BBC Gets Tree-Ring Data 100% Backwards

Written by Andy Rowlands on May 16, 2024. Posted in Current News

As I was driving home yesterday, on the 6pm Radio 2 news was another item about last year being the ‘hottest on record’ – but can we trust the BBC’s reporting on climate alarm?

The BBC spokesman said this had been determined from looking at tree ring data from the last 150 years.

He said tree rings are narrow in warm years and wide in cold years. But wait….what?

This is exactly reversed; in warm years trees generate wide growth rings, and in cold years narrow growth rings.

Either the spokesman didn’t know what he was talking about, was reading a script, had not checked to make sure what he was going to read was correct, or it was the latest example of deliberate BBC lies.

The science of tree-ring dating; dendrochronology, where cores are taken from timbers with a hollow drill as seen below, show the date the tree was felled by Carbon-14 dating, and more importantly, how warm or cold past periods were.

Oak is the best wood for dendro dating, and there are dendro records for the Northern Hemisphere going back to 13,000BC.

Image: Scottish Archaeological Research Framework

The National Oceanographic & Atmospheric Administration says this about tree-rings:

Because tree rings are sensitive to local climate conditions such as precipitation and temperature, they give scientists some information about an area’s past local climate or “micro-climate.”

For example, rings generally grow wider in warm, wet years and thinner in cold, dry years. (bold in original – Ed)

Brainly.com says:

A wider tree ring typically signifies that the weather in the year the ring was formed was warm and wet, promoting better growth conditions. Thinner rings represent less optimal climates, such as cold or dry weather.

Notice the words ‘less optimal climates, such as cold or dry weather‘.

Less optimal.

So a warmer climate is by inference more optimal.

This is why the Holocene Maximum in the Neolithic period is also described as the Holocene Climate Optimum.

This kind of nonsense reporting infuriates me. The number of times this has happened must be more than just incompetence, it smacks of a deliberate policy.

While the BBC continues to peddle this utter garbage, the gullible will continue to believe it.

Header image: Alabama Sawyer

About the author: Andy Rowlands is a university graduate in space science and British Principia Scientific International researcher, writer and editor who co-edited the new climate science book, ‘The Sky Dragon Slayers: Victory Lap‘

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