BBC Wheel Out The Discredited Camille Parmesan
May 17, 2019
By Paul Homewood
As Philip Bratby pointed out, one of the interviewees on the BBC’s Costing the Earth was Camille Parmesan, who made her name studying butterflies.
In her interview, she repeated claims that formerly common butterflies had disappeared from their usual sites because of global warming.
Jim Steele totally debunked her work on WUWT a few years ago:
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I do not deny that global warming is taking place but I get furious when so-called scientists seem unable to think beyond the results of their models and seem unable to refer to historical and current data that conflicts with their findings.
You don’t deny it, well I do, and I don’t, depends entirely on what timescale you pick and what proxies/data you care to cite!
Last few years – cooling.
1980-present – unexceptional warming.
Last 8000 years – cooling.
etc.
Was it Parmesan who advocated transporting elephants to North America to save them from global warming? Yes: here you go
The reporter is Suzanne Goldenberg who used to be at the Guardian (mebbe still is), who mistakenly claimed an Alaskan village was in trouble because of global warming leading to America’s first climate refugees: WUWT
Apparently, butterflies have been around for 34 MILLION years so I can hardly believe that the odd degree of warming (or cooling) will cause them such a perturbation.
I remember one comment from the Jim Steele WUWT article saying the her paper was pretty cheesy.
Butterflies like many ‘insects’ are not under threat from a tiny amount of warming! For most species of butterfly a little warming can be beneficial. The important thing is the the plant food source for the caterpillar. Cold and wet periods reduce butterfly numbers as well as urbanization along with recent changes in agriculture in the UK.
I heard the tail end of the ‘Costing The Earth’ programme on my car radio. Towards the end of the programme the female presenter was cooing over some young male activist who was extolling the virtues of the recent disruption on London’s bridges. He also said that ‘hundreds of species are becoming extinct every day’, which I thought was a bit strong!
There is a “prediction” that a million species could be at risk of extinction over the next few decades, which translates into hundreds per day – but it is a prediction, not a fact.
This is covered here:
Parmesan – how apt. Jim covered her butterfly drivel in his excellent book as well as on WUWT. I think she was the one who said that UK butterflies were moving north. Yes, they were. Their range was increasing which of course means they were still as far south so the net result would be more butterflies over a larger area. But of course this bit was missed out as it was good news.