False claims that heatwave is bogus spread online | Hacker News Reader

False claims that heatwave is bogus spread online

bbc.com

36 pointsbelltaco18 comments

This is an excerpt from an article published a few days ago on an Italian newspaper. The author is Ugo Bardi, a scientist who is definitely in the "orthodoxy" camp (also runs a blog about the dangers of climate change). The article he acknowledges that data were actually off and explains why (at least for Italy).

Temperature record, is someone fudging the data? Here's the confusion of the past few days explained

Another week, another heated climate controversy where, as a change, scientists manage to portray themselves in a not exactly positive light to the public (to say the least). Did you read last week's apocalyptic headlines? Things like "48°C temperatures incoming"? Well, they were quite exaggerated, actually, considerably so. But how did they end up on the front pages of newspapers? Did someone make them up? Or was it a conspiracy by the powers that be, who had recalibrated the thermometers of the global measurement network to scare us?

No, it all started from a recent article by the ESA (European Space Agency). It wasn't incorrect per se, but they did not explain well the difference between "ground" temperature measurements and "air" measurements, which are usually much lower. Obviously, it's the air temperature that interests us, unless recently you've found a way to save a bit on your gas bill by boiling your pasta water by placing the pot on the asphalt of the parking lot in front of your house. But both journalists and the public did not understand the difference. Hence, the apocalyptic headlines and the ensuing controversy.

> Temperature record, is someone fudging the data? Here's the confusion of the past few days explained Another week, another heated climate controversy where, as a change, scientists manage to portray themselves in a not exactly positive light to the public (to say the least). Did you read last week's apocalyptic headlines? Things like "48°C temperatures incoming"? Well, they were quite exaggerated, actually, considerably so.

Well, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, population ~650k is this minute at 42C air temperature and still going up to 44C today. "48C incoming" doesn't seem like such a stretch.

The BBC does not do themselves any favours

From a recent weather report their temperature color code:

10C(50F) below, green

15C(59F) yellow

20C(68F) orange

25C(77F) very dark orange / light red

30C(86F) and above, several shades of red

So people in UK like to live below 10C and risk dying at 25C, clearly they are pushing it

I mean I will gladly wait for a pleasant apocalyptic red to go to the beach

https://m.youtube.com/results?search_query=bbc+weather+repor...

https://twitter.com/statsjamie/status/1547640116432080896

Seem like the movie Don't look up has a more realistic script than I would have imagined.

Just like how the movie Contagion was a prophetic look at the most recent pandemic.

I really wish we could turn back the clocks to a time when crackpot voices were not artificially amplified by social media.

It would be great to understand (and perhaps everyone else has figured this out already) how much of this stuff is just bad people responding to incentives created by social media design for anger and how much is directed (at least at some level) by interests (e.g. oil or whatever) that want to see the issue fuzzed up.

If it's mainly the design of social media then how do we hold these folks to account for the damage?

indeed, like when the experts were all telling us that we shouldnt use masks, as they dont work, and then they swapped and told us to wear them, only to be filmed not doing it themselves.

Or when the mainstream media couldnt emphasize enough how covid was only of a concern to countries without any healthcare, to then flipflop entirely.

Cant we just make them all unable to reach an audience?

A friend of mine is a (retired) MD/MPH who was asked in February '20 to be on some task force or another. I congratulated him, but he said turned it down. I was kinda shocked and asked why.

"Imagine you're the captain of the Titanic, and one of your men tells you that you've just struck an iceberg. Naturally, you sound the alarm, call for help, and immediately get everyone into the lifeboats (which you have plenty of), right?"

Recognizing the rhetorical move, I smiled and waited for his continuation.

"Of course not! You tell them everything is fine, that your Best and Brightest are working the problem, announce that drinks are on the White Star Line tonight, and strike up the band. Then you pray like hell that you can fix the problem before the ship sinks and everyone dies. No, thanks. I'm too old for that."

Media consolidation means most local and national news are controlled by a few people, this was happening in past few years as well in USA, and the number of people touting conspiracies and snake oil treatments (Geraldo etc) on Fox or formerly shows like Oprah sometimes predate social media. This along with social media was powderkeg in hindsight.

The only way to counter bad speech is with more good speech, not to silence the crackpots. Silencing them makes it way worse. If their bad speech is artificially amplified then so too should your good speech be artificially amplified.

This is just a backlash to sensationalism in the form of influencers/personalities claiming that various places on earth are now instant-death zones even in the shade, and refusing to accept that they are wrong.

Guess there's a reason they post photos of people standing next to a giant thermometer for Death Valley California.

Mr Oliver used to present BBC TV series about history among other things. At some point he seems to have fallen into a radicalisation spiral.

This site says the high in Lamia in Greece on the Monday the 24th was 37C -

https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/greece/lamia/historic

Who is lying?

Can someone point to historic data that confirms the BBC and the claim of a high of 45C on Monday the 24th in Lamia as would normally be reported? (BBCs claim - https://twitter.com/bbcweather/status/1683810369406394368)

[edit] This one has it at 41C - https://www.worldweatheronline.com/lamia-weather-history/cen...

45C is insanely high. That's something you might find at a weather station somewhere really hot like a airport above concrete, but you don't report the hottest station you can find, that would be straight up fake news. We should expect temperatures to be reported as they always have for the region mentioned.

The BBC tweet you linked says

"Table below shows the forecast air temperatures (1.2m above ground)"

But a quick google search for "temperature measurement height" produces the answer

"Air temperature is officially measured in the shade at a height of 2 meters, or about 6 feet, above ground."

I'm not sure what a measurement at 1.2 metres actually means. This (the inflation of temperatures produced by measurements closer to the ground than usual) was also pointed out in the Italian press by scientists who cannot be suspected of climate denialism.

> "The BBC tweet you linked says "Table below shows the forecast air temperatures (1.2m above ground)""

Does the BBC really measure temperatures itself? Or more realistically, they just use a weather API?

Of course they use some source. The scientist I've quoted in the other comment explained that (in the Italian news at least) there was some confusion as journalists used data from an ESA article, reporting temperatures on the ground.

OTOH, it's a bit strange that BBC feels the need to specify the height at which the temperatures were taken or predicted, a height that appears to be different from the standard one (but I have no specific knowledge about this so it might be perfectly normal). But it could explain the discrepancy between the temperatures reported on the site linked by the OP and those of BBC.

Your 2m value seems wrong. It should be 1.2m.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/guides/observations/how...

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