The BBC’s (Warm) Front

Here is what you might call a balanced report on climate with ‘inconvenient’ facts (for AGW proponents) included:

Arctic sea ice reaches lowest extent on record while Antarctic ice grows

Scientists announced yesterday that Arctic sea ice had completed its summer melt and in the end reached the lowest extent since satellite measurements began. At the other end of the globe Antarctica was seeing the exact opposite as the ice at the South Pole grows to record levels.

 

The BBC have been quick off the mark to highlight that the Arctic ice is melting rapidly….but I can find no mention of the Antarctic ice growing.

Nor it seems can other people as they have been complaining to David Shukman that he hasn’t mentioned it….his answer is…..

The ‘big melt’ at the roof of the world

‘So is it scaremongering to report on this new record? Several people have suggested I should mention how the sea ice around Antarctica has expanded this year. It has, but Antarctica is a continent isolated by an ocean with its own unique and incredibly cold weather.’

 

Ah, it’s ‘weather’ or something…not climate that controls the Antarctic then!

The BBC were not shy of reporting on the Antarctic when it suits them though……

….in August 2012:

Antarctica warmth ‘unusual, but not unique’

 

and Richard Black in July:

Antarctic: Grand Canyon-sized rift ‘speeding ice melt’

 

Can’t imagine that when ice is ‘melting’ that suddenly the Antarctic is an integral part of the climate change story for the BBC….surely not?

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11 Responses to The BBC’s (Warm) Front

  1. Old Goat says:

    As I posted in another thread, ice is generally in balance at the poles – it’s fairly widely recognised that there is an oscillation of ice quantity between either pole, and it’s also well known that there have been periods in the past, where there has been little or no ice at the north pole.

    As far as I’m aware, there were not mass extinctions at this time, indeed, the gentler nature of the climate no doubt encouraged settlement and life.

    So why are the BBC hell-bent on trying to kid us into believing that a little less ice at either pole will sound the death knell for the human species, unless we return ourselves to the Dark Ages. What is it that is so attractive to the doom-mongers, about the good old days, when life expectancy was short, but there was some sort of green Nirvana where everyone was happy, and prancing through the grass with the bunnies?

    Why do they not want us to develop further as a species?

    Club of Rome, Frankfurt School, Fabianism and common purpose all seem to register in my mind when I think about it.

    But perhaps I’m being paranoid. Perhaps not…

       19 likes

    • Alan says:

      ‘Club of Rome, Frankfurt School, Fabianism and common purpose all seem to register in my mind when I think about it.’

      Dangerous talk…and deluded….sorry,yes deluded….climate change policy is not a Marxist plot to destroy industry and western civilisation.

      How do I know? Because the BBC has told me…..I haven’t done a post on this yet but you can have a foretaste of what the BBC thinks of climate sceptics….they’re all right wing conspiracy nuts….

      Political Prejudice
      http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mqmyw
      Availability: over a year left to listen Duration: 30 minutes First broadcast: Monday 17 September 2012

      If you think that you are rational and unprejudiced, Michael Blastland hopes you will be open minded enough to listen to the evidence which suggests that you are probably not.
      We might think our views about global warming, nanotechnology or the value of IQ tests are based on scientific evidence. But the beliefs we hold about these issues often say more about our ability to screen out the evidence we dislike than it does about the scientific facts.
      Michael Blastland investigates the causes of our cognitive biases and our remarkable ability to not let the facts get in the way of a deeply held belief.

      This is purely a vehicle to attack climate sceptics….if you blink you will hear them mention Leftwingers and ‘IQ Tests’ but only so as to provide the tiniest smidgeon of ‘balance’.

         8 likes

    • NotaSheep says:

      I found quite a few pictures pre-1979 of melted ice at north pole. I wonder how much ice cover there was at North Pole during Medieval Warm Period…

         3 likes

  2. London Calling says:

    “Melting ice” is the ultimate metaphor for catastrophic warming – a godsend to environmental activists desperate “to communicate” through the media/bBC to a wavering public. However as the temperature at the North Pole I am told is minus 40 degrees, a drop to mins 38 degrees is .. well, what? Irrelevant. Hence the obssession with normal calving and polar variation in ice extent – at the edges. “Look!! You can see ..err .. warming!! We are all going to die!! Except we are not.
    They don’t give up because it is, unfortunately, their chosen livelihood: bogus scientists, Charity and NGO campaigners, grant and subsidy hunters, doom-mongers.

       14 likes

  3. Mike Fowle says:

    Have a look at The Green Agenda web site.

       4 likes

  4. Richard Pinder says:

    “Antarctica is a continent isolated by an ocean with its own unique and incredibly cold weather”

    This means that Antarctica becomes colder than the Arctic under cloud cover. According to the CERES instrument on the Modis satellites, there was a large increase in cloud cover over the Arctic this summer.
    An increase in cloud cover in the Arctic would increase temperatures as clouds trap heat, as well as the fact that the Arctic has far more heat input than the Antarctic region, due to the jet stream. So it would be possible for the Arctic to be warmer under cloud cover even in daylight unlike the Antarctic which is isolated from any equivalent of the jet stream. Also what is called the snow zone, a zone that when it melts, reveals the dark surface below the white snow or ice, only exists on the Antarctic Peninsular and the Southern tip of South America in the southern hemisphere.

       0 likes

    • London Calling says:

      Richard, I am sure that is a very erudite and scholarly scientific critique but I am afraid I am no wiser for it – its right over my head – mea culpa. What I want to know is are we all going to drown, or not? Your view?

         2 likes

    • mick of orpington says:

      In the year 982 AD Erik the Red sailed west and found a’green land’. He then began to colonise Greenland. It was then Green with grass and virtually no ice. Over next four or five hundred years the colony built up to over 4000 – 5000 people with over 150 farms and was more or less self sustaining. The ice returned at the beginning of the Little Ice Age and the colony then failed. During this period there were no factories, central heating, lumpen public flying to the Costa del Sol or other significant sources of man made CO2.

      Why the fuss and claim that the current loss of ice is due to man?

      Mick G

         1 likes

  5. deegee says:

    I wonder if this is an example of BBC Northism? (I made up the word – is there a common usage)? That is, the conviction that only the Northern Hemisphere matters. Anything that happens in the Southern Hemisphere can be safely ignored as a colour item.

       2 likes

  6. lojolondon says:

    “Antarctica is a continent isolated by an ocean with its own unique and incredibly cold weather”
    Yes, as the idiots say when we mention how cool the weather is “the key is in the word ‘global’, so if you feel cool here in England, it is even hotter somewhere else” – when it suits them!!

       0 likes