Global warming - the power of personal experience

The BBC enjoy nothing more than an international event involving "the youth" and climate change. So you can almost feel the moistness as the BBC report on the "Five hundred teenagers are meeting in Denmark for a competition to design new products to help tackle climate change." Personal experience stories add colour so the BBC report that

"many of the teenagers at the camp have already experienced the impact of climate change first hand.

Yashvardhan Gusani, 15, lives near Mumbai in India.

He says: "The cities are getting hotter all the time. I feel like we have hardly even had a winter"."

That's odd I thought as my Indian relatives have been moaning about how cold it has been the last few years. So I looked for some documentary proof and found these articles: Thaindian News 31.01.08 -

"North India continues to be under the grip of intense cold wave with some parts of the country experiencing sub-zero temperatures.

As the Meteorological Department has predicted colder day’s ahead. Delhi recorded a minimum temperature of 3.4 degrees Celsius on Thursday.

The season’s lowest was recorded at 1.9 degrees Celsius on 2nd January."

Ok that's North India, maybe further south it was warmer...

Indiainfo 26.01.08 -

"Chilly conditions continued to prevail in north India today with some cities recording sub-zero temperatures while the mercury plummeted in Mumbai to a record low in 45 years.

While cold wave conditions intensified in Shimla which witnessed a fresh spell of snowfall, icy winds from northern hills brought down the minimum temperature in the national Capital to 4.1 degrees Celsius, five notches below normal. The minimum at Shimla stood at -2.2 degree celsius.

Kolkata and its adjoining districts were lashed by continuous drizzle cutting short the Republic Day parade which saw only a few visitors at Red Road outside Eastern Command headquarters, known for its huge spectator crowd.

The unusually cold spell in north and central India lowered the temperature abnormally in Mumbai, which has maritime climate conditions and is used to temperate climate even during winters. The city recorded season's lowest at 10.8 degree Celsius.

Though people in some parts of Punjab and Haryana had a bit of relief as minimum temperatures increased slightly from close to below freezing point for the past over a week, the cold wave conditions still prevailed in the region. Karnal in Haryana was the coldest at 2.2 degrees Celsius.

The desert state of Rajasthan continued to reel under icy winds, with the mercury dipping to the freezing point in Sriganganagar and northerly cold wave continued to sweep the state."

So that would be the north and Mumbai, but maybe Indiainfo is mistaken, surely there can be no other articles saying similar things...

Climate Change Corp 23.02.09 -

"India's largest city experienced a record low temperature nearly two weeks ago, part of a stretch of cold weather that has gripped the city much of this month

The financial hub of India saw temperatures plunge to 6.5 degrees Celsius February 8, the lowest temperature ever recorded in the city. The previous low, recorded January 27th, 1962, was 7.4 degrees. Such temperatures are almost unheard of in the subtropical city that rarely experiences cold due to its coastal position near the hot Arabian Sea."

So 15 year old Yashvardhan Gusani is quoted as saying that "I feel like we have hardly even had a winter" and the BBC accept that as fact, did they not even think to check? My research took about 2 minutes in Google and 15 minutes to write up; does the BBC not bother with fact checking any more, or was this comment so in tune
with their world view that they didn't bother checking. A Mumbai resident says that he has hardly even had a winter when this winter saw the coldest ever temperature ever recorded in the city; worth mentioning?

The BBC however take a different slant:

"But do the young people really think they can succeed with green ideas, where past generations have failed?

"Yes, because we know we have to do something right now," says Yashvardhan. "