England's England

Why the Met Office “forecasts” are pointless

With those who do the long range weather forecasting like the wonderful yet eccentric http://www.weatheraction.com constantly being accurate with their ability to see almost to the exact week, 6 months ahead (he predicted the massive snowfall set to follow Valentines day), and the Met Office being constantly shown to be completely incompetent, I was interested to watch an interview with a Met Office man who had just received some massive pay bonus for something or other.

In this interview he said that long range forecasting was a new science and in its early stages, which is why they kept getting them so horrendously wrong.  You’ll remember how we were supposed to be having a mild winter after a promised barbecue summer.  100% fail there by the Met Office, despite the fortune it costs to run and the huge amount of tech they’ve spent our money on.

Anyway, he continued to talk up the Met Office weather forecasts, homing in on their “Five day forecast” as being wonderful and accurate and worth all the money we were paying them.

Like a red rag to a bull, I decided to test this.  I mean, this was the Met Office, the same insitution that wanted us to believe all the mumbo jumbo about future global warming.  They must know about climate and weather in the future or they wouldn’t be “forecasting” global warming would they?  Or would they?

On closer inspection I discovered that the words “5 day” and “forecast” are a tad bit misleading.  What they actually provide is a “nowcast” plus the four next days.  Yes, that totals five, but surely it’s “forecasting” only four of them.  Bit cheeky that, indeed, some might say ‘deliberately misleading’.

So I picked a random date in January and carefully watched the feeds and web predictions from the Met Office via their own site and the BBC Weather site. I’d picked the generic term ‘Liverpool’ as what I wanted one of these world famous “forecasts” for.  That seemed big enough and easy enough compared to a far smaller and more specific, say, “Number 6 Hedgeway Cuttings” address type demand on my part.  Surely I was being fair?

The first ever appearance of the forecast for my chosen day was at just after Midnight with now just under four days to go.  This told me that my target day would be Sunny, maximum temperature 3, overnight low 1, with a Northerly wind at 18mph. Hmmm.  Not a bad day then, a bit cold, not too windy, but at least it would be dry.  So, I could wrap up warm and sit in my garden in the sunshine.  That’s what I decided I would do when the target date arrived.

Within a day I noticed that the overnight low had changed from being 1 degree and was the colder 0 or freezing!  Mind you, there’s not a lot of difference really.  But, what’s this? Just two days to go and it was no longer Sunny but Light Rain Showers that were predicted.  What?  So, in other words they were wasting my time with the original forecast.  I was going to sit in my garden and get wet.  That’s a big radical difference to what I’d been promised.  Temperatures were now going to be 4 and 2, so that’s warmer by day and no longer freezing by night.  Winds were dropped a bit to 17mph, but this time coming from the North-North-West.

Yes, I guess you could argue that as we got closer and they were able to tweak the forecast that not a lot had changed beyond the rain replacing the promised sun, and I’m sure a spin doctor could say it’s all only a general trend guide.

With just 24 hours until my target day and the Met Office removed the prediction of rain and replaced it with “Sunny Intervals”.  What on earth does that mean?  What is a “Sunny Interval”? Is that still saying rain, but now and again there’d be sun?  Should I still be thinking it would rain or what? Anyway, the wind was now going to be Northerly again and 14 mph.  The daytime temperature would now be 5 degrees and overnight it would be 0.  Ah, so freezing again.  I wish they’d make their mind up.  Freezing point or not freezing point can make a big difference to vegetables and water pipes, y’know.

This was getting exciting.  With less than 6 hours to go, I checked in and to my relief my target day was again going to be Sunny.  No mention of rain, or these mysterious “intervals”, just “Sunny”, so no getting my head wet when I went out in my garden tomorrow.  I was looking forward to it.  The temperature was now going to be 4 and it would drop to 2.  Winds would again be North-North-Westerly and this time 20mph.  Hmmm.  A bit breezier than first ‘predicted’.

Finally my target day arrived.  According to what was now a “nowcast” it was 2 degrees out there.  Hmmm.  But only yesterday they’d said it would be 2 degrees at night, not by day.  Ok, fair enough, but yesterday they’d promised me “sunny” and I didn’t like the look of that dark overcast sky I was now seeing.  To my dismay the words “Sunny Intervals” appeared to have returned to the “nowcast”.  Oh well, out to the garden I went.  The cold sea air did make it a bit nippy, but I was ok  in the dull sunless cold waiting for one of these “intervals”.

Well, I was ok for about 20 minutes until I was forced to beat a hasty retreat into the warmth of my house.

It had started to snow quite thick fluffy snow which appeared to be settling.

Being 19 … again.

Yesterday it was my, erm, my “19th” birthday.  Well, when I say 19, what I mean is, erm, sort of 19.  Let me explain.

In conversation, I very very occasionally drop into the discussion that I am 19 years of age (Ok, I actually say it a lot, I’ll give you that!). This often rushes by people, but others who examine the things I discuss, especially relating to things I’ve done, will question how it’s possible that I’m so young. Those who have followed my meanderings for many years will point out that I appear to have been 19 forever.

Some people will get angry and tell me I should act my (real) age. Others will say how pathetic I am pretending I’m 19. Yes, me being 19 polarises people. Only a few actually ‘get’ it.

So, I guess I’d best explain it: Firstly, I need to qualify it, or maybe even confuse it, by saying that almost everybody I know is 19, including those who slag me off for saying I’m 19.

Ok, it works like this: 19 is the mean age by which you have made your major decisions about who you are and what you like. This is constantly slightly changing and readjusting itself forever of course, but it is pretty much in place at the age of 19. The years from 13 to 19 are full of wonderment and build the foundations of a person’s musical tastes, humour, style, likes and dislikes. Normally, this is a time for soaking up what really is new and exciting, especially when it comes to music and fashion, constantly looking forward to the next day. It’s a time when the song being sung yesterday gives way to the song being sung today. Living for the here and now means there’s not too much time to care about the songs from yesterday, whilst being excited about what is to come tomorrow.

The majority of people will take a ’snapshot’ of these years and will spend the rest of their lives replaying them and replaying them or looking only for more of the same. A further 19 years may pass but all they are interested in is what was around when they were 19 (well, ok, it’s not exactly 19, but those years around the age of 19. You know what I mean, right?). As what they liked when they were 19 gets further and further into the past and things move on and sound even less like the music they remember, they get more and more angry, grumpy and frustrated by what is there instead. They tend to envy, hate or dismiss the 19-year-olds of the day because they aren’t listening to the stuff they remember 19-year-olds listening to when they were 19.

So, another way of looking at it is to say that these folk have mentally remained their original 19 forever. They have no real interest in anything that has happened since they were actually 19, constantly acting as if they were still 19, back how ever many years ago that really was.

Meanwhile, there are a different type of eternal 19 year olds. These are the ones who are continuing to listen to and be excited by new music, just as they did when they were 19, and they continue to have no time or space in their heads for the vast majority of the old stuff, regardless of their actual age.  I’m one of these 19 year olds.

There we have it. The bottom line is that we are all 19 years old, regardless of how we deal with the eternity that follows the chronological age of 19! See? Denial is pointless!

Climate change is really about population control

As the lies of those who want us to believe that we are facing man made climate change continue to unravel and the public slowly gets to see as near as they can what’s really going on, I thought it might be a good time to take stock, and maybe point to what’s really going on.  It’s very very frightening.

Firstly, what’s my armchair pundit’s position?  Ok, well obviously I’m not a climate scientist.  But, I am a realist and can apply scientifically based ‘logical tests’ to evidence as presented.  I am not a fan of ‘he said she said’ and prefer to go to the source.  The bottom line for me is that I’d say two things are definite when it comes to global warming/cooling.  Will I be arrested or hounded out of my home for saying this?  Not yet, but for how long am I safe?

1) If there is any longer term warming/cooling it has not yet been proven to be anything beyond a natural cyclic event seen many times before on planet Earth.

2) If humans are in some way contributing to climate change, no evidence has yet been found or presented that satisfactorily demonstrates the linking of any of our emissions to actual climate change.

Secondly, the bizarre thing that has happened to this whole climate change “science” worries me beyond anything that has worried me before.  It should worry us all if we want to remain as free as we can and out of the control of others.

Here’s the thing: We seem to have those who aren’t interested in the actual science, but just WANT to believe that we are heading to some man-made catastrophe.  They want this far more than they wanted the world to end because of ‘Y2K’ or the ‘Millennium Bug’.  They are so devoted to their climate catastrophe faith rather than looking at the actual and evolving science, that anybody who asks for more evidence, more debate, more research, or dares suggest the motion that man is changing climate is not yet carried, becomes tarred with the brush that labels them a “Climate Denier”.

Yep, asking for more proof or for the base research data or to go back to the origin of climate ‘facts’ is not allowed in the “believer’s” world.  They want the “deniers” to repent and beg for forgiveness for their sins of not believing by shouting at or intimidating them.  To this end, ‘facts’ and figures and research data is hidden from the public.  Gangs of the “believers” will go through Wikipedia changing history to fit their motion, lobby peer review magazines to not publish articles that don’t adhere to the faith-line, and stifle any form of questioning or debate.

These people are not scientific. They have created a new religion.  They have no interest in continued investigating or logical testing of the data.  Their mind is already made up.  And it’s all based on faith not science.

So what we now have is a religion masquerading as a science.  Not too dissimilar to how Intelligent Design masqueraded as science.  Many eco-loonies and enviro-wankers have complete faith in their faith and have now so tightly closed their mind to debate or the input of new or reviewed evidence that we can’t ‘save’ these people from their cult.  They are as gone as are any other group with a major religious belief.

Now to the conspiracy bit.  This is all about some small global elite making money, but hey, when isn’t a religion?

Remember, I am not normally a conspiracy theorist; I used to think they were fun and nothing more. Until now.

You see, globally, there is now a huge industry being created and growing at a massive wildfire rate that taxes and then sets limits on and buys and sells … carbon emissions.  This is weird and bizarre.  Think about it for a moment: It’s a mad as when, in the (original) Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, some new settlers to the planet Earth declared the leaf to be the currency, and set about a massive deforestation by fire exercise in order to limit and control the currency.  It’s as laughable and doesn’t really make any sense, but it is happening and it is about ‘control’.

The carbon ‘control’ industry wants to dominate the world with rules about how and what we are allowed to do as countries, towns, villages or individuals.  There are rumours about population control, keeping new birth numbers down in order to meet carbon emission targets - all of which can of course can be offset by carbon trading - in other words, money money money.  Loads of money.

The whole climate change scam is now being shown as one big global conspiracy far removed from real science, but it is snowballing out of the realists’ ability to control or stop.  It is big money.  It is control over the developing world.  It is keeping the poor poorer and lining the pockets of the few, but on a global scale.

Are we too late to stop this?  Probably.  Here’s why:

Legislation already forces me to have to ‘believe’ in all the enviro-nonsense.  I’m not allowed free will, but will suffer penalties if I don’t recycle or spend my time sorting my waste into the relevant different piles and their relevant different bins for the relevant different collectors to come and pick up.  Just like prayer in any religion helps to reinforce that faith, so does all this time in the kitchen sorting and sifting through my trash.  Most from within a faith don’t question prayer or see ‘outside’ to the bigger picture of just how they are being controlled.  Likewise, the majority of all the millions of us doing this pointless sorting and sifting exercise just ‘accept’ the new rules about sorting and sifting through all our used rubbish and do as they are told.  And so the indoctrination continues.

Next stage will come more legislation about how much energy I can use, what car I can drive, what clothes I can wear, what food I can eat. Tighter and tighter the control will get.  All in the name of climate change and helping save the environment.

How many children will I be allowed to have?  Will they cut off the internet to stop us freely communicating and pretend it’s to stop us emitting so much carbon?  Will my free-will soon be gone by legislation?

All of this control over us will be done by continuing to feed us bad science from bad scientists, controlling us (for our own good!) in what seems a very plausible way that we will just accept.

Unless the truth about the lies of climate science can properly come out and be freely shared to everybody everywhere, all we will be allowed to do is do as we are told and thank them for letting us be part of an imaginary saving of the world.

My Steve Conway envy

Today I will come out and share that I’m suffering from Steve Conway envy.  Steve is a Dublin based broadcaster, journalist and writer (he has books, damn him, books).  I met him originally back in the 1980s because of the offshore pirate station Radio Caroline, when we were both based in London.

When I first met Steve he seemed a bit odd or strange.  I love odd and strange and so I felt very comfortable with him, despite his then physical appearance in some way reminding me of the awful Morrissey at the time.  I hated Morrissey.  His music made me want to kill myself.  Nobody else saw this whenever I mentioned it behind Steve’s back, so it must have just been something odd going on in my head and maybe he didn’t look like Morrissey at all.

Anyway, for nearly a decade or so Steve and I kept in touch through good and bad times, and although drawn more by a kind of business relationship, I maintained a friendship during that period until as happened with everybody I knew from that era, I drifted away.  Or maybe he drifted away.  It doesn’t matter.

So, during this decade of which I speak we had a sort of tolerance of each other’s views on Radio Caroline and those who’d taken over running it, and so on, which was a very good thing.  Try as I might I could never get him to see that the people I’d declared as evil were in fact evil.  Damn him for having his own mind!

After losing touch, Steve disappeared off to Dublin and it is there that he holds down a regular radio show (on a real radio station), finally published his book about his time on Radio Caroline, and generally settled into getting old gracefully.  Or so I thought.

Steve, like myself, is a bit of a dreamer.  Different dreams (in different beds), all usually coming to nothing, and I appreciated that of him.  One of his dreams was to publish ‘the book’.  He wrote a first draft and I was extremely privileged to have been given a copy.  It needed a lot of ‘subbing’ (as we world famous journos call it), but it was an exciting graphic read.  One of the best reads I’d had in fact, probably because it was about a subject I loved, and it used Steve’s excellent powers of observation and easy to understand explanations and descriptions.

At this point I didn’t have Steve Conway envy.  I hoped he’d get it published, tried to bully him into getting it published, and enthused about how he MUST publish it.  However, he let it go and it took him over a decade before he finally got round to it.

The internet, especially the awful Facebook, lets you spy on people you lost touch with from before there was an internet, and so Steve (alongside so many others) was on my radar despite having lost touch.  I read his publicity about his book deal and later read about his book launch. Nope, no Steve Conway envy at this point either.  Either in my head or out loud somewhere (I can’t remember) I wished him well with it and didn’t think much more about it.

I carried on spying on Steve as time passed and he then blogged about doing something that I found incredibly curious.  He’d basically prepared a kind of a ‘bucket list’ of ten things he wanted to do that he’d never done before, hopefully not because he was about to kick the bucket but because he is an imaginative genius with a bit of time on his hands.  Ok, a bucket list, eh?  I loved the film about ‘The Bucket List’ but had never really thought about preparing or implementing my own.

Yes, it was at this point that my Steve Conway envy started.  It was tiny at first.  Not enough to even make me realise I was suffering from Steve Conway envy. He’d hooked me and reeled me in, the swine.

First to be implemented from his list was to appear naked in public.  He provided us with a brilliant blog entry describing how he had been part of a photo-shoot along with many other naked people for an album cover or something.  He described his fears and experiences of getting his kit off for the very first time and nakedly sitting nakedly posing nakedly alongside other nakedly sitting nakedly posing naked people.  It wasn’t porn, it was art.  But, reading his vivid descriptions took me there and I was able to be with him and laugh out loud at the experience and his feelings of awkwardness and wry observations along the way.  It was pure poetry with which I could identify.

Within a few days the Steve Conway envy started to rise.  I slowly began to realise that I was actually jealous that he’d been able to do this naked photo-shoot, and I was talking about it to people around me.  Their advice was that I should do one and why not?

Well, the point they missed was that all I’d be doing is copying Steve Conway.  I couldn’t just go out and copy Steve Conway, I thought, because I’m a person who prides himself on being original.  But, bloody Steve Conway had bloody beaten me to a bloody brilliant and original bloody idea.

A week or so passed and I had the hump.  The Steve Conway envy had risen to an extreme.  My brain was processing a thousand thoughts.  Should I travel to Dublin to kill him?  I mean, he’d stolen my idea after all!

Ok, he hadn’t stolen my idea in the slightest.  I’d never had the idea.  It was his idea and it was a good idea, and in the hands of the best person to implement the idea.  I couldn’t do anything about it.  If I copied him I wouldn’t be original.  It was his idea, damn him, his idea.

The Steve Conway envy boiled over until I was seething with bile and making audible groans as I paced up and down.  My head was looking for something - anything - to do that would rival what Steve was doing.  But, the whole concept of having a list was already out there, so nothing, absolutely nothing I could do would be anything but copying.  Even if I didn’t mention it, write about, or communicate it to anybody (least of all Steve), I would know that I was just copying him.  There was no way I could ‘win’ in this game that was solely in my head of trying to be better than Steve.

Eventually I managed to wrestle control of my senses and the Steve Conway envy started to slowly subside.  I’m in control of it, and no harm will come to Steve, honest.  In fact, I felt a sense of contentment and ‘Pah!’ when Steve announced the completion of his second task which was to drink a Guinness.

Pah!  Drink a Guinness?  What a rubbish thing to have on a list.  Pah!

Obviously, it was important to Steve, and although not as outrageous as his first thing, to him it was as important for many other reasons.  Hence why if I was to have a list - I HAVEN’T, OK, I HAVEN’T - drinking a Guinness wouldn’t feature on it.

This made me feel superior to Steve for a while as I smugly nodded and went ‘Pah!’ in front of my computer screen.  Pah!  I felt I’d won some victory over him, crushed him into insignificance. The Steve Conway envy was at a low.

Until I then remembered he has another eight unannounced things on his list.  With butterflies in my stomach, I felt the Steve Conway envy rise as I stared out of the window at the full moon and howled before returning to a scowl as I spied on him via Facebook and his blog watching and waiting…

(Steve Conway’s blog is http://steveconway.wordpress.com but be warned, you might get Steve Conway envy)