Pressing Porkies

There is a worrying trend in the press - the increasing use of stories that are wrong or deeply flawed to create headlines that suit the editorial line - a case of  "never mind the facts - spread the rumour".

Claims by the Mail about the impact of changes to electricity prices on household energy bill in featured a little in  "Media and Manipulation", a piece focussing on Murdochs deliberate misrepresentation of climate change issues. The Mail splashed headlines predicting £1000 a year plus energy bills.

Today "Carbon Brief" published evidence to show the Mail's claims were unverifiable

"The £1000 claim was sourced to a report produced by Unicredit Bank.  When Carbon Brief investigated, we found that the report mentioned the figure just once and did not explain its underlying analysis. The £1000 figure – which is dramatically higher than other estimates – proved impossible to verify.

The report goes on to say:

"This is the second time in a few weeks that the Daily Mail has given significant prominence to figures on energy bills which have proved impossible to verify. In June the Mail’s warning that green measures are currently adding £200 to household energy bills proved to be based on unsourced claims by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). After we and others highlighted this, the Mail quietly stopped using the figure in favour of Ofgem's estimate of £100."
The main thrust of the GO article is that the right wing press have published misleading and untrue material that has seriously distorted public perceptions of climate issues - Carbon Brief give an example of just how damaging this can be.

"This week the Daily Telegraph also reported a poll carried out by the website Conservative Home, which asked 1,500 members of the Conservative party to identify the top three mistakes that David Cameron has made since he came into office in 2005.  Number two on the list was “Supporting climate change policies that will increase energy bills
Full report "The Carbon Brief

BBC under fire

The BBC has been criticised for giving equal coverage to denier propaganda in the interests of balance. An independent report commissioned by the BBC trust concluded that in an effort to appear impartial when reporting on science the BBC had to make a distinction between an opinion and a fact. At times, when reporting on climate issues, opinion has been given the same weight as established scientific fact, meaning that viewers might perceive an issue to be more controversial than it actually is.

Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, said it was crucial for the BBC to

"challenge inaccurate and misleading claims made by bloggers, campaigners and politicians who 'reject and deny the findings of mainstream science for ideological reasons.'...

..."The BBC is required by law not to sacrifice accuracy for impartiality in the coverage of controversial scientific issues such as climate change. Yet it is well known that there are particular BBC presenters and editors who allow self-proclaimed climate change 'sceptics' to mislead the public with unsubstantiated and inaccurate statements,"

In response the BBC have published new guidelines highlighting the need to consider the weight of arguments and to account for the difference between fact and opinion in science reporting

It's worth noting that the review praised the overall quality of BBC science reporting it doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that BBC editors efforts to give equal weight to the opinion of deniers and overwhelming scientific consensus has been influenced by the Murdoch presses vitriolic anti BBC campaign

Not In My Backyard - Errr - oh go on then... 4/11/2011

In a year when NIMBY protests help reduce wind farm consents to a five year low, protesters in Leicester admit they were "wrong" to object to the counties first windfarm. Anti - windfarm protests help reduce consents to 5 year low Wind is one of the most reliable and mature sources of renewable energy in the UK - and also  one of the most divisive  At a time when UK wind and marine renewables industries are struggling to obtain consent for new wind projects with an average approval rate for wind farms of just of just 26% by capacity last year, there's some good news from one group of protesters. 

Frequently cited as one of the "worst rural eyesores" and the cause of vociferous protests campaigns nationwide, windfarms stand accused of killing birds, creating noise, flicker and visual pollution.

For anyone growing up in places like the Trent Valley, home to numerous massive coal fired power stations these may seem like minor problems - but the cat owning Nimbys of Britain (in case you are wondering - cats are reckoned to kill 50 million birds a year in the UK - windfarms - maybe 5000) are determined that windfarms are a major threat to property prices and amenity. 

"Wind farm - what wind farm? - we hardly know they are there"

 It must be some comfort to the wind industry to know that residents in rural Leicestershire  have found their fears about the county's first wind farm were unfounded. The Leicester Mercury report that a group of wind turbine protesters admit “we were wrong about turbine noise” Villagers in Leicestershire launched a vigorous campaign against a windfarm proposal sited between the villages of Gilmorton, Ashby Magna and Dunton Bassett. Concerns that the 410 foot turbines would create noise have proved to be wrong and residents say they “hardly notice the turbines.

 One resident – Mr John Phillips, who attended all the protest meetings and admitted to being against the project from the start said: “...now, I must say they really don't bother me. I can't hear them and I can barely see them. It's like the industrial revolution all over again – people don't like change until it actually happens – then they get used to it” Since they started running in early October the turbines have produced 2.5 gigawatts of electricity – while local Parish Councils will receive over £5000 pounds a year as part of the agreement with the developer.

climate change and food security 19-06-2011

Food prices surge 36% in a year

Peak oil and climate change  line are seen as two of the underlying causes of a huge leap in food prices and the number of people driven into extreme poverty.

The World Bank's “Food Price Watch” estimates that food is 36% more expensive than a year ago  and warns that, since June 2010, high prices have added 40 million people to the world's billion plus people living below the extreme poverty line of $1.25 a day.

High energy costs and last summers drought and fire stricken harvests have led to steeply rising food prices. In the west food is only a small element of our living cost. The rising prices of staple foods like wheat and maize mean meat, dairy and bread get a little more expensive but its not a disaster.

For the world's poorest food can be 100% of the budget, and that's a budget that will, at best, buy a few kilos of maize or flour. The April 2011 report links price rises to a combination of severe weather events in key grain exporting countries, high energy prices, which affect production costs directly (and also drive competition for land for biofuel production) and a range of other economic and political variables.

In 2008 when food prices reached similar levels food riots and protests hit over 30 of the world's poorest nations and were an underlying factor in the unrest in Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt. Ironically - the 2008 riots are one of the factors that have helped push energy prices to their current levels