Following yesterday’s item aimed at making sure the kids are still on message about MMGW, today we had Newsround for grown-ups. In a report which aired on the 6 pm news on both BBC 1 and Radio 4 this evening, David Shukman explained:
“The key thing is that there’s a difference between the weather and the climate. The weather’s what you get day by day, month by month, like this cold spell. But the climate is the kind of weather you get over a thirty year period, and that’s what the scientists say is changing.”
He was a little less clear about any distinctions back in May 2008 when he reported on a dry spell affecting Spain:
In a year that so far ranks as Spain’s driest since records began 60 years ago, the reservoir is currently holding as little as 18% of its capacity – at a time of year when winter rains would usually have provided an essential boost by now…
And it may also remind people of the forecasts from climate scientists of still drier conditions to come in the approaching decades.
As soon as Shukman left the area, it rained. A lot. From the Guardian, 7 June 2008:
After months of the worst drought for 60 years, Spain has experienced the wettest May since 1971; it rained on 18 days of the month. Heavy rains have continued into June, which is rare during the Spanish summer…
In Catalonia, the worst affected area, reservoirs whose levels had been reduced to only 20% are now nearly half full.
A proposed water pipeline, cited by Shukman as evidence of the changing climate, was cancelled. From New Europe, 16 June 2008:
The Spanish government recently cancelled a controversial plan to build a 62-kilometre pipeline to divert water from the river Ebro in the Tarragona region to the Catalan capital Barcelona, Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said. There was no longer the situation of “extraordinary necessity” that had prompted the plan, Vega said.
If Shukman did a follow-up pointing any of this out, I can’t find it online.
Here are some images from his May 2008 report. This, remember, was explained with reference to climate change:
And here are some images taken from a Spanish blog in October 2009 showing the blogger’s recent kayaking trip to the same Sau reservoir:
The blogger states (via Google Translate):
This year the Sau had a significant level in the water, exposing only the latest instalment of the famous bell tower of the church of Sant Romà de Sau.
As far as the BBC is concerned, some weather events are more climate change than others.
Update 8 January 10.40am. The BBC School Report website offers children the benefit of David Shukman’s top ten tips for reporting the environment. In tip 7 Shukman tells the kids:
If it’s about a drought, stand in a dried-out reservoir.
If the drought then suddenly ends, thus undermining your narrative, don’t worry – just move on to the next alarmist story.
Best of all is this sentence from tip 9:
You’re an ambassador for common-sense in a world of spin.
Who knew Shukman had such a sense of humour? (Hyphenating “common sense” in that context isn’t setting a very good example to budding journalists, though.)
Brilliant work DB.
Shukman and the rest of the beeboids must think we are stupid. Well the only stupid people are Guardian readers, Cocaine snorters and Beeboids.
This is whgat happens when you put a load of middle class arts graduates in charge of science at the BBC. You get crap.
Also take a look at this link, it’s mostly about the lack of snow in Europe (from 2006) note again how the beeboids confuse weather with climate change.
BUT best of all take a look at the bottom article? Seems familiar? Yep it’s yet another no snow in Moscow story from 2006.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6185345.stm
Look at the date on the article (December 17) but them look at the link below which shows the temperature in Moscow for December 2006, look what happens to the temperature AFTER the article is written. Why no update?
http://www.flymig.com/weather/monthly.images/Dec.2006.htm
The BBC do this all the time, as DB points out there are HUNDREDS of stories like this where the three tossers (Harrabin, Shukman and Black) run these stories and fail to correct them later on.
I noticed Shukman telling us than when it was about cold days, weather (ie what’s happening today) can be ignored as it is obviously just a minor divergence from the ongoing apocalyptic MMGW that is going to kill us all any day now.
Funny how if we get a single slightly warmer than average day in the summer it’s a cast-iron sign that the Geeen God is displeased and has turned the global thermostat up another notch.
Looks like all weather is equal, but some weather is more equal that others.
More climate change bollocks on Newsnight. Some lefty creep claimed that it was “easier” to predict long range climate change than short term weather.
So why didn’t ANY of the climate change models predict the global cooling of the last decade?
SO are we really supposed to believe these drug addled tools can predict the climate accurately in 1000 years time but not the weather for next week? Jesus that most be good smack they use.
Martin,
I watched newsnight with interest to see how they would “hide the decline”, so to say…and wasnt disappointed either!
Did you catch the bit at the end by the Met Office guy that the only way they can get their models to match todays climate is by inputting CO2 in to their models?
Did you also catch the bit about how their code and data is reviewed? Most likely by the gents at CRU and not someone like McIntyre!
So the end result after this evenings news report was that people are too stupid to understand whats going on (curtesy of Susan Watts) and that the climate is not the weather and that weather prediction is harder than climate prediction even though they are “modeling” the same chaotic atmospheric conditions…only difference is one is modeling conditions now and the other 50 or 100 or more years in to the future.
Al Beeb is hard out pimping for global warming by continuing the meme of the weather not being the climate and people being too stupid to understand whats going on!
Mailman
Yes I saw that as well, so why do the three knobs (Harrabin, Shukman and Black) continually use weather events to spout on about climate change? If they can use extreme weather events to promote global warming why not the other way round?
Also their climate change models clearly don’t work as CO2 levels have still be rising since 1998 but average global temperatures haven’t and that’s before we get to the fiddled CRU data and the selective temperature data from Russia oh and the fact that the original tree ring data was ‘destroyed’ years ago.
None of these climate change models has been given proper scientific scrutiny which makes them untrustworthy.
http://talkingabouttheweather.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/snow-blindness-spreads-in-newsrooms/
This is why al beeb cant see what is right in front of them, snow blindness!
BUT…on a more serious note.
I just wonder if one of the contributing factors to just how unprepared the UK is to this cold is that somewhere, someone, some organisation, has been giving advice to organisations along the lines of global warming being real therefore you dont have to prepare so much for cold weather events?
The other thing thats been bothering me is that perhaps one of the reasons the Met Office didnt give advance warning of Decembers cold snap is because they couldnt, seeing as how they came out stating that 2009 was the hottest year in the history of the universe and THEN stated the reason they came out with that was to directly influence Copenhagen.
Therefore, if thats what really went on at the Met Office, how would it look if they then turned around and stated that the UK was going to be hammered by one of the harshest cold snaps since William landed as an illegal immigrant in 1066?
You see what Im getting at here? The Met Office is so committed to global warming ™ that they CANNOT report real weather events that will kill people!
Mailman
The Met office is up the arse of the Government and BBC. They are all spining the same climate change crap. I wonder if the Met office would be getting nearly £85 million a year if it didn’t spin climate change crap?
Again if the scientists state that we can’t use this cold spell as proof of global cooling why do they continually allow the three tossers to use other weather events to try to prove global warming?
Just HAD to post this from the Independent of 2000 (from your link Mailman)
However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
And if UK has a very warm spell this summer, all the BBC/Met folk will say, ‘oh, this just weather, not global warming’? Ha.
On a positive note, surely the fact that the warmist scientists, politicians, journalists, activists etc. feel they have to distort the evidence, suggests they are very worried that they just might be wrong ? Unfortunatley the rest of us have to pay the price for their stupidity.
Labour and BBC just love those very expensive, mainly useless, eyesores:
INDUSTRIAL WIND FARMS –
“Wind farms: Generating power and jobs?”
(Forget the BBC’s ‘question-mark: it’s all the usual BBC propaganda, oblivious to the critiques of Christopher Booker and Richard North)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8443865.stm
Christopher Booker:
“Wind farms: One of the Great Deceptions of our time”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/2910741/Windfarms-One-of-the-great-deceptions-of-our-time.html
Good post DB. That Shukman doesn’t know his arse from a hole in the ground does he?
They (the Beeb) seem to think that if they appear to say something (like Global Warming) forcefully, and without an alternative point of view, we the viewers will all cheerfully and unquestioningly soak it all up!
This situation with regards the BBC and the Met Office is nothing short of scandalous. Barbeque summer? Exceptionally mild winter? I hold them responsible for our utter unpreparedness for this current cold spell.
Shameless plug for my blog but I’ve spotted one too.
This bit made me laugh:
—If it’s about rubbish, get yourself right in the middle of it – you can always shower afterwards. If it’s about a drought, stand in a dried-out reservoir. If it’s about trees, arrange to get up in one —
Honestly! They are so literal. I’ve often wondered why TV reporters do this. “If it’s about trees, arrange to get up in one”, takes the biscuit. Why? Tell us why it is necessary to be in a tree when talking about trees. Tell us, tell us.
It’s probably all that rushing up trees and posing in dry reservoirs that has scrambled his brain so that he puts hyphens into plain phrases such as common sense and plain speaking. A little less climbing and a little more brain would be good in a reporter.
Another crap Beeboid, another crap story, more crap propaganda…
… and all paid for (handsomely) by you and me.
“But the climate is the kind of weather you get over a thirty year period…”
So the current “cold snap” at three years is now starting to look as though it might be significant? Or does the BBC only class it as significant when it has exceeded their (arbitrary) hurdle of 30 years?
As one who buys in more than many to the notion of the climate changing, and not in a good way (still ‘jury out’ on the extent of ‘A’ in GW stlll), I remain totally confused that they think the messages from these (I presume sincere, but competence-challenged) messengers add up. And if I am trying my best to stay on board, lord alone knows what the average punter is feeling as the logic failures and plain spin gushes forth to be nailed time and again.
If what is happening now is what last happened 30 years ago, how in the heck can it therefore be ‘unprecedented’ (adj.
Having no previous example) as they and any civ serv with a bonus to protect seems to be claiming left, right & centre?
Especially when the seem to be records of longer, and worse summers/winters/ginger snaps back through living history. So selectively citing or retroactively defending one to prop up the narrative seems to me to only make their cases worse!
You make a great point. “We” are informed by the warmists that The evidence for man made global warming is true because their climate change models that predict the future also predict accurately the past. The problem with that is there are many elements of our climate that cannot be predicted, not only that but there is some dispute over the accuracy of the data used, for example the tree ring data has been lost so we are expected to believe it was accurate. They we have the manipulation of some data to make the climate change models work, hardly reliable science. Not only that none of the climate change models predicted the cooling of the planet over the last 10 years, many of the so called scientists claim they did but I can’ find a single graph from the 90’s that shows a levelling off of global temperatures.
But the real crime is the three tossers at the BBC without a science qualification between them who distort natural weather events to try to prove their boyfriends global warming scam.
Shukman is a complete pillock – just like the rest of the whole motley crew!
They will simply change their narrative to suit the circumstances.
Seems only yesterday that teams of Beeboids were flown into Cockermouth to cover the floods, with many references to this isolated incident proving MMGW is real. You’ve got to hand it to them for their absolute shamelessness in changing the narrative when another (and rather longer) isolated incident doesn’t fit the objective.
Have been watching the BBC News channel on and off all day (no other is available) and notice they kept on that the coldest temp so far in the highlands is a LONG WAY off the coldest from 1962/3 freeze. Then it was -27c. Now it is only -22c. Is their a sublimable message there saying -22c is still nowhere near what it was pre-global warming days? Im sure the people in the highlands completely agree…thank god for global warming; or else it would be really really really cold instead of really really cold.
My England was bad in last post (red wine does the trick!!!). It should of course be subliminal NOT sublimable. Oh well, time to crack open another bottle to help through the global warming.
Don’t worry pal – your England is just fine.
This global warming is soooooo threatening, it is snowing again. Met Office got it wrong of course. They said our part of the world would get snow again tomorrow night & Sunday.
Thanks for this article, its a good catch of Shukmans’ hypocrisy. I think I am beginning to see an element of “jumping the shark” with all these climate stories, the standard BBC reporters patronising attitude is probably alienating more people than they realise, pity is (for them) they just dont know how to operate any other way.
Janet Daly has a good piece in the Telegraph pointing out that the BBC’s “weather isn’t climate” finger wagging at the masses is directed at the wrong target when you realise it is local government councils that seem to have assumed we were only going to have balmy winters from now on and so managed not to stock up on grit!
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/janetdaley/100021668/wasnt-belief-in-global-warming-behind-the-failure-to-stock-enough-grit/
This was part of my e-mail to the head of day time news, Mary Hockaday, re the Catlin expedition: “I am sorry to say that you have not answered my questions to my satisfaction. I do not find David Shukman to be a sufficient authority on matters scientific. I note his earlier experience was in international affairs” http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2001/dec/10/mondaymediasection.afghanistanI had earlier correspondence with Peter Rippon, who is now Newsnight editor, when Shukman was doing the drowning Tuvalu bit two or three years agomary.hockaday@bbc.co.uk
Sorry, posted too soon, but you get the drift