A BBC Panorama documentary about global warming made a number of false claims, an internal investigation by the broadcaster has found. MailOnline has more.
The programme Wild Weather, presented by climate editor Justin Rowlatt, said deaths worldwide were rising due to extreme weather caused by climate change – whereas the opposite is true.
It also claimed Madagascar was on the verge of the first famine caused by climate change – despite other factors being involved.
The programme, broadcast last November to coincide with the COP26 climate conference, sparked two complaints investigated by the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU).
Last year Rowlatt’s sister Cordelia was among a number of Insulate Britain activists arrested for staging a protest at junction 3 of the M25.
Miss Rowlatt, who once appeared on TV advising her brother on how to be more environmentally friendly, pleaded guilty by post at Crawley Magistrates’ Court. She was fined £300 with £85 court costs and a £34 surcharge for committing a public nuisance on a highway.
The introduction of Wild Weather said “the death toll is rising around the world and the forecast is that worse is to come”. The ECU said this risked giving the impression the rate of deaths from extreme weather-related events was increasing.
In fact, as noted by a recent report from the World Meteorological Organisation, while the number of weather-related disasters – such as floods, storms and drought – has risen in the past 50 years, the number of deaths caused by them has fallen because of improved early warnings and disaster management.
Read Daily Sceptic Environment Editor Chris Morrison’s detailed write-up of this case last week.
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Didn’t we have this story a couple of weeks ago?
The climate ‘narrative’ is on continuous repeat.
Careful now
The Rowlatt family is another example of the Elites telling us all how to live our lives.
By doing the opposite of what they preach.
It would seems deaths are falling because of improved early warning and safety measures.
Whereas bad weather incidents are increasing.
So from a climate POV, this is not positive news.
Bad weather is increasing. That is the Daily Mail’s claim no doubt based on what is commonly to be found on the Web put out by various climate change doom mongers.
In fact actual data from over one hundred years shows no trend of increase. In any case, since climate is a dynamic, chaotic, non-linear system and is an average of weather over very long periods, taking a snapshot over a decade or two is misleading.
Floods are increasing because we have more hard surface run-off into rivers, more washing machines, dishwashers, industry, etc draining water into rivers. We have stopped proper land management to ensure adequate drainage in order to provide wetlands and habitat for wildlife. Regular clearing or firing of scrub and woodland to ‘protect habitats’, results in a build-up of fuel and thus more and more serious wildfires.
Just ask yourself – do you see more severe weather around you, getting worse every year? I doubt it. These extremes are always somewhere else.
Spot on!
Bad weather incidents are increasing? I would be most grateful for your supporting evidence?
‘The facts regarding natural disasters also do not support the “existential threat” claim. The number of hurricanes per year, a 2021 EPA report shows, has not increased since the late 19th century.
Moreover, although you wouldn’t know it from the panicky, sensationalized news coverage, the total acreage burnt by forest fires annually has decreased, and most rivers flood less today than they used to.’
Washington Examiner 14 Mar 22
The report referred to in the article above?
‘The latest edition of the annual report – WMO Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update – has been produced by the Met Office for the World Meteorological Organization.
The findings of the annual update also includes:
• Predicted precipitation patterns for 2022 compared to the 1991-2020 average suggest an increased chance of drier conditions over southwestern Europe and southwestern North America and wetter conditions in northern Europe, the Sahel and Australia.
• Predicted precipitation patterns for the months May to September over 2022-2026 compared to the 1991-2020 average suggest an increased chance of wetter conditions in the Sahel, northern Europe, Alaska and northern Siberia, and drier conditions over the Amazon.
• The Arctic temperature anomaly (compared to the 1991-2020 average) is predicted to be more than three times as large as the global mean anomaly when averaged over the next five northern hemisphere winters.’
Right……..!
If deaths are falling – for whatever reasons – than, the claim that they’d be rising is wrong. That’s what matters in the context of this article.
I would suggest that ‘weather events’, that were just attributed to ‘being weather’ are now largely put down to ‘due to climate change’. Saying things on the internet does not make them true, yet it is absurdly easy to get people to believe them.
Even if it were true, we have never been in better shape to mitigate any such effect, however caused. When I was a kid, 1960’s, every cyclone season in Pakistan and India was met with a five figure death toll. And now? Hurricane Katrina caused absolute devastation in New Orleans (something about never live below sea level…). The useless levies were rebuilt and subsequent hurricanes have cause little or no loss of life/property. So what is all this about really..? Follow the money…
Bad weather isn’t increasing, but the filming of bad weather is. This gives a warped perception. Blame it on smart phones.
Just to add, I have actually seen footage of a downpour/cloudburst that is not unusual in august in the UK described as ‘awesome, frightening’ and ‘my god, what is happening dude?’ (You know the sort of thing). Some ignorant 20 something who has rarely ventured outside for most of his life comes up against British weather and reckons it’s the apocalypse.Post it on twitter and add #global warming. Job done.
I wonder what they thought during the medieval warming period? And when the Romans grew grapes for wine-making up by Hadrian’s wall? The summer of 1976 resulted in many heat-related problems and stand-pipes all over the country because of drought. What about the severe winter of 1963, and the deaths from terrible flooding in the 50s, and of those perishingly-cold winters when the Thames froze over and held fairs and people got about on ice skates?
It’s called WEATHER – and we’ve had it since time began!
Nobody in Environmentalism knows how to tell the truth, and it attracts useful idiots – royals, celebs – who are so ignorant and lacking in intelligent thought, they believe and repeat the lies.
The crown estate loots billions from taxpayer subsidised windmills
Sadly the surprise here is that the BBC has admitted spreading misinformation.
have they finally got the message?
This is in the vein of lessons were learned.
“the number of weather-related disasters – such as floods, storms and drought – has risen in the past 50 years” as increasing populations have expanded into new areas and communications in formerly isolated areas have improved.
If they lie about something you can double check through your window, just imagine what they lie about that’s harder to double-check!
So what? That is the response all of us need to get better at saying when confronted with climate alarmism, fake pandemics and the trans rainbow claptrap. So fucking what?
I’ve grown weary of taking the time to examine graphs, data, facts, well researched opinions and all the rest only to realize the other fellow is thinking like a thirteen year old. I know my somewhat reasoned response does not penetrate because he is animated by the emotional resonance of some bullshit he found on Facebook.
So perhaps it is time our response was more blunt. The world will be warmer in 2100, so what? Where l live is 20 degrees cooler than southern India right now, and they are fine. Someone called a trans person a weirdo on the Tube yesterday, so what? Who cares? Nobody died.
If they want to avoid reasoned debating why bother?
The late, incomparable US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was being interviewed about his “originalist” approach to constitutional interpretation (which was more or less orthodoxy from inception until the 1950s). The interviewer asked something along the lines of “well, taking that approach, decision X would not have happened, what do you say about that?” where decision X was something worthy like making racially segregated schools illegal. His answer “so what”. By which he meant that this in itself isn’t a reason to bend the constitution out of shape, and in any case those laws would have been changed sooner or later by the legislature.
Today Scalia would be considered somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan.
But it is the right approach. The constitution is meant to be awkward. And universal.
But today is characterized by convenience and outrage. The only hope is a therapeutic collapse.
‘only to realize the other fellow is thinking like a thirteen year old’.
Strong language, but spot on from George Carlin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rh6qqsmxNs
“not as clear as it should have been” is a delightful Newspeak version of “almost, but not quite, exactly unlike the truth”.
There is no trend in floods, droughts, snow, rain, you name it … all totally boring.
Wouldn’t it just be easier to state that all of the BBC’s climate “armageddon” (or whatever they’re calling it this week) claims are false.
Well, what are they going to do about the director, the presenter and the BBC programme controller as a result of all this?
Finding them guilty of that is all very well, but unless you engage in a bit of sacking ‘pour encourager les autres’, it’s just a meaningless bit of PR fluff trying to claim that you aren’t just an organisation dedicated to green fascism by any means including lying.
put the harms bill to good use and fine the bbc 10% of revenue for spreading “misinformation”
BBC’s reply includes: “the death toll is rising around the world and the forecast is that worse is to come”, risked giving the impression the rate of deaths from extreme weather-related events was increasing.
It would be like saying “the BBC is a left wing tax payer funded and inefficient organisation” might give the impression the BBC is a left wing tax payer funded and inefficient organisation. What is the point of this?
Yes Climate Cultists always retract a while later after their wildly exaggerated claims have gone unchecked in the first place.
Don’t believe for a minute they don’t know this full well.
Millions heard the lies, only an informed few know the truth.
It’s a tactic they use
Does nobody in Rowlatts world understand or even know about El Nino and La Nina and their effects on the weather, sometimes worldwide with variation over 2 to 7 year cycles.
Causing litle bumps in temperature variation which seem to coincide with the catastrophists narrative.
But regardless it’s the same people who believed the covid crap who are believing the climate crap. So job done.
And worse the teaching profession are now indoctrnating our kids that the planet is dying therefore ensuring further compliance for the future.
Of course they KNOW, or people like this Rowratt person do. But those kind of facts just don’t fit into their narrative – the one they must use to further their agenda. And there are plenty of dimwits who will swallow all the tripe without question. Just as they do with ‘covid’.
I have now stopped watching ALL msm for two years. This includes reading newspapers and listening to the news on radio. I cannot tell you how liberating this has been. I use my own BS filter and immediately stop reading or listening to anything that sets off the bs alarm bell. As a masters prepared family nurse practitioner with over 40 years of practice, I feel confident and capable of understanding scientific literature. It has served me well.
As an antidote, read ”Fake Invisible Catastrophes And Threats Of Doom” by Patrick Moore. An easy and informative read and well worth your time.
Giving storms names has made them all so much more scary and dangerous! That’s how gullible and predictable the left is!