The BBC’s El Niño Apocalypse Friday

Friday, August 21st 2026 was a slow news day. You could tell because the BBC’s Radio 4 6 O’Clock News led with the vacuous revelation Harry and Meghan are coming back to the UK. Slightly less uninteresting was the second story, the disastrous case against the Mail and how Harry and his fellow litigants are going to have to pay tens of millions of pounds to the newspaper in compensation.

There were more vacuous revelations to come. The ‘other’ top story was the impending catastrophe promised by the mounting El Niño crisis in the Pacific. The 6 O’Clock News was typical of the corporation’s output for the day. This is how the bulletin flagged up the story in the headlines:

[Announcer] Dire warnings from the Met Office about the effects of what it describes as an unprecedented El Niño event.

Cue then to the Voice of Doom, in this case the obliging Professor Adam Scaife – head of the Met Office’s long-range forecasting and a professor of applied maths at the University of Exeter – who was identified later in the bulletin:

We think that when it peaks in November and December it’s likely to be [a] record event, beyond anything we’ve seen in living memory.

That sort of phrasing, readers may recall, is straight out of the 17th-century playbook of weather catastrophising, as I discussed in a piece for this website in 2024 (’They Were Catastrophising the Climate in the 17th Century‘). Instead of the modern ‘since records began’, Scaife had opted for a version of the 17th Century’s equivalent. Here’s a quote from that piece I wrote:

All summer long there were “so great rains, that produced greater floods than in the memory of man”, wrote John Locke in 1673.

Such methods of emphasising a point are a handy way of terrorising oneself and other people because they evoke a sense of something both unprecedented and terrifying, predicated entirely on the nebulous limits of human memory without even specifying what that amounts to – or doesn’t.

Just look at the BBC’s wording. Not only are there “warnings”, but they are also “dire”. ‘Dire’ comes from the Latin word dirus, which means something ‘awful’ or ‘ominous’. Appropriately enough, it was a word often used by the Romans in a religious context when confronted with a bad omen, either in the form of a natural event or as the result of a sacrifice, such as the examination of the animal victim’s entrails.

There was something overwhelmingly religious about the bulletin’s coverage of the El Niño apocalypse because it served as no more than a harbinger of doom – something that might or might not happen and, even if it does, we are in no position to know exactly what form it will take.

It was ironic, but typical, that a scientist confronted with something he doesn’t know for a fact but is only guessing resorted to religious-style phrasing. This was exactly the sort of behaviour we saw during Covid too. The phenomenon is in fact entirely normal for most human beings. We live in a world of uncertainty and there is a latent desire among all people to believe they live in exceptional times.

Scientists are all too inclined, in circumstances where they do not know what will happen, to use their scientific status to substantiate such claims. This affords their pronouncements an aura of false credibility – both to themselves and their audiences.

The full item was delivered by the BBC’s Environment Correspondent Matt McGrath (spin forward in the bulletin to 07:26). It included more of Scaife – he has worked in the meteorology field since the early 1990s – who expanded darkly: “I have never seen an event like this in our forecasts.”

McGrath:

[Vague sounds of weather and barely audible Spanish fading down] In Peru this week the famous Machu Picchu tourist trail closed because of flooding, said to be [my italics] linked to a strengthening El Niño. This is the naturally occurring pattern that shifts weather across the globe. Scientists are growing ever more concerned [my italics] that this year’s event will be exceptionally strong with widespread impacts.

Let’s linger with McGrath’s intro for a moment. First, note how he used the words “said to be” when suggesting that the flooding might be linked to a “strengthening El Niño”. “Said to be”? That’s like a medieval rumour and as fatuous as Percy’s observation to Blackadder that “They do say that the Infanta’s eyes are more beautiful than the famous Stone of Galveston.” He also uses “ever more concerned” to suggest a crisis which isn’t only impending but is also becoming worse, to add some gratuitous dynamic to the story.

McGrath continued: “Professor Adam Scaife is the Met Office’s head of long-range forecasting:”

[Scaife] I have never seen an event like this in our forecasts. The tropical Pacific is warming faster than I’ve ever seen. We think that when it peaks in November and December it’s likely to be [a] record event, unprecedented beyond anything we’ve seen in living memory.

You’ll note that although this was depicted as a sound scientific opinion, the words of Scaife quoted amounted to no more than a personal anecdote. It was unsubstantiated – with no data or detail of any kind supplied (perhaps McGrath cut it out). Naturally, it also went completely unchallenged. It’s at moments like this that scientists seem entirely to forget the scientific principle that you should test every hypothesis to destruction, not make vague pronouncements based on your perception of the utility and relevance of the limits of human memory.

McGrath continued:

In Panama drought has drained the freshwater lakes that feed the shipping canal, forcing the authorities to cut the number of vessels passing through. And the effects are already reaching people’s pockets. India, the world’s second-biggest sugar producer, is now importing for the first time in a decade. A weak monsoon has hit production, and prices have jumped 40% in two months.

Despite the assertion that the event is unprecedented, in July 1920 and during the 1930s drought brought water levels in Gatún Lake dangerously low, nearly forcing closures of the canal and prompting major new dam construction to secure its water supply. This led to the building of the Madden Dam across the Chagres River in 1935 to create Lake Alajuela, which bolstered the water supply.

As for India, McGrath – who appeared only to have followed other news releases on Friday – didn’t mention that India is also one of the largest sugar consumers in the world and thus especially vulnerable to fluctuations in the crop. A ‘decade’ is hardly a long time in world history for a start. As it happens, India’s sugar production has increased by a staggering 7.6 times since the mid-1970s, meaning that El Niño aside, any environmental fluctuations are going to have more visible effects.

Moreover, any problems caused by high rainfall have been compounded by Red Rot and Top Borer disease, as well as stockpiling and speculation (according to the Financial Express). This illustrates just how complex these scenarios are, and the banality of attributing them to single causes.

McGrath ploughed on:

And it’s not just food that’s likely to be impacted. The same weather turmoil could push up energy prices too. Professor Amanda Maycock [of the Met Office Academic Partnership] is from the University of Leeds:

[Maycock] I think we’re definitely looking at the compound effect of different influences from a weather and climate perspective – you know, the prices of things like liquid natural gas imports and so on can be affected by demand that’s happening elsewhere in the world, which may well be affected by the El Niño if there are droughts in certain regions, reductions in the production of hydroelectricity, for example in places like Brazil. That could have a knock-on effect for us here in the UK.

Apart from observing the eternal fact that the weather and climate affect human activity, Maycock didn’t seem to say much of consequence at all – at least in what McGrath used. But note the opening words “I think” and the later “could have” (no more valid than ‘might not’).

McGrath wasn’t finished. He had a moment of lucidity when he acknowledged that there’s no evidence climate change is affecting El Niño, but he quickly got a grip and found a way to leave listeners quaking in their boots at the prospect of a hotter year next year – so “scientists say”:

The effects depend on where you are in the globe. As mentioned, a weaker monsoon in India but for the UK the prediction is for more rain in a wetter, stormier autumn. El Niño is a naturally occurring event and there’s no clear evidence that climate change is making it stronger but it’s arriving in an already warmer world and that, scientists say, is what will sharpen its impacts. But all the extra heat that’s set to release from the ocean into the atmosphere, next year is likely to be the hottest ever recorded.

Even if the predictions turn out to be true, McGrath showed no interest in what we might do about it. The story seemed purely concerned with the prospect of doom.

The bulletin continued with a piece by the BBC’s Climate Editor, Justin Rowlatt, about how “unusual” the current El Niño is. He harked back to the last extreme El Niño event in 1877 but darkly reminded listeners that the world is now 1.4 degrees warmer than in “pre-industrial times”, an era the parameters of which he did not bother to specify, presumably because ‘pre-industrial times’ is simply the next vague block of time always wheeled out before ‘living memory’. As it happens, just as a for instance, between 250 BC and AD 400 Roman Europe was around 1–2 degrees warmer than the 20th Century.

In the Roman world, and almost anywhere else in antiquity, anything that seemed deviant was recorded and scrutinised, whether it involved a meteor falling from the sky, a talking cow, a swarm of bees, a maidservant giving birth to a boy with only one hand or anything else that looked or sounded peculiar. By such signs, promising or ominous, the Romans ruled their lives. The statesman Cicero wondered whether the superstitious observations and the attention paid to omens and their interpretation amounted to self-induced imprisonment. This mentality has endured into modern times.

As ever, the whole El Niño news item really amounted to nothing but speculation and glossed over the fact that since time immemorial human beings have had to cope with extreme weather events and climate change of all types and hues.

When modern scientists bolster their claims with terms like ‘I think’, ‘could be’ and ‘anything we’ve seen in living memory’, and useful-idiot journalists substantiate their stories with ‘scientists say’, I’m not sure what the difference is between now and the ancient world.

One thing is certain: these terms ain’t science, but perhaps it takes a non-scientist to notice. Whatever happens next year is beyond our control, so when and if it does, we’ll just have to cope with it.

Appropriately enough for such pap, by Saturday August 22nd the story had disappeared from the bulletins, gone with the wind, though no doubt it’ll be back like a bad penny on the next slow news day.

Science requires an almost complete openness to all ideas. On the other hand, it requires the most rigorous and uncompromising scepticism.

Carl Sagan, in ‘Wonder and Scepticism’, Skeptical Inquirer (vol. 19, no. 1), 1995

Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian and writer with numerous books to his credit, most concerned with the ancient world, though his latest is The Confessions of Samuel Pepys (Abacus 2025). He has contributed to Daily Sceptic since its earliest days.