By Paul Homewood
h/t Tim
There’s an interesting follow-up to this story about the floods in Pakistan at the end of August:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62712301
Readers will recall that the claim that a third of the country is under water immediately triggered my BS detector and I fully analyzed it. herecompletely debug it.
But just a few days after my article, the BBC’s More or Less radio program also considered the request, after some viewers complained:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001brmm
They interviewed an environmental scientist, who examined what different satellite records indicated. His conclusion is that the actual figure is that about 10% of the country has been affected by flooding, and much of this is short-term.
In fact, all the BBC had to do was what I did for a few minutes and checked out what NASA was reporting:
Apparently nothing like a third of the country was flooded. Indeed, just looking at a map could tell them that much of Pakistan is mountainous or desert where flooding is unlikely.
They may also have checked with the United Nations disaster agency, OCHA, which publishes regular reports on floods.
According to them, the affected area is 75000 square kilometers, equivalent to 9% of the country’s area:
In fact, this is exactly the kind of check the BBC should have done before making their ridiculous claims. Something that anyone with a bit of common sense, or integrity, would immediately suspect is false.
It is doubly ironic that the BBC’s defense of the third claim has been widely reported in the media. This shows how much of today’s media has been completely damaged.
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