Exclusive: Welsh Gov body promotes climate change misinformation

Plus Welsh Labour MS talks about ‘absolute scandal’ in how UK Labour treats Wales

Hello and good morning.

We have a cracking newsletter today. We will start with an investigation into a Welsh Government owned and funded body that is unapologetically spouting climate change misinformation.

Then we will break down some good news (that’s right, good news!) from the Welsh NHS.

Finally we will look at an interview I conducted last week with a Welsh Labour MS who told me “Labour can’t go on like this” and the “party needs to federalise”.

Before we start, a word from our sponsor:

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Investigation: Welsh Government funding climate change denial?

Recently someone drew my attention to the above Facebook post. It contains the rather obvious falsehood that it is a “myth” that “methane emissions from cows” contribute to global warming.

So what right? This is just one of millions of lies about climate change that are circulated online. But a bit of digging into the source made some concerning findings.

The Facebook page that made the post is called “Welsh Beef”. It has 19k likes and 21k followers. In a Welsh context this is a pretty big page. Most of its posts are about promoting the industry and how delicious beef is (nothing wrong with that) but there is a smattering of posts like the above which contain flat out untruths.

This is not just a random group of beef enthusiasts. It is run by an organisation called “Hybu Cig Cymru” or HCC. This translates as “Promote Welsh Meat”.

When you look at their website they have some other…err…bold claims including:

As well as some other misleading claims like:

What’s wrong with their claims?

It’s worth taking a second to break down why what they are saying is either untrue or misleading.

Let’s start with the “myth” that methane produced by farting cows contributes to climate change. This is the easiest because it is just patently bollocks (or perhaps bullocks),

Unfortunately for all of us, cows simply do belch methane which is one of the leading causes of climate change. There are no farming practices that can change that.

For context about how many emissions come from beef production I made this graph:

As you can see, beef is far and away the most polluting foodstuff.

What about the claim that they are keeping greenhouse gases “underground”? This has been disproven. If you want to see the study you can read more here. This was a international research collaboration that showed that not only are cattle pastures not a climate solution, they directly contribute to the problem.

The claim that “although agriculture is responsible for 10% of UK emissions this is less than transport and business sectors” is technically true but also misleading.

In a UK context it is true but in Wales agriculture makes up 16% of Cymru’s total greenhouse gas emissions, which is actually more than transport. Plus while emissions in areas like power generation have fallen massively since 2016, agriculture has barely changed at all. As we said before, you can’t decarbonise a cow.

So who is putting out their misinformation and why does it matter?

I will confess, initially I didn’t really know a lot about Hybu Cig Cymru. It turns out they are a private company limited by guarantee which is wholly owned by the Welsh Government.

It is pretty concerning that a body which is owned by our government is putting out this kind of misleading information.

When I approached the Welsh Government they were quick to say that it was an “arms length body” whose money was raised by a levy on red meat producers/ processors.

While it is true that most of their cash comes from a levy (which the Welsh Gov sets btw), HCC has also received a lot of taxpayers money.

I looked at their last few years accounts and this was what it said:

This was 2024:

This is 2023 and 2022:

As you can see, over the last few years they have had over £5m of public cash (the Arfor Challenge is also Welsh Gov funded).

When I pressed the Welsh Government on why they haven’t acted to stamp down on climate misinformation a spokeswoman told me :

"As an independent body, it's for HCC to decide what they publish on their social media channels. We would however, like any other body, expect them to be accurate and evidence based.”

This is pretty weak. They own it. They have funded it. I don’t think it is acceptable for them to simply accept that HCC is spreading falsehoods about the biggest crisis facing humanity while at the same time the Welsh Gov are patting themselves on the back for declaring a climate emergency.

Just to hammer home the point of what an “arms length body” means, below is a list of all the organisations that fit the criteria according to the Welsh Government. It includes the National Museum, Careers Wales and Future Generations Commissioner. Would they sit idly by if they were spouting misinformation?

What did HCC say when I approached them?

I went to HCC to challenge them on their social media posts and received the following reply from a spokesperson:

“HCC collaborates with researchers and academic institutions across the UK and beyond on the topics of environmental sustainability, an area of scientific research which is evolving constantly. Welsh red meat is produced in harmony with Wales’ natural environment and offers a range of environmental, economic and societal benefits to the people of Wales.”

Hmmm OK. So I replied to them:

Can you point me to an academic institution or researcher who says it is a myth that "methane emissions from cows are responsible for global warming" please?

To this they replied:

“You might be interested in reading this study from Oxford University which discusses how methane emissions are measured and their effect compared with other GHGs”

This response underlines how the organisation is seemingly twisting legit science to fit their narrative. It is true that the author of the study is arguing that, while methane is extremely potent, it is more short-lived in the atmosphere than CO2.

However “short lived” in this context simply means hundreds rather than thousands of years! In fact you can argue that because methane is more short lived than CO2, cutting methane emissions is even more crucial because it will have a more immediate effect on our efforts to stop climate change.

So what we have here is a clear falsehood posted by an organisation owned and part funded by the Welsh Government. It has been raised with both the organisation and the Welsh Government yet it still remains up. This isn’t good enough.

Some good news about the Welsh NHS

It’s time for the monthly update on Welsh NHS waiting lists. Between January and February this year (the latest data we have) there was a 25% drop in the very longest waits meaning that the number of people waiting over two years (purple line) has fallen from 21k to 15.5k in one month.

While this is great news (and means the First Minister is on course to hit her target of 8k by May) this can’t be celebrated as a job done.

There are still almost 800k total waits on the Welsh NHS and just because someone comes off the list doesn’t mean they are cured of whatever was ailing them.

For example, if I had been referred to see a consultant about a potential hip replacement and had waited two years to do so, when I see that consultant I am taken off the list. I would then start waiting on another list for the actual op. So just because I have now been moved to a new list doesn’t mean that I have had my suffering alleviated .

One could also reasonably ask why, if they were able to reduce the longest waits by a quarter in a month, haven’t they done this before?

In order to make these reductions they have been running loads of overtime and are using special hubs which solely concentrate on clearing the backlog. The Welsh Gov will argue that they couldn't have done the overtime before because they needed an injection of cash from the UK Gov for the overtime.

However it is worth nothing that there was nothing stopping them from creating the hubs except political will. The Royal College of Surgeons was calling for it for half a decade.

Labour MS expresses anger at UK Labour: ‘There are a lot of very, very angry people. It's an absolute scandal that should not be happening’