Sunday, March 09, 2008

Whither Weatheraction?

Looks like the fun is over for now, as Corbyn has stopped publishing his forecasts. Perhaps he thought his run of failures was getting a bit embarrassing. But it could just be a temporary hiccough, so I'll keep an eye out for new developments. Of course I could get the forecasts by buying them, but I'd rather drill a hole in my head than actually pay for that nonsense - and perhaps more importantly, if I actually entered into a contract then I might have to respect confidentiality clauses which would negate the whole point of the exercise.

I did find my copy of Dennis Wheeler's paper and may post on it later. But for now, you will have to put up with some poetry:

Whether the Weatheraction forecast be wrong,
Or whether the Weatheraction forecast be right,
We must weather the real weather,
Whatever the weather,
Whether Piers Corbyn predicted it or not.


7 comments:

crandles said...

This reply to FX-discuss got blocked.

>> You can't discount it completely because
>> it makes an obviously wrong prediction in a context where it has known
>> weakness.

>Maybe so, but what is the "known weakness" to which you refer?

An interest rate can be considered to be a payment for the opportunity cost of having cash earlier rather than later.

There is a spread between coupon buying price and selling price and the only thing you can do with FX coupons is to sell for FX$ while FX$ can be used to buy any of many different coupons. In these circumstances an interest rate or payment for opportunity cost is to be expected.

crandles

P. Lewis said...

I wonder whether he managed to forecast the "once in a decade storm" (as I think I saw it described a few days ago) of the past couple of days and its brother or sister following on 'Oop North' tonight. I guess it'll be all over his website if he did.

It didn't seem that bad to me (in The Marches) -- though I slept right through "that hurricane" in '87 while all around me in the Sarf East Lundun streets trees were being uprooted and school walls and the like were a-tumbling down -- but the pictures of waves overtopping the sea wall at places like Saundersfoot suggest it was worse to the west and south.

Well, we can look forward to a decent Easter weekend weatherwise now then ... in like a lion and all that jazz.

James Annan said...

P. Lewis,

I've now got hold of the March forecast, and will post about it shortly. About the storm, you'll have to keep guessing for now :-)

Chris' email will get replied to back on the FX list...

bigcitylib said...

James, I will post about this tomorrow or next day, but the folks at the Climate Sceptic list have turned on him over this (and he's disappeared from the list too, for the last couple of days). One is even bitching that he relied on Corbyn's findings in his denialist lectures and its all gone to crap. Huzzah!

bigcitylib said...

I have a .pdf of the March forecast, if you like.

James Annan said...

That's OK, I've already got it, thanks.

P. Lewis said...

Well, it seems from bigcitylib's piece that Piers obviously didn't quite manage to forecast the "once in a decade" storm (which I sort of guessed was the case from your smiley), at least not within his give or take a day bounds.

I may be proved wrong when the statistics are analysed over a longer period than Dr Wheeler managed to study (fat chance?), but I can't help thinking that "his" Solar Weather Technique is more a method of Numeralogical Astrolog... (oops! meant) Astrophysical Fustian Forecasting, or NAFF for short.

Of course, until they got their new supercomputers, one used regularly to level similar jocular jibes at the Met Office's short- and medium-range weather forecasts (I wouldn't compare his long-range forecasts with the Met Office's, who say theirs are naught but indications), but at least you could appreciate why their forecasts went wrong.