The world of geography teaching in the UK
is in crisis following guidance from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change that a collection of assumptions used in climate computer modelling known as RCP8.5 is “implausible”.
The ruling has effectively trashed the Met Office’s 2018 climate
projections report (UKCP18) which only used this scenario to produce a
variety of always ridiculous forecasts.
To widespread mainstream media acclaim at the time, it was said that
summer temperatures could rise by over 5°C in 50 years. Since 2018,
UKCP18 has been embedded in UK school geography teaching as a core
forecasting source. Its predictions are assessed, used for impact
studies and underpin public examinations. The “implausible” ruling means
that geography teaching materials particularly at A-level now require a
major rewrite of core textbooks involving the removal of all the junk
predictions.
Preferably by the start of the Autumn term in September.
It’s not as if teachers can argue that
only the ‘high emissions’ pathway of RCP8.5 can be ignored. At the time,
the Met Office only ran RCP8.5 assumptions through its super-computer,
the results of which it then described as “plausible” as it promoted
them in bold type. Using only RCP8.5 was justified on cost grounds since
it enabled the available computer time to produce results – guesses
might be a more accurate description – down to 2 kms. School resources
do note that lower emissions results are available, but these were
statistically derived by the Met Office from the RCP8.5 results. This
means that all the Met Office projections are compromised and a thorough
cleansing needs to be undertaken of all the flawed information wherever
it occurs in the teaching environment....<<<Read More>>>....
