On Piers Corbyn: Crazy People Occasionally Get Stuff Right By Accident

AGW denialist and "alternative" meteorologist Piers Corbyn has been much in the news lately, having allegedly forecast (but note Nicks comment in the comments) Europe's current spell of nasty weather. However, FreeD's Peter O'Donnell (another AGW denier and amateur meteorologist pursuing alternative research paradigms) explains the problem:

I can add some inside knowledge on this story -- don't get on this band-wagon because Piers Corbyn has been trying to fit every winter since about 2005 to this "coldest ever" scenario and we can't get any sort of testable information on methodology, even for those of us following alternative research methods, the answers have been too vague to allow any testing, and if we took all known forecasts from his company, the track record would be a lot less encouraging than this one forecast seems to be. Also, any number of other forecasts were saying this would be a severe winter in Europe, it was fairly obvious from the trends and the blocking pattern that caused the Russian fires, that the winter would probably be very cold.

[...]

Now that he's finally hit the jackpot with this coldest winter in living memory forecast, we need to ask, what's the track record going to be in the future, or do we now just get "another severe winter" forecast every year until that hits?

If you want to check out what I'm saying, you could google the names Piers Corbyn, Positive Weather Solutions, and January 2008 which gave a false positive for cold that caused these names to link up with newspaper headlines about a very cold winter to come...

And, as it turned out, I wrote about Corbyn's 2008 performance back in March of that year. He bunged up so badly that any number of other of his fellow AGW Deniers denounced him on the movement's well known Climate Sceptic mailing list. For example, Dutch denier Arthur Rorsch complained:

My problem is, however, that Piers forecasts, which where not sufficient accurate, has been used against me in the national (Dutch) debate on climate change. I did never refer to Piers. But it was assumed that I support his view, (as a sceptic) which weakened my own case, because the Piers forecasts where seriously questioned and he has not as yet been prepared to show the basis for his forecasts.

And Hans Erren groused:

Piers missed today's severe gale. Combined with the absence of a forecast cold winter in holland I think there is not much confidence left....

Its funny that Corbyn should be getting so much play in the MSM when even his own tribe has raised questions about his methodology.

Incidentally, Climate Scientist and general badass James Annan has made a cottage industry of debunking Corbyn. He hasn't written much lately on the topic, but here's some of his older stuff.

And, also incidentally, under his real name Peter O'Donnell is one of the anonymous posters from FreeD that Richard Warman has launched defamation suits against. Warman is not only fighting Hate, he's out there saving mother Gaia.

PS. I note that Stoat has written on Corbyn recently, though in a somewhat scrambly fashion.

Who The Heck Is Piers Corbyn, Or: Why Has The Denialist Movement Turned On One Of Its Own?

Piers Corbyn, according to his Wikipedia entry, is a a maverick British weather forecaster[2]. He runs WeatherAction, a company which makes weather forecasts up to year in advance, and publishes/sells these forecasts though his website. In fact, he has a

...wide range of weather sensitive customers, including gas and electricity companies, farmers and retailers.[6] - for example, PolyGram staggered their release dates and promotional tours for the motion picture Bean around Corbyn's predictions

While Corbyn's forecasts often resemble a horoscope--they are, that is, vague enough to be unverifiable--recently Piers has been making some fairly precise predictions that have clearly been proven wrong by actual weather events. As Corbyn himself writes:

Forecast errors in Jan and mid Feb and advances in the Solar Weather Technique which are coping with the present hypersensitivity on Sun-Earth weather links (a situation we reported at the Oct 16th 07 WeatherAction Press event).

Now, note the reference here to the "Solar Weather Technique". Piers is a hard core AGW Denier, and puts it all down to those ubiquitous "solar cycles", knowledge of which his "technique" (the methodology is a closely guarded secret) employs in crafting WeatherAction forecasts.

Corbyn's apparent successes have been oft-touted within the Denialist community, where they have been taken as evidence that the "solar cycles" explanation of recent global temperature changes has empirical support and predictive power.

However, as his recent forecasts have failed, so too has his reputation taken a hit within that community, the whole sad process currently playing out in discussions at the Climate Skeptic Cafe.

The grouching kicked off with the arrival of Corbyn's March forecast a few days ago, and this gusty blast from Hans Erren:

Piers missed today's severe gale. Combined with the absence of a forecast cold winter in holland I think there is not much confidence left....

This opinion was 2nded by Arthur Rorsch:

My problem is, however, that Piers forecasts, which where not sufficient accurate, has been used against me in the national (Dutch) debate on climate change. I did never refer to Piers. But it was assumed that I support his view, (as a sceptic) which weakened my own case, because the Piers forecasts where seriously questioned and he has not as yet been prepared to show the basis for his forecasts.

Of course, Corbyn still has a few supporters. Sweet Kristen, the Tiniest Denier, has leapt to his defense:

I recall Magnus explaining that the sun is not behaving as Piers expected and thus inaccuracies in his forecasts. I also recall that Piers gives degrees of accuracy. His forecasts all come with a probability of being correct. But when the sun does behave as he expects his forecasts are accurate.

Nice girl, but she oughtta be out rebelling someplace.

In any event, the upshot of all this is that, for the time-being, Corbyn has stopped publishing his forecasts. I do have a copy of the March version, however, and if anyone wants one, they can drop me an email.