I Call BS On Harrabin’s Wye Drought Claims
By Paul Homewood
More BS from Harrabin!
https://twitter.com/rharrabin/status/1547446804710670336?s=21&t=gaqiC0XRHiUGbw93dIjliQ
Does Harrabin just repeat any old rubbish he has been told, without bothering to check?
The above claim immediately set the alarm bells ringing, and sure enough it is baseless.
Harrabin does not actually say exactly where this lack of rainfall was measured, but the Met Office give data for the wider region, SW England & S Wales:
It is obvious that rainfall for this spring and June has not been unusually low – it ranks just 26th driest since 1836. What is more, there is no trends to these months becoming drier over time, and by far the driest period was back in 1893 – global cooling anyone?
Of course, it is possible that the Wye and Usk valleys have somehow miraculously missed out on all of this rain; but unfortunately for Harrabin’s credibility, Ross-on-Wye has received 140.3mm of rain, according to the Met Office over the four months:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/stationdata/rossonwyedata.txt
The Met Office also confirm that the particular area that Harrabin refers to has had its share of rainfall, around 200mm:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-actual-and-anomaly-maps
Apparently Harrabin will continue freelance work for the BBC, when he officially retires at the end of the month.
No doubt they value his constant stream of fake news!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I hope you’ve answered his tweet directly.
Yep!
Blimey Paul, you kept that twitter account quiet! How come you don’t post links on it to your webpage?
Unfortunately those of us without Twitter accounts cannot read what you wrote…the page gets blocked with a login/signup banner by Twitter.
Regarding Conservative leadership race, the only one who seems to have mentioned Net Zero is Suella Braverman and then only to suggest it should be shelved. Not surprising Steve Baker is supporting her.
Interesting cos I often post tweets in comments
and no one has complained before.
I find posting tweets is very useful
TS: Not so. Kemi very aptly referred to it as “a unilateral declaration of economic suicide” (or similar).
Before we accuse perhaps BBC Farming Today sent Harrabin this farming report from 1844.
So the only thing wrong is the historical context!
https://www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk/content/article/rain-sun-sun-rain
Yes, and checking some of the other rainfall records in a similar area .. for the period from 1 March to 13 July 2022 I can see Sennybridge (in Powys and on the river Usk) has recorded 178mm of rain; Credenhill (near Hereford) has recorded 148.4mm and Shobdon (in West Herefordshire) has recorded 165.4 mm. And Harrabin claims ‘no rain’ since March 10th and he is supposed to be a responsible journalist. Took me 5 minutes as an ordinary person to check the data on weatheronline.co.uk
Thank you Paul for this and the many other refutations of alarmist articles.
I regularly post on The Times, Financial Times, and Telegraph trying to refute the manipulated data and headlines which even these supposedly quality papers put out – but I gave up on The Guardian because of the abuse.
I urge others of you to at least try to counter some of the tide of mis-information and hiding of inconvenient truth.
—
For example – The Davos/WEF have suddenly removed the piece they had on their website promoting the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka saying “I will make my country rich by 2025”
Harrabin, and the BBC, should be treated like politicians – always assume they are idiots and liars until they prove otherwise.
Anyone else seen the start next week on BBC2 of a 3 part propaganda series against the use of oil?
When can you tell that a “journalist” is lying?
Watch his lips move! – a la politician!
Having had a good grammar school education in the 1950s the thing that apalls me most about journalists and politicians is the standard of their English – they all spout American “corporate” b******t!!!!!
No rain on the southern Welsh borders for 4 months? Who on earth is going to believe that tosh!
At University in Wales I learnt a saying about Welsh weather: If you can see the mountains its about to rain, if you can’t see the mountains it is raining.
Since he is, nominally, still employed by BBC is he not in breech of his duty of impartiality when he urges political action on his ‘report’? He confuses his role as a reporter/analyst with that of an activist.
Hi Paul,
i don’t know how you keep going with all this, you must get some terrible brickbats thrown at you for daring to not support the climate extinction narrative.
I have finally realised Twitter etc (quite naive of me actually) is not there for an exchange of views, it is just a medium for supporting the chosen narrative by the chosen few. So i have disabled my accounts and will probably stop posting here.
got better things to do. Best wishes
This from my local rag yesterday…
https://www.herefordtimes.com/news/20276265.big-pressure-herefordshire-water-supply-river-levels-drop/
The Lugg is also low, but it’s not as if we’ve not seen the like before.
Indeed. There’s a few years of history here (scroll well down for the charts)
https://riverlevels.uk/herefordshire-ross-on-wye-ross-on-wye-lvl
Not so long ago that historic flooding levels were being matched upstream at Hereford Bridge either. The page carries links to other locations on the Wye and to nearby rivers as well for those who want to explore.
We have transitioned to beyond stupid land now. Everything is now blamed on climate change. It is bad enough that useful idiots spout nonsense but Harraharrabinbin should know better. The bus was late this morning….blame it on climate change…. the dog is off his food….blame it on climate change. NEVER do any of these purveyors of hysteria ever qualify their claims and never are they challenged when they do not. We are dealing with people of the ilk of Slartybardfast and Vroomfondel. That propagansist Harrabin receives a salary beggars belief.
Or Trump. My shoelace broke, it must be climate change or Trump
BBC fishing ban article I found following up on this story includes a picture of the river at Carew Castle with the title:
“The Carew River at Carew Castle was shallow at low tide on Monday when temperatures soared”
Non sequitur anyone? Is any one surprised it was shallow at low tide? What did it look like at high tide? Possibly….deeper?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-62143667
As for fishing bans, ban on fishing for salmon, trout and grayling always gets considered in on some rivers as water temps rise at this time of year, even if only voluntary. Ghillies keep close watch on water temps and will stop fishing as soon as it rises too high. Salmon, trout and grayling are very sensitive to temperatures, mainly because the oxygen saturation drops as water temperature rises. Pike are also sensitive, but carp (and especially eels) generally not so. These are also the reasons why Carp and Eels can survive much longer out of water, pike can die very quickly if out of water, salmon usually kept in the water to unhook and release, usually not even weighing them on many waters.
On the subject of eels, they can in fact survive hours out of water and can travel overland. Tough buggers they are, with teeth!
And very hard to kill.
Many years ago I caught a decent sized eel – around 30″ – took it straight home and started preparing it for the frying pan.
First off, it was beheaded and the disembodied head put on the table.
Along came the cat and put its head down to sniff the eel head from the front, whereupon the head opened its mouth, clearly intending to bite the cat’s nose!
The cat jumped back and spat, then carefully inspected the clearly disembodied head and prodded it, whereupon the eel head tried to bite its paw, talk about a puzzled cat!
I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.
Hi TS, I live in what is known as the Elham Valley in Kent which has an intermittent chalk stream flowing through it. The derivation of the name is disputed but (despite the tosh on Wikipedia) there certainly are eels in the area even to this day. I have seen eels (usually very early morning) literally slithering almost snake like through long wet grass to get to my garden pond. After a short stay through drier weather, they then seem to instinctively leave and go back to the stream.
The Wye webcam at Hereford:
https://www.skylinewebcams.com/en/webcam/united-kingdom/england/hereford/river-wye-hereford.html
It has been very dry, but it hardly seems like the end of worlds.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-62143667.amp
Of course the stupidity of Harrabin’s ravings is to pretend that we never normally had flood or drought, or that there is some linear relationship with the fabricated level of the supposed warming, worse, that politicians in the UK, that contributes 1% of global co2 emissions, could possibly make any difference even if the theory were correct.
”
Maybe harrabin would not be so ignorant if he had studied history.
“From 1884 onwards, Britain experienced a series of major droughts, which reached their peak in the ‘Long Drought’ (1890–1909). Despite being imagined as a wet part of the world, rural Wales was hard hit as many communities did not have access to reliable water supplies. ”
https://academic.oup.com/shm/article/30/3/590/2726334
Just 1.2°C of heating? Wonder where that number came from? According to NOAA the global 2021 temperature anomaly was still less than one degree C. at plus 0.84°C. And that is lower than it was in 2016.
See table 1 top ten England Wales Precipitation deficit periods, appears to be no significant relationship to bias in the post 1950 so called climate change period.
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.6521
And as a follow-up to my previous post, here’s a story from last year reminiscing about 1976…
https://www.herefordtimes.com/news/19480333.river-wye-ran-dry-heatwave/
Is there anyone on this site who actually knows Harrabin socially ? I mean does he spout this tripe to friends and family or is it just for those who not agree with him.
I’ve tweeted this reply. Drivel, typical biased BBC alarmist nonsense.
alarmist false news, that is.
A common BBC tactic is to press guests on whether climate change is causing more of x,y,z knowing the data doesn’t support the conclusion, but hiding behind the fact someone said the words.
Can they claim this whopper wasn’t misleading given their own journalist furiously retweeted this twaddle?
Pau,l if you give a Twitter link
you can strip off the question mark and everything after it
It’s just tracking info etc.
This was a FAIL by Skeptics
The reason why the UK is a banana republic that is not safe to invest in
is cos skeptics fail to stand up to the zany Guardianistas
We get drawn into their narrative world,
.. instead of keeping BASED in the real world
Harra said
“.. drought on #Wye and #Usk. No rain since March 10 says @BBCFarmingToday”
– Of course his side took him at face value
– but 99% of skeptics did too and went of ranting about rainfall charts ..deep history etc.
No stop rushing in like that
.. Harra made a claim that is “too wow to be true”
We know Harra is NOT about facts, he’s about NARRATAVE
If he sees something that supports his narrative, he will run with it,
he’s not going to spoil it by actually checking
Yet not one person here said “let me go to the BBC audio” and check it
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0019479
Minute 9:30s Simon Evans from the Wye and Usk Foundation
“we haven’t had rain since 10th of March .. the ecology is falling apart”
We know damn well the BBC cherrypick such lines, cos they are gold to narrative supporting
Note that is the ONLY line from Simon Evans selected by the BBC to be in that carefully constructed 4 minute BBC radio collage
Simon Evans later tweeted he mis-spoke
Actually if we Twitter search we get
Welsh rivers run low as lack of rain impacts country – https://newsatw.com/welsh-rivers-run-low-as-lack-of-rain-impacts-country/
Simon Evans, chief executive of the Wye and Usk Foundation,
said there had not been **sufficient** rain fall since 10 March, and the situation was “pretty grim”.
There we have it Evans dropped the word “sufficient”
so made fake news, which then Harra ran off with to initiate a new sermon pushing his religion
We could continue and take apart his next lines too.
“.. 1.2C of heating. ..2-3C warming. ..#Tory leadership race.”
Of course he does. We know that even if Climate Change was broadly right, plenty of papers and claims would still be wrong – that’s how stuff works. Yet Harrabin and other cheerleaders simply won’t accept that. Every paper, every claim, every forecast is right and true.
It’s pathetic really.
If thevleadership race should discuss anything it is what to do about the constant propaganda and truth distortion promulgated by Harrabin and his cronies. They are a significant cause of the hard times we now face on energy supply.