'Think tank' criticisms of Met Office climate change data have "not been substatianted"

A ‘think-tank’ report that the Exeter-based Met Office is ‘over-exaggerating’ climate change has been criticised for making unsubstatiated claims.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, managed by prominent climate change sceptic Lord Lawson, released a report which claims that a computer programme used by the Met Office to measure climate change is biased in favour of showing climate change.

The Foundation has argued that this has skewed evidence of the UKCP09, the UK’s official climate projections.

However the Met Office has responded that the all information from their HadCM3, computer programme is independently reviewed prior to publication to ensure its accuracy.

They also point out that the official projections are drawn from multiple sources not just the Met Office figures which support a the climate change hypothesis.

A spokesman for the Met Office said: “It claims the Met Office climate model used to make those projections, HadCM3, contains an error and that, because of this error, the projections overestimate warming.

“The Global Warming Policy Foundation’s article, however, accepts that the claims of an error have not been substantiated.

“Ultimately there is nothing in the Global Warming Policy Foundation article which undermines UKCP09 or the way climate models, including the Met Office’s HadCM3, project future temperature changes.”

Lord Lawson said government policy had been “based on projections by a computer model which has been found to be fatally flawed”. A review of the model and its projections was “essential and urgent”

Lord Lawson reached some prominence in 2011 when his first book An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming was found to have ‘significant scientific errors’ by UK chief scientific advisor Professor Sir John Beddington.

In a letter to Lord Lawson at the time Prof. Beddington wrote: “You are, of course, absolutely right to point out that there are uncertainties in climate projections.

“However, a critical point is that these uncertainties relate predominantly to the detailed spatial and temporal changes that we can expect.

“The basic conclusions that greenhouse gases cause warming, that the average global temperature is rising linked to increases in greenhouse gases from human activities and that this trend can be expected to continue is based on well-established scientific principles and wide-ranging evidence."

Exeter MP Ben Bradshaw took to twitter today to criticise the Global Warming Policy Foundation, tweeting that the foundation is: “not exactly a "think tank" more a bunch of anti science climate change deniers with zero credibility”