BBC & Weather Attribution Models – Watts Up With That?

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

You may recall this BBC report from last summer:

Human-induced climate change made recent extreme heat in the US south-west, Mexico and Central America around 35 times more likely, scientists say.

The World Weather Attribution (WWA) group studied excess heat between May and early June, when the US heatwave was concentrated in south-west states including California, Nevada and Arizona.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czvvqdg8zxno

I complained at the time that the WWA claims were presented as “factual”, rather than output from computer models. Furthermore the actual historical data showed the WWA claims to be false. (See my post here).

I have just received this response from the BBC:

As I understand your email’s complaint it is that the headline presents the findings of the scientists’ study as a fact.

Having reviewed the article, we believe the headline should have included quotation marks around the scientists claim.

The headline has been changed to read: Climate change made US and Mexico heatwave ‘35 times more likely’

We have also added a note at the bottom of the article to acknowledge the change.

This is the correction they refer to:

In its own way this is quite a remarkable admission by the BBC – that they now accept that weather attribution models cannot be regarded as FACTUAL

I intend to pursue this with the ECU on two grounds:

1) That a obscure correction on an article published last June will not be seen by anybody. Instead a full correction needs to be logged on the BBC Complaints website

2) Now the BBC admits weather attribution is not based on facts, data or evidence, all future BBC reports quoting it must carry on warning notice to this effect.

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