This morning I awoke to a truly hilarious (if inadvertent) moment on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme [‘Listen Again’ from  07.17 am onwards]. There was good old Roger Harrabin sounding like some doleful Eeyore braying on about how terrible it was that Italy, Poland, France, and all the rest were likely to scupper the EU’s efforts to save us all from “dangerous climate change”, only to be followed by an item from a poor soul who was stuck up North somewhere because of heavy and unseasonal snow. The cognitive dissonance was deafening, yet none of the presenters flinched, nor had the wit to make a comment, such is the BBC’s increasing deafness on the subject of climate change.

Here is what the ‘Today’ programme website says about Roger’s item: “Environment analyst Roger Harrabin reports on the threat [my emphasis] from Italy, Poland and other East European nations to veto the climate package because, they say, it would cost too much.” The choice of the word “threat” speaks volumes; it never crosses the mind of the BBC that Italy, Poland, and the rest may actually be correct. I for one believe that they are, and so do millions of other people.

Sadly, I thus think that the situation at the BBC is now a serious one with respect to their uncritical reporting of climate change. Around the world, the grand narrative of ‘global warming’ is dying, strangled by the cold realities of the economic crisis, by world politics, by the fact that an increasing number of people are seeing through the exaggerations and distortions of much of the ‘Green’ movement, but, above all, because of climate itself.

Cooling All Round

We now know that the world’s average surface temperature has flat-lined, and then fallen, since at least 2001, but possibly since 1998. Indeed, during the last two years, the curve has plummeted, leading to severe winters in many countries. It is further arguable that we are about to enter a significant cooling phase, partly driven by two specific phenomena, the Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation (PMO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), coupled with the lateness and the weakness of Solar Cycle 24, leading to low sunspot activity.

What is worse, climate models have failed to predict these trends, a fact which is hardly surprising, because we know so little about 80% of the variables - from cosmic rays to clouds and water vapour - driving climate. Belief in 'global warming' is a little like crossing a bridge for which the engineers have understood about 20% (if that) of the forces involved. Moreover, modelling is essentially 'soft' science, dependent on the choice of factors inputted. Models are thus less subject to rigorous falsification, and they can only be judged with respect to historical contingency and real-world outcomes - like heavy snow in Yorkshire!

Time To Chill Out

This would indeed all be hilarious, if the impacts of our ridiculous climate-change policies in the UK were not so potentially damaging economically. In these most straightened of times, they could well undermine our economy yet further, and thus our future capacity to adapt to climate change, whatever its direction, hot, wet, cold, or dry. If this happens, we must hold both the BBC and our bandwagon politicians fully accountable.

Worldwide, ‘global warming’ as a trope is on its way out [this is partly why I have moved to this more general blog from my old blog, ‘Global Warming Politics’ - it was becoming so old hat and boring]. Furthermore, we should not be kidded by Obama’s team on this; although America will surely ‘talk-the-talk’, their prime interest is always going to be in energy security (and rightly so).

The BBC really does need to chill out over its coverage of ‘global warming’, and quickly.

Regrettably, however, I suspect that the ‘global warming’ corpse will still be twitching in the UK when the stake has gone through its heart in pretty well every other country.

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Picture credit: the snowman is based on an original photograph by ‘Danielaustinhall12’, and it is reproduced here under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version.