BBC GETS IT WRONG AGAIN ON GLOBAL WARMING
From the Global Warming Policy Foundation
London, 24 January: The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has lodged a new complaint to the BBC about its misleading reporting on global warming.
The BBC’s News at Ten programme on the 18th of January 2018 contained two factual errors in its report of the global temperature of 2017.
The errors were in the cue to the report by Roger Harrabin, and in the report itself.
The newsreader, Huw Edwards, said that 2017 was “the hottest year on record,” insinuating that global temperatures have continued to rise last year.
This is untrue. In reality, global temperatures have declined in the last 12 months. According to the Met Office, 2017 was the third warmest year on record.
In his report Roger Harrabin said, “2017 had no heating from El Niño.”
This is also untrue.
El Niño warming was evident during eleven weeks in the spring and summer of 2017, pushing global temperatures up accordingly.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) there were El Niño “conditions” for nearly three months in 2017, but they did not lead to an El Niño “event.” A formal El Niño event was not declared because the El Niño heating did not continue for five consecutive three-month periods.
It is therefore untrue to say that “2017 had no heating from El Niño.”
“These are two factual errors that should be acknowledged with an on-air apology and a correction on the BBC’s Corrections and Clarifications page,” GWPF director Dr Benny Peiser said.
GWPF letter to the BBC (PDF)
As reported previously, NASA GISS says 2017 was the second warmest year and NOAA says it was the third warmest year.
So BBC listeners go a good rogering yet again?
Lies are becoming a way of life … of survival.
BBC FAKE NEWS. again.
It doubly untrue since it is well known that global mean lags about 5mth behind any Nino effects in the Pacific Nino34 region. The El Nino effects are still there in the global record even when there are no longer El Nino conditions in the Pacific.
The BBC didn’t get it wrong, this was intentional, they knew exactly what they were doing.
This Harrabin fellow is simply telling his audience to keep the faith. He’s telling them that the world is still warming up, humans are the cause and the Mother Gaia god is gong to punish us any day now.
He’s also trolling the climate skeptics, hoping to make their heads explode. And from what I can see he was successful.
Just sayin’
Unless it was a Jolly Rogering
I see one of Harrabin’s fellow alarmists (Lewandowsky) has been given the aptly named title of “expert in misinformation” No I’m not making it up!
http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/bristol-academic-thinks-solution-fake-1108895
Just to clarify; Lewandowsky has been ‘called’ “an expert in misinformation” by the local Bristol news.
Who’s arguing?
Shades of the Gestapo’s organization!
He’s the last person you want giving advice to MPs they are a very gullible crowed who have lost the ability to think in anything other than soundbites.
James Bull
Isn’t it quicker and easier just to use ‘liar’.
How to Discuss Global Warming with a “Climate Alarmist.” Scientific Talking Points to Win the Debate.
Smoking Gun #1: Al Gore’s Ice Core CO2 Temperature Chart
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/01/16/how-to-discuss-global-warming-with-a-climate-alarmist-scientific-talking-points-to-win-the-debate/
You can’t use logic to talk someone out of a position that was never based on logic in the first place.
The BBC will claim this was an ‘opinion piece’ by Harrabin and leave it at that. No apology, no correction. Standard practise.
Presenters on the BBC are given carte blanche to say anything they like as long as – in the view of the BBC – it would not mislead the average listener. That, in effect, is what I was told by the BBC Complaints Unit.
Sadly, Alba, you are probably right although GWPF should point out that his comments were made in a news programme and the BBC are tasked to separate news from comment.
For anyone who follows global warming science Harrabin is a face-reddening embarrassment to journalism but, of course, one of the BBC’s lefty golden boys. Listening to his abysmal reports you would think that there is no dissent to the global warming mantra, that everyone agrees that CO2 is an evil that needs to be eradicated and that renewable energy is the answer to everything. This disgraceful episode reported by Anthony is just another in a long line of misleading and unbalanced packages from Harrabin and the BBC.
There’s always newswatch, but personally I’ve given up complaining. Add to that the regular sceptical science trolls in the comment section and they’ve essentially turned it into a propaganda arm for the worst of the alarmist brigade.
What is surprising is that believing anything the BBC says on climate is still the default option, and they never miss a chance for biassed reporting and climate change is always a fy uture problem for whatever environment they are in with no evidence offered of cause and effect. “This can only get worse as climate change occurs”? Up? Down? What Sort? When? Natural or otherwise? Climate change has always occured, etc. NOTHING is changing significan amounts in human lifetimes.
The problem is that the BBC is still revered by too many as the same institution that Lord Reith founded as opposed to the left-wing propaganda outlet it has become in the last few decades. During the years of the Cold War, the oppressed behind the Iron Curtain would risk punishment to listen to news from the BBC as they knew it was more trustworthy than their own sources. Strange how it is now reversed. The BBC as in much of the west, the creeping cancer of the left has taken over. We have in the UK the supposed party of the right, the Conservatives, now behaving as a centre-left bunch barely different from Labour under Blair.
Telling inconvenient truths to the people has never been the policy of our establishment. But they were always covered up before. Any new issue is examined to determine whether it can be exploited by law to profit the rich and powerful in the cash flow that results, at public expense. This includes providing the media with an agenda to follow. Rhetoric is then created to justify the racket. Any relation to technical reality is purely accidental. Opposing it with facts is labelled anti social heresy. This legalised crime model of government prevails across the “developed” world, the alternative reality of modern so called democracy, legalise the crime and keep it non violent. Except in Hispanic countries 😉
Under a Freedom of Information request a few years ago I found ( after battling for a year to get the information out of them) the BBC upheld only 0.014% of 1.2 million complaints over the 5 year period. OFCOM, now the final arbiter of complaints, very much tows the BBC line. The document is available to any who are interested. Don’t hold your breath …
Toes the line
I’d really like to see it. Would it be possible for you to upload it somewhere?
I would be interested to see it.
What people should note as a step forward is that, kicking and screaming of course, the BBC has been forced to provide more information on programmes that get complaints. If 100 complaints are received then they must report this and also report the result of their investigation. A small step to making them more open if we can only get enough complaints sent in.
Paul Matthews has more context on the Harrabin’s fake news on the BBC and exaggerations on Twitter at Cliscep.
https://cliscep.com/2018/01/19/fake-news-from-the-bbc-harrabin-and-stott/
Is Stott the guy from CRU that “invented” the homogenisation farce that is used to “correct” surface temperatures into warming trends?
Spent some time with the Uni NSW climate priests and BOM?
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/people/peter-stott
Stott’s job title includes attribution of climate events to anthropogenic causes. If that’s what you get paid to do, that’s what you will do.
This could have been good for a laugh until one realizes that a lot of greens believe the falsehoods the spotlighted moron spews. I don’t call it GLOBULL WARMING for nothing. Globull warming is in fact a TRUE statement!
Globull warming ? … Let’s take it a step further – GloBULL SMARMing
Any or all of you can excommunicate me at any time or a simple request to cease will be requested.
‘continue’
When I use my own data set and ignore others, I can claim what ever I darn well please.
Therefore, 2017 was a record year for everything!
It was only last month that BBC presenter Kate Humble, in episode 2 of her show, ‘Off the Beaten Track’, warned that the draining of Wale’s central wetlands would result in the release of ‘toxic carbon dioxide’ into the atmosphere.
Did she mean’ toxic’, or ‘essential’? Either way, does she write her own rubbish or just read from a script?
‘Toxic carbon dioxide’ ??? Lord, these talking heads have no concept of absurdity
Let’s see, CO2 is 400ppm in the air, about 40,000 ppm in exhaled breath, and absolutely vital to all life on the planet.
Hard to square that with “toxic”
Unless it’s the exhaled breath of the Patriarchy.
“toxic” is a wonderful word, that you can apply to anything, including air and water.
And, of course, to Kate Humble babbling. She is certainly more toxic than CO2, though.
The Beeb continually propagandise the subject of GlobalWarming on TV & Radio that the General Public have no chance of knowing otherwise; as a scientist I find this very sad.
2017 most certainly a significant remnant of the Blob and El Nino energy release.
Horrorbin has lots of “previous”. Both he and the BBC are incapable of telling the truth when it comes to “climate change”.
“Horrorbin has lots of “previous”.”
In America the phrase would be, “Horrorbin has lots of “priors”.”—where “priors” is cop-talk for “prior convictions.”
“It is therefore untrue to say that “2017 had no heating from El Niño.””
According to the graph shown, there was more time of La Niña conditions than El Niño in 2017. So it would be true that 2017 had no net heating from El Niño.
Look its an obfuscating coprophagist…..
“So it would be true that 2017 had no net heating from El Niño.”
Nick, you stuck a “net” in there……the quote has no net…..big difference
It’s net heating that determines the effect on the average.
That the stupid averaging argument, yet again. With my feet in the freezer and my head in the oven, on average I am comfortably warm. Do you never have anything sensible to say?
Just because it wasn’t an official El Niño year doesn’t mean that temperatures didn’t cross the El Niño thershold. AND temperatures which cross the El Niño threshold certainly have a warming effect.
Since temperatures did cross the official El Niño thershold in Spring and Summer, El Niño DID have an affect on the 2017 temperatures.
Don’t worry. 2018 will more than make up for it. It is cooling everywhere.
From Ulaanbaatar where the wind chill this morning (feels like…) is -52 C.
Exactly.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/figure03.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.pdf
The problem with your graph is you limited it to 5° N/S of the equator. A lot of the warm waters of the 2016 El Nino drifted outside that region due to the lack of any Bjerknes feedback. That was the major cause of the 2017 warming.
Somehow I got the feeling you really aren’t interested in the cause.
“The problem with your graph is you limited it to 5° N/S of the equator. A lot of the warm waters of the 2016 El Nino drifted outside that region due to the lack of any Bjerknes feedback. That was the major cause of the 2017 warming”
Show data for that then.
I have said that the reason that the GMST has not come down after this recent EN as it did after the ’97/’98 one is because the PDO is now +ve (so your “Warm waters … drifted outside …”) could be explained by that. The PDO has more of a long-term effect on GMST than the transient ENSO cycle.
Is why the “hiatus” happened – the prolonged -ve PDO.
When your argument is hottest except for all the cooling you’re already failing.
No. It was hot despite the predominance of La Nina. Must have been something else.
“The newsreader, Huw Edwards, said that 2017 was “the hottest year on record,” insinuating that global temperatures have continued to rise last year.”
Not if this is true (and I haven’t verified)
“Not if this is true”
The newsreader said it, but it isn’t true. Harrabin, in the remainder of the sentence about El Nino not warming the average, said that 2017 was one of the top three, which is true. I can’t see the relevance here though.
When your argument is hottest except for all the cooling you’re already failing.
“When your argument is hottest except for all the cooling you’re already failing.”
Wow!!
The argument is that it was the 3rd warmest year …. and this despite a net cooling contributed by a predominantly La Nina (like) year in the Equatorial Pac.
Full stop.
So you wouldn’t claim the opposite (if true)?
That it was the coolest despit all the warming?
Yeah. Right.
And yes, your argument is failing ….. except of course on here.
Because….
This place is not representative cross-section of the science and it’s review of it.
” it was the 3rd warmest year”
Which is of course total load of BS, because you are talking about a TINY, IRRELEVANT period of time.
Nothing apart from the satellite data , 39 years, is worth even bothering about.
Before that there was some HIGHLY BENEFICIAL warming out of the COLDEST period in 10,000 year
And for the 7000-8000 year before that it was WARMER than now.
The AGW FARCE is a TOTAL FAILURE when put against any real historic reality.
Nick, you are being DISINGENUOUS as always,
You know just enough to KNOW that 2017 contained a significant El Nino effect
So you are being DELIBERATELY untruthful.
The ONLY way you can support your manic AGW fanaticism is by LYING and MIS-INFORMATION.
IT takes several months for el nino/la nina events to go from ocean temps to air temps. The La Nina events were late in the year.
So where does the graph lead the BBC to the statement “The world’s leading climate agencies have said for the first time that global warming caused by humans now dwarfs natural temperature changes”?
So Nick, if you put on 20 lbs after Christmas last year and then settled out and finally lost a few just before this Christmas, you’d be correct to say that there was no period of weight gain in 2017?
No. It says your average for the year worked out OK. If it did.
Nick, gawd, really?
“…no net heating from El Niño”
The quote is: “It is therefore untrue to say that “2017 had no heating from El Niño.”
By your own admission, it had some. “no heating” and “no net heating” have entirely different meanings.
This is why I often think you are a paid troll. Your comment is simply spin. This is almost as stupid as your defense of “death threats” that never occurred.
Harrabin was talking about the average for 2017. That is determined by net heating. The net result of hot times and cool times.
I always thought “silly” worked better than “stupid”, one confers a bad thought process while the other a total lack of intellect.
Over the last year or two, Nick has succeeded in opening his mouth and removing all doubt.
This net was thrown in to catch suckers. Might work better in more shallow waters.
fine…..so if it wasn’t for the El Nino…temps would have been a lot lower….I do agree with Nick on that one
So, the 3-month ENSO conditions occurred during the northern hemisphere early summer and the impact would lag well into fall. Seems like the possible impact should be acknowledged and its impacts would be lagging into the fall months
Horrorbin is WWF/Greenpeace man at the BBC , he used to be Blacks boss and you remember how ‘unbiased ‘ he was and that is before we get the infamous ’28 meeting ‘ In short if you are looking on AGW for truth the you are looking in the wrong place .
Cardinal Harrabin is the BBC’s number one serial liar. He makes sure every possible programme on the BBC contains lies and propaganda about ‘climate change’.
Why is the British public continuing to pay these clowns?
It’s the law! I don’t have a TV or watch live TV or iPlayer so I don’t support them (or Channel 4 and La Newman).
Why pay these clowns? Because if you do not you are liable to a fine of £1000 + legal fees , and if you continue to refuse you will, as dozens have, go to prison (in England , less likely in Scotland).
Precisely, Cathy Newman’s (CH4 is state funded too) wages are paid from money extorted from people on pain of imprisonment. Those in prison for non-payment are disproportionately poor single mothers whose poverty, fear and ignorance leads them to confess to the sin of watching without a licence which is otherwise undetectable despite the mocked-up ‘detector vans’. There has never been a conviction based on a ‘detector van’. Rant over, apologies, see diclaimer above, I don’t need a TV licence since I don’t watch live TV or iPlayer.Test Match Special and The Shipping Forecast, both on radio, only for me!
Some information on this iniquity from ‘The Register’. Over 100,000 women per year end up with criminal records for non-payment. Nearly 100 people per year end up in prison.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/17/70_pc_tv_licensing_convictions_women/
@mikewaite: I’m currently in the late stage of harassment for not having a TV licence, so I can give all you non-Brits a flavour of 21st-century life in our “free country” (snort …) verbatim. Note that, like Nigel S, “I don’t waste my time watching TV – I have much more interesting ways of wasting my time”. “They” have been informed of this numerous times over the last few decades. I do listen to some radio, and download radio programmes (only) from the BBC.
Interestingly, this time around the letters are addressed to me by name, rather than to “The Legal Occupier” as they used to be, despite the fact that, as a long term non-TV user, there is no reason for my name to be on their database at all.
“Dear Mr C,
As you have not responded to our letters yet, you have left us no alternative but to proceed with the final stages of our investigation.
An Officer has been scheduled to visit (address) to find out if TV is being watched, recorded or downloaded illegally. The Officer may visit your property any day of the week, morning or evening.
The information below explains the procedure. You may refer to it during a visit from the Officer.
Yours sincerely”
The “information below” reads:
“What you need to know about the enforcement process.
– We can apply to court for a search warrant to gain access to your property.
– An Officer may interview you under caution in accordance with national criminal law.
– Anything you say to the Officer may be used as evidence in court.
– You risk a fine of up to £1,000 plus any legal costs and/or compensation you may be ordered to pay.
– If your property needs a TV licence, you will still need to buy one.”
Curiously, I have never received demands for proof that I don’t, say, pilot aircraft, or take ships to sea, or anything else I don’t do and don’t have a licence for, but the TV licence people can get court warrants, use anything I say as evidence, blah blah. “Innocent until proved guilty?” Ha!
Steve C: Ignore all that BS, if you’re not watching live TV they can’t get a warrant without lying. Write to deny them the right of access to your property, if they turn up anyway say nothing (or at least the absolute minimum) and deny them access. I got rid of them with this letter (extracts below) written over ten years ago.
‘Your company appears to operate on the principle that failure to have a television licence whatever the circumstances is a criminal offence. However you have no legal or moral right to operate your business in a way that harasses me. If you continue this harassment I shall report it to the Police.
Your employees or agents must not call at my address. This letter is a legal warning that any visits will constitute trespass and harassment. Any assumed right of access to my front door is denied to your employees and agents.
Your employees or agents will not be admitted without a warrant. You will not be able to obtain a warrant unless you provide false information. I am sure that you are aware that the penalties for obtaining a warrant based on false information are severe.’
Courage! (See this site’s Maxim)
The link in the article to the Met Office goes to a page that does NOT have any column headings. Why no headings? — how is that even possible ? I don’t know what I’m looking at.
Here: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/data/current/time_series/HadCRUT.4.6.0.0.annual_ns_avg.txt
Harrabin was once “persuaded” to amend a piece for an activist.
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/noel-sheppard/2008/04/07/global-warming-activist-pressures-bbc-significantly-alter-article
I (finally) got to watch the film ‘Patton’ yesterday afternoon.
Even in a 1970 film, it had mention of climate where at some point (in a North African desert unsurprisingly), one character comments to another:
How can that be, we’ve been told since age 4 and greater that deserts are Hot Places.
So, is not an ocean (Pacific by example) not = A Desert. The landscape is pretty flat and nothing much grows there.
Then along comes ENSO to freshen things up.
To start, lets go with a non El Nino. ENSO neutral, is that right?
East to West winds are piling up warm water up against Australia, pretty much
This, as Bob T constantly drilled into us, creates a fairly deep well of warm water in the Western side of the ocean. (Beside Aus)
But, like pushing rocks up an ever steeper gradient, the thing collapses. The big pile of warm (some may say hot) water effectively ‘does an Oroville’ and flows backwards across the ocean towards the Americas and in doing so, spreads itself out a fair bit. (Warm water will float over colder stuff)
El Nino as I understand it.
Now then, climate scientists will see a (much) larger area of warmer than normal water and this will go into their temperature calculations and create a warmer globe.
BUT.
During the El Nino event proper, a large volume of water with a small surface area (while piled up near Australia) becomes the same volume of water with a much larger surface area than it had previously (When it comes up against The America(s))
Both volumes containing the same amount of energy but because the ocean can only lose heat from its surface, does that not actually mean El Nino is ‘properly’ a cooling event. Earth is losing energy that was previously stored in the ocean (the deep well in the Western Pacific)
Yes the temperature goes up, but it is a net energy loss. Thermodynamically= cooling
Hence where I came in and Patton in the desert – deserts may have high temperatures but they have low amounts of stored energy and hence are actually cold places.
So in actual fact.these people bleating about rising temperatures is actually a VERY scary thing as it represents an overall loss of energy from the ‘Earth System’
Just like the water pile in an El Nino, the thing will collapse. Into cold.
BTW. My little survey of Wunderground PWSs covering what is effectively Central England tell me that 2017 was 8th out of 18 on the scale of warmest to coolest
2017 averaged 10.72
2006 was warmest at 11.56
2010 was coolest at 9.09
At some point you have to call it a form of harassment when these reporters take advantage of people with the assumption that the audience is not well informed. They don’t even punish the child molesters at BBC anyway.
I am sure that they will issue a correction. It will look like this. Whispering the correction when off camera.
A couple of years ago, during an exceptionally mild UK winter, Harrabin referred on his FB page to the remarkably verdant and unseasonal growth of the roses in his garden as evidence of the unprecedented march of global warming assailing the planet. When an ‘off message’ contributor did a ‘drive by’ and politely posted a little excerpt from Samuel Pepys’ Diary to demonstrate how unprecedented Harrabin’s garden growth wasn’t in the annals of UK winter climate history, the heretic mysteriously found themselves unable to make any further blasphemous posts to his page. They don’t like it up ’em do they? Oh, and one of the quotes from the Pepys diary, written some 350 years earlier, that Harrabin seemed to find so unsettling was:
“It is strange what weather we have had all this winter; no cold at all but the ways are dusty and the flyes fly up and down and the rose bushes are full of leaves; such a time of the year as never was known in this world before.”
Samuel Pepys’ Diary, 21st January 1661
And this ‘never known’ mild winter occurred just 2 years after, arguably, the coldest winter ever recorded in England at the absolute nadir of the Little Ice Age. If Mann and Gore had been around then, inevitably, such huge swings in temperature would have been claimed as clear evidence of an anthropogenic climate crisis, no doubt caused by all those huge forests successive monarchs cut down to build the Royal Navy. But, perhaps not, I forgot that Mann got rid of the Little Ice Age didn’t he?
Yep, but what Harrabin actually said was even worse than reported or complained about; he said “CO2 emissions are dwarfing natural trends”.
Complaining to the BBC about false ‘climate change’ reporting? Well good luck with that!
To be fair, the NASA press release was written to be misunderstood or misrepresented. People have been so conditioned to read yet another news article spouting “XXXX was the hottest year ever” that they are bound to skip over the (not including El Nino) caveat. It’s like when the announcer sells the product in a booming voice then in hurried and whispered tones goes over all the legally-required boilerplate.
From the perspective of Harrabin and the BBC, it is not so much a failure of logic, but more a case of the precautionary principle at work. When you’re saving the planet, sometimes you have to pretend that wrong is actually the new right. To avoid political connotations perhaps the BBC might find it easier to merely describe wrong as simply “alt-correct”.