August 23, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Financial Post

Mike De Souza, Postmedia News · Monday, Aug. 23, 2010

OTTAWA — Sustained cuts to Environment Canada weather-service programs have compromised the government’s ability to assess climate change and left it with a “profoundly disturbing” quality of information in its data network, says a newly released internal government report.The stinging assessment, obtained through an access-to-information request, suggests that Canada’s climate network infrastructure is getting progressively worse and no longer meets international guidelines.

“Environment Canada is on the road to junior partner status with respect to other agencies, both provincial and international, in the area of climate data gathering, quality control and archiving,” said the report, released to the Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based environmental research group.

The analysis — Degradation in Environment Canada’s Climate Network, Quality Control and Data Storage Practices: A Call to Repair the Damage — noted the lack of data on climate conditions can affect decisions on major infrastructure such as roads, buildings and sewers as well as a number of “real-life” decisions made by Canadians every day….

Full Story

It is a good thing that the Pembina Institute made the Freedom of Information Act request, because very few of the rest of us mortals can.  However, the Pembina Institute puts its own political spin on the causes of the calamity by blaming Stephen Harper and his party instead of John Chretien and the Liberal Party, the real culprit responsible for the budget cuts, while the elephant in the room goes unnoticed.

Perhaps the report contained no information on what the elephant is.  If so, it is amazing that neither the author of the Financial Post article nor the Pembina Institute were sufficiently astute to notice the biggest problem of all, which is that the vast majority of Canada’s weather stations that once regularly reported on weather conditions now no longer exists.

One could argue that weather satellites eliminated the need for ground-based temperature measurements, but that would be far too simple a reaction. Weather satellites do not measure local conditions such as rainfall-and snowfall amounts, wind-speed and -direction, relative humidity and hours of sunshine — all absolute necessary not only for climate change modelling but also for accurately forecasting the weather.

The deterioration of the weather services programs was not only caused on account of automation, as claimed in the report, but primarily on account of closing down hundreds and perhaps thousands of weather stations.  That was done many years before Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada made it into Ottawa and even before the Conservative Party of Canada even came into existence.  The fault for the severe cutbacks to the data-collection network lies squarely with the Liberal Party.  It did not happen by accident.  It happened because it was a deliberate policy of the Liberal government.

Have a look at some pertinent comments on the report (at wattsupwiththat.com)

• MaxL says: August 23, 2010 at 2:45 pm

• Dave in Exile says: August 23, 2010 at 3:16 pm

• Dennis Nikols, P Geol. says: August 23, 2010 at 4:37 pm

One of those comments (the first on the list) was made by a Canadian weather forecaster.  It seems to be obvious that no other commenters either at the FP article or at the wattsupwithtthat.com posting have any appreciation of what is necessary to produce accurate weatherforecasts.  It even seems that most of the commenters see no need for accurate weather forecasts, which makes me wonder why they bother to comment on the article except to complain that funding for weather-forecasting is a waste of money.

Many of the commenters see the Environment Canada report as a cry to stimulate more funding, somewhat justifiably surmising that the bureaucrats responsible falsely feel that if we only throw more money at the problem, the quality of  the data produced by the Canadian weather services programs will be improved.  It is very doubtful that will any improvement will happen, although all extra funding will doubtlessly be used up.  After all, Environment Canada’s size grew within a relatively short time from an office with with about 15 employees to become a large employer with a workforce that grew to very large proportions.

Environment Canada is a federal government department with approximately 4,700 employees located in 100 communities. (Source: Environment Canada, “What We Do: Key Facts and Figures,” About Us, 31 March 2003, <http://www.ec.gc.ca/introec/keyfacts.htm> , 13 May 2004)

The Wikipedia entry for Environment Canada presently shows an employment figure of ~6,000, although I have no idea how old that figures is, while it seems to me that not very long ago I read an article that put the total number of Environment Canada employees at 10,000.  Darn it, I did not bookmark that.

Regardless of how much money is being thrown at that problem, even with the best intentions, the quality of the data outputs of the weather service programs cannot be better than the quality of the data that is being input: garbage in = garbage out.

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August 23, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

A family friendly website like this one is not the proper place to describe Pachauri’s portrait of Sanjay’s sex life.  It is not a pretty picture; parts of the book read like the Memoirs of a Disgusting Old Goat — by the kind of Old Goat that doesn’t understand the concept of too much information.

The quoted paragraph is from a book review by Walter Russell Mead: Rajendra Pachauri: Voodoo Scientist and Lone Ranger of Love?” at americaninterest.com,  Rajendra Pachauri being the “formerly outspoken head” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  As the book review explains, and as Rajendra Pachauri has stated during the time he was still much in the public eye as the head of the IPCC while putting his foot in his mouth time and again by making outrageous, justifiably-criticized, propagandistic claims about the alleged calamity of an imminent global-warming catastrophe but nevertheless finding time to create publicity for his book, Return to Almora, the book is claimed to have been dashed off by Pachauri while flying from one international meeting to the next.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Walter Russell Mead’s review.  Having read various excerpts from the book that others used to substantiate their assertions that Return to Almora is somewhat talented writing of a morally vacuous plot spiced with liberal doses of smutt, the review is right on target.

The short summary I posted here does not do justice to the marvelous review by Walter Russell Mead, but if you like short summaries, the comments posted in response to the book review are jewels:

4 Comments

There are few things I enjoy as much as a really skillful critical evisceration. Bravo.

Comment by Dave – August 22, 2010 @ 5:58 pm

Pachauri sounds like an excellent case study for Thomas Sowell’s Vision of the Anointed

Comment by Randy – August 22, 2010 @ 6:40 pm

Yet again Walter Russell Mead performs a selfless humanitarian service: reading this clot of codswallop so we don’t have to.

Comment by vanderleun – August 22, 2010 @ 7:05 pm

I will never read “Return to Almora”, but I am glad I read this review.

Comment by Dracovert – August 22, 2010 @ 10:30 pm

Read the full review, and don’t neglect to read also IPCC now in Bizarroland: Pachauri releases “smutty” romance novel, a January 2010 review, posted at wattsupwiththat.com.

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