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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day – Met Office is inventing temperature data Ray Sanders has produced solid evidence that suggests the Met Office is inventing temperature data that it is using for political Net Zero purposes. Claiming his thorough, well documented investigations are “vexatious” will no longer wash. It must reply with realistic explanations and evidence of its own to retain public trust in its work.
– Chris Morrison
I used to say “Other than weather reports, don’t believe anything the media says without looking at multiple sources”… well even the weather reports are deeply suspect now.
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It appears that, as so many other things happen to be, that the weather is what we are told it is, and why should you believe your lying eyes? We are to have faith, are we not?
We have just had the hottest summer ever it would appear.
But I’m sure next summer will be hotter.
If a national government’s word on foreign policy, immigration policy, fiscal policy, the equality of everyone under the law, and even meteorological data can be presumed to not be trustworthy; at what point does the legitimacy of the government come into question?
Something to ponder, and maybe talk about very, very quietly in case of stukachi.
Subotai Bahadur
the corporate media is only capable of reporting the footballl scores, and the horse racing results
The weather app on my phone comes from The Weather Channel. I don’t know which forecaster they use but their prognostications seem to be pretty reliable. The UK Met Office now have zero credibility, producing little but propaganda.
I had a look at the interactive map Tallbloke links to. I’ve always been under the impression that the main weather station for Glasgow was at the airport. But it turns out that it closed over 25 years ago. So did Springburn Park, the closest to the city centre, but well-sited. Pollok Park on the south side closed about a decade ago. The Met Office confidently gives reports from all three (and even from Renfrew Airport, which closed in the late 1950s; its runway is now part of the M8 motorway) as if they still existed.
As best as I can tell (the Met Office website’s own map of active stations is comically blurry to the point of illegibility; one might almost suspect it’s deliberate), the closest operational station is at Bishopton, 11-12 miles away.
Yes indeed Perry.
It is often forgotten that the physical sciences depend on certain philosophical principles – including ethical, moral, principles.
For example, that truth is objective and universal – that there is such a thing as “the truth” rather than “my truth” or “your truth”.
And that telling the truth, rather than making up data, is a moral imperative in science.
American Pragmatism (which displaced the “Common Sense” philosophy of such thinkers as Noah Porter and James McCosh – the story that it was a continuation of it, is a lie) and British Utilitarianism (Jeremy Bentham and co) reject this.
To them if lying leads to the “greatest happiness of the greatest number” than one should lie.
To them there is no great moral principle prizing truth for its own sake.
So it is not astonishing that people educated in such philosophies lie about data (in all sorts of fields) to further a political and cultural agenda.
This is especially true as these philosophies (Pragmatism and Utilitarianism) are NOT formally taught to most people in the schools and universities – it is NOT the case they will be formally presented with opposing opinions also presented, they are sort-of background assumptions twisting thought.
So it is no longer the case of “is this true?” but rather “how will this help promote Social Justice?”
Short version of the above – be very careful with any factual claims made by authorities, they may be telling the truth (it is possible), but they may be twisting the truth, or even just lying – even about basic facts.
Sam Duncan – yes, and it is much the same in much of the rest of the world.
The establishment do not even do a very good job of covering up their falsehoods – but then why should they? After all they can “swamp” dissent (crush the truth) via their domination of the main-steam-media.
And, as you know, if you encounter people who justify things in terms of the “public interest” or the “general welfare” you are likely dealing with very bad people – capable of any crime. It used to be called “for the good of the state”.
I have been telling my statistician colleagues about this sort of thing for 20 years. The problem is that they do have very high standards and assume that other scientists also adhere to these high standards.
In other words: too much trust and not enough verify.
I think our real problem is that modern lampposts can’t support very much extra weight.
It has been said that in polite company, one does not discuss religion or politics. Weather used to be okay, but these days …
“The problem is that they do have very high standards and assume that other scientists also adhere to these high standards.”
This has been the main problem for the whole lifetime of the CO2 alarmism scare. I used to frequent quite a few sciencey blogs and these people universally treated climate scientists with respect and sceptics with contempt. It is just expected that other scientists are doing honest work. They even repeat the ludicrous accusation that sceptic blogs are being paid by the oil industry to spread misinformation.
@Stonyground
Yup. I still get some odd looks from my colleagues when I talk about the egregious errors and worse of (a lot of) climate scientists.
The Met Office are now declaring 2025 to be our hottest summer ever. Presumably they have the invented data to prove it.
It has also been mentioned that the MO do sell their data to other organisations. If they are fabricating data they would surely be guilty of fraud.
From the article: it cannot name the up to six well-correlated sites behind closed-site climate averages, because “it is not retained information”.
Well. So the Met Office does not retain the identity of the sites being used to fabricate the data. I cannot quite grasp how this system is supposed to function, then. I mean, how are they supposed to know which sites’ data should be used? Do they just pick random sites, anywhere? Do they fabricate all the data from whole cloth?
“Science is the belief in the fallibility of experts” – some know-nothing named Richard Feynman.
Except in some cases it looks more like malice than mistake.
Fred the Forth.
Official “science”, both the natural sciences and the social sciences (whether or not that term is appropriate) are now meant to serve a progressive political and cultural agenda – to promote Social Justice (the enemy of justice).
It is no more convenient, for this agenda, to tell the truth about temperature data, than it would be to tell the truth about juries – namely that nonwhite juries are more likely to be racist than white juries are – that, for example, black juries in the United States tend (tend – a tendency) to find black people innocent and white people guilty (NOT all such juries – but there is a tendency). White juries are less biased – and, in Britain, may (perhaps) even have a bias against (yes – against, what is called an “out group preference”) people of their own race.
Better, from the point of view of Social Justice, to teach people “To Kill a Mocking Bird” than to tell them the truth about who is more likely to murder who, or which juries are likely to be more racially biased.
The same is true for temperature readings – first there is the objective, the promotion of Progressive Governance, control over the people, then there are the temperature readings – which must be made to serve that objective.
I have touched on the philosophies that justify lying about scientific data.
Watching the sheer number of people climbing ladders in order to hang flags, I’m beginning to doubt that…