Just like the IPCC and its reliance on reports from activist NGO’s has gotten them burned, so has the BBC.
From the Daily Mail:
The BBC has been forced into an embarrassing climbdown over climate change claims made in Sir David Attenborough’s groundbreaking Africa series. In the last episode of the series, entitled ‘Future’, Sir David discussed the challenges facing the region.
Speaking over footage of Mount Kilimanjaro, Sir David made the assertion that ‘some parts of the continent have become 3.5C hotter in the past 20 years’. However, figures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that since 1850 global temperatures have risen by 0.76C, causing widespread concern among viewers.
The comment, first broadcast in the final episode of the Africa series last Wednesday, was removed from Sunday night’s repeat of the show.
A BBC spokesman said: ‘There is widespread acknowledgement within the scientific community that the climate of Africa has been changing as stated in the programme.
‘We accept the evidence for 3.5 degrees increase is disputable and the commentary should have reflected that.
‘Therefore that line has been removed from Sunday’s repeat and the iPlayer version replaced.’
The BBC initially defended the claim, saying it was taken from a report by Oxfam and the New Economics Foundation, but in turn this report suggested the figure had come from a report by Christian Aid.
h/t to WUWT reader steverichards1984
Wrong spin on this issue but Attenborough’s nature shows are otherwise very watchable.
Well if the 3.5 degrees figure had come from such respected scientific organisations like Oxfam, The New Economics Foundation and Christian Aid, I can fully understand why the BBC believed them.
Shame on the denialist viewers who complained.
they must all be in the pay of “Big Oil”
(sarc)
“A BBC spokesman said: ‘There is widespread acknowledgement within the scientific community that the climate of Africa has been changing as stated in the programme.
‘We accept the evidence for 3.5 degrees increase is disputable and the commentary should have reflected that.”
No it is not “disputable”. It is WRONG. W.R.O.N.G. WRONG! Incorrect, without foundation in truth, erroneous and completely wrong.
I am greatly saddened to watch any of the BBC natural history programmes fronted by Sir David Attenborough now. He was once a reliable teacher of the wonders of nature, but now resembles a geriatric old duffer who is slowly losing his marbles and has difficulty keeping in touch with reality.
I despair that the BBC still use Attenborough and not Dr David Bellamy who was a much loved regular expert and activist on the BBC, who never let hype or hyperbole get in the way of truth, and who was a vociferous supporter of all real environmental concerns. Naturally, he is a scientists first and foremost and never ever saw the scientific proof of human induced global climate disruption.
Sir David Attenborough should have been retired by the BBC several years ago. He is now an embarrassment.
Kon Dealer…
Beautifully done. I was thinking much the same thing.
Priceless, keep it up people, the more they spin, the faster they fall.
Yet another manifestation of 28gate
Oxfam, WWF, NASA/GISS, Greenpeace, NOAA, BBC…the CAGW misinformation sources are indistinguishable to me any more.
Attenborough is an idiot.
Its the British way that if someone “talks posh” he’s regarded as intelligent.
In actual fact, as a communicator, Attenborough is a serial failure.
Remember to keep focusing on “Surface air temperatures = global warming” and skirt around the planet’s total energy balance figures….
…BTW, apropos the earlier thread on faked images, do those here who have watched BBC wildlife programmes realise that large parts of the footage (scenes supposedly inside nests and such like) is fake? I used to buy stuff at a shop that supplied the materials used in the fake settings. I also know a guy who is a consultant to them on the creation of such sets.
Kevin M
“Wrong spin on this issue but Attenborough’s nature shows are otherwise very watchable.”
Yes they are very watchable but Attenborough who, for many years, I had the greatest of respect for, has been 100% captured by the warmists and takes every opportunity he can to put out propaganda.
Even though the 3.5 deg C had been pulled all his comments were of increased temperatures, reduced rainfall, the increasing desertification and increasing size of the sahara and also snow loss on kilimanjiro due to global warming/climate change – points which have all been comprehensively, scientifically debunked.
I have always had the greatest respect for him, although it genuinely saddens me to say that I have lost that because of his ceaseless warmist propaganda in recent years.
I read the 100 or so highest-rated comments. Didn’t find a single one supporting the BBC spin. I wonder if the BBC takes notice.
I used to love Attenborough’s nature documentaries. He gave me a glimpse of things that were beyond my ability at the time to go see for myself. Lately though, the guy seems to think that he has to pound home the CAGW meme with every episode. I was watching one of his documentaries on NetFlix and it sounded like a much older Attenborough voice added as a voice-over toward the end exclaiming how all this was in imminent danger due to the actions of man and catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. Took a very enjoyable nature diversion and turned it into a preach fest…ruined the whole thing for me. Now I don’t know if I dare watch any of the old documentaries I remember enjoying years ago for fear the old guy will have defaced more of them with CAGW pap voice-overs.
I am with him on basic conservation measures, but this anti-industrialization nonsense has got to go!
Attenborough was simply reading the script written for him by the producers.
The mood music background to tragic scenes, gives the whole game away despite their denial that “…. the programme’s score ‘told viewers how to feel’ at different points”….
‘It is part of the process of looking deeper and creating that more immersive experience”.
Watch and weep.
“Sir David Attenborough should have been retired by the BBC several years ago. He is now an embarrassment.”
Absolutely correct, Ken. Yet who was it the BBC did can from their science and nature programs? David Bellamy who had the temerity to question the “end of the world” line the BBC was pushing.
[snip – off topic]
I hope that someone is putting in a strong complaint to the authorities about this.
We had evidence that the BBC were over-egging the climate scare. Are they now to be allowed to change their program retrospectively and claim that they didn’t really broadcast this? Because that’s what it will look like to future historians…
Heh, 3.5 degrees increase in 20 years? This claim ranks up there with the gone-by-2035 Himalayan glacier story. It’s so patently absurd on its face, it’s laughable.
Great News. Does this mean the law for non payment of the license fee is ‘ disputable’ now?
/sarc
A claim about “some parts of Africa” can’t be debunked by pointing to a global average. I am nearly certain that at least one weather station somewhere in Africa has seen 3.5C increase: it’s a big continent! But the claim seems ill sourced and too vague to mean anything. Good on viewers to challenge it. I presume you challenge all claims equally, right?
I’m certainly no warmist, and can’t believe I’m backing him, but you should give credit in this instance to Leo Hickman at The Guardian, who exposed this glaring error. It was not The Daily Mail, as you reference, and we live in hope that The Guardian’s environment and science journos might behave similarly in future, checking the facts rather than accepting guff from any green advocacy group.
Therefor it should follow that any end of movie, TV , book, news article, ect. with Al Gore’s claims on the tempature rise he claims should be reviwed and his claim/claims edited out.
This story popped up in the Graun om 8th February. Following on from the story it took me no time at all to find information about the station in a paper called “Raised temperatures over the Kericho tea estates: revisiting the climate in the East African highlands malaria debate”
Judith A Omumbo, Bradfield Lyon, Samuel M Waweru, Stephen J Connor, Madeleine C Thomson
From the paper it seems that: In the Tx time series (Figure 2a) a single break-point, with
an associated shift of 1.29°C, was detected in 1986. KMD
indicates the timing of this shift corresponds to a change
in the Kericho station location from the Hail Research
Center (35.27E, 0.37S; elevation 2184m) to its current
location (35.35E, 0.37S; elevation 1976m) at that time. The
sign and magnitude of the identified shift in the mean
temperature are both consistent with expectations given
the average change in atmospheric temperature with elevation
(lapse rate).
Later on there is a table that gives the Mean Temp increase as being 0.21°C per decade – so about 12% of the BBC figure.
Come on BBC it ain’t hard!!
The BBC and accuracy in the same sentence appear to be an oxymoron. I guess the English are learning some things from its former Colonies. Just not the right things.
Ken Hall says: “No it is not “disputable”. It is WRONG. W.R.O.N.G. WRONG! Incorrect, without foundation in truth, erroneous and completely wrong.”
You mean, a lie? I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you! The BBC? Lying? (Amazing how they continue to dig the hole ever deeper.)