From The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

The climate ghouls were out in force recently following the severe clear air turbulence incident on board a Singapore Airlines Boeing 777 that led to a passenger suffering a fatal heart attack. The Guardian asked if the “climate crisis” was making turbulence worse, and both the newspaper and the BBC pointed to one model-based report stating that it was. Needless to say, actual data were ignored in the rush to feed the politicised climate emergency, Net Zero-inspired narrative. Figures published by two safety bodies show there has been no increase in turbulence accidents or rise in injuries per passenger mile over the last 30 years. This in the context of at least a quadrupling of global air passengers over the same period.

The figures above from the International Civil Aviation Organisation confirm the continued low level of turbulence incidents across the United States, the largest air market in the world. There has been no statistically significant increase since 1989.

The second graph above was produced in a 2021 report from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. It showed no increase in passenger and aircraft accidents, allowing for the enormous growth in traffic during these decades. The NTSB concluded: “There was no obvious trend in turbulence-related accidents during this period.”

Whatever the actual data show, you can’t beat a good climate predicting model when there is Green Blob-inspired work to be done in mainstream media. Both the BBC and the Guardian cited the work of Professor Paul Williams of Reading University. He suggested that atmospheric dynamics have changed significantly since scientists first observed them via satellite data in the late 1970s. Using climate models and the RCP8.5 scenario, he forecast huge increases in clear air turbulence.

Of course he is using the RCP8.5 pathway that assumes soaring temperatures of up to 4°C in less than 80 years. This pathway is little more than a climate model plaything, and an increasing number of scientists believe it is not remotely plausible. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change  (IPCC) states it is of “low likelihood”. Nevertheless, the clickbait addiction to this scenario is still high, with an estimated 40% of IPCC climate impact statements still based on its modelled use. In addition the pathway is said to be behind an astonishing 50% of impact findings produced across the wider scientific community, and these provide a convenient ‘scientists say’ tag for the latest climate scare du jour. The science writer Roger Pielke Jnr. notes that the world imagined in RCP8.5 is one that “becomes increasingly implausible with every passing year”.

The investigative climate journalist Paul Homewood has been debunking nonsense climate and weather stories over many years. He was disgusted with the latest effort from the BBC. Can the wretched BBC sink any lower, he asked, adding: “You are utter scum, BBC – how can any organisation try to play politics with a tragic death like this one?”

Homewood’s bitter comments are understandable as the BBC and most legacy media seek to catastrophise almost every bad event and human tragedy that can be related to the weather. This despite the fact that many authorities state that there has been no increase in most extreme weather events over the last 100 years, human caused or otherwise. In this latest case around atmospheric turbulence, it is surely grossly irresponsible to scare people, young and old, about air travel using the unverifiable findings of computer models fed with highly contentious data. Unless, of course, the mostly undeclared aim is to stop people flying altogether. As regular readers will know, many journalists attend courses to learn how to insert climate scares into almost any story. In addition, they sign up to ready-made copy outfits, all funded by green billionaires seeking to radically reorganise the social and economic lifestyles of global populations.

At this moment, BBC Verify’s climate ‘disinformation’ specialist Marco Silva is coming to the end of his six-month sabbatical at the Oxford Climate Journalism Network (OCJN). This operation is run out of the Reuters Institute and has attracted past funding from a number of green foundations including the European Climate Foundation, an operation heavily supported by Extinction Rebellion paymaster Sir Christopher Hohn. Over 400 journalists from around the world have been re-educated at the OCJN, which aims to move climate specialists “beyond their siloed past” into a strategic position within newsrooms, “combining expertise with collaboration”.

Take a mango, or indeed any fruit, and write about how it is less tasty than before due to climate change, is one suggestion for the delegates. Past speaker and BBC regular Dr. Friederike Otto uses climate models to attribute individual weather events to long-term changes in the climate through her billionaire-funded World Weather Attribution operation. Following her OCJN presentation, attendees were reported to have shown a “massive jump in self-confidence” when attributing individual weather to climate change. The more curious might wonder how this can be so, given the computer-modelled pseudoscientific claims are, to coin a phrase, unfalsifiable and unverifiable.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.