I’m not the biggest fan of the Cameron-led Conservative Party, but even I was forced to wonder where the Today programme gets balls big enough to follow yesterday’s double-team attack on Tory spokesman Phil Hammond with another one-sided assault on Tory policy this morning. Daniel “Danny” Dorling, a socialist professor of human geography, was given the prime-time slot following Thought For The Day to promote the idea of expanding public sector employment and increasing taxation. Conservative-proposed spending cuts were singled out for criticism by Dorling and his softball-tossing interviewer Sarah Montague. There was no one to offer a counter opinion and not the slightest pretence of balance. It’s not just the political parties that are already in election mode; the Today programme’s manifesto is taking shape too. (Interview can be heard here)
Immediately after Dorling, Justin Webb interviewed Sir David King about his proposal to have a climate scientist on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee. King got very irate when Webb brought up the CRU emails. Even though Webb wasn’t challenging the consensus view, the very mention of the emails is now considered off-limits as far as the high priests of the Warmist cult are concerned. Webb took his punishment meekly, like a good on-message Today presenter should. (Interview can be heard here)
Here’s a rushed transcript of the relevant segment:
King: It’s rather like the fact that there’s a labour market economist on the MPC itself, on the group, designed to stop monetarists riding roughshod over the jobless people. In other words that person has a particular hat to wear, and I’m saying why not put someone on there who understands energy, energy technology, low carbon moves and wears that hat and can express it right there when policies are being decided on our finances.
Webb: You look at the University of East Anglia emails and you do wonder, actually, whether putting someone there would just make them a target, quite apart from anyone else, a target from their own colleagues. It’s not settled enough, is it, to have someone doing the job and everyone accepting that they are doing the right job?
King: Good heavens. What are you saying is not settled enough? The science of climate change?
Webb: No, not the science, but the arguments, the flurries of discussion and dissent among the scientists themselves, and that to have someone there…
King: There is very little discussion and dissent among the scientists. That’s a total misreading of the theft of the UEA emails.
Webb: Well you can see it in the emails, can’t you?
King: (getting angry now) I’m sorry, that is an interpretation of the emails – the scientific community is of one voice on the issue. Is the planet warming up at the moment? That was the issue around the emails, and our Met Office, not involved in the issue, has published its own set of data this week demonstrating that of course we know icebergs are melting, we’re losing ice around the planet, every single piece of evidence from satellites, from temperature measurements is showing that the temperature has risen by three quarters of a degree centigrade.
Webb: OK, and you want that information to be there at the top table in the Treasury, in the Bank of England. Sir David, thank you very much.
“Sir David, thank you very much. May I have another?“
Does anybody else get the impression that Sir David has been rattled by Climategate? As more and more holes appear in their theory, King and his fellow zealots become ever more shrill in their declaration that the science is settled and that all dissent should be crushed. Talking of which, check out the Stalinist heading to King’s article in the latest Prospect magazine:
The Bank’s green future
Darling is getting it wrong on climate change. Now scientists must shape monetary policy.
Update 13.30. Just noticed that Umbongo mentioned these two interviews in the comments to an earlier blog post. Don’t want to deprive anybody of a tip of the hat.
For those interested Prof Dorling’s research group webpage is here ..
http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/sasi
Also on “today” a ridiculously soft interview with the ludicrous Quentin Davies. Webb just allowed him to prattle on. The National Audit Office report is bunk, defence procurement couldn’t be more effective, perfectly reasonable to reschedule asset purchases (unlike those Tories who would slash & burn their way through the programme) etc. His claim for his bell tower was pefectly legitimate (unlike Cameron’s wisteria). He even attacked Webb for having the cheek to talk about bell towers – Webb came close to apologising!
DB
Thanks for the H/T. Maybe B-BBC should consider reserving a section of its site purely to Today. After all, Today – as a microcosm of the BBC – is the gift which keeps on giving by providing an endless stream of biased and (setting aside the bias for a moment) just crap journalism.
The Guardian is not as thrilled, mind:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/dec/15/bbc-climate-change-justin-webb?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments
Kind of sweet that, from the author through most of the commenters, the notion is there to only broadcast views held by the Guardian and its readers, and not those from other oily rags.
Truly, some not only think they are more equal but don’t get the irony of squealing when stuck.
Cannibalism ain’t pretty, I guess.
…the BBC is there… 🙂
And on the Jeremy Vine Show Tory lead down to 9%, perhaps those nasty Tories won’t get a majority after all. His explanation during a trail earlier as to why the Tories need to poll over 40% to get a majority but another major party needs somewhat less was waffled away with something about how the Tories vote and where. No mention of the near rotten boroughs with undersized electorates tending to be concentrated in areas tending to vote other than for the Tories. I believe it is estimated that Labour will lose approx 30 seats on boundary changes with this election. If DC gets in seems like another round of Boundary Commission work to equalize constituencies size further could be an early item for attention.
Richard Black wonders why most climate sceptics are men. Is it down to having analytical minds, or perhaps psychological factors.
Feel free to give him your opinions.
David King did always have a rather slender grip on reality, perhaps all the time spent with newlabour politicians infected his mind with some kind of mind destroying parasite.
King went a little mental to say the least, gone was any shred of sign of the scientists usual caution, it was as if the dam burst and his emotional fervour took over? “science speaks with one voice”(er no it doesnt and never has) and “the icebergs are melting” (er yes David they do melt each year and have done ever sicnce there were icecaps at the poles) and “we are losing ice around the planet” er yes David but we are gaining it and losing it every winter and summer, ice comes and goes).
The one section of his childish rant that stands out is his wild claim that “every piece of evidence from satellites,from temperature measurements is showing that the(global)temperature has risen by three quarters of a degree centigrade”.
Well firstly ground based and satellite measurements have diverged for some time which is why the three temperature series all rely on ground based data and this data has been manipulated to show a rising trend, the satellite record only goes back a short way and the famous ‘trick has been to manipulate the rising trend of the historical network by lowering early data and raising later post war data to show a rising trend, no wonder the AAM cultists cling to the ground station data and are trying to keep the data and its method of manipulation a secret.
The tragedy is that King has effectively sealed our fate during his time advising the government, the words he uttered could not have come from a real scientist, the certainty of the cretin has no place in science, the dishonesty of the political scoundrel doesnt fit with scientific principles, he sounded like a desperate fanatic lying to protect his narrative.
We should all thank Mr King for his ridiculous rant, he is showing us the true consensus, he highlights perfectly why people like him are no longer trusted. So a big thankyou to David King the lying fraudster and charlatan, you have recruited more sceptics to the cause.
Curiously there was a counter-balancing interview to the one with Red Danny. It was with Andrew Lilico of the Policy Exchange think-tank (at 8.47am). Bizarrely – and you’ll all see this if you click on DB’s link – there’s no ‘listen’ icon available for Mr Lilico’s reposte. That means you have to go to the ‘listen to full programme option’ and scroll forwards 2 hours and 48 minutes till you get to it! (And how many people are likely to do that?)
Why, out of all the interviews between 7-9am, was this the only interview the BBC chose to make unavailable for bite-sized listening? To make it hard for us to hear perhaps – unlike the pro-government musings of Danny Dorling? Andrew Lilico was sent to the radio equivalent of Siberia.
It turns out that Andrew Lilico got 2 minutes less time than Danny, but was interrupted twice whereas Dorling was only interrupted once. Sarah Montague showed her true colours in these interviews (all of them red).
“Sir David King about his proposal to have a climate scientist on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee.”
Here is a novel idea – why don’t the people elect someone to sit on the banks monetary policy committee?