The BBC were rather dishonestly using flooding in the Somerset Levels to promote the idea that we are suffering from extreme weather brought on by global warming….the floods were very unusual we were told.

Which is odd because their own description of the Levels says this:

This unique landscape is one of the lowest, flattest areas in the country. In ancient times it was known as the summerlands… because it was too wet to use in the winter… and it is thought this is where the county of Somerset got its name.

The Parrett Catchment Flood Management Plan tells us that, of course, climate change is one factor, but that other elements play an important role in aggravating the flooding.

‘The oldest man living does not remember such great floods and so much water. Everything beyond Bridgwater is like a sea.’ 1809

The catchment has a history of flood risk, generally due to the high rainfall that can lead to extensive flooding of the river valleys.

Much of the flooding is due to….a combination of surface water, fluvial and sewer problems.  Recent flooding has been strongly driven by local surface water problems, exacerbated by some farming practices which have increased field run-off locally.

Certainly where I live small changes to drainage, digging out the ditches and changes in how fields are managed has a dramatic effect on whether there is flooding.  This year there has been no flooding in the usual locations….that’s despite fairly constant rain.

We are always told by Harrabin and Co that it isn’t a problem of the amount of rain but that it will now fall in intense bursts due to climate change:

‘The issue is the way it falls in sudden bursts not the amount of rain.‘

However…it always flooded before with the ‘regular’ type of rainfall…and that is the rain we’ve been having recently…so climate change hasn’t been the cause of  massive ‘intense bursts’ round here.

By coincidence WUWT has posted something on coverage of this very subject today:

Flooding In The Somerset Levels – A Case Study

As can be seen, although December rainfall was higher than average, it was not abnormally so. I have also included the November map, to show that that month was around or below average for Somerset, so there is no evidence of a long term build up of water.

The graph makes clear that last month’s rainfall was not unusual in any way. Since 1910, it ranks as the 19th wettest, in other words a once every 5 year event. The rain in December does not even compare with years such as 1934, when 307mm was recorded. In fact, it is noticeable that all of the really wet Decembers occurred prior to 1970.

One of the quotes we get highlighted is that ‘the rainfall is unusual…two years of floods in a row’.…but from the graph above you can see that two years in a row of heavy rain is not unusual long term.

Nothing unusual on that graph either…if anything rain dropped off in the last decade.

Here is George Monbiot, slumming it in the Daily Mail…presumably this little bit of heresy didn’t get past the censors at the Green Guardian…..

Drowned by EU millions: Thought ‘extreme weather’ was to blame for the floods? Wrong. The real culprit is the European subsidies that pay UK farmers to destroy the very trees that soak up the storm

By George Monbiot

We all know what’s gone wrong, or we think we do:  not enough spending on flood defences. It’s true that government cuts have exposed thousands of homes to greater risk, but too little public spending is a small part of the problem.

It is dwarfed by another factor, overlooked in public discussion: too much public spending.

Vast amounts, running into billions, are spent every year on policies that make devastating floods inevitable. This is the story that has not been told, a story of destructive perversity.

Instead of a steady flow sustained around the year by trees in the hills, by sensitive farming methods, by rivers allowed to find their own course and their own level, to filter and hold back their waters through bends and braiding and obstructions, we get a cycle of flood and drought. We get filthy water and empty aquifers and huge insurance premiums and ruined carpets.

And all of it at public expense.

Flood and drought caused by bad land management?  And you thought it was global warming.

Wickedness in the World

 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypresswood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.

I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.

DID JESUS DIE?

DIRECTOR INTERVIEW…RICHARD DENTON

Friday 11 July 2003

BBC Four: Your central question is did Jesus die on the cross rather than did Jesus die at all.

Richard Denton: It is really.

BBC Four: You say that the resurrection and the literal truth of the Gospel have in the past been the cornerstone of Christianity.

RD: Exactly. And the idea that you can go on preaching this to the ordinary stupid faithful while not believing it yourself seemed to me truly offensive.

All those Christian ‘ordinary stupid faithful’ who believe.  What fools!!

BBC on 5Live yesterday were having a great laugh at this:

UKIP councillor blames storms and floods on gay marriage

A UKIP councillor has blamed the recent storms and heavy floods across Britain on the Government’s decision to legalise gay marriage.

David Silvester said the Prime Minister had acted “arrogantly against the Gospel”.

In a letter to his local paper he said he had warned David Cameron the legislation would result in “disaster”.

Curious they didn’t have a similar snook at this by the Rev. Dr. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Professor of Theology, Chicago Theological Seminary from a few days earlier:

Cold as Hell: The Chilling Effect of Global Warming

Hell is normally depicted as a “lake of fire,” as in Revelation 20:10. This week in the Midwest, however, Hell is likely to look more like lakes of ice, as dangerous cold from a polar vortex, brings “wind chills that could hit 50, 60 or even 70 below zero.”

The science of what is causing this current extreme cold is, in fact, complex, and research is ongoing.

But while the science of changes to the polar vortex and its relationship to global warming are complex, the Christian theology of our failure to protect the creation is not complex.

Simply put, the Christian theological argument must start with our sinful failure to take care of the creation, as God intends (Gen. 2:15). Instead, we are trashing the planet and changing its climate primarily through the fossil fuel emissions.

Sin against the creation abounds.

The climate is where the weird things are. You may not know the cause, but everybody knows the weather sure has gotten weird. Weird is threatening. Weird is scary.

And you should be scared.

In history, artists have portrayed scenes of the fiery Hell as very scary.

Today, there is a Hell coming toward us, but it is a frigid apocalypse, brought on by our own sinful disregard of the planet.

The future prospects are chilling.

So that’ll be Global Cooling then?

Christopher Booker also blames Cameron…for a different reason:

Flooding chaos is down to David Cameron, not climate change

The Environment Agency’s failure to dredge clogged-up rivers is causing floods

…emmm?…..

The BBC looks down on climate change ‘deniers’….dismissing them as unqualified ‘bloggers’…unlike English graduate Roger Harrabin who can speak authoritatively on climate science….being an English graduate presumably he knows how to write a convincing tale even if not in possession of all the facts.

It happened after bloggers seized on a Met Office paper revising downward its decadal global temperature projection for 2017.

Which is why this is so amusing…especially as it is from Harrabin’s climate propagandist sidekick Dr Joe Smith:

‘It is handy that the Internet came along at precisely the same moment as
‘the greatest challenge facing humanity’.

The bloggers will save us all!

And here  again Smith is at odds with the scientific consensus

‘I’m puzzled why anyone would think that researchers want climate change to be true. Everyone I know working in this field would dearly love to discover that the conclusions almost every climate scientist’s work is pointing to are wrong. Climate change seems likely to bring significant waste and suffering, albeit highly unpredictable.’

Shame the infamous Professor Phil Jones from UEA’s CRU admitted he’d love the planet to fry….

‘I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences.‘

While some have argued that ebbs and flows in the Sun’s activity are driving the climate – overriding the effect of greenhouse gas emissions, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that solar variation only makes a small contribution to the Earth’s climate.

How often have we been told that the sun plays little to no part in the planet’s climate?  It’s the CO2 stupid!

Wriggle room in the climate research labs:

Is our Sun falling silent?

“I’ve been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” says Richard Harrison, head of space physics at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.

He shows me recent footage captured by spacecraft that have their sights trained on our star. The Sun is revealed in exquisite detail, but its face is strangely featureless.

“If you want to go back to see when the Sun was this inactive… you’ve got to go back about 100 years,” he says.

This solar lull is baffling scientists, because right now the Sun should be awash with activity.

The Sun’s activity may be falling faster than at any time in 10,000 years

It has reached its solar maximum, the point in its 11-year cycle where activity is at a peak.

Dr Green says: “There is a very strong hint that the Sun is acting in the same way now as it did in the run-up to the Maunder Minimum.”

“We estimate that within about 40 years or so there is a 10% to 20% – nearer 20% – probability that we’ll be back in Maunder Minimum conditions.”

The era of solar inactivity in the 17th Century coincided with a period of bitterly cold winters in Europe.

Londoners enjoyed frost fairs on the Thames after it froze over, snow cover across the continent increased, the Baltic Sea iced over – the conditions were so harsh, some describe it as a mini-Ice Age.

So could this regional change in Europe have a knock-on effect on for the rest of the world’s climate? And what are the implications for global warming?

“If we take all the science that we know relating to how the Sun emits heat and light and how that heat and light powers our climate system, and we look at the climate system globally, the difference that it makes even going back into Maunder Minimum conditions is very small.

Ah…hang on….a mini ice age…but it’s not really ‘significant’…it’s only  going to be in Europe….globally the effect is insignificant….curious how global warming in the Arctic region drives climate around the globe but a mini ice age in the Northern hemisphere has no effect on global climate….do you think they make the science up to suit their own prejudices?

Oh…hang on again……this from rebel weatherman Paul Hudson who curiously reported this exact story in October last year…..

Although the biggest impact of such solar driven change would be regional, like here in the UK and across Europe, there would be global implications too.

According to research conducted by Michael Mann in 2001, a vociferous advocate of man-made global warming, the Maunder minimum of the 1600s was estimated to have shaved 0.3C to 0.4C from global temperatures.

Though he adds:

It is worth stressing that most scientists believe long term global warming hasn’t gone away. Any global cooling caused by this natural phenomenon would ultimately be temporary, and if projections are correct, the long term warming caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would eventually swamp this solar-driven cooling.

But keep panicking….if you think you’re safe in a colder world think again:

BBC Laughter: Less warming may cause more damage

From BBC Radio’s Today program.

The BBC’s Roger Harrabin reports:

So it is possible that the climate would warm less than predicted, but the effects of the warming at a low level might be greater than predicted.

 

 

Good old Roger….would have made a great priest.

The scientists can’t agree…..regional or global…..

Large changes in solar ultraviolet radiation can indirectly affect climate……We conclude that changes in atmospheric circulation amplified the solar signal and caused abrupt climate change about 2,800 years ago, coincident with a grand solar minimum.

An influence of solar irradiance variations on Earth’s surface climate has been repeatedly suggested……If the updated measurements of solar ultraviolet irradiance are correct, low solar activity, as observed during recent years, drives cold winters in northern Europe and the United States, and mild winters over southern Europe and Canada, with little direct change in globally averaged temperature.

From the Guardian:

Got to admire the BBC’s ability to compartmentalize things.

On Today this morning we had a long exploration of the disaster that is Syria…conclusion…Assad, who has terrorised his own people with chemical weapons and barrel bombs is actually a better man to have in power than the Al Qaeda extremists fighting to remove him.

So that’s just how bad the Al Qaeda boys are.

Followed immediately by a heart warming tale of…an Al Qaeda terrorist…in Guantanamo Bay…who has written back to a plucky British Christian who wrote a letter to him.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed ‘quite friendly’ says pen pal

Rory Green speaks about his his letter from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Guantanamo

The BBC managed to find two extracts they wished to read out from the 27 page tract…the first saying the lovable rogue never stops repenting for his sins (though we’re not sure what he thinks they might be) and the second an attack on paedophile Catholic priests….driven to their evil lusts by a decadent West apparently.

Sweet.

Might there be a connection between that terrorist and his compatriots who are actually chopping up Christian priests in Syria?

Not for the BBC.

The telegraph..and many others..including ‘Marketing Week’ (7 hours ago)…report this:

West Bromwich Albion shirt sponsors threaten to cancel deal over Nicolas Anelka’s ‘quenelle’ goal celebration

Shirt sponsors may withdraw from multi-million deal if West Bromwich Albion striker starts against Everton on Monday

The BBC doesn’t.

Zoopla is owned by a Jewish businessman….wonder why he wants to remove the funding?

Anelka is a Muslim making what is an anti-semitic gesture.

Wonder why the BBC is so slow on reporting this.

Not always so reluctant to report other religious/sponsor problems:

I mentioned in previous posts the BBC’s refusal to report the Governor of the Bank of England’s remarks about capping bank market share and bonuses…..it looks like they knew but refused to publish it because it was too ‘Tory friendly’…….

The BBC now are eager to examine Carney’s remarks…but the BBC’s Chris Mason seems to have forgotten that he is supposed to be impartial and not be pushing Labour’s narrative as in this entirely negative, one sided, Labour’s side,  look at Carney….

On Wednesday, shortly the BBC’s Political Editor Nick Robinson had broken the story of Labour’s plans to impose a limit on the market share of individual banks, Mr Carney happened to be appearing in front of the cross-party Commons Treasury Select Committee.

Labour were clearly less than gruntled by these remarks.

Remarks, after all, about the leaked contents of a speech that, at the time, had yet to be actually delivered.

Conversely, the Conservatives were delighted and keen to emphasise what he had had to say, and the importance of his remarks, in their conversations with us.

So Tory MPs were talking to BBC reporters about this…and the BBC reporters decided not to report what Carney said….despite the importance of the comments which completely undermined the credibility of Miliband’s plan.

As for ‘Remarks, after all, about the leaked contents of a speech that, at the time, had yet to be actually delivered.‘….well that’s a very pro-Labour comment…and misses the point…Labour deliberately leaked the speech (I liked that ‘Nick Robinson broke the story’) and got the BBC headlines it wanted…and then got them a second time today.

Robinson didn’t of course break all the story, ignoring a rather massive, important part of it….the Governor of the Bank of England thinks Miliband’s plan is unworkable twaddle.

Carney wasn’t being ‘political’ he was doing  his job and commenting on a technical issue….what would be good for the economy.

After all Labour has no such qualms about people being political when it is Doctors in the NHS speaking out against Government reforms.

The BBC finally came round to mentioning Carney’s remarks on its website today…….just one tiny short sentence….

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said earlier this week that he supported the view that a cap on banks’ market share “would not result in substantial improvement to competition”.

Yep that’s it….no substantial improvement to competition…..so the BBC are in effect saying Carney had nothing of importance to say…..except that he did, as the Telegraph reports:

Ed Miliband’s plans to reform banks undermined by Mark Carney

On the issue of limiting banks’ market share, Mr Carney said that similar caps in America had failed to prevent the financial crisis.

“In the United States, there is a hard cap on deposits – you can’t have more than 10 per cent of the deposit share in the US and that’s a rule that’s been in place for decades.

“And I think that’s one of the points I’d make from a financial policy perspective – that obviously that rule in and of itself did not prevent the creation of large, systemic financial institutions.

“In fact, one could argue a bit – and I wouldn’t overstate this – that by limiting the absolute funding of certain large institutions, in other words they can’t go above that 10 per cent deposit cap, it encouraged on the margin more wholesale funding for expanding balance sheets, which created risks in and of itself.”

So a cap in America did nothing to prevent market failure…and indeed may have created risk of banking failure.

The BBC did dip a toe into the water on this on the Today programme  (0632 ish)….where they were told that Miliband’s type of policy doesn’t work in the US, it’s a schizophrenic policy…wanting banks to be successful but capping that success….and Carney’s remarks were ‘downright negative’ about capping market share….and that is a big problem because if the Governor of the Bank of England doesn’t think it will work it won’t happen.

Strong stuff…and important you might think…but never heard again.  Listen to the news reports during the day and all you will hear is clip of  Chuka Umunna telling us what great things Miliband’s bank cap will do for competition and the economy….you won’t hear the criticism of the plan.

It is  a work of immense skill for any BBC editor to have found a good clip of Umunna’s interview with John Humphrys this morning (0733)….a more evasive and slippery character it is would be hard to find.

Humphrys said he had lots of questions to ask…..is Miliband’s plan in our interest, would it work, would it benefit us, do we want it?

But one question he didn’t ask…and it’s probably the most important one….if the Governor of the Bank of England doesn’t think your plan is workable and won’t support it will it ever see the light of day?

Everything else is mere pie in the sky until the plan gets support from one of the most important financial institutions in the country.

Good though to know that the Bank’s market share cap is designed to solve our economic problems…which are a low wage, low skill economy.

Em….isn’t that a Labour Party creation having imported literally millions of low paid, low skill workers into this country?

Anyway…capping the Bank’s market share will solve all that…and bring peace to the Middle East.

Humphrys didn’t challenge Umunna on his claims despite saying at the beginning one of his questions being….‘Will it work?‘…..He never asked the question so we never got the answer as to just how it will work in the real world….all we got were the intended end results…to grow the Middle classes.

Carney says it won’t work….so a perfect opportunity to bring his comments up…but Humphrys didn’t bother.

A lightweight interview from Humphrys letting Umunna, and Labour, off the hook.

What else has hardly had a hearing on the BBC?

George Osborne’s announcement that he wants to raise the minimum wage…whilst Miliband’s bank capping saga gets frontpage billing, twice in a week, Osborne’s minimum wage raise is relegated to a small line on the UK page…and is now shoved even further out of the limelight onto the Politics page…whilst Miliband is still on the frontpage.

Even Labourite Dan Hodges thinks Osborne’s pledge was the most politically significant event of the week…..so why is the BBC essentially ignoring it?

George Osborne’s announcement last night he supports an increase in the minimum wage to £7 an hour has shot Ed Miliband’s fox. And his cat, his dog, his goldfish, his hamster and his Bolivian marmoset called “Che”.

To be honest, Miliband’s speech is already redundant. The politically significant event of the week was the Chancellor’s minimum wage pledge.

Well not quite ignoring it…..

Today had a segment at 06:13 and then again at 0708.

Both times the BBC ‘exploration’ of the issues managed to convey an entirely negative view of the policy…which is quite remarkable really…imagine the reaction if Miliband had announced it…it is after all one of the left’s mantra’s…increase the minimum wage.

We were told the policy would have a significantly bad effect on jobs…but the TUC was in favour of it.

And of course….as businesses suffered or failed under the regime tax revenues would go down, unemployment would rise and welfare would go up…the economy would suffer.

At 07:08 we were told that some businesses could pay the minimum wage but that some sectors of the economy, like care homes, would have to lay off workers……the policy was inflationary and would hit pensions….all doom and gloom.

All very true of course….but the contrast with how the BBC treats Osborne’s proposal and Miliband’s ‘Living wage’ is marked……it’s funny how the BBC never went into this much detail about Miliband’s equally ruinous ‘living wage’ which the BBC never seemed to find the time to criticise.

So…Carney’s remarks which said Miliband’s proposal was basically unworkable, and Osborne’s minimum wage rise proposal, have either been given absolutely minimum coverage or if they have been mentioned it is only to denigrate and dismiss them.

Must be an election coming.  Maybe the champagne is on ice already at Broadcasting House….

‘….the corridors of Broadcasting House were strewn with empty champagne bottles – I will always remember that  – er – not that the BBC were celebrating in any way shape or form – and actually – I think it’s fair to say that in the intervening years the BBC, if it was ever in love with Labour has probably fallen out of love with Labour, or learned to fall back in, or basically just learned to be in the middle somewhere which is how it should be – um – but there was always this suggestion that the BBC was full of pinkoes who couldn’t wait for Labour to get back into power – that may have been the case, who knows ? but as I say I think there’ve been a few problems along the way – wish I hadn’t started this now…”

Perhaps the BBC is a bit left wing:

BBC Presenters Have ‘Deeply Held Left-Wing Political Views’, Complain Tory MPs
Much of the BBC’s political coverage is biased against the Conservative Party and the broadcaster “long ago gave up any pretence of neutrality”, Tory MPs have complained.
Angela Watkinson told the Commons on Monday that the BBC was failing in its duty to “provide balanced information” and was instead routinely offering “political opinion” presented as news.

It seems to be the done thing nowadays to psychoanalyze climate sceptics…the science is settled therefore anyone who ‘denies’ it must ‘a loony’ to quote one BBC boss.

A favourite device also used by the Soviet Union to eliminate its dissidents.

So I think it only fair a similar process is practised on other sectors of society…say comedians for instance…actors too might be worthy of examination…so very lefty.

There must be a reason after all why the BBC can find no ‘right wing’ comedians..

And there is….

Comedians have psychotic personality traits, study finds

In a study in the British Journal of Psychiatry, researchers analyzed comedians from Australia, Britain and the United States and found they scored significantly higher on four types of psychotic characteristics compared to a control group of people who had non-creative jobs.

“The creative elements needed to produce humor are strikingly similar to those characterizing the cognitive style of people with psychosis – both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder,” said Gordon Claridge of the University of Oxford’s department of experimental psychology, who led the study.

“The creative elements needed to produce humor are strikingly similar to those characterizing the cognitive style of people with psychosis – both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder,” said Gordon Claridge of the University of Oxford’s department of experimental psychology, who led the study.

The researchers found that comedians scored significantly higher on all four types of psychotic personality traits compared to the general group. Most striking were their high scores for impulsive non-conformity and introverted personality traits, the researchers said.

The actors scored higher than the general group on three types – but did not display high levels of introverted personality traits.

Must be a reason comedians and actors all seem to be left wing and have a very loose attachment to reality…..could explain a lot…such as support for all those left wing dictators and mass murderers.

The researchers recruited 523 comedians – 404 men and 119 women – and asked them to complete an online questionnaire designed to measure psychotic traits in healthy people.

Wouldn’t you just love to see who filled in the questionnaires?

Ed Miliband is here to save the banks and don’t the BBC love it? Here’s a new Open Thread to see us all off into the wild blue yonder of the weekend!