The full facts are not yet up on the BBC complaints site, but the Mail on Sunday today reports that the corporation has apologised to the vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia because John Humphrys suggested on the Today show back in December that the Climategate emails may have shown that Phil Jones, the head of UEA’s climate research unit (CRU), had manipulated data. Stephen Mitchell, the BBC’s head of news programmes, has reportedly written to the vice-chancellor apologising for such impertinence and stating that the question was “misconceived”.
The corporation clearly operates in an alternative universe. Climategate showed beyond doubt that those involved were – to put it mildly – lacking in transparency in the way they handled and presented climate data. But to the BBC jackboots who now control editorial policy, even hinting that something may be amiss with the climate change scam is now officially considered a crime. The Today programme’s coverage of climate change is already ludicrously one-sided; the editor, Ceri Thomas, is an activist in the cause. It now seems that the Ministry of Truth has fully taken over.
This week I tried to make sence of the leaked file named :HARRY_READ_ME
It’s a fascinating read for anyone who has the time. For those who haven’t read it, it chronicles the efforts (in mostly programming language but also with commentary), of computer guy/climatologist Ian ‘Harry’ Harris as he tries desperately to piece together the data that has been used to provide the predictions of global warming.
Read as he tears his hair out at the poor storage and confusing mess that the data has been left in. Be amazed as he gloses over the fact that some data may have been altered by data handling processes from the past.
The truth is that from what I read, ‘Harry’ is trying desperately to rescue the project by recovering as much data as possible and corralating it into a single format. He largely succeeds, but does so by seemingly ignoring much of what he can’t fix; normals which are from an inappropriate period, the fact that much of the rain data is projected and not observational, and that so much of the data is not first generation but has come to him from the work of other programmers and he has no guarantee as to its provenence.
It’s not by itself damning, and his task is not dishonest – he genuinely seems to be making the best of a bad job. However, it must raise questions and for the BBC to ignore this is sheer folly.
Is he ‘one world government’ project marching on at the BBC?
Everyone who has paid attention to the ClimateGate stuff knows about the Harry_read_me file. It is an important indication of the total mess the CRU’s data was/is in. The data on which hugely important economic decisions have been based.
Therefore – the BBC’s paid hacks dealing with the environment – all those guys propagandising Warmism – have read the Harry file.
But not once has the BBC mentioned it, let alone discussed it.
Bias by omission.
It’s a little outside B-BBC’s scope and my science stopped at high school but why hasn’t someone simply repeated the observations leading to the theory? It can’t be so difficult to cut down some more trees and count the rings.
Why allow the truth to spoil the narrative, man made global warming is the truth according to the gospel of Al, Jim and global warming TV, aka, the BBC.
Too much at stake here, reputations on the line of the great scientific thinkers; Black, Thomas et al.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the science is settled! All here who of sound mind know it the IPCC decreed it! And, all Leninists (aka beeb worker) knows it, any nay sayers to be subject to trial by Auto da fe.
The edicts are to be attached to the walls of that other great bastion of knowledge and democracy the EU politburo’s Justus Lipsius building.
Where soon, public flogging (in accordance with Sharia law) of deniers of self evident truths will occur along with the usual executions of adulterers and apostates.
I can’t stand the bias that Humphrys usually displays – but in this case his questioning seemed entirely appropriate. I would not be surprised if Humphrys is pissed off by this story, splashed large in the Mail (for which he writes columns ?).
Hopefully the next time he interviews a Warmist, he will go for the throat.
An apology from the BBC is the last thing the CRU needs at the moment. Its credibility is nearly zero as it is and support from that source is not going to improve it.
Madness. Humprhys was only reading a “devil’s advocate” question prepared for him by his producers.
How can we be expected to take anything from come crappy Polytechnic in East Anglia?
Thisnk of the great places of learning and research
Oxford
Cambridge
Imperial College
MIT
Carnegie
CIT
Um… Anglia Poly doesn’t really deserve to be taken seriously does it?
I suppose its been lost down the memory hole that the whole set of files were sent to a BBC journo a month before they were put on an open server and widely leaked.
And the BBC just sat on them.
Ah, but those were “hacked”, or “stolen”, and thus of dubious merit. The BBC invited us to consider the motives of the hacker. In stark contrast, WikiLeaks “published” documents and video which had been leaked to them. These were immediately championed by the BBC as a potential blow to US efforts in Afghanistan, and the admitted motives of the WikiLeaks boss were never questioned.
Let’s not get too carried away here: the BBC were not in possession of the full UAE emails a month before their release – see here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/11/climategate-what-next.shtml
UEA. Doh!
Hudson was in posession of enough to know what was up. He and his colleagues sat on it.