Environment Agency Chief Accused Of Making False Claims About UK Weather
By Paul Homewood
The GWPF have today published an official press release criticising Sir James Bevan’s claims that the UK is “no longer a wet and rainy country”
A new report, The Great British Rain Paradox (1), has just been published, warning of potential water shortages in the UK in years to come.
It claims that the major factor for this is climate change. The foreword, written by the CEO of the Environment Agency Sir James Bevan, states:
Climate change is causing long spells of dry weather that are putting our water resources under increased pressure. May 2020 has been the driest on record and exceptionally dry weather across the south east between 2017 and 2019 led to some of the lowest groundwater levels we have ever seen.”
These claims have no basis in fact.
Official Met Office data shows that the UK has actually been getting wetter in recent decades (2).
What is particularly noticeable in England and Wales is the absence of severe drought years in recent decades.
May 2020 certainly was not the driest on record either – in the UK as a whole, it was only the ninth driest since records started in 1862. The driest May was in 1896.
Analysis of regional rainfall data also fails to support Sir James’ claims.
Neither does the claim of exceptionally dry weather in the South East of England stand up to scrutiny. Met Office data proves that rainfall there between 2017 and 2019 was in fact close to average.
There are undoubtedly good reasons why water shortages may occur in future, such as population growth and increased demands. Spurious claims about climate change will simply serve to draw attention away from these very real issues and the failure to expand storage and deal with water leaks.
GWPF director Dr Benny Peiser said
This is not the first time Sir James has been caught playing fast and loose with the facts to support a political agenda (3). He should apologise and issue a correction.”
Notes for editors
1) The Great British Rain Paradox is available here:
https://www.savewatercleanclever.co.uk/content/dam/rbfinishposeidon/uk/report/The%20Report.pdf
2) Met Office rainfall data can be accessed here:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-and-regional-series
3) James Bevan’s speech not supported by scientific evidence – Environment Agency:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/11/10/james-bevans-speech-not-supported-by-scientific-evidence-environment-agency
https://www.thegwpf.com/environment-agency-accused-of-making-false-claims-about-uk-weather/
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Why do these pompous officials continue to issue their ridiculous comments when the real world is doing something completely different ? They seem to think that they know what they are talking about when Corona has taught us that most experts are often all out at sea and are only capable of contradicting each other . Time for humility especially from CC scientists peddling daft models which again Corona has taught us are seriously unreliable .
Everyone agreed ? How do we tell everyone ?
Buchanlad: “Why do these pompous officials continue to issue their ridiculous comments?” Because they are part of the ‘blob’. Their job is to keep the populace in a state of anxiety; they keep their well-paid jobs on the basis that Green initiatives ie: the Money Tree – will keep on providing great bundles of money for the members of the club.
If they were to push for the building of new reservoirs, they would be drummed out of the club: you can’t have people luxuriating in the wealth of easily available and copious amounts of relatively cheap water – or energy, come to that. The ‘people’ need to be brought to the point that they are clamouring for ‘the state’ to do something, anything. They will beg to pay for the ‘solution’.
As proof of this I offer the ridiculous (to us) theatre of the BBC’s Chief Environment Correspondent, Justin Rowlat (Non-BSc; Non-PhD; Non-Scientific qualification) interviewing Greta Thunberg (Non-Schooled; Non-Qualified) to continue the spreading of the gospel. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-53100800 They don’t seem to understand that if we hadn’t had the Covid pandemic we still wouldn’t have enough money for the crazy solutions the Greens want; it’s even more of a remote chance now that Covid has broken the country and the rest of the World.
That wasn’t an interview it was a profuse panegyric.
The article ‘UK is no longer a ‘wet and rainy’ country, head of Environment Agency says’ was written by Emma Gatten in the Telegraph.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/18/uk-no-longer-wet-rainy-country-head-environment-agency-says/
Perhaps the Telegraph should produce an article apologising for creating a fake news article and it should get the numpty head of the Environment Agency to go down on one knee and issue a humble apology to all the people of the UK. He should then resign since he is clearly unfit to hold the job.
I can’t wait for this to happen!
UK has a temperate oceanic climate. Koeppen Cfb. Has for a long time*. Temperate, without dry season, warm summer.
This is the UK climate. Period.
“UK is no longer a ‘wet and rainy’ country”
This is a casual observation, anyone may utter.
‘head of Environmental Agency says’
Okay, anyone but the head of a science agency. Bevan can’t say this. He must deal in science. He has declared himself unfit for purpose.
*There is no climate change. PERIOD. There are changes occurring – minor fluctuations in GMT – but calling them ‘climate’ is absolutely bogus. Abuse of the language.
“Period” is the American term for a full stop. Are you American?
All my life. Wanna fight about it?
“Sir James Bevan’s claims that the UK is “no longer a wet and rainy country”
Except when it is
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/07/10/event-attribution-science-a-case-study/
Paul, I missed your 12million blog hits milestone. BZ.
12million blog hits?
wow
congratulations, paul
+1
Wasn’t he here last year?
Wetter than an otter’s pocket.
Nobody expects the Environment Agency to be competent surely and given that ex Labour MP Chris Smith – a man who could go on Spitting Image without a puppet – was once chairman and Bevan is a career bureaucrat.
Shouldn’t any media outlet that ran this story have doused him in derision?
Of course for the Environment Agency, climate change is always the convenient scapegoat for stuff that happens when they don’t do their jobs.
The “i”s Madeline Cuff, (a Horrorbin clone), is being given free rein to expound similar drivel every day: any comments are of course binned immediately. Her latest fluff is that the UK is heading for serious water shortages in 20 years time due to climate change and that apparently most people do not understand this worry: you could not make up such drivel, but they can!
I buy the “i” for its crossword and puzzles only, but glance through its biased reporting.
In the UK rainfall is often a slow process, so there are a lot of hours of rain but the total rainfall is not exceptional in most places.
I am hopeful that bevan’s knighthood was inherited, because it seems very highly unlikely that he could have been awarded it for public works, for which he is clearly totally unsuited.
I had a note from my water board asking me to use less water. No baths, don’t clean the car, the normal list. They make the plea seem like the public duty of every citizen to comply. What other area of the capitalist system asks me to pay via a contract with little expectation of receiving the product? Do we ever hear of a water company refusing to supply new houses in order to meter out a sparse resource or to protect those to whom they already have a responsibility?
So the corollary to the building splurge is to expect a lower standard of living for all? When natural resources reach this sort of criticality we have reason to reflect on the calls for maintained immigration for whatever cause, a lull in building expansion; the situation, according to the way of things, is that so many dwelling will be built that everyone will expect less water, a constant condition of draught rules and proscription.
We now have a record of such services, such necessities, commented upon as being being beyond reproach and faultlessly managed. So much of our amenity in Britain works wonderfully when it has no customers, a strange sort of cloud cuckoo land. The commercial system works in this way: I submit to a contract with the washing machine maker, the biscuit maker, that I will pay for a product as described. I will consume as many biscuits as my finances and tastes will allow. Yet we see so many instances whereby we pay for the continuation of a services rather than for what it is delivering.
Are we really in the capitalist system at all or rather a rather hybridised form of socialism where our pockets are picked to maintain entities that are badly run, who remove their responsibilities on a whim, have an increasing expectation of failing their promises or obligations?
When the Government ‘caps’ energy companies for over-charging or not showing the restraints in the market expected from competition while stealing my money by way of support for ideological and profoundly unnatural sources of energy, I find that to be a bit of legerdemain. To sequester cash and to diminish choice and expectation seems not what Adam Smith intended.
If you need to contact him about rainfall, someone provided this email address for James Bevan, the Environment Agency Chief in a recent blog entry – here it is again james.bevan@environment-agency.gov.uk
Dosing thru the telly channel ads last night,an ad for something called ,I think,FINISH,caught my sleepy attention.To do with reduced water usage in dishwashers.
All of a sudden Bevan pops up extolling the virtues of the product because of future water shortages.Stunned I was.
If what I sleepily observed is correct,is it not against the law to advertise using an unfounded speculation-that’s me being polite?
I saw that ad too and nearly fell off my sofa! Strange how Bevans comments suddenly appear in an advert! Smells fishy to me!! I am going to make a complaint, for what good it does, but we need to start fighting back against these outright lies. Anyone else – https://www.asa.org.uk/make-a-complaint.html
That graph is for January, not May. Also in the graph you can see that it’s oscillating more and more, going to two extremes. That’s what the guy is talking about.
Eh?
The graph is titled “Rainfall Amount UK Year” – that means Annual. Go away and check it out for youself.
As for “oscillating more and more”, it is obvious that the exact opposite is true
I did not actually show the May graph, but you can see that Bevan lied about that as well from the Met Office figures here:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/datasets/Rainfall/date/UK.txt