Compare and contrast these two accounts of the Fourth International Conference on Climate Change, one by the BBC’s Roger Harrabin, the other by a genuine journalist who attended the event. Mr Harrabin’s sole intent, it soon becomes apparent, is to pour scorn on the conference; to him the 700 who gathered in Chicago were steak-eating, libertarian, republican, right-wing Yanks. In the BBC’s rogues’ and vermin gallery, you can’t get any lower (unless, perhaps, if you are from UKIP). No mention of their qualifications, the range of expertise they encompassed, or anything else that might gave credence to the proceedings. His sole intent is to rubbish what went on.
Not only that, his pay-off line – in accusing Lord Monckton of not being a scientist (and therefore, presumably, in Mr Harrabin’s book, not qualified to make the closing address) – falls heavily into the domain of the proverb involving kettles and the colour black. The writer will be the Roger Harrabin who mainiacally pontificates to the world about the dangers of global warming from his privileged BBC pulpit, even though he himself has no science degree. It will also be the Roger Harrabin who, despite being a self-proclaimed expert (in churning out the material that he does), confuses weather with climate:
His (Lord Monckton’s)closing words were delivered in a weeping whisper, a soft prayer of praise to the American constitution and individual liberty.
As the ecstatic crowd filtered out I pointed one delegate to a copy of the Wall Street Journal on the table. A front page paragraph noted that April had been the warmest on record.
“So what?” he shrugged. “So what?”
h/tip George R
The more I read of Harrabin’s rants the more I think he really needs to go and see a psychiatrist. His left wing rants at our expense have shown him up not only to be a tosser (which we knew anyway) but he is also out of his depth. He has no knowledge of the subject and along with the other two mongs (shuckman and Black) make the BBC look like the rent boys of Greenpeace.
Harrabin’s sneering was one of the items on From Our Own Correspondent today.
He claimed that the Heartland Institute was massively funded by oil interests. I believe this is a straight lie ?
The longer I live the more Kafkaesque our society becomes.
I would have prefered living in the time of Machiavelli than this dark ages of ignorance, corruption and mendacity as portrayed by a crypto-fascist cretin like Harrabin-Laden
If you can’t discredit its research discredit its funding. From the internet research I’ve just done I’d take a guess that warmist organisations receive more funding from oil corporations.
Peeps.
This is an area of the BBC I don’t really care about, except for the International Socialist agenda that it allows Blue Peter et al to pump out.
Have any of you done anything about this? If not, why not?
I live in Brighton, so I have had to contact my nearest Tory to see if he will represent me on the case of the BBC.
I am sick of the BBC telling me that I am worse than a Nazi because I think gay adoption is wrong, that people who want to kill me should be sent back and that I should celebrate diversity.
Doubt the local Tory will back me (looks wet) but if we just moan and do nothing, we get nowhere.
No offence meant to anyone, just had enough of paying money for this Univesity cr@p.
You live in Brighton!You have my sympathy
Yes, it’s backs against the wall time in the royal Blackpool.
Queen Victoria would have been one queen not amused by the decline of her former watering hole.
April had been the warmest on record.
That would any any time in the past 4 billion years I suppose?
Or since satellites. Or since when? Since putting ones finger in the air and guessing.
I seem to remember it being frigging freezing here until this week.
Siberian at times.
Harrabin deliberately confusing weather with climate – he always does when it suits him, never does if the weather is cold.
I hope Christopher Booker goes to town on him tomorrow. Given the sheer size and economic impact of the measures being taken or advocated to combat alleged unprecedented warming, it should have been the BBC’s duty to report very fully and fairly on the detail of the conference – a major gathering of sceptics and scientists who have disproved a lot of the Warmist tosh.
I did like Monkton’s line – WE are the consensus now!”. Omitted from Harrabin’s sneering report, of course.
But he manages to include the Hockey Stick graph. But of course no mention of WHY McIntyre and so many others others say it is wrong.
Fortunately, the cooling period we’re about to go into should last long enough for most people to stop listening to Warmists like Harriban.
…steak-eating, libertarian, republican, right-wing Yanks.
Fuck yeah! My kind of people.
Hmmm. The clip I listened to from the World Service website ends with Harrabin quoting Monkton talking about the global socialist fraud of global warming. Nothing about Harrabin talking about April being the coldest month on his way out and getting a response of “So what?”
Wonder why they edited that bit out and what else, if anything. The clip was just over four and a half minutes.
Harrabin finds some of the comments here on B-BBC objectionable.
(Wednesday, April 07, 2010, 16:27:38)
roger.harrabin
<snip>
Personally I find some of the comments in this blog objectionable. I do not have a fixed view on climate change, and have always tried to depict it as a Risk issue rather than a case of rigid scientific fact. This will have been clear in my recent interview with Prof Phil Jones which was widely appreciated by both sides of the debate.
I note that this blog does not complain about bias from those high-profile BBC presenters who also chair conferences and who regularly make on-air remarks ridiculing climate change.
Just as sceptics attack the BBC for being biased on climate change, so greens attack the BBC for giving to much prominence to climate sceptics. In a very complex debate we’re trying to get it right.
Larry
Can you please provide the link to Harrabin’s remarks ?
Thanks
Click on the link (finds some of the comments) and scroll down.
I note that this blog does not complain about bias from those high-profile BBC presenters who also chair conferences and who regularly make on-air remarks ridiculing climate change.
NAME ONE or three?
I do believe he may be trying to allude to Andrew Neil. Which, considering the number of ‘reporters’, ‘editors’ and ‘analysts’ dedicated to the arena of ‘green’, all with questionable ability, objectivity and many frequent flyer miles, is rather silly.
‘Two wrongs’ is a poor basis to kick off from…
And, TBH, Mr. Neil does seem ‘guilty’ more of simply asking questions than actively promoting a narrative.
I saw him moderate an eco-debate at ECObuild Earls Court recently, and he seemed more to be acting as journalistic challenge to various participants’ claims than mouthpiece for an agenda. Which is the kind of rigour I tend to expect from my news reporting, especially in areas of science. As opposed to passing on PR from my favourite outfits as ‘news’.
Then there was David Bellamy. Now, what happened to him?
There are none so ignorant as those who would seek only to be informed by those with whom they already agree. Or, often, as dangerous.
Mr. Harrabin has a view to which, as an individual, he is entitled. Even if finding robust contra views on an independent blog reasons to get huffy is about as daft as it gets. Carter Ruck on the case as we speak?
What I find objectionable is that I am forced to co-fund his career.
From the reporter on the Heartland piece linked to above:
“Over the course of many years, I’ve had the opportunity first-hand to try to cope with the catatonic state of British life and British bureaucracy. This long ago led me to wonder how it was that such a society was ever once the mistress of a globe-girdling empire, the likes of which the world had never seen.”
I have found myself asking myself the same question. How low we have sunk as a nation.