BBC Peddle Fake Claims About India Monsoon
By Paul Homewood
h/t Malcolm Bell
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0938tj7/victoria-derbyshire-01092017
Just when you thought the BBC could not get any worse.
Standing in for Victoria Derbyshire on her current affairs programme yesterday morning, Matthew Price ran a report on the heavy floods this summer in Nepal and Bangladesh.
After telling us this had been one of the heaviest monsoons on record, he went on to interview Mark Pierce, Save the Children’s Director in Bangladesh, and Francis Markus of the International Red Cross in Nepal. (About 32 minutes in).
It did not take long for him to blame climate change for the floods.
He first directly asked Pierce :
“In a place like Bangladesh, do people start to say things are getting worse, it is something to do with climate change?”
Pierce unsurprisingly agreed, and said that even farmers could see climate change everyday, and see their land either flooded every year or facing drought.
Price then asked a similar question of Markus:
“In Nepal, do people at the sharp end relate this to climate change?”
In reply, Markus talks of immense changes in climate, and states “All the farmers in Nepal are kind of noticing that yields are less and less from year to year”, and goes on to tell us there has been nothing but nothing but droughts and floods in recent years.
Well, as you will all know by now, the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation publish data which tells us exactly what is going on.
First, Bangladesh.
We can see that both yields and production of cereals has been steadily rising since the 1980s. Also, the prevalence of undernourishment has halved since the 1990s, despite a large increase in population:
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#country/16
And we find exactly the same story in Nepal:
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#country/149
Clearly neither the Red Cross nor the Save The Children representatives were telling us the truth, which does not surprise me. Meanwhile the naive BBC presenter has been so indoctrinated by global warming propaganda, that he never even thought for a second that he was being lied to.
As for “one of the heaviest monsoons on record”, this year’s has so far been perfectly normal, with 3% less rain than normal.
As for the East and North East, where the rainfall has been heaviest, rainfall is bang on average:
And what about the longer trends, and claims of floods and droughts?
Well, the whole history of Indian monsoons is one of recurrent floods and droughts.
http://www.tropmet.res.in/~kolli/MOL/Monsoon/Historical/air.html
Drought conditions were particularly prevalent between 1900 and 1920, and again in the 1960s to 1980s, when the world was cooling down.
Conversely, the worst of the flooding took place in the late 19thC and 1940s and 50s.
Drought conditions prevailed in 2015 and 2016, but this was because of strong El Nino conditions. Indian scientists are well aware of this connection, which has nothing to do with global warming.
In short, the whole story reported by the BBC is a pack of lies. Indian monsoons are not becoming more extreme. If anything, the opposite is true.
Even Madhav Khandekar, IPCC lead author on extreme weather, accepts that there is nothing unusual about recent flooding in India. In a 2014 paper, he concluded that:
The floods and unfortunate deaths of several dozen people in the Kashmir region of India in September 2014 reignited the debate about increasing human emissions of carbon dioxide and their putative linkage to extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and heat waves. What is missing from many of the media reports and scientific publications on this subject is critical analysis of past weather extremes to determine if there has been an increase in recent years.
In this brief report, past floods and droughts in the Indian monsoon are examined carefully and it is shown that such events have occurred throughout the excellent 200-year-long summer monsoon rainfall dataset. It is further documented that such floods and droughts are caused by natural variability of regional and global climate, and not by human carbon dioxide emissions.
In fact, if Price had bothered to check with the BBC Delhi correspondent, he would have discovered that the heavier the monsoon rainfall is , the better it is for India’s economy and many other things:
They are finally here, the monsoons, India’s most important weather phenomenon.
After days of speculation about the date, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) announced on Wednesday that the monsoons had arrived in Kerala. India receives 80% of its annual rainfall during the monsoon season, which runs between June and September.
The monsoon will gradually spread across India by 15 July, bringing cheer, hope, insects, relief from the heat, better farm output, GDP growth and lower inflation.
The arrival of the monsoons is like finding a river after crossing a desert. This year, a deluge is predicted. Weather forecasters expect at least 5-6% more rainfall than usual. This will affect things ranging from bank interest to the fortunes of the fertiliser industry. It will also alleviate the drinking water crisis in many parts by replenishing ground water.
But the joy doesn’t last long.
The hot summer gives way to complaints of “It’s not the heat it’s the humidity”. Meanwhile insects and mosquitoes multiply, bringing diseases in their wake.
As the Indian farmer sows a new crop, the city folk face water-logging that makes it difficult to get out. Sometimes it rains so much, especially in the financial nerve centre of Mumbai, that the city is flooded.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-36476535
This is now my speculation – but I do not believe that Matthew Price dreamt up all of these leading questions and fake claims all on his own. He would have been fed with these by someone higher up.
Equally, Pierce and Markus would have been primed with this line of questioning beforehand. They would no doubt have been more than happy to take advantage, in order to further their anti-western agenda.
In short, the whole segment of the programme was used to push the BBC’s biased and dishonest alarmist agenda.
The tactics they have used are actually very familiar. Find some junk scientist, green lobbyist or politically motivated charity worker, encourage them to spout clearly fake claims, and then broadcast them as “fact”. In this way, if anybody challenges the BBC for making inaccurate statements, they simply turn around and say – “it was not us who said it”.
But in the meantime, the gullible public have lapped it all up, as it has the BBC stamp of authenticity all over it.
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The official BBC update from 7 hours ago:
“Indian Flood: ‘Na rat cause am’ – Minister
Water resources minister, Rajiv Ranjan, don say na rats im blame for di flooding wey kill more than 500 people, come pursue another 12 million people comot house for im State of Bihar, India.
Mr Ranjan say di rat dig hole put for inside the barriers wen dem use take block water; na dis one come make di barriers weak well-well sotay flood water pass through, begin cause palava for di people.
Dis flood na part of wetin some countries for South Asia dey face, as heavy rain don bring flooding since two weeks wey affect India, Bangladesh and Nepal.
But na dis weekend di Indian minister Ranjan tell local media say wetin make plenty-plenty rat dey come the flood protection embankment, na di food wey di villagers wen dey stay near the area dey store.
Im word don bring palava.”
https://www.bbc.com/pidgin/41136708
Kind of like ancient weather superstitions but they call it science and they call you a science denier. My hope is that this craziness will end one day when they find something else to save the planet from.
Don’t expect news from the BBC. It does not have ‘news’ anywhere in the name. It is supposed to broadcast, which it successfully does. Who cares for objectivity?
I’ve noticed a recent step-up in AGW propaganda on the BBC, especially in connection with Hurricane Harvey, part of its political campaigning in response to Hurricane Donald. The Foreign Office funded BBC World Service is now almost entirely the broadcast wing of the Guardian.
Yep. Imo it’s because of Trump, as they see in him by far the most serious threat to the entire AGW agenda. He really could bring it down and privately they know it, hence their relentless activism for AGW hysteria and against him.
Imagine for a second if Trump started flaying NOAA and NASA/GISS for their data. He could finish them in months and every regular on here knows that. The BBC also know this and are terrified, not least because they have many millions of their pensions tied into green investments.
“Don’t get mad. Get even.”
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2017/09/01/Trump-to-name-Rep-Bridenstine-as-NASA-administrator/1761504311319/
Astonishing deceit.
Though, sadly, unsurprising out of the communist BBC with its “stamp of authenticity.” Tsk tsk.
Nice work on this Paul.
The whole BBC episode is pure racism.
The monsoons caused four hundred thousand displaced people and thirty thousand deaths one year in the seventies, in what is now known as Bangladesh. Another one a few years later claimed four thousand lives. A typical Monsoon flood covers twenty per cent of Bangladesh. Every few years severe floods cover fifty per cent or more. In 1988 two thirds of the country’s land area was heavily flooded.
Any BBC presenter and hired commentator would be hounded out of the public sphere if they had ignored such massive numbers to make a political point if it had been Europe they were talking about.
What is notable this year is how little death and destruction there has been in the region this year compared to The Big Ones or even average events.
Good work again Paul.
“In short, the whole story reported by the BBC is a pack of lies.” As I’ve said before, the opposite of what the BBC says is usually the truth. I think the BBC invented fake news but failed to patent it, so you get it on most MSM.
Thank you Paul, I appreciate the tag and your meticulous response. As I expected you to say, Southern Asia and Indian crop yields are increasing as they are in the Sahel and indeed most other places across the world.
This is a useful site. I have a complaint on a related subject that’s gone all the way to Offcom after the usual truth-denying responses from three stages if the in-house complaints procedure:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/complain-online/
Ignoring the nonsense, lies and deceit coming from the BBC, WHO and the like, I’m never surprised by people on the ground saying they are seeming changes. The climate is cyclical and during your lifetime it, the climate in your locale, will be different towards the end of your allotted 70 years than it was in your youth. Those with a political agenda can take advantage of this, after all there’s a bit of Private Frazer in us all. Elephant herds survive the exceptional drought by having a matriarch old enough to remember being taken to a waterhole by her great-grandmother the last time it happened; unfortunately instead of great grandmothers we now have climate scientists and the BBC.
Seventy years ago, even in infant school, unsurprisingly India was a part of the curriculum and I first learned of the monsoon and the essential part it played in the lives of the sub continent.
Like others here, I was astonished on hearing the ignorant crap eminating from the BBC platforms, including the world service.
No longer does nation speak truth unto nation; on so many fronts the BBC is shamefully partisan.
By far the most important aspect of international climate politics is that, whereas we in the West keep using events such as the Indian monsoon as evidence that doom is just around the corner unless we adopt more and more economy destroying measures to “fight climate change”, the rest of the world (responsible for 75% of global emissions) isn’t concerned with silly stories and is focusing on economic development. Given the US change of policy it’s essentially only Europe (responsible for less than 10% of global emissions) that’s damaging itself in this way. It’s pointless – so what conceivable reason might organisations such as the BBC have for doing this to us?
And Australia, although we only produce just over 1% of the world CO2 emissions. However, we are hell bent on destroying our economy to show that we care about saving the world, to hell with the Australian population who now are the proud owners of the world’s most expensive electricity – thanks to “green” energy, Renewable Energy Targets and Carbon Trading. And we export most of the imported coal that India uses to create its energy – what madness!
Paul indulged in a little speculation, so I’ll do likewise.
I suspect that China and India, and other newly industrialised countries with – for historical reasons – no love for the West engineered the Paris outcome so that the maximum pressure to “act” is put on the US, EU etc. and the minimum on themselves. An initial step was the Obama / Xi Jinping “landmark” climate summit in November 2014, where Obama promised major CO2 cuts and Xi promised … er nothing. When the Chinese Politburo sees reports such as this one from the BBC they may allow themselves a quiet smile. The only fly in the ointment (for them) is that Trump seems to have seen through to what’s really happening.
Good luck with solar power in India during the annual monsoon season.
Perhaps the BBC could tell us how that’s going 😉
At least the panels will be nice and clean when the rain stops!
Perhaps they could use some of the power generated to pump some of the excess water to wash the desert based solar farms. Oh, wait! The panels don’t produce enough in the first place! Silly me.
I have been writing a play in which there is, notionally, a lot of technical information. I started off wanting the gen to be absolutely correct and worked myself up into a fine froth in pursuit of the absolute. Then I had a moment, a second in which I suddenly realised, from my own experience as a dullard, that people generally have a version of the truth which they portray as an adjunct to the display of their emotional self.
People are apt to reflect a version of life that suits their particular situation. If they are really dedicated they are not beyond being lax about the specifics and make up for this with an emotional connection, If argument cannot be won by citing statistical data then we are not beyond changing the rules to fill the gap of our grasp on the truth. Truth is what we want to believe.
So I stopped thinking in terms of the truth for my characters and started to write my approximation to fact and supportable assertion. I realised that the Google version of life does not reflect how we behave. Yes, you can refer to Google for every fact, every variant of fact, but that does not represent you and at some point you are going to have to move into the emotional you as it is obvious that presenting a play of emotion and interaction by insisting on fact is less realistic, less riveting, than allowing the characters to play with fact and to present it as supportive of their individuality.
In a media world where we dullards are averse to the complexity of science then the representation of reality is far better communicated by the emotional side and in our media it is the emotional side, with all its human tragedy and despair, that is penning science into a place in which it will be seen as insensible, a wilful purveyor of falsehood, fact jugglers, the scientific confabulation deviously presented by geeks with some (perhaps paid for) opinion.
The Internet has done some wonderful things but it has harmed reality. Each character in the play of life fashions has an urgency to conjure a world of the idyll composed of the poetic set against the verbosely visceral for dramatic effect in contempt of records, logic and method. As a presenter in a TV show you know that people glaze over at the trotting-out of fact People generally quickly lose attention. But when emotion comes into play, that thing which we all have a degree in, then the idle, the unquestioning, the paid for and directed opinion can wax lyrical on all those suppositions and conclusions that this report fell into gratefully. “You provide the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”
There has been large-scale flooding and landslides in Nepal this year after what are claimed to be the heaviest monsoon rains in fifteen years. Nepal is vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the climate and is barely recovered from the major earthquakes of a couple of years ago. For anyone considering sending financial help to the people of Nepal, I can strongly recommend the Gurka Welfare Trust, whose work in assisting Gurkha veterans and their widows also benefits the rest of their communities. The GWT have their overheads paid by the MOD, so all contributions made will go in full to where it is needed. Check their website Here.
FLOODING IN THE INDUS VALLEY: http://web.archive.org/web/20100818070945/http://rupeenews.com/2010/08/15/history-of-floods-in-the-indus-valley-of-the-9000-year-old-pakistani-civilization/
“Although some of its water comes from melting Himalayan glaciers, the vast majority is dumped by the summer monsoon.
“As torrential rain sweeps in from the Indian Ocean, floods are triggered almost annually. Its floodplain was an early cradle of civilisation 9,000 years ago. Here people first gave up their nomadic ways to farm livestock and cultivate crops.
The Indus Valley is home to 100 million people, who rely on it completely for drinking water and irrigation. Due to population growth, the people are now living in the alluvial flood plains, which used to be left for the river to meander about.
Geologist Professor Peter Clift of Aberdeen University, has been precisely dating layers of flood-deposited sand in the Indus floodplain, in order to work out past changes in river flow, with surprising results:
“During a warm period 6,000 years ago, the Indus was a monster river, more powerful and more prone to flooding than today. Then, 4,000 years ago, as the climate cooled, a large part of it simply dried up. Deserts appeared where mighty torrents once flowed.”
In spite of discovering the reasons for themselves, the authors still try to blame “climate change”, but then it is culled from a BBC report.
The last two centuries in Asia, just a sample:
China – 15 years of storms 1851 to 1866, the low area between Beijing, Shanghai and Hankow flooded repeatedly during a disastrous 15 years of storms. It is estimated that 40 to 50 million Chinese perished in these floods.
Yellow River Flood, 1887- spring rains in China caused the Yellow River to overflow, covering 50,000 square miles and killing an estimated 1.5 million people.https://worldhistoryproject.org/1887/9/28/yellow-river-flood-of-1887
Central China floods of 1931- The 20th century’s worst water related disaster inundating 70,000 square miles and killing 3.5-4 million people.
http://floodlist.com/asia/central-china-floods-1931
Ganges Delta tidal wave 1970, a cyclone-driven tidal wave overwhelmed the Ganges Delta in what is now Bangladesh, killing somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 people.
And also there is here — http://monsoondata.org/hist/region.html , compare and contrast these regional area monsoon rain anomalies to the BBC reports.
Paul have a look at this one
“800K home solar plan = tax on everybody
cos unicorns don’t pay the difference between the FIT paid & the normal wholesale electricity price; that extra bit increases the electricity part of everything you pay for”
That’s not the title the BBC went for, they used this
Solar power deal will lower social tenants’ energy bills
They do kindly point out that so called financier is mostly the Dutch government.
Also EnergyVoice say Over 1,000 new jobs are to be created under a £1 billion programme to install solar panels on social housing across England and Wales.
Great find! That’s about £1,250 per social tenant (I am not estimating the social tenant’s religion). The social tenant will save £240 a year (of taxpayer’s money). I wonder also about terms of this Dutch investment – could it be a pure philanthropy?
What’s the life of a solar panel ?
2 years if you get a big hail storm.
https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2017/07/small-scale-epc-replaces-17920-panels-two-year-old-solar-farm/
to be frank, what do you expect from al beeb?
Quite honestly I don’t give a fig what the bogus broadcasting claque say.
I do however care that, their propaganda has an effect on generation snowflake and millions of others who swallow this fetid water which gushes like a Monsoonal flood out of the mouths of the liars who peddle their alamist mantras on the idiots lantern.
Unfortunately, the beeb is a law unto itself and anyway the EU protect it fiercely………. there is not much we can do except cheer on Donald Trump or, stop paying for it.
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/09/bom-scandal-one-second-records-in-australia-how-noise-creates-history-and-a-warming-trend/
Does the met office do this???
Reblogged this on 4timesayear's Blog.
And yet, just a few years ago when monsoons were not so good, we were told climate change would mean much reduced monsoons:
http://www.iop.org/news/12/nov/page_58892.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/6105404/Climate-change-threatens-Indias-monsoons.html
Really, whatever happens, somebody pops up to claim climate change. A truly pathetic science, that differs little from ancient soothsaying.
Soothsaying did a lot less damage!
The I today had a full middle page spread telling readers that the world was going to flood unless we all stop carbon usage. What is frightening is that it is pure brainwashing with no objectivity: they actually mentioned that sea levels were only rising at 3 mm / year in one para, but used the current monsoon and Harvey as proof of climate change.
What chance do we have against this Goebelism.