(This is a guest blog from BBC environment correspondent Richard Blackbin in Copenhagen.)
Why can’t more people be just like me?
The question first came to mind on the plane to Copenhagen as I caressed my cheek with my Guardian COP15 84-page pull-out supplement.
If more people were like BBC environment correspondents, I reflected, then the world would be a better place because people like me understand things so much better than ordinary folk.
Gazing out from the window at the frosty city landscape while we circled the airport, another thought struck me: perhaps I should have worn a little more than a Greenpeace T-shirt, Bermuda shorts and Birkenstock sandals.
I asked the stewardess if there was a clothes shop in the terminal building where I could purchase some sturdy boots and a reasonably priced winter coat made from sustainable natural products, but she didn’t seem to understand.
“Have you at least heard of Fair Trade in Denmark?” I asked, pointedly.
“Sir, I can’t understand a word you’re saying when you’ve got your thumb in your mouth,” she replied, rather too harshly for my liking. Maybe she was one of those “conservative women” one sometimes hears about. I was quite shaken, and decided not to press the issue. I would jolly well find a shop myself, I thought.
As things turned out, I didn’t have to.
There I was shivering by the baggage carousel waiting for my duffle bag (small size, made from sustainable Romanian hemp) when who should I see but Marmaduke Quimly-Farquharson, one of Oxfam’s go-getting young press officers. We have shared many thousands of air miles together travelling the world to exotic locations for various climate conferences. Indeed, we’d both been on the same flight just then but thanks to all this frightful recent scrutiny about BBC expenses I’m no longer able to travel up in first with all my pals from the NGOs.
In one of the many acts of kindness one often experiences at these events (populated as they are by caring planet-loving types and not old right-wing white men with their sceptical views) Marmaduke offered to lend me a coat on condition that I give Oxfam a bit of a mention now and then during my reports. I agreed, of course. “After all, we’re in this together!” I said.
“Indeed we are!” he replied. “Why quite can’t more people be just like you, Richard?”
My thoughts exactly.
Nice poll at Russia Today. Not quite to Black’s liking I feel.
RT ASKS
The Copenhagen climate summit is:
61% : compromised, as global warming is a hoax
8% : humanity’s last hope
21% : one more gathering of fat cats
10% : just another media event
Just wait for a BBC poll set that confirms the BBC is loved by nearly everyone and they are happy to pay more for the BBCs wondeful service.
Nearly everyone is very concerned about the global climate catastrophe tipping disaster/dangerous climate change and nearly everyone is more than happy to pay more taxes and enjoy greater restrictions on their lifestyles to fight/combat/stop catastrophic climate disaster.
In BBC land 8 out of 10 people think exactly as the BBC do on everything and every topic and the BBC can prove it with a fake/rigged poll or three.
There seem to be two possible outcomes to Copenhagen –
1 some sort of fudge, not binding – but with lots of our money being shelled out by Brown to developing nations, most of whom get lots already. The warmists may be able to claim that their case is accepted, just not acted on properly, and the BBC will carry on regardless with its ignorant alarmism
2 a glorious trainwreck, everyone blaming everyone else, people like Obama and Brown with egg on their face, and the BBC “experts” looking fools after the many months of build-up. Plus oodles more time for the “science” to fall apart and sink lower in public estimation.
………………………
Although the waqrmists froth at the mouth over any challenges, there ARE more challenges. After looking at the ClimateGate stuff, the Harry’s fike stuff, and realising that the CRU stuff is at the heart of the IPCC argument that there is unprecendented warming, I for one am now utterly sceptical rather than mildly so.
For an example of how the figures are twisted by other contributoirs to the IPCC “consensus” – google “darwin weather station”.
A lot of it looks increasingly like a fraud.
Black has just responded to some of the criticism of his blog from yesterday.
One response is priceless.
“LarryKealey, and others – apologies if the quote you cite caused any offence. That wasn’t the intention. As you’ll see quite clearly, it wasn’t my quote – as you know from many, many previous posts, my position is and has to be studiously neutral – but it does demonstrate the perplexity with which some in the “warmist” camp view what in their eyes is an inability or unwillingness to accept what they perceive as an overwhelming scientific case”.
Studiously neutral?
Pull the other one.
LarryKealey: “Really, even for you, this is a new low. To actually print a comment such as:
“I’ve been debating the science with them for years, but recently I realised we shouldn’t be talking about the science but about something unpleasant that happened in their childhood”
Richard Black: “LarryKealey, and others – apologies if the quote you cite caused any offence. That wasn’t the intention. As you’ll see quite clearly, it wasn’t my quote – as you know from many, many previous posts, my position is and has to be studiously neutral – but it does demonstrate the perplexity with which some in the “warmist” camp view what in their eyes is an inability or unwillingness to accept what they perceive as an overwhelming scientific case.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2009/12/cop15_questions_about_sex.html
No! The intention of using that quote and Richard Black’s lack of neutrality is clear. He used it to slander the heretics with a quote (along with the invariably wearing a tweed jacket quote) from someone else to back up his own position. As I sated earlier “Why is it the Richard Black thinks it is impartial to be using selective quotations (the BBC do this a lot in reports) alluding to the premise that all ‘sceptics’ have mental problems to back up his own position against climate scepticism?”
Will McBrown try to shag Obama’s leg tomorrow? Two weeks of utter hot air.
So where is the fretting by BBC reporters and commentators over violence in these protests? Why are the Beeboids always quick to fret about even potential violence from certain groups, but never about actual from these people? When it’s a cause they support, they understand violence and let it pass unremarked, obviously.
David Preiser.
You are being unfair. EcoNuts never indulge in violence. They never seek to incite baton charges.
The people to fear for violence are all those middle-aged middle class Tea Party protestors, dontcha’ know !.
BBC climate camp seems to be trying to move into a plaintive mode, judging by ‘Newsnight’s one-sided coverage of Copenhagen.
‘What can Copenhagen do, to be a success?’ – the BBC ponders.
The answer seems to be, not spelt out by the BBC: for cards like G. Brown, success is to be measured by how much extra British taxpayers’ money can be given away by him and his ilk to other countries for ‘climate’!
Does Black have any background in science ?
Some years ago I had an online interchange with Charles Clover, then writing for the Telegraph, and asked the same question of him. After some wriggling, he blurted out proudly that he had an honorary degree from the University of Essex !
Really, these people are a bunch of jokers.
Good one DB.
The most telling point is this:
“Why can’t more people be just like me?”
This sums up the BBC – narcissistic solipsism. Paradoxically they also think that everyone around the world already thinks just like “we” do but choose to wear funny hats.