I don’t know how much Richard Black is paid by the BBC. They spend almost a billion a year on their newsgathering and news programmes, but don’t reveal individual salaries. I do know, however, that a friend of mine who is a BBC presenter is paid north of £150,000 a year; on that basis Mr Black, as a specialist correspondent, probably gets at least £70K and probably substantially more.
He is presumably asked as part of his responsibilities to be reasonably thorough in his assessment of material.
But is he thorough enough? On July 5, he filed an analysis of three reports into aspects of climate change, by Oxburgh, the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee and the Dutch Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL). Yesterday, I wrote about severe reservations about the first two. Mr Black,however, was convinced of their rectitude, and wrote that:
…none is judged….to undermine the central tenets of man-made climate change.
He singled out from the Dutch report these paragraphs:
Our findings do not contradict the main conclusions of the IPCC on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability related to climate change… The negative impacts under unmitigated climate change in the future pose substantial risks to most parts of the world, with risks increasing at higher global average temperatures.
This, he clearly believed, particularly supported his conclusion. In other words, he took the PBL report as a massive vindication of the BBC’s stance in support of AGW.
But was he correct? Indur M Goklany, by contrast, is a scientist, and has been writing about these issues for decades. There isn’t space to summarise here all his arguments, and I urge you to read the piece, which was filed on the What’s Up With That? website a few hours ago. But his conclusion about PBL?
To summarize, the PBL gave the IPCC’s summary statements on regional impacts a relatively clean bill of health because it only looked for errors of commission in a limited number of chapters while deeming errors of omission to be an acceptable part of a “risk-oriented approach.” Under the latter approach, it would be acceptable for executive summaries to emphasize costs and, moreover, highlight the upper end of these costs, even as they eschew information on benefits. And providing policy makers with the broader context might be nice, but optional.
PBL may label this a “risk-oriented approach”, but most rational people would label it “biased and unbalanced”.
So where does that leave Mr Black? I contend with egg all over his professional, highly-paid face. He was eager to rush into print in support of the climate science conclusions of PBL (and the other two reports), but unlike Dr Goklany, seemingly did not sufficiently analyse the core issues, or whether the extravagant press-released claims of the authors were properly supported.
‘…did not sufficiently analyse the core issues, or whether the extravagant press-released claims of the authors were properly supported.’
To be fair, one has to wonder how he would set about doing that.
I think you need to be called an analyst, like Roger Harrabin, and hence with such a title comes all the necessary skill sets.
Keep up the good work, Robin. And don’t worry about Black’s salary. I’m sure he keeps it well-supplemented with his exta-curricular Warmist activities.
Arch-panicmonger among the Warmist culy is James Hansen.
He is now predicting that by the end of the century much of East Anglia and Holland will be submerged :
Click to access 2007_Hansen_2.pdf
Richard Black will love all this, of course.
The fact it is rubbish won’t stop him !
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/12/bad-news-for-holland/#more-21755
I don’t know why anyone bothers to predict anything. They always end up with egg on their faces, but by the time it all comes to light the perpetrators are either dead, or buggered orf somewhere in highly-paid retirement, and aren’t available for comment.
I predict that it’s all bollox, and that Holland and East Anglia (more’s the pity) will still be around for some time (negating the need for UEA to relocate to higher ground), and that summers will continue to be hot (or not), and winters cold, and that charlatans will continue to rule the earth, unless, of course, Islam does a deal or annihilates them first.
I predict these things in the full knowledge that I will probably no longer be around, and in the meantime I will continue to enjoy my hedonistic life in my well-earned (and reasonably funded) retirement, and stuff ’em all. Insha’Allah…
Robin
Your post comments on Black’s salary.
I would be surprised if his total cost is less than £250,000 pa counting salary, overheads, travel and expenses.
These guys get lots of overseas trips – often for fatuous reasons. One of the BBC enviro-nuts says that the idea of travelling the globe at our expense was a major factor in deciding him to take the job.
Last week Harrabin was over in Switzerland for a few days on the solar plane story. There was nil need for him to be there (probably with sound man, producer and maybe a cameraman) – the local BBC stringer could have covered it, together with the PR puff the plane people put out.
And I bet they were not staying in B and B. Cost of trip – £10,000 easy.
Actually, as the precedent is already well set, maybe a complete PR pack that they can merely rebrand as news?