Another day, another BBC climate change scare. Maybe I am wasting my time by writing about these items, they are so predictably biased and so blatantly political; but I hope that charting the extent to which the BBC churns out this relentless tide of propaganda is of interest. It’s our money and the fact that the BBC pours shedloads of its resources into this mindless drivel is obscene. Don’t just take my word for it; even ardent greenie academics like Dr Denis Rancourt now think the whole climate change hyopthesis is a mental disease. To the BBC, of course, he’s just another denialist nutter.
Today’s BBC scare is that Mexicans will become so hot because of climate change that almost 7m of them will flee to the US by 2080. It’s made by a team led by a member of the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change (not biased, of course) and the findings are presented, as usual, without a word of balancing comment from someone with some sanity. Or mention that the US has just gone through its snowiest winter on record, and that South America is currently in the middle of its biggest cold snap in living memory. So maybe those Mexicans will head the other way!
Millions of Mexicans are already fleeing to the US
Funny how this report comes just as loads of illegal Mexicans are leaving Arizona in advance of the new law allowing AZ police to check their papers. I guess it will be a quick turnaround, and back to the balmier climes of Tucson with 120 degrees F in the shade?
Let’s face it – you have to laugh, don’t you.
As I said in a previous post, I don’t know why they bother, as they’re ridiculed from arseholes to breakfast time (olde English saying).
When the inevitable cooling arrives (as it surely will), what are they going to say then? Will the mexicans be running in another direction? Caramba! They’re all stark raving mad.
When they are proved wrong, they’ll merely shrug their shoulders, say “well, it was fun whilst it lasted” and move on to something else to waste the licence-payers hard earned cash on.
I can’t begin to think why the whole bloody BBC hasn’t been certified. How long can they get away with it before someone with sense and in authority (an unlikely combination, I grant you) pulls the plug on this nasty, obscene organisation, who have yet to notice that the government’s changed (and not necessarily for the better…).
Natsman,
Well said. But, that olde english saying is a new one on me !
So only Mexico will be affected by this “global warming” – it is going to stop at the border is it?
I would suggest people read this
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100726/full/news.2010.375.html
Which explains how the “economists” and 1 environmental activist came to their conclusions and also to get a glimpse of the other side of the debate, viz.
“Douglas Massey, a sociologist at Princeton, says that he thinks some of the migration attributed by the study to environmental change could actually be the result of structural changes in the Mexican economy. “Over the same period of the study [1995–2005], Mexico’s economy underwent a wrenching change as agricultural subsidies were ended, price supports eliminated, and communal lands privatized,” he says.”
Now why don’t the BBC mention that? The BBC is so blatently dishonest yet they can get away with this fantasy because of the limp wristed politicians who also live in the fantasy world of “green tax”.
“The ongoing drought in the western U.S. began in 1998 and has now continued, with some interruptions and despite a quite wet winter 2007/8, for close to 10 years. Less well know is that this same drought has impacted Northern Mexico and even began earlier there. The Mexican drought has coincided with major changes in the Mexican economy and agriculture triggered by the North American Free Trade Agreement and moves to privatize water supply in much of Mexico. The combination of drought and economic change has created serious social impacts in Mexico with impacts on internal and cross-border migration.”
“The 1890s persistent drought – which caused starvation across northern Mexico – seems to have been forced by a persistent La Nina while the 1950s drought was potentially influenced by both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans.”
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought/mexican.shtml
So there has been drought in Northern Mexico for years since before 1998. There were also major droughts in the 1890s and 1950s (what caused them?)
It took me a few minutes to find this out – why can’t the BBC check a few things before blowing their alarmist trumpet? Well, we know whydon’t we.
It is a basic of science that one one cannot attribute any extreme weather event such as a drought to climate change (natural or man-made). All one can do is work out whether a changing climate makes such an event more or less likely.
A good analogy is a pair of dice, one a normal die and the other loaded to give a six more often than it should. You could throw the loaded die and get a six, but there would be no way of knowing whether you got a six because of the die being loaded or whether a normal die would have returned a six too.
This point seems to elude reporters, whether they are arguing in favour or against, but I guess probability etc isn’t a strong point of journalists.
I don’t think science is a strong point of journalists. Come to think of it nothing else is either.
No, Robin, you’re not wasting your time. The BBC bias in this area must be charted because it may come in useful in the future when lamp-posts have to be apportioned.
Roland,
I posted my post below before I read yours. Great minds here in Edinburgh !!!!
Robin,
No you are not wasting your time. The BBC’s warmist bias is one of its worst and most dangerous. Keep on posting !
Warmism propoganda at the BBC comes not only from the recognised environmental “analysts”/preachers – it infects much of the overall news and current affairs coverage.
For example, last night on the World Service there was a Hardtalk interview between Stephen Sackur and John Hofmeister, a former President of Shell.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p008qln5/Hardtalk_John_Hofmeister_former_President_of_Shell/
Hofmeister’s thesis is that if we need to shift from a carbon economy the matter cannot be left to politicians who focus on the short term – there needs to be some form of Federal body akin to the Federal Reserve capable of taking a long view, of making steady cumulative change over decades.
But to Sackur he was just Mr “Big Oil”. Sackur kept interrupting him arguing for instant and damaging economic changes, and feeding in lots of Warmist lies such as arctic ice melting and high temperatures in 2010 – quoting NASA stuff that I have seen torn apart on WattsUpWithThat as being utterly unscientific. Then there was the canard about Exxon funding the sceptics – another story that has been exploded.
What could have been an interesting discussion was ruined by Sackur pushing Warmist propaganda.
BBC presenters are nearly all in the tank for Warmism. That is why they see no problem in failing to report the sceptic arguments properly, no problem in trotting out the latest false PR from Greenpeace.
This Mexican scare story is the latest idiocy publicised by the BBC – based on NIL science.
To point out how absurd it is – Mexican statistics show some 6.7 million agricultural workers. Yet up to 6.8 million might migrate. Absurd on its face.
Every week or so there is a scare story – which the BBC rushes to publicise. The BBC NEVER waits to see what others might make of the story. It might be sensible for any BBC journalist to wait a few days and check out what criticisms have been made – no big difficulty, they would only need to check a a couple of the leading sceptical blogsites.
In this case – lo and behold, the entire report has been debunked within a few days by a very senior and well-known academic, Roger Pielke Jr. And of course his debunking is linked to from the BishopHill site in the UK –
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/7/28/theyre-all-a-comin.html
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/07/silly-science.html
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The BBC ought to take the whole stupid “story” offline. Or they should amend it severely by reference to Dr Pielke’s comments.
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There should be a firm rule at the BBC – no climate scare stories to be run until we can see if there is any rebuttal. Say – allow 2 weeks, check a list of about 5 key sites. The whole climate thing is long-term anyway, there is no urgency to publish every bit of PR they get. Especially when they so often look totally stupid by rushing to print the latest bit of flawed alarmism.
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Anyway, in the BBC’s eyes this is merely another item to add to the 768 terrible things that AGW is causing :
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
In this case – the whole scam has been exploded
and here at WattsUpWithThat is another article demolishing the BBC’s stupid Mexico story :
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/28/border-transgressions/#more-22661
Where’s part 2 of this post gone? More threatening letters from Mr Black?