From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
You may recall this BBC report from last summer:
Human-induced climate change made recent extreme heat in the US south-west, Mexico and Central America around 35 times more likely, scientists say.
The World Weather Attribution (WWA) group studied excess heat between May and early June, when the US heatwave was concentrated in south-west states including California, Nevada and Arizona.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czvvqdg8zxno
I complained at the time that the WWA claims were presented as “factual”, rather than output from computer models. Furthermore the actual historical data showed the WWA claims to be false. (See my post here).
I have just received this response from the BBC:
As I understand your email’s complaint it is that the headline presents the findings of the scientists’ study as a fact.
Having reviewed the article, we believe the headline should have included quotation marks around the scientists claim.
The headline has been changed to read: Climate change made US and Mexico heatwave ‘35 times more likely’
We have also added a note at the bottom of the article to acknowledge the change.
This is the correction they refer to:
In its own way this is quite a remarkable admission by the BBC – that they now accept that weather attribution models cannot be regarded as FACTUAL
I intend to pursue this with the ECU on two grounds:
1) That a obscure correction on an article published last June will not be seen by anybody. Instead a full correction needs to be logged on the BBC Complaints website
2) Now the BBC admits weather attribution is not based on facts, data or evidence, all future BBC reports quoting it must carry on warning notice to this effect.
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Facts and the BBC are perfect strangers
More like neighbors who absolutely hate each other.
:”Scientists” on the Climate gravy train say lots of things in order to keep that gravy train rolling along.
The “scientists” quoted by the BBC in the headline are actually pseudoscientists. It is impossible to attribute any weather event to global warming. The vast majority of climate scientists know that the whole field of attributing weather events to global warming is pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo.
pseudoscientists
More like clairvoyants and mediums
Not even mediums. They are well below average.
Clairvoyants and mediums have a better track record.
Your horoscope for today is…
Copy paste for all of them.
Climastrology falls into what is called Grenzwirtschaft, “border science” in German, or what Richard Feynman called “cargo cult science”. Belief systems that superficially resemble real science, but are rejecting or ignorant of what matters with actual science. Apologists for Young Earth Creationism fall into that class.
Alchemy. Like turning lead into gold because they are both so similar. Models and reality are similar except when they aren’t..
Oh no: this blows a hole in my cast-iron rule to reverse anything the BBC states about climate. My only escape is to refer to ‘the exception that proves the rule’.
Well, so even the BBC is finally getting to where all ‘real’ scientists are and have been for decades and all such have been since last November when the so called Climate Emergency was declared to be at an end:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/19/climate-scientists-officially-declare-climate-emergency-at-an-end/
35 times- not 34 or 36- exactly 35 and they know that for a fact! /s
I’m sure if pressed, the authors of this “study” would state something like 35.053 times more likely. More precision is a strategy they use to obscure the lack of accuracy.
“obscure the lack of
accuracyreality.”Fixed.
Roger Pielke Jr. posted a new article for his “Weather Attribution Alchemy” series on the WWA methodology just 9 days ago, which started with the following warming :
It comes to conclusions about the “significance” of WWA’s press releases similar to those of the ATL article, but by a different route.
One of the commenters in there states that Tim Barnett and Ben Santer wrote a paper that supposedly verifies the attribution claim: “Thus, the RECENT research supports and strengthens the IPCC Third Assessment Report conclusion that “most of the global warming over the past 50 years is likely due to the increase in greenhouse gases.””
In my eyes everything in regards to climate is based on attribution. Sometimes i find it hard to distinguish between ‘believable’ and ‘non believable’ attribution.
In regards to Co2 is it zero, just above zero, a bit more, a fair bit more, IPCC more?
I dont care, simply because i dont think it’s an important issue..
Homewood ==> Go get ’em, pal. You can refer them to Pielke Jr.’s excellent series on Weather attribution studies.
There are more posts in the series, up through six I beleive.
“Scientists say…”
Stop reading.
Notice the absence of “our most vulnerable,” the common emotionalism.
How can the models be wrong? They are showing what they were designed to show.
/sarc
Wow! Paul Homewood actually managed to get the BBC to correct something, albeit with a mealy-mouthed correction.
This type of correction is a bit like apologising with the words “I’m sorry if …”
Nice work Paul.
A more realistic headline would be:
“Advocacy group, using climate modelling, makes claim that climate change made US and Mexico heatwave 35 times more likely.”
If extreme heat is 35 times more likely, then once in a generation extremes should be happening every year. And it is also accelerating uncontrolably, so really we ought to see it surpassed most years.
If they don’t, will scientists retract their attribution?