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
Attenborough should be beyond this type of misinformation / manipulation using visual means. Time and again they head for the great Mount as a sign of global warming and time and again it’s debunked.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/tag/mount-kilimanjaro/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/21/kilimanjaro-regaining-its-snow-cap/
[snip – off topic – see previous note – Anthony]
Lightening Conductors and Strange People.
The odd thing about all of this is that Leo Hickman of Comment is Free if you Agree of The Guardener, was the first to get on his high horse about this exaggeration of 3.5C rise over the last twenty years in Africa. It’s as if he’s saying it is wrong to exaggerate to cover up all of his own exaggerations.
Hickman to the Villagers: There are Ten Wolves coming?
Attenborough: No No there are Ten Lions coming.
As for the BBC they spoil all science programmes because they have to keep on message.
Attenborough isn’t the man he once was, he doesn’t write his own scripts, do his own research or anything like that anymore. He is reliant on others, and so errors and facts that if he’d been involved in the research and writing himself probably would not have made it past editorial have snuck into his shows.
I won’t let that stand in the way of my respect for his achievements though.
Even if he is a believer in catastrophic global warming, he is still a man of integrity and would only use scientific sources (I choose to believe.)
This is a great shame isn’t it. I find it so. The BBC’s nature programmes, and especially those by David Attenborough, are spectacular, amazing photography, world beating.
Unfortunately, some BBC script writer has decided to introduce a lie, but that is no excuse. For David Attenborough declares himself as being converted from a sceptic to a Global Warming Climate Change believer. Therefore, he implies that he has come to understand something about the issue.
But anyone who understands the first thing about global warming must know that we are only talking about a mere increase of a fraction of a degree in global mean temperatures over 130 years. This is the scale of the catastrophe that has befallen all of us.
So, a suggestion of 3.5 degrees in 20 years should set alarms bells ringing. It is simply absurd! An abrupt change of that magnitude takes us back half-way to the last ice age. So why did Sir David lend himself to reading out such an obviously ridiculous claim? Why did he not question it? Was he willingly complicit?
Ask yourself, do you think he is as guilty as the BBC and the person who wrote the initial lie?
Remember that Attenborough also does freelance work, highly paid for Sky and others.
The question arises as to whether this was his independent input or whether he was following BBC dogma.
I suspect the former myself, and therefore it is he who should answer for it, not the BBC.
OK I know we don’t normally have a need to reference the Guardian, but credit to Leo Hickman and this deconstruction;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/feb/08/bbc-global-warming-attenborough-africa
I love David Attenborough, he is a true national treasure, but feared the last episode in this great series would have some alarmist BS included, and I was not disappointed.
I was shaking my fist at the screen when the bit about the snows of Kilimanjaro were said to being caused by warmin when this is demonstrably untrue.
Sir David Attenborough is a Fellow of the Royal Society – he should therefore have an obligation to make sure that the words that he speaks on scientific matters are based on the facts. It is a shame that he sometimes bears his responsibilities so lightly!
To the apologists who say that Attenborough is not to blame because he is just reading a script – I say balderdash. He is a professional of many decades’ experience. He is famous. He doesn’t need the money.
In these circumstances, how can he not take responsibility for the words that come out of his mouth?
His unscripted public statements of the last few years indicate that he is just a Grumpy Old Man who hates most of humanity. There is no obvious inconsistency between his personal views and the scripted ones.
It’s sad to see Mr Attenbourghs deline:-
His bedfellows:-
http://populationmatters.org/about/people/patrons/
and that article in The Telegraph:-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9815862/Humans-are-plague-on-Earth-Attenborough.html
Someone should make a version of “Inconvenient Truth” with all the inaccurate and over-hyped bits removed. I suspect it would be 3 seconds long and consist entirely of the words “Hi, I’m al-Gore”.
The 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 the evidence is not “disputable”. It is wrong, just plain wrong and also totally incorrect, even it is quite in error and totally without foundation.
The BBC should bring back the estimable and wrongly ignored Dr David Bellamy in place of the clearly failing David Attenborough.
David Attenborough says “some parts of the continent” and in the same paragraph you reference “global temperatures”. He may still be wrong and/or irrelevant, I havent checked, but this post is a complete strawman comparing his statement to something he wasn’t even talking about. Show no parts of Africa have warmed by 3.5 degrees then he’s wrong. I’m sure no one will bother, not sure why you would given the relevance of the statement by itself anyway.
‘some parts of the continent have become 3.5C hotter in the past 20 years’
may or may not be true but it has nothing to do with global climate change. sounds more like regional weather (or desperate cherry picking depending on your cynicism). some parts of Oxfordshire have become 7 degrees colder in the past week.
I have just seen a promo for this show, which is on TV here on Saturday night.
I wonder which version we will get?
Nick Kermode, the point is that even if a couple of temperature stations support the assertion (and there is no evidence for that), it is misleading. Africa is vast, its temperature stations are few and not likely to produce state of the art records, and there is nothing remotely scientific about Attenborough’s statement. OTOH, it supports the crumbling edifice of CAGW at the expense of objectivity.
Nick in Vancouver on February 12, 2013 at 7:55 am
Priceless, keep it up people, the more they spin, the faster they fall.”
Sadly I think they are like a gyroscope. The faster they spin the more stable they become!
You might like a little further background to why the Guardian wrote their article…
http://mygardenpond.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/the-power-of-a-tweet-two-examples/
Ruth Dixon was the first to alert them of the whopping great error in the BBC coverage.
She is far too modest to take much of the credit but I just had the pleasure of buying her a drink….and also her husband, lest eyebrows be raised.
YET his skepticism failed him when he said:
Even the Guardian was not just sceptical, they outright denied the claim. Maybe Attenborough should have kept some of his skepticism; he much not have then found himself shamed and in so much hot water.
Should the world cool, what the heck is Attenborough going to say then? I was sceptical, then I was convinced, then I was sceptical? I like Attenborough’s documentaries, but he has been ensnared by the Warmists at the Beeb who have fooled him. A sad end, but there is still a chance for him to see the light. TIP: Attenborough see AGW theory which says that most of the warming will be at the poles at night. See urban growth in Africa and UHI. See activism in the IPCC etc.
Jimbo, I am surprised to see you lining up with the apologists – “he was ensnared” etc. Bulldust. As I said above, he is a professional, rich, famous and not entirely stupid. He has said that humans are a plague on the planet (presumably excepting him and his family and friends).
It may be that he has lost his marbles, or that he is just a Grumpy Old Man (US readers may miss this reference to a TV show). Attenborough has ridden the Green wave for decades, and it is about time that he was held to account for it. Like a few other BBC legends, he has been given a free pass for too long.
You could tell Attenborough had joined The Cause from his series surveying the plant kingdom, filmed at Kew Gardens. In one episode he listed the requirements of plants: water, light, minerals… but didn’t mention carbon dioxide.
Attenborough is an example of the way that relatives of successful people can get into positions they thoroughly do not deserve to be in. What is good in his programs is entirely the work of his researchers and what is trash and misinformation is entirely his own work like these claims on climate.
Since BBC is funded by a special form of taxation rather than choice is has a duty to be impartial which is has knowingly and deliberately violated. To think people here go to prison for not paying for this organisation even when it knowingly violates its charter that justifies this compulsory payment. Has no one in the organisation any integrity?
Even its supposed removal perpetuated the mealy mouthed lie that has already done its damage.
Christian AID-why have one god when you can have 3. Why have slight warming, when you can have 3.5? Same difference.
Oh come off it, Nick. I’m the first to jump on ‘fake’ sceptic arguments if they’re obviously wrong, but Attenborough is talking through his a**e (again!) and has being doing so for a while now. He’s used his position as a ‘national treasure’ to promote the case for CAGW. I’m afraid he’s set himself up to be shot down.
The facts are that Tim Osborn found just ONE region in Africa which had warming above 3 deg C for just ONE season. But it’s worse than that. Osborn explains about the ‘paucity’ of african data. He can say that again. If he’s found a dataset which represents a specific region then I doubt that data comes form any more than ONE station. I’d like to know a bit more about the location of that station. How well-maintained is it? Has there been any recent development or land clearance in the area?
But if you’re happy with cherry-picked regional data Nick here’s one for you: Between 1692 and 1711 mean ANNUAL (not seasonal) temperature in the Central England region increased by 2 deg C, i.e. more than any African region over the past 20 years (according to Tim Osborn).
Attenborough is, I am afraid, well past his best. His comments are directly contrary to his training as a geologist. He has turned into a tub thumping alarmist thanks to the PC BBC.