The BBC (& others) have been enthusiastically hyping the storm in the Phillipines as the strongest in history…then moderated it to ‘one of the most powerful‘….but still giving wind speeds incorrectly:
The storm made landfall shortly before dawn on Friday, bringing gusts that reached 379km/h (235 mph), according to the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center, with waves as high as 15m (45ft), bringing up to 400mm (15.75 inches) of rain in places.
WUWT gives the figures as reported by the Phillipine Met Agency:
That’ll be 235 KPH….not 235 MPH!
The BBC has now updated that report…still calling it ‘one of the most powerful’:
Typhoon Haiyan – one of the most powerful storms on record to make landfall – swept through six central Philippine islands on Friday.
It brought sustained winds of 235km/h (147mph), with gusts of 275 km/h (170 mph), with waves as high as 15m (45ft), bringing up to 400mm (15.75 inches) of rain in places.
And as for that ‘one of the most powerful’…even that is wrong….
Terrible though this storm was, it only ranks as a Category 4 storm, and it is clear nonsense to suggest that it is “one of the most powerful storms on record to make landfall ”
How is it that the BBC got it so badly wrong? Even Category 5 storms aren’t that rare….so why the hype?
And why are they still reporting it in such apocalyptic terms relative to its strength? I note that many reports have ‘world’s strongest storm…of 2013’..…but that certainly wasn’t what was said on the radio, the ‘of 2013′ was missing….usually having ‘on record’ instead.
Is it just more evidence that the BBC’s environmental journalists are prepared to lie in order to keep pushing the global warming produces ‘extreme weather’ theme?
Many people have died in the storm but should their deaths be used to promote the BBC’s political and environmental agenda just as they used the deaths of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan to campaign against the wars?
I have a business associate in Cebu city and I will try and contact him today as I’m worried for him. Spoke to him late Thursday and he was very worried. I’ll let you know from the horses mouth what it was like, that is if I can get hold of him. He might be dead.
“How is it that the BBC got it so badly wrong? Even Category 5 storms aren’t that rare….so why the hype?”
Since 1970 there have been 12 Category 5 Pacific Hurricanes as opposed to some 93 Category storms. This does not include the current event. I guess that saying Category 5 events “aren’t that rare” depends on your definition of rare.
“The BBC (& others) have been enthusiastically hyping the storm in the Philippines as the strongest in history…………..”.
I have read reports from a number of sources (the majority of which say that this was a Scale 5 event, now downgraded to grade 4) and none of them gave the impression that the authors were “enthusiastically hyping the storm”. Perhaps you can cite some references of this “hype”.
At the same time perhaps you could point out where in the BBC articles etc. they have used the storm and the resultant deaths to promote their “political and environmental agenda”.
Apologies – there is a “4” missing from the above.
The 3d line should read “Since 1970 there have been 12 Category 5 Pacific Hurricanes as opposed to some 93 Category 4 storms”.
I am not an expert like Chris Landsea, but he has put the case for a simple understanding of the increase or decrease in Hurricanes.
Computer models ten years ago predicted a lowering of differentiation between the surface and six miles up in the Atmosphere, this would have lowered the number of Hurricanes. Of course this has not happened today, ten years later.
But experts such as Landsea report a lowering in the number of Hurricanes due to a lowering of temperature differentiation between the Tropics and the Arctic regions. The evidence is that this has been caused by an increase in clouds in the Arctic regions, trapping heat input.
So the irony is that a lowering of the number of Hurricanes could have been mistaken by the BBC morons as proof that the computer models are correct.
But the proof is that the warmist morons like Albaman, only like apocalyptic scare stories, even if the science shows that a reduction in Hurricanes would be more favourable for the BBC/Guardianista warmist cause.
Temperature differentiation, that is, and a lowering of temperature differentiation means less weather.
But the BBC morons will be pleased to learn that this does cause one type of extreme weather event. An increase in droughts.
Simple logic tells you that if a planet has no weather, then it would have an eternal drought.
“But the proof is that the warmist morons like Albaman, only like apocalyptic scare stories, even if the science shows that a reduction in Hurricanes would be more favourable for the BBC/Guardianista warmist cause. ”
Where did I say, or infer, that the recent storm had anything to do with climate change?
The list of questions posed of people, But as yet left unanswered, grows.
It will be interesting to see who asks them, but does not see the need to answer.
Which is, of course, very BBC, employed by, or not.
That confirms my suspicion that the BBC policy is not to say, or infer, that the recent storm had anything to do with climate change?
The BBC and Albaman are a trick bunch of morons.
Is it not rather moronic to call someone you don’t know a “moron”? It surely can’t be a sign of superior intelligence can it?
So if you are not referring to Climate Change why are you introducing information about the numbers and size of storms in order to refute a claim that the BBC persist in ramping up the size of weather events to push the Climate Change Religion, which is the whole point of the article under discussion?
The BBC began by reporting this was the ‘strongest storm in history’….then moderated to ‘one of the most powerful’…then moderated again to ‘one of the most powerful…in 2013’.
Let’s have a look….using your own figures so you can’t quibble….
So this is one of the most powerful storms?….along with the other 93 category 4 storms of recent times….and that’s not counting the even more powerful cat. 5 storms.
Yep…pretty exclusive storm. So rare at least 105 other storms like it or stronger than it.
Alan, this was a category 5 storm which was downgraded to category 4 after it passed over the Philippines and the wind speed abated. Based on information provided from a number of sources it was the 3rd strongest storm since the 1970. I know these facts are inconvenient to your argument but that is not my fault.
Albaman, was it the third strongest storm to break land or simply the third strongest storm? There is a very big difference.
“…so why the hype?”
Because at a time when the CAGW Agenda is failing to deliver the much-promised climate catastrophe, when even the Guardians of the Holy Consensus, the IPCC, have had to admit that there has been a near 17-year ‘pause’ (that’s ‘absence’ to you and me) in the rise of global temperature, the BBC still feels politically obligated to push the same old propaganda – these days, more in support of its common purpose chums at the EU (someone’s got to keep the momentum going for Agenda 21, after all, right?) and the UN. The entire edifice of CAGW – and the lucrative industry (funded by you and me through our taxes) it promotes – depends utterly on keeping up the pretence at all times.
Every new storm, regardless of how unremarkable it might actually be in the great scheme of things, is to sensationalised and described as, somehow, an ‘extreme weather event’; this is the BBC’s mandate and it will steadfastly stick to the agreed climate narrative first hatched twenty-five years ago at that first ‘Conference of the Parties’.
Social change – the entire point of the CAGW scare – doesn’t happen, after all, without a little help from the world’s richest state broadcaster.
If anybody spots a dhow heading to the Straits with a Green Crescent on its sail…let me know!
The BBC seem only to think that whitey should be stumping up…those Saudis etc are a bit strapped at the minute.
Afraid, until I see those Somali pirates splicing a mainbrace and not a kaffurs head…I`ll not be inclined to give a rial myself…I`m sponsoring a “dig your ancestors” trawl through the Blue Peter Garden for the trainers worn by Jimmy Savile that went into a time capsule in 1979…1989…1999…and 2009 likely as not.
For all were different times…posthummous pardon for Sir James of Wood Lane(yes Dez…I know it`s a spelling variation for fun…OK?)
I think the BBC journalists get all excited about the weather being the “worstest ever!” that fact-checking (basic unit conversions) slips down the list of things to do.
The problem is that those ignorant peasants at the BBC do not know how to convert kph to mph. Goes with the Guardianista concept of education.
Well my friend in Cebu got through the Typhoon and posted me this:
“Yes. very bad for areas that were directly hit (in the typhoon’s path). we were off by 150 km to the south. You should see the devastation in the news.
Regular power was restored yesterday.
I didn’t know you are a weather tracker. So you believe in conspiracy theories? There are allegations in the internet that this was a trial of weather weaponized. HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) by the US military.”
Don’t you just love conspiracy theories? A bit like the BBC banging on about global Warming. 😎
On a slightly different note, I went abroad on the 26th October. The Met was predicting that on the 27th October the greatest hurricane for 30 years would hit the UK. To be fair, every media outlet was repeating this, not just the B-BBC. I eagerly tuned in to CNN to hear the news, it was like a small wind hit the UK, almost nothing happened, except that rail unions took full advantage and stopped trains whether they were running or not.
Another massively over-hyped climatic non-event.
Of course I wasn’t here, so I stand corrected if anyone disagrees with my analysis.
lojo, you really wouldn’t believe how lucky the Met Office got on that Monday. The storm that never was fizzled out on it’s approach to the U.K. and split into two weather systems. One went North, the other went south of Dartmoor and gathered some extra energy from a warm sea. As a result, the *storm* manifested it self as an active *Cold* front which hit land at Poole in Dorset and traversed North Eastwards across the Southern Part of the U.K. That’s all it was, a very active cold front with a weather band of approx. 40 miles. Windy, yes which is what you get from a rolling cold front, but nothing special and these happen all the time in the U.K. with waterspouts and mini tornado’s. Of course storm force winds were forecasted but not from this cold front but from a weather system that would bring havoc to the whole of the U.K. As I say because of some trees down and a few regrettable deaths, the Met Office came out smelling of roses. Some of us know otherwise. *Uncle Pup* on here will understand the potency of a cold front (he is/was an Air Traffic Controller) as opposed to a *storm*. Terminology is everything.
OldBloke, I thought as much – Glad I wasn’t here as all the news was about how all the trains were cancelled – I want to fire the lot of them, staying at home for every damn excuse….
The mother of all storms mostly wasn’t. The main problems the following day were due to the precautionary principle, not the storm, which closed the rail network and cancelled flights., advised people not to go to work Having been bigged up by the Met and the media, no-one in charge of anything wanted the blame for anything that might happen.
All echoes of the paralysis of will caused by the volcanic dust. We probably still wouldn’t be flying today left up to the Civil Aviation Authority quango, that couldn’t bring itself to say “OK”, just in case anything happened.
The Beeb are falsely reporting predictions of doom to “warn us” what’s to come if we don’t accept their Greenpeace-sponsored lies about “Carbon” and Climate Change.
Expect more bigging up of “extreme weather”, a form of bullying by the BBC.
The BBC are playing a very crafty game now with weather events like this. Rather than hype it at the time as being yet more proof of ‘climate change’ they’ll refer back to it some weeks down the line when discussing, say, the new mythical warming of the oceans and cite this storm as being a most probable consequence to fit the ‘extreme weather’ predictions of the IPCC.
In fact, I’ll put money on it.