As readers of Biased- BBC already know, BBC environment correspondent Richard Black has repeatedly filed reports that are rather alarmist about climate change and seem to advance what I would call a crude political agenda, linked closely with the UN’s attempts at world domination.
Mr Black is a busy boy behind the scenes, too. He recently chaired a session about that latest UN buzz-word “biodiversity” at the BBC College of Journalism, which was set up to spread best practice in the corporation’s £1bn-a year news operations and is compulsorily attended by them all.
Mr Black opens by telling the assembled throng baldly that a “staggering” fact is that in the last 40 years, the number of creatures alive on earth has fallen by one third, and that man is responsible.
I am not a zoologist (neither is Mr Black), but a few minutes’ digging on the internet made it clear to me that: a) scientists don’t have reliable, uncontested data on this topic; b) it’s not as simple as that, and projections of extinctions and decline are based on models constructed mainly by biologists who are also political activists; c) claims about biodiversity are inextricably linked with the global warming agenda; and d) some scientists believe that biodiversity is not on the decline, and that the number of extinctions in recent history are few.
In other words, Mr Black’s opening to the “briefing” to the College of Journalism was a crushingly one-sided affair, and it seems that “biodiversity” is the new front in his alarmism – see this post, too. What’s particular chilling about the episode is that it’s clear that this is an organised, systematic attempt at brainwashing, delivered under the guise of “objectivity”. What the corporation is actually involved in is nothing less than an eco-crusade, with Today editor Ceri Thomas’s membership of the Science Media Centre part of the same jigsaw.
There were other major problems with Mr Black’s session, not least of which was was the choice of speaker, but I’ll make those the subject of another post.
The number of creatures alive has fallen by one third??? That’s one of those “facts” that is so patently ridiculous it should be dismissed out of hand, whether you’re an expert or not. But no, it’s lapped up by greenies and the Beeb.
“The truth is getting lost in the Amazon”
(Christopher Booker)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/amazon/7996749/The-truth-is-getting-lost-in-the-Amazon.html
I wonder if he and Harrabin have had time to read the Andrew Montford report into the Climategate whitewashes yet – pretty damning stuff by all accounts. I expect him to appear on Today (tomorrow) and apologise for his misleading deviations, and finally admit that the jig is up. Pigs might fly…
Harrabin does not read anything but media studies papers. The BBC don’t do science.
The only scientist on the BBC is this man.
Here is the other Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace – telling why man-made global warming is a left-wing scam, and a guarantee to get research funding :
He seems to have all the other approved thoughts, so why won’t the BBC have him on to talk about this? They’re open to charges of intellectual fascism if they don’t.
Get ready for series of cold winters. The Co2 isn’t doing what the model says it should. I blame it on global warming/climate change, myself.
On a serious note IPCC AR4 is getting bitch slapped at present…..same old story but this time its the economics assumption which violate the rules vis a vis the claimed technical and research benefit to outweigh the costs of climate mitigation. A flawed model which is 100% breathlessly supportive of the warmist party line.
What a shambles this whole circus has been.
The BBC output on this cannot be labeled bias. To be bias at least there should be some truth if only from one side of an argument. No, when it comes to “Global Warming” the BBCs output has become blatant lies and propaganda.
Mutton-headed? Baaaaaa.
With friends like you, who needs enemies…
You seem to be saying that the BBC is too big to challenge and we shouldn’t bother. Bollocks to that I say.
This blog offers an alternative viewpoint to major and minor issues which never get aired on the BBC. More power to it I say.
It also exposes some rather sinister attitudes widely held, it would seem, at the BBC. Israel for one.
Thanks for your advice but I think I’ll keep reading posts on here.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-11297111
Apologies if someone else has commented on this but the Prosecutor of Gosling give a definition of Gosling which I think applies to most BBC reporters:
The man they thought was a worthy and principled journalist is, in fact, a sheer liar and fantasist”
End Quote Simon Clements Prosecutor
Also seems especially fitting in a thread about Richard Black.
Just ignore ‘A Friend’ he posts here two or three times a day, probably when the medication wears off.
As for Black he really is a tool, as anyone knows the planet has always had species that die out and new ones that come along.
We have also had many species written off by scientists only for them to turn up a few years later.
Black is a knob and spouts this crap without any scientific proof. This shit should really be stopped by the BBC, unless this twat can back up his statements with proper peer reviewed scientific evidence he should stick to spouting bollocks on the BBC website.
Perhaps Black might like to list his scientific peer reviewed evidence for this claim? I thought so.
Twat.
Quite right Martin – Natural phenonoma which have occured for millions of years are now being used by Black and his type as proof of AGW. They really are the lowest form of life.
Nothing? Are you sure about that?
http://biasedbbc.tv/2007/09/bbc-corrects-childrens-guide-to-911.html
Do you have the balls to admit where you found this site and why you’ve joined the rash of trolls? Splitter!
Has that comment from the PFJ been deleted? Now my “splitter” remark looks weird.
David P – 22.57
It is a real pity when mods (from CiF to Telegraph… to the BBC… and here) do this, at least unacknowledged. I wondered what you were on about and only realised because of your subsequent post.
Not fair on those who reply, IMHO. And, as you say, while any well argued counter-points are welcome, there seems to be an infestation of very odd posts designed more to distract and disrupt than inform.
This site is in ‘good’ company, mind. I engage on the Newsnight blogs, and there are now several posters who are either bonkers or make zero sense. Oddly, the mods seem very tolerant of their, often highly personal, ramblings, whilst still keen to apply the OT nuke on anyone who crosses lines too close to the narrative.
It’s almost like some see merit in getting free debate back to the good old days of broadcast only.
Such a shame the wise old Mr George Carlin isn’t around any more to make a guest appearance at the BBC College of Journalism.
The global warming debate concluded in a matter of 7 minutes and 39 seconds :-
Mr Horbury
Thanks for keeping the BBC’s incessant bias – and lies – on global warming right up in the frame. It is a provable example of their closed minds, their deliberate driving of an agenda.
The big news this week is – or should be – Andrew Montford’s (“Bishop Hill”) review of all the Climategate reviews / whitewashes. Here is the press release :
http://thegwpf.org/climategate/1532-damning-new-investigation-into-climategate-inquiries.html
Interesting to see that the foreword is by Lord Turnbull – a recent Cabinet Secretary (2002-2005), previously Permanent Secretary at the Treasury and earlier the PM’s Private Secretary. That might make people focus a bit, if the report is endorsed by such a 24-carat mandarin, MPs and civil servants might take it more seriously.
The whole global warming business is a major financial and economic scandal – as well as an academic scandal. And if today’s Treasury are looking for savings all over the shop – they need to start with global warming funding, and carbon-tax policies. Turnbull recommends that the H of C Science and Technology Committee should take evidence from Montford.
Here is Andrew Montford’s brief account of the press launch :
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2010/9/14/the-press-conference.html#comments
This link gives a further link to the full Montford report :
http://www.thegwpf.org/gwpf-reports/1531-the-climategate-inquries.html
Here is the report by Fred Pierce – the Guardian’s most senior correspondent on this stuff – he says the report obviously comes from one side of the argument, but he appears to endorse Montford’s main findings and contradicts absolutely nothing. The comments are well worth reading:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/sep/14/montford-climategate-gwpf-review
The FT’s take :
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2914e324-c019-11df-b77d-00144feab49a.html
Surprise, surprise – Roger Harrabin evades – refuses to report – the key criticisms of the Montford review, quotes in full the UEA response – to what ??? – instead goes off at a tangent about Patchouri :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11303686
That looks like deliberate obfuscation.
Unusually for her , a half-fair report by Louise Gray, Telegraph correspondent on the environment :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8002466/Doubt-remains-over-climategate.html
………………………………..
The main thing is that the Montford review is already getting decent press coverage – and that should lead to much wider coverage when people realise how strong is the Montford list of allegations about whitewashing.
ClimateGate takes on a new lease of life, methinks. “Truth’s a chiel that winnae die, and cannae be disputed”
Lord Turnbull pulls no punches in this interview with The Register :
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/14/lord_turnbull_interview/
CRU looks dead in the water ?
Well so far no one has actually been able to challenge anything in The Bish’s report…lots of parroting of the old “where are the CRU/alarmist members of his report…must be a hypocrite!” but nothing challenging anything in the report.
Funny that…could it be because the alarmists realise that the bish has it pretty damn close?
Mailman
The cruel and most telling line from Lord Turnbull :
“The enquiries have been more Widgery than Saville”.
OUCH !
99.9% of all the species that have ever lived are extinct I believe, that means extinction is a natural event in the evolutionary cycle, they come and they go and others take their place.
As the AGW certainties implode the cultists search for alternatives to fill their ideological void and it mirrors the natural extinction closely, ideas come and then die to be replaced by others.
I have a certain empathy for the notion that, over and above evolutionary progress, ‘man’ is indeed impacting the natural world adversely.
I’m just not so sure it’s all down to AGW so much as a honking great load of humans encroaching on vast acres that are needed for an Avatar-style idyll. I look forward to the BBC tiger-saving squad steering around the ‘building affordable shacks on the flood plain’ (so-named because..) squad and giving the the ‘huge families’ squad a bit of an ear-bashing on unsustainable religious practices. Maybe Sts. Bob & Bono can be ‘coptered in to explain why vast money is needed to stick folk in concentration camps to be kept barely alive whilst doing what comes naturally.
Meanwhile, in true BBC style, I note as I write that a rushed defence review is ‘a disaster in the making’, whereas the one(s) on the ‘single greatest threat to the world’ were just tickedy-boo in composition, conduct and, results.
Unique.