Climate Change Risk to Castles? No, Just More BBC Fake News!
By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul Kolk
The propaganda goes on and on!
Castles that have stood for hundreds of years are at risk of being damaged by climate change, conservation charity English Heritage warns.
The charity, which manages over 400 historic sites across England, highlighted six castles threatened by coastal erosion and rising sea levels.
They include Tintagel in Cornwall and Hurst Castle in Hampshire
It is appealing for money to repair walls and improve defences against storms and more powerful waves.
"It seems to be that the whole natural dynamics of the coastline in some places have been accelerated by climate change," Rob Woodside, English Heritage’s estates director, told BBC News.
"What we’re trying to do now is essentially buy time, so with places that we value, and people want to look after, we put measures in place to protect them."
There is broad consensus among scientists that even if the greenhouse gas emissions that warm the Earth are dramatically cut, global sea levels will continue to rise for several hundred years. Higher sea levels mean more powerful waves coming closer to the shore, and faster coastal erosion.
These are the six sites that English Heritage says are most at risk:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62995598
I’ve looked at the first example, Hurst Castle, and climate change has nothing to do with the matter. I gave up on the rest before I lost the will to live! If anybody wants to follow up on those, I’ll gladly publish.
According to the BBC:
Originally built by Tudor King Henry VIII between 1541 and 1544, a section of Hurst Castle’s east wing collapsed into the sea in February 2021 after its foundations were eroded. As part of efforts to defend the castle 5,000 tonnes of granite boulders have been put in place to form a barrier, or "revetment".
A classic case of sea level rise, I hear you say!
Well, maybe not.
According to Wikipedia:
Hurst Castle is an artillery fort established by Henry VIII on the Hurst Spit in Hampshire between 1541 and 1544.
Hurst Spit is a one-mile-long (1.6 km) shingle bank near the village of Keyhaven.
And this is the spit of land:
Anybody with a smattering of geography knows that spits and shingle banks are not permanent features; They are constantly shifting, sometimes gaining material and sometimes losing it, as currents shift around, and the Hurst Spit is no exception.
The Engineers Report for the Hurst Spit Stabilisation Scheme explains further:
It is of course doubly ironic that the Spit is largely formed from sediments from erosion in Christchurch Bay:
And as we often see in cases such as this, it has been the construction of sea defences upwind which have thrown the natural equilibrium out of balance at Hurst:
Sea levels in the area have been rising steadily since the 19thC, at a rate of 1.67mm a year at Portsmouth, and there is clearly no acceleration:
https://www.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=170-131#tabscenario
Such a tiny rise is not a significant factor in the erosion undermining the castle. The real culprit is the construction of coastal defences in Christchurch Bay.
But don’t expect the BBC to tell you that.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Well what a surprise! Mans actions have messed up ecology again and now its “Global warming / climate change” sheeesh
“It seems to be that the whole natural dynamics of the coastline in some places have been accelerated by climate change,” Rob Woodside, English Heritage’s estates director”
What an utter load of ignorant carp.
He should be asked to study Harlech Castle in north-west Wales. It’s over 700 year old, was built on a cliff next to the sea but is now hundreds of yards inland due to coastal deposition (no doubt via erosion elsewhere).
How do such stunningly ignorant people get into theses senior positions? Oh wait, of course you can’t obtain one of these positions UNLESS you spout such woke and/or green rubbish.
He wouldn’t get any money without dragging in CC.
So, will English Heritage acknowledge this (have they been informed?), and issue a correction? We know the BBC won’t, they have their agenda (facade) to keep up.
I’m sure English Heritage and the BBC know that only 17% of the United Kingdom coastlines are threatened by erosion and not accelerated by the ‘dynamics ‘ of climate change but rather the boulder clay, chalk and other sedimentary soil structures vulnerable to storm surges and tides . British Isles coastlines were dramatically different in the era of the Roman occupation. The sea levels of today have receded from the peaks of the 350 – 550 AD Roman and post Roman occupation age when the Sussex castle of Pevensey was a harbor entrance fort surrounded by the ocean on three sides yet is now situated over a mile inland. :
” Pevensey in Sussex ….was one of the “forts of the Saxon shore ” built by the Romans in the 3rd century to keep out the Saxon invaders .The castle – still visible – now lies a mile or two inland but was very important at the time of the Romans ”
One of the more novel responses to this BBC propaganda exercise that seems to have eluded you Paul is to chart the British Isles castles and settlements that were once ports but are nowadays inland from the ancient coastlines and not endangered by coastal erosion . And the hundreds of villages and towns that now lie underwater The BBC ran a Time Team special ” Britain’s Drowned World ” exploring the submerged landmasses of the North Sea and the Cornwall – Scilly region that were forested and above water thousands of years ago . The BBC’s lying propaganda is damned by their own archived programs https://judithcurry.com/2011/07/12/historic-variations-in-sea-levels-part-1-from-the-holocene-to-romans/
The main problem is that nature constantly remodels, coasts, paths of rivers, mountain slopes….. And then man comes along plonks things down and expects nature to stop for ever.
The mouth of my local river had gradually moved 2 miles over hundreds of years, now it is fixed in place by shore development and sea defences.
How even to react to this gargantuan level of nonsense. Hurst Castle is on a ‘spit’ of land – a peninsula of sand and gravel from deposition of material. Spits are transitory features – they come and go, erode and rebuild. The classic one is Spurn Head in Yorkshire that has a 200 year cycle of growth, erosion and then formation of a new spit to the west of the old one. This is all so well known we shouldn’t have to say it. It’s perhaps a miracle the castle has lasted as long as it has. To even mention climate change is a travesty. In addition, spits are affected by other human activities that can cut off the supply of sediments that maintains them. As you say even Wikipedia explains that coastal protection works in Christchurch Bay since 1940 may have interrupted the natural flow of shingle to the spit that kept it in balance. Maybe they should talk with their Welsh counterparts in CADW (the organisation that maintains historic monuments in Wales and what’s happening with Harlech Castle – 740 years old and now the sea is even further away from it than ever! It was built, on the shore, with its own port in 1282-1289. Now it’s half a mile in land, despite rising sea levels or whatever.
Always thought Harlech castle rising was isostatic rebound. Once the glaciers across Scotland and northern England withdrew, the land, relieved of the weight, began to rise. Much of the apparent rise in sea level along the South East coast is due, see-saw like, to it sinking as the West rises.
A large area of sand dunes near Harlech Castle complicates the picture. Wind has a big effect on them.
Nope. No rebound at Harlech. Sea levels were HIGHER 1000 years ago.
Sunday before last had a BBC programme about a race to excavate a coastal archeological site before it was lost to climate change. The presenter said explicitly that the coastal erosion was due to the rapidly changing climate.
The real link to climate change is that some of these archeological sites are in places that today look highly unattractive as places to live, due to the current climate. Skara Brae and Dartmoor are examples.
And just look what happened to Doggerland.
Also English heritage current Black History month, more in reality like fake history month.
I took it as a plea for more financial donations to repair these “castles” by using global warming as a tool. An excuse that is little different from many such pleas. The glaciers are melting, seas are rising, lower CO2 emissions ASAP… etc.
Demanding money by misrepresentation. That’s illegal, isn’t it?
I used to enjoy the BBC’s natural history programmes but I’ve now stopped watching them because I’m sick of being lectured about climate change in every one of them. Anything about the environment that is perceived as bad is now automatically ascribed to climate change, with no effort expended to find out the real cause.
Me too !
The photography is excellent, but that old fraud Attenborough spoiling it all parroting BBC propaganda. Bellamy would never have done, that’s why he got replaced.
Summed up.
https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1677009/jeremy-clarkson-david-attenborough-frozen-planet-ii-bbc-climate-change-news-latest
Yes. Attenborough has passed his Use By date.
Re Attenborough and the BBC, I read recently that the Guardian is running a masterclass where Prof Mark Maslin of UCL is speaking. In the short biography of Maslin, they said he was climate advisor to David Attenborough. Need one say more…
Hi Ken, I looked up this Mark Maslin and came across some of his work such as a paper entitled “”Climate suitability for viticulture in UK in 2100”.
Does anybody really believe this sort of stuff let alone buy into it? Predicting climate in almost 80 years time for which you will not be anywhere near around to be held liable for?!
on sunday i saw a trailer on sky for a programme on sky sport that night about how climate change would affect football. Mentioned how many grounds were at risk from rising sea levels etc. I dont have catch up so would be interesting to see what nonsense they came up with
skysport is totally on message with all this wokery – focussing on players taking the knee again
Yep.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11300721/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Footballs-climate-change-hypocrisy-league-own.html
“When politicians point the finger at Putin, they’re deflecting from their own failures.”
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/western-leaders-must-share-the-blame-for-the-energy-crisis
The stupid sanctions against Russia have merely sped up the arrival of the gas price crisis since as the Speccie article points out, costs were already rising as demand increased for gas.
The only threat that English heritage, National Trust and all the other begging bowl charities are concerned about is the threat to their ‘entitled’ inflated salaries.
The BBC has only publicised the English Heritage handout. Strange they never do the same with anything from Net Zero Watch or similar. Anyway, like the failures at the Environment Agency, rail companies, utilities and others, it’s down to poor or non-existent maintenance. The climate change card is an excuse, as it a cover for politicians’ lack of investment in energy production. I just received the latest EH members’ magazine and others above are correct – it’s all about digging up reasons for giving them money. The fact that 30 of them take over £2.3 million in salaries out of the charity (one of them over £145,000 alone) isn’t mentioned of course. As someone else has mentioned, they are also highlighting black prisoners of war held here in the 18th century. Other PoWs aren’t of sufficient interest, obviously. My membership will now be cancelled.
That’s exactly the modus operandi of the BBC. Only report items they agree with, like English Heritage climate nonsense, then when challenged they say that their reporting on it was fair and play the “who me, guv?” card. They get away with being biased by omission, ie ignore other viewpoints.
They did exactly the same with the WMO nonsense report claiming weather related disasters are getting worse. When I complained they simply harped on about how their reporting of the WMO claim was balanced and fair. They were completely blind when I pointed out the WMO claim was false, by admission of the EM-DAT database curators who had long warned against such use.
I suggested the BBC might consider that the real story was why the WMO was generating a false report and that the BBC might consider investigative journalism. Simply passed them by and they just ignored it. Its hard to tell if its willful bias or just utter stupidity, ignorance and incompetence by the BBC. I suspect the latter – even my Cocker Spaniel is better informed and certainly more intelligent. But then its a low bar where BBC journalists are concerned.
It seems clear to me that the BBC is cutting back on investigative journalism as just too expensive. This is why we see a rise in private individuals doing their own podcast reports, particularly on old crime cases that get very large audiences online. BBC Radio 4 has piggy backed on this trend to some extent.
The BBC is passing on press releases from sources it trusts, certainly not Net Zero Watch or other Tufton Street think tanks.
Good reporting does get through on the radio, the riots in Sri Lanka due to a ban on artificial fertilisers was featured on “From Our Own Correspondent”. How long this reliable source will continue is a good question.
Contrast the upkeep of the UK’s Hurst Castle with the homophone Hearst Castle in Northern California, including its vast acreages. I’ve been there and can attest it is a fabulously run and maintained CA State-owned and private foundation-run historical landmark. It is a huge moneymaker for the State and surrounding communities. If you are interested, see:
https://foundationathearstcastle.com/
Did we not go over this issue a few years ago? Yes, we did.
I offered the similar situation on the left coast of Washington State.
https://washingtoncoastmagazine.com/2016/02/washaway-beach/
Daily Torygraph as bad as it ever was:
https://postimg.cc/8s3kJKLk
From October 2004. But the article has nothing to do with sea level rise but instead describes coastal erosion, with a quote saying “Mr Fell-Clark…awoke after a storm in 1997 to find the shingle beach had disappeared”
I never really forgave the Telegraph after their Science Editor described Pi as a fraction. If only that were true, it would make life much simpler.
As an English Heritage member I recently received a begging-letter from EH asking for a donation for this very project. I returned the letter in the reply-paid envelope with no donation, but with a letter of my own stating that I would gladly have given towards their project if they hadn’t given ‘climate change’ as the reason.
A great way to respond. I might try this with a few groups.
Paul, if I may, I’ve looked at related issues a couple of times at Cliscep:
and
“It seems to be that the whole natural dynamics of the coastline in some places have been accelerated by climate change”
1. Define ‘whole natural dynamics.’
2. Define ‘climate change.’
3. Using your definitions, explain the mechanism by which ‘climate change’ altered the ‘whole natural dynamics.’
In reality, his assertion is just word salad.
Good article by Andrew Montford in Net Zero Watch:
https://www.netzerowatch.com/the-dodgy-numbers-behind-labours-energy-policy/
—which gives a detailed and dismal description of the bumbling incompetence of politicians (not just Labour) who harbour delusions about their qualifications for government.
Carbon Brief gets a dishonourable mention also.
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/warning-sea-getting-hotter-and-higher
RNZ radionewzealand. sister to BBC ! No scientists on the staff.
The land tilts down and the sea level appears to rise in parts of NZ . See NZ faultlines.
Note, acidification of sea water. Not possible , surely. as sea water is alkaline. They mean the water is less alkaline perhaps?
Plastic bags are at fault again, again. 🙂
Post Hoc Propter Hoc reasoning is rife in the world . That newsmedia world- wide rely on cut and paste in most reports, is my contention , and they all use the same data. Where does that data come from ? Some area without logic.?
” I’ve looked at the first example , Hurst Castle and climate change has nothing to do with the matter .I gave up on the rest ………If anybody wants to follow up I’ll gladly publish ”
I find it bemusing you “gave up” so prematurely when the reason English Heritage [ spruiking for donations ] and the BBC highlighted those six coastal fortress and castle sites [ from a compendium of 400 ] for propaganda value is so glaringly obvious Paul . The answer lies in the respective dates of their construction and refurbishment ranging from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age conveniently eliding the fact that sea levels have fluctuated significantly over the last 3500 years and British Isles sea levels during the late Roman occupation and Byzantine era were HIGHER than today when atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were lower . I previously cited the Saxon harbor fortress of Pevensey Castle and its present day inland location. Elsewhere in the comments thread of your article ” The Telegraphs Reputation Slowly Sinks Beneath The Waves ” , I noted – based on simple arithmetic – the loss of land to the sea along the Holderness coastline must have been more rapid centuries ago than the ‘meter every year ‘ reported by The Telegraph
St Mary’s [ Isles of Scilly ] Garrison Walls : 1551 / 1593 1601 / 1716 -1746
Hurst Castle : 1541 – 1544
Bayards Cove Fort : 1522 – 1536
Calshot Castle : 1539 – 1540
Piel Castle : built in 1327 on the ruins of an earlier fortress dating to the reign of King Stephen [ 1135 – 1154 ]
Tintagel Castle : 1225 – 1233 on the remnants of an earlier palatial fortress built in 1145
All of these English heritage coastal castles and fortifications were built after sea levels had receded from the Roman occupation – Byzantine age peaks centuries ago . To quote Judith Curry ” …in early Roman times levels were somewhere around current levels . Levels then rose significantly through the Roman period peaking around the 700 AD Byzantine period at levels higher than today ” … The modest incremental sea level incursions as the Little Ice Age segued into the modern warm period are completely natural and the coastal erosion more a consequence of land subsidence , vulnerable soil structures and human terrain modification