The BBC’s green activist-in-residence Justin Rowlatt has had two complaints upheld against him, following the broadcast last November of his absurd “Wild Weather” Panorama programme. The latest upheld complaints followed a similar rebuke last year, after Rowlatt described offshore wind as “virtually subsidy-free”.
The Panorama programme was an hour long, emotion-charged rant that tried to show human-caused climate change was behind a series of recent bad weather events. It featured a man with vascular dementia being helped into a boat from his flooded home. Improbable stories of 6°C rises in temperature were illuminated with a Met Office globe turning deep red. Not a scintilla of scientific proof was supplied to back up most of the improbable claims.
The BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit found that the wording of the introduction, which stated “the death toll is rising around the world and the forecast is that worse is to come”, risked giving the impression the rate of deaths from extreme weather-related events was increasing.
“Risked” is an interesting turn of phrase. The BBC said the wording “was not as clear as it should have been”, and accepted the obvious fact that deaths have actually been falling for many years
The ECU also upheld a complaint about a Rowlatt statement that Madagascar was on the brink of the world’s first climate-induced famine. The report about the drought in the south of the country was presented “without qualification”, but other evidence “prior to broadcast” was said to suggest there were additional factors that made a significant contribution to the shortage of food.
In fact, drought in southern Madagascar was not unknown in the past. A group of scientists and observers working for World Weather Attribution recently published their findings. As can be seen, a drought in 1992 was actually worse. Recent rains have marginally improved the current situation.
Moreover, the paper noted the finding of the sixth IPCC Assessment Report that classified the region as exhibiting “low confidence” of observed human influence on drought, “due to limited evidence”.
The core problem affecting the coverage of climate science at the BBC, and most of the mainstream media, is the ludicrous proposition that it is somehow settled and beyond debate. As the Daily Sceptic has noted on numerous occasions, nobody can put a provable figure on the actual warming that will occur if carbon dioxide, from whatever source, is doubled in the atmosphere. This is a subject of intense, ongoing debate within scientific circles. Rather than artificially divide scientists into those who say humans cause climate change and those who don’t, a more nuanced stance would be to look at their views on a scale from one to ten – one being no effect from humans, and ten suggesting humans cause all warming. Currently, you will find views spread across the entire spectrum.
But debate has long been closed down by politically inspired activists, driven seemingly to do what it takes to ‘save the planet’ and secure the Net Zero agenda. Improbable suggestions that temperatures will rise by 6°C, guessed by always-wrong computer models, are broadcast for maximum emotional impact. Attempts to debate the science are often met with the slur of denier, suggesting the denial of the World War Two Jewish Holocaust.
Consider this extraordinary photo and caption published recently on the main BBC’s climate page.
The story concerned an Eastern European group called the Creative Society that was said to have tricked a number of scientists, politicians and campaigners into participating in events promoting “climate change denial”. It was written by two BBC “climate disinformation” reporters, Marco Silva and Merlyn Thomas. The above picture was used to promote the story, alone on a separate page, but was not attributed to the Creative Society in the full article. It does not seem to appear on any of the main pages of the Society’s web site.
In the absence of clear attribution, the long nose, the pig snout and the loaded use of the term ‘deniers’, might unfortunately suggest that anyone dissenting from the settled science view is a lying pig akin to an antisemitic Holocaust denier.
The actual story is a non event. Even if the Society is promoting ‘climate denial’, whatever that is – so what? The BBC says the Society has hundreds of thousands of followers across all major social media platforms, and through them “bad information about global warming is being spread”. Not on Twitter it’s not – the Society has fewer than 4,000 followers.
On its website, the Society says a creative forum can “provide for a future without wars, conflicts, violence and hunger”. A recent tweet sought understanding for immigration, noting that the United States was founded by refugees. Climate change is often attributed to cosmic cycles. The Society seems to combine an idealistic view of society with a dash of eastern Christian mysticism and a scattering of ‘end is nigh’ warnings. Climate, it states, is the “enemy of the entire humanity”. It claims that climate cataclysms are occurring at record breaking speed. “Why are the world media silent about the scale of threats,” it asks.
It appears that the Creative Society has an idealistic message that everyone is entitled to be happy, combined with a dash of neo-mysticism and warnings of imminent climate Armageddon. In fact, in many ways, it seems remarkably similar in outlook to the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor
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Perhaps this page exists to sow the seeds of doubt in the minds of normies and there is nothing wrong with that.The BBC, are you having a laugh? These people have cheered on genocidal wars in which millions died. I could go on all day. Are we even living in the same universe. You speak as if this loathsome monstrosity is still somehow alive.
Normies?
I am a Normie thanks very much. It’s the climate change hysterics that are the certifiably insane.
We won’t have to worry about ‘Wild Weather’ soon…
“Russia’s chief propagandist threatens to ‘plunge Britain into the depths of the sea’ with underwater Poseidon nuke that would trigger a 1,600ft radioactive tidal wave and wipe the UK off the map”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10774235/Ukraine-war-Russian-state-media-threatens-UK-underwater-nuke.html
Scarier than covid and the millennium bug put together!
Do you see people ‘nuclear’ distancing, wearing ‘nuclear’ masks or engaging in ‘nuclear’ lockdowns’?
Covid was waaaaay scarier than yet another nuclear threat.
Would the UK be any worse than its current state?
Problem A: This weapon is planned but doesn’t exist yet.
Problem B: Nothing changed in the fantasy universe of strategic air warfare with nuclear weapons. If the Russians do this, a large part of Russia will end up as radioactive desert due to counterstrikes from UK ballistic missile submarines and possibly, other actors. In other words, the outcome will be that this clown dies a horrible death and that all which is dear to him will be reduced toxic waste.
Does that sound like a war-winning strategy?
It’s all, total bollox.
Those who threaten, don’t. Those who don’t, do.
Counter strikes…. Ha ha ha….
How do you counter strike when you have no arms or legs
Some times, reading a comment before replying with something nonsensical, can provide valuable insight into its content.
RW clearly referenced submarines.
That almost certainly no longer work as designed.
Only a flesh wound.
Problem A makes problem B irrelevant. But if you believe that strategic air warfare with nukes is a fantasy universe, why are you promoting the idea of strategic nuclear deterrence in the form of the notion that “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) brings security?
I didn’t promote anything, I’ve just pointed out that Har, har, har! Our bombs are so huge that we can destroy your tiny island three times over! is not a credible threat but more the ravings of a lunatic: Everybody has more than enough of them to destroy everything three times over (and more). I also prefer to call that MAS for mutual assisted suicide because that’s going to be the outcome: Everybody’s dead and everything’s destroyed (three times over) and presumably, the cockroaches conjectured to surive all this won’t be able to stop laughing for a really long time.
Stockpiling loads of devices whose only practical application is to force everyone else to stockpile them as well, sucking up considerable resources which could be put to better uses, even militarily more effective uses, this all being based on some 1920s air strategist’s wet dreams of winning wars easily and without risk by mass killing of civilians and destruction of cities qualifies as fantasy universe, and a pretty surreal one, for me.
Please stop, both of you. It’s boring, inane and irrelevant.
I assume you have evidence.
That’s why he’s named ‘propaganda’ minister (or whatever).
A sidebar of the mail article states that:
Poseidon is a Russian nuclear weapon currently in development that is a blend of torpedo and drone.
[…]
However, the weapon is not thought to be operational and may not enter active service for several years.
Don’t rely on the UK Ballistic Missile deterrent. Spares shortages for years have made it dubious to say the least. Are any actually at sea?
There’s a clue. Imagine that, propaganda with no foundation being used to scare the witless sheep even more witless.
Like our own government hasn’t used that particular tactic on its own people in the last two years.
Why the fuck are we shipping arms to a country we have no formal links to, involving ourselves in a war that has nothing to do with us, thereby perpetuating said war and, undoubtedly at the conclusion of that war, have those arms directed at us at some point.
It’s as though wars in the middle east over the last 30 years just didn’t happen. Nothing learned from them, but lots more money available to spunk against the wall in a futile attempt to stop a war we were told months ago Putin had already lost.
This is sick. Our government needs to be dragged into the street and stoned.
And what are you going to do about your beloved Finland joining NATO and breaching several long standing peace agreements?
If Finland or Sweden joins NATO – and the submission and acceptance of applications does seem to be the plan – then that is a huge giveaway regarding US policy. It basically says to Russia “We tried to get Ukraine into NATO, so that we could fly our warplanes in your face, and you invaded Ukraine in response; well now we’re taking Sweden and Finland into NATO too, so see if you like that”. It would be an extremely aggressive move, and for those who understand basic international relations it would further demonstrate why Russia invaded the Ukraine. It would show you that “the West”, i.e. the US followed by its pathetic little satellite regimes, seeks a major war between nuclear powers.
I would compare it with Germany moving across the Rhine in 1936 but events in 2022 would move much faster. The key points are that it was not a Russian threat to the Kiev regime that triggered Kiev’s NATO membership talk, and there is absolutely no Russian threat to Finland or Sweden that those countries’ NATO applications would be a response to either.
In another sign of the shift in strategic relations, take a look at the Israeli government’s response today to Sergei Lavrov’s comment that Volodymyr Zelensky’s being Jewish doesn’t stop him from being a Nazi and that, according to Lavrov, Hitler had Jewish family roots. Personally I have never bought into the story that Alois Schicklgruber was the illegitimate spawn of a Jewish father, but guess what, who cares if he was? What is interesting is the absolutely insane Israeli “logic”.
The “logic” runs like this:
Point 1) is itself insane. Adolf Hitler’s father’s mother may have had a secret affair with the milkman that led her to give birth to Adolf Schicklgruber in 1837, or for that matter with a Romany person, but that wouldn’t make the general categories of “milkmen” or “Romany people” responsible for anything, let alone for terrible crimes that were committed more than a century later, following their first evil successes against disabled people.
Point 2) is also insane because the truth is the truth even if we don’t know what it is. To say there cannot possibly have been a Jewish guy who got Hitler’s grandmother pregnant is nuts.
Careful, because somebody might start mentioning how Zionists cooperated with Hitler, and then where would we be? Someone might start mentioning how the ideology and practice of the Israeli regime is ethnic-supremacist too.
But to bring us back to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war: the idea that Israel was somehow “neutral” in it was always rubbish.
Israel has funded the Azov battalion, which is now the Azov Regiment, part of the Ukrainian army. It also seems likely that Israel has some of its soldiers holed up in the Azovstal iron and steel plant. Certainly that country is on the list of foreign countries which have citizens fighting against Russia in the war, as is Britain. I hope Lavrov now says that he couldn’t give a monkey’s about Adolf Hitler’s grandmother, but he does care about these matters.
Don’t over think the situation, it’s not that complicated.
Oh dear, your antipathy to Israel has led you down a very deep rabbit hole. Get some rest. Maybe have a chat with Jordan Peterson.
Israel is one of today’s great terrorist states. That is not an anti semitic statement. Look at the facts. (Hint. Not on MSM)
Yeah, and China is the home of democracy and Canada’s Prime Minister bears no resemblance to Fidel Castro, the BBC is impartial, bumble bees can’t fly, Oldham athletic will be European Champions this year and Richard Dawkins is a devout Roman Catholic.
Wrong, the religion of Islam is the real villain.
Your obvious National Socialism is evil.
Judaism follows the maternal line for precisely this reason. The same as the Pharoahs. Growing up in the 50,s it was accepted that Shicklegruber may have had Jewish antecedents. Not a massive leap.
The Palestinians, rather than the Israelis, fly swastikas at Israel.
Indeed, Hitler is Islam’s favourite infidel and your preferred foreign policy is a combination of communism and domestic abuse.
My “beloved Finland”?
Why would I give a flying fuck about Finland?
Gosh, I couldn’t imagine anything more intimidating to Russia than Finland joining NATO and breaching peace agreements.
The prime minister of Finland (who, it may interest some readers of this website to know, was raised by a lesbian couple):
Bit of an improvement over Bozo.
Boris has bigger boobs.
Is that a photo of Emerald Fox?
I think he was confusing you with Emerald Fox (how?).
What makes you think Finland is ‘beloved’ of me? As I don’t have any power or influence in the Finnish Government over this decision to join NATO, I expect I shan’t be doing anything about it.
Finland has announced it’s just stopped the Russians from continuing to build a new nuclear power station in Pyhäjoki, west coast of Finland… will there be any ‘fallout’ from that ?!
My Finnish partner points out that Finland didn’t have any agreement with Russia not to join NATO. It did have an agreement with the Soviet Union, but Russia is not the Soviet Union.
And what about all the agreements Russia has broken recently? Such as the banning of flights across Russia (eg Helsinki-Japan)?
The Daily Mail is the last bastion of measured, verified, dispassionate journalism, isn’t it?
Some of the claims on The Daily Mail are no less whacky than some of the claims on The Daily Sceptic!
Nanobots and graphene tubules in the vaccines, for example. And promotion of net sites which advertise ‘solar flare & EMP shields for your protection’. Not to mention ‘Ivermectin’ flogged by some Indian company (no, you have no idea what’s in those tablets when they arrive in the post).
Read the actual judgment. It is worded so as to leave the climate change lies unaffected. There have been more climate disasters, but fewer people have died in them because we’re better at rescuing them.
Heck!
Discuss your enemies in good faith and they will just pull down their clothes and laugh at you. A critique of the BBC is utterly laughable. Honestly, either you get a grasp of the serious or you will be in dire trouble in the near future, That world is gone forever. I am not looking forward to dealing with inept clueless assholes who clung to a myth because it made them feel good.
I am more concerned by the primary school teachers indoctrinating the innocent children with this scientific fraud.
An then of course ‘my’ Pope doing the same for sad Catholics.
I remember seeing some 1st year undergrad science posters and one was about the climate emergency and had some data about a decline mental health due to concern about the climate.
No such thing.
No!
Please don’t stop the indoctrination of children. The younger the better as far as I’m concerned.
It will take them until their early teens to rebel, as teens always do. Five years is an eternity to a 12 year old. By the time they’re 17 they’ll be scornful of climate armageddon because it didn’t happen in their ‘lifetime’.
I grew up during the cold war. It was just an accepted thing that we could all be wiped out at a moment’s notice. Did it worry me? If I really thought about it (once) yes, then a pretty girl in my class distracted me.
Then I got into the serious business of wondering how I could get into a pub when I was 16. My first motorbike then obsessed me, then my first car. Job hunting came next, then that pretty girl (or one of them) pitched up again, then it was marriage, and a divorce, all the while holding down the job I got after all that hunting.
Then my own kids pitched up, and when the Berlin wall fell, I wondered what all the fuss was about.
So now its climate change.
Rinse and repeat.
When I was 16 I was living in West Germany (my father was in the Royal Artillery) and going into a pub (Gasthaus) with my school mates was no big deal. We never really worried about the possibility of a nuclear war even though there was the occasional military exercise (flap). The nearest I got to being concerned was reading Neville Shute’s ‘On the Beach’.
That’s the saddest novel I’ver ever read.
Absolutely no hope at the end.
True. and I wrote a poem about it which was published in the school magazine, but afterwards I returned to my favourite writer Arthur C. Clarke, who filled me with unbridled optimism.
Once you see the parallels between the COVID panic and climate “science” you can’t unsee it. It’s all there – the dodgy models, the “we’re all going to die” hysteria, the mantras, the aversion to everything that makes life worth living and (most importantly) the absence of any old-fashioned evidence.
As with COVID, it’s a cult for people whose lives hold no meaning. A way for them to feel part of something bigger and superior to those around them. A symptom of deep, spiritual sickness.
It’s all laughable.
I have no religious faith other than I live my life to theChristian values I grew up with in a Christian society.
Perhaps that’s why I have never felt any real fear of death. I don’t like the idea of it happening prematurely, but I have faced my demise on a number of occasions in my youth and it never bothered me. My only fear being of pain. If I go, I just want it to be quick.
Have I prayed or asked for forgiveness when faced with death? Nope, but I made damn sure I thanked God, just in case he’s listening, for sparing me. I simply can’t count the really, really near misses I have had (Misspent youth).
Does the prospect of nuclear war worry me? Certainly not if I’m at the centre of the strike as I wouldn’t know a thing about it. And I would rather be there than dealing with the fallout of the event.
Frankly, were I religious, I would have to believe that we are living in some sort of purgatory right now, which is what I guess the Bible is trying to tell us, without actually spelling out that we are already dead.
A little asides.
Three best mates, an Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman die in a plane crash on the way to a “golfing” weekend away from their wives.
The Englishman and Irishman wake up in hell where they are immediately put to work in the fires of hell during the day, and forced to endure unending nightly orgies and drinking before forced back down to the mines. The pair are exhausted after only a week.
One day they see the Scotsman, a God fearing man who only went on the golfing trip to show them the error of their ways, floating by on a cloud, with a gorgeous woman by his side and a large tankard of been in his hand.
The Englishman shout’s up “Oi, Jock, I wish I had taken your advice and led a decent life on earth. The Irishman agrees and shouts “we both might have a beautiful woman and beer aplenty now, instead of labouring in the fires of hell”.
The Scotsman shouts back down, “I’ll swap you lads, the. tankard has a hole in it and the bird doesn’t”.
Do you know any amusing jokes?
I wonder if a sceptical view will eventually break through on climate change. There is a prevailing view in the BBC/Guardian etc that we live in a Post-Truth world, wherein the objective truth is their own perspective, I.e. that the EU is fantastic, that Conservatism is bad, that Trump is Hitler and that the our world will disintegrate because of an ever warming climate caused by evil corporates and billionaires. It is impossible for them to comprehend their truth may not be “truth.” Alan Rusbridgers book “News and how to use it” was quite interesting, but there was no critical view of the Guardian or other left wing newspapers who are equally tricksy with readers and what constitutes “the truth.”. The assumption throughout was that he held the key to objective truth.
This is one reason why upholding free speech is so, so important. We’re so arrogant as a species we quite often think our current view of the world is the correct one, and some people spend a great deal of their time trying to scorn those with different views. It goes to historical extremes of torture or the death sentence, but today we will still try get someone sacked or criminally sentenced aka Craig Murrsy. Sometimes the unpopular view prevails over the course of time, and that is why it must be permitted to voice unpopular views and to “air” them.
The mere fact we are discussing the subject, and the government wants to introduce legislation to stop us discussing it online, should tell you all you need to know.
We’ve won already, it’s only a matter of time util victory is announced.
This is a really good year for woodland flowers, especially wood anemones, early purple orchids and wood spurge.
I’ve also seen more deer – roe and muntjac – than for many years.
The Bees……what about the Bees? it’s all about the Bees!!!!
Strike that. Bees are like polar bears, more now than ever.
And is there honey still for tea?
This afternoon I spotted a kind of bumblebee I’ve never seen before on my solanum crispum glasnevin.
There was a weird looking bee standing on my Fox’s Glacier Mint today, sort of all white and bear like.
I do an activity in primary school hall – in the infants section. Latest book on the shelves “Living with climate change” complete with picture of poor-looking, Indian-looking barefoot children knee-deep in water.
I trust you do your best to explain the situation as it is without risking your job.
You are the sceptics fifth column.
Justin Rowlatt
TwatRat. With a sister as bonkers as him.
Runs in the family, like Diarrhea.
He is a cunt-faced twat.
Don’t hold back, say what you really mean.
I assumed you were Scottish, but don’t you Jocks spell it ‘Diarrhoea’ ?
On the subject of disinformation, here’s DeSantis on the money again:
https://mobile.twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/1520068299417079808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1520068299417079808%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fnews%2F554834-mayorkas-dhs-disinformation-unit%2F
Also on the subject of disinformation, here we have Woke daily iNews actually producing a balanced article on whether NATO is maybe, just maybe, a teensy bit responsible for the Ukraine situation (it’s behind a paywall but still readable):
https://inews.co.uk/news/world/nato-expansion-west-russias-doorstep-experts-dont-know-right-move-1602805
How dare MSM publish such heresy! Cunts United (aka Fingal, Tree and Monro) will be having a meltdown!
You forgot c68 and EF – another couple of time wasting trolls.
I like how going to gigs and drinking beer is the “fight of your life”!
It’s vital to remember BBC Editors aren’t journalists, they’re apostles for their cause.
Climate change, wokism, the LGBT cult, covid, leftism, you name it.
Incorrigible, untouchable and unaccountable.
Just switch off like millions of others, let them talk to nothing.
Make a refreshing change from all those boring COVID waves. Better get my surfboard out before the danged Russkies change their minds.
Nothing new here.
If the bbc told me the sky was blue, I’d look up to check.
The thing about so-called ‘climate scientists’ is that they are first and foremost human beings – vain, venal, error-prone, political and corruptible. Second, they have not proven any link between human activity and a gently warming planet which has been going on since the beginning of the Holocene with some marked warmer periods such as the Roman warm period and the Medieval warm period punctuated by cooler periods such as the Little Ice-Age. Third, by their own admission they do not even understand natural climatic fluctuation. How they think they can then pronounce on anthropogenic climate change is beyond all rational explanation.
Climate deniers- people who, apparently, deny there is a climate.
This term is used by totalitarians who want a second Holodomor.
The number of complaints attempted to be brushed off by the Beeb’s Complaints team that are then escalated to its Executive Complaints Unit is rising, and the forecast is that worse is to come.
Aunty has learnt a lesson in combining two different complaints into a single ‘mea culpa’ from its ECU.
Soon-to-retire Harrabin was forced to correct his ‘correction’ to his misleading claim in his original report ….
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44129679
…. that “The government had introduced a ban on onshore windfarms.”
Scroll to the bottom to learn
“Correction 1 August 2018: An earlier version of this article said that the government had introduced a ban on onshore windfarms. This was amended to refer to an “effective” ban and amended again on 26 July to clarify changes in policy since the article was published.
A complaint about the inaccuracy was upheld by the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit.”