Sunhats off

Yes, sunhats off to Tyler at Burning our Money who draws something to my attention: the reason the BBC are biased on the “climate change” issue is because they decided to be two years ago. This decision may be rather more controversial now than then, as sceptics are more organised and data more negative for the AGW hypothesis. DV mentioned a related study last week.

I can’t have been reading the excellent Mr Tyler’s blog back then, or if I did I missed it; certainly Jeremy Paxman seemed to have missed it when he said that “People who know a lot more than I do may be right when they claim that [global warming] is the consequence of our own behaviour. I assume that this is why the BBC’s coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago” (as chronicled in our sidebar). He assumed correctly (in a sense), but he needn’t have assumed. [in fact I think Paxman may have been having a dig here: a long time ago being well before it became official BBC policy]

Tyler reported in ’07 (and I missed) that the BBC in their report called, ahem, “safeguarding impartiality”, said that “The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus.”

So that was that: by fiat the BBC decided the narrative had changed; what numerous people from scientific and non-scientific backgrounds either refused to be convinced by or actively disbelieved had actually to be promulgated.

This is excellent evidence that the “impartiality” meme on which the BBC base their public service justification is unworkable, at least if they are also to “educate and inform”. To do these they need to know “the truth” about newsworthy issues, which is oxymoronic really- they wouldn’t be news if they were as predicable as “truth” (for want of a better word) needs to be. Apple falls from tree- shock, disbelief!

Anyway, yesterday Roger Harrabin started criticising the Met Officefor failed forecasts- the same Met Office which has been teaching the Beeb all about global warming. Is this preparatory for what could be known as the BBC’s Great Climate Trackback?