Media: the propagandist BBC

By Richard North - August 2, 2023

Much to its evident discomfort, the BBC has been forced to acknowledge the obvious, that for weeks now, the UK’s weather has been unsettled – with widespread rain, cooler temperatures and an autumnal feel.

Without doubt, the broadcaster would prefer us to be roasting in a prolonged heatwave to support its treasured “global boiling” thesis, matching the situation in much of southern Europe, which it reports has been enduring dangerous heatwaves that have seen temperatures top 40ºC and large wildfires.

That we are not frying to order is obviously something that cannot be tolerated without trying to explain away the anomaly, which the BBC attempts to explain away by telling us that the two extremes of weather are linked. Crucially, we are told, “it’s down to where the jet stream is”.

In an appeal to authority, without identifying any specific sources, Esme Stallard, climate and science reporter, with the assistance of all-purpose hack Sean Seddon, tell us that “meteorologists say” the wet and cool weather is due to the position of the jet stream, a core of strong winds sitting about five to seven miles above the Earth’s surface, and which dictate much of the UK’s weather.

The jet stream, we are then told, marks the boundary of cold air to the north in the polar regions and hot air to the south, a contrast which produces pressure differences. And last year, the jet stream was positioned further north, so the UK saw warm and dry weather created by the high-pressure system sitting over the country.

According to these BBC sages, what is different about this month is that the jet stream has been stuck to the south of the UK, meaning its low-pressure system has been bringing cold and wet weather.

This is actually a pretty poor explanation of the meridional flow pattern which has been dominating the weather for a couple of years now, but that is of less concern than the need to tie in the phenomenon with global warming.

And here, the formula used is classic is its dishonesty. “Some scientists think”, we are told, as if that is sufficient authority for what comes next. These wondrously anonymous “scientists” apparently think that higher temperatures due to climate change in the Arctic are causing the jet stream to slow, increasing the likelihood of high pressure and hot weather remaining in place.

But that’s it – that’s all we get, followed by the assertion that “global warming means hot temperatures and wetter periods will become more typical for the UK”.

Without specifically saying so, therefore, the BBC is conveying the impression that the current weather anomalies in the UK, where the Met Office is warning in its current forecast of “60mph gusts and heavy rain”, are unequivocally down to “global warming”, without any sense that such a supposition might be completely unsupported.

Turn to an official US government climate site and a guest blog by Tim Woollings , a professor of climate science in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford in the UK, though, and we get a different picture.

As to the effect of climate change on the jet stream, Woollings remarks that “clever ideas on this abound in the literature, but overall our confidence in what will happen unfortunately remains low” – acknowledging that the science is very far from settled.

In a more detailed commentary for the temple of climate change, Carbon Brief, Woollings then gives a lot more detail, specifically on the blocking effect which is associated with the meridional flow.

As blocking events can bring such extreme conditions, Wollings says, an important question is how their frequency and severity is being – and is likely to be – affected by a warming climate. However, he adds, there are a couple of reasons why this is less than straightforward.

First, he explains, there is no set definition for a block: “Blocks come in various shapes and forms, so that while meteorologists would all agree on what a cyclone is, there are often different views on whether a particular weather pattern should be classed as a block or not”.

In a 2018 review paper by Woollings and colleagues, it is noted that a “bewildering range of indices” have been developed to identify blocking events, where we are told that:

A major weakness in dynamical meteorology is that there is currently no comprehensive theory capturing the different processes acting at all stages of the blocking life cycle: onset, maintenance and decay.

This makes it more difficult to monitor and track changes in blocking events, as well as directly compare results from different studies.

Second, “blocking is a sporadic weather pattern and, hence, highly variable from year to year, even from decade to decade”, says Woollings. This means that blocking events will naturally vary a lot from one year – or decade – to another, so a clear view on any long-term trend is muddied by short-term fluctuations.

Overall, Woollings adds: “there are no clear trends in blocking seen against this noise”, a point with which Len Shaffrey, professor of climate science at the University of Reading, agrees.

“Historical weather records suggest that blocking hasn’t changed significantly over the past few decades”, he says, although he concedes that this view is somewhat dependent on the method used to define blocking events.”

Woollings notes that one possible exception is over Greenland, which has seen an increase in summer blocks since the 1990s. However, he adds, it is not yet clear whether this is down to natural variability or not, he says:

“Several methods give about a 1-in-20 chance of this trend occurring by chance, so it seems interesting. But then, if you test 20 different combinations of region and season, you would expect one of these to show such a change purely by chance.”

Thus, while it is being hypothesised that the increase in blocking could have “been triggered by low-level regional warming promoted by surface feedbacks” – such as increased snowmelt and ice melt on Greenland, and Arctic regional sea ice losses – or changes in the jet stream, the actual causes are “currently “unknown”.

As to future prospects, scientists making projections of how blocking might be affected by continuing climate change face another hurdle: climate models generally struggle with simulating blocking and have the tendency to underestimate both the frequency and duration of events.

Woollings tells us that, in general, models “predict a general decrease in blocking occurrence in the future”, the reason being that the dynamics of blocking is focused up at jet-stream level in the atmosphere. Here, models predict the strongest warming in the tropics and, perversely, this strengthens the jet-stream winds, making it harder for blocks to form.”

Furthermore, Woollings refers to models which predict changes to heatwave patterns but, while noting that there is “good agreement between models”, he warns that “we should still be cautious because it is not clear that the models are capturing the physics correctly”.

This, of course, is not the first time I have addressed such issues, having written in similar terms back in January – demonstrating that there is plenty of critical discussion around.

But the BBC lives in its own little world, where the duty to inform has long been subsumed by the determination to propagandise over its favoured cause. But, if the case for its “climate crisis” was that strong, it wouldn’t have to deceive, obfuscate and lie by omission.

What this says, therefore, in nothing new to us, that nothing the BBC tells us on climate change can be trusted. This is a propaganda operation in full flow, and one that has betrayed the very foundations on which it is supposedly based.