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BBC Radio 5 live - In Short, Bill Giles: "Shattered" by end of BBC's Met Office contract
Met Office 'lost BBC contract over dumbing down rows and weather app' - Telegraph
To what extent has this decision been 'political'?
BBC Pulls Plug On Met Office
1) BBC Pulls Plug On Met Office – The Sunday Times, 24 August 2015 The
BBC has ended a partnership with the Met Office dating back more than
90 years by deciding not to renew its contract to provide weather
forecasts. The last bulletin presented by the Met Office will be
broadcast in October 2016, 94 years after the first, in November 1922.
Bill Giles, who led the Met Office’s team of BBC forecasters from 1983
to 2000, was among those in shock at the decision. “It’s a hell of a
shame. It’s the end of an era,” he said. –Nicholas Hellen
2) BBC Denies Climate Sceptics Behind Decision To Ditch Met Office – The Independent on Sunday, 23 August 2015 A controversial BBC radio programme that questioned the scientific credentials of the Met Office is unlikely to have influenced the broadcaster’s decision to end its nearly 100-year relationship with Britain’s official weather service, it has been claimed. The BBC announcement came three weeks after a contentious Radio 4 programme, What’s the Point of…?, focused on the Met Office. The programme, presented by a Daily Mail columnist, questioned the accuracy of the long-term forecasts made by the Met Office in its scientific assessments of the risk posed by global warming and climate change. A BBC spokeswoman said: “There is absolutely no link between the programme and the situation we’re in now.” –Steve Connor
3) Editorial: Met Office Feels Icy Blast Of Competition – Daily Mail, 24 August 2015 In recent years the Met Office has often felt less like a dispassionate provider of weather information and more like a lobbyist for the climate change agenda. It frequently seems more interested in pronouncing on the long-term climatology of rain forests and polar ice-caps than providing the best possible bread-and-butter local forecasts for its clients? Yes, it’s sad that the Met Office has effectively been sacked by the BBC after 93 years but it only has itself to blame.
4) Quentin Letts: I’m Not Surprised The BBC Dumps Climate Change Obsessed Met Office – Daily Mail, 24 August 2015 The Met Office may only have itself and some of its more swivel-eyed defenders to blame. With its hunger for news headlines, it occasionally went further than it should have done in predicting ‘barbecue summers’ and so forth. Sometimes you got the impression its forecasts were being written by the same hand that authored the Book of Genesis and its chapters about Noah’s flood. Gosh, they did love to whip up a storm about a few isobars. But if that is a shame in itself, it’s as nothing to the Met Office’s political lobbying, pushing a green, climate-change agenda with such force it stopped being seen as a dispassionate observer and started to look too much like a political player.
2) BBC Denies Climate Sceptics Behind Decision To Ditch Met Office – The Independent on Sunday, 23 August 2015 A controversial BBC radio programme that questioned the scientific credentials of the Met Office is unlikely to have influenced the broadcaster’s decision to end its nearly 100-year relationship with Britain’s official weather service, it has been claimed. The BBC announcement came three weeks after a contentious Radio 4 programme, What’s the Point of…?, focused on the Met Office. The programme, presented by a Daily Mail columnist, questioned the accuracy of the long-term forecasts made by the Met Office in its scientific assessments of the risk posed by global warming and climate change. A BBC spokeswoman said: “There is absolutely no link between the programme and the situation we’re in now.” –Steve Connor
3) Editorial: Met Office Feels Icy Blast Of Competition – Daily Mail, 24 August 2015 In recent years the Met Office has often felt less like a dispassionate provider of weather information and more like a lobbyist for the climate change agenda. It frequently seems more interested in pronouncing on the long-term climatology of rain forests and polar ice-caps than providing the best possible bread-and-butter local forecasts for its clients? Yes, it’s sad that the Met Office has effectively been sacked by the BBC after 93 years but it only has itself to blame.
4) Quentin Letts: I’m Not Surprised The BBC Dumps Climate Change Obsessed Met Office – Daily Mail, 24 August 2015 The Met Office may only have itself and some of its more swivel-eyed defenders to blame. With its hunger for news headlines, it occasionally went further than it should have done in predicting ‘barbecue summers’ and so forth. Sometimes you got the impression its forecasts were being written by the same hand that authored the Book of Genesis and its chapters about Noah’s flood. Gosh, they did love to whip up a storm about a few isobars. But if that is a shame in itself, it’s as nothing to the Met Office’s political lobbying, pushing a green, climate-change agenda with such force it stopped being seen as a dispassionate observer and started to look too much like a political player.
BBC Pulls Plug On Met Office
This has been going on for some time:
The Met office and the BBC- caught cold | Watts Up With That?
A petition has been launched:
Urge the BBC to reconsider its decision not to renew the Met Office contract
The BBC have confirmed that the Met Office will not have their forecasting contract renewed after a partnership dating back over 90 years.
The Met Office are the world's best at forecasting, it's difficult to believe another provider can offer better. In 2014 the Met Office invested £97m in a 'Super Computer', enabling forecast updates every hour and the ability to provide very high detail weather information for precise geographical areas. The British public will lose the benefit of much of this investment if this contract is not renewed.
It is worthy of note that the weather 'presenters' appearing on the BBC forecasts are actually employed and trained by the Met Office unlike other channels' presenters who have little understanding of the science behind the forecast. The U.K. has a unique and changeable weather system and quite simply being based here in the UK ensures a comprehensive knowledge that will be difficult if not impossible for competitors to emulate, (the contract is expected to be awarded to either a Dutch or New Zealand based company).
The loss of this contract places under threat an historic and important part of our national culture, as well as the TV forecasts mentioned The Shipping Forecast which as well as being vital for mariners is also a national treasure and could be directly at threat.
As the British Broadcasting Corporation , you would expect the BBC to support British organisations rather than allowing work to go offshore,
The petition is to urge the Director General of the BBC, Lord Tony Hall to urgently review and the reverse this decision.
LETTER TO
BBC
Director-General BBC Lord Tony Hall
Petition · BBC: Urge the BBC to reconsider its decision not to renew the Met Office contract · Change.org
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SCIENCE EDITOR 
