The BBC Trust’s From See-saw to Wagon Wheel, p 40:
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. But these dissenters (or even sceptics) will still be heard, as they should, because it is not the BBC’s role to close down this debate. They cannot be simply dismissed as ‘flat-earthers’ or ‘deniers’, who ‘should not be given a platform’ by the BBC. Impartiality always requires a breadth of view: for as long as minority opinions are coherently and honestly expressed, the BBC must give them appropriate space.
Evan Davis on the Today programme this morning: “climate change deniers”
BBC Scotland political editor Brian Taylor on his blog today: “climate change deniers”
BBC presenter Ros Atkins on the World Have Your Say blog: “climate change deniers” (and on more than one occasion during this programme, even after Christopher Booker had pulled him up on it)
The advice of the mysterious “experts” they take. The rest of it, not so much.
(Reminder re. that seminar of scientific experts – there is at least one FoI requestoutstanding.)
God it’s only day 1 and you can’t get away from Climate Change. The BBC are almost masturbating live on TV. Last time 20,000 beeboids got so excited was when they were told there were 6 new 12 year old Albanian rent boys on Hampstead Heath.
I can’t believe this crap is going on for two weeks. I was even informed by Christine Bleakley that we should all go veggie (although she appears to be enjoying a bit of meat from Chelsea these days) so I can’t wait to see what’s on the menu at Copenhagen. Muesli and rice I think not.
I’m sure the fois gras and caviar the delegates will dine on at their 5-star hotels won’t be free range or dolphin-safe.
I am getting so fed up with the BBCs (and others) use of the pharse “climate change denier” – it is not only inaccurate but offensive. I have sent a complaint to the BBc asking them to correct that phrase in future “reporting”. Doubt if it will make any difference.
MMGW sceptic will do. Does anyone know someone who denies that the climate changes?
As far as I’m concerned, as soon as the offensive and reason-sapping term “denier” is used, the argument is over.
Its beyond the pale that it is now being accepted on the BBC.
“the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus.”
Did they ever give equal space to opponents of the ‘consensus’? I remember noticing many years ago how uneven the coverage was – and this was back when i accepted unquestioningly the received wisdom that a scientific consensus existed.
Hell if anything the BBC has played a major part in pushing the impression that there is a massive, unequivocal consensus amongst all honest, unbiased scientists with no ulterior motive whatsoever on the one hand and quacks and extremists in the pay of big oil on the other.
Two items.
1. Please make sure that the FOI request reply is linked to on here.
2. Note that the “media” are only using the phrase “climate change” now rather than AGW/MMCC since “Climategate”, and that is something very difficult to “deny”, since the climate has changed since the “creation” of the earth!
There was an intersting program on Channel 4 about climate change: Britain’s Drowned World
Also a great interview with Lord Christopher Monckton HERE
It’s in five parts and they’re all worth watching if you have time.
It’s become utterly clear that, having been forced to mention Climategate, it is now to be ignored and discarded. There is an agenda to be met, and met it will be. It wouldn’t matter now if evidence were shown that the IPCC were all paedophiles and the funding was being diverted to their habit.
And there’s two weeks of this. Dear God.
I really do enjoy seeing all these wet lefties weeping at this conference. Here’s a thought. Why doesn’t the Government for one month bring in the sort of things it needs to do to actually reduce CO2 levels by the amount they say they need to and then see how these wet lefties get on?
For example, no mobile phones or ipods (most made in China and a huge amount of CO2 is produced making them and shipping them over to the UK) allowed to be purchased in the UK
Online shopping suspended (CO2 produced delivering very small items is disproportionate and inefficient)
Only rich people allowed to fly for 1 month (no piss ups in Europe on cheap Easyjet flights for leftie students)
Car use restricted (100 miles per car for the month) unless you are very rich
All coal powered power stations taken off line for 1 month and rotating power cuts brought in to spread the power loss out (as per the 3 day week)
No meat allowed to be purchased for 1 month.
I just wonder how many wet liberals will be happy with that little lot?
As long ago as 2001 – five years before the BBC policy unit met to fix its position on the world’s climate – the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine issued a petition. This was signed by 17,800 dissenting scientists following the pronouncements made at Kyoto in 1997.
Not only did they argue that there was no convincing evidence of harm from CO2 emissions, they asserted that Kyoto would actually harm the global environment because “increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
So, if we want to talk about a consensus, then for over twelve years, the sceptics have outnumbered the MMGW proponents many times over. however, their contrary view has barely been reported at all in the mainstream media, which overwhelmingly sits in the Warmist camp. The BBC must have known about these 17,800 signatories, yet chose to stay with the MMGW mantra – clear evidence of blatant BBC bias through fixing the message and stifling debate.
Not to be outdone, the original Oregon signatories wrote to the Institute complaining that their views had not been represented in the media, pressing for another petition to be made public. The Institute’s director, Arthur Robionson, did just that. So far he has received over 31,000 signatures, (including 1,000 with PHDs) roundly refuting the Warmists’ claims.
So, if we are to go by sheer numbers to determine the consensus, as the BBC loves to do, then the science is indeed settled. The Warmists have lost.
Just had to pop this one in to Aunty:
Watching today’s news.
Some entirely welcome, and valid coverage on Copenhagen, and the issues at stake.
Then a few more pieces, followed by a commercial for favoured son Richard Branson and his next moneymaking scheme taking the uber-rich into space for a quick Kodak moment.
But it’s all ok it seems, as the design of the craft is, according to the reporter, ‘fuel efficient’.
Dancing to the tune of PROs of your mates and issuing news by press release does the BBC little credit. Especially when it is contradictory.
You either think greenhouse gasses are a here and now issue, or you don’t.
Stick Ed Miliband and Richard Branson up together on this and I think your brains would freeze as anything either comes out with gets shared with zero critical thinking attached.
To be fair (if conceding two wrongs makes an MSM consenus) SKY had the same double standards as well. Who gives a sod about the planet if you get invited by a ratings-cert Celeb billionaire to play with his rocket?
Then, having seen it first on BBC, the trivial ‘pink stinks’ campaign they are excited about took on more serious Planet Ban-it overtones when I saw this also mirrored on SKY, but that a Labour minister was involved.
This latter snippet was, oddly, absent from BBC coverage.
Just heard on the BBC as the talking head reads out what he’s told to ask Prof. Sir David King: ‘the issue is that a large number of people are saying there is nothing to be concerned about’.
Is this true?
Or is this how the government and its media shills would wish to see ‘the debate’ framed?
Anyone who thinks there are no issues of concern regarding (A)GW is a) not being too rational and b) in a very small minority. Hence why play that up?
My concern, and I suspect that of others, is that ‘climate’ gets used as an excuse by already mediocre minds to try and compensate for fiscal failures elsewhere that will have zero or, worse, negative enviROI impacts on my kids’ futures.
I smell straw men, and the media using them to frame…more like steer the issues stinks.
At least the talking head raised the contradictory point of Ed. Miliband shrieking about reductions whilst the government he is part of is advocating a 3-fold increase in air travel.
But this is an MSM that seems to see the US EPA and its timely actions as somehow unconnected with media management in a new era of command and control by big government.
‘…an MSM that seems to see the US EPA and its timely actions as somehow unconnected with media management in a new era of command and control by big government.’
Maybe not all…
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100019206/climategate-barack-obamas-rule-by-epa-decree-is-a-coup-detat-against-congress-made-in-britain/
I actually don’t agree with much he comes out with, but on the rigging of this whole thing by he establishment and it’s media poodles is bang on.
An alternative to the BBC’s hype:”Copenhagen climate change summit to produce as much CO2 as an African country”
By David Derbyshire
[Opening extract]:
“It is being hyped as the summit that will save the planet.
But according to critics, next week’s climate change talks in Copenhagen are more likely to cost the earth.
Researchers have estimated that the bill for the 12-day jamboree will top £130million – and will generate as much greenhouse gas as an entire Africa country.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1233771/Climate-change-summit-produce-CO2-African-country.html#ixzz0Z5ZKScR8
BBC Radio 5 phone in was a total love fest for the green eco loons. What gets me is all these bleating liberals that claim to be the “majority” don’t seem to vote green do they? They vote Liebour.
I was watching planet earth last night (the one with that doctor ian stewart guy), which on the whole I find quite interesting.
What got me was the bit about the carbon cycle. So if there is extra carbon in the air, which is then soaked up by the sea, which is then eaten by the plankton, which then dies and falls to the sea bed, which is then turned in to rock, which is then taken underground by the tectonic plates, and melted and then returned to the air by volcanoes…surely if more co2 is in the air, and plankton feeds on the stuff…wouldnt that mean because there is more food about that there will be more plankton to off set any increase in co2?
And as plankton eat the stuff, then die and then turn in to rock on the sea floor…where is the problem?
Would this not mean the self regulating system invented by gaia, will just adjust itself? More co2, more little critters that will talk loudly and star on spungebob square pants?
Mailman
Gerald Warmer in the Telegraph might be permitted to utter a few words of common sense but the Telegraph – a warmist propaganda sheet right in tune with the BBC – seeks to get a “neutral” to explain to us flat earthers why we’re so stupid.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6753253/Copenhagen-climate-summit-the-climate-sceptics-QandA.html
Fred Pearce the senior environment correspondent for the New Scientist is enlisted to debunk the sceptics. What the Telegraph doesn’t tell us is that the New Scientist is in the vanguard of those publications complicit in the silencing of anti-warmist criticism. While the New Scientist paid lip service to the scientific process it published articles like this:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11462
setting out why the strawman sceptic arguments were all horribly misconceived. Pearce repeats the arguments but, oddly, is not asked any substantive questions (and thus does not have to go into any of the issues) concerning the betrayal of the scientific process revealed by Climategate.
Sorry – Fred did address climategate and comes out with this:
“Did the researchers succeed in suppressing opinions they disagreed with? No. Did the emails reveal a conspiracy to lie to us about the climate science? I have read most of them. I am a journalist. I love conspiracies. But the answer is no”
So – according to Fred – Steve McIntyre, Antony Watts and Bishop Hill are liars. He might have read “most” of the emails but, obviously, not the ones that everybody else read. You see he’s a “journalist”, he can’t be fooled, he comes to the issue with an open mind – as if!
He probably did read most of the emails. What seems to be missing is whether he understood them, which is probably a big NO.
Mailman
Listening to the Toady Programme on the way in to work today, loads about Carbonhagen suprise suprise. Anyway at one point without even a hint od irony the wheeled in some woman “climate change expert” from the UEA. No mention of Climategate just the mad ramblings of this warmist bint.
I did a bit of googling to see if Fred Pearce has any science qualifications. Couldn’t find anything easily. Does anyone know his background or is he a mere journalist ?
Grant
He is not a “neutral” in this “war”. He has written about half a dozen books since 2005 most published by Eden Project Books. See
http://www.greenprophet.com/2008/06/18/613/book-review-confessions-eco-sinner/
where his 2008 book “Confessions of an Eco Sinner” is given the green imprimatur. He is as “sceptical” as Geoffrey Lean or Roger Harrabin. The difficulty of finding out whether or not he has a science (or any) degree argues for his not having any formal scientific credentials. Of course, this should not disqualify him from commenting on any subject he feels requires comment. But, you know, it would be nice if, occasionally, the warmists put up a spokesman with an open – rather than a vacant – mind.
More amazingly crap global bullshit propoganda.
Radio 5 had a phone in this morning with some wet leftie on going on about banning short haul flying. His answer was high speed trains.
Only TWO problems with that.
1. The track needs to be straight and that means at some point building through villages and towns, the Volvo brigade won’t like that and the environmentalists won’t allow a train track to run through and area where Newts or Toads live
2. The time and cost of building a high speed network. To run high speed trains to say Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle and Glasgow would probably cost upwards of 100 billion (if not more) and take 30 years to build. What are we supposed to do whilst waiting?
Originally Eurostar were meant to offer a north of London service with modified Eurostar trains, but they knew that with the cheap airlines they couldn’t compete on price so got the Government to scrap the idea (the trains are still sitting around unused at 20 million a pop in London)
Railways only work if you build the network up around them (like the French have done) and work for major hubs, but the cost of building a high speed link to say Leeds or Bradford or Aberdeen is uneconomic.
Every previous comment is based on an pro and anti climate change line, from the BBC’s point of view I think the question goes deeper. Is it climate change or anti capitalism ? the latter certainly fits their obvious left wing liberal heart, perhaps they see themselves as The Ministry of Communication in their bizarre version of 1984