James Delingpole is in trouble after the Met Office has eviscerated a number of claims he made in a bizarre Daily Mail article.
The Met Office writes:
“This article contains a series of factual inaccuracies about the Met Office and its science, as outlined below.”
One claim Delingpole made is that the Met Office was unable to predict snow in 2010. However the Met Office explains that this is untrue:
“our 5-day forecasts accurately forecast 12 out of 13 snowfall events – as you can see in this article. In addition the Press Complaints Commission has also already addressed this fallacy with the Daily Telegraph in February of last year. As a result the newspaper published a clarification that highlighted that “the Met Office did warn the public of last winter’s [2010/11] cold weather from early November 2010.”
Another claim made by Delingpole is that the Met Office did not predict flooding in November 2012. The Met Office points out:
“Once again, our 5-day forecasts gave accurate guidance and warnings throughout the period. In just one example of feedback the Met Office has received for highly accurate forecasting and guidance throughout 2012, Assistant Chief Constable Paul Netherton, Chair for the Local Resilience Forum for Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (which was one of the areas most affected by flooding in November), said: “[I] would like to formally thank and recognise the hard work of the Met Office over the past week. The information you provided was invaluable and enabled the responders in Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly to prepare and respond effectively to assist our communities.”
At one point Delingpole claimed that the Met Office had admitted that “there is no evidence that ‘global warming’ is happening.” This is firmly rebuffed:
“We have not said this at any point. In fact, we explicitly say this was not the case in an article, posted on the home page of our website and widely circulated, which was written in response to articles about updates to our decadal forecast. Professor Julia Slingo, Met Office Chief Scientist, has also provided a more in depth feature on ‘Decadal Forecasting – What is it and what does it tell us?’.”
There are other mistakes Delingpole has made and it is worth reading the Met Office’s blogpost in full.
Here are some of the Twitter responses to the Met Office’s destruction of Delingpole:
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/catBrahic/status/289392862796333057″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/jamesrbuk/status/289383966077767681″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/drsimevans/status/289385758106738688″]
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3 Responses to “Delingpole debunked by Met Office”
ACA The Underground
You mean ‘standard Daily Mail article’
Jim Hansen
can’t believe global warming hype myself. 0.7 degrees in 100 years? what a joke. there’d be more effect after 5 mins of putting a knotted handkerchief on my head. get a grip for god’s sake
Jimmy Hall
@fb9580755455624f14275b9f2e6976f4:disqus I hope you’re being sracastic…