The BBC's Top 50 Pieces of Climate Misinformation – Part 2
More of the worst examples of bias and falsehood from the past couple of years
In Part 1 we looked at 25 examples in the last couple of years or so of how the BBC is misinforming the public about climate change and climate-related policies. In Part 2 we will look at another 25 items:
A BBC report in April 2024 claimed that “coral around the world is turning white and even dying as recent record ocean heat takes a devastating toll”.
Bleaching is a perfectly natural and common event which occurs for all sorts of reasons, including when the water gets too cold. It does not mean the coral is dying. Bleaching occurs naturally when coral expels algae to switch to a type better suited to new conditions. Far from coral dying out around the world, coral scientists say that it is doing fine.
2. BBC blames European wildfires on climate change
The BBC spent most of the summer of 2023 blaming climate change for the severity of wildfires around the Mediterranean. When the EU finally published wildfire data for last year, it emerged that the area burnt was close to average. Since the 1980s, area burnt has been declining.
3. Global warming making flight turbulence worse
A long BBC article in May 2024 stated that “aircraft turbulence is worsening with climate change”.
However, a recent detailed study by the US National Transportation Safety Board examined flight records between 1989 and 2018. It concluded that there has been no increase in incidents of severe flight turbulence, measured as a proportion of flight hours.
BBC Verify, the organisation’s unit of supposed disinformation experts, decided to waste money writing a long hit piece on a young Kenyan farmer who had dared to campaign for Africa to be given full access to fossil fuels. This apparently made him a “climate denier”. Quite why the BBC saw him as such a threat is a total mystery.
5. Renewables are cheaper, say BBC
During June 2024’s election coverage, BBC Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt stated that new solar or wind projects generate power at a lower cost than new gas generators. He was commenting on Reform party policies. At the time of the election, the contract price for offshore wind was double the cost of gas power. This is still true now.
In the summer of 2024, the BBC reported on what it described as an unprecedented heatwave in Delhi, even though temperatures at the time were normal for the time of year.
The next day, it claimed climate change made the late May/early June US Southwest heatwave 35 times more likely.
Again, the claim was absurd, as the temperatures recorded were perfectly normal for the time of year. In Phoenix, Arizona, for instance, temperatures hit 113°F, well below the record of 122°F for June which was set in 1990
A BBC report on polar bears informed us “the species is in decline, and scientists attribute it to the loss of sea ice caused by global warming”.
Polar bears are frequently used by the BBC to push climate propaganda. But scientists say the opposite – that the world population of polar bears has nearly tripled since the 1960s and that numbers are now stable, a fact since admitted by the BBC Executive Complaints Unit.
The BBC reported a projection of potential global changes if the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) collapses, which it suggests could happen as early as 2050.
Icy winds howl across a frozen Thames, ice floes block shipping in the Mersey docks and crops fail across the UK. Meanwhile, the US east coast has been inundated by rising seas and there’s ecological chaos in the Amazon as the wet and dry season have switched around.
Contrary to BBC claims, data show that the AMOC has been remarkably stable for the last 40 years.
9. Child marriage? Blame climate change!
A BBC Sounds broadcast last autumn stated that extreme weather, caused by climate change, is making farming impossible in many parts of Bangladesh. This, so we were told, has increased the risk of more girls being pushed into child marriage.
But far from farming becoming ‘impossible’, agricultural output, particularly of cereals, has rocketed in recent years in the country and now stands at record levels. The same is true of the area harvested, according to official UN data.
Moreover, the share of the population living in extreme poverty in the country is now at record lows
10. Climate change turbo-charging Somalia’s problems
According to the BBC’s Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, Somalia recently experienced its worst drought for 40 years – an event scientists estimate was made 100 times more likely by human-caused climate change.
The BBC report omitted data indicating that Somalia has become wetter since the mid-20th century, with more severe droughts occurring in earlier periods.
According to a BBC report three years ago, “for decades [India’s} monsoons have been drying up”.
The opposite is true. Severe droughts in the 1960s, 70s and 80s were catastrophic in India. Since the turn of the century, rainfall has been above average.
12. Hurricanes getting more powerful
Another tenet of faith for the BBC is that global warming is making hurricanes more powerful. As regular as clockwork, the end of the Atlantic hurricane season in November last year brought forth the usual BBC propaganda that a higher proportion of hurricanes are now turning into major hurricanes, meaning they reach the highest wind speeds.
This false claim, however, is strongly contradicted by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Its latest review of hurricanes could not be clearer, stating:
There is no strong evidence of century-scale increasing trends in US landfalling hurricanes or major hurricanes. Similarly for Atlantic basin-wide hurricane frequency (after adjusting for changing observing capabilities over time), 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.
Even more deceitfully, the BBC included an infographic plotting major Atlantic hurricane activity since 1920 which showed the numbers ballooning in recent years. But NOAA notes that many mid-ocean hurricanes went undetected before satellites existed. The BBC is comparing chalk and cheese.
13. Valencia floods
Why let a tragedy go to waste, when you can use it for propaganda?
The tragic flooding in Valencia last autumn brought the standard BBC kneejerk response that extreme rainfall events like this one are getting more common.
However, the daily rainfall data for Valencia, which goes back to 1937, show no such trends.
14. Windy weather
Storm Darragh brought some windy weather to Britain last winter, but no worse than the sort of weather we see every year.
A few days later, however, the BBC’s Science Correspondent informed us that the winds from Storm Darragh were made 5% stronger by climate change. His so-called proof of this came from weather attribution computer models.
Maybe next time he should report the actual data instead, which, according to the Met Office, clearly show that windstorms in the UK were much more powerful in the 1980s and 90s than anything seen since.
In their end of year report, the BBC told us that billions had been challenged by extreme weather brought by climate change. The claims were based on what are known as ‘Weather Attribution Computer Models’, rather than on actual data.
The article listed a few random weather events, droughts, floods, hurricanes and heatwaves, with no attempt to show that they are either becoming more frequent or extreme, or that they were not simply run of the mill occurrences that happen every year.
Indeed, subsequent analysis demonstrated that there was nothing unusual at all about any of the examples used.
The Los Angeles fires at the start of this year were quickly blamed on “climate change charged droughts” by the BBC.
When it was pointed out that the weather in that part of California had been no drier than many other years in the months leading up to the wildfires, the BBC then said that a period of unusually wet weather had increased the growth of flammable grass earlier in 2024, which was followed by very dry conditions – what it called “whiplash conditions”, which climate models said were getting worse because of global warming.
Once again however, the computer models were thoroughly contradicted by the actual data, which show no such trends either in wet or dry weather.
17. Record breaking hurricane season?
Another BBC report claimed that last year’s Atlantic hurricane season broke records.
It was not a record season, with 11 hurricanes — three fewer than the record and matching the totals in 1887, 1933, 1950 and 1995.
Five of these were major, two less than the record high. There have been 16 other years with five or more.
18. Cheap renewable energy myth
The BBC have spent years pushing renewable energy, frequently peddling the myth that it is cheaper than fossil fuels. They were at it again earlier this year, with a report by BBC Verify titled ‘If the UK has more renewable energy, why aren’t bills coming down?’
Nowhere does their report mention the £15 billion worth of subsidies, direct and indirect, for renewable energy which is added to electricity bills this year.
Renewable energy is more expensive than fossil fuels, not less so. That is why the UK has some of the highest electricity prices in the world.
19. Wildfire porn
The BBC always loves to use human tragedy stories to fuel its climate propaganda.
Recent summers have seen continuing apocalyptic coverage by the BBC of Mediterranean wildfires, often accompanied by claims that they have been made worse by climate change.
At the end of the year, official data from the EU showed that wildfire activity was below average last year, and only slightly above in 2023.
20. Weather alchemy
You may have noted in some of the earlier items the BBC’s reliance on ‘Weather Attribution’ to back up claims that climate change is making weather worse. Dressed up as ‘science’, weather attribution is merely computer modelling which can be programmed to come up with whatever daft conclusions you want.
Often, they are contradicted by real world data. Unsurprisingly, they have been rubbished by many proper scientists, dismissed as “weather alchemy“ designed to generate quick headlines.
Following a complaint, the BBC Executive Complaints Unit was forced to publish a correction that the claims should not have been presented as fact and that the article failed to meet the requirements for due accuracy.
Another example of the BBC’s bias towards renewable energy took place in a World at One interview in April between the BBC’s Sarah Montague and Adam Berman of the renewable lobby group Energy UK
The topic was why UK electricity prices are so high. Berman went on at great length to put the blame on the high price of gas, while claiming that renewables were cheaper, without any challenge from the interviewer.
During the interview, the significant direct expense involved in subsidising renewable energy was never brought up.
When these subsidies are taken into consideration, electricity generated from wind, solar, and biomass facilities continues to be significantly more costly than that produced by gas power stations.
This little episode underlines the repeated failure of the BBC to get a broad range of opinions on topics like these. An independent energy expert would quickly have dismantled the false claims of the industry lobbyist.
22. Flight turbulence getting worse
You may recall reading this same story earlier!
Yes, just like clockwork, the BBC wheeled it out again in August, following an incident on a Singapore flight, in which some poor chap died. Flight turbulence is getting more frequent and severe because of global warming, shrieked the BBC.
The US National Transportation Safety Board has thoroughly examined turbulence. Having examined flight logs for all US flights between 1989 and 2018, it concluded that there are no increasing trends in the frequency of severe turbulence.
23. Great Barrier Reef in decline?
Yes, another story wheeled out each year! According to the BBC:
Parts of the Great Barrier Reef have suffered the largest annual decline in coral cover since records began nearly 40 years ago. AIMS warns the habitat may reach a tipping point where coral cannot recover fast enough between catastrophic events and faces a “volatile” future.
What the BBC failed to report was that coral cover on the GBR was at a record high last year. Even after losses this year, it still stands as the fourth highest on record.
Hardly evidence of a “tipping point”!
24. Save our trees!
Sometimes the BBC runs such absurd stories that I can only assume its journalists think we are idiots!
Last month it told us that English forests were struggling to keep pace with climate change and increasing extreme weather.
The solution was to plant resilient species, such as oak, birch and alder.
What, like the same trees that have been growing here for thousands of years?
I must apologise for cheating here, because this final BBC report comes from 2004. But it was too good to resist!
It told us that the Maldives would soon be underwater.
Since then, 12 new airports have been opened on the Maldives, plus a new passenger terminal at the Velana International Airport.
Tourist numbers have tripled to more than two million last year. Tourism now drives 28% of GDP, supported by more than 170 resorts. Last year alone, another seven new resorts were opened.
Far from disappearing beneath the waves, the Maldives seem to be thriving!
Read Part 1 here.
Well collated, but I don't expect Justin Rowlatt is ready to retire?