Interesting to read the BBC report on the G8 pledge to reduce carbon emissions by 50% by 2050. It lasts for two sentences before the USA gets a rhetorical slap from the State Broadcaster, with the word “pathetic” inserted for maximum effect! As with much of the BBC’s coverage on this issue, it is presented as cuts for the sake of cuts. There is little if any discussion on the actual climate and economic impacts this 50% carbon reduction would have over the next 100 years and I guess that suits the alarmists for whom the BBC does such a sterling service propagandising. For those who prefer to consider the issue in a balanced way, I do recommend Bjorn Lomborg’s “Cool It”
MORE HOT AIR
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Hi David,
More hot air indeed. You state:
“It lasts for two sentences before the USA gets a rhetorical slap from the State Broadcaster, with the word “pathetic” inserted for maximum effect!”
Well, the word “pathetic” occurs twice in the article you kindly linked to:
First time here:
“But the US has refused to set any interim targets for cutting emissions – and environmentalists have criticised the progress at talks as “pathetic”.”
and the second time here:
“The global environmental group WWF said the target date of 2050 was insufficient and called the lack of progress “pathetic”.”
So what do you suggest. The BBC not mentioning reactions by environmental groups?
Wot! No Warming!!
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/07/priceless.html
How do you think the BBC has performed? What would you like to ask the BBC’s director general and chairman about the organisation? Send us your questions using the form below.
Go ahead, Make their day!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7494034.stm
Gunnar: it doesn’t make sense to put para 3 where it is. It interrupts the natural flow of the report which would place it as paragraph 5.
It looks as if some editor came along and did a cut-and-paste job to move it up from where it should be.
So was that done to get in a crack at the US or because the US features in the Beeb mind (even subconsciously) as the villain of the piece on climate matters and it would be a kind of automatic thought process? Well, David may have a point.
Memo to BBC:
The London C-charge was designed to be a CONGESTION charge, as the RAC points out here. And well done, logical Boris.
The C-charge is NOT a CO2 charge, despite all the attempts of the self-flagellating ‘left/greens’ to impose higher ‘green’ taxes:
“Mayor quashes £25 C-charge hike”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7494495.stm
Hi Millie Tant,
Well, the way the BBC structures the online articles is usually to summarise in the first section and then to expand. I guess to pacify those who can not be bothered to read the whole article. Agree with you that this is not the best way to inform people with little snippets, but that would be another discussion.
It seems that all scientists know one thing beyond reasonable doubt: they won’t get funded unless their research confirms climate change (or global warming as it used to be called in the good old days). Yet some still don’t tow the line. Try a review of papers from Dr Bjorn Lomborg and also meteroligist R Lindzen.
I’m fairly new to this site, so sorry if these links are already well known.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597
http://www.lomborg.com/
Well the EU has failed dismally to cut CO2 emissions (with the exception of the UK and I think Germany)
The USA though HAS cut CO2 emissions even though it’s not signed up to Kyoto.
The reason for that is simple. The EU will simply fudge or lie to show it’s doing something when it isn’t but the US like the UK would hold to the pledge.
In the USA the individual states are allowed to set their own Carbon emission limits.
Not that the BBC reports this of course.
Al Beeb were talking about the abandonment of growing bio fuel crops as a major blow for the “green revolution”
its effing freezing and these muppets ae still going on about global warming, sorry i mean dangerous climate change
Yes, we must all use the phrase DANGEROUS when talking about climate change. I strongly suspect we will see wanker boy Harrabin using it as well.
What an agonising morning. I spent it at the dentist, having a horizontal wisdom tooth removed. Blood everywhere.
But that wasn’t the agonising part, that was the relief.
The agonising part was spent in the waiting room beforehand, where a wall-mounted HD television was beaming BBC World News into our brains. I couldn’t wait for the slicing and drilling to begin.
The main story was introduced over a background image of ice melting into the oceans, catastrophically I think. It looked catastrophic at any rate. I rather enjoyed it. The article ran under the leading question, “G8 summit – are world leaders doing enough to combat global warming?” In my mind I answered, “They must be, because it stopped a decade ago”, but never mind the facts, stick to the theories. An environmental lobbyist is then given a platform to tell us how bad things are, how more must be done to stop the looming catastrophe, and how nuclear technology must play no part in the solution. He goes unchallenged by the reporter, who seems to have no facts at her disposal, and is happy to yield the floor to him.
Then I notice, running along the scrolling headlines at the bottom of the screen – (I’m paraphrasing as closely as I can remember) – “San Francisco group claims a fitting tribute to George W Bush would be to name a sewage plant after him”. The group was not named, and no mention was made of the story in the 20 minutes I watched. Perhaps they knew it wasn’t really newsworthy but just liked the sound of it.
I had taken all I could bear of this intense pain, when thankfully a door opened and the welcome sound of dental equipment beckoned me in. Lovely fillings, lovely extractions. Blessed numbness, sweet blood.
The BBC Climate Change Narrative is out in full force today.
Two bits of bias in this article:
Brown faces climate change revolt
Why is Greenpeace the go-to source for any facts regarding anything about industry? They have a well-known agenda, so how can they be considered a trusted source for anything on this topic?
Voice their “concerns” if you want, but using Greenpeace as the only authority in an entire article about the details of emissions laws and targets is a joke.
The other bit of bias is that this is presented as a “backbench rebellion”, but when it’s really a plea to make the Climate Change Bill even stricter. Mr. Brown wants to reduce emissions by 60% by 2050, but his own MPs want to cut them even more! Gosh, what a controversy.
In case anyone misses the point, the Lib Dems get the featured quote:
“This is one of the biggest issues facing domestic politics and clearly goes beyond party politics.”
Steve Webb, Liberal Democrat MP
And as for the Conservatives?
The Conservative frontbench, like the government, is waiting for Lord Turner’s report and abstaining on votes on carbon emission targets.
This could save the government from defeat in the autumn.
But there are fears within government that the Tories could harden up their position, back the 80% target and therefore make a government defeat more likely.
Just a potential foil, apparently. No quotes or anything about how concerned Tories are about the environment, or any statement about their actual position or thoughts on anything.
I have often wondered just why the BBC would destroy itself by clinging to a failing global warming theory. It looks from the outside that the BBC imagine that their fate is tied up somehow with people swallowing the global warming disaster myth. Is it because they have booted out any real scientist? maybe. Is it because they have been so infiltrated by the leftist/liberal elite that they can no longer tell fact from fiction? The Soviet union became so addicted to lies that in the end everyone knew that everyone else was lying about everything and they ended up unable to seperate their political doctrine from what was really happening around them! Perhaps the slide into lying started a long time ago and snowballed? I truly believe that the BBC comrades have lied to themselves and us for so long that they can no longer tell fact from fiction!
The BBC has become so dishonest and deceitful that when bitter wind of reality comes calling(and it will) the BBC collective will suffer the same fate as the old USSR, even as the old USSR was dying their BBC equivalent was still reporting the same old lies about food production surpluses and traktor production figures!
Are the BBC suffering from the sort of collective mental illness that so bedeviled every Marxist regime, the seemingly total inability to separate political ideology from reality?
gavin esler is a prat
And this very evening, as the stock market plummets and the economy starts to melt before our very eyes, what is obsessing R4’s PM?
According to a trailer I’ve just heard, yes, you guessed: ‘global warming’. And to whom does the BBC turn for a balanced view? Someone from the IPCC.
Any BBC trolls left who want to defend the Corporation on this absurd exercise in ‘Green’ hype?
I believe all countries with active volcanos are to blame.
The temperatures on earth have not increased in 10 years.
Lastly there is nothing stopping the left from unilaterally giving up their cars and living a carbon free life.
The BBC is just a farce passing on the lefts propaganda.
Cassandra, it’s hardly a ‘failed theory’. The majority view of the global scientific community, notwithstanding some under-reported dissenters, remains that this is a major issue.
What the Beeb seemingly fails to comprehend is that this is a risk not a fact. A currently largely unrealised albeit major risk. What you do with an risk is you quantify it as best you can and manage it in a cost effective manner. That doesn’t mean that you take Bjorn Lomborg’s word for everything and dismiss all other views, but equally you don’t jump on every ‘it’s one hundred times worse than previously thought’ study and label it the ‘latest science’ which seems to be the Beeb’s view. Or advocate chucking money at it until we’re all subsistence farming. You take a middle ground.
Cockney,
Look, why dont you use some of that world renowned common sense and that highly developed bullshit detector that you cockneys come born with and examine the facts!
The BBC allows NO dissent OK? The BBC avoids any evidence that contradicts the ‘party line’ OK? The BBC tries to link any event with AGW no matter how weak the link is and it never ever apologises when it gets things wrong OK? The BBC has made its corporate mind up about climate change and presents only one side AND actively supresses any dissenter no matter how respected or qualified they are OK? The BBC parrots the exact line that the eco mentalists take as if they were singing from the same hymm sheet OR the eco mentalists are in sole charge of BBC enviromental policies OK?
I am not a scientist and I do not pretend to be smart BUT I can smell bullshit from a mile away and the internet has given me the gift of a veritable treasure of information that the BBC will never ever divulge OK?
May I suggest you visit a site called greeniewatch and read from the top down right to the bottom with an open mind, its quite complicated and might take a while BUT at the end you wil be asking yourself the same question I ask of myself and that is, IF the BBC is so confident of its position then WHY does it allow no dissent or open dialogue between qualified scientists?
“Mr. Brown wants to reduce emissions by 60% by 2050, but his own MPs want to cut them even more! Gosh, what a controversy.”
By which time they will be in retirement or be recycling their components.The great Illusionists of Westminster.
I would be more impressed if,the whole shebang offered their carbon to Gaia or volunteered to be made into Soylent Green
i dont think ive ever seen a scientist on Al Beeb discussing dangerous climate change
they do have some fella called Dick, and another one called Roger. Roger and Dick are moonbats of the first degree
i suppose it is dangerous if the climate changes and a pengiun bites me arse
i know Roger went to the other side of the world aka Japan to cover the G8 meeting giving him a huge carbon footprint
i dont think Dick is important enough for Al Beeb to send tho
Cassandra:
Spot on about Greeniewatch. And time and time again, as I have chronicled in detailed posts over the past few days, in every climate-related story there is no, repeat no, alternative to reaction from the eco-freaks at WWF, Greenpeace or the Green Party.
There are dozens of scientific experts out there who have easily accessible alternative opinions about everything from penguin populations and threats to dugongs (to name but two stories where man-made global warming has been cited as a threat), to whether we are actually entering a major cooling phase. These voices are never, ever heard on the BBC.
Meantime, frontline reporters such as Martha Kearney do linking commentary on biofuels and say categorically that fossil fuels cause climate change.
It’s scandalously poor journalism and demonstrably so.
The BBC is a vast £3-4 billion power consumer,if it was serious about AGW the staff would be campaigning to close it down.
Global Warming was supposed to bring wet winters and bone dry summers to the UK.
Summer 2007 was a complete washout and 2008 might be similar…
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Weather-Experts-Predict-Rain-And-Warm-Sunny-Spells-This-Summer/Article/200807215027795?lpos=UK%2BNews_2&lid=ARTICLE_15027795_Weather%2BExperts%2BPredict%2BRain%2BAnd%2BWarm%2BSunny%2BSpells%2BThis%2BSummer
Bang goes another nail in the Global Warming coffin. That won’t stop Roger Harrabin and Co. from spouting their gobshite though.
Expecting rational analysis from the Beeb on the so-called AGW [non-]issue, or for that matter, on any actual or (more likely leftwing/liberal perceived) issues, given their lack of intellect is too much to ask for.
With the “Stepford Wive” presenters in front of autocues being fed the traktor production figures, or the autocratic guilt-inducing comments on “how you should live the ‘good’ life” theories (promoted by self appointed tax payer funded, living by surveys wankers) we should all have no hope that the BBC will EVER change. To think otherwise is to be deluded.
GBS
Please dear liberals, do us all 2 favors.
1)Look up the words “globe” and “warming”.
After doing so, and realizing what a bunch of azz-hats you are, please do us favor #2
2)Kill yourselves. Become Soylent Green.
Please?
Cockney writes: “Cassandra, it’s hardly a ‘failed theory’. The majority view of the global scientific community, notwithstanding some under-reported dissenters, remains that this is a major issue.”
Well, that’s one punter the confidence trick has worked on.
As I’ve posted here before, the answer to this myth is to be found in several places, but the following is one of the shortest and most persuasive.
http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/Scienceletter.htm
I strongly suggest you visit and read.
Why is Greenpeace the go-to source for any facts regarding anything about industry? They have a well-known agenda, so how can they be considered a trusted source for anything on this topic?
This is no joke. When the establishment headed up by the Rothschild’s wants something from the media and especially the BBC, The Rothschild’s get it.
Who do you imagine really controls the BBC’s entire agenda?
Who finances the Green Movement including Greenpeace?
Who ‘supports’ though charitable foundations and sponsorship all of our great universities.
Who lends almost infinite amounts of created money to any country willing to take the cash and pay the interest. For anything whatsoever to do with reducing CO2 production?
Who knows for absolute sure that CO2 has got nothing whatsoever to do with climate change?
Who largely owns all of the central banks and our entire political system?
Two clues; It is the same person, and his initials are ER.
David Preiser USA. You asked the question. I have now told you the answer.
The BBC never mentions (at least when I am listening) what would be the cost of a Co2 cut.
A no electricity day or two when the wind drops for a beeboid with a pile in the country would be a wood burning aga with plenty of wood pre cut by a helpful yokel a pot of home made soup, prepared by the house keeper, with lots of organig veg dug out the garden by a local pensioner who needs the money to pay his television tax.
For most of us it would be freezing cold, defrosted freezers clothes we cannot dry or wash eating cold food out of a tin.
If the peower goes out and I cannot watch the TV do I get a refund on the telly tax?
Atlas shrugged | 08.07.08 – 7:58 pm
If only the world was really that simple.
David, you don’t know for sure that the world isn’t that simple.
You don’t know for sure that CO2 didn’t shoot JFK.
And you don’t know for sure that I’m not the Wizard of Oz.
Same logic as Atlas.
And ER is ELEANOR ROOSEVELT.
The following is off topic for this thread but the following video demonstrates BBC bias and is well worth taking a look at: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LbFKCZnDYIo
Harrabin was spouting nonsense again on the 10pm BBC 1 news – talking about the planet warming. Is it that he simply does not know the facts? Or is he a bare-faced liar?
Answers on the back of a Greenpeace membership form to….
So 50% becomes 80%…
Harrabin is a twat. Pure and simple.
I know the BBC has to have it’s ritual “we hate America” funny five minutes but I do know a bit about US railroads and I know that the locomotives sold by the US and Canada in large numbers to us and other EU countries would not turn a wheel in the US.Much too dirty.Same with the new coal power stations coming soon in the US.Far far cleaner than ours ever will be.The US just gets on with it while we ,or rather our self appointed guardians of all things green play around with useless windmills and ban plastic bags.
It was hard to know whether Paxman was editorialising at the close of Newsnight this evening. If he wasn’t, he needs to be a damned sight more careful.
Reviewing tomorrow’s newspapers and in particular the Guardian’s take on the G8 agreement on carbon emissions, of the 50 per cent figure he added: ‘which everyone knows is insufficient’.
Now, was that Paxman’s opinion or was he trying to paraphrase the Guardian?
The fact that it is palpably and demonstrably wrong is almost beside the point. By no stretch of the imagination does ‘everyone’ know any such thing.
The BBC has, this entire day, pushed, shoved, nudged, lied, spun and stopped at almost nothing to promote the belief that ‘global warming’ (which stopped a decade ago – assuming it ever began) is caused by emissions of manmade carbon dioxide. No dissent from that view has been admitted. The line has been held.
If ever there was a day when it became clear that the BBC has crossed the line – that it is no longer a news organisation, but a front for ‘Green’ neo-Marxism – today has been that day.
GCooper: Look on the brightside. No one apart from a few fruits believes this bollocks about global warming.
The BBC can ponce on about it all they like. Come the nex election and the Tories get in, the BBC will have its throat slit and will die like a squealing pig. I can’t wait for the day.
Martin writes: “Look on the brightside. No one apart from a few fruits believes this bollocks about global warming.”
Well, no. The Government believes it. The EU believes it. The future US government will believe it (both McCain and Obama are warmists) and, heaven help us, so is Cameron.
Sadly, this war against rationality isn’t over yet. It has only just begun.
McBean, obviously, is finished. But if ‘Call me Dave’ is his replacement, in what sense does that seem like any sort of improvement in terms of stemming the ‘Green’ flood?
TUESDAY JULY EIGHTH 2008
This was the day that the BBC dropped the pretence of being a news organisation and showed the world that in reality it has become a grubby and dishonest partisan lobbying/propaganda mouthpiece! The BBC have been hiding it for years but now its plain for all to see!
The propaganda continues like a torrent. Never is a BBC presenter happier than when being gloomy about global warming. This morning the lead on BBC Breakfast Time is ‘world leaders fail to agree on limiting the carbon (sic) emissions that cause global warming’. No questions, no doubt, no alternative view, no room for debate. The eco-loons have won.
Sorry this is off topic but it’s a classic example of Al-BBC cherry-picking
the parts of a story that fit their world view and then being written up as the headlines to that story..
“End Farc ‘hate’, Betancourt urges
Ms Betancourt urged an end to hurtful vocabulary towards the rebels
The recently freed Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt has urged an end to the Colombian government’s “vocabulary of hate” against her former captors. ”
So in a story where other freed hostages called the FARC rebels “Terrorists”, Al-BBC lead with Betancourt’s Stockholm-syndrome induced rant against the Columbian govt (the same govt that freed the ungrateful liberal idiot). Naturally the leftists at Al-Beeb just LUVVED her comments about hurting FARC’s feelings – yes, musn’t hurt the feelings of murdering scum who torture, kidnap and kill. Remember in Al-BBC world NOTHING is worse than hurting the feelings of terrorists (especially islamist or communist ones).
Off topic but it really makes me wonder what the hell goes on at the BBC. Radio 5 has just run a story about the killing of pet rabbits in Germany – must have been at least 5 minutes – seemed like 50. Now in the big scheme of things about what’s going on in the world I couldn’t give a crap about the killing of pet rabbits by some nutter in Germany. Anyone from the BBC able to explain why such an insignificant and irrelevant story makes BBC headlines because I had to check the calendar when I got to work – just to confirm it wasn’t April 1st
Meanwhile, as the BBC creams its collective knickers over reporting the G8 climate change decision, the excellent US site Climate Skeptic
http://www.climate-skeptic.com/
has posted evidence that the NASA eco-freak James Hansen’s 1988 pessimistic claims for man-made global warming are radically wrong. Worth a look to see just how wrong – the graph shows that we are at an average temperature less than if the massive CO2 reduction measures he called for had been taken. Which they haven’t.
The day after it finally blew what little credibility it had on the subject, the BBC’s ‘News’ website still finds room on its front page for more G8 ‘global warming’ nonsense.
Meanwhile, in the background, the British economy collapses in a heap of rubble.
You can only conclude that, if you work for an organisation funded by a poll tax, economic meltdown doesn’t figure that high on your priorities.
Any plan today for reducing ‘carbon emissions’ in 2050 is rather like having a world conference in 1908 to tackle the menace of horse-dung emissions by 1950.
“Doing nothing is not an option. By 1950 our grandchildren will be walking around neck-deep in horse manure. Only a world-wide plan to replace horses with dung-efficient goats can save the planet. What a shame that the Austro-Hungarian Empire refuses to sign up to the Baden-Baden Treaty”, said a spokesperson.
I see the official BBC line (Breakfast news and Radio 4) is that emissions CAUSE global warming, no ifs no buts.
Meanwhile cut to yet more footage of ice falling off icebergs, location unknown, season unknown and whether it is even real or special effects, unknown.
The BBC can save a few trees by not having letters sent to housholds that haven`t got a television.
They can save oil and carbon footprints by not having goons going round to houses that dont have the telly tax licence with the aim of harrasing them.
How is the weather in UK?
Here in The Southern French Alps it’s sunny and hot (the norm)
Whilst in Peru last month, I noticed it was, well normal for the time of year.
Whilst in Johannesburg this time last year, dozens were dying of the extreme cold – can’t remember the exact figures, but on a par with the recent riots. Not a squeek from Orla bin Gurin???
Not a squeek from Orla bin Gurin???
Tim | 09.07.08 – 12:20 pm | #
Orla bin Gurin… Ha ha. Funneee, dude.
Now if only she could be forced into a full Burka.
GCooper:
“…Well, no. The Government believes it. The EU believes it. The future US government will believe it (both McCain and Obama are warmists) and, heaven help us, so is Cameron…”
Like I said. Only loons and fruits believe this nonsense about man made global warming.
The way to counteract the politicians is easy. Don’t vote for them. Good to see though that the brilliant Boris Johnson has scrapped the £25 a day charge in London. I noted the Bum Bandit Corporation had to quote corrupt Ken yet again though.
Shut the fuck up Livingstone. YOU LOST. Live with it.
All people have to do is keep pointing out the lies and distortions that the likes of the BBC pump out about climate change.
The problem the BBC has it that it can’t change the weather.
For example back in winter shit head Harrabin did a piece from Kew Gardens (I think it was there or some other gardens in London) going on about how climate change was giving us milder winters and that it was causing daffodils to flower early (some might remember it was discussed here). Of course the following week, there were snow flurries all over the north causing people to be trapped for hours.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7310218.stm
And we were told that climate change would give us hotter and dryer summers. Now the eco loons tell us that actually we might not have hotter dryer summers some years. So what’s new?