Tag Archives: Justin Rowlatt

Justin Rowlatt’s Easter Egg

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Joe Public

Today’s misinformation from Justin Rowlatt:

You may have noticed that Easter eggs are more expensive this year.

But did you know that climate change is one of the reasons?

Most chocolate is made from cocoa grown in West Africa, but a humid heatwave has blasted the crops and massively cut yields.

Experts say that human-induced climate change has made the extreme heat 10 times more likely.

Which? found some popular eggs have risen in price by 50% or more.

The shortage of cocoa resulting from the heatwave has seen prices soar to almost $8,500 (£6,700) a tonne this week.

Cocoa trees are particularly vulnerable to changes in the climate. They only grow in a narrow band of about 20 degrees latitude around the Equator.

Most global production is concentrated in West Africa. In 2023, 58m kilogrammes of cocoa beans worth £127m were imported to the UK from Ivory Coast and Ghana with 85% of the UK’s cocoa beans sourced from Ivory Coast.

However, severe drought conditions have hit the West Africa region since February this year.

This has been caused by temperatures that soared above 40C, breaking records in countries including the Ivory Coast and Ghana.

It was these exceptionally high temperatures that the World Weather Attribution group, based at Imperial College London, found were made 10 times more likely by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

Their study found that unless the world quickly reduces fossil fuel use, West Africa will experience similar heatwaves about every two years.

“There were reports from farmers in Ivory Coast that the heat weakened the cocoa crop,” according to one of the authors of the study, Izadine Pinto, from the University of Cape Town.

He said the high temperatures increased the rate of evaporation, leaving the crops without sufficient moisture.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68619912

I’m not sure how you can have a humid drought, but this is Rowlatt we are talking about, who has no interest in actual facts!

Maybe somebody ought to tell him that weather attribution models are just that, models, and they should not be confused with the real world.

But cocoa prices have always been notoriously volatile, in large part due to variations in weather. 2016/17, for instance was a bumper harvest, and prices dropped through the floor:

https://www.kakaoplattform.ch/about-cocoa/cocoa-facts-and-figures

But over time, cocoa production has been steadily increasing, making a nonsense of Rowlatt’s climate doom.

But there are fundamental problems in West Africa, and they have nothing to do with climate change, as Dr Michael Odijie, an economist who specialises in Africa affairs, points out:

A number of long-term structural issues have beset cocoa farming in west Africa for decades. They shouldn’t be overshadowed by concerns with short-term problems.

The first is the declining availability of forest land and its connection to increasing production costs.

Over the last two decades, depletion of forest land has led farmers to turn to grasslands for replanting cocoa plants. This requires extensive land preparation, regular weeding around the cocoa trees, pruning, and the application of fertilisers and pesticides. What’s more, the plants are highly susceptible to disease. All these things result in increased labour costs.

None of these additional burdens have been incorporated into the pricing for sustainable cocoa production. In light of the new cost structure, cocoa beans have been undervalued for decades. Farmers have become poorer and are exploring alternative sources of livelihood.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/oct/analysis-cocoa-prices-are-surging-west-african-countries-should-negotiate-better-deal

Perhaps Rowlatt might reflect on that when he is munching his easter egg next week.

COP28 President’s “No Science” Remark Blows Holes in Carefully Curated Net Zero Narrative

The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

COP28 President and Chief Executive of the UAE state oil company Adnoc, Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber let the cat out of the bag this week when he said there was “no science” that says phasing out fossil fuels will achieve a cap on global warming of 1.5°C.

In an interview with the impressively self-important Irish politician Mary Robinson, he demanded to be shown a roadmap for sustainable socioeconomic development “unless you want to take the world back to caves”. You would have had a heart of stone not to enjoy the antics of the BBC green activist-in-chief Justin Rowlatt as he tried to finesse Al-Jaber’s remarks. What a creative chap to write a BBC story about it headed, ‘Is the world about to promise to ditch fossil fuels?‘

Rowlatt claims that the UAE has recognised the world has to kick its addiction to unabated fossil fuels and has decided to put itself decisively on the right side of history by trying to own the decision. “But yes, at the same time it is planning to increase capacity and sell even more oil,” he helpfully added.

Other more realistic interpretations are available. The world will need as much, if not more, fossil fuel in 2050 as it consumes today, and its biggest customers will be those who are too virtuous to drill and frack the hydrocarbons for themselves. As is usually the case, the meek are unlikely to inherit the Earth.

Al-Jaber might have slightly underestimated the type of housing stock available in future ‘Net Zero’ countries – mud and grass huts are suggested in a recent United Nations report, although sustainable caves could occupy a premium niche. With money comes power and all the trophy assets vast wealth can buy.

For instance, by 2050 the Gulf Arabs, along with Saudi Arabia, will be able to buy all the football clubs they want. In the end it might just be easier to relocate the entire English Premier League into state-of-the art, air conditioned local stadiums.

Al-Jaber’s remarks blew holes in a ‘settled’ science narrative that has been carefully curated over decades by collectivists aiming to transform global societies with a Net Zero project.

A bewildered John Kerry, the U.S. presidential climate envoy, suggested the comments may need “clarification” and “maybe just came out wrong”. Kerry’s irritation showed clearly that Al-Jaber had undermined the fixed idea that reducing human-caused carbon dioxide will somehow stop temperature moving around in a chaotic atmosphere.

Despite 50 years of trying, scientists have yet to produce conclusive proof that humans control the climate thermostat. A rival hypothesis that trace gases such as CO2 ‘saturate’ past certain levels and lose much of their warming abilities has the advantage of offering an explanation for the absence of an obvious temperature-CO2 link over the last 600 million years.

For alarmists, Al-Jaber’s linking of his remarks with the 1.5°C limit was very unfortunate. The idea that humans need to cap a rise in global temperature to 1.5°C is an invented number designed to invoke panic and concentrate the political mind. The setting of an arbitrary target is credited to IPCC lead author and former climate adviser to Angela Merkel, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. At first he set the limit at 2°C, and in 2010 he was asked by Der Speigel why he had imposed the “magical limit” to which all countries must adhere. In reply, Schellnhuber said: “Politicians like to have clear targets and a simple number is easier to handle.” The ploy was so successful that it was ratcheted down to a scarier 1.5°C  to persuade politicians to sign the Paris climate agreement in 2015.

Again, none of this is based on science. The rise of 1.1°C since the lifting of the Little Ice Age is tiny in climatic terms and to be expected after hundreds of years of slowly declining temperatures. In the cyclical historical record of the last few thousand years, temperatures were similar in Medieval and Roman times, while observational evidence from the mid Holocene suggests large rises of around 3-4°C.

Rowlatt’s copy is of interest since it hints at the dawning realisation that a world without the power provided by hydrocarbons is impossible to achieve. He quotes the new head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Professor Jim Skea who explains that stopping the temperature rise will mean getting rid of unabated coal completely. But, in Skea’s view, the world of Net Zero will still need 40% and 55% of its current oil and gas supplies respectively. Rowlatt picks up on the word ‘abated’, noting that the technology to do that “does not exist at anywhere near the scale needed”. This is the guiding “science” that Al-Jaber is talking about, concludes Rowlatt, at a time when the Gulf States sell huge quantities of oil and gas to power-starved Western countries leading the way to Net Zero.

For some inexplicable reason, Rowlatt fails to channel similar understanding when campaigning to ban fossil fuel exploration in the U.K. And to think of all the jobs and wealth that might have been created if frackers had got on with fracking, while an understanding press praised their scientific credentials and were happy to waffle on about unworkable abatement technologies.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Justin Rowlatt Promotes EVs

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood.

h/t Dave Ward

If there was ever any doubt about Justin Rowlatt’s credentials, his latest contribution shows beyond doubt that he is no more than a shill for the renewable lobby:

My mind is changed. At the start of an hour-long promo extolling the wonders of battery-powered vehicles, I admit I was slightly sceptical.

It seemed questionable that Britain could convert to electric transport and ban the sale of petrol cars by 2030.

There’s no lingering doubt now. The more desperate the hard sell became, in Electric Cars: What They Really Mean For You (BBC1), the more painfully obvious it was that the scheme is doomed.

One of two things seems certain: the government will pull the plug on its impossible deadline, or the era of mass travel in private cars will end.

Every argument the presenters served up only emphasised the technology isn’t ready, the infrastructure doesn’t exist and the green propaganda is bogus.

Presenter Michelle Ackerley promised us that there are 44,000 public chargers around the country. ‘That sounds like a lot,’ she added.

No, it doesn’t. There are more than 33 million private cars in the UK. If we all go electric, that’s one charger for every 750 vehicles. You’ll be queuing for a week every time you need to refresh the battery.

Michelle pulled onto an all-electric forecourt outside Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire, with about 20 state-of-the-art zappers. ‘This is charging heaven,’ she announced, before plugging her vehicle in for ‘as little as 40 minutes’.

She sauntered into the adjacent service station for a coffee — all right if you’re on your own and in no hurry. Now try it with three fractious children, slogging across country on a wet Friday in August, with thousands of other holidaymakers, some on their second or third recharge of the day. See how heavenly that is.

To beat the queues, Michelle produced an ‘electric lance’ from the boot. This device, the size of a pneumatic drill, slots into a charging point like a water hydrant in the pavement. After a struggle, she managed to get it working, for an overnight charge.

Call me overcautious, but I don’t fancy plugging a metal pole into the electricity mains, in winter, in the dark, during a rainstorm.

Co-presenter Justin Rowlatt, the BBC’s Climate Editor, was trying to entice us with shiny gimmicks. He went for a spin in a converted electric VW Beetle, buzzing up a Welsh mountain road like the Lovebug on amphetamines. The acceleration far outstripped anything possible with the Beetle’s 40-horsepower petrol engine. But Justin carefully didn’t mention how far it went before charge-ups, or how much the conversion cost. He just talked a lot about ‘meeting challenges’ and dismissed any objections as ‘perceptions’.

There was no attempt to explain how HGVs or heavy construction vehicles can ever run on electricity, and after its zippy start in the electro-Herbie, the show ran out of energy. During a deadly dull interview with a Whitehall eco-spokesman, it slowed to a halt. There’s another episode next week — I hope that gives them enough time to charge up again.

The problems of electric transport have been glaringly obvious for 40 years, since Sir Clive Sinclair launched his ridiculous battery-powered tricycle, the C5.

It may have looked like a potential deathtrap but it has nostalgia appeal today, as proved on Retro Electro Workshop (Yesterday). A broken C5 was one of the clapped-out devices coaxed back to life in this soothingly watchable show.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-12337927/CHRISTOPHER-STEVENS-reviews-nights-TV-charge-33million-electric-cars-44-000-chargers.html

Justin Rowlatt Flies To Spain To Tell Us It’s Hot There!

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Patsy Lacey

Utter hypocrisy from the BBC!

The BBC’s Justin Rowlatt and his editors have been accused of hypocrisy after he jetted off to Spain to report on the current heatwave and its links to the climate crisis.

Rowlatt, the corporation’s climate editor, flew to Alicante to report on the record temperatures over the European mainland, blaming the phenomenon on global warming.

In a live report on Tuesday morning Rowlatt stated: “I’m on the beach at Alicante and it’s 27C now, and as you can see dawn is just rising. Even hotter inland, as you can see, they had temperatures in the 30s overnight, inland in Spain and they’re expecting temperatures to peak well into the 40s.

“We’re getting the blast of the heat today in Spain, it’s going to go across into Italy, it’s already very hot in Italy but it’s going to get hotter there, and finally it will end in Greece. All accentuated, exaggerated by the effects of climate change.”

Shortly after, Rowlatt tweeted that mankind was clearly to blame, citing experts, stating: “It is getting very hot in southern Europe and it is going to get even hotter. These kinds of temperatures would be vanishingly unlikely without man-made climate change, says [Dr  Friederike Otto] and other climate scientists.”

Why fly to Spain?

But critics queried why Rowlatt flew to Spain to report on the hot weather.

Craig Mackinlay, the Conservative MP for South Thanet, said: “There’s something rather rich about Justin Rowlatt using a fuel-guzzling aircraft to find out what a phone call would have told him. It follows the pattern of the great and the good telling us about the evils of climate change while jetting around the world.

“High temperatures are common in summer and doubtless everything will be back to normal soon.”

Several angry BBC viewers agreed that Rowlatt was contributing to global warming by flying to Spain in order to produce a report he could have presented in the studio.

Andy Mich tweeted: “Did the BBC fly you over to southern Spain Justin? If the climate crisis is as serious as you say and I’m not disputing that it isn’t, wouldn’t it make more sense and be a better look if you stayed at home?”

Other viewers pointed out that the BBC’s Spain-based correspondents could have presented the segment without the need for Rowlatt to fly anywhere.

Rob Morgan wrote on Twitter: “Was it necessary to travel to Spain when the BBC already has reporters there.”

Rowlatt, the BBC’s first specially appointed climate editor, gave up flying for a year in 2006 to reduce his family’s carbon footprint.

The broadcaster has made no secret of his passion for the subject and his belief in the impact climate change could have on mankind.

In November 2021 he presented a special edition of BBC Panorama called Wild Weather: Our World Under Threat, in which he told viewers: “The world is getting warmer and our weather is getting ever more unpredictable and dangerous. The death toll is rising around the world and the forecast is that worse is to come.”

But the following May the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) upheld criticism of  two comments made in the programme.

The unit found there was no statistical basis for the claim that the death toll from natural disasters is rising.

The ECU also ruled that Rowlatt’s claim that southern Madagascar was “on the brink of the world’s first climate-induced famine” was incorrect, as other factors were involved.


Critics have pointed out that climate activism appears to be a family affair for Rowlatt.

His wife, Bee, a former producer for the BBC World Service, has taken part in Extinction Rebellion protests and supported a “justice” fund that gave protesters access to legal advice after they were charged.

Rowlatt’s sister Cordelia, who helps run a small fruit and vegetable farm in Frome, Somerset, was fined for taking part in one of Insulate Britain’s M25 blockades in 2021.

Earlier this year, defending his reporting, Rowlatt told the Columbia Journalism Review: “It’s our job in the media to report the facts, impartially and without bias. And there are some inescapable and very grim truths about the trajectory the world is on, in terms of our emissions, which continue to grow.”

The BBC, which has a number of correspondents it can call on in Spain and a Spanish language unit based in London, refused to confirm whether Rowlatt had taken a flight to Alicante for his dispatch.

A BBC spokesman said: “The extreme heat millions of people are experiencing in several parts of the world is a significant story relating to climate change, and our journalists are providing additional insight and analysis on the ground from some of the hardest hit regions.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/19/justin-rowlatt-alicante-spain-heatwave-hypocrisy-climate/

So it’s acceptable for the BBC to waste licence payers’ money on flying this ridiculous person to Spain, in order to tell us it’s hot there. I suspect anybody who has been to Spain for summer holidays knows that already, and don’t need this charlatan with his shirt buttons undone to tell us!

As for the BBC’s pathetic excuse:

The extreme heat millions of people are experiencing in several parts of the world is a significant story relating to climate change, and our journalists are providing additional insight and analysis on the ground from some of the hardest hit regions

It has nothing to do with climate change. And it is no more significant than all of the cold, snowy days many countries get every winter. And I don’t see what additional insight and analysis Justin Rowlatt can provide.

In reality, Alicante’s temperatures only hit 36C that day, itself much higher than the rest of the week:

https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/spain/alicante/historic

And as I suspect you have already worked out, temperatures of 36C are pretty commonplace there:

https://www.ecad.eu/utils/showindices.php?fj605blbbj6bc6iqosbrm7s0uc

Nor is there any evidence that heatwaves are getting worse in Alicante:

What this latest piece of brazen propaganda proves is that the BBC is only interested in its relentless pursuit of its Net Zero agenda, and objective facts are expendable.

Don’t Fall For Justin Rowlatt’s Global Heatwave Con Trick

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Justin Rowlatt plays the shell game:

It is hot. Very hot. And we are only a few weeks into summer.

Texas and part of the south-west of the US are enduring a searing heatwave. At one point, more than 120 million Americans were under some form of heat advisory, the US National Weather Service said. That is more than one in three of the total population.

In the UK, the June heat didn’t just break all-time records, it smashed them. It was 0.9C hotter than the previous record, set back in 1940. That is a huge margin.

There is a similar story of unprecedented hot weather in North Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

No surprise, then, that the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather forecasts said that globally, June was the hottest on record.

And the heat has not eased. The three hottest days ever recorded were in the past week, according to the EU climate and weather service, Copernicus.

The average world temperature hit 16.89C on Monday 3 July and topped 17C for the first time on 4 July, with an average global temperature of 17.04C.

Provisional figures suggest that was exceeded on 5 July when temperatures reached 17.05C.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66143682

It’s summer, so inevitably some places are hot! But Justin Rowlatt wants you to focus on those and ignore all the other places that aren’t.

The full picture tells a totally different story. Across the world as a whole, there is the usual mix of above and below temperatures:

https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/

The only exception is Antarctica, and the Climate Reanalyzer website has added this special note explaining this, no doubt concerned at the way the media and climate scientists have misled the public about the significance of the spike in temperatures:

It is of course winter down under, and temperatures in and around Antarctica are still well below freezing, even though they may be 10C higher than average.

Such intrusions of moist, warm air from lower latitudes into polar air mass are not unusual, as we have frequently seen in the Arctic in recent years during winter months. And it is precisely this phenomenon which makes the whole idea of an average global temperature totally meaningless. It all has to do with water vapour.

Because polar regions are so dry, a small change in heat produces a large swing in polar temperature, whereas it requires much more energy change to produce the same size swing in temperatures in the mid-latitudes. This is because of the fact that water has a much higher heat capacity than air.

Think, for instance, of the Sahara Desert. Temperatures fall away dramatically at night because the dry air holds so little heat.

Although average global temperatures may have increased because of the warm air brought to the Antarctic, the overall heat content of the Earth’s atmosphere has not changed.

But Justin Rowlatt would like you to think that the world is burning up because of a few sunny days last month.

Justin Rowlatt’s Fishy Tale

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Joe Public

The hysterical Justin Rowlatt continues to catastrophise summer weather!

Note that Rowlatt does not provide any data to compare fish deaths with prior years! It makes you wonder what he is hiding.

Whether it really was the hottest June or not, the temperature for the month as a whole was not exceptional in summer terms, with a mean of 17.0C on CET. In most years it gets hotter in July and August.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/data/download.html

Since 1659, there have been 127 months with temperatures of 17.0C and higher. If all of these fish deaths really are due to hot weather, then we would expect to see mass die offs every year.

We also know that peak temperatures during the month were not exceptional either, reaching 28.6C. The chart below only runs to 2020, but it confirms that daily temperatures often hit 28C in June:

https://www.ecad.eu/utils/showindices.php

And the BBC cannot blame the die offs on lack of rainfall either:

As many have pointed out to the hysterical Rowlatt, how much of the problem is down to sewage and pollution?

Of course, the BBC is quick to play the pollution card when it suits them!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/65631256