If anyone is tempted to believe Mark Thompson’s ludicrous assertion that BBC bias was in the past, take a look at Roger Harrabin’s attempt to discuss dispassionately the recent attack by Inter Academy Council (IAC) on the snake oil salesmen techniques of the IPCC. BBC reports about the IAC such as this one have already done their best to minimise the importance of the damning IAC verdict. Our Roger pretends in his opinion piece that he is carefully weighing up the pros and cons of how the IPCC has behaved. And to be fair, he even admits that he himself got it wrong in being so uncritical. But – try as he might to be “fair” – his true colours show at the end. He states:
When the right-wing American critics who are likely to welcome much of this report raise a glass in celebration whenever Dr Pachauri does go, they should remember who put the chairman in his current place.
It was George W Bush. This was seen by some as a move to install a compliant developing country economist who wouldn’t stand in the way of industrial growth. He arranged the appointment of a former railway engineer who proceeded to drive right over his toes.
So that’s it, then – Mr Thompson’s (now) unbiased BBC in action. Let’s spell it out: according to Mr Harrabin, critics of the IPCC are right-wing Americans, and George W.Bush was the stupid b*** who is the cause of this whole car crash.
They can’t help themselves. It’s what they do.
Wow, I see. I’m supposed to like Pachauri simply because Bush appointed him? And even though the nefarious plan (or what Harriban claims, without proof, reading Bush’s thoughts) fell through?
At least Harriban admits this is a partisan, Left vs. Right, purely emotional issue and no longer based on reason and science.
Well, that’s put us RWDBs in our place now, hasn’t it ? We’ll be bloody great hypocrites if we celebrate the departure/disappearance/defenestration of Dr. My-Hands-In-Your-Pockets ‘cos he was appointed by *<i>DAH-DA-DEE-DAHHHH !!<I/> George Dubya, who to all right-thinkers is slightly brainier than plankton, and yet is The Greatest Hero In The World EVAH to us poor, benighted scrubs outside the blessed realm of Libtardia.
I’ll celebrate Pachauri’s going all the same I think. Especially if he could be shot out of a cannon or something cool like that.
Why does Harrabin say Bush “.. put the chairman in his current place”? I thought he was a UN appointment so would have been elected.
The Warmists on the Left were angry about the US pushing Pachauri even back in 2003, the year after he was appointed the first time. He wasn’t considered enough of a believer at the time, and the mere fact that Boooooosh backed him was enough for them to hate him at the time. Harriban has clearly been nursing that grudge for years.
Funny how Warmists like Harriban supported Pachauri at all costs during those recent charges that he was making a fortune out of the Warmism racket, and still support him now because he showed them that he held all the approved thoughts.
Good question David — looks like yet another sloppy accusation without evidence from those highly qualified experts at the BBC interpreting the news for us
Isn’t there a review coming up shortly pertaining to BBC licence fee finance?
Look!!!…..Does anybody really believe that Thompson would be washing any of his dirty laundry in public, if New Labour still held power? He’s portraying all of the characteristics of his beloved former junta, in that, every time they suffered heavy defeats in elections over the past few Years, they bleated pathetically of a bloody nose” given to them by Joe Public, and followed up those soundings with some verbal diarrhea or other that they would “Change their ways”.
Did they? Of course not, a Socialist is a control freak Socialist per se, and as the BBC have recruited nothing else but Guardian reading, right on luvvies, for their current News affairs output over the last two decades and more, so how the hell are they ever going to change?
In my opinion, It was nothing other than a cynical ploy for Thompson, to sound off his bile at perhaps the leading left wing publication in Britain today, I.E. the New Statesman. Especially as in talking to James Macintyre, a creature who has form in the past for calling “All Tories racist”, he was in amongst his own.
So Thompson gives his interview to Neo Trots, they publish it on-line for all the world to see, and what do you know in the comments section of the said Thompson article, the New Statesman readership rant and rave and Call the BBC “Right Wing”…….Job done!……..Nothing changes!…..Bravo Comrade Lenin-Thompson……..Criticism contained…..
Bollocks!
Roger Harrabin a full on twat who no one takes seriously.
Harrabin the Horrible from the clan McMoonbat needs replacing with someone who is a scientist rather than a eco activist
“US Government admits global warming satellite sensors “degraded” – temperatures may be out by 10-15 degrees.”
http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/
Did anyone know this? Did Harrabin “comment” on it? Did the BBC headline it in their trendy multi-million pound “Science and Environment” web page? Did Uncle John Humphreys summon Harrabin the Horrible to the Pravda studio to explain this shocking scientific error that had been kept under wraps for years?
Silly questions of course.
Harriban’s fellow Warmist priest, Richard Black, has an article on the website about a new report published in Nature which says that there are more hurricanes in modern times than in the past. Except it doesn’t, even though there’s no other reason for the BBC to mention it.
‘Many hurricans’ in modern times
Now, what else is one supposed to get from this headline? Of course it encourages the reader in a specific direction. Black says this about the report:
Hurricanes in the Atlantic are more frequent than at any time in the last 1,000 years, according to research just published in the journal Nature.
Sounds like something to worry about!
Scientists examined sediments left by hurricanes that crossed the coast in North America and the Caribbean.
The record suggests modern hurricane activity is unusual – though it might have been even higher 1,000 years ago.
WTH? So it isn’t anything to worry about?
The possible influence of climate change on hurricanes has been a controversial topic for several years.
And the BBC leaps at any opportunity to stoke up the fear in the faithful. Guess who is behind this report:
Study leader Michael Mann from Penn State University believes that while not providing a definitive answer, this work does add a useful piece to the puzzle.
That’s Michael “Is that a bogus hockey stick in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me” Mann.
“It’s been hotly debated, and various teams using different computer models have come up with different answers,” he told BBC News.
And I’m sure he’ll spin them all to his benefit.
Basically, the report reveals that there were more hurricanes at another point in history. So what?. BBC audiences will be shocked to learn of the existence of the Medieval Warming Period, so I guess this is a step forward in BBC science reporting in some way. But how to spin it to support Warmism?
Now, the high number is simply driven by warming waters in the Atlantic – which is projected to increase in the coming decades.
Projected by whom, BBC? I think we all know the answer to that.
“Even though the levels of activity are similar (between 1,000 years ago and now), the factors behind that are different,” said Dr Mann
“The implication is that if everything else is equal – and we don’t know that about El Nino – then warming of the tropical Atlantic should lead to increasing levels of Atlantic tropical cyclone activity.”
So even though the data shows that there were loads of hurricanes in the past, there are more now because of Man-Made Global Warming, because…er…because true believers believe it’s real. We’re supposed to have come into this discussion already believing in Warmism, so we’re expected to go along with the way Black and Mann spin this report.
“The record suggests modern hurricane activity is unusual – though it might have been even higher 1,000 years ago.”
Exactly – So what caused the high numbers of hurricanes 1,000 years ago Mr Black? The Battle of Mortlach?
http://www.viking.no/e/info-sheets/scotland/mortlach.htm
Speaking of the BBC’s eagerness to report the lastest findings from Nature Magazine, I found one item in the latest edition which the BBC definitely will not tell you about:
Politicize me
In his inaugural address, US President Barack Obama promised to restore science to its “rightful place”. How is his administration doing so far? It has failed to strengthen protections for endangered species, appointed officials with long records of suppressing politically inconvenient science, ignored new evidence-based recommendations for breast-cancer screening, failed to remove all restrictions from embryonic stem-cell science and ignored decades of research in a politically motivated effort to prevent nuclear waste from being stored at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
So The Obamessiah didn’t save us after all? Justin Webb promised me He would. Personally, I could see this coming when the BBC had to edit the President’s inaugural speech to make it appear He was supporting the BBC’s environmental message, lying to the public from Day One.
The Nature piece concludes with this:
Who will be courageous enough to step away from this pathological codependence? Perhaps Obama’s unapologetic decision to turn his back on $10 billion of nuclear-waste disposal research is the best thing for both politics and science. Perhaps he is discovering science’s ‘rightful place’ after all.
If it’s bad enough that a leading science publication such as Nature feels the need to criticize the President, surely it’s bad enough for the BBC to take notice and say something? They were never shy about bashing Bush for it.
No, the BBC’s editorial policy is never to criticize Him or report anything that might make Him look bad.
PS: Actually, I doubt that any of the Beeboids read through Nature enough to notice something like this. I bet Mann emailed Black personally about his report.
Good posting at the US blogs Breitbart and Powerline on Mark Thompson’s admission of massive BBC bias :
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.91cc350cfed23f483b23ec44acc183c7.201&show_article=1
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/09/027145.php
The balance just took my breath away. To report on BBC2 this morning at 7.30, that factions in Gaza have joined forces with Hamas to step up attacks against Israel in response to the peace talks, Moira Stuart added this counter-point: “there has also been an angry reaction to the peace talks by the right-wing Israelis”.
The BBC just couldn’t resist equating democratic misgivings by some Israelis with murderous intent by the whole of Hamas.
The BBC has no moral integrity.
…..and Jeremy Bowen, in his new line that religious animus has been “grafted on to” the Israeli-Palestinian land dispute, tries to suggest that this animus is on both sides, when even a blind man can see it is Islamist hatred that is the real problem.
Islamism is the elephant in the room that the BBC never reports on – the indoctrination of hatred from childhood onwards, the endless vicious TV programming, the Islamist roots of Hamas and Hezbollah, the Islamist backing of all this by religious/fascist crazies in Iran.
BBC website headline article. “Why did we get so much snow last
winter ? “. Scientists conclude it was a special once in a century event not evidence against global warming.
Perhaps the Tories HAVE finally woken up to the BBC bias?
The Daily Mail understands Mr Thompson was hauled int o Downing Street for showdown talks with David Cameron’s strategy chief Steve Hilton amid increasing Government displeasure over the BBC’s coverage of the forthcoming spending review.
The Tories and the Liberal Democrats have become concerned that BBC reports rarely mention the reason for budget reductions – the £15billion deficit left behind by the Labour government.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1308561/Is-biased-BBC-trying-cosy-Coalition-No-10-meeting.html
How on earth can a Liebour mong claim the BBC were tough on them?
Michael Dugher, a Labour MP who was previously Mr Brown’s communications adviser, said: “The BBC should be standing up for its independence and should not be bullied by Cameron’s aides with the threat of cutbacks
“The BBC gave Labour a hard time when we were in Government and it is well within its rights to continue with the Tories.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/7978695/Mark-Thompson-BBC-chief-talks-to-No-10-about-selling-the-cuts.html
Remember what I said and have said many times. The prime directive of the BBC is to maintain the licence fee regardless of what cost. The BBC would sell their kids to keep themselves in the luxury of the TV tax.
Cameron and co shouldn’t fall for the spin, cut the TV tax now.
This reminds me of Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
In every bureaucracy there are two types of people, those dedicated to the goals of the agency (example: good class room teachers) and those dedicated to the bureaucracy itself. The second kind inevitably gain control of the bureaucracy. Always.
Although in the BBC’s case, the goals of the agency involve promoting far Left ideology.
So Bush pushed for the appointment of an industrialist from an emerging economic superpower. That’s not surprising or particularly disturbing – nor is it particularly biased to point this out in a report if it is true.
What it should teach us is that with the billions of pounds at stake in the global warming ‘business’, just about anyone from any background, if given as much power as was the case here, will almost certainly go native. The power and opportunity for personal enrichment is too much and because the system exists to feed itself then there is no brake on the process at any point.
Harrabin and Black are no doubt living in one camp, and many on the right of politics reside in the other. Those not in line with the AGW narrative must now realise that working to rectify it’s faults from the inside is futile and a more direct and organised scientific challenge is necessary – the process in place now is designed to lead to one end no matter who is at its head.
That’s all fine, but I object to being told that I should be blindly supporting someone with whom I vehemently disagree simply because he was initially backed by somebody I voted for one time. That’s assuming I’m not very bright, and just a sheep. Black insults the readers’ intelligence, and this taunting makes him look very petty indeed.
Exactly – So what caused the high numbers of hurricanes 1,000 years ago Mr Black?
Mann does tell Black this:
Then, he says, an extended period of La Nina conditions in the Pacific – which aid hurricane formation – co-incided with relatively warm conditions in the Atlantic.
But Black does not elicit from Mann the cause of these relatively warm conditions. Possible reasons for this are:
1) Black had heard what he wanted to hear – conditions then were different to conditions now – and so no further questions were required.
2) Talking to one of the greats of Warming, Black was starstruck. Likel a teenage girl meeting her pop idol, Black could barely remember his own name let alone think of a probing question.
3) It is George Bush’s fault that Black failed to ask the question.
When the town herald receives a message from a prophet, he just wants to get the message out to the faithful villagers. Black was just doing his job relating the latest chapter in the Book of Prophecy.
Judging by his very closed, and hence for once truly water oversought blog, Mr. Black has been on holiday for a very long time.
One hopes somewhere appropriate.