How the doomed Met Office tried to spin its way out of trouble
By James Delingpole Politics
Last updated: January 4th, 2011
Translation by Autumnson Blog
Panic reigns as Met Office predicts another 'barbecue summer'恐慌籠罩當氣象局預測另一個'燒烤夏天'
So apparently the Met Office isn’t useless after all. Just cruelly misunderstood.
因此表面地，畢竟氣象局不是無用的，只是殘酷地被誤解。
It seems that the reason it didn’t provide an accurate forecast of this winter was not because it didn’t know bad weather was coming. It was because we were all so horrid last time it made a boo boo over the infamous “barbecue summer” that it decided it wouldn’t make its forecasts public any more.
看來今年冬天它之所以沒有提供準確的預測並不是因為它不知道惡劣天氣要來，它是因為上一次我們全都被它嚇怕，在臭名昭著的“燒烤夏天”做出大錯，它決定不會再公開作出它的預測。
Which means the real victim of this sorry story is not us (for having been misled about the extremity of cold we could expect this winter) but the poor old, much-put-upon, much-maligned, but basically splendid and well worth the £170 million it costs us every year Met Office.
它意味著這個遺憾故事的真正受害者不是我們（為被誤導有關我們今年冬天可期待冷凍極端），但那可憐的老、很投入、很受非議，但基本上精彩和很值得這氣象局每年花費我們1.7億英鎊。
Hurrah, Hurrah and Thrice Hurrah for those magnificent men (and women: let’s not forget the great Julia Slingo) at the Met Office!
萬歲、萬歲和再三萬歲，為那些在氣象局的宏偉男人（和女人：讓我們不要忘記偉大的朱莉婭 Slingo）！
Hmm. Is anyone else as unpersuaded as I am by this extravagantly implausible piece of spin? There’s a big clue in the identity of the fellow from whom it originated: Roger Harrabin. Yes, Roger Harrabin as in the BBC’s High Priest of Gaian Worship and Climate Alarmism.
嗯，有否其他人如我般不被說服，被這奢華地不可信的旋轉塊？有一條大線索在來自它起源的傢伙的身份：羅傑 Harrabin，是的；羅傑 Harrabin正如在英國廣播公司的佳亞崇拜和氣候危言聳聽的高級祭司。
And I’m not the only one to be suspicious. Autonomous Mind has deconstructed Harrabin’s spin campaign with vicious skill.
和我不是唯一懷疑的一個，自主精神已解構Harrabin以邪惡技能的旋轉運動。
As recently as October, Autonomous Mind reminds us, the Met Office was publishing on its website weather maps predicting above-average temperatures across Europe for November/December/January. Are we seriously expected to believe that it was secretly telling the government something entirely different?
正如最近的10月份，自主精神提醒我們，英國氣象辦公室在它的網站上發布它的天氣圖，預測高於平均的氣溫在整個歐洲的十一月/十二月/一月。我們是否會認真的期望相信，它會秘密地告訴政府一套完全不同的東西？
AM then goes on to administer a deliciously comprehensive Fisking to the Harrabin’s weasel prose which, he suggests, “smacks of an concerted attempt to muddy the water, shift attention from the central issue and prepare the way for the BBC to give the Met Office a clean bill of health at a future date.”
自主精神接著來管理一美味地全面的Fisking到Harrabin的黃鼠狼散文，其中他提出：“一協調企圖使水泥濘的味道，從核心問題轉移注意力，並留下伏線讓 BBC在日後去給氣象局一乾淨衛生的清單。“
Here’s what Harrabin says:
下面是Harrabin說的：
The trouble is that we simply don’t know how much to trust the Met Office. How often does it get the weather right and wrong. And we don’t know how it compares with other, independent forecasters.And here’s AM’s deconstruction:
Can we rely on them if we are planning a garden party at the weekend? Or want to know if we should take a brolly with us tomorrow? Or planning a holiday next week?
In a few year’s time hopefully we’ll all have a better idea of whom to trust. By then the Met Office might have recovered enough confidence to share with us its winter prediction of whether to buy a plane ticket or a toboggan.
下面是自主精神的解構：
In the first paragraph Harrabin is paving the way for a BBC comparison of the Met Office with independent forecasters. This despite Piers Corbyn being banned from placing bets on long range weather forecasts because he kept beating the bookie with odds set by the Met Office itself. There is also substantial evidence of independent forecasters such as Corbyn, Joe Bastardi and others winning business from clients who had dispensed with the Met Office offering due to poor accuracy.
The language in the second paragraph is telling. The central issue has been the Met Office failings in seasonal and long range forecasting. Harrabin however selects examples of short range forecasting, where the Met Office is not as weak simply because the weather patterns are already upon us and therefore much easier to forecast. However, there is even a question mark over that ‘nowcasting’ as Bournemouth would happily testify.
The third paragraph is exactly what I would write if I was trying to buy the Met Office some breathing space. This is a standard defensive communications technique.
- Give people the false impression there is no existing evidence with which to make a comparison and so suspend the onslaught
- Give people the false impression that forming a judgement now would be unreasonable
- Set an expectation that it will take a few years to establish whether or not there is actually an issue with the Met Office’s forecasting
Nice try, Harrabin. Nice try, Met Office. Better luck next time, eh?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100070451/how-the-doomed-met-office-tried-to-spin-its-way-out-of-trouble/
Piers Corbyn ：溫暖天氣不會使天氣變冷
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