dear climate change sceptics, page-2

gm, perhaps the reason that such warnings are ignored is because the public have been conditioned by numerous previous false warnings and forecasts being totally wrong.

Your 20/20 vison is all well and good, but even though we all make jokes about it, the fact is that the weather bureau does get it horribly wrong a lot of the time. Not only forecast conditions not eventuating, but damaging conditions not being seen even hours before they descend.

I write about this continually, the weather is important to me, and the better forecasts I have available, the better able I am to make decisions.

BOM, perhaps because of getting it wrong so often, now produce most rain forecasts that read, "there is a 50% chance of above(below) average rains" Many farmers are fed up, such forecasts are totally useless, as you may appreciate.
There are private forecasters that are able to demonstrate forecasts 80% accurate, and one that I know is able to because he focuses on the Indian Ocean.
As you know the El Nino/La Nina preoccupies much of the BOM thinking, but it is the Indian Ocean where our weather originates from. Private forecasters and researchers who focus on the Indian Ocean are able to produce accurate forecasts for much of Australia 6 to 9 months ahead of BOM. Sooner or later BOM are going to have to incorporate data from there and perhaps then people may start to take more notice of them.
If you want any confirmation, check out the BOM predictions for the last EL Nino and La Nina events. BOM earlier this year were forecasting an imminent La Nina whilst Japanese researchers were warning that conditions in the Indian Ocean were an almost exact repeat of conditions in 1967/68.
At the start of April this year as I updated my rainfall charts I also saw, as I posted on HC at the time, that the period April 2004 to March 2007, Australia wide, most closely resembeled April 1965 to March 1968 of any 3 year period in the last 117 years.

Interestingly that same private forecaster is also a sceptic. Part of his reason is that he knows, courtesy of many years working at BOM, that if you have a preconceived idea of what the weather may be at any given time in the future, you can find data that will lead to and justify that conclusion.
The reason he left BOM is because he felt that they were stuck with old set ideas and not taking into account new research identifying new factors that influence our weather.