BBC’s Indonesia Drought Claims Rebutted By The Data
By Paul Homewood
You will recall this BBC report a couple of weeks ago:
When Sariah went to fetch water in a pit near her home in Bangka Island, Indonesia, last September, she was unaware that a 3m-long saltwater crocodile had been resting in the crater, watching as she filled one of her buckets.
"The water was calm and there was no sign of a crocodile, so I decided to take a bath. Suddenly, it appeared out of nowhere and bit me, dragging me by my left arm into the water," the 54-year-old says.
Indonesia sees the most saltwater crocodile attacks in the world. In the past decade, there have been about 1,000 attacks, killing more than 450 people. Nearly 90 of these attacks took place in Bangka and its neighbouring Belitung island, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Bangka island is one of the richest tin-mining regions in the world.
The island – almost the size of Hawaii – has a population of one million, and about 80% of them are miners. More than 60% of the island’s land has already been converted into tin mines, says wildlife conservation group Walhi. Many of these mines are illegal.
Decades of tin exploitation have stripped the island of its forest, leaving behind thousands of vast craters and pits that resemble a lunar landscape. And as land deposits diminish, miners are turning to the sea.
That means saltwater crocodiles, which can also live in freshwater, are squeezed out of their natural habitats. Now they are living in abandoned and active mining pits close to people’s homes, contributing to the rise in attacks.
Last year’s prolonged dry season, driven by climate change, dried up the well in front of Sariah’s house. Her water supply was cut after she fell behind on payments for three months. So, the abandoned pits were the only source of water for her family and many others.
Five days after the attack on Sariah, a miner in the island was almost killed by a crocodile when he was washing tin ore in another pit. He suffered injuries in his head, shoulder and an arm.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-67004770
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I filed this complaint:
The report claims that "Last year’s prolonged dry season, driven by climate change, dried up the well in front of Sariah’s house"
Droughts in Indonesia are driven by El Nino cycles and the Indian Ocean Dipole. When these are positive, as they have been this year, droughts occur in the region – see here:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
Neither of these cycles are connected to climate change, and there is no evidence that the current drought is any worse than previous ones in Indonesia
A correction should be published to make this clear
The BBC has responded:
Thank you for contacting us about the article: "Why Indonesia can’t stop crocodile attacks."
We have noted your concerns that you feel it was wrong to attribute the drying up of a well to climate change.
Upon review, we found that the article states that it was ‘driven by’ climate change, as opposed to being a direct result. The evidence supporting worsening droughts in Indonesia due to climate change is supported by established organisations including the World Bank and the United Nations. Their outlook is provided at the links below which we hope you will find useful. However, we acknowledge you feel that greater attention could have been given to the historic El Nino cycle which affects Indonesia.
(The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sources.)
https://indonesia.un.org/en/172909-climate-change
https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country/indonesia
We appreciate your feedback. All complaints are sent to senior management, and we’ve included your points in our overnight report. These reports are among the most widely read sources of feedback in the company and ensures that your concerns have been seen by the right people quickly. This helps inform their decisions about current and future content.
Thank you, once again, for getting in touch.
Neither of the links they have given offer any evidence supporting worsening droughts in Indonesia.
The first link is just a general global assessment of climate change, which is not specific to Indonesia at all. Even then it is no more than a political propaganda statement, containing no science or data at all.
The second link takes us to the World Bank Portal.
It provides this chart on precipitation:
https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country/indonesia
Naturally, the darker the blue, the wetter the year – click on the link, and you can hover over the chart to see the actual data. It would appear that recent years have actually been wetter than average.
The Portal also has this chart, which shows two things:
1) Annual rainfall in the last 30 years is higher than previously
2) There is less annual variability between 1991-2020 than in the past.
The increasing trend is confirmed by this graph:
The World Bank has also published a Climate Risk Country Profile for Indonesia. It states:
“Studies point to an overall decrease in average annual precipitation.”
However the only link is to a paper based on short term trends and published in 2007, a period when rainfall was relatively low:
The World Bank claim is also contradicted by this statement in the same paragraph::
“USAID’s climate risk profile for Indonesia describes a decreased average annual precipitation of 3% during 1901–2013, but a 12% increase between 1985 and 2015”,
something which is clearly borne out in the above graph.
The BBC’s claim and response are therefore contradicted by the actual data.
Of course, I will be resubmitting my complaint!
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Whats clear is there is no trend 1951-80 nor 1981-00. The distribution shifts slightly but calling that a trend is pushing random variation. Eyeballing it, I’d say there’s no trend 1951-05. The last 15 years or so has been different, but obviously wetter. Quite how that it is drought, let alone climate change is beyond me.
“Upon review, we found that the article states that it was ‘driven by’ climate change, as opposed to being a direct result.”
Wut? So ‘driven by’ is different from “caused by” ?????
‘The evidence supporting worsening droughts in Indonesia due to climate change is supported by established organisations including the World Bank and the United Nations.’
Gamecock’s go-to meteorological sources.
The car moved because it was driven by the man, but its motion was not as a direct result of the man.
I hope that’s clarified it for you.
and therefore, the crash was not my fault….
‘Why Indonesia can’t stop crocodile attacks’
And, as I pointed out when this was originally posted, the headline is completely bogus. Indonesia’s problem is crocs are a protected species. It is illegal to harm them, even if they have a baby in their mouth.
When the alligators get too rambunctious here in South Carolina, we start shooting them.
But the driver was not the driving force. He merely controlled it.
GC, many years ago my wife, daughter and I took our Coleman pop-up to park at a campsite at Myrtle Beach. The site had a couple of small lakes and some of the campsites were located round them. One morning I was leaving the camper when a neighbour warned there was an alligator by my camper. Too right, he was! It was lying under the pull-out bed at the lake end of the camper – where my young daughter was sleeping!! As we say in the UK, a ‘half -crown-sixpence moment’!
So salt water crocodiles are like Hamas.
Blameless by BBC definitions.
“… driven by’ climate change, as opposed to being a direct result.”
Potayto potahto. Pass me a new hair, the last one split.
When I complain to the BBC, I sometimes put Dr in front of my name…..I am not a Dr. Anyway, I only get replies from them when I put Dr. When I don’t, they never respond.
They are liars.
The outlook of the climate has no effect on what has happened recently.
The World Bank Portal can be very deceptive, what is written does not always agree with the data provided. And can also be a bit of a pain to navigate without some practice.
Try this:
– at the top of the webpage click on ‘country’.
– got to Indonesia on the map.
– click on ‘current climate’
– then go to ‘variable’ and click on ‘precipitation’ as well as any the time period.
You will then get a graph of precipitation from 1910 to present, including the trend of the 10-year average.
This graph completely contradicts the BBC quote.
The ten year average shows only a slight annual variation, with NO long-term tend. Annual variation is around 2.75 meters, which tells me that the well of the lady was not very deep or well positioned. Oddly enough, the last 3 years have had more than the average rainfall. l would copy and past the graph, will (should?) make the BBC look pretty stupid.
The BBC will be along with more news as soon as they can make some up.
Am I the only one that wonders about this statement:
“… dried up the well in front of Sariah’s house. Her water supply was cut after she fell behind on payments for three months. ”
Question #1 is – what did dry up poor Sariah’s well?
Question #2 is – are there two wells or just one?
Question #3 is – who owns the well she should have, but didn’t, pay for?
Question #4 is – Why did a surface pond have water with a resident crocodile when her well went dry “because of climate change”?
You can ask the BBC these questions but I guarantee the answer will be along the lines of and I quote a BBC response
“Therefore, we believe it is accurate and appropriate to report on this topic in the way we have done, whilst also attributing the findings to the scientists who conducted the research.”
Nothing to do with us gov, it’s what bigger boys said.
“We are stenographers, NOT journalists, you fool!”
“Companies give us their press releases, and we print them. That’s what the press does, dummy.”
The exact opposite of AI is spelled B-B-C.
When it suits them the BBC says we are reporting what others say and then they do ‘investigations ‘ of subjects that interest them. The common theme being ‘on the left’.
How apt that when reading this there was an interview with Jordan Peterson on GB News who ended with the statement as a way to improve things – tell the truth or at least don’t lie. I doubt this would ever be on the wall at the BBC to inspire them. And in another case of the BBC lying, Peter Hitchens has researched the new BBC drama Time which is about a single mother being jailed for stealing electricity. You will find that the basis for this is false as there is no record of any such case and that in such circumstances it is certain that the woman would not be jailed. The BBC hide behind it being ‘fictional’ but you can guarantee that they know full well that many still – remarkably – hold the BBC in high esteem and would assume it was based on something real.
In lighter news, it seems that the BBC’s generosity with money to its raft of overpaid staff has created a £1.9bn problem for its pension fund, especially as it has been offering early retirement packages. It would seem that their fund is like the LGPS and increases by CPI each April which has seen costs soar recently. £1.9bn is the cost of BBC1 & BBC2 output for a year.
Might also have something to do with investing it in green and woke companies. A portfolio of Tesla, Ørsted, NatWest and Siemens wouldn’t be looking too clever at the moment.
The BBC pension scheme is like many other government pension schemes, based on the final, high salary; salaries which are paid for by taxpayers and inflation proofed to boot. I do not know one commercial concern that can afford a final salary pension. We all have to make do with a defined contribution pension. But there again, nothing’s too good for the public sector, given that they provide such good service to the public…..
No longer true. The BBC I think is paying 2/3 of salary. The LGPS stopped using Final Salary well over a decade ago. It went to Average Salary to reduce costs and increased contributions but there is no doubt it is still a massive benefit to recipients and members. Brown and his sidekick Balls ruined all the great company pension schemes by taxing fund income from dividends. The idiots could not see that pension funding would go up and down and that their theft in the good times would hammer them in the bad times.