Category Archives: climate

"world" "news"

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The BBC is now promoting the cold weather in Europe to one of the top stories. What about the fact that more than half the entire USA is under snow at the moment? In any case the worst period for cold is over for most of central Europe at least (I know whereof I speak- in Prague where I am the daytime temperatures were minus 12 celsius or so only a couple of days ago; I’m lucky my ears didn’t freeze off). The Beeb typically refer to this as Europe’s “cold snap”, implying that it’s a little aberration. Well, they’ll soon be able to catch up with the weather and report a warming, as is their wont. But it seems to me that more than half the USA under snow (average depth across this area 3.8 inches) is a much bigger story, yet it has been relegated to the status of a freak east coast winter storm. The BBC tend to concentrate on the effects regardless of the intensity of the weather (unless it suits them), ignoring the fact that Europe’s chaos- at the very least the UK’s- is in large part due to reduced capacity as a result of lower expectations following predictions of global warming. Yet again the BBC’s coverage- even of the weather!- is distorted by ideology. When there is no financial rationale behind a business, ideas do tend to take over like bindweed.

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Suppressio Veri, Suggestio Falsi (again)

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aka “The suppression of the truth is the suggestion of a falsehood.“

When I heard on Radio Four news headlines blaze forth the news that German commercial ships had successfully navigated the North East Passage, with the clear implication that it had never been done before (and was now only possible because of climate change), I was puzzled. Hadn’t Stalin put a lot of effort into cracking just this problem in the 1930s, in order that the Soviet Navy not have to circumnavigate the globe to get to the Far East, as happened with their ill-fated Second Pacific Squadron in 1904 ? Isn’t that why they had nuclear-powered icebreakers ?

The answers are – yes, they had, and yes that’s why.

After a couple more trial runs, in 1933 and 1934, the Northern Sea Route was officially open and commercial exploitation began in 1935. The next year, part of the Baltic Fleet made the passage to the Pacific where armed conflict with Japan was looming.

Richard North examines the entrails at EU Referendum. He mostly concentrates on the Independent newspaper, which came out with a straight lie, but the BBC report is also mentioned.

Given that hardly anyone reads the Independent, yet BBC radio news is listened to by millions of people, its likely that far more people have been deceived by the BBCs insinuations than the Indie’s outright lies.

(Disclaimer – I actually believe it is pretty certain that chucking large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere could indeed impact the climate – the question is to what extent, and what actions should be taken to mitigate risk. But a good cause doesn’t justify falsehood.)

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Sunhats off

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Yes, sunhats off to Tyler at Burning our Money who draws something to my attention: the reason the BBC are biased on the “climate change” issue is because they decided to be two years ago. This decision may be rather more controversial now than then, as sceptics are more organised and data more negative for the AGW hypothesis. DV mentioned a related study last week.

I can’t have been reading the excellent Mr Tyler’s blog back then, or if I did I missed it; certainly Jeremy Paxman seemed to have missed it when he said that “People who know a lot more than I do may be right when they claim that [global warming] is the consequence of our own behaviour. I assume that this is why the BBC’s coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago” (as chronicled in our sidebar). He assumed correctly (in a sense), but he needn’t have assumed. [in fact I think Paxman may have been having a dig here: a long time ago being well before it became official BBC policy]

Tyler reported in ’07 (and I missed) that the BBC in their report called, ahem, “safeguarding impartiality”, said that “The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus.”

So that was that: by fiat the BBC decided the narrative had changed; what numerous people from scientific and non-scientific backgrounds either refused to be convinced by or actively disbelieved had actually to be promulgated.

This is excellent evidence that the “impartiality” meme on which the BBC base their public service justification is unworkable, at least if they are also to “educate and inform”. To do these they need to know “the truth” about newsworthy issues, which is oxymoronic really- they wouldn’t be news if they were as predicable as “truth” (for want of a better word) needs to be. Apple falls from tree- shock, disbelief!

Anyway, yesterday Roger Harrabin started criticising the Met Officefor failed forecasts- the same Met Office which has been teaching the Beeb all about global warming. Is this preparatory for what could be known as the BBC’s Great Climate Trackback?

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OFF THE RAILS

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. The BBC is a prime cheerleader for those who seek to use “climate change” as a convenient excuse for limiting our freedoms. I notice it carries a glowing report this evening suggesting that the UK needs a “modal shift” from road to rail if greenhouse gas emissions from transport are to be curbed. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) says changes are needed to government policies on transport pricing, energy and town planning. A train journey can produce about one tenth of the carbon emissions generated if the same trip is made by air. The report’s authors say substantial investment in the railways is needed. And as part of the war on motorists, we read Cliff Perry, vice president of IMechE’s Railway Division and a former head of Thameslink under British Rail declare “Eighty-five percent of transport emissions come from roads, so if we are serious about doing something, we must hit road transport.” I bet.

But since when did AGW become a fact rather than a theory? Why does the BBC continually imply that AGW is undisputed science? Government is determined to tax us for using our cars and this report, given all due prominence by the BBC, is just one of many designed to create the right mood music to help support what will be further strident impositions on the motorist who dares to travel without government approval. Doing Brown’s dirty work seems all they are good for!

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BLOWING HOT AND COLD.

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Proselytising for man-made global warming is a major theme running through many BBC alleged news items. If we get through a day without being asked to worry about the polar bears drowning or some other such invented headline grabbing nonsense, then some little greenie Beeboid has failed in his solemn duty to preach the gospel of the eco-wacko left to us sinners.

Any notion that our preening State broadcaster might approach the important topic of climate change in a serious and balanced manner is just so much, erm, hot air! You see for the Beeb the wisdom of Rev Al Gore prevails, “the debate is over” and now it’s time that we paid for our wicked excesses. (Literally, by accepting nefarious eco-taxation, for example)

I read this latest PR exercise on behalf of the anthropogenic global warming fanatics with some bemusement. The story here is that a study commissioned by the pro-AGW Government has found that AGW could lead to the possibility of the UK experiencing lethal heat waves in the summer but milder winters. Malaria outbreaks remain a possibility, oh and if that doesn’t get you, the floods will! Dog bites man. A real story would be covering one of the many reports which throw cold water on the scalded AGW topic – man bites dog!However even the tenured authors of this report acknowledge that “in conventional thinking” terms predicting these drastic temperature changes is “difficult.” I’ll say – if we can’t predict with any certainty the weather for the next seven days what is the likelihood of getting a four year forecast right? I also love the way this historically unprecedented putative heat wave is instantly linked to 6000 deaths, how scientific is that?

By way of balance, no one who disputes AGW claims gets to comment at all but good luck ensures that a spokesman for the NHS gets to declare that tackling climate change is a key priority for our Health Service. Sorry? An NHS which struggles to deal with lethal bugs in its own filthy wards is now out to tackle dangerous gases in our atmosphere? More taxes to pay for this brave NHS initiative?

It’s interesting to consider how this all works. The State Broadcaster propagates the ideology of its paymasters in Westminster, via a State funded report, and uses the State Health Service to underline just how awful things will be unless we change our lives and accept what the State declares to be best for us. Don’t know about you but Northern Ireland could sure do with some hot summers – I’ll buy air conditioning if necessary!

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What a relief!

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The BBC has cancelled its planned Climate Relief day. Messrs Horrocks and Barron weighed in with criticism of the event and it’s been shelved. Barron (Newsnight Editor) came up with the very quotable, almost Paxmanesque, “It is absolutely not the BBC’s job to save the planet”.

Well, that’s the spin, anyway. My guess is the BBC feel that because the science is not at all that settled, they don’t want to overextend. They can always save the world another day, after all.

Hat-tips to Damian Thompson, who is gratified, and Iain Dale, who says “well done” to the Beeb. Not sure congratulations are in order here.

Oh yes, and I shouldn’t forget, Andrew had some good thoughts about this topic earlier.

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That relentless climate…

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of climate change (global warming, when they can fit it in) reporting that has become virtually the BBC’s trademark is put in an interesting light by this saga of diligence on the part of bloggers (I presume scientists too, but maybe just enthusiasts).

Today the BBC have regaled us with British scientists’ latest grandiose attempts to predict the weather ten years ahead. The BBC assert that “Currently, 1998 is the warmest year on record, when the global mean surface temperature was 14.54C (58.17F).”

Well, perhaps they are out of date; indeed misled and misleading. According to the story I linked above, NASA’s data for the US was in fact skewed by a Y2K hiccup, and thus 1934 is in fact the warmest year on record– at least for the USA (other data were upset too, apparently, and generally in the direction of downgrading recent temperatures relative to the past, but this is the most notable example). Perhaps that would not affect the global data, but I suspect it would come close to upsetting those set-in-stone league tables of temperature which the (basically) man-made global warming proponents of the BBC hammer home at every opportunity.

Oh, and I suppose I should point you in the direction of NASA’s “new” data, which can be found here.

Update: Don’t miss HotAir’s analysis, including former Nasa scientist Bryan Preston’s view. “Can we at least get some peer review before we build the ark?”

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Weather to notice or not

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Yes, it’s Easter. Happy Easter to those in the “Christian world”!

It’s been a great weekend for climate change at the Beeb. Good Friday saw headline after headline drawn from the pre-release of one of the IPCC’s four reports expected this year. Now the main pre-report report is lurking both under Science and Nature and also under the Americas section, for some reason, although the IPCC met in, guess where? Brussels.

April 4th saw them see fit to report Scotland basking in warmth ahead of this Easter weekend; as if to show that weather stories arestories, even if they can’t boast any records.

Then we have, currently, a report from Mexicodetailing the drying up of a lake there. This begins with citing that well-known source of water disappearance, God, as one possible explanation, and then posits the alternative – man-made global warming. Yeah, that’s balance. The same source who cited God as the main culprit, a Ms Ortega Torres, also claims a dramatic reduction in rainfall and blames this on anthropomorphic global warming:

“Ms Ortega Torres has no doubts why the lake has shrunk so much.

“It’s because of climate change,” she says. “This area used to get around 300 days of rain a year. Now we are lucky to see 100 to 150 days. So the lake cannot be replenished.”

 
Faith abounding, apparently.

Because lost in the rest of the text, concealed as a contributing factor, is the massive increase in Mexico’s population and the demand that has placed on agricultural production and water consumption.

Worth investigating, I’d have thought- especially the source and specifics of the rainfall claim. I’d have thought that’s what editorial meetings are for.

But no, probably they’re for deciding not to cover record-breaking cold weather across much of the United States. And when I say record-breaking, I mean, RECORD BREAKING. That is to say, daytime historic lows in cities like Atlanta (1886), Augusta (1981), and Charlotte (1961). And it’s also pretty chilly in Nashville (hat-tip, Insta).

Bad timing, Auntie. High time to manage the news. I notice that the unwisely opened Have Your Say is dominated by MMGW sceptics, like this chap from Lithuania who comments:

“I dont like BBC as it provides us information about global warming. It provides us all arguments for, however, almost all arguments against are kept quiet.”

Indeed, Mr Kinselis, indeed.

[nb. all the above is not an argument against global warming per se, but against the dramatic claims made for MMGW. Evidence that record low temperatures are possible in this carbon benighted world needs to be carefully recorded and studied, and noted by both public and politicians worldwide. How are the BBC helping that along, I wonder?]

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