Five months after the IPCC ruled that the infamous RCP8.5 computer scenario responsible for most mainstream climate doomsday copy over the last 15 years was “implausible”, what news can I bring you of the Met Office’s UK Climate Projection 2018 report (UKCP18) that based its predictions on the now cancelled modelling nonsense? Good news: the Met Office immediately withdrew UKCP18 with a fulsome apology for all the harm caused. Everything from the compromised geography A level syllabus to numerous Net Zero rules and regulations that relied on its claims have been withdrawn pending future alteration. Sorry, I must have dropped off for a moment and started dreaming. Of course, the report has not been withdrawn; of course, no apology has been forthcoming, and of course, UKCP18 is still up to all its old tricks.
On June 23rd, the Met Office produced a weather forecast for 2055 showing how the summer temperature in England under a “plausible” computer model scenario could hit 45°C along with nine consecutive days where 40°C was recorded somewhere in the country. Not bad going in 30 years, given that the UK temperature ’record’ of 40.3°C produced on July 19th 2022 by the runway at RAF Coningsby was somewhat challenged in its veracity by the fact that Typhoon jets were attempting to land at the time. The claimed record was a 60-second 0.6°C spike and over a five-minute average – recommended by the World Meteorological Organisation to reduce ‘noise’ – the temperature fell below the magic, headline-grabbing 40°C.
The Met Office did not specifically identify which “plausible” scenario it used but the figures were remarkably similar – in fact slightly hotter – than claims in UKCP18 that summer temperatures could rise by 5.1°C by 2070. Furthermore, Chief Scientist Professor Stephen Belcher, who called the illustration “scientifically plausible”, noted: “By using data from Met Office projections, we can glimpse into what an event like the 1976 summer would look like in the 2050s. It is a stark realisation to see the maximum temperature reach 45°C.”
The ‘maximum invented temperature’ would have been a more accurate statement, but such a reasonable scientific qualification was not made by Belcher, who is on record as stating that Net Zero will “stabilise” the climate.
