Two More BBC Complaints
By Paul Homewood
Two more complaints are winging their way to the BBC!!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-67752167
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The first concerns the Scottish climate story.
My complaint states:
Two unsubstantiated claims are made:
1) "Researchers have been comparing temperature and rainfall records from the period between 1960-1989 to the three decades from 1990 to 2019.
In some parts of Scotland, temperatures in February rose from a high of 16.9C to 19.4C"
This is plainly absurd, as average February temperatures in Scotland are about 3C!
This claim apparently comes from the researchers, but it is the BBC’s job to challenge such obvious falsehoods, not broadcast them.2) "A series of storms have delivered unprecedented weather to Scotland in recent years.
Storm Arwen in 2021 brought 100 mph north-easterly winds which flattened entire forests and left many without electricity for days."100 mph winds in Scotland are not unprecedented, or even unusual. The record wind speed according to the Met Office is 142 mph, at Fraserburgh in February 1989.
The Braer storm in 1993 brought 125 mph winds, and the Burns Day storm in 1990 had winds of 100 mph in Berwickshire.
I can provide the Met Office links to all these storms.
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The second concerns the wind curtailment story:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
My complaint reads:
You claim "Wasted wind power will add £40 to the average UK household’s electricity bill in 2023, according to a think tank. Carbon Tracker researches the impact of climate change on financial markets. It said since the start of 2023, wind curtailment payments cost £590m, adding £40 to the average consumer bill"
As domestic users only consume about a third of total electricity generation, the cost to them would be about £196m. There are about 27 million households, so the average would be £7 a year, not £40
In both cases, the BBC have merely cut and pasted press releases, as all the media seems to have done.
The BBC will no doubt blame the source and deny all responsibility, as they always do.
However, that does not excuse them from printing false information.
It also highlights the lack of any real editorial control in matters of climate/energy. These are both schoolboy errors, which any sub-editor would have picked up straightaway.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Paul, Britain needs a punchy precis of the top 20 or 30 BBC lies about Climate Change. I need it also to take to my MP who I’m seeing after Christmas.
I’m going to write the next annual review for the GWPF in the New Year
You might send him the last two reviews:
Thanks Paul, that’s exactly what I need.
1. Regarding pollution rather than climate, Paul covered this BBC disinformation:
2. “Joshimath: The trauma of living in India’s sinking Himalayan town.” and “Joshimath: Cramped shelters fill up fast as India’s Himalayan town sinks.”
The BBC originally categorised both under “Climate change” until it was pointed out that both stories explained the causes of the situation, which had absolutely nothing to do with climate change.
The stories were stealthily recategorised.
The BBC along with virtually all mainstream media outlets is a propaganda outlet for the climate catastrophists. The extreme left wing ideology behind it finds sympathy within. What I dislike most is the licence fee funded arrogance of the BBC.
Well done Paul, they must really detest you by now.
It’s CLIMATE COMMUNISM…easier to say, easier to spell and it’s EXACTLY what’s going on.
I’m going to use that.
It is more simple than that. A left wing takeover of the BBC has taken place and like a virus they are modifying the cell (the bbc) to perform tasks on behalf of their political masters. This is SO wrong it is to Parliaments eternal shame that this is being allowed to continue
Parliament, having a sense of shame. Really?
Clearly not so double the shame. Wonder when they will be voting themselves another pay rise?
I would lay bets you have ro escalate this complaint, Paul. Well, more power to your elbow! I’m with you. Get yourself a Christmas present!
Does the BBC really doubt the Settled Science?
Meanwhile the James Hutton Institute know they’ve been rumbled. The text now reads
In some parts of the country, temperatures in February, for example, have risen 2.5°C, since 2060. This observed change is comparable to the lower range of what climate scientists had projected for the future period 2020-2050, implying we are on course to reach the projections of higher temperatures.
since 2060????
They’ve clearly been on the Christmas sauce or something. You’d have thought someone would have checked before posting the amendment, which makes no intelligent sense even if you correct to 1960.
Even that is complete garbage. Parts for a month proves nothing whatsoever about the whole for decades. I’d also very much like so see the data – one or two years with very high anomalies perhaps? And of course they don’t get homogenised down.
One further nail in their clearly already heavily nailed up coffin is that there is no such thing as a “climate scientist. Climate science is an overarching field drawing drawing “expertise” ( I use the term in it’s loosest form) from a wide range of disciplines from Stem (not so easy to fiddle with) to what actually is not science at all, statistics where fiddle factors abound keep them all in relative luxury. I suppose developing this silly all encompassing term, I can call myself two climate scientists having been educated in two. I feel so climate aware…….
What the BBC originally said:
http://web.archive.org/web/20231219012205/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-67752167
What they say now
https://web.archive.org/web/20231219191922/https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-67752167
Always worth archiving a dodgy news story or other web page so they can’t pretend it wasn’t what they posted.
“which flattened entire forests”: forests my backside: I’ll bet they were just conifer plantations.
If there’s a prize for the most ludicrous BBC response to a complaint, I claim it for the following effort by ‘Cecilia’, Journalist, BBC News website.
Relating to “Price paid for offshore power to rise by over 50%”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67430888
Simon Jack, Business editor opens with ….
“The price paid to generate electricity by offshore wind farms has been raised by more than 50% as the government tries to entice energy firms to invest.
It comes after an auction for offshore wind projects failed to attract any bids, with firms arguing the price set for electricity generated was too low.
The government has lifted the amount it pays from £44 per MWh to a price up to £73.”
In pointing out that Mr Jack was wrong because the Administrative Strike Prices (£/MWh in 2012 prices) shown in Table 1 below states that Floating Offshore Wind would receive £176/MWh
Click to access cfd-ar6-administrative-strike-price-methodology.pdf
My complaint was rejected by ‘Cecilia’, Journalist, BBC News website. with the
I’m now waiting to discover what excuse a more-knowledgeable BBC bod uses to extricate itself from further embarrassment.
Goodness me! what a misleading article. Having not read a single BBC webpage in many months today I read two. Firstly, the government doesn’t pay anything. The Low Carbon Contracts Company acts as an intermediary between CFD holders and electricity retailers, ensuring that the latter are billed for the difference between market and strike prices. Electricity retailers actually buy the output at market prices via direct contracts with generators, but have to pay the surcharge from the LCCC on top, or for older wind farms, have to buy ROCs or make cashout payments. Electricity retailers then charge customers to cover the cost, which is explicitly allowed in OFGEM’s cap, for instance. Government buys its electricity from retailers, just like the rest of us, except where it uses its own generators for which it pays fuel and maintenance as well as the cost of the generator. It is us billpayers who pay in the end – not the government!
Administrative Strike Prices are simply the maximum permissible bid price in 2012 money for a given technology in a particular CFD auction. They only become the 2012 money price awarded if there is a limited volume of bidding such that all bids are accepted, as happened with solar and geothermal in AR5. All 2012 prices are subject to indexation and bear little relationship to prices actually paid.
What we actually pay for offshore wind is the result of the historic arrangements for wind farms that are now in operation. Those under the ROC scheme sell their ROCs and REGOs (greenwash certificates of renewable origin) into the market once they have been registered with OFGEM (i.e. proof of generation from meter readings submitted to Elexon, adjusted for deemed transmission loss). Those on CFDs that are in effect get the difference between the hourly day ahead price and their indexed strike price on their hourly adjusted metered generation. Wind farms that have yet to exercise their CFD simply get market price – that includes those partly in construction, as well as those that have chosen not to commence their CFD despite being fully commissioned because market prices have been much higher than their indexed strike price. All wind farms can sell REGOs. The result is that we pay a substantial premium to market prices for wind, particularly offshore wind and floating wind.
Since AR4 actually saw CFDs awarded as low as £37.35/MWh the new ASP of £73/MWh is almost double (which would be £74.70/MWh) – not just 50% more. Of course, we already have the cancellation of the Norfolk Boreas project at that price, and whether others go ahead remains in doubt. With indexation we are looking at prices that are a premium to current market prices if bids come in close to the ASP cap, while floating wind is in the realms of the ridiculous.
All of these prices do not include the consequences on costs that arise from intermittency and remote location of wind farms, which add substantially. To get an idea about this, total wind and solar generation in the year to September was about 77.5TWh. Balancing costs have risen by about £3.5bn in the renewables era, while transmission costs have gone up by about £2.7bn. It is perhaps a little unfair to blame all the increase on renewables, but demand has fallen from 400TWh to about 275TWh per year, so in theory we should need less grid than before – so it is less unfair than appears at first sight. So £6,200m/77.5TWh works out to be £80/MWh. Wow.
Thanks for the additional ammunition IDAU. 👍
BBC rejecting of complains is normal
cos they know most people will then just give in
You have to escalate it to the Executive Complaints Unit
The ECU is worse than the bots at the first stages. They are actual humans who appear to have any hint of professional integrity removed.
I read some of the comments on the article which reveal just how badly it misleads.
1. No-one has understood that ASPS are in 2012 money, and that £73 in 2012 is now £100.
2. No-one understands that the price is for yet to be agreed, let alone built wind farms that might just become operational by 2030.
3. There is widespread belief that the price will apply to all offshore wind and that therefore retailers are indulging in gross profiteering via the cap.
4. No-one has a clue about current wholesale electricity prices which have been averaging below £100, making even this wind more expensive.
5. No-one is aware that CFDs in operation are paying an average of around £175/MWh while with ROCs and REGOs other wind farms are averaging over £200/MWh.
5. Extra network costs of wind add perhaps as much as £80/MWh to what we pay for it.
Pretty high level of misdirection IMHO.
Additional complaint. If the temperature change is “comparable with the lower range of what climate modelling” is saying, how come the headline of the article claims changes are “faster than expected”?
Because it’s happening sooner. But the headline should then be “climate models wrong.” If your forecast is wrong, whatever you based that forecast on has been proven wrong. If change happens more quickly, it’s just as wrong as if it happens more slowly. You don’t understand what’s happening. What this suggests is actually that natural variability is higher than forecast.
I would complain that “parts of Scotland” is not Scotland and February isn’t “climate”. It’s obvious that the research uses small areas and limited time because otherwise it doesn’t show what they claim. Assuming thry have the data for all of Scotland and every month, picking out parts of that record that show what you want is fraud. If I was a fund manager and showed you only the stocks that went up in value as proof of how good I was, I would be done for fraud. This is no different.
I assume that temperatures of 16.9 and 19.4 degrees refer to one day highs. With a mild south westerly airflow and the fohn effect these temperatures don’t seem excessively high for one or two locations on the Moray coast. Seems like the article was just a lazy cut and paste job without anyone bothering to try and put headline grabbing figures into context.
Of course the latter 30 year period has higher temperatures. The means of measuring and recording temperature has been made far more accurate and new stations have appeared, often poorly sited, making record temperatures far more likely. The modern record really only starts after 1980, when the UKMO changed to platinum electric thermometers with a margin of recording error practically zero. Before 1980, manually read and recorded Mercury thermometers had a recording error of up to 10 degrees! This was admitted by the UKMO but they have now changed the error figures in the past few years. Complete manipulation and sleight of hand by the MO. As usual.