BBC Happisburgh Complaint
By Paul Homewood
You will no doubt remember this BBC report from last December, which specifically blamed coastal erosion in Norfolk on climate change:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-63822899
I filed this complaint at the time:
The report states”But punishing weather conditions linked to climate change have eroded so much of the village’s soft sandy rock “
In fact coastal erosion has been taking place in Happisburgh for thousands of years. There are well established historical links for this fact, for instance:
http://happisburgh.org.uk/ccag/history/
The British Geological Study in their 2006 study on Happisburgh erosion states:
“It is likely that the Norfolk cliffs have been eroding at the present rate for about the last 5000 years”
https://www.bgs.ac.uk/case-studies/coastal-erosion-at-happisburgh-norfolk-landslide-case-study/
The recent increase in erosion is due to fact that sea defences built in the 1950s, which worked well, have lately fallen into disrepair.
Your claim of “punishing weather conditions” also does not stand up to scrutiny. The Met Office have recently said that “There’s no evidence of a trend in storminess because of climate change [in the UK]”:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/press-office/news/weather-and-climate/2022/2022-provisionally-warmest-year-on-record-for-uk
And the Met Office’s own charts clearly show that the frequency and intensity of storms in the UK has actually declined since the 1990S:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/image-1.png
Sea levels on the East Coast have been rising at a steady rate since the mid 19thC. There is no evidence of recent acceleration.
https://www.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=170-053
About half of the sea level rise along the Norfolk coast, about 1mm a year, is caused by the land sinking, something which has been occurring since the Ice Age:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/image-61.png
Nowhere in the article is there any mention of the above facts.
Consequently readers will have been badly misinformed, and led into thinking that coastal erosion is all due to modern, man-made global warming.
The first response was obviously written by the office junior, which I refused to accept. I have just received the second formal response:
I appreciate you may not believe there is a link between coastal erosion and climate change however many scientists and experts would disagree. Within the article, we quoted a spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as saying: "We recognise the threat from climate change and sea level rise, which is why we are investing a record £5.2bn over six years in around 2,000 flood and coastal erosion schemes to better protect communities across England,"
The LSE’s Grantham Research Institute released a paper on this in 2021 which says: “Climate change is causing sea level rise, which is increasing the risk of flooding around the UK’s coastline. It is also increasing coastal erosion. Both of these hazards pose a risk to people and the environment. …The major impacts of sea level rise occur during high tides and storms, causing flooding along coastlines and estuaries.”
The LSE paper further says: “Sea level rise can also increase coastal erosion because waves can extend further up and along beaches and cliffs. Erosion is happening faster along coastlines made from softer sediments, notably on the East coast of England”– which is where Happisburgh is sited.
You have cited a BGS survey from 2006. As you suggested, it does indeed say “It is likely that the Norfolk cliffs have been eroding at the present rate for about the last 5000 years…"
However it goes on to say: “…future predictions of sea-level rise and storm frequency due to climate change are likely to have a profound impact on coastal erosion and serious consequences for the effectiveness of coastal protection and sea defence schemes in East Anglia in the near future.”
It also states: “Sea-level rise and climate change, including increased storminess, may also increase the rate of erosion.”
The BGS survey was conducted 17 years ago in 2006, since when knowledge about climate change has moved on. What it predicted then does indeed seem to be happening. We reported in our article that During the last 20 years, 34 homes have crumbled into the water in Happisburgh because of coastal erosion.
I am sorry if you were disappointed by our coverage however I do not believe there has been any breach of our Guidelines relating to editorial values and standards. I would however like to thank you for taking the time to write in and share your views with us.
So I have now sent my complaint up to the Executive Complaints Unit, with this reply:
Your response implies that the rate of sea level rise and storminess have increased since 2006, when the BGS stated that "It is likely that the Norfolk cliffs have been eroding at the present rate for about the last 5000 years"
There is no evidence for this. In terms of sea levels, the rate of rise has actually slowed in the period:
https://www.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=170-053
You quote DEFRA on the future threat of sea level rise, but the data shows that has not happened yet.
And as my original complaint noted, the Met Office have recently confirmed that storminess has not increased either. Their charts actually show a decline since the 1990s.
Your comment that "During the last 20 years, 34 homes have crumbled into the water in Happisburgh because of coastal erosion" is utterly irrelevant, as homes have been lost to the sea for centuries.
Above all you offer no evidence that the rate of erosion has increased since 2006. This is obviously crucial to your claim that climate change is having an increased effect on erosion.
Unless you can prove that the rate of erosion has increased since 2006, the BGS statement remains true, that “the Norfolk cliffs have been eroding at the present rate for about the last 5000 years". This in turn therefore invalidates your report’s claim that “punishing weather conditions linked to climate change have eroded so much of the village’s soft sandy rock that her house is now the last one before the cliff edge”.
Whatever role modern climate change may have played, it is a fact that most of the erosion is due to geological forces which have been taking place for thousands of years.
It is grossly misleading not to mention this fact. It is also inaccurate to claim that climate change is having an increasing effect, as your reponses state.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Keep at ‘em Paul!
You should get a knighthood for this) but won’t),
I am routing for sainthood!
Good on you but…these misinforming media outlets aren’t held to account. They create these misleading releases and aren’t required to publish recourse. Again though, top marks for your efforts.
Their charter says they shall not mislead yet this article is the most brazen attempt to mislead the public as you will find.
I used to work for a high level complaints team in the Civil service from 1995 until 2013. If I’d given a clearly dishonest response like that to a complaint, I’d have been swiftly moved elsewhere.
So when did the rot set in and why?
Say hello to Twentyeightgate…
https://joannenova.com.au/2012/11/bbc-secret-exposed-greenpeace-activists-bp-decide-what-sciencebrits-see-hello-twentyeightgate/
Was there not a further BBC organised out at least attended meeting at which it was decided that the science was settled and therefore there was no need for their editors to balance their coverage of AWG/CC – sometime in 2009 and one T.Davie was an attendee?
Defund The BBC…
….but you wouldn’t have been sacked.
Because no one sacks a Civil Servant.. ..
You’d be surprised, that is actually a bit of an urban myth. But, if you’re a higher up you’d be palmed off on some other department or broom cupboard if you weren’t high enough up the ladder.
But not sacked, therein lies the problem, cover up?
The whole of the east coast from Flamborough Head south has been eroding for as long as I can remember and history provides us with further evidence of lost villages off the East Anglian coast. Meanwhile the Cinque Ports just round the corner have by and large refused to sink(!) and are now a considerable distance from the coast, Dover being the notable exception.
Where do the Mediæval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age fit into this blinkered attitude towards readily available evidence that “climate change” has nothing to do with coastal erosion?
Yes indeed Mike.
First of all qudos to Saint Paul for all his efforts.
I live on the north side of the Tay estuary (in a famous golf town) and my neighbour, who is a lobster fisherman, assures me he has difficulty in launching his boat as the sea level has fallen. Especially coming back up.
As we all know it is due to the North East coast of Scotland recovering from the mile high glacier ice age burden.
Poor old South Enguland is sadly sinking.
Yes I know “agree” with you – BUT does the rock mantle have a MEMORY ?. – WHY should it rise? we were taught so much and accepted it – a Generational thing to do.
@saighdear
The answer to your question is yes it does.
In geophysics we use gravity surveys and other data to identify mantle anomalies associated with crustal rebound due to post glacial land ice unloading and thereby establish the size of the rock mantle “memory”.
See Kaufmann, G. and Lambeck, K. 2000 Mantle dynamics, postglacial rebound and the radial viscosity profile
I can go to the Norfolk County Record office to see what archives exist regarding coastal erosion at Hais’bro and Bacton before 1850 and the industrial revolution.
The self-justifying responses that you have received Paul are characteristic of people who have been found out.
It’s a good job that the BBC did not try to cover the loss through erosion of a coastal town next to Dunwich in Suffolk long before CO2 was discovered. But that is the point: no loss of dwellings for a long time makes for no story and no seekers of compensation.
If you go to ” Georeferenced Maps , NLS ” you can put up OS maps from the 19th century to see where the coastline was then , and a blue slide button will show you now .
Along the coast as a whole , there are many places which have gained land .Probably more than which have lost land to the sea .
So most of it is storm erosion just moving parts of the cliffs a bit further along the coast .
But just like the fake ” Hottest Ever ” reports we are always being bombarded with , the ” Sea level rising ” claims are all part of the Green Loony lies .https://notrickszone.com/2023/09/14/have-sea-level-rise-data-been-faked-altimetry-corrects-non-trends-to-show-rapid-acceleration/
Excerpt from “Outrageous Waves” Basil E Cracknell, (Philimore 2005)
“The first great storm in Norfolk was in 1236 and it was followed by another in October 1250 when the sea broke through the dunes between Happisburgh and Winterton. Matthew Paris, a chronicler of the time, says that over 300 houses and several churches were damaged or destroyed by floods along the coasts of south-east England. Then came the great flood of 1287, or rather floods, since Lamb notes that there were no less than five great storms in that same year, two in January, two in February and one in December. The flood waters rose above the high altar of the church of Great Yarmouth. Excavations made at the time of the construction of the South Denes power station at Great Yarmouth showed that the flood waters must have reached a height of at least nine feet above Ordnance Datum. Alot of pottery sherds, dating to the late 13th century were found buried by up to 17 feet of beach ballast and silt, and human remains unearthed indicate that about 100 people must have drowned” page 64.
Complaining to the BBC is like banging your head against a brick wall, I no longer trust them as their biased reporting has increasingly become so blatant that they have lost all credibility. Try to escalate to the DG.
I have done that in respect of their editorial decisions about website articles selected for HYSs. Two complaint currently in – I have trapped BBC HYS so called moderators, sorry censors, many times not only with the reasons they have selected for removing my very deliberately worded posts but also for using what they deem abusive language – my tactic is to repeat terms and phrases already posted and been visible for hours. So much for their
Zero Tolerance” I would heartily recommend people to do likewise as they see fit and email Tim Davie’s office – tim.davie@bbc.co.uk. They have routinely shot themselves in the foot many times and Mr DAvie cannot say he is unaware ( as he did recently when trying to convince us all that after he listened to Brand’s BBC programmes he could not understand why “it” as broadcast.
They have to respond – and it is easy to drive a massive whole through their crass woke rubbish. Apologies if off topic.
I suspect that the BEEB got Mrs Bayless to don winter clothes for the photo when it was probably quite a nice day!
Excellent. There literally is no answer to you your statements. The BBC are misleading the public on climate change on a daily basis with their sweeping unsubstantiated assertions such as “however many scientists and experts would disagree”. Meaningless.
I don’t have a problem with that statement. That’s the point. There’s disagreement and multiple points of view. The BBC insist that if an “expert” says its climate change, then that’s it, all settled, because their policy is climate change is settled. That this is a complete travesty of science even when it’s settled bothers them not.
Those two responses are very familiar to me.
Tried two browsers and still had to log in and had to accept a name change, Has something changed?
I got two “tests”!!!
Sorry Paul,
I see that was confusing.
What I meant was the two responses in your posting were very similar to the ones I get from the BBC. The first is almost a standard from a pro-forma, the second is also very formulaic, just change a few names.
I then had problems with WordPress wanting me to log in before posting. I have something for WUWT but that seems site specific so I created a new one, but had to change my name.
So as I use two browsers I put in two test posts, hope that clarifies things a bit
I had the same problem with WordPress. I had to log in, then it didn’t recognise my email address (?), then said my user name had already been used; of course it had. Tried several user names, including my own name, which were not accepted, so I am now Nevis52. If anyone is interested I was previously know as Caro.
I have experienced strange but maybe not so strange problems with logging in to both in the last month or so.
“Dangerous site” type message with WUWT which I overcame eventually (now not apparearing …ATM) ) and then slight long winded login issues with NALOPKT …don’t want to start overthinking this but……
Thank you. Not just me then.
I has a similar problem a few months back. I had to create a new email address to get back in.
One of the problems can be the browser you use .
Some of them are censoring the sites they allow you to visit .https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-06-22/google-is-the-worlds-biggest-censor-and-its-power-must-be-regulated
The usual way is something like ” This site might not be safe ” or similar , when really it is on a list of not complying with the left wing agenda types site .
So perhaps try another browser .
Well done Paul.
So the science has moved on since 2006 has it? It seems that only the opinions of certain institutions have changed, and as you say not the evidence. Still this sort of argument is becoming common in the post truth world. I suppose if they actually did any proper research they’d be traumatised by the results, which would undoubtedly lead them to invalidate it in case they upset those poor little zealots’ feelings.
My preference in this situation is to ask everyone that hasn’t done so already to simply cancel their TV licence. It’s the only way to hit them where it hurts and I can attest does wonders for your blood pressure.
The BBC are really scraping the bottom of the barrel when they have to reference the Grantham Institute. I wonder if “fast fingers” Bob Ward wrote that part of the response for the BBC.
“You quote DEFRA on the future threat of sea level rise, but the data shows that has not happened yet.”
This DEFRA?
The one whose blog reminds its readers “The blog features a review of our leading media stories, rebuttal of inaccurate comment, and updates about our campaigns and stories.”
Yet uses the same faked turtle image that the Beeb was caught using!
There is a picture of houses collapsing into the sea at Pakefield near Lowestoft in the Observer book of British Geology – 1949 – described as “Coastal destruction”
Pretty much any old school geography book would have that or something similar.
I bought a geography A level book just to see what is taught. Almost nothing on physical geography; lots on climate change – and even claims carbon dioxide is 72% of greenhouse gases – which rather omits water vapour !
It is scandalous if this is being taught in schools. I suspect the book didn’t explain that the atmosphere comprises just 1% greenhouse gases and the most abundant greenhouse gas is, as you say, water vapour with carbon dioxide and methane being miniscule.
Some part of the BBC knows about the east coast town of Dunwich…
Dunwich: The British town lost to the sea
BBC travel, 28th February 2022
The thriving port town of Dunwich was lost to storms in the 13th Century. But scientists recently have discovered that it wasn’t lost at all – it’s simply underwater.
. . .
The crumbling stone walls you can visit today are the remains of the “new” friary, rebuilt in the late 13th Century on land half a mile from the sea. They now stand perilously close to the edge of the cliffs – illustrating how storms, surges and coastal erosion turned the tide on thriving Dunwich, some of which was later built on higher ground.
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220227-dunwich-the-british-town-lost-to-the-sea
More and more agencies/officials appear to be using “Climate Change” as an excuse to not do anything helpful about problems that fall within their jurisdiction.
Recall the freefall of birds article: Instead of investigation habitat loss, faulty data, or other issues, the dubious “facts” dredged from nether-regions are blamed on CO2 — so the only solution is to paint oneself green and blame an uncaring society.
Agreed John. I have been trying to explain that to friends for 15 years now. It’s just gets more and more incredible which organisations are using it as an excuse as the years go by. Of course many judiciously insert the word “could”, as in “sky could fall due to climate change”. That’s the level we are at these days and of course everyone goes with it because they can all wash their hands of any accountability. And all done increasingly from their spare bedrooms. What a time to live in!
Well researched response to the BBC article. well done!
“I appreciate you may not believe”
Precisely when did science become a matter of belief?
Yes, what we “believe” is that they are alternative, equally valid explanations that the BBC refuses to publish alongside its preferred explanation.
‘Nicola, who also works as a fitness instructor’
Her house is going to crumble into the sea, and she’s a fitness instructor.
Better than their previous appeals to pity. They’ve been using a lot of street urchins. Nicola at least seems to be likeable.
The problem is that the BBC simply says that “experts support our claim”. They believe, as a matter of policy, that those experts are always right whdn blaminv clinate change. That, even in climate science, experts are not always right is of no interest to them. The idea you can show a different view when experts say it’s climate change is anathema to them. The younger generation in the BBC believe fanatically that they have a mission to save the world and that they are right. They do not and cannot question this and will pursue their ends no matter what.
If anyone challenges the claims that climate change in the UK is increasing sea levels and therefore increasing coastal erosion as I have challenged many times, I have some advice.
The clearest evidence against this misinformation is primarily in the sea level data itself. The fact is that the RATE of sea level rise has NOT changed over centuries. The capital of East Anglia vanished beneath the waves 800 years ago and this ancient port is now 2 miles out under the North Sea and there was no oil or gas industries producing CO2 back then.
Secondly, any material which is eroded does not simply vanish, it is deposited elsewhere and one can highlight today’s landforms created by coastal deposition where the coastline is actively being driven further and further back out to sea due to long-shore drifting, spits a multitude of new marshlands and shingle beaches along the same stretch of coastline.
Further hard evidence is that all our east coast ports must be dredged regularly to maintain the depth of sea water. It’s NOT the other way around.
Unfortunately, common sense isn’t very common amongst TPTB
First, there is no such thing as man-made climate change; it’s called weather. Water levels go up and down. About twenty years ago the Lake Michigan Dunes were being eroded by high lake levels that have since returned to the mean. Some homes that were purposely built close to the watr’s edge fell into the lake as the dune eroded. Oh my, what happened? they asked. I read once in An Old Book, “Only fools biuld their house on shifting sands.” That was true 2,000 years ago and nothing has changed–the fools, like the poor, will always be with us.
O/T but both the Guardian and the BBC are going apoplectic over Rishi Sunak’s recent tame announcements. But on the same hysterical page the Graun are whinging about fining barge owners for lighting their heating systems. Effing idiotic hypocrites! Make ’em live on solar panels and twee little wind turbines.
Maybe Dale Vince can flog them some “gas from grass”.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/23/ban-on-wood-burners-threatens-british-boat-dwellers-with-winter-freeze
He is so good at spouting bulls*** out of his sphincter channel, can we make that “gas from ass?
Completely OT but some readers may be interested in this. An easy to follow summary of the various schemes (CfD …) and electricity pricing.
(h/t Richard North – turbulenttimes.co.uk)
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/renewables-increase-electricity-bills
That person should also be sacked for his/her continual misuse of ‘however’.
This shows how bad things are. You cite facts and they respond with should’ve. Time they were forced to face facts i.e. a huge audit