Green Blob-funded Climate Central is celebrating a significant fearmongering coup having persuaded the BBC’s lead weather presenter Simon King to sub and publish its press release claiming that since 1970 the average UK spring temperature has increased by 1.8°C. It is said to be the fastest warming season in all the UK’s four nations. Alas, it is almost a shame to spoil such a good story by noting an obvious cherry-pick missed by King and the fact that the warming according to the Met Office was only 1.3°C. As the graph below shows, 1970 was a low point in the UK temperature record at a time when global cooling was all the rage. The rise from 1945 is just 0.8°C, a figure that happens to approximate with a 1°C rise in global temperature over the last century.
Needless to say, the longer term trend is not such a good yarn and not one likely to appeal to Climate Central, a green billionaire-backed activist operation that produces custom-made climate catastrophe agitprop specially curated for unquestioning activists working in mainstream media. For Simon King, the ‘boiling’ spring story is another BBC classic, following hard on the heels of his suggestion that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) “appears to be getting weaker”. This story was timed just days after an important paper in Nature inconveniently stated that the AMOC current that includes the Gulf Stream had shown no decline in strength since the 1960s.
Spot the difference
The average spring temperature for the UK has increased 1.8°C since 1970, making spring the fastest warming season for the UK as a whole.
Climate Central Press Release
The average spring temperature has increased by 1.8°C since 1970, making it the fastest warming season for all four nations of the UK.
Simon King, Lead Weather Presenter, BBC
Regurgitating pre-prepared, cherry-picked material does of course serve a useful purpose since the regular ‘Spring has Sprung Early’ story can be given its annual outing. King notes that data given to BBC Weather by Nature’s Calendar – a “citizen science” project by the Woodland Trust – are said to demonstrate how climate change is triggering natural events. Both bluebells and frogspawn are appearing earlier in March and April respectively, it is reported. Inevitably the disinformation Net Zero lecture follows: “And climate change is leading to more extreme weather which is also causing confusion among some species.”
On balance, a slightly warmer climate with longer growing seasons is almost certainly good for nature. But, as ever in the UK, the climate picture is mixed. March is the start of Spring but April is when it starts to really build. As the graph below shows, the average April temperature in the UK has actually fallen over the last 20 years.
Of course caution is required in taking Met Office temperature figures at their face value following recent revelations, covered extensively in the Daily Sceptic, about massive unnatural heat corruptions around measuring sites and the invention of figures at no less than 103 non-existent locations. Nearly 80% of Met Office weather stations across the UK are rated in junk classes 4 and 5 with internationally-recognised ‘uncertainties’ of 2°C and 5°C respectively. The Met Office has failed to preserve the integrity of its network, with sites commonly next to busy roads and car parks, airport runways, solar farms and electricity substations. The recent growth of urbanisation and the massive heat it generates across many Met Office sites has corrupted the data. Thus, it might be considered scientifically reasonable to knock off some warming when comparing recent temperatures to possibly more accurate measurements 80 years ago. Using current recordings, it can be observed that spring is on average 0.8°C warmer than around 1945, but the true figure could be closer to around 0.5°C, or even lower.
Climate Central has impressive form in spinning climate catastrophe tales to gullible boobies. It had great success with the Mirror in November 2022, which ran a load of hooey claiming that much of London would be under water within 80 years. Climate Central provides a flood predictor tool that activists can use to claim inundation in a location of their own choosing. Local landmarks well above sea level can be shown to be disappearing beneath the waves since the tool uses sea level increases over 30 times faster than current rises. Reporter Sam Elliott-Gibbs noted the existence of “terrifying new maps” of the UK that predict towns and cities “will be vanishing into the sea”.
Climate Central is a well-funded green propaganda operation based in Princeton, New Jersey. The group says it works with news outlets “to produce compelling and scientifically accurate stories”. No fewer than 33 foundations and “leadership donors” are listed with heavy backing thought to have been provided by Eric Schmidt, the former Chairman and CEO of Google. Among the activist academics involved is Michael Oppenheimer, Professor of Geoscience and International Affairs at nearby Princeton University. This chap is noted for once remarking: “We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialisation we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.” Perhaps he had Europe in mind as well, particularly the UK where the state-dependent broadcaster pumps out climate catastrophe copy that is used to provide cover for Net Zero-obsessed governing elites set on de-industrialisation, destroying food security and reducing living standards.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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The Green Blob has been exploiting this benign warming for years, often the fact that temperatures rose sharply at the end of the 20th century gets reported simply as “temperatures ARE rising”, which is both misleading and requires a time machine visit to the future.
I don’t buy the junk thermometer part of the article, what matters is how junkness has CHANGED (not a great deal), rather than the absolute degree of junkness.
Disagree. Claiming 1.3 or 1.8 degree increases based on readings plus/minus 2 or 5 degrees is meaningless.
One thing: Urban heat island effect is real and the actual temperature is higher in cities. If higher temperatures are so bad people would move out of those cities.
The Human Mortality Database STMF records weekly mortality for many countries. Every country I’ve looked at shows greater mortality rates in the winter or cool season. Headline scare stories about deaths due to heat are missing the point – far fewer people die of being too hot than die of being too cold.
What a truly wicked thing to say.
Spot on re UHE. Nullifies all urban measurement stations.
Difference of at least 4C between rural and urban areas. Your carmometer can tell you the same. When they recorded the hottest day evah July ’23, it was 34C in our Sussex ex-urban area. A far cry from the 42 C (nano second) fake measurement at the RAF based behind the greenhouse, beside the jet engine, in front of a roaring fire.
As with Rona etc. follow that money.
And… the wealth.s climate system has been warming for over 10 000 years.
7 000 years ago Spring in “Britain” was considerably colder than now.
I have seen a difference of 5C from the London suburbs and my corner of Surrey. What was more surprising was a drive to the edge of Gatwick Airport one frosty evening. Getting back in the car I spotted it was 3C but it was frosty at home. So driving home I watched it slowly drop down to read -1C at home, just 8 miles away.
In the US there is the USCRN which is a network of unsullied rural stations set up recently in response to the contamination of UHI. It recorded the second largest month-month drop of just of 7F from Dec to Jan in the supposedly warmest January in the planet’s history. My gas use for CH said otherwise, continuing through February and it was so warm last week we had a football match abandoned on Tuesday evening for a frozen pitch.
Thank you, Chris Morrison (as ever). Gaping holes that have been evident going back years, decades, centuries…
…Analysis in 2014 by two engineers, entitled, “Trends in the Central England Temperature since 1659,” (Figs 1 and 2 on pages 20 and 21):
https://www.brugesgroup.com/images/pdfs/thesunandtrendsintheCETsince1659.pdf
“With this chart we see the true nature of the warming that has taken place since 1659. It is mainly a winter phenomenon…
…The greater warmth in winter quite literally saves UK plc billions of pounds annually in reduced heating requirements. The warming also brings on spring conditions two to three weeks earlier and prolongs the summer and early autumn by a week or two. The result has to have been a useful rise in agricultural productivity.”
To which could be added elderly lives saved in winter. Net zero is a killer set on the loose by murderous politicians.
When is this Theatre of the Absurd going to end?
Look into my eyes, look into my eyes, not around the eyes, into my eyes… you’re under!
Just come back from Thailand. Thailand has had its coldest winter in 40 years. Will the BBC be mentioning that?
If they do, it will be as proof of “extreme” weather. Or climate disruption caused by human emissions.
I was told many years ago that “if you torture data long enough, it will confess to anything”. Still true today…
Except – these “temperatures” are not data, they are numbers derived from manipulating/torturing raw data by running them through computer programmes overloaded with algorithms to “correct” for this and that – including the one-third of the temperature leasuring stations in the UK that do not exist.
Grass again frozen over yesterday night on Christchurch meadows although the ground seem to have mostly thawn again. Over in lala-land, a German weather service recently screamed about the first “heat wave of the year” hitting Germany, with outside temperatures expected to be around 18⁰C for a short while around noon.
The boiling point of water is also still 100⁰C and anything less isn’t “boiling.”
Although to be fair, it reduces to about 82 degrees atop Mt Everest. LOL I suppose the boiling point of Oxygen at -183 deg could account for the “boiling” hyperbole.
Thanks to Chris Morrison & the DS for that lovely photo of spring flowers in the countryside of this green and pleasant land we are fighting to protect.
Was this warming observed at the 103 temperature recording stations that don’t exists?
It was 4C here overnight.
As I write, at 1430, it’s 16.5C.
That’s a 12C increase.
We’re doomed.
Anyone who lives in Watford is perpetually doomed…..
🙂
Greatly appreciate your endeavours, but rest assured that many of us do not listen to the BBC but enjoy each day as it comes. Hello trees, hello sky.