If you think the U.K. Met Office is adept at producing junk temperature measurements and statistics, just wait till you see what the Department of Net Zero and Energy Security (DNZES) is up to. Its compilation of 30-year temperature averages for its Energy Trends publication is so flawed, it might be easier and more cost-effective just to make the figures up.
The DNZES figures, both monthly and annual, are said to provide average temperature, “heating degree-days” and deviation from long-term measurements. Just 17 Met Office stations are used although, curiously, 21 sets of information arise due to site double counting. Eight of the stations consulted are in Class 4 sites with internationally-recognised ‘uncertainties’ of 2°C, while four are in Class 5 with possible errors up to 5°C. The data are not only corrupted by unnatural influences but also slewed by less than obvious geographical sitings. No measurements are taken in Northern Ireland, most of Scotland or mid and north Wales. The entire south-east of England is represented by Heathrow Airport, one of the worst places possible to gain an idea of surrounding air temperature.
The siting and identification of the relevant Met Office stations is shown below.
The eight Class 4 sites are Glasgow Bishopton, Bingley, Crosby, Nottingham Watnall, Coleshill, Aberporth, Hurn and Plymouth Mountbatten while the four Class 5 are Leuchars, Durham, St. Athan and Boscombe Down. Quite why four of the 17 sites are double counted “to produce the national averages for temperature correction” is not immediately clear. Admittedly the Met Office does not have many Class 1 and 2 sites, but quite why these cannot be used rather than the hopelessly corrupted bunch identified is again not immediately clear. But it gets worse.
Hat tip again to Ray Sanders, the citizen journalist who is carrying out a forensic examination of the entire Met Office temperature gathering operation. Noting that the DNZES statistics stretch back to 1980, he observes that doubled-up Rostherne was only opened in 2012. Glasgow is also short of a few years having started in 1998, as is Coleshill (1997), St. Athan (1997), Leconfield (2002) and Weybourne (1991). Just two Class 1 sites are used, neither of which existed in 1981. “This concoction of historic averages is reminiscent of Dungeness where stations that do not exist are attributed averages by what are no better than mathematical conjuring tricks,” Sanders states. The Dungeness note refers to the recent discovery that the Met Office has been inventing temperature averages for over 100 stations, a practice, and a subsequent attempted cover up, the Daily Sceptic recently reported here and here.
Sanders also casts a critical eye on the Leconfield site. This is a Class 3 station with uncertainties of 1°C but its doubled-up data arises from a location with “multiple issues”. In Sanders’s view, the site should be at least Class 4 due to nearby roads and tarmac. There is also the “serious issue” of a newly-built solar farm with 4,248 heat-producing panels standing just 80 metres (at its closest point) from the measuring device. “There are even bigger problems with the way in which its temperature readings are subsequently manipulated by Government departments that is almost unbelievable,” he adds.
The end result of all these shenanigans can be seen in the table below. The average temperature for the period 1991-2020 was said to be 10.3°C, a figure that according to the Met Office has never been reached in a single year. The highest recorded temperature was 10.03°C in 2023.
It’s becoming clearer by the day that the Met Office’s temperature measuring operation is amateurish and unsuitable for the serious scientific purpose of underpinning the Net Zero agenda. Little care seems to have been taken over the siting of measuring devices, with nearly eight out of 10 stations based in junk classes 4 and 5 with huge uncertainties identified by the World Meteorological Organisation. Alarmists frequently talk about the dangers of warming of as little as one tenth of a degree centigrade but Met Office figures (and those of other state-funded meteorological organisations around the world, which suffer from similar problems) are incapable of providing measurements to this degree of accuracy.
Meanwhile, DNZES is in the hands of an extremist gang of weird political wonks led by the Mad Miliband. They are unlikely to lose much sleep over a few inaccurate temperature details when there is work to be done saving the planet. Dodgy temperature figures, hockey sticks and purple weather maps have been creating mass climate psychosis for years – the job is almost done. Now is time to make a real move on the hated free enterprise industrial society and the plebs who seem to take an unnatural enjoyment in the improved living standards it offers. Step forward Miliband’s right-hand man and the former Chief Executive of the Climate Change Committee, Chris Stark. Commenting on the Net Zero imperative, he recently said: “We are likely to see a move towards a more stick-like intervention into the future if we are not able to act.”
Things are getting hot – these people are ready to strike.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
This piece was first published in The Daily Sceptic, and is reproduced by kind permission.
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When the purpose of data collection and analysis is to promote a particular political and ideological philosophy, truth and accuracy will always be subservient to scientific integrity and truth.
Can we expect to see the senior civil servant running the Department of Net Zero and Energy Security (DNZES) to be on the New Years Honours List?
Undoubtedly a thorough evaluation by the writer (obviously not the data fiddlers) but rather complicated – my own yardstick is this:
What’s the weather like outside my window?
Is report x promoting the falacy that humans can control the climate?
And yes, the net zero crowd will get gongs and Knighthoods just like the covid pushers.
Milliband is a zealot….there is no reasoning with him. Those who follow him for the money and the ‘gongs’, well, they don’t want to understand the reasons they are destroying the country. They fly high on hubris until they are burnt by reality. Sooner rather than later, hopefully.