The BBC slavishly reports the findings of the Met Office, even though it is headed by a climate change activist, and even though – with funding of £243m from the government to carry on its climate change mission – its forecasts are totally unreliable, its measurements systems highly questionable, and its overall credentials are totally shot. So the latest report from this august body (published, naturally, by the BBC, its house PR agency, before appearing on its own website), that recent research papers confirm increased man-made warming, is elevated to reverential headline status. No one at the BBC ever seems to even begin to question why it is so partisan; its utterances are treated as sacred, like the Delphic oracle was to Athens.
Thank god, then for people like Richard North, of EU Referendum. From his Bradford semi, he’s been toiling and chipping away, working out how much our so-called government is spending on climate change “research” – those confections that the Met Office seems to think are real evidence rather than agitprop. In a cracking posting today, he points out that in the US, to date, at least $89bn has been spent on climate change measures and hot air; here, by just scratching the surface (as he puts it), he’s found that no less than around £500m has been spent purely on funding research projects. And surprise, surprise; they don’t bite the hand that feeds them.
Chances of the BBC uttering a word about this national scandal of our money being tipped on to the climate change gravy train? Zero. Yet the research involved from the Sybils of the Met has about as much credibility as that of a paper on human biology by Mengele.
Update:Fascinating post from Joe Bastardi of Accuweather (definitely NOT in the sway of government grants)here about why the Met office gets it wrong every time…
***Update: The Met office throws in the towel and admits it can’t see three months in advance with any certainty. But still, it – and its press officers, the BBC – claim to be right about what will happen fifty years hence.
*****Update: For the sort of debunking of Met office hot air that BBC journalists ought to be pursuing – instead of pushing their propaganda – take a look at this. I quote from the conclusion:
So the work of the Met Office is just about propaganda. It’s not science. It’s about their attempts to intimidate people by suggesting that there are hundreds of people who may disagree with you if you disagree with AGW. But none of them actually has any argument that would be ready for a detailed promotion in isolation. It’s only the quantity, the brute force of the people who have a vested interest for the panic to continue.
Coldest winter for over 30 years (even colder in some parts). Enough said.
The wording of NSIDC press releases usually highlight the negative (this one being no exception) but the message is clear. This summer is likely to continue the trend since 2007 of increasing summer minimums.
So how is Arctic sea ice looking at this point, near the winter maximum? NSIDC shows ice extent within 1 million km2 of normal and increasing.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
It’s depressing. Only today I find that my daughter is expected to learn a passage for her school assembly urging us to turn our lights out for an hour to support the WWF and show we “care about climate change”. And when I point out to her that it may be a load of claptrap, she stomps off in the huff. I wonder how much indoctrination has gone on before I’ve found out about it.
I will of course take it up with the school, but sometimes you feel you’re just pissing in the wind.
My granddaughter is taking GCSE Geography in 2 years, I have been checking out the syllabus and the revision textbooks. One eighth of the whole course is focussed on Warmism, all trotted out as gospel truth. A whole generation is being brainwashed – the issuing of the Al Gore movie to all UK schools was only a part of the wave of panicky nonsense being preached in our schools.
Thank God for sites like WattsUpWithThat.com, Bishop Hill and EU Referendum where we can check out rubbish like the latest Met/BBC propaganda. But it really is an uphill task to counter all the ignorance out there.
Don’t worry. At my daughter’s school Warmism infested the entire curriculum. Up to the age of about, well, 10, she bought it. After that, she and her entire age-group first shut it out of their heads (‘so boring’) and more recently are relishing its exposure.
You see Im all for turning the lights out to save on energy costs BUT not to save the planet.
Mailman
Roland, you’d better embark urgently on a crash course of de-indoctrination.
I suppose every kid in the land is now subjected to this insidious propaganda. Can we defeat it? It looks doubtful.
Each time the Met Office line of ducks is shot down, up they pop again with exactly the same claptrap. Oddly, I never seem to see any unequivocal avidence to support their assertations. I suppose the raison d’etre is that if you say the same thing for long enough, some of it will stick. They don’t appear to have reckoned with the public not swallowing it hook, line and sinker any more, thanks to the internet.
What a crying shame that the various radio and television programmes such as they have in the States, Canad and elsewhere are not emulated in the UK, where scepticism is given a good representation and the AGW lobby get a run for their many.
Typical of the best the UK can do was exemplified yesterday in the Daily Politics Show where George Monbiot was feted by Andrew neil, and the token sceptic (James Delingpole, whose sceptical views are legendary) was hardly given time to speak.
Rotten, rotten BBC – biased to the core. Makes one ashamed to be British.
I am proud to advise that my daughter has NOT been affected by all this climate change indoctrination propoganda…mainly because she is too lazy to turn lights out after herself! 😉
Is this the same Met Office that predicted a barbeque summer followed by an exceptionally mild winter? Politically motivated rascals wasting peoples’ hard earned money is all they are.
I must get a new keyboard (or fingers…)
Interesting long range forecast here :-
http://deniersaurus-rex.blogspot.com/2010/03/plague-or-ten-on-your-houses_04.html
The BBC is not alone. In the Telegraph, the Queen of Recycled Press Releases, Louise Gray, issues this from the Met Office
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7369339/New-evidence-for-man-made-global-warming.html
What does she do all day? It’s certainly not journalism. Like her colleagues at the BBC, she’s pulling down a nice six-figure (?) salary by copying and pasting emails from the Met Office into her employer’s “Environment” pages. Why don’t the Telegraph – and the BBC – cut out the middle man and just issue the emails direct?
On the 8 o’clock news on the Al-Beeb Today prog this morning, immediately after the newsreader had delivered all the above (in a tone, of course, of appropriate reverence for The Word), the very next item was about a cruise ship in the Baltic that’s finally made it to port after being stuck pack ice. The company spokesman said it was the worst pack ice seen in the Baltic for 15 years.
I was laughing so much I almost drove into a wall. You really couldn’t make it up.
An interesting antedote to the BBC is the Alex Jones Radio show from the US. Yes you have to take some of it with a pinch of salt. yes he runs slots to promote his sponsors (it is commercial radio) and he can rant for far too long at times but he has some interesting U.S. and sometimes U.K. guests. You here plenty that would make the BBC squirm. Contributors such Lord Monckton who campaigns against the Global Warming con, whom I have never heard mentioned or interviewed on the BBC. Also Nigel Farage has given some great insights into the undemocratic workings of the EU. (I download the podcast and wind through the boring bits http://www.infowars.com )
Are you saying there are some occasional pearls of wisdom in a sea of batshit insanery? Perhaps you’re right, but I can’t help be sceptical. That’s because I’ve seen enough of Alex Jones to know he’s a 9/11 Truther (and every other crazy conspiracy theory out there including but not limited to HAARP, Big foot, UFO’s, JFK assasination, Moon Landing, shape-shifting Lizard people), Ronulan, Jew-hater, accomplished liar, snakeoil salesman, and all-round mentalist.
From reading the regurgitated press release (sorry article) this isn’t original research at all but someone has just read through selected research papers recently released. The question is of course how were these papers selected and what temperature data do the ones selected rely on ? It would be interesting to know how many of them are based on the CRU dataset (the original of which was eaten by a dog or lost or something).
It looks like the Beeb are trying to put Climategate down the memory hole.
For every pro-Warmist paper cited, there will be a rebuttal paper or a paper with entirely opposing results. Just scan any month’s postings at WattsUpWithThat or similar sites.
But such papers are NOT cited. Which is how the whole Warmism scam tries to operate. Pretend that opposing views, opposing research papers do not exist.
(per JimD commenting at Bishop Hill) look at who’s editor-in-chief of the “science” journal in which the Met Office’s crapola is published (Mike Hulme of the UAE) – no hint of possible bias there then.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123201100/home/EditorialBoard.html?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
While you’re looking, glance at all the other academics running this celebration of AGW “science”. No hint, of course, from the BBC that the publication by the Met is by warmists via warmists for warmists. As far as the BBC is concerned it’s holy writ.
BTW should we be impressed that the BBC have wheeled in Pallab Ghosh (the BBC science correspondent) to front this rather than use the damaged goods of Shukman, Black or Harrabin?
While I’m about it, isn’t it peculiar that even the Met Office doesn’t post its own research paper but merely posts a review of said paper on its website.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2010/pr20100305.html
So, unless there is evidence to the contrary, the BBC’s science correspondent has gone to town on a press release – pathetic and typical. For £3.5 billion the BBC can’t even do journalism, let alone impartial reporting.
My daughters have more electronic equipment in their rooms than NASA could have dreamed of a few years ago – but they care deeply about the environment, or so they say.
Now they have to walk to school, for the environment of course, and don’t seem too happy about it. They’ll be wanting iPads in due course – they’re going to be disappointed.
iPads? I was wondering how long it’s take for Apple to make a foray into the sanitary towel market.
The IPCC say that AGW is real and the planet is going to get warmer by 4 – 6 degrees C. The BBC and Met Office take this as a fact. So what exactly are they doing spending loads of money “confirming” this “fact”?
The simple reason is that it is not proven and the Met Office and others are trying to get data to fit their hypothesis.
Cherry picking research and rejecting contary evidence is not how science works. The BBC are just playing a PR job for this abomination of the scientific method.
The BBC’s weather forecasts are poor. They are overlong, over complicated and seem to be mainly an excuse for the presenters to show they are not mere presenters at all but clever people.
ITV’s and SKy’s are much better – the facts are presented quickly and clearly.
Hah! You’re right. I’ve wondered for years when they would get around to actual forecasting. It has always amused me that the BBC tells you what the weather was like yesterday or today or last week, then takes you on a grand tour to God knows where – you might end up in Japan or America – and while all this is going on, you are wondering what happened to the weather forecast.
You sit there amazed and eventually your mind wanders or you doze off or decide to read the paper or take a stroll round the block to pass the time and when you come back, they are still rabbiting on. I have no idea what about – it’s just this stream of gibble gabble and you keep willing them on: “Get to the point!” ” “Give us the ruddy forecast!” but they never do or else you always miss it, if they ever do. I have never really found out which it is.
Having grown up with this BBC palaver of pantomime meteorology masquerading as weather forecast, I had to go to America for an actual weather forecast – delivered in that wonderfully crisp way they had: “Dry, sunny and hot, 80 degrees”. Loved it.