Monthly Archives: January 2011

I apologise for again posting about Richard Black, but he increasingly personifies all that is wrong with the BBC’s climate reporting. Last year, he went against form and posted this item, showing that research – for once, not based on models but actual observations – had illustrated that the Gulf Stream showed no signs of slowing down. This was a big poke in the eye for the alarmists who have repeatedly predicted that the switch-off would trigger ice-melt doom. Their fears were sensationally portrayed in the nonsense catastrophe movie The Day After Tomorrow as well as in the many spoutings of Mr Al Gore.

Today, though, Mr Black seems to have forgotten about all that, and like a faithful puppy, he is reporting with clear, unadulterated admiration the latest exploits of the egomaniac so-called polar explorer Pen Hadow. Here, in his description of Mr Hadow’s last polar expedition in 2009, Anthony Watts gives ten very simple reasons why anything this foolhardy would-be Scott does must be taken with a huge dose of cynicism, among them, that he has already made up his mind that he can swim most of the way to the Arctic Circle (yes, swim), and questionable competence (in having to be rescued at huge expense and leaving behind polluting supply oil). In short, the man is a fantasist.

Notwithstanding, Mr Black clearly believes that his new mission is important, and he repeats with odd disregard of his own writing, Mr Hadow’s fears that the Gulf Stream is in danger of switching off, as well – of course – as the usual scaremongering about the Arctic ice is melting “faster than the computer models predict”. In the real world, Arctic ice is low, but as real world observers have pointed out, there are clear natural reasons for it. And what Mr Black never mentions is that this is more than compensated for by the fact that Antarctic Sea ice is heading the opposite way, underlining that there is no danger of world indundation anytime soon.

What is even more sinister about this sensationlist, highly selective reporting is his pay-off line. In his latest so-called news report, he concludes, without a blush:

The £1m project is directed by explorer Pen Hadow and sponsored by the Catlin insurance group.

That will be the same Catlin group that a minute’s research confirms is among the world cheerleaders for climate change alarmism. In my book, they are using their so-called sponsorship of Mr Hadow to further their apparent goals of fannning warming fears so that they might attract more business. How does that square with the BBC’s Charter, Mr Black?

The Pakistan floods of August last year were devastating. And like carrion crow picking a carcass, the warmists were all over them within days. Hillary Clinton was among the first to provide the link, and true to lapdog religious-zealotry form, the BBC was also quickly in on the act. Here, science “reporter” Howard Falcon-Lang assembled a catalogue of alarmist evidence to tell us (as the main message of the piece):

Professor Rajiv Sinha, from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, who has had first hand experience of Asian river floods, takes a more strident position.

“What all the climate models predict is that the distribution of monsoon rains will become more uneven in the future,” he told BBC News….Total rainfall stays the same, but it comes in shorter more intense bursts.”

Very little doubt there, and of course – as usual – Mr Falcon-Lang provides no alternative opinion from experts with different views, other than a brief nod to that deforestation of the Indus and poor management of levees may also have played a (minor) role. The inference is clear. The billions of pounds of damage and torrent of human suffering was exactly in line with the great-god climate models. And the people of Pakistan had better get used to it. The start of the Apocalypse.

Spool forward. A peer-reviewed paper to be presented to the American Meteorological Society (currently meeting in Seattle) says:

Last summer’s disastrous Pakistan floods that killed more than 2,000 people and left more than 20 million injured or homeless were caused by a rogue weather system that wandered hundreds of miles farther west than is normal for such systems, new research shows.

And, as Anthony Watts points out, the word “climate”, let alone “climate change” is not even mentioned in the findings of the paper. It was a highly unusual weather event in an area prone to unstable cyclonic rainfall. Full stop, capital letter.

I will await with bated breath for the BBC’s corrected take on this. And wait….

I wonder what goes on in Richard Black’s brain, though doing so is not easy.

On the one hand, you have this, a report from the Global Warming Policy Foundation – set up by a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and a raft of eminent UK citizens – stating that an investigation needs to be carried out into problems in the ways that the various investigations into Climategate were carried out. The conclusions could not be clearer; there are many unanswered questions. The press release is prominently available on the internet, most notably on the high profile sceptical site WUWT – hence not easy to miss.

On the other, published in the early hours of this morning by Mr Black, are claims by a parliamentary committee (packed with avowed warmists) that it’s time to completely forget the alleged problems in the Climategate investigations – irrespective of any doubts – and move on. They state:

“While we have some reservations about the reviews which UEA commissioned, the key point is that they have made a number of constructive recommendations.

“In our view it is time to make the changes and improvements recommended, and with greater openness and transparency move on.”

Now my first reaction to this sweeping statement – as a former newspaper and BBC journalist – was unease. When committees, however eminent or expert their members may be, want to move on in such a simplistic way, in effect to magic away any issues, I smell a huge rat. My instinct is to feel pressured, and uneasy that things are not what they seem. It makes me want to dig deeper to get at the truth. Words like “cover up” spring uneasily to mind.

But not our Richard. In fact, he’s demoted the concerns of GWPF and Andrew Montford, who have spent much careful time and effort explaining precisely why there are doubts, to the very end of his piece, and given their considerable evidence so little space that the whole thing looks like no more than a tacked-on genuflection. The GWPF release is well-crafted, and elements of it could easily have been lifted into Richard’s copy, just like he so easily and so often takes the words of climate change zealots.

My conclusion is that Peter Sissons is correct in his latest installment of concerns about standards at the BBC. The disease in the BBC mindset is truly profound. It goes so deep that they are delusional. They willfully downplay doubts to the extent that they give them no credence, despite their common sense ubiquity, the quality of the evidence involved and persistence of the sceptics against the might of the billions-of-dollars, highly corrupt climate change industry.

What’s even worse is that Mr Black backs the establishment (for that is what AGW now is) against those who advocate spirited, upstart concern.