Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
I was in the middle of writing up the story of the heatwave and the supposed record June temperature set at Class 5 junk station Santon Downham, when lo and behold three days after the event the Met Office “discovered” an even higher temperature in Norfolk on the Friday!
Amazingly Lingwood, near Norwich, was nearly half a degree hotter than even Santon Downham, which should set alarm bells ringing:
Both are junk Class 5 sites, but Lingwood is truly worse than junk, as Ray Sanders has diligently revealed at Tallbloke.
As Ray notes, the weather station is just yards north of the edge of a thick wood, apparently in someone’s back garden:
The winds were from the south on Friday, so that bank of trees acted as a very efficient sun trap, preventing any air circulation. It is also surrounded on the other three sides by a tall hedge.
It really is difficult imagining a worse site for measuring temperatures.
Lingwood really does sum up how bad the Met Office’s temperature network is. In fact, it has gone beyond descriptions such as “bad” or “poor”. It is now corrupt, in the same way as the Soviets manipulated statistics for political purposes.
The Met Office keep these sites going, and even open new ones, because they need the artificially high temperatures they produce for political purposes.
Their excuse that it is hard to find pristine sites is hogwash. I could drive out of Norwich and within ten minutes find plenty of open fields, perfect for meteorological purposes.
I’m away at the mo, so my full analysis will be published in the next day or so. That is, as long as the Met Office don’t miraculously find an even hotter place in the meantime!
The report states”But punishing weather conditions linked to climate change have eroded so much of the village’s soft sandy rock “ In fact coastal erosion has been taking place in Happisburgh for thousands of years. There are well established historical links for this fact, for instance: http://happisburgh.org.uk/ccag/history/ The British Geological Study in their 2006 study on Happisburgh erosion states: “It is likely that the Norfolk cliffs have been eroding at the present rate for about the last 5000 years” https://www.bgs.ac.uk/case-studies/coastal-erosion-at-happisburgh-norfolk-landslide-case-study/ The recent increase in erosion is due to fact that sea defences built in the 1950s, which worked well, have lately fallen into disrepair. Your claim of “punishing weather conditions” also does not stand up to scrutiny. The Met Office have recently said that “There’s no evidence of a trend in storminess because of climate change [in the UK]”: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/press-office/news/weather-and-climate/2022/2022-provisionally-warmest-year-on-record-for-uk And the Met Office’s own charts clearly show that the frequency and intensity of storms in the UK has actually declined since the 1990S: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/image-1.png Sea levels on the East Coast have been rising at a steady rate since the mid 19thC. There is no evidence of recent acceleration. https://www.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=170-053 About half of the sea level rise along the Norfolk coast, about 1mm a year, is caused by the land sinking, something which has been occurring since the Ice Age: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/image-61.png Nowhere in the article is there any mention of the above facts. Consequently readers will have been badly misinformed, and led into thinking that coastal erosion is all due to modern, man-made global warming.
The first response was obviously written by the office junior, which I refused to accept. I have just received the second formal response:
I appreciate you may not believe there is a link between coastal erosion and climate change however many scientists and experts would disagree. Within the article, we quoted a spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as saying: “We recognise the threat from climate change and sea level rise, which is why we are investing a record £5.2bn over six years in around 2,000 flood and coastal erosion schemes to better protect communities across England,” The LSE’s Grantham Research Institute released a paper on this in 2021 which says: “Climate change is causing sea level rise, which is increasing the risk of flooding around the UK’s coastline. It is also increasing coastal erosion. Both of these hazards pose a risk to people and the environment. …The major impacts of sea level rise occur during high tides and storms, causing flooding along coastlines and estuaries.” The LSE paper further says: “Sea level rise can also increase coastal erosion because waves can extend further up and along beaches and cliffs. Erosion is happening faster along coastlines made from softer sediments, notably on the East coast of England”– which is where Happisburgh is sited. You have cited a BGS survey from 2006. As you suggested, it does indeed say “It is likely that the Norfolk cliffs have been eroding at the present rate for about the last 5000 years…” However it goes on to say: “…future predictions of sea-level rise and storm frequency due to climate change are likely to have a profound impact on coastal erosion and serious consequences for the effectiveness of coastal protection and sea defence schemes in East Anglia in the near future.” It also states: “Sea-level rise and climate change, including increased storminess, may also increase the rate of erosion.” The BGS survey was conducted 17 years ago in 2006, since when knowledge about climate change has moved on. What it predicted then does indeed seem to be happening. We reported in our article that During the last 20 years, 34 homes have crumbled into the water in Happisburgh because of coastal erosion. I am sorry if you were disappointed by our coverage however I do not believe there has been any breach of our Guidelines relating to editorial values and standards. I would however like to thank you for taking the time to write in and share your views with us.
So I have now sent my complaint up to the Executive Complaints Unit, with this reply:
Your response implies that the rate of sea level rise and storminess have increased since 2006, when the BGS stated that “It is likely that the Norfolk cliffs have been eroding at the present rate for about the last 5000 years”
There is no evidence for this. In terms of sea levels, the rate of rise has actually slowed in the period:
You quote DEFRA on the future threat of sea level rise, but the data shows that has not happened yet.
And as my original complaint noted, the Met Office have recently confirmed that storminess has not increased either. Their charts actually show a decline since the 1990s.
Your comment that “During the last 20 years, 34 homes have crumbled into the water in Happisburgh because of coastal erosion” is utterly irrelevant, as homes have been lost to the sea for centuries.
Above all you offer no evidence that the rate of erosion has increased since 2006. This is obviously crucial to your claim that climate change is having an increased effect on erosion.
Unless you can prove that the rate of erosion has increased since 2006, the BGS statement remains true, that “the Norfolk cliffs have been eroding at the present rate for about the last 5000 years”. This in turn therefore invalidates your report’s claim that “punishing weather conditions linked to climate change have eroded so much of the village’s soft sandy rock that her house is now the last one before the cliff edge”.
Whatever role modern climate change may have played, it is a fact that most of the erosion is due to geological forces which have been taking place for thousands of years.
It is grossly misleading not to mention this fact. It is also inaccurate to claim that climate change is having an increasing effect, as your reponses state.
The BBC’s coverage of climate change and related policy issues, such as energy policy, has long been of serious and widespread concern. There have been numerous instances of factual errors, bias and omission of alternative views to the BBC’s narrative.
The BBC’s coverage of climate change and related policy issues, such as energy policy, has long been of serious and widespread concern. There have been numerous instances of factual errors, bias and omission of alternative views to the BBC’s narrative.
Our 2022 paper, Institutional Alarmism, provided many examples. Some led to formal complaints, later upheld
However, many programmes and articles escaped such attention, though we believed they were equally biased and misleading. They include:
The third most active hurricane season
In December 2021, BBC News reported that “The 2021 Atlantic hurricane season has now officially ended, and it’s been the
third most active on record”.
It was nothing of the sort. There were seven Atlantic hurricanes in 2021, and since 1851 there have been 32 years with a higher count.
The article also made great play of the fact that all of the pre-determined names had been used up, implying that hurricanes are becoming more common. They failed to explain, however, that with satellite technology we are now able to spot hurricanes in mid-ocean that would have been missed before.
Hurricanes: are they getting more violent?
Shortly after Hurricane Ian in September 2022, a BBC “Reality Check” claimed “Hurricanes are among the most violent
storms on Earth and there’s evidence they’re getting more powerful”. The video offered absolutely no data or evidence to back up this claim, which contradicted the official agencies.
For instance, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) state in their latest review:
“There is no strong evidence of century-scale increasing trends in U.S. landfalling hurricanes or major hurricanes. Similarly for
Atlantic basin-wide hurricane frequency (after adjusting for observing capabilities), there is not strong evidence for an increase
since the late 1800s in hurricanes, major hurricanes, or the proportion of hurricanes that reach major hurricane intensity.
The IPCC came to a similar conclusion about hurricanes globally in their latest Assessment Review. However, the BBC
article failed to mention any of this.
The Norfolk village crumbling into the sea
Coastal erosion in Norfolk has been a go-to issue for the BBC’s climate change propagandists. In January 2023, a BBC News
reporter visited Happisburgh, one of the villages affected, and spoke to a resident. The report claimed that “punishing weather
conditions linked to climate change have eroded so much of the village’s soft sandy rock that her house is now the last one before
the cliff edge”.
In fact, the coast in that part of Norfolk has been retreating for thousands of years, for reasons that are geological rather
than climatalogical. According to the British Geological Society: “It is likely that the Norfolk cliffs have been eroding at the present
rate for about the last 5000 years.”
The historical record also clearly details the loss of large chunks of the village to the sea since the Middle Ages. Following
a complaint, the BBC have been unable to offer any evidence for their claim.
Heat pumps are much cheaper to run
In BBC world, all renewable and low carbon technologies are wonderful. In October 2021, BBC News claimed that ‘heat pumps
are much cheaper to run’ than gas boilers. There is no truth in this, as the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit was finally forced to admit 16 months later.
Quite why it took them so long to correct such a blatantly obvious error is a mystery.
Svalbard: the fastest warming place on Earth
In October 2022, the BBC published a long report on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, reporting that ‘the temperature in
Svalbard has jumped 4C [sic] in the past 50 years’.
However, they failed to point out that temperatures in that part of the world plunged between the 1950s and 70s, and are now only about a degree higher than at the start of the 20th century.
Pakistan floods: one third of country is under water
Reporting on the dreadful floods in Pakistan in summer 2022, the BBC stated: “One-third of Pakistan has been completely submerged by historic flooding, its climate minister says.”
A quick map check would have told the reporter that this claim was simply absurd, as most of Pakistan is covered by mountains
and deserts. A subsequent BBC programme, More Or Less, admitted the claim was false, and estimated that the real figure was
about 10 percent. Incredibly though, Lord Deben, Chair of the Committee on Climate Change, made exactly the same false claim in a BBC interview in January 2023. The BBC interviewer failed to challenge him.
Puff piece for solar power
“Queen Elizabeth Prize: Solar team wins prestigious engineering award”, was written in February this year, with the usual over-the-top praise for how wonderful solar power is and claiming that its uptake is rocketing. To illustrate its message, it used a graph showing share of power capacity.
Readers seeing it would naturally have believed that solar power is now a significant contributor to the energy mix. Unfortunately, the BBC forgot to explain that capacity and electricity generation are two different things, and that because solar power only produces a small fraction of its capacity (just 11% in the UK), it still only supplies 3% of the world’s electricity.
Extreme weather is the norm
The BBC uncritically reported the World Meteorological Organization’s latest claims that ‘extreme weather events are the new normal’. Yet this idea contradicts successive reviews from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Moreover, just a
month before the BBC ran the story, an authoritative study had concluded that there was no clear positive trend in extreme
events, such as floods, droughts, tropical cyclones or tornadoes.
Bee-eaters ‘worrying sign of climate change’
Last summer a few bee-eaters (see Figure 2) turned up in Norfolk, to the delight of twitchers. But for the BBC this news was worrying, as they reported: Rare ‘rainbow birds’ trying to breed in the UK was a worrying sign of how our climate is changing.
Pushed northwards by climate change, these exotic birds will likely become established summer visitors in the future, having been an early and unmissable sign in the past two decades that the nature and climate emergency has reached our shores. 18
In fact, as any half-knowledgable bird watcher would have told the BBC, bee-eaters have frequently visited England in the past. These sightings have been very carefully recorded in British bird books, as far back as 1793. Indeed, one archive alone lists 80
sightings between 1793 and 1957.
Trees threatened by climate change
According to the BBC, a study has found that many trees in cities in England are at risk of drought linked to climate change.
Many are already supposedly stressed. Drier weather under climate change is expected to have a big impact on trees, particularly in York, London and Birmingham, we are told. Yet Met Office data shows that these areas are not getting drier; nor is there any evidence that they will. Once again, the BBC is uncritically presenting a controversial study as factual.
Driest start to year since 1976
England certainly had a notably dry spring and summer last year. But maybe not quite as dry as the BBC would like you to believe. On 26 July 2022, their report claimed that it had been the driest January to June in England since 1976.21 It’s a pity they did not check the Met Office data first, which would have told them it had actually been drier in 1996 and 2010.21But ‘driest start to the year since 2010’ hardly has the same ring to it!
The article also featured a photo of a dried-up reservoir. In fact, this was trick photography, as the dried up part was merely a small area at the head of the Dowry Reservoir, near Oldham.
Similar images of the same part of the reservoir have often been published in past years, such as 2013 and 2019.
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