Monthly Archives: May 2010

Sadly, I missed this response from Roger Harrabin on April 7. It deserves a wider airing for its surprise value (to put it mildy). At least he has not so far resorted to BBC lawyers, as one of his sensitive colleagues has:

Here is the official BBC comment: “It is well known that BBC correspondents are often invited to act as an independent moderator for events, sometimes for a fee. Our Editorial Guidelines allow correspondents to do so, as long as they do not undermine the impartiality of the BBC. There is no evidence here suggesting this expectation has been breached.

“To give more context: Roger Harrabin also undertook a chairing role at a lecture by the climate sceptic Vaclav Klaus; the RSA meeting mentioned in this blog featured a proponent of GM crops as well as the Soil Association, and for the recent Economist meeting Mr Harrabin requested a climate sceptic speaker on the panel.”

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.

First – “objectionable”. The reason why remarks on this blog (from this writer at least) are robust and at times pungent is that the BBC is reporting climate change with “due impartiality”, that is, it has assumed that there is a consensus on the subject and is affording warmists very significantly more airtime than so-called sceptics. No matter what is said or missed, or established to the contrary, BBC reporters pough on like the Triffids.

Almost every day, the BBC website posts another warmist alarmist story; the occasions when balance is given to these ludicrously one-sided reports are extremely rare. Worse, sceptical sites such as WUWT, Bishop Hill, EU Referendum, Icecap and dozens more are routinely and deliberately ignored. Thus, in Mr Harrabin’s own report of the International Conference on Climate Change, he suggested that the hockey stick was disbelieved by sceptics; nowhere has he analysed why people like Andrew Montford have comprehensively demolished the assumptions made in its compilation. This is at best lazy disregard of the truth; at worst, extremely poor journalism.

Second: greenies complain that Mr Harrabin’s coverage is not greenie enough. That’s an old nonsense that the BBC has used at least since I was a BBC publicity officer. It didn’t wash then and it doesn’t now; the existence of complaints from both sides of a debate does not mean that what is complained about is balanced. The facts that matter in this connection are that, as I posted earlier this week, when people like Richard Black write a story about climate change, in 99 cases out of hundred the only people quoted are from the eco-freak side. Harrabin, Black&co. ignore sceptics in a systematic, unprofessional way. They are thus on a mission of agitprop, not journalism. I have reported dozens of examples where simple attention to the other side of a debate would have created balance. But it doesn’t happen.

Third: The meetings and conferences which Mr Harrabin chairs or presents at are also attended by sceptics. The evidence speaks otherwise. If this is genuinely the case, I’d like to know from him the balance of sceptics to warmists at the events he has chaired over the past two years. I’d like to know how much he has earned from chairing the events; and to see the briefing letters and notes he has prepared. Has he put the sceptics’ case at any of them them? Has he told people why the hockey stick has been comprehensively demolished, about the work of Anthony Watts, of Andrew Montford, and of all the thousands of sceptics round the world? I expect not, though if I am wrong, I will happily say so.

Finally, I can think of only Jeremy Clarkson and Andrew Neil who have ever said anything against climate change on the BBC. If there are more examples,as Mr Harrabin asserts, I would be delighted to know who they are, when they expressed their scepticism; and how this balances out with the thousands of biased reports that Mr Harrabin and his cohorts have filed.

I look forward tio your reply, Mr Harrabin. And rest assured, anything you furnish that proves my perception of the way you operate is wrong will be properly aired.

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