164343
Book your tickets here to the FSU’s live discussion with Matthew Goodwin about his new book. Book your tickets here to the FSU’s live discussion with Matthew Goodwin about his new book. Book your tickets here to the FSU’s live discussion with Matthew Goodwin about his new book.
  • Log in
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Forum
  • Donate
  • Newsletter
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

More Climate Fiction From the BBC

by Chris Morrison
1 April 2023 7:00 AM

Countless mainstream media programmes now incorporate extremist green climate propaganda into their output, seemingly without any desire to question the most outlandish and improbable statements. Last Monday’s Start the Week on BBC Radio 4 provides a case study in how fiction is mixed with cherry-picked fact, doused in error-ridden political Net Zero propaganda and presented as a learned contribution to our understanding of how the climate is breaking down. Not to put too fine a point on it, the whole affair was a one-sided, misinformed muddle.

As extreme weather becomes more frequent, are we out of kilter with nature, asked presenter Kirsty Wark. The question was rhetorical since in the same sentence she adds, “How and why did it happen and could we humans drive a climate catastrophe?” But extreme weather is not becoming more frequent. All that seems to have happened is that the BBC, like most mainstream media, has started catastrophising every bad weather event. Last year, four leading Italian scientists published a joint review of historical climate trends and concluded that declaring a ‘climate emergency’ was not supported by the data.

During the course of their work, the scientists found that rainfall intensity and frequency is stationary in many parts of the world. Tropical hurricanes and cyclones show little change over the long term, and the same is true of U.S. tornadoes. Other meteorological categories including natural disasters, floods, droughts and ecosystem productivity show no “clear positive trend of extreme events”.

The BBC programme featured three guests to help Wark “convey the story and impact of climate”. They were the Oxford historian Professor Peter Frankopan, Professor Dame Jane Francis, Director of the British Antarctic Survey, and climate fiction author Jessie Greengrass.

Frankopan noted that we were living in a world of “cascading effects”, asked how we have reached a point of “existential threat” and suggested we are living through an ongoing “mass extinction”. One can’t help wondering if students in a Frankopan history tutorial would be welcome to ask questions along the lines, what cascading effects and what existential threats? This fear-mongering is just repeating activist opinions, and there is little in the scientific evidence to back it up. As to the ‘mass extinction’ trope, trotted out constantly on the mainstream media, the evidence suggests something completely different. The bedrock extinction scare comes from the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London, who made the improbable claim that vertebrates across the planet have declined by 69% since 1970. But a group of Canadian biologists recently showed that the figure was a statistical freak. They revealed that the estimate is driven by 2.4% of wildlife populations, adding, “If these extremely declining populations are excluded, the global trend switches to an increase.”

Antarctica scientist Jane Francis said the climate was changing fast and we needed to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. To back up her observations, she referred to the Antarctica ice core explorations, noting correctly that air bubbles gave an accurate indication of the past atmosphere. From this and other elements present in the ice can be deduced both temperature and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere going back 800,000 years. But Francis gave no further details, possibly because the ice core drilled at Vostok suggests that temperatures often rise ahead of CO2 levels.

A seminal science paper in 1999 (Petit et al.) concluded that CO2 lagged temperature during the onset of glaciation by several thousands of years. The above graph shows that over many periods, particularly during the current Holocene, temperature and CO2 levels are not in general lockstep. A more plausible observation might be that naturally rising temperatures lead to higher levels of CO2 as gas is released from across the Earth’s surface.

There were a number of contributions correctly billed as fiction from the author Jessie Greengrass, who invoked Noah’s Ark in a new book called The High House. It features the heroine who leaves her family because she is so worried about the climate that she wants to make a difference on a global scale. There were no further details about making this global difference, although it might not be a surprise if it included shouting very loudly and gluing herself to stuff. Like Noah, Greengrass is also worried about floods and is concerned about Pacific islands (most of them increasing in size at last looking) and England, which she suggested could be a “spine’”in future.

But enough fiction, back to the fiction. Professor Francis was worried about extreme weather “which we have created”, referencing the recent hurricane in Mississippi with the suggestion that such events have become “more frequent and worse”. Regrettably, a couple of small errors crept into these statements, namely that it was a tornado that hit Mississippi, not a hurricane, and far from getting worse, the recent record has got better.

Of course Francis is in good company in claiming black is white so far as U.S. tornadoes are concerned. Penn State meteorologist Michael Mann claims that the latest science “indicates that we can expect more of these huge (tornado) outbreaks because of human-caused climate change”, while Jennifer Francis, a scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center, told the Guardian that climate change was “making some of the ingredients needed to create an outbreak like this more likely”.

Author Greengrass concluded that we needed to communicate about climate change “in every way we can to every possible audience about what is happening”. There is nothing wrong with the BBC trying to make interesting programmes with interesting people having a lively debate about newsworthy topics. But on climate change, the appalling decision made years ago to avoid debating the so-called ‘settled’ but unproven science narrative means that almost any crackpot green opinion and agitprop can be broadcast without any attempt made to inquire into its validity. This sterile approach should be left to the wilder reaches of social media, and cannot justify imposing a hefty licence charge on everyone in the U.K. owning a terrestrial TV receiver.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Tags: BBCClimate AlarmismClimate JournalismNet Zero

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

News Round-Up

Next Post

Narrative Crumbles as Doctors Thank Aseem Malhotra and Angus Dalgleish for Explaining How the mRNA Vaccines Are Injuring Their Patients

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

28 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

 

DONATE

PODCAST

Nick Dixon and Toby Young Talk About Meghan and Harry’s Alleged Car Chase, Insane Immigration Under the Tories and the Sinister Closure of Triggernometry’s Bank Account

by Will Jones
23 May 2023
0

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editors Picks

Prepare for a Disease “Even Deadlier” than Covid, WHO Chief Warns

23 May 2023
by Will Jones

Teacher Who ‘Misgendered’ Pupil Banned From Profession

23 May 2023
by Will Jones

When Will the NHS Address its Under-Representation of White People?

23 May 2023
by David Craig

News Round-Up

24 May 2023
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

23 May 2023
by Toby Young

News Round-Up

43

Prepare for a Disease “Even Deadlier” than Covid, WHO Chief Warns

41

Teacher Who ‘Misgendered’ Pupil Banned From Profession

41

When Will the NHS Address its Under-Representation of White People?

18

News Round-Up

30

When Will the NHS Address its Under-Representation of White People?

23 May 2023
by David Craig

Australian Government Colluded With Big Tech to Suppress Speech on Covid, FOI Documents Show

23 May 2023
by Rebekah Barnett

German Government Report Names Pandemic Lockdowns as Precedent for Climate Policy

23 May 2023
by Eugyppius

Lockdown Proponents Try to Evade Reckoning With Whitewash Report

22 May 2023
by Jeffrey A. Tucker

Republicans’ Confidence in the Scientific Community Plummets

22 May 2023
by Noah Carl

POSTS BY DATE

April 2023
M T W T F S S
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
« Mar   May »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Forum
  • Donate
  • Newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Create New Account!

Please note: To be able to comment on our articles you'll need to be a registered donor

Already have an account?
Please click here to login Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment