Richard Black plumbs ever-lower depths in his distortions. Here, in his latest Earth Watch posting, he claims – without an ounce of qualification – that most Americans want climate change measures to be introduced, and that Obama has disappointed them. He’s being disingenuous in the extreme. Pew, as Mr Black should well know, is one of the main polling organisations in the US, and their latest findings on climate change – available with two seconds’ effort on Watt’s Up with That? – found that only 28% of voters thought it was a priority, and it was bottom of 20 topics of urgent concern, behind even the esoterics of trade policy. A recent Gallup poll asked slightly different questions and found that 48% of Americans think that claims about climate change are exaggerated. This was the highest total for this belief in a decade, and it came despite the torrent of climate change scare stories emanating from the pens of doomsayers like Mr Black.
Our friend Richard also claims that the reason Oz PM Kevin Rudd was booted out in April was because voters were unhappy that he had diluted plans to tax CO2 producers. This, even by Mr Black’s standards, is utter tosh. Rudd went because his eco-freak CO2 trading plans had so enraged the opposition and voters that even his lefty Labour colleagues realised the game was up. It takes Herculean efforts to throw away a landslide victory in less than a full term, but Rudd did it. Don’t take my word for it, Richard – have a look at analysis in the Australian. It makes it pretty damn clear that you are talking a load of limey cobblers.
Essentially – Black is spreading lies. Especially on the OZ story.
Blatant porkies.
Is there no-one in the huge BBC editorial heirarchy who can see this ?
It’s the Black and Huhne show!! Lie, lie and lie again, obfuscate, and sell the country to the dogs, you know it makes sense.
What kind of BS is this, blaming the nasty conservatives for stopping this important legislation? They couldn’t stop ObamaCare, but they can stop this? There’s still a big Democrat majority in the House, and still a majority (but not the dreaded “super” one) in the Senate. If the President really wanted to ram through cap-and-trade as much as He wanted to with ObamaCare, there wouldn’t be any BBC gnashing of teeth over a lack of action.
And where were all the Beeboid remarks about how bipartisan politics tend to “drag parties and leaders towards the middle ground” when Bush was in charge? I guess this excuse saves Black from having to think about why there are no backroom deals and demagoguery and rushed votes over this, like Pelosi and Reid did with ObamaCare. Not a whole lot of “middle ground” occupied then, was there, BBC?
Also, it’s highly inappropriate for Black to refer to the Administrations of democratically elected leaders as “regimes”. But it is very revealing of his and the BBC’s autcratic mindset.
As for the President failing to deliver what the electorate wants, we didn’t want ObamaCare, yet He still delivered it unto us. So Black is full of it.
I never remember the BBC referring to the Labour regime as a “regime”.
The format for emails at the bbc is christian name dot surname at bbc dot co dot uk. Ignore al the spaces!
Get writing!
He’s been taken to task for it in the comments. Never seems to stop him though.
The comments demonstrate his misuse of statistics brilliantly. After one early intervention to try and defend himself, he seems to have now gone very quiet.
I don’t think Black gives a toss one way or the other what the posters and commenters on B-BBC think. Neither, of course, do Harrabin or Shukman. Although the spat concerning fees (or absence of same) for chairing conferences betrayed a sensitivity which was surprising, even so, one possibility of finding out why Black treats sceptics and their arguments with contempt might be to “follow the money”.
The money – for Black – would primarily be at at the BBC that pays his wages. Second; the money and kudos (which translates into money) subsist in the big wide world where warmist “science” and those commenting favourably on it can benefit from the avalanche of taxpayers’ cash. Accordingly, were the BBC to do a Newspeak hand-brake reverse (“we’re at war with Eastasia – we’ve always been at war with Eastasia”) and the taxpayer spigots turned off, who would bet against the possibility that he – and his colleagues – would turn on a sixpence, start spouting AGW scepticism and be as dismissive of warmists as he is currently of AGW sceptics? After all Black has, I’m sure, bills to pay we all do. Why would he put the means to fulfil his financial obligations at risk by biting the hand(s) that feed him?
Now I might be being grossly unfair to Black. I have absolutely no evidence to back up any assertion that Black’s warmist zeal is fuelled by money: the BBC’s or anyone else’s. Perhaps he really is convinced that there is nothing in the objections posed by the sceptics. Perhaps, he’s actually looked at the evidence and concluded that we’re all being a bit unfair to the Manns or Hansens and Joneses of this world. Perhaps, if the BBC became suddenly and genuinely “impartial” concerning climate change (as if), he would man the last redoubt at the BBC (or at one of Huhne’s seven homes) and go down fighting for the cause. Somehow, though, I doubt it. Nevertheless, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Let’s allow that he’s not dishonest nor guilty of cupidity nor even biased. Maybe, absent any other likely cause, he’s simply incompetent.
No. He’s a preacher. He siezes on any “news”/PR that suits the Warmist cause – ignoring any specific criticisms or even queries.
And he suppresses everything else.
That is bias – pure and simple.
JA
Slight irony on my part: of course, I don’t rule out that he’s biased and incompetent which, if you think about it, appear to be the key criteria for employing BBC journalists (Mardell, Kuenssberg, Peston . . . .).
Soon there will only be the BBC and Cru who will belive the “GW” hype.
Two stories of note today in the eco-geekosphere.
1) It’s possible the extent of the Gulf impacts were a smidge over-egged, especially by a certain President
2) It’s possible that we might all die due to 40% (already… sounds a lot) of the phytoplankton in the sea being toasted by… global warming
Now, which will make it, in some form (edited or enhanced), through Aunty’s editorial filter?
Maybe neither? That would, of course, represent balance in some eyes.
Guest Who, the phytoplankton have already swum through the BBC’s editorial filter!
Plankton decline across oceans as waters warm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10781621
At the bottom of the article it tells you who the author is:
Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk (aka Richard ‘No Filters When It Comes To Warmist Scares’ Black)
I just decided to read the posts on Black’s blog. “This information is currently unavailable “.
So, if there are too many hostile posts to delete individually, the BBC just close the whole comment section !