Will 2024 bring any respite from the BBC’s relentless climate propaganda? It doesn’t look like it. As if to set the tone for the next twelve months, on New Year’s Eve it published a real gem. The central claim its article makes contains a very big but easily debunked falsehood.
Even when the evidence is sparse or non-existent, the corporation is always eager to tell us that every wildfire, flood, storm or drought is a sign that the planet is doomed and we must all submit to Net Zero. The BBC seems unconcerned that it has now racked up an ever-growing litany of examples of climate misinformation, while it regularly accuses others of doing the same.
In its attempt to drill into its readers the idea that we are on the brink of disaster, the BBC usually uses what its reporters think is a tried and tested method, or a combination of several. Where there is nothing more than a correlation between variables, it frames an article in a way which implies there is causation. Or it is selective with the evidence, ignoring anything that is inconvenient, including choosing a truncated period of time which suits its views, while disregarding longer-term data which would cast doubt on them. More generally, it simply emphasises some things and downplays others, guiding readers from the beginning of the article to the end along a path clearly signposted ‘Climate Catastrophe’.
This time, however, it went a step further, and its article is a good example of how bold (or reckless – take your pick) it is prepared to be in pushing a narrative of impending environmental calamity. The central claim it made to support its case is demonstrably untrue. It claimed that a big increase in deaths from lightning strikes in Bangladesh is linked to climate change – the story is unambiguously headed ‘Bangladesh sees dramatic rise in lightning deaths linked to climate change’ – because in recent years there have been more thunderstorms. Yet, on the contrary, data show that in the years when deaths greatly increased, there was not an increase in thunderstorms.
This, of course, leaves aside the important, related question of whether more thunderstorms would have been evidence of climate change over the long-term – something the BBC and other believers in climate dogma simply assume is the case.
It is not as if the BBC is suggesting climate change may be the cause. When the BBC says the increase in deaths is linked to climate change, it is clearly implying there is causation, not just a correlation. It also seems to be implying that climate change is probably the major cause.
The article links to a web page on the United Nations Capital Development Fund’s website. No, I’d never heard of it either. In hyperbolic language typical of the UN, it states there has been an increase in the frequency of thunderstorms in this part of Asia and that this is a cause of the increase in lightning strike deaths. It doesn’t provide supporting evidence, but a bit of googling reveals that in Bangladesh, over the last 40 years or so, there has indeed been a rising trend in the number of thunderstorms each year.
Unfortunately for the BBC, the UN and other alarmists, who are determined to show we are on a “highway to climate hell“, between 2000 and 2010, while the number of reported deaths suddenly increased and was significantly higher than in all previous years, over the same period the number of thunderstorms each year did not increase but remained constant, as the authors of this study state, and as can be seen in their graph, above. In fact, there were fewer storms during that period than in the early- and mid-90s, before the rise in deaths. If that wasn’t enough to further embarrass the BBC and the UN, between 2011 and 2020, the number of thunderstorms decreased while the number of recorded deaths began to rocket.
Despite there being no evidence that the increase in the number of deaths is caused by more thunderstorms, and therefore climate change, the BBC goes on to say that NASA and the Government of Bangladesh also say climate change is the cause. But on the page it links to on NASA’s Earth Observatory website no evidence is provided to support the claim. Instead, the Earth Observatory merely links to a page on the Anadolu Agency’s website – a state-run news agency in Turkey. Here, the assertion is repeated, and a Bangladesh Meteorological Department official is quoted, but again no evidence is provided.
To make matters worse, other (more likely) reasons for the increase in deaths are discussed openly in the Earth Observatory’s article, while the BBC only mentions one non-climate related reason, passing over it as briefly as it can, in its effort to emphasise climate change. Despite the Earth Observatory’s unfounded claim about climate change as a cause, unlike the BBC it mentions what it believes are a number of other possible causes. And it links to research where those causes are discussed in more depth. While more research is required, the consensus among those not obsessed with climate is that there are myriad contributory factors that have led to a steep rise in deaths in Bangladesh from lightning strikes. None of them are associated with climate change. The main reasons appear to be an increase in the reporting of deaths, as a result of more widespread electronic communication; an increase in the population, leading to more people – in particular agricultural workers – being vulnerable to lightning strikes; and deforestation, especially the felling of taller trees, which previously afforded significant protection during storms. Increased mobile phone use is also considered a possible hazard during thunderstorms.
The BBC’s article only briefly mentions one of these factors, suggesting planting more trees would help. But one gets the strong impression that the reporter thinks it of relatively little consequence compared with the larger problem of climate change.
The increasing number of deaths in the country is tragic for all involved, but the way the BBC has spun it is bunkum, not to mention self-regarding. There is a considerable amount of evidence (and plain, common sense) to show that more deaths from lightning strikes in Bangladesh are caused by things which have nothing to do with climate change, and no evidence to show climate change is the culprit. But the BBC still brazenly insinuates that it must be down to the climate, regardless of the facts.
BBC journalists – and for that matter, the UN, politicians, bureaucrats, activists and others – are of course bent on sustaining a febrile narrative about climate change. Whether, in each case, it is a result of ideology, mendacity or unthinkingly following a narrative to maintain personal reputation among peers and superiors, and for some to retain lucrative funding, is a moot point.
But what is clear, if the BBC’s article about Bangladesh is anything to go by, is that it will stop at nothing to achieve its aims, even when it means exploiting the deaths of others. Its journalists should show some respect to the families of those who have died and also stop taking their readers for fools.
David Hansard blogs here.
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