UK Met Office exaggerates volcanic ash cloud warnings

Great article from the Daily Mail highlighting UKMO blunders – the same UKMO that claims to have IPCC temperature trends correct. I enjoyed reading about the people running the UK CAA – the CAA boss says, “..I know nothing about aeroplanes..”.

4 thoughts on “UK Met Office exaggerates volcanic ash cloud warnings”

  1. Another CAA head, Andrew Haines derailed from former job on the railways. Well at least he’s got a background in transport.

    OTOH: Met Office, run by former WWF president, Robert Napier.

  2. This would funny if it were not such a tragedy for so many people. The global warming activist, healthy food advocate and the railroad engineer use computer models with no current data to use for verification of the models’ accurary and they cause a shut down of airspace in the UK and most of Europe.

    Did these people never learn the basics of computer programming? GIGO!!!

    Normally, one would input multiple data points in 3 dimensions to set up a computer projection. They used NO data and caused hundreds of thousands of people to suffer.

    I told my wife that I was confident that there were a number of planes flying in and around the ash clouds with laser particle counters measuring the ash particles. Now we discover that the one plane that the Met Office had fitted with particle counters was not operating. No data and they released their baseless computer projection anyway.

    You just can’t make this stuff up.

  3. the CAA boss says, “..I know nothing about aeroplanes..

    Just today I was dealing with the man who runs the Electricity Commission that manages our electricity industry. I have told them that there were some serious errors in the Commission’s assessment of security of supply in the near future that made it overoptimistic. I tried to explain what they were and why the figures used were wrong. He wouldn’t even discuss it. He just didn’t want to know.

    So I have written this about it:

    “It is very interesting to compare his attitude to that of Frontinius, a Roman general and patrician who took over the management of Rome’s degraded water supply in 97 AD. He said “I have always made my principle.. to have a complete understanding of what I have taken on. … nor is there anything more degrading for a man of self-respect than having to rely on the advice of his subordinates in carrying out the commission entrusted to him.”(1)
    In modern parlance “If you want to manage an business successfully you have to have a good overall understanding of how it works.”

    I find it very disturbing that two very influential people in the electricity industry have so little understanding of the realities of the New Zealand power system. Neither are engineers.”

    1 “Engineering in the Ancient World J G Landels 1978. Page 213. He goes on to say that subordinates and advisers are a necessary part of the organisation but they should be servants not the masters to whom a senior official in his ignorance has to keep running for advice. ” … “His first action on taking over was to make a detailed personal inspection of the entire aqueduct system of about 400 km of conduit, most of it underground.”

    I commend the wisdom of the wise general to the boss of the CAA.

    And to many others in a similar position.

  4. Nice to hear from you Brian. Presumably the powers that be think your electricity network basically runs itself and only needs a bean counter in charge. What you recount is similar to what I term “unlearning” – which I detect at times as a modern trend to forget basic lessons our ancestors learned the hard way. Just quoting one example that quickly comes to mind which is OT. The many “leaky houses” built to trendy modern designs in Auckland show how we can forget basic lessons of house construction learned over thousands of years – the cost is ongoing and huge.

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