Make sure you’re sitting down for this one.
BBC environment correspondent Roger Harrabin on Radio Five Live Breakfast this morning:
“There is a sort of misapprehension here that we in the media have probably helped to perpetuate: that the science of climate change, all the details, are settled. In fact there’s a lot of uncertainty about big areas of the science as to what will happen.”
A frank admission from an unexpected quarter. The fallout from Climategate continues.
Meanwhile, over at cilimategate “Have Your Say”, over 1047 comments have been posted. However, only 350 have been published, 17 rejected and 680 are awaiting “censorship” by the moderators.
Strangely, my post which was submitted very early in the day has yet to appear.
Wonder why?
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=1&forumID=7310&start=0&tstart=0&edition=1&ttl=20091204144622#paginator
The BBC’s “Science and Environment” section sure isn’t giving up the fight. The report on the UN’s acknowledgment of the e-mail problem is full of partisan language.
The desire to shoot the messenger appears in the third sentence, and the Beeboid contributor sticks in the usual dogmatic statements such as “critics of the scientific consensus have claimed….” and that politicians use the IPCC findings to “tackle climate change”, as if “climate change” is understood to be man-made only.
Notice that there are a total of zero voices of actual criticism in the piece. There are two quotes from people saying that the e-mails may or will cause a problem in Copenhagen, but that’s not the same as an actual opinion from the other side. The second half of the report is full of statements supporting Warmism: Ed Miliband (lending the weight of government), and a guy from the Sustainable Development racket worrying about cleaning up the issue (which is not the same thing as admitting there’s a problem with the scientists’ behavior).
However, there are also signs that the wagons are circling. The BBC disingenuously says that Phil Jones “has stood aside from his job”, and dutifully provides space for him to provide full deniability. There is also an amusing attempt to distance the IPCC from the problem, pointing out that they only collect the data, and don’t actually get involved in the science.
In case that’s not enough, the article ends with another manifestation of the desire to shoot the messenger. The similarities to someone whose religious beliefs have been shattered are startling.
No mention anywhere in the BBC’s “Science and Environment” section of last night’s edition of The World Tonight where hockey-stick maven Michael Mann’s attempt to distance himself from Phil Jones’ e-mails discussing the desire to corrupt and stifle the peer review process. In fact, it’s not even mentioned as one of the show’s highlights.
The wagons are circling at the BBC, for sure.
All the BBC are going to do is to simply “re-phrase” man made climate change, already the BBC just refer to climate change, this after “global warming” looked a silly thing to bang on about when under several feet of snow.
What I find interesting is how the BBC attacked the Tories for misleading people over the two Muslim schools the other week, yet for years the leftist media have been misleading us about climate change and the BBC hasn’t said a word.
This is in part because no one at the BBC is actually qualified to analyse this data and give a balanced report.
A degree in English doesn’t qualify you to do anything. There really should be a public inquiry into all this, looking at the part the BBC has played in this corruption of the truth.
The BBC were cheerleaders for the inquiry into the famous Blair dodgy dossier and it’s manipulation of the truth, so why not climategate?
We all know how committed the B-BBC is to the whole MMGW fairy story. However today I think they’ve taken it to a whole new level.
For some time I’ve been a contributer to the BBC “Have Your Say” site and suffered the usual censorship(or “Awaiting Moderation” delays) to make sure not much gets through that doesnt meet the BBC prejudices. To make a point I set my town to “Why has global temperature not risen since 1997?”. This was done a long time ago and predates the current “ClimateGate” storm, until now this has caused no problems. Many other contributers have non-geographic entries on their posts.
This morning I received a mail from the BBC as follows:
Hello,
Thank you for your contributions to Have Your Say. We have noticed the town that you have entered on your JohnRSmith membership – “Why has global temperature not risen since 1997?” – and are writing to ask you to change it.
If you would like to contribute to any future debates, we would ask that you change the town to either your actual town of residence or leave it empty if you would prefer. We have temporarily banned your account, but if you reply back to this email to confirm that you have changed your town to something more appropriate, we will reinstate it.
Regards
The BBC Have Your Say team
I have to say that I am astonished at the blatant censorship being demonstrated here. I will have to comply with their demand as I wish to carry on making points on their site. We are all aware that the B-BBC has swallowed the MMGW story hook, line and sinker, but to force the public to follow suit would seem way beyond their remit.
The Green God is still very much in charge in the B-BBC.
I’m curious what town did you write and where do you live. If, for example, I was a London resident and wrote to HYS from New York claiming London was my place of residence would I be rejected?
Just create another account
Slimy Beeboid covering himself, the stinking organisation he works for, and the massive paycheck and multiple 1st class air tickets he gets to lie about carbon footprints.
Yech.
Its a blockbuster of an admission isnt it?
The kneejerk and unthinking partisan fanatical peddling of a supposed consensus based on faked,forged and fraudulant evidence has been a hallmark of BBC coverage so far, the often dishonest and sometimes downright nasty BBC coverage has been based aound the need to suppress dissent by smear and denial of airtime to sceptical scientists.
The BBC made a conscious decision at a high level meeting to embark on a distinct editorial policy of denying airtime to anyone who dared to question the orthodoxy, editorial guidlines were drawn up to exclude scientists on the say so of people so far unknown but possibly some of those who are now being exposed as fraudsters.
BTW this scandal has far reaching implications for many people and institutions from the BBC to the met office to news agencies like reuters and beyond, ‘who knew what when’ and who made the phonecalls blacklisting certain people!
The carpet bagger Gore has fled, he is the sort of scoundrel who is the public face of AGW, the fading celebs using AGW as some kind of career booster will flee next, the money men will sever connections and create firewalls(they will never be pinned down) and the bought off politicians will escape by blaming the bit part fraudsters down the line.
Like the fall of Paris in 44 and the fall of nazism in 45 everone was partisan/anti nazi, the big people got away and the politicians for the most part got away, ony the little people got caught.
I think we are seeing the start of the age old game replaying itself, the useful idiots who stood in the way of the soviet steamroller were disposable fools while the rich/VIPs fled and now the bigwigs flee while the AGW indoctrinated useful idiots form the rearguard.
The big wheels will start severing their connections, the politicians will start to distance themselves untill only the leaderless useful idiot rearguard are left bereft and alone.
If only the warming had continued, if only the internet had not been invented, if only those meddling kids had not…. ahhhh all the if onlys in the world eh?
Of course we can expect to hear Brown/Cameron claim that they were sceptical all along?
The dance of history repeating itaself until we learn and move on.
Nothing to see here ( again), please move on .
It is the utter dishonesty and socialist attempt to control the agenda of our lives, which is so frightening about the beeboids and their fellow travellers.
Mrs Dale has a link to some left wing nut who actually encourages lefties to lable anyone who doesn’t instantly sign up to the awg message, as deniers – thus trying to imply a link to holocaust denial.
Harrabin is quite clearly not a reporter but an advocate. If he was a reporter – if his primary interest was in following the news in his patch – nothing on god’s earth could have persuaded him to ‘sit’ on what turns out to be the biggest ‘environment’ story of the century so far, for more than a week. Harrabin needs to ask himself, quite seriously, whether he wants to be a reporter or an advocate. If he wants to be an advocate, that’s fine – but he does need to resign from the BBC.
We also now need to know in great detail about that meeting the BBC had years ago when it decided that ‘the science was settled’ about the AGW thesis. In particular, we need to know what the editorial line now is, and how it can be justified. FOI requests need to be filed.
… and what precisely does his grandiose, self-serving title (Environment “Analyst”) mean, apart from a hugely inflated paycheck, natch.
Roger Harrabin should be forced to watch the outraged demolition done on CRU et al by CBC’s Rex Murphy.
Twice.
And then he should ask himself how he betrayed journalism: not so much speaking truth to power, but lying to the powerless. Is his resignation in yet?
Stunning post, hit the nail on the head perfectly.
‘lying to the powerless on behalf of the powerful’
‘misleading the trusting on behalf of the deceitful’
‘betraying the innocent on behalf of the guilty’
I am going to email those lines to Harrabin, it may well be ignored but at least he will read them.
What you’re seeing here is the initial efforts of the BBC attempting to draw a line under this scandal and move on. They’re using the same tactics a politician would do after a scandal: Yes, there was a problem, but we have learned our lesson and we will take the necessary action to prevent this in future. Note that there has not yet been an acknowledgment that Warmism is being exposed for what it is. Rather, the problem is being reframed as human error.
Worse, the acknowledgment of the problem is being presented in a way that allows the Warmists to take control of the debate once again. For example, look at this ridiculously long and tortured attempt to draw a line under the scandal:
‘Show Your Working’: What ‘ClimateGate’ means
This article is another one of those “lessons learned” pieces, and is also disingenuous, if not downright dishonest. This overly flowery language makes it sound like the writers are all very serious scientists, trying to explain the scientific method and all that. The Dickensian length will prevent most people from reading the whole thing, and the dense language will probably keep most people from catching their BS.
The Narrative now – as evinced by Harriban and several others lately – is that they are concerned that these emails make the scientific method look bad. Of course, that’s BS. The problem is that the emails make it clear that Jones et al. were attempting to circumvent it. Yet, the BBC and everyone they bring in is trying to make this out to be a case of the public losing faith in science, full stop. A false premise. To reinforce this message, they’re all going on about how they understand things need to open up more, restore the public’s trust, etc. This bit is quite revealing:
And science earns its status in society from strict adherence to such norms.
For climate change, this may mean the adequate operation of professional peer review, the sharing of empirical data, the open acknowledgement of errors, and openness about one’s funders.
And who exactly was it that prevented the “adequate operation of professional peer review”? Lord Monckton?
Oh yeah, guess who wrote the piece: Mike Hulme, from the University of East Anglia, and Jerome Ravitz, and Oxford mathemetician who thinks free markets aren’t such a good idea.
Gosh, I wonder why he’s involved in the Warmist agenda.
The BBC is allowing the priests to clean out the temple.
Let’s also remember that the BBC bosses had decided that the debate was over, and that there was no longer any reason to give air time to “opponents of the consensus”. It got so bad that the BBC trust had to say something about it. (Link goes to PDF, the relevant bit is on Page 40).
On the BBC News web page now under Other Top Stories…
Expert slams ‘tabloid’ e-mail row
Gosh that sounds heavy doesn’t it? Obviously some independent expert observer has waded in with his unbiased opinion in support of the hapless academics at East Anglia.You click on the link though and you get…
Colleague defends ‘ClimateGate’ professor
A colleague of the UK professor at the centre of the climate e-mails row says “sceptics” have embarked on a “tabloid-style character assassination”.
Come on BBC at least try to be a bit subtle.
David Shitman doing more crap reporting about climate change.
I wonder if the ‘rats are not exactly leaving the sinking ship’ have they packed a spare pair of underpants and renewed their passports, just in case? O:-)
Whats that you say? World wide temperature increases at unprecidented rates?
Well I guess someone has a massive sense of irony as its snowing in Houston today, which beats the previous earliest its ever snowed in Houston by 6 days…which was recorded, wait for it, last year!
And to think, Milliband (in the Evening Standard tonight) reckons those who doubt man being the sole cause of global warming are no better than flat earthers!
Mailman
The “colleague” mentioned by “Guest” was a pillock – Professor Watson – who appeared on Newsnight about 30 minutes ago. If this is the guy chosen to represent “climate science”, the warmists are in real trouble. Despite Martha giving him about 90% of the speaking time (against Mike Murano in the US), Watson – giving an “indignant old woman” impression – was entirely unconvincing, totallly lost it and ended the segment by calling Murano an “asshole” [sic].
Mind you, earlier BBC News at 10:00 had Shukman whining on about disappearing glaciers in South America and Harrabin saying that Climategate will not affect the real business of Copenhagen and now that Obama is turning up at the end of the Copenhagen lovefest, most scientists will advise their political masters to keep on track. It was noted in the course of the studio discussion that Gordon Brown – the well-known scientist – had described sceptics as “flat-earthers”.
“Newsnight” staged a climate change item that typified the debate. Via a screen link a brash US sceptic spoke too loudly, partly to try to be heard over the constant interuptions from mutton dressed as lamb Martha Kearney.
He was trying to debate with an old hippie professor from the University of East Anglia. The hippie was extremely irascible due to the outrage that scientists could be questioned & doubted, he insised that the reponse to the email affair was all “character assassination” & that the “tweaking” of data related only to some unimportant diagram in an obscure paper.
The hippie concluded the interview with an on-camera, muttered, but clearly audible, “What an asshole” delivered in his best hippie US accent.
Kearney later apologised that “one” of the guests had come out with an expletive – perhaps she was hoping that people would assume that the cussing had come from the Yank!
Will
That nutty East Anglia Uni professor knocked another couple of nails in the AGW coffin.
And here’s a link to the superb demolition job done on CBS in Canada :
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/12/04/canada-s-public-television-commentary-says-climategate-spells-end-of-global-warming.aspx
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/12/04/canada-s-public-television-commentary-says-climategate-spells-end-of-global-warming.aspx
Gordon Brown is an idiot. Does he really think that by insulting those who do not share his pathetic views will win him votes? But as in everything he has a tantrum if anyone questions his “wisdom”. The days of any integrity in our political masters is well and truly over.