Inept ‘Fact Check’ by Science Feedback Shines Further Light on U.K. Met Office’s Junk and Fabricated Temperature Measurements
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic
Republished by David Icke
After a year of damaging revelations about the state of the Met Office’s temperature measuring network, the Green Blob-funded ‘fact-checker’ Science Feedback has sprung to the defense of the state-funded U.K. weather service. It has published a long ‘fact check’ seeking to exonerate practices that have recently come to light including the locating of stations with huge heat corrupted ‘uncertainties’ and the publication of invented data from 103 non-existent sites. Inept is a word that springs to mind. At one point, Science Feedback justifies the estimation of data at the non-existent stations by referring to the hastily changed Met Office explanation for station/location long-term averages. The original and now deleted Met Office webpage referenced station names and provided single location coordinates including one improbable siting next to the sea on Dover beach. This would appear to be a new low in the world of so-called fact-checking – designating copy as ‘misleading’ based on an explanation changed after the article was published.
The first Daily Sceptic article reporting on the existence of 103 non-existent stations can be read here. The second appeared last month here and detailed the unannounced web changes and the obvious cover-up intended to deflect criticism from the invented station data.
Under the verdict “misleading” Science Feedback claims that the average data going back 60 years for stations is not “fabricated” but estimated using “well-correlated related neighbouring stations”. This is said to be a scientific method that is published in peer-reviewed literature. The Met Office discloses it has “relatively few” stations with 30-year data from which long-term averages can be calculated. The distinction between estimated and fabricated is moot. A pundit calling the winner of a sports match before it has taken place is an estimation of the result, and the opinion is no less a fabrication or invention however distinguished the pundit and however well-regarded any peers signalling agreement might be.
Let us examine the claim of “well-correlated neighbouring stations” by taking an example from the Met Office’s now renamed “location-specific long-term averages” climate database. Cawood in the West Riding of Yorkshire is a pristine Class 1 site designated by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) as providing uncorrupted data over a large surrounding area. It also has an immaculate record of temperature recordings from the same site stretching back to 1959. But no rolling 30-year average for Cawood is provided. Instead the Met Office flags data for five other sites between two and 27 miles distant. Unlike Cawood, all of these have average data despite the fact that four no longer exist and the fifth, High Mowthorpe, is 27 miles away and at a 163 metres higher elevation.
Again we are obliged to the super sleuthing of Ray Sanders for bringing the Cawood data to light. He is not inclined to be charitable and notes:
