UK Met Office Says It Can’t Back Up Senior Meteorologist’s Claim That Storms Are “More Intense” Due To Climate-Change

Authored by Chris Morrison via DailySceptic.org,

The Met Office has been unable to back up a claim that storms in the U.K. are “more intense” due to the effects of climate change.

The claim was made by senior Met Office meteorologist Claire Nasir on January 22nd on BBC 5 Live Breakfast in the aftermath of Storm Isha, and led to a freedom of information request for an explanation by investigative journalist Paul Homewood.

The Met Office has replied that it is unable to answer the request due to the fact that the information “is not held”.

In fact the Met Office could have addressed the claim that storms are growing in intensity by referring to its own ‘State of the Climate 2022’ report:

The most recent two decades have seen fewer occurrences of maximum gust speeds above these thresholds [40/50/60 knots] than during previous decades, particularly comparing the period before and after 2000. This earlier period [before 2000] also included among the most severe storms experienced in the U.K. in the observational records including the ‘Burns Day Storm’ of January 25th 1990, the ‘Boxing Day Storm’ of December 26th 1998 and the ‘Great Storm’ of October 16th 1987. Any comparison of storms is complex as it depends on severity, spatial extent and duration. Storm Eunice [in 2022] was the most severe storm to affect England and Wales since February 2014, but even so, these storms of the 1980s and 1990s were much more severe.

An explanation for the remarks broadcast unchallenged on the BBC was provided by the Met Office, “in order to provide advice and assistance”. The statement about more intense storms being due to climate change was, the Met Office explains, in reference to “our published U.K. Climate Projections, looking at projections in the future”. This is straight out laughable, since it seeks to justify a statement firmly in the present with waffle about future modelled projections. Paul Homewood comments that it is “small wonder that so many have little confidence in the Met Office anymore”. Meanwhile, the Global Warming Policy Foundation has demanded that the Met Office retracts the “false ‘more intense storms’ claim”. The foundation notes that there is no compelling trend in maximum gust speeds recorded in the U.K. since 1969.

Of course these remarks by Claire Nasir are just the latest in a long line of scares that are being spread by state-funded operations promoting the collectivist Net Zero project. In the mainstream media there is little or no push back on often outrageous and improbable claims of climate collapse and potential future human misery.

In December, the headlines were full of the news that London could suffer an endemic dengue plague by 2060 due to changes in the climate. The claim from the Health Security Agency arose from a computer model fed with an implausible rise in temperature of 3-4°C within 80 years. Paul Reiter, retired Professor of Insects and Infectious Diseases at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, called the claims “entirely  fictional” and “shameless”. Andrew Montford of Net Zero Watch commented that science is being misused to generate fear and to ‘nudge’ us in a desired direction. “This kind of shameful disinformation brings the Civil Service into disrepute,” he said.

The cynical might observe that climate Armageddonites know they are unlikely to be challenged on any claim on climate change, however improbable. In mainstream media, politics and academia, the science is ‘settled’. As a matter of policy, the BBC no longer gives airtime to anyone challenging the politicised narrative. As a result, many scientists seem to have lost the ability to engage in a rational debate with anyone taking a sceptical view of their work. Last December, the Daily Sceptic reported on a paper from the Met Office that proposed a radical new method of calculating climate temperature change. The scientific method of calculating trends over 30 years was to be ditched and replaced with 10 years of actual data merged with model projections for the next decade. The motive behind this controversial move was obvious since the hope would be to claim an earlier breach of the 1.5°C political threshold. The paper was led by Professor Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impacts at the Met Office, and this is what he tweeted as a rebuttal.

The only mainstream broadcast media outlets in the U.K. offering a platform for sceptical discussion of climate change and its role in promoting Net Zero are Talk TV and GB News. Almost all salaried academics working in ‘climate science’ subscribe to the ‘settled’ narrative and will not debate with people they frequently term ‘deniers’. In fact they hide behind this and similar abuse because they fear a forensic examination of much of their fearmongering. Not to put too fine a point on it, they are scared of what might happen in an uncontrolled debating environment. Perish the thought that Professor Betts might be asked to explain how he keeps a straight face when promoting the Met Office’s 40.3°C U.K. temperature  ‘record’. The one recorded for 60 seconds on July 19th 2022 by a runway at RAF Coningsby as three Typhoon jets were landing.

To ‘balance’ their coverage, and seemingly to keep the state regulator Ofcom happy, Talk TV and GB News are forced to give a platform to  people inhabiting the more colourful end of the climate spectrum. Step forward Jim Dale, one time Royal Navy weather observer, who can be relied upon to point to any bad weather event or natural disaster such a wildfires and claim it is all due to a human-caused collapsing climate. Any reference to actual data is met with shouty denial and frequent abuse. The regular brawls on Nana Akua’s GB News Sunday show with retired hydrologist Paul Burgess are a classic of their kind.

Let’s call it the Daleification of climate science, and as we can see it is not just confined to our eponymous hero.