Latest Moan From You and Me 2025

I was under the impression that the BBC stopped using the Met office a couple of years ago, maybe 8, time flies, and was using some other company, lots of trendy companies out there now all coming up with their own forecasts so it seems.
BBC reunites with Met Office for weather forecasts.

Agree, never been know to do what I'm told, I'm my own person and will live or die by my own mistakes, its nobody else's business, although there are a lot of people that seem to be wanting to be told how to live their lives these days, covid proved that.

 

I doubt the return to using the Met Office will make forecasts any more accurate. I tend to check both the BBC and Met Office forecasts and they sometimes differ so much I wonder if one or other has posted a forecast for another day. Neither one seems more accurate than the other over time. Today is a good example, with one showing 50% to 60% chance of rain, the other 20%. This morning they were both showing 70% to 80% chance and we actually had a few showers for about an hour in total.
The only accurate forecast in this country is to look out the window.

 

There was an interesting paper on how people percieve climate change published fairly recently. The abstract taken from Binary climate data visuals amplify perceived impact of climate change | Nature Human Behaviour

Abstract
For much of the global population, climate change appears as a slow, gradual shift in daily weather. This leads many to perceive its impacts as minor and results in apathy (the ‘boiling frog’ effect). How can we convey the urgency of the crisis when its impacts appear so subtle? Here, through a series of large-scale cognitive experiments (N = 799), we find that presenting people with binary climate data (for example, lake freeze history) significantly increases the perceived impact of climate change (Cohen’s d = 0.40, 95% confidence interval 0.26–0.54) compared with continuous data (for example, mean temperature). Computational modelling and follow-up experiments (N = 398) suggest that binary data enhance perceived impact by creating an ‘illusion’ of sudden shifts. Crucially, our approach does not involve selective data presentation but rather compares different datasets that reflect equivalent trends in climate change over time. These findings, robustly replicated across multiple experiments, provide a cognitive basis for the ‘boiling frog’ effect and offer a psychologically grounded approach for policymakers and educators to improve climate change communication while maintaining scientific accuracy.

There is more of the research here Informing the Boiling Frog: Binary climate data amplifies climate change perception

I think it's a very sensible finding which most of us can understand.

 

I didn't, and I don't mind admitting.
Boiling frogs, ?????

 

It doesn't much matter if most of us understand climate change is happening if there is very little in our power we can do about it. Govs pushing heat pumps, electric cars, etc, is no help if most people simply can't afford to make the switches.

The people that could do something about it (aka the very wealthy) won't adjust their lavish lifestyles, so nothing will improve.

 

If we are honest about the situation, there is nothing the UK can do which will make a meaningful difference to climate change as long as the big polluters i.e. China, India and the USA continue to pump out the pollutants.
We are suffering far more in the UK from the imposition of pointless ideology than from climate change.

 

We have just passed our carbon output onto China and India, not intentionally but due to them producing things cheaper, so we can pat ourselves on the back while moaning about them.
Its all just smoke and mirrors, I think that is the modern term for deception.

 

Well, the first thing the BBC could do if it wishes to embed climate change in every story is talk about how every bomb, every collapsed building, every assault on infrastructure raises the human carbon footprint exponentially. It could report on the costs of war in terms of human casualties AND environmental degradation. It could report on the rebuild carbon footprint.

It could report on the energy costs associated with tech companies holding onto every piece of internet info ever uploaded, and the huge water use required to cool the data centre equipment.

It could have a reporter at every airport monitoring every flight and categorising the carbon emissions wilfully, profligately squandered.

Etc, etc.

Strangely it gives wars and rich tech firms and new runways a feee pass.

 

Agree entirely @KT53. And dare I say (shock, horror) there is no actual proof that the situation is caused entirely by human activity and not (in part at least) due to a natural climatic cycle that was going to happen anyway, like it did before humans existed.

 

We can't turn the clock back, but most of the data being held is not for the benefit of those who generated it. So, ditch it. Make it against the law for any company to collect and retain any data beyond the bare essentials needed to supply a service at its point of use. Ebay has details of every search, every listing, every purchase ever made on its site. Completely pointless from the POV of a customer buying something today. And that goes for every internet sale anywhere.

Why won't it happen? Selling data on is big business. So, make that against the law too.

And so on.

Yes, the wealthy would scream and shout. Let them. Why should we care if the 1% are upset. It shouldn't matter at all.

 

Nah not buying that one; not without some good evidence and stats. While I can accept that war is bad for the environment and for climate change. Every bomb, every building wrecked increases the carbon footprint by e^f where f is a factor related to the size of the bomb detonated and size of building demolished, I mean a 1000 kg bomb must cause more damage than 500 kg bomb and demolishing a 10 storey building must be more damaging than a 5 storey building built on the same size site, but how do you scale f and what is the relationship between bomb size and building volume?
Yes the BBC could have a reporter at every airport doing as you suggest

How ever would you pay a TV licence that grew for every reporter so employed and who would decide that the emissions were profligately squandered.

 

The vallay that i live in was craved out by the ice many many years ago, so i've been told, so climate has changed and i had nowt to do with it, i wasn't even there