Britain's brainless Met Office

An interesting correspondence below -- forwarded to me. Among other things, they can't even spell such simple words as "truly" or "huge". I start with an email to them:

Dear Met Office,

You may know of the late Mr Norman Holdsworth, who was a senior Met Office weather forecaster for decades. He served at Cyprus ; Aberporth, Wales and Bracknell.

Norman was a lovely man.... a real gentleman of high intellect. He always used to tell me that he never believed in the twin falsehoods........"global warming" and "climate change".

Since he's died, we have had four successive winters in the UK, with long spells of severe weather.

So where is the EVIDENCE for anthropomorphic "global warming" ........ now dubbed "climate change" to try and dupe people even further?

Could you please supply PROOF that there has been global warming over the last 10 years ?

Yours faithfully,

L J Jenkins,

The Met reply below

Dear L J Jenkins,

The evidence for climate change is vast and if you wish to truely understand the physical forces at work you will need to be prepared to do a certain amount of reading to gain this. There are hugh amounts of scientific research available in the public domain. However as a good overview, I would refer you to the web site of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html and the Met Office Hadley Centre publications which can be found here (in particular the one titled "Evidence"): http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/library/publications/climate-change.

The Met Office Hadley Centre is the UK’s national centre for climate change research. Partly funded by DECC (the Department of Energy and Climate Change) and Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), the Hadley Centre provides in-depth information to the Government and advise them on climate change issues using expert scientific evidence. Our climate scientists undertake studies of the global climate using similar, though more extensive, models of the atmospheres, as are used for the prediction of weather conditions.

In its Fourth Assessment Review, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that there is unequivocal evidence from observations that the Earth is warming. It further stated and that most of the observed warming since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in man-made greenhouse gas concentrations. By “very likely”, the IPCC means a 90% probability or greater. This broad climate change message has also been strongly supported by the world’s top Academy of Sciences, including the Royal Society in the UK and the National Academy of Sciences in the USA.

In view of this, the Met Office firmly believes that climate research has captured the essential aspects of what is causing our planet to warm. It is now time to look at strategies for adaptation and mitigation; better defining uncertainty and improving regional detail in climate models. This is where our efforts will and should be directed.

Trish Lamb,

Climate Science Enquiries Coordinator

If Trish had another brain, she'd be lonely

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).