Legacy media filled its columns last week with poppycock ‘attribution’ stories suggesting that recent heatwaves in Mali (the hottest country in the world), Burkina Faso and the rest of the Sahel would have been impossible without human-caused climate disruption. Needless to say, a number of important facts were missing from this latest bout of climate catastrophism. Average temperatures in both Mali and Burkina Faso have barely risen in the last 85 years, rainfall in both countries has increased slightly in recent times, agricultural production is up, while de-desertification is under way across the entire Sahel region.
This last fact is never likely to be mentioned in these footling stories dreamed up to promote Net Zero collectivisation. To do so would be to open a Pandora’s Box showing global plant levels have accelerated due to the recovering levels of carbon dioxide in a previously denuded atmosphere. A recent science paper revealed that over the last two decades, plant growth had accelerated over large areas of the planet. During the last 40 years, it is thought that there has been 14% more plant growth, bringing immeasurable benefits for local biodiversity as well as more food for human consumption.
The above illustration shows the boost to the natural world over just the last 20 years. Big increases in leaf growth are reported across India, Europe, Brazil and significant parts of Africa. The growth across the Sahel region south of the Sahara desert can be clearly seen.
None of this seems to attract the interest of activists writing in the mainstream media, seemingly concerned only to fear monger and push populations to embrace the insanity of Net Zero. The Guardian wrote of a protracted heatwave in the Sahel that “filled hospitals and mortuaries”. Matt McGrath of the BBC reported a claim that additional heat “would have been the difference between life and death for many people”. Both media operations were reporting the findings of World Weather Attribution (WWA), an operation partly funded by green billionaire Jeremy Grantham, that the “deadly heatwave” would have been “impossible” without humans ratcheting up the climate thermostat.
Regular readers of the Daily Sceptic will be aware of the model-driven crystal ball gazing of WWA. The service produces pseudoscientific opinions, but fails the test of the scientific process since its claims cannot be falsified. Further details are available here. Despite this lack of scientific rigour, the service provides useful ‘scientists say’ cover for legacy media in their Net Zero work.
Both the BBC and the Guardian picked up on the claim by WWA that the temperature rose above 48oC in the Mali city of Kayes on April 3rd, with the Guardian claiming the 48.5oC was the hottest day ever recorded in the country. Some doubt on this figure us cast by the data below provided by Time and Date.
According to this data, April 3rd saw a 44oC high, which was over four degrees lower than the claimed record, and this dropped away two days later to 41oC. As we have seen across the world, the collection of surface temperature data is subject to numerous corruptions. In the U.K., the Met Office compiles nearly 80% of its data from stations that have ‘uncertainties’ set by the World Meteorological Office of between 2-5oC. WWA states that “extreme five day maximum heat as rare as the observed event over Mali/Burkina Faso would have been between 1.5oC cooler and 1.4oC cooler over the larger Sahel region if humans had not warmed the planet by burning fossil fuels”. Quite where such precision comes from is anyone’s guess, including, it might be suggested, the computer wizards claiming their garbage-in-gospel-out models can unlock the mysteries of a chaotic atmosphere.
Away from the elites catastrophising about the weather for domestic political purposes, the countries of the Sahel including Burkina Faso and Mali have actually enjoyed a remarkably stable climate over the last 85 years.
Both Burkina Faso and Mali show similar average temperature trends and in common with many countries near the equator recent warming has been much less than territories further north. In fact, a large spike during the 1930s, presumably unrelated to humans burning hydrocarbons, was followed by an 85-year pause with little or no warming. The five year 2022 smoothed average temperature of 29.57oC in Burkina Faso, shown above in a World Bank climate graph, is almost exactly the same as that recorded in 1938. In Mali, the temperature difference between these two years is just 0.2oC.
Of course rainfall is very important, and in both countries precipitation amounts have risen in recent years. In Burkina Faso, annual amounts rose from 798.04 mm in the period 1961-1990 to 831.07 mm in 1991-2020, while in Mali the rise over the same period was 313.7 mm to 328.93 mm. Meanwhile, in the course of the BBC story, it is claimed that Senegal is seeing “decreasing rainfall as a result of climate change”. Not according to World Bank figures which show an annual rise in precipitation from 707.87 mm in 1961-1990 to 722.91 mm in the latest 30-year period.
Overall then, the great story missing from the headlines is that the Sahel is slowly turning green. A few thousand years ago the Sahara desert was full of vegetation. Natural process and climate change turned it into a desert, a process that can easily go into reverse. The desert has shown a greener image over the last 15 years notes Britannica with heavier summer rainfalls reported. “This is a blessing for the desert as the vegetation recovers,” it notes. Sub-Saharan Africa is a difficult place to make a living on the land. The area needs aid in the form of inorganic fertilisers to improve the soil and hydrocarbon power to boost productivity. But more rain from the heavens and higher levels of CO2 all have a part to play. What it really doesn’t need is the BBC and the Guardian spreading nonsense stories inspired by green billionaires about the mortuaries filling up because hot countries have a few hot days.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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The other (admittedly boring) fact to remember is that Billionaire Hedge Trader Jeremy Grantham (and many others of his ilk) are deliberately producing mendacious twaddle in their lust for greater power and obscene wealth.
And that the BBC and Grauniad are unstinting in their efforts to promote this twaddle as “The Settled Science™”
“but fails the test of the scientific process since its claims cannot be falsified.”. Surely they cannot be verified, or am I missing something?
Falsifiability is an important property of a scientific theory. This means that it’s possible to design experiments to test it which would disprove it if the outcome wasn’t as the theory had predicted. That’s inherently impossible for computer simulations claimed to model future conditions on earth accurately.
If something cannot be falsified then there is carte blanche to make all manner of claims under the guise of “science”, when in fact it is really “Post Modern Science” where models are claimed to be evidence of things when they are clearly nothing of the kind. Models are NOT science and are evidence of NOTHING.
I always find “falsified” a barrier to my comprehension. I find “disproved” more understandable.
In my pre-scientific experience “falsify” was never used as an antonym of “verify”.
“Ah yes science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture from such a trifling investment of fact” ——–That was Mark Twain over 100 years ago. I would love to see Mr Twain’s observations on today’s “Official Science” of climate change where scientific truth is simply DECLARED.————- No empirical evidence is required, and data is continually tortured till it will confess to anything. We now live in a scientific dictatorship where science has been hijacked for political purposes, and as governments get more and more desperate to impose their pretend to save the planet tyranny on us, I suggest it will soon be a criminal offence to question anything to do with climate or energy. There are already politicians who think it should be a crime. If there is no “climate emergency” then the whole Sustainable Development and Net Zero agenda collapses. There are trillions of dollars and pounds at stake here that depend on those political agenda’s, and when it comes to these huge amounts of money then scientific integrity is the last thing on the minds of the Climate Establishment.
Excellent post. The twain quote is excellent whether he said it or not.
I would not quote mark Twain if it was something he never said. But thanks very much for liking my comment. Obviously one person does not like it, but we won’t know why because they don’t seem to have the confidence to say.
He probably did say it, sometime I do wonder if one man can have so many remarkable quotes attributed to him, or said so many emminently wise things. As in here’s a very sensible statement, let’s attribute it to Mark Twain. There again he wasn’t corrupted by power.
As the UK had the unforgivable mendacity not to maintain its 40+ degree jet engine temperature last summer and remains trenchantly chilly this spring, thus refusing to co-operate with the ‘climate boiling’ schtick, what else can the propagandist MSM do but search the globe for the odd hot day here and there to prove their point?
Not least in one of the hottest places on earth. They tried the same stunt last year by looking at temperatures in Death Valley, California… literally THE hottest place on earth!
Does ‘booking.com’ operate in Burkina Faso, I could do with a bit of sunshine.
Where is it?
Do they have any pubs and do they serve Watney’s?
No, but there are early signs. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/AztGLePCAAE12d6?format=jpg&name=small
Thanks
Yes, they do – and Mali. So does Airbnb. And Vrbo. Bit warm for Watney’s though – you’d be better off with a pina colada or local equivalent…
The BBC is an extremist organisation in a bizarre alliance with the rent seeking billionaire class, that wishes to freeze yr granny to death so it can impose it’s nasty politics on everyone.
BBC are Climate Activists. Probably the second largest activist organisation after the UN IPCC.
I suppose, since it is so un-seasonally cold here in the UK, the likes of the BBC and other propaganda broadcasters have to sniff about the world to try to justify the collective devotion to the fanatical Net Zero cult.
…..but isn’t the unseasonable cold weather a consequence of climate change
!
Northern Africa used to be the bread basket of the Roman empire. In order to achieve this and to maintain their sizable fleets, the Romans cut down most of the trees. But the area really only turned into a desert after it had been conquered by nomadic Arab tribes driving the first wave of Islamic expansion who let the elaborate irrigation systems fall into disrepair as they had no use for them.
Another human activity which contributes (or used to contribute) to Sahel desertification is the habit of the local natives to burn down a new area of forest whenever their present fields are exhausted instead of using fertilizer or some system to crop rotation like the ones which were common in less spacious Europe before fertilizer became a staple item.