GWPF Newsletter: BBC’s Fake Climate Claims Now Becoming A Habit

BBC Regrets Climate Error — Then Does It Again

In this newsletter:

1) BBC Regrets Climate Error And Failure To Meet Usual Standards Of Reporting — Then Does It Again
GWPF Observatory, 26 March 2018 
 
2) BBC’s Fake Climate Claims Now Becoming A Habit
Not A Lot Of People Know That, 22 March 2018 

 
3) BBC Ignores Complaint Over Fake Climate News 
Climate Scepticism, 23 March 2018 
 
4) Flood Of New Scientific Papers Show Surprising Results
No Tricks Zone, 25 March 2018 
 
5) Paris Climate Agreement Is Encouraging Nations To Increase Their CO2 Emissions
Benjamin Storrow, E&E News, 24 March 2018 
 
6) ‘IRON LAW:’ The World Got Richer, So CO2 Emissions Went Up
Daily Caller, 23 March 2018 

Full details:

1) BBC Regrets Climate Error And Failure To Meet Usual Standards Of Reporting — Then Does It Again
GWPF Observatory, 26 March 2018 
Dr David Whitehouse, GWPF Science Editor

Everybody makes mistakes, and some of them matter. On the BBC’s News at Ten on the 18th January 2018 there were two of them, and the GWPF complained a few days later.

The first was in describing the global temperature of 2017 as the “hottest year on record,” which it wasn’t. The second was that the BBC’s Environment Analyst Roger Harrabin said that, “2017 had no heating from El Nino,” which was also incorrect.

We pointed out that whilst 2017 was not designated a year in which there was an El Nino event (defined as a period with prolonged El Nino heating) there was in fact El Nino heating in the northern spring for 11 weeks, and we provided a graph to prove it. (Click on image to enlarge)


2017 Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomalies in the El Niño 3.4 region reaching and surpassing the 0.5°C threshold; Source: NOAA    http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/wksst8110.for

This is straightforward stuff, and one would have thought a swift correction would have settled the matter. But no.

The BBC’s reply a few weeks later was a prime example of how making confusing and inaccurate statements are used to justify an inaccurate report. They said in referring to 2017 as the hottest year on record was an “unfortunate and genuine error,” and that, “an error slipped through,” and expressed regret that their usual standards weren’t met on this occasion. They issued a correction on their website.

However, they then indicated that they should have said what they said on an earlier TV bulletin which was, “2017 was the hottest year on record without the natural warming effect of El Nino,” the inaccuracy of which was the subject of our complaint!

They were even more confused in the response to our complaint about 2017 having no “El Nino heating.” They said that Roger Harrabin’s “no heating effect” referred to a recognised formal El Nino “event” in the year rather than the temporary occurrence of “conditions” which do not result in a recognised event that year.

As this was nonsense we complained again on the 19th of February, pointing out that saying there was no formal El Nino event is not the same as saying there was no El Nino heating. We also said it was not a proportionate response for a mistake on the News at Ten to be “corrected” on an obscure website as it still leaves large numbers of News at Ten viewers misled.

To say we waited for a reply with rueful anticipation would be an understatement.

It came almost a month later. They ducked the issue of correcting a serious error on the News at Ten on the same programme, saying they had taken measures THEY felt were adequate.

As for the no “El Nino heating” problem, they told us what we already knew and that an El Nino did develop in the first half of the year but that it didn’t count as “heating” because it didn’t last long and the year ended up in La Nina conditions. They added that Roger Harrabin’s report reflected this when he said, “It’s extraordinary that temperatures in 2017 have been so high when there’s no El Nino (contradicting their “explanation” – Ed) In fact we’ve been going into cooler La Nina conditions.”

Once again the explanation is internally inconsistent and does not make sense. The year 2016 was the warmest on record due to the boost in temperature it received from a very strong El Nino. Given that is it all that surprising that the following year should have inherited a lot of this warmth prior to its dissipation!

And on that the BBC says it will not continue discussing the matter.

As I said, everyone makes mistakes and usually issue corrections. But what the BBC has done in this, and in other complaints, is not to address the problem but try to find a form of words that they think will get the complainant off their back. The issues involved in the GWPFs complaint are simple, the replies in attempting to justify a sloppy report are convoluted, inaccurate and misleading.

Feedback: david.whitehouse@thegwpf.com

2) BBC’s Fake Climate Claims Now Becoming A Habit
Not A Lot Of People Know That, 22 March 2018 
Paul Homewood

 
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/accuracy
 
Accuracy is one the fundamental requirements imposed on the BBC by its Charter.

For years, however, it has been sorely lacking in its handling of climate related matters.

Most of the time, the BBC gets away with it, simply because people don’t realise it, or if they do don’t complain, or if they do are fobbed off all too easily.

However in recent months, it has been forced to retract three totally fallacious claims, which could and should have been avoided with a few simple checks.

1) The first concerned a report on the World at One last march, which discussed rising sea levels around Florida:


https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/11/13/bbc-forced-to-withdraw-fake-sea-level-claims/

The BBC correspondent, Nick Bryant made the following comment:

Sea levels at Miami are rising at ten times the global rate

When I complained, the BBC’s first response, as usual, was to prevaricate and ignore the specifics of my complaint completely.

Only after I pursued matters to the Executive Complaints Unit were they finally forced to retract their claim, which was so utterly ridiculous that it should have set alarm bells ringing at the outset.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/comp-reports/ecu/theworldatone270317 

2) Then in October 2017, the BBC broadcast an episode of “Russia with Simon Reeve”.



The programme made certain claims about reindeer in northern Russia, as Lord Lawson of GWPF noted in his letter of complaint to the BBC:

Lord Lawson pointed out that on the contrary reindeer populations were stable, and in some cases increasing.



Again the BBC were forced to issue a retraction, as the GWPF reported in January this year:



The alarming claim that reindeer populations across Northern Russia were “in steep decline because of climate change”, was made during the first episode of the recent BBC 2 series: Russia with Simon Reeve.

Writing to the BBC Complaints department, Lord Lawson pointed out that according to a 2016 study, 17 out of 19 sub-populations of Eurasian Reindeer were now either increasing in number, or had a stable population trend.

The BBC have now accepted this evidence, and have published a correction which reads: “This programme suggested that many reindeer populations are in steep decline because of climate change. It would have been more accurate to say that many reindeer populations are threatened by it.”

Indeed it would have been less inaccurate, given that the claim is blatantly false. However, even the claim that they are “threatened” is highly questionable given their growing populations.

The false alarm highlights the BBC’s habitual attempts to exaggerate the consequences of climate change and to ignore scientific evidence that contradicts climate alarmism.

https://www.thegwpf.com/bbc-accepts-lord-lawsons-climate-complaint/

3) Then in December 2017, one of the BBC’s weather forecasters ran an article on BBC Online, provocatively headlined “Is Climate Change Making Hurricanes Worse?”

Full post 

3) BBC Ignores Complaint Over Fake Climate News 
Climate Scepticism, 23 March 2018 
Paul Matthews

As readers may recall from previous posts, the 6 O’clock news on BBC Radio 4 on 18 January started with the false claim that

“The world’s leading climate agencies have said for the first time that global warming caused by humans now dwarfs natural temperature changes.”

This was, to put it bluntly, a lie. None of the world’s leading climate agencies said any such thing. The first sentence of the news story itself, about leading scientists in Britain and America, was also a lie.

I wrote a complaint to the BBC and they responded with a short and nonsensical letter, stating what I already knew, that Roger Harrabin had obtained a soundbite from Peter Stott. Someone at the BBC then twisted this soundbite into the headline about leading climate agencies. Their letter also quite contemptuously said “We trust this allays your concerns”; of course they were well aware that it could not do so.

I wrote a follow-up complaint, reminding the BBC of their charter obligations, spelling out again why the story was completely untrue, and requesting a more serious and honest response this time. However, the BBC response contained even less substance than their first response, failing to address any of the issues at all.  In fact, their response is virtually a form letter, showing no evidence that they had even read my complaint. I will of course be continuing with further complaints.

Complaint submitted, 5 March

The BBC’s new Ofcom operating license states that the BBC’s public purposes include

“To provide impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them: the BBC should provide duly accurate and impartial news, current affairs and factual programming to build people’s understanding of all parts of the United Kingdom and of the wider world.”

This was badly violated by BBC Radio News at 6pm on 18/1/18 which began with two blatant falsehoods:

“The world’s leading climate agencies have said for the first time that global warming caused by humans now dwarfs natural temperature changes”

“For the first time, leading scientists in Britain and America say they are confident that the impact of humans on our climate dwarfs that of natural processes.”

Neither of these statements are true. The statements by the agencies (linked in my previous complaint 4752632) said nothing of the sort.

This was a very serious deception of the public by the BBC at the top of a flagship news programme.

I complained to the BBC on 25/1/18 and received a response on 2/2/18 that can only be described as thoroughly dishonest:

(a) It misrepresented my complaint, which was not just about the word “dwarfs” but the entirety of both statements.

(b) It cited Peter Stott’s soundbite, which was pointless as I was of course aware of this since it appeared later in the news.

At the risk of stating the obvious, Peter Stott is not “the world’s leading climate agencies”, nor is he “leading scientists in Britain and America”.

I therefore have two complaints – the original falsehood broadcast on the news, and the dishonest reply to my complaint.

I request a serious, honest response, a full apology and correction live on air on the same news programme, and an investigation and explanation into who was responsible for creating this fake news and distorting the truth so badly.

Full post & BBC reply

4) Flood Of New Scientific Papers Show Surprising Results
No Tricks Zone, 25 March 2018 
P Gosselin

Two days ago Kenneth presented an impressive flurry of scientific, peer-reviewed charts published over the past 15 months (46 alone in 2018). Much to the surprise of alarmist scientists, global warming is weak at best.

Lack of warming a global phenomenon

According to Kenneth, these new papers show that “nothing climatically unusual is happening”. For example a publication by Polovodova Asteman et al shows that continental Europe’s temperatures are lower today than they were on other occasions over the past 2000 years:

Today’s warming doesn’t stand out

The authors write that the contemporary warming of the 20th century “does not stand out in the 2500-year perspective” and is “of the same magnitude as the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Climate Anomaly.”

A number of strident global warming scientists prefer to dismiss the significance of Europe’s temperature record, claiming that it is local in nature and does not tell us what is really happening globally. However, other papers fully contradict this. For example, a paper by Wündsch et al., 2018 shows us that the warming today in South Africa also is nothing unusual.

It’s global, stupid

Temperature reconstructions show the same is true in Southeast Australia, according to  McGowan et al., 2018, Northern Alaska (Hanna et al., 2018), the Tibetan Plateau (Li et al., 2018), South Korea (Song et al., 2018), Antarctica (Mikis, 2018), to cite just a few among dozens of others.

“Warming holes” surprise scientists

Meanwhile new findings by Partridge et al., 2018 show in fact that other regions have cooled. The eastern US “annual maximum and minimum temperatures decreased by 0.46°C and 0.83°C respectively.”

The surprising winter cooling has led scientists to dub the eastern US a “warming hole”, where scientists blame oceanic cycles for the unexpected cooling.

Greenland within normal, cooler than 1930s

Greenland often gets cited by alarmists as a climate canary in a coal mine due to its massive ice sheets and their potential to cause dramatic sea level rise should they melt. But a brand new study by Mikkelsen et al., 2018 shows that surface temperatures going back over 150 years are lower than they were in the 1930s!

Full post

5) Paris Climate Agreement Is Encouraging Nations To Increase Their CO2 Emissions
Benjamin Storrow, E&E News, 24 March 2018 

Global carbon dioxide emissions surged to record levels the year after the landmark 2016 Paris climate agreement was signed.
 

 

Energy-related emissions climbed 1.4 percent to 32.5 gigatons in 2017, the International Energy Agency reported yesterday in its annual survey of global carbon levels. The increase is the equivalent of adding 170 million cars to the road, the agency said.
 

The uptick—coming on the heels of the major international climate deal—signals an abrupt end to several years of stagnant emissions growth and raises questions about the world’s commitment to reducing carbon levels.

“It’s not good news,” said Rachel Cleetus, policy director for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It certainly is a sign that we have a great deal of work to do to meet the commitments that countries made in Paris to limit emissions and the harmful effects of climate change.”

Asia accounted for two-thirds of the increase in global carbon emissions. Carbon dioxide emissions also climbed in the European Union.

Those increases stood in contrast to the United States, which posted the largest year-over-year decline in carbon emissions of any advanced economy. The decline was all the more notable given President Trump’s outspoken opposition to global attempts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and his plans to withdraw from the Paris deal.

The IEA figures were not particularly surprising, analysts said, as a strong global economy and low energy prices prodded emissions higher. Growth in emerging economies like China and India has driven global emissions growth for much of the last decade, they noted. In that regard, the growth of emissions in 2017 represented a return to the norm following stagnating carbon levels in 2015 and 2016.

The numbers nevertheless laid bare the challenges facing climate hawks as they seek to tame an increase in global temperatures. An improved economic landscape worldwide resulted in a 2.1 percent increase in demand for energy. Roughly three-quarters of that increase, or 72 percent, was satisfied by fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, the world backslid on other key metrics like energy efficiency. Global energy intensity still improved by 1.7 percent. But that was below an average of 2.3 percent over the last three years and short of the 3 percent annual reduction that analysts say is necessary to keep global increases in temperature to around 2 degrees Celsius.

Demand for oil remained as robust as ever. Oil demand rose 1.5 million barrels per day, or by 1.6 percent. That was twice the average annual growth rate witnessed over the last decade, IEA said.

Full post
 

6) ‘IRON LAW:’ The World Got Richer, So CO2 Emissions Went Up
Daily Caller, 23 March 2018 
Michael Bastasch

Global carbon dioxide emissions shot up 1.4 percent in 2017 after three years of flattening out, according to new data.

The jump in emissions comes despite nearly 200 countries signing onto the Paris climate accord, which went into effect in 2016. International Energy Agency data shows, despite Paris pledges, fossil fuel use increased.

So why did this happen?

The answer is simple: “It’s the economy, stupid!”  According to the Center for International Climate Research Director Glenn Peters.

The global economy grew nearly four percent in 2017, outweighing improvements in energy efficiency and carbon intensity, according to IEA. On net, booming global economic growth drove emissions upward. Growth was lower from 2014 to 2016, meaning global emissions remained flat.

That’s the macro-level assessment. Of course, the energy sources used to fuel economic growth matter as well when tallying up emissions; and since fossil fuels met 81 percent of global energy demand, economic growth will bring emissions increases.

IEA’s data illustrates the tension between economic growth and global warming regulations illustrating what University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke, Jr. calls the “iron law” of climate policy.

“When policies on emissions reductions collide with policies focused on economic growth, economic growth will win out every time,” Pielke wrote in a 2010 essay. The concept is also in his book, “The Climate Fix.”

Pielke’s “iron law” is “a boundary condition on policy design that is every bit as limiting as is the second law of thermodynamics, and it holds everywhere around the world, in rich and poor countries alike.”

Basically, “even if people are willing to bear some costs to reduce emissions (and experience shows that they are), they are willing to go only so far,” Pielke wrote.
Green energy from solar and wind sources has grown in recent years, but it’s not done much to supplant fossil fuel use on a global scale. Fossil fuels will continue to dominate economic growth, without some big technological change.
Indeed, demand for coal, natural gas and oil grew in 2017.

Coal demand rose about one percent, and natural gas and oil demand rose three and 1.6 percent, respectively, IEA reported. World energy demand also grew 2.1 percent — 70 percent of which was met with fossil fuels.

The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.