The climate alarmists at the BBC have been out in force during COP28 with a story focusing on a couple of years of Mediterranean drought linking “climate change” to poor olive harvests. It makes a good short-term weather story, but what it has to do with longer term changes in the climate attributed to humans is a bit of a mystery. Olive oil production in Spain has been at record highs in recent years, while rainfall has shown little overall change for over 100 years.
The BBC claims that climate change means traditional assumptions that a poor harvest would be followed by a good one, “are no longer safe”. The authority of a UN environmental programme report is invoked to justify the statement. Spain is the world’s largest olive oil producer covering 70% of European Union consumption and 45% of the entire world. As the graph above shows, Spanish olive oil production has soared in recent years to record highs. The Mediterranean climate has always been affected by spells of drought followed by prolonged heavy rain. In addition, the olive tree often fruits well in one propitious year and takes a breather in the next. All these factors, none of which can be tied to long-term changes in the climate – human-caused or otherwise – help explain the short-term variation in harvest yields.
Rainfall across Spain has been remarkable stable for over 100 years. According to World Bank figures, average precipitation was actually marginally higher in 1991-2020 at 622.78 mm, compared with 618.95 mm between 1901-1930. In common with the rest of the northern hemisphere, the temperature has risen around 10C over the last century since bouncing back from the Little Ice Age (LIA). However, the effects seem beneficial, not least for olive growers. In a 2005 science paper investigating past Spanish climatic conditions, a team of scientists led by Professor Manuel de Castro of the University of Castilla-La Mancha noted much greater LIA climate variability between the 17th and 19th Centuries. In certain periods of the LIA, the risks were “more frequent” and of “greater magnitude” than during the 20th Century, “with a noteworthy impact on the societies of the time”. It was observed that the period stretching from the middle of the 19th Century to the present day has involved “a return to conditions of greater climatic regularity”.
None of this scientific and historical perspective is ever likely to appear in a legacy media story these days since copy about natural variations of the weather is ruthlessly hijacked to promote a collectivist Net Zero narrative. But this endless stream of intelligence-insulting, green drivel is starting to be more widely called out. In an excoriating article stating that the COP circus has achieved “next to nothing”, the veteran British journalist Andrew Neil recently poured scorn on “green grifters, renewable energy hucksters, two-faced fossil fuel executives, snake oil ‘scientists’, political and royal virtue signallers, billionaire hypocrites”, and “a compliant media addicted to green propaganda”.
Neil concluded his remarks by noting that climate change discussions are marred by green zealots ”constantly resorting to the most extreme predictions of global disaster. They scare the young but they are not backed by science.”
The BBC is just one offender among many, with the same Armageddon stories usually appearing across a variety of outlets. Often these co-ordinated truth-attacks are the work of shadowy, billionaire-funded activist groups such as CC Now, providing free, ready-to-publish copy to support Net Zero. The BBC now has an estimated dozen journalists working full or part-time on the green activist beat and the scale of their output is such that the investigative climate journalist Paul Homewood compiles an annual review of their more egregious howlers.
This year’s favourite has to be the story from the Norfolk village of Happisburgh where “punishing weather linked to climate change” is said to have eroded the soft sand cliff rock. No mention, of course, of the finding of the British Geological Society that it is likely the Norfolk cliffs have been “eroding at the present rate for about the last 5,000 years”. And also in Norfolk we celebrate the appearance of the rare bee-eater bird, an “unmissable sign”, no less, that the climate emergency had reached our shores. Alas for Thermogeddonites, bee-eaters moving a little further north are nothing new. One twitching archive alone listed 80 sightings between 1793 and 1957.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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The eco Marxist grunts at the BBC need putting out of their misery, I implore anyone to cancel their TV licence and put like cash behind more based media like the TCW or Daily Sceptic. Remember the only drawback of not having a licence is you supposedly cannot watch live TV or dreadful iPlayer.
When everything that happens is due to your theory, you are no longer indulging in science. When what you claim cannot be falsified, similarly you are not indulging in science. ———-Climate Change “science” or “official science” is not science as we used to know it. Science used to be a genuine search for truth based on comparing hypothesis to observations. It has now become just another government department, and almost all climate science is funded by government. It is post normal science based on modelling and regarding the issue of climate, the scientific method has been abandoned. “The science” is simply the excuse for desired public policy regarding energy, which is why we used to have a Department of Energy, but now we have “The Department of Energy and Climate Change”————-Can you imagine the spitting fury if all climate science was funded by the fossil fuel industry. It would be claimed that the industry was only interested in protecting profits and had a n agenda. But what makes people think government has no agenda? ——–Ofcourse they do. It is called Sustainable Development, which means a world run by unaccountable Technocrats at the UN with climate change as the seemingly plausible excuse. ———But upon closer scrutiny the plausibility vanishes and as someone once pointed out “A beautiful theory is often ruined by an ugly fact”.
I’m seeing adverts pop up highlighting your c02 output, this seems like stealth manipulation to me.
Cancelled my TV licence years ago.
I haven’t cancelled my TV licence because I want to watch GB News, and an occasional ITV programme. It’s absurd that I have to pay £159 to to the BBC, even if I never watch the BBC, just so that I can watch ITV or GB News.
I think you can legally watch snippets of GB news via their YouTube channel (and through any other streaming platform, including GB news own website) as long as it’s not live. I think you can also legally watch ITV or any other channel except BBC through their catch-up/online player.
Watching snippets isn’t the same, though, as watching, for example, three hours of excellent television on Sunday evenings on GB News: The Dinosaur Hour with John Cleese, and Andrew Doyle’s Free Speech Nation.
I also like to watch Headliners almost every night to keep me informed about news without depressing me. And I enjoy other GB News programmes as well, such as Patrick Christys.
I don’t like paying for BBC propaganda, particularly the totally one-sided vaccine reporting, where the BBC lie by omission, and also their whole woke agenda and gaslighting people by pretending obvious men are women. So, as the only effective way to protest, I’m definitely considering how I may stop paying my licence fee without depriving myself. A friend of mine is in one episode of a BBC drama in January, so I’m at least going to wait until after that.
I’ve only just discovered that GB News is available on the radio, here:
https://www.gbnews.com/radioplayer/index.html
and elsewhere, eg. DAB radio. You don’t need a license to listen to the radio.
Also, if I only want to watch an occasional TV programme, on ITV, or BBC, there’s always the option of watching it in a friend’s house, like I do for occasional football matches on Sky, for example.
I’m not averse to breaking a minor law if it’s a bad law. For example, I’ve smoked marijuana in the past (not recently). It’s just a matter of knowing how not to get caught!
Of course, nobody should ever break the law by watching TV without a licence, because that’s not a bad law, as I’m sure every right-thinking person here on DS agrees! Nevertheless, it would be interesting to find out how some people watch TV without a licence without risking getting caught. There are YouTube videos, but I’ve not seen any which suggest breaking the law.
If I could figure out a way of claiming that I was watching TV without a licence as a ‘Just Stop Oil’ protest, I would therefore be morally justified, as the BBC would then have to agree!
But seriously, I wonder if it’s against the law to record TV programmes while you have a TV licence but then watch them during following months when you don’t have a licence? And what’s the minimum length of time you can pay the licence fee for? I don’t think there is any minimum, if you just stop paying it. So I wonder if it’s possible to pay the licence fee for, say, just one month, record loads of programmes during that month, and then watch those recorded programmes during following months when you’ve stopped paying the TV licence?
I’m also inclined to stop paying my TV license just to enjoy annoying the people from Capita who pursue people who aren’t paying their TV licence. Capita is a despicable company which has driven disabled people to depression, despair and suicide by refusing them benefits that they were clearly entitled to.
I think a campaign should be organised and widely publicised to encourage people to stop paying the BBC licence fee, legally, on a particular day, for example, on the day of the forthcoming increase in the cost, which is next April, presumably April 1st, appropriately. That might encourage a lot of ditherers like me to actually do it, and make an impact.
I’m not sure what the answer is to the question about recording live TV when you have a license and watching it later, though obviously it’s not a very good long term solution.
The BBC should be privatised, though as someone pointed out their pension liabilities are huge so we might need to give it away.
It’s an interesting question about recording live TV when you have a license and watching it later when you don’t have a licence. I’ll try to find out the answer.
I asked Bing’s AI which replied:
“The rules do not explicitly state whether you can watch a programme recorded while you had a valid TV Licence after your licence has expired. However, since the licence is required for watching or recording live TV and for using BBC iPlayer, it is implied that once your licence has expired, you should not watch recorded live TV as it would be considered using the content without a valid licence.”
which is a very ambiguous answer.
Then I asked Chat GPT which replied:
“Once you have recorded a programme, your TV Licence status at the time of recording does not affect your ability to watch the recorded content in the future.”
But Chat GPT is not reliable and was unable to direct me to any website where that’s stated.
Then I went to the TV Licencing website where there is a virtual assistant which you can ask questions, but it avoided answering the question. First it replied:
“Can you briefly explain why you are looking to cancel your licence?”
I replied, “That’s irrelevant, can you please answer the question” and I asked the question again. And again it avoided answering the question but instead it asked me to sign in to update my licence.
I’m not sure if it avoided answering my question because it’s too stupid or because it’s too smart.
But I’m beginning to think that you can watch recorded programmes when you don’t have a licence if you recorded them when you had a licence, because otherwise the crafty people at BBC Licensing would be wanting to tell us that you can’t. But instead, there’s no information about it, which suggests that they don’t want us to know that you can.
It is called telling them to get off my property — Reading the last paragraph there you could exchange TV licence with council tax, that would shake things up when you consider how much they waste. Attack the soft underbelly as Churchill said.
I don’t like Neil for obvious reasons that don’t need explaining to readers on here, but a stopped clock is right twice per day. If you want a climate howler, what about Hillary Clinton proclaiming that hot weather is the biggest killer, really!
“political and royal virtue signallers”
I think there is more to just virtue signalling when it comes to Charles, he is heavily invested in wind turbines. Also he must stay popular with the Davos/Bilderberg crowd in order to stay relevant and to secure his future.
Chuckles is a traitor.
I can’t make up my mind if Charles actually believes all of this ” we only have 3 months left to save the planet” stuff or if he knows it is really bu..s.it but is playing the eco socialist politics game……When you see eg Jim (I am a meteorologist) Dale on GB News I am certain he believes that the worst case scenario’s from computer models are actually “science”, and that all of that is going to really happen. —–But GB News really need to wake up and stop giving this guy sych a free ride. he usually appears when Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster are the presenters, but these two know very little about this issue, and let most of what Dale says pass unquestioned.——–But as for Charles he is free to spout whatever nonsense he wants and no one ever gets the chance to tell him he is talking nonsense.
It is very simple, the BBC blames all news on climate change. Whatever happens, it is climate change. They are well off with the faries, probably on white powder.