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BBC Verify Should Investigate the BBC’s Own Climate Misinformation

by Toby Young
2 June 2023 6:00 PM

Paul Homewood has written a cracking piece in TCW: Defending Freedom about why the BBC’s multi-million pound new fact-checking unit should start by investigating the deluge of misinformation about the ‘climate emergency’ pumped out by the… BBC.

THE BBC has set up a new ‘disinformation unit’, BBC Verify. Marianna Spring, the BBC’s Disinformation Correspondent, says she is currently studying “the U.K.’s conspiracy theory movement” which she claims has “evolved and intensified” since the Chinese coronavirus outbreak. Spring identified “alternative media” as a source of so-called conspiracy theories.

“I’m looking at the way alternative media is funded, I’m looking at its impact on local communities, I’m looking at its connections with far-right figures and also its foreign links,” she said.

The millennial journalist’s reference to ‘far right’ rather gives the game away. Evidently disinformation from the left wing or globalists is OK then! And what she means by far right is not neo-Nazi, but ordinary conservative, Christian views, once regarded as mainstream and still held by most of the British public.

The whole thing is laughable anyway, because the BBC itself is one of the biggest sources of disinformation, certainly where climate change is concerned. So I suggest BBC Verify begin by looking into the BBC’s own coverage.

Here a few examples of the factual errors, omission of relevant information and sheer bias which have featured in BBC climate reporting just in the last year or so:

  • The BBC reported that the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season was “the third most active on record”. It was not; there have been 32 years with a higher count.
  • The BBC claimed last summer that “hurricanes are among the most violent storms on Earth and there’s evidence they’re getting more powerful”. But according to the hurricane experts at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there has been no increase in the frequency or intensity of Atlantic hurricanes since the late 1800s.
  • A claim that “punishing weather conditions linked to climate change have eroded so much of the coast at Happisburgh, Norfolk”. The BBC have been unable to provide evidence for this, and the British Geological Society say that the coastline has been eroding at the same rate as now for the past 5,000 years.
  • In October 2021, the BBC claimed that heat pumps are much cheaper to run than gas boilers. The opposite is the case, as the BBC eventually admitted.
  • In October 2022, the BBC reported that the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard had warmed by 4°C in the last 50 years. They failed to report that temperatures there plunged by almost as much between 1950 and 1970.
  • The BBC reported at the time of last summer’s Pakistan floods that one third of the country had been submerged. The real figure, as evidenced by NASA satellites, was less than 10%.
  • Last year Sri Lanka experienced a catastrophic collapse in farming output, following a ban on imported fertiliser, which was designed purely to reduce GHG emissions. The BBC has been extremely reluctant to publicise the real reason, instead first blaming the food shortages on Putin, and then claiming that the ban was an attempt to “protect dwindling foreign currency reserves”.
  • A classic example of BBC deception appeared in a recent report on solar power, when it published a graph showing solar power now accounted for more than 10% of the world’s generating capacity. They omitted the fact that, because solar power is so intermittent, it only accounts for 3% of the world’s actual electricity.
  • The BBC often regurgitates propaganda from official bodies without any attempt to challenge or fact check. Last year they uncritically reported the World Meteorological Organisation’s claims that “extreme weather events are the new normal”. There is no evidence that extreme weather is getting worse, something which even the IPCC has been forced to admit.
  • According to the BBC, a sighting of European bee-eaters in England last year was “a worrying sign of how our climate is changing”. British bird books are full of details of past sightings as far back as the 18th Century.
  • One particularly silly study found willing support from the BBC last year, claiming that British trees are at risk from “drier weather under climate change”, even though the country has been getting wetter!
  • In July 2022, the BBC reported that England had its driest start to the year since 1976. In fact it had only been the driest since 2010.
  • It was very hot in Delhi last May. The BBC was quick to blame it on climate change, with claims of a new record high temperature in Delhi. In fact, none of the long-running weather stations showed a record, with data at the Indian Meteorological Dept’s base station in Delhi proving that it was more than a degree hotter in May 1944.
  • It was dry in February this year, but the BBC’s claims of water shortages were simply not credible. So they included in their report a photo of a near-empty reservoir, which was quickly proved to have been taken two summers previously.
  • The BBC was eager to report that the U.K. heatwave last July had killed more than 3,000 people. However, the Office for National Statistics analysis, on which the BBC’s claims were based, actually said no such thing. It also pointed out that excess deaths had been running at high levels throughout the spring, summer and autumn of last year.
  • The BBC’s green bias is on display all the time, exemplified by its choice of interviewees and experts. In March 2022, Radio 4 broadcast a half-hour programme considering whether Shell should develop the massive Cambo oil field off the Shetland Islands. All three interviewees were ardent lobbyists for renewable energy, so unsurprisingly they argued against Cambo, something for which the BBC was forced to apologise for.
  • Only two weeks ago, the wretched BBC claimed that the recent tragic floods in Italy were due to climate change, even though such floods have been only too common in the past.

Worth reading in full.

Tags: BBC VerifyClimate changeMarianna SpringMisinformation

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36 Comments
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RickH
RickH
4 years ago

“A new study by Oxford University and the ONS has found that one dose of the Pfizer vaccine reduces Covid infections by 65%“

Relative risk.Pure bollocks.

‘Worth reading in full’? Nope.

24
-1
realarthurdent
realarthurdent
4 years ago

But it doesn’t prevent infection and it doesn’t prevent transmission. So it’s not a vaccine. But it might reduce your symptoms if you catch the not especially deadly virus. And you need repeated boosters to ensure you continue to be susceptible to infection or transmission, or else there’s a danger you might catch the virus and develop complete immunity.

It’s an interesting business model.

Coming soon, a car that doesn’t move, a plane that doesn’t fly, and a teapot made of chocolate.

Last edited 4 years ago by realarthurdent
37
-1
mwhite
mwhite
4 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

Money Vs. Science – YouTube

About2 minutes in, the vaccine business

.

10
-1
JYC
JYC
4 years ago

 “buying up to 1.8 billion doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine to last until 2023”

That will be about the same time they complete their clinical trials and we’ll know whether they’re safe or not.

18
-1
iane
iane
4 years ago
Reply to  JYC

Hmm, we may know whether they are fairly safe for 2 years after injection. And even that requires that we believe the stated ‘results’ of their studies.

3
0
Robin Birch
Robin Birch
4 years ago

Good stuff -make it 1.8 billion doses of the gunk plus 2 that have my name on them. No charge for the latter.

8
-1
chris c
chris c
4 years ago
Reply to  Robin Birch

I wonder how quality control holds up in such quantities

1
0
BeBopRockSteady
BeBopRockSteady
4 years ago

Is anyone else’s head completely melted from trying to understand claims such as

“The vaccines were more effective against symptomatic than asymptomatic infections, reducing rates by 72% and 57% respectively, compared with those seen in the unvaccinated population.”

What is the mechanism that reduces the occurrence of an infection with zero symptoms by 57%?

Are we talking about PCR here? I mean what kind of bonkers world am I am now living in?

Do these vaccines somehow bat the Covid particles away from your body? An invisible shield of some kind.

Someone commit me now.

Last edited 4 years ago by BeBopRockSteady
13
-1
RickH
RickH
4 years ago
Reply to  BeBopRockSteady

The thing is threefold re. those two junk figures coming out from pharma-dependent academe :

  • they are relative risk figures – always misleading, but prized in the advertising industry. They are totally divorced from real world actual risk ratios.
  • they are not about real infection, but the detection of PCR positives at wildly excessive Cts
  • this isn’t a controlled experiment with properly matched sample populations (RCT), as far as I can see – the gold standard in judging treatments.
7
-1
sjonesy1999
sjonesy1999
4 years ago

So what.

2
-1
Andrea Salford
Andrea Salford
4 years ago

And?
Sorry I’ve had ‘some’ wine therefore don’t actually give a shit what the eeeeyoouuu do.

6
-1

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