Last month a group of scientists published a paper in Nature stating that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) had shown no decline in strength since the 1960s. Helped by publicity in the Daily Sceptic, the story went viral on social media, although it was largely ignored in narrative-driven mainstream publications. The collapse of the Gulf Stream, a key component of the AMOC, is an important ‘tipping point’ story used to induce mass climate psychosis and make it easier to impose the Net Zero fantasy on increasing resentful and questioning populations. Obviously, reinforcements to back up such an important weaponised scare needed to be rushed to the front and the BBC has risen to the challenge. The AMOC “appears to be getting weaker” state BBC activists Simon King and Mark Poynting. Their long article is a classic of its kind in trying to deflect scientific findings that blow holes in the ‘settled’ narrative.
In the Nature paper, three scientists working out of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution stated that they came to their conclusion showing the stability of the AMOC after examining heat transfers between the sea and the atmosphere. It was noted that the AMOC had not weakened from 1963 to 2017, “although substantial variability exists at all latitudes”. This variability is the basis for much of the Gulf Stream fear-mongering. The BBC notes that the presence of larger grains of sediment on the ocean floor suggests the existence of stronger currents, pointing to a “cold blob” in the Atlantic that appears to have cooled of late. Thin pickings, it might be thought, to run an article titled ‘Could the UK actually get colder with global warming?’ The Woods Hole scientists note that records “are not long enough to differentiate between low frequency variability and long-term trends”.
The Nature story is not the only recent scientific finding that suggests the Day After Tomorrow alarm about the AMOC is a tad overdone. In 2023, Georgina Rannard of the BBC reported that “scientists say” a weakening Gulf Stream could collapse as early as 2025. There was no later reporting, needless to say, of subsequent work from a group of scientists at the US weather service NOAA that discovered the huge flow of Gulf Stream tropical water through the Florida Straits had remained “remarkably stable” for over 40 years.
Of course the BBC, along with most of the legacy media, has form as long as your arm when it comes to producing deflective copy seemingly designed to head off inconvenient scientific findings. The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is the largest and best observed collection of tropical coral in the world. Any sign of ill health is a boon for green propogandists who argue that warming measured in tenths of a degree centigrade will destroy an organism that has survived for millions of years in temperatures between 24-32°C. For the last three years, coral on the GBR has hit recent record levels with scarcely a mention in mainstream media. Days before last year’s record was announced, the places where journalism goes to die were full of stories from a paper that conveniently noted climate change posed an “existential threat” to the reef. “The science tells us that the GBR is in danger and we should be guided by the science,” Professor Helen McGregor from the University of Wollongong told Victoria Gill of BBC News. Professor McGregor’s statement was an opinion readily broadcast by the BBC, a courtesy that does not appear to have been extended to the fact that coral on the GBR was at its highest level since detailed observations began.
It beggars belief that the BBC and all its fellow alarmists can run this stuff with a straight face knowing that crucial scientific information is missing from their reports. Important findings from reputable sources emerge about the current stability of the Gulf Stream and the response is to blow more smoke around that raises wholly unnecessary fears.
The main concern is that the AMOC “could suddenly switch off”, state King and Poynting. To back up their statement and provide the inevitable political message they note the comment of Matthew England, Professor of Oceanography at the University of South Wales: “We’re playing a bit of a Russian roulette game. The more we stack up the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, the more we warm the system, the more chance we have of an AMOC slowdown and collapse.” Now look what you plebs have done with your steak chomping, gas-guzzling central heating and naff holidays in Benidorm, is an unpleasant subtext here.
Of course, keen and dedicated followers of climate alarmists will note a master craftsman at work. In 2023, aided by 35 million computer hours and using an improbable rise in temperature of up to 4°C in less than 80 years, Professor Matthews suggested that there was a dramatic slowdown in deep Antarctica ocean currents. Melting Antarctica ice could lead to a 40% slowdown in just 30 years. The fact that Antarctica has barely warmed in 70 years is ignored.
Who needs Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters when we have the BBC.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Well, BBC, like any well thought out propaganda channel cherrypicks and highlights through headlines. The general public usually does not read beyond that. It is the sheer number of headline grabbers that steer the public into thinking a certain way. The official fact checkers never check actual facts. Most unofficial channels like WUWT do.
You have to remember that most state workers and politicians get their information from mainstream sources. The rest goes into the ‘misinformation’ bag, to be dismissed out of hand..
I’ve been saying for years that sites such as WUWT provide much better and much faster peer review than do any of the so called “scientific” journals.
Some of our favorite trolls, also.
Perhaps, the best thing the BBC can do is to desist on reporting on all matters to do with climate.
There is always a bias towards threatening imminent climate catastrophe by distorting or ignoring the facts. I have rarely read anything from the BBC on climate that is anything different – their latest scare is that this January was the hottest on record, despite record cold in North America and the UAH data showing it definitely was not.
Maybe this report on the Gulf Stream is a step towards reporting reality, but I am not going to hold my breath
The BBC highlights what they want to sell. It usually trickles down from 2 sources: AP and REUTERS, although the BBC have their own activists working hand in hand w a multitude of affiliates.
When AP and REUTERS consider something important you can bet safely that all the msm will report it all at once ( plus the subsequent question: where do those 2 main providers get their headlines from?). I first became aware of it sometime before the Iraq war with a multitude of reports about the imminent threat of Saddam sending weapons of mass destruction to the west.And remember Colin Powell? Anyway, what i did was that i went to the newsstand and look at the broadsheets. They ALL had it prominant on the frontpage. My actions were triggered by Chomski’s ‘manufacturing consent’. Ive been a skeptic ever since. I must admit i havent been as skeptical as i should during C.
But climate alarmism is so dumb i am reluctant to discuss it in public.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyezjwnx5ko
The best thing the Reform Party can do when they win power in Parliament is to privatize the BBC and free the millions of Brits conscripted into paying for the BBC and their crap leftist ideology.
I enjoyed the fantasy movie “Day after Tomorrow”. I saw it in Kiev when it just appeared. I think the title in Russian was “Posle Zaftra”. It was dubbed in Russian, no subtitles. It had everything: supersonic ice blocks killing pedestrians, wolves raiding in Manhattan, the Royal family frozen in -125C air. It even had ‘Bilbo Baggins’, in a different role, deciding to drink the scotch to postpone being deep frozen rather running the generator with the last quart.
Scientifically, it was, of course, ‘Hollywood’, and even admitted it. Naturally, it had the tear jerker theme of the child cancer patient saved by evacuation to southern Mexico. The list of miracles went on.
Meteorologically, it was insane, but as mindless entertainment, it was fine. I especially liked the line ” Evacuate everyone below this line – as the hero drew a line across the USA at about 38 N latitude – everyone above the line is already dead.”
It had one astute line. The now President saying that it was a mistake to assume that we could continue to consume our natural resources without consequences.
Given the planet’s natural resources are not unlimited, there is truth in that closing statement.
The movie was based on a piece of scifi, “The Coming Global Superstorm” published in 1999.
I have that book. I had read it long before “The Day After Tomorrow” came out. The movie was a Hollywood Superstorm. No basis in reality.
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, the loathsome and traitorous former Prime Minister of the UK should have defunded the Marxist cesspool that is the BBC when he had the opportunity to do so.
Of course being a useless sack of shlt, he didn’t.
I’m not even sure Farage will do it if he gets the opportunity. Just firing the people at the top might work though.
Alpha – you might recall that he was rather preoccupied with a Covid pandemic and needed to keep the Beeb onside in order to get his lockdown propaganda out there…
Not to mention the little head versus big head conflict. Unfortunately the little head won.
Trump is pulling out $3+million funding from BBC.
One has to wonder what we will see next.
Bad enough the money being given to US based media (WTF with that?), but BBC? Why?
To have more media in US pocket? Money is never handed out to media for free, it is for advancing some agenda.
Has he moved from the University of New South Wales to the University of [Old] South Wales?
It was New South Wales, until it was homogenised with Victoria….
Don’t worry too much about names in Australia. Victoria will undoubtedly become Ulurula or some such meaningless assemblage of letters before too long, it is a tradition apparently….
Any scientist who isn’t a sceptic isn’t a scientist.
————
OT, slightly. Why do so many articles here, and elsewhere, repeat the falsehood rather than the rejection?
The first words of the headline to this article are: “BBC Rides to the Rescue.”
“BBC repeats climate lies again” would be my version.
Most people skim headlines and don’t read articles in full. In my view a good headline should summarise the article.
Humour is so hard to recognize.
Or, as a minimum, accurately reflect the article’s basics.
Yeah but…. any intelligent person who reads the BBC knows that it is sarcasm.
Climate is but one subject where BBC partiality shines.
The Times and the Financial Times are also both climate worriers and both banned me from making comments that cast doubt on the climate doom narrative.
The FT vies with the Guardian for first prize.
It would appear Ofcom has a public duty when it comes to BBC output and, like much of so called officialdom in the UK, is not fit for purpose. Value for money is rarely seen in the UK these days which is another reason why the decline of the BBC is actually a sign that Auntie has been following the popular politics route to irrelevant half truths rather than searching for, finding and broadcasting whole truths. Just consider its love for anything related to global warming and the human self destruction narrative and total ignorance of much stuff that goes against that grain..
The BBC has not been a reliable purveyor of the truth for at least three decades (you’d be better seeking confirmation from another independent source) and that decline has gotten worse since the increased size of its online content where standards are even lower than usual when running live. The BBC’s contemporary standards are a very small fraction of what they once were because it tends to run with the general media mob e.g. Auntie loved Biden and couldn’t get enough of him.
Miliband on BBC R4…
”the growth agenda and net zero are perfectly aligned.
The illusion of energy security using fossil fuels
Renewables – onshore, offshore and solar – are far cheaper
Lie after lie after lie
Ed Miliband has dropped his opposition to building a third runway at Heathrow Airport.
The Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary threatened to resign over expansion of the airport in 2009 and voted against the plan in 2018.
But he said this morning “I do support what the Government is doing” and that he would “ abide by collective responsibility” on the issue. – The Telegraph
The alternative to building a 3rd runway is to either force jets to fly further to other airports and then passengers get some kind of ground transportation to where they really wanted to go. As well as keeping planes in the air longer, circling above the airport waiting for a landing slot to open up.
Both will result in more, not less, fossil fuels being burned.
But there is Stansted, and Gatwick, both with rail connections to the heart of London. Of course, attempting to increase traffic at Gatwick without building another runway is not a great idea. But is Stansted under utilized?
The problem for us Yanks flying to London and then on into Europe is that many of the flights to Europe that used to go from LHR now use Gatwick, necessitating a long transfer between airports. Makes changing airlines at LAX or DFW look easy.
Chuckle. His threat to resign was likely met with a chorus of “Yes, please.”
Very telling – “collective” responsibility.
On BBC Breakfast this AM, Milliwatt is interviewed regarding the plan to make landlords improve the energy efficiency of their properties which “will save tenants £250 per year in energy costs”
To be fair to Charlie Stayt, he did question Milliwatt about the economics of his claim by referring to an earlier conversation with the Chief Executive of the National Residential Landlords Association who had said that the cost of what was proposed would be 20 billion pounds, that there was no way that it could be done in less than 10 years and that absent significant grants the full cost will be passed on to tenants.
Milliwatts reply?
MRDA (Mandy Rice-Davies Applies):
“He would say that, wouldn’t he”
If that’s the best he’s got, God help us.
It is
Many residential landlords will try to sell up because it is architecturally infeasible to reduce the energy consumption of their houses to the required level. Of course mortgage companies will make it hard to buy them, for the same reason. Landlords face penalties for not meeting the standards so they will turf out sitting tenants (section 21) to delay their own inevitable bankruptcy. I foresee increasing homelessness with “stranded asset” houses standing empty.
If there are ever any authentic climate refugees they will be the erstwhile tenants of those houses. Possibly followed by their erstwhile landlords.
Wow! We did not have to wait long. Not five minutes ago I heard the “Minister for Energy Consumers”, Miatta Fahnbulleh, announcing the government’s intention to force private landlords to upgrade their houses to EPC category C by 2030.
“It will save residents £240 off their energy bills.”
It will save them a heck of a lot more than that. They won’t have any enegy bills at all once they’re homeless! Alternatively it will cost them a heck of lot more in rent if they are lucky enough to be able to find new, compliant accommodation, in the bidding war resulting from restricted supply.
Beyond insane.
Edit: She has a degree in politics, philosophy, and economics. Economics no less. And a PhD in economic development from the LSE.
The climate propaganda department at the BBC, most accurately defined as, The BBC. will literally leave no stone unturned when it comes to looking for climate crisis. Little rocks versus big rocks on the sea bed being a fine (no pun intended, honest) actual example of their fixation with climate.
Because chaotic variation is a concept that is not widely understood (particularly within the BBC) every breeze that passed these islands and every warm (rare) day requires the so called experts at the BBC, to weave those normal variations into their rich tapestry of climate propaganda.
The big question is why are they so fixated? The BBC is a state owned entity, via a mandated licence fee on all users, something we normally refer to as taxation.
It does not add to their income by being downright wrong and knowingly partisan. So why do they insist on beating the climate alarmist’s drum?
If anyone knows the answer I would love to hear it.
The BBC was captured a long time ago
Yes, maybe occupied by the forces of ignorance.
They clearly believe the Woke will inherit the Earth.
As some of you may have noticed, I’ve been taking an interest in the educational background of journalists who write about climate. I don’t have enough data yet, but of the fifty or so at the BBC I’ve looked at, over two thirds have no scientific qualification at all. Mostly they have (in order) degrees in literature, history, politics, philosophy, “climate studies”, and there is even one with a degree in rhetoric. There are a few with science-adjacent degrees such as geography.
There are just four with an actual BSc (two chemistry, one physics,and—because I am in a generous mood, one meteorology).
In a way this is not surprising. Journalism (let us call it that) is all about writing. People who have a facility for writing but no other saleable skill will naturally be keen to become journalists. On the other hand, no one with a degree in, say, high-voltage power engineering is likely to want to fill their already busy day by writing sceptical articles about the faint utility of “grid scale” battery storage.
You could do the same analysis about the educational background of politicians and civil servants. They are all from the same arts background. Disproportionately from PPE and Classics backgrounds. The BBC is part of the same establishment. They come from the Oxford Debating Society and the families of those from the Oxford Debating Society.
It’s the same problem.
No maths. No statistics.
No understanding of the difference between opinion and evidence (look out for that in news interviews and political debates). The French symbolists have destroyed imperialism among that set.
It is most obvious when a technical policy issue arises. It’s not that the arts graduates cannot understand the narrative, It’s that they cannot analyse the risk.
Remember Y2K? It was a real problem. It needed to be fixed. But how big a problem was it?
The UK spent a fortune on trying to avoid any impact at all. We had a decade where every system was updated and tested. And it worked. We had no problems. But resources that could have been spent elsewhere had been diverted into fighting the Millennium Bug.
South Korea fixed a few key systems and spent sod all on anything else. They knew that most of their problems could be fixed by turning it off and on again on January 1st or eventually by routine upgrades. They also got lucky.
So which country’s establishment was more justified in their risk assessment? The Greek and Latin scholars of Oxford or the executives from Samsung?
We can see the problem. The BBC is just another branch of it. We used to send the idiots of the well-bred families in to the church. Now it’s the media.
03:14:07 19 January 2038 is coming…
Immediately followed by 00:00:00 1 January 1970 🙂
Ah, the timeless classic 2038.
Will there still be any UNIX[TM] systems out there using a signed 32-bit time_t?
With a bit of luck I’ll be able to get some lucrative consulting work in another decade to work on the “2038 problem”.
Di you mean “imperialism” or “empiricism”.
Also, “[w]e used to send the idiots of the well-bred families in to the church”. Also used to send them into the military.
I did. Of course I did. Stupidly, I typed in a quick rant.
Good spot.
Science (the real kind) is hard. Engineering is hard. Math is hard (and racist). Those who can’t hack it, and those unwilling to try, end up in other fields of endeavour. But they still don’t understand, or recognize, science or engineering. Some, as outlined above, become journalists, and write about that which they know nothing.
While in engineering school, I remember all the taunts by the Liberal Arts or Humanities majors about us engineers. The difference between what we were studying, and what they were pursuing, was, and is, that in science and engineering, there are right answers, often just one, while in all those other studies, everything is relative.
Obviously, I prefer engineering, especially when looking for Truth.
Unfortunately in today’s environment, advocacy journalism has replaced objective journalism.
At least their USAID grant $$$ are on the chopping block. Why we across the pond ever subsidized the rag is a matter for investigation and prosecution!
The BBC is a media channel like any other, that thrives on scare stories. There just isn’t any mileage in admitting that a 1.5c rise in global mean temperature isn’t catastrophic; and that the Gulf Stream is doing just fine! The problem of course, is that the grand old BBC claims to uphold the truth by delivering fair, transparent and unbiased reporting… 😂
Investigating and exposing The Narrative for what it is, and following the money trail of those espousing it, could be big headline news.
“Investigating and exposing The Narrative for what it is, and following the money trail of those espousing it, could be big headline news.”
Yes, it would be indeed. However, as things stand, the mainstream media have played their part in delivering the CAGW agenda. I know several very reasonable people and organisations that believe implicitly that it’s a major problem. Meanwhile, the manufactured scare stories provide a constant gravy train for the media, who are able to portray every extreme weather event as something extraordinary. And while CO2 and warming keep on rising in tandem (kind of!)… so the charade will last.
Ocean currents are easily monitored, and in fact have been monitored regularly for hundreds of years, as any mariner or boater well knows. The data gathering has been improving, of course, in recent decades due to technological advances, especially satellite reporting, but any mariner can tell exactly what the currents are doing by comparing speeds through water with positions calculated by whatever means (GPS being the easiest, of course, but also star navigation and in coastal areas, triangulation on fixed features like headlands, light houses, etc.). And in recent decades a network of buoys both fixed and floating that report data via satellites.
With all that mass of data that represents a dataset literally hundreds of years long and from hundreds of thousands of data sources, why is anyone even talking about models?
We KNOW what the ocean currents are doing … and we’ve always known there is variability in ocean currents.
It beggars belief that the BBC and all its fellow alarmists can run this stuff with a straight face
Not really as it seems par for the course with lefties masquerading as journalists-
‘They lied’: CBS under fire for ‘deceptively editing’ Kamala Harris’ interview with 60 Minutes
The dumb schmucks and deplorables can’t appreciate what Utopia is all about without lying like pigs in manure to get there.
“impose the Net Zero fantasy on increasing resentful and questioning populations.”
Typo, should be “increasingly”.
Alphabet/Google/YouTube is still on “misinformation”.
Apparently, mentioning Michael Mann, red noise, or the vanishing Little Ice Age draws their “moderators”. Which was ironic, as the thread was about censorship.
Government funding of various “news outlets” is a recent foofraw, and obviously those governments did so for a reason. The BBC is openly government funded, so one would expect them to take the government position on whatever.
Studies show that telling stories about impending Armageddon sell.
There has been a popular book around for a couple of thousand years that says exactly that.
We are all going to die. The only question is when. Hard to argue with success.
As I pointed out in another thread, we have plenty of evidence that the AMOC does not switch off due to warming.
The Medieval, Roman and Minoan periods were all warmer than it is now. But none of the proxies we rely on for those reconstructions show any sudden cold snaps in Europe that could be attributed to collapse of the AMOC. In addition, had such a thing actually happened, we would have plenty of historical records because that sort of event would have caused massive crop failure, starvation, deaths from cold and disease.
As we have no such proxy or historical records from times much warmer than now, it is pretty safe to assume that no such collapse did, or will in the future, occur.
Well that and for the earth to stop spinning on its axis and/or the sun stop shining since those are the processes that ultimately drive the AMOC.
Pick one, I will be happy to put money on either if there’s some fool to be found stupid enough to take the other side of the bet.
Light Bulb Moment.
What if we crowdsourced some funding, and challenged various climate scientists predictions with a betting proposal?
Like a press release (which I have no idea how to do or how to get attention to it, perhaps Heartland or someone like that) stating that we are willing to bet $1,000 at odds of 100:1 that the AMOC does not collapse in the next 20 years. All the scientists need to do to have a crack at $100,000 is publicly accept the bet and put up $1,000
None of them will take it of course. Then a second press release pointing out that not one scientist would put their money where their mouth is.
Good news is no news.
No news is bad news.
Bad news is great news and it sells papers and generates ad revenues.
How to sway public opinion?
Fear and Anger with Fear being predominant.
Large font headlines have an intrinsic fear value, too.
Scan and Scroll was defined some 20 odd years ago in the Lansing State Journal.
Basically, it takes advantage of reader psychology and limited attention span.
It gets readers attention with the headline.
The readers believe they get get everything from the first couple of sentences in the opening paragraph.
Readers then scroll onto the next story without reading the entire piece.
It allows media writers to bury the Rosanna Rosannadanna “Never mind!” deep in the article, usually in the bottom 25% of the writeup, where their eyes will never venture.
After all, computers do not lie and if it is written it must be truthful, accurate, and verified. Or so we were raised to believe.
For what it is worth, Elon Musk’s team found USAID monies going to NGOs and hence to the BBC.
I haven’t seen a total, yet.
I suspect the BBC is going to be a tad short of funds this year.
Watch for the BBC to try and make up their loss by raising fees.