The Met Office should be sued

The Met Office should be sued

www.timesonline.co.uk

With its prediction of a blazing summer, it has helped to trash the travel industry abroad.

It's official. It will not be a scorcher this summer. The barbecue will not be worn out, and many will have another year of spending a week in the rain in a holiday cottage in Cornwall.

I blame the Met Office. The wet summers of 2007 and 2008 were highly unlikely to be repeated, said Ewen McCallum, chief meteorologist, back in the spring.

“This year will be much drier than normal,” he predicted. “Get the BBQ out. Probably with spells of weather with the temperature reaching 30 degrees Ce

(visit the link for the full news article)

This article is mis-leading... and shows an ignorance which is insulting towards the MET office and the educated man or woman.

The MET office produces an accurate statistical analysis, and publishes it as a probability. This is all science can do. I understand that the hot summer was a 2:1 bet, pretty good odds, but not assured. Anybody who expects more has missed the point of what stats can give.

I think there's an education problem, or lack of it, both in the media and the public.

Perhaps this Times editor should sue his "school" for not educating him properly about statistics.

Or are the MET office to treat the media & public like children and withhold information for fear of misunderstandings.

If anything, the media are like naughty school children.

Philip Eden, vice president of the Royal Meteorological Society, has rightly criticised the Met Office for publicising such an optimistic prediction when they had relatively little evidence of how the summer would unfold.

According to Mr Eden the MET office should not bother and just accept the science isn't good enough. Well.... Mr Eden, if they were to do that, how could they justify using the resources to make these predictions if they aren't to be used, and how will the science progress to the level where we do understand the climate much better if we don't calculate the stats for the current climate?!

www.timesonline.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)


[edit on 29-7-2009 by john124]

What a ridiculous whiney article.

The met office never said it would be a blazing hot summer, they said there would be spells reaching 30 C. That's not hot, it's warm. A perfect temperature to relax in.

And they got it wrong?
Well boo hoo. Weather prediction is not yet an exact science.
Anyone who assumes met predictions are unchanging law probably can't work out why their losing money at the races while religiously following the form guide.

2+2 does not always equal 4.
Not when you're adding clouds or sunbeams.