Piers Corbyn

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Piers Corbyn
Adams' Grammar School
Alma materImperial College London
Queen Mary University of London

Piers Richard Corbyn (born 10 March 1947)

BSc degree in physics from Imperial College London in 1968 and a postgraduate MSc in astrophysics from Queen Mary College, University of London, in 1981. Corbyn was a member of the Labour Party and served as a councillor in the London Borough of Southwark from 1986 to 1990. He is the elder brother of former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, leaving Labour in 2003 due to his opposition to the Iraq War
.

Corbyn ran a weather monitoring company called WeatherAction in the 1990s and gained some prominence in the media for his predictions and, later more so, for his rejection of the scientific consensus on climate change.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, he was a prominent proponent of conspiracy theories. He described SARS-CoV-2 as a "hoax", frequently campaigned against lockdowns and against COVID-19 vaccines, and described COVID-19 vaccines as dangerous. Corbyn was arrested on several occasions for taking part in protests against public health laws, and for calling on supporters to commit violent acts against members of Parliament.[2]

Early life and education

Piers Corbyn was born on 10 March 1947 in Chippenham, Wiltshire.[1][3] He grew up at Yew Tree Manor in Pave Lane, in Newport, Shropshire, a 17th-century country house which was once part of the Duke of Sutherland's Lilleshall estate.[4][5] He began recording weather and

MSc in astrophysics in 1981.[8] While he was an undergraduate, an article by Corbyn was published in the Royal Meteorological Society's magazine Weather discussing a brine barometer and an electrical thermometer.[1]

Student representation

In 1969, Corbyn became the first president of the Imperial College Students' Union to be directly elected by the student body. As president until 1970, Corbyn was successful in establishing a sabbatical union president, enabling the elected student leader to be registered at the college without having to study or pay fees (in fact they received a grant from the college and union).[9]

Corbyn set up a short-lived Imperial College Representative Council, seats on which were distributed between members of the college on the basis of their numbers, a system that almost gave students a majority. The ICAUT, a staff union, refused to cooperate with this student-led initiative. Although this particular council did not survive, increased student representation on college boards and committees became, like the sabbatical president, a lasting success of Corbyn's time as ICU president.

Corbyn, together with the rector at the time,

Lord Penney, received the Queen when she opened a new administrative building in 1969. During the visit Corbyn petitioned the Queen in front of 900 people, asking for students to be given greater say in the governance of the college.[10]

Housing rights

Corbyn was a housing and

squatters' rights activist in the north Paddington area of the City of Westminster in the mid-1970s. In 1974, he stood for election to Westminster City Council in Harrow Road ward as a Squatters and Tenants candidate; in 1978, he and a colleague stood in Harrow Road as Decent Housing candidates.[11] In the 1977 GLC election he was the International Marxist Group candidate for Lambeth Central.[12] He and some of the squatters in Elgin Avenue were, as a result of their campaign which included the building of barricades against eviction, rehoused by the GLC in 1975 spread out between Westminster and other London boroughs to discourage the risk of further united action. He later moved from that rehousing in Rust Square to the Alvey Estate in Southwark where he became a leader of the tenants association.[citation needed
]

Career

Party politics

Corbyn was a member of the Labour Party. He was elected as a Labour councillor for Burgess Ward of the Southwark London Borough Council in 1986 but lost in 1990.[13] In 1987, Corbyn was arrested for the defacing of an SDP–Liberal Alliance poster, but cautioned and released without charge.[14] For seven years he was an unpaid campaigns organiser in Southwark and Bermondsey, being thanked by Tony Blair in 1998 at Downing Street.[15] Corbyn left the Labour Party in 2002 in the run up to the invasion of Iraq,[16] and stood as an independent candidate in 2002 and in a 2015 council by-election.[17] According to The Sunday Times in September 2017, his attempt to rejoin the Southwark Constituency Labour Party in January 2017 was blocked.[16]

His brother,

Labour Party leadership election, on the basis that he stood for proper debate and accountability, including on climate.[18][19][20] On Twitter, he urged people to register to vote and back Jeremy Corbyn to lead the Labour Party.[21]

In 2016, Corbyn was among a group of protesters at a Lambeth council meeting who "screamed abuse in the faces" of party councillors.[22]

WeatherAction

Following some years of weather prediction as an occupation, he formed WeatherAction, a business, in 1995.[1] WeatherAction is the business through which Corbyn sells his predictions. He has in the past bet on these predictions. His betting attracted much interest in 1990, when his predictions of severe weather were met by a year of the "worst extremes".[23]

WeatherAction was formerly

listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) as 'Weather Action Holdings plc' in 1997,[24] and was transferred back to private ownership in 1999, primarily because of sustaining increasing losses and the impact of annual £70,000 costs related to listed status on annual revenues of £250,000.[25] Corbyn reacquired the weather prediction business; the listed shell was taken over by investors and changed its name to 'InternetAction.com', with the intent of researching potential net-based takeover targets.[26]

WeatherAction left the Alternative Investment Market in 1999 after reported losses of £480,000 incurred during its time as a public company; its share price dropped from 79p a share to 24p.[25]

Prediction methods

Corbyn's technique is stated to combine "statistical analysis of over a century of historical weather patterns with clues derived from solar observations."[1] He considers past weather patterns and solar observations and sun-earth magnetic connectivity. However, meteorological studies show that such influences cause minimal impact on the Earth's atmosphere.[27]

Scientific review

The only study involving Corbyn's work published in a peer-reviewed journal was in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics (2001). Its investigation was limited to Corbyn's "likely damaging gale periods" predictions for the island of Great Britain for the period October 1995 – September 1997. Corbyn's enlisted work (carried out for a consortium of insurance companies) was only for the most likely periods of the strongest winds and specifically not a full forecast to include lesser winds:[28]

Forecasts prepared by WeatherAction would repay further attention. The results provide little evidence to dismiss the observed success rates as being attributable to mere chance or good fortune. Indeed the balance of evidence indicates that the system performs better than chance although it is recognized that the margin of success differs greatly between the seasons and is lowest in winter when gales are most frequent.
This analysis has been wholly empirical in nature, seeking only to establish the success levels of the gale forecasts. Other aspects of the forecasts have not been considered in this evaluation. Inevitably however these results draw into the debate questions surrounding the methodology by which the forecasts are prepared. This is not, however, the arena in which such issues should be taken up.

In a 1999 edition of Wired magazine, researchers Ian Jolliffe and Nils Jolliffe stated of Corbyn's predictions that:[29] "It is unusual for most of the detail to be completely correct, but equally it is rare for nearly everything to be wrong… Some forecasts are clearly very good, and a few are very poor, but the majority fall in the grey area in between, where an optimistic assessor would find merit, but a critical assessor would find fault."

In a 2012 article in Wired titled "The Fraudulent Business of Earthquake and Eruption Prediction",

cherry-picking" and said people who claimed to be able to forecast earthquakes
were "faith healers of the geologic community and should be seen as such."

Media coverage

Critics have pointed to inaccurate predictions, such as a white Easter in 1989,[31] and "raging weather" in September 1997.[32] WeatherAction predictions were contested by the Met Office in 2008.[33]

While he was Mayor of London, Boris Johnson repeatedly suggested that Corbyn might be correct on anthropogenic climate change.[34]

Corbyn speaking at a 2011 El Ser Creativo event

Let London Live

In January 2021, it was announced that Corbyn would stand for his own party, Let London Live, in the 2021 London mayoral election and 2021 London Assembly election.[35] On 19 April, Corbyn told the BBC that if he were to be elected then he would "end lockdown on day one as mayor".[36] He finished 11th with 20,604 votes (0.8%) in the mayoral election, while his party finished 12th on the London-wide list with 15,755 votes.[37] He stood for Let London Live in the 2022 Southwark London Borough Council election.

He stood as a candidate in the 2023 Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election for Let London Live;[38] Corbyn finished 11th of 17 candidates, receiving 101 votes (0.3%), behind the novelty candidate Count Binface who received 190 votes.[39][40]

Let London Live was deregistered as a political party in November 2023. [41]

Promotion of conspiracy theories

In 2020, Corbyn was reported by Hope not Hate and the Community Security Trust to have attended a meeting organised by Keep Talking, a conspiracy theory discussion group based in the United Kingdom which invites guest speakers involved in Holocaust denial.[42][43]

Climate change denial

Corbyn rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. He denies that humans play a role in climate change, and spreads false and discredited narratives about the issue. He has claimed that the media, Met Office and "corrupt scientists" are brainwashing the public as part of a Qatar-run conspiracy to keep oil prices high.[44]

Corbyn has stated his belief that the

the Heartland Institute.[46]

Corbyn appears on talk shows to discuss what he considers to be weaknesses of the argument for anthropogenic global warming.

1984–85 miners' strike.[49] However, there is no evidence that Thatcher used environmental arguments about climate change at the time; her support for climate change policies did not start until later in the 1980's. [50][51]

In 2015, BBC Radio 4 apologised for an "unfortunate lapse" in a documentary presented by Daily Mail journalist Quentin Letts, which featured Corbyn in a critique of the Met Office's views on climate change while failing to mention the scientific consensus.[52]

In 2016, Corbyn was allowed to participate in a BBC climate change debate which resulted in many people complaining to the BBC for giving him airtime.[53]

He was interviewed by Dutch filmmaker Marijn Poels for his 2017 documentary feature film about climate, energy and agriculture, called The Uncertainty Has Settled.[54][55][56]

In April 2019, Corbyn tweeted about the Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg with an image of her next to a Nazi swastika, describing her as an "ignorant, brainwashed child".[57][58]

In April 2023 Corbyn crashed an Extinction Rebellion church service in London, telling environmental activists that man-made climate change “does not exist” and that they were “working for the Devil”. The crowd, which had gathered for a service titled “No Faith in Fossil Fuels“, began to sing the hymn “Amazing Grace” as he was escorted away.[59]

COVID-19 denial