My Complaint To The BBC - Four Weeks And They're Still Chewing On It

It’s the first complaint I’ve ever made to our now disgraced and discredited national broadcaster. I expected at least some sort of a response, even if it was inadequate. But nothing - just an email today apologising for the delay in the response.

This was on January 15th:

Thanks for contacting the BBC. This is to confirm we’ve received the attached complaint sent in this name. We’ve included the text of the complaint and a case reference for your records (see below).

Our normal aim at this stage is to reply within 10 working days (two weeks). We hope you will understand that sometimes it may take us longer. If we think that will be the case here, we'll try to let you know in advance.

We’ll normally include your complaint in our overnight report to producers and management. This will circulate your complaint (with any personal details removed) together with all the other reaction we receive today. It will then be available for the right team to read tomorrow morning.

For full details of our complaints process you can visit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/how-we-handle-your-complaint.

Please don’t reply to this email because it’s an automated acknowledgement sent from an account which can’t receive replies. If you do need to get in touch, please use our webform instead at www.bbc.co.uk/complaints, quoting your reference number.

Here are the details of your complaint:

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YOUR COMPLAINT:

Factual inaccuracy in reporting  

I am making a complaint regarding your reporting of a factual inaccuracy as regards the cause of the 2023/2024 record warm years, globally.

The author of the article referenced above says:

"The scientists said human-caused climate change was the primary driver for record temperatures, while other factors such as the Pacific Ocean’s “El Nino” weather phenomenon, which raises global temperatures, also had an effect."

This is factually inaccurate. The link which you provide to another BBC article in order to justify this statement proves it:

“I think it’s safe to say that both 2023 and 2024 temperatures surprised most climate scientists – we didn’t think we’d be seeing a year above 1.5C this early,” says Dr Hausfather.

“Since 2023 we’ve had around 0.2C of extra warming that we can’t fully explain, on top of what we had expected from climate change and El Niño,” agrees Helge Gößling, a climate physicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany.

"Various theories have been suggested to explain this ‘extra’ warmth, such as an apparent reduction in the low-level cloud cover that tends to cool the planet, and prolonged ocean heat following the end of El Niño."

Furthermore, the direct quote from the scientist from Copernicus is:

"By far and away the largest contribution impacting our climate is greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere," Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, tells the BBC.

Despite the BBC text* immediately above that quote repeating the factual error that 2023/24 RECORD warmth is predominantly due to GHG emissions, the quote does not prove that, it is more general.

* "Last year's heat is predominantly due to humanity's emissions of planet-warming gases, such as carbon dioxide, which are still at record highs."

Please correct your factual errors in both articles and issue an apology.

Last year’s record heat (and that in 2023) was not predominantly due to GHG emissions.

Even the BBC themselves admit it:

In one breath, they say the 2024 record breaking heat was due predominantly to GHGs, with a small contribution from El Nino, then they quote Hausfather who says that a whopping 0.2C cannot be explained by man-made climate change and El Nino!