Hi folks and welcome to another week on Biased BBC. I’ve received emails from several of you wanting me to highlight what is perceived as the BBC using the Japanese disaster to advance their long standing opposition to Nuclear Power. A reader advises;
“There was a great interview HERE with Ian Hor Lacy on March 12th edition of Weekend Breakfast on R5 where Rachel Burden’s exaggerated beliefs about the threat posed by the nuclear plants is beautifully exposed: go here and go to 1:06
I also heard Today kicking off on this line this morning – now that they flown Naughtie et al over to Japan (Never mind the carbon emissons, natch). Never miss the chance to take advantage of tragedy in order to advance the cause, right BBC?
johnprescott John Prescott by bbc5liveI’m talking to @richardpbacon on @bbc5live at 2pm about Comic Relief and no doubt other things
And the go-to guy today… yes, ‘climate rapporteur extraordinaire’, Lord Hypocrisy of Creosote.
To talk about Comic Relief… and other things.
Can’t wait.
Labour Party grandees love appearing on the Richard Bacon show, don’t they? Guaranteed a sympathetic hearing.
Glad I listen to American talk radio in the afternoons now.
Dr Christopher Busby, the former Green Party spokesman on Science and Technology who was on the Today programme this morning (and R4’s World At One yesterday) scaremongering about nuclear power, has a website devoted to him called Chris Busby Exposed. The editor-in-chief of the Journal of Radiological Protection has stated “much of Chris Busby’s work is self-published and difficult to access; he seems mainly to avoid publication in the recognised scientific literature, which presents difficulties for a proper review of the evidence underlying his conclusions.” The claims he made this morning have been challenged on Twitter.
“has a website devoted to him called Chris Busby Exposed“
It’s a blog with a single, three-year-old, post on it. ‘Devoted’ is hardly the word I’d use…
He also appeared on Today on Saturday.
Clearly the BBC’s (anti) nuclear expert of choice. Expect to hear more from him as he got it right the first time so moves wqell up the list.
Christian Wolmar is a similar “expert” on railway matters. His google search comes up with “Britains leading (self-appointed) transport commentator”. I’ve added the bit in parentheses.
If you are on the BBC you must know what you are talking about. Mustn’t you?
David
Given that nuclear seems to be the best current option for reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, don’t you think that the current situation in Japan is maybe just a little worrying? It seems that some of that scepticism you freely apply to the subject of climate change might also be in order where nuclear power is involved, no?
Hmm, let’s see. A 40 year old power plant gets hit by an earthquake 7 times more powerful than it is rated for, takes a direct hit from a tsunami knocking out its backup generators, runs out of battery power, has problems with connectors for mobile generators (ok, that one is probably neglect or incompetence) and the core is still standing (note: the core, not the building housing the core). I’d say they did pretty well. Now, you could question whether they should be building to withstand richter 9 earthquakes, but you can say the same about refineries and other power infrastructure.
FWIW, I think that we need to seriously look at alternate designs, but I haven’t looked into the viability/safety of the thorium reactors that I hear people talking about. The thing is, we need a realistic debate about power supplies. This needs to take into account the true economics of the various methods of power generation, not the ignoring of subsidies, feed in tariffs, EU legislation etc.
I suggest you take a few minutes to read this posting (on a warmist site, ironically), which explains in some detail the various scenarios and why the dangers have been greatly overstated.
That’s not to say the matter shouldn’t be discussed, but I’ve yet to hear anything as helpful to the subject from the resident expert, Mr Richard Black.
Alfonso, are you suggesting that nuclear power is somehow a fraud and needs to be treated with skepticism? Are you denying decades of proven work of nuclear scientists, which has not only been through an infinitely more rigorous amount of peer review but also has decades of real-world results reproduced thousands upon thousands of time in many parts of the world?
Clearly the idiots at the BBC, and there are many, either don’t understand or fail to mention that Japan is somewhat bereft of natural resourses.
Not bad for a country enjoying the world’s 3rd largest economy.
Ergo :
Time for Beeboids to sell off their second homes in France, which has, shock- horror, lots and lots of nasty Nuclear plant things.
Hypocrites !
Mind you if Dez’s apartmónté dé nucléar came on the market I would buy it and let him live rent free for the rest of his days, but on one condition, he understands and then informs the BBC that the movement of the earth’s tectonic plates just happen to be a natural phenomenon and not an excuse to say that nuclear power is a very very wicked thing.
Most of the French nuclear reactors which supply 90% of their power needs are built on the north west coast, many facing the UK (with a fair wind) whilst the sensible place for the apartment secondaire is of course the Mediterranean-facing south coast. No conflict of interest there I think.
Needless to say the Beeb is bigging it up with the headline raising doubts and fears about Europes nuclear power stations. Greenies and econutters worrying about nuclear power is, as they say, like fish worrying about water.
Waiting to hear how any wind turbines performed during the Japanese tsunami.
No doubt the bBC will be straining every sinew to advise Iran to stop its nuclear plans now.
NOT!
I’m not sure I understand you here. You’re criticising David Vance for his position on nuclear power? What relevance does that have to the BBC coverage? I’m not forced to pay £150 pa to Mr Vance, so his opinions are his own.
You accept that nuclear is our best option for long term energy security. The BBC do not. Of course it is right to discuss the safety implications, but the BBC tell us that covering the land (and sea) with windmills will magically keep the lights on, without the need for dirty fossil fuels or nasty nuclear energy.
Herein lies the bias – nuclear=BAD, fossil fuels=BAD, renewables=ECOTOPIA. The debate should be framed in terms of energy security. Thus the unreliability and incredible inefficiency of wind power effectively becomes as much a threat as nuclear safety concerns. The BBC would never allow discussion of this issue in these terms.
This was misposted – it was meant to be a response to Alfonso’s post.
Radio 4 TODAY and many of its sister programmes wouldn’t, but Nicky Campbell on 5Live (I’ve just posted the link separately) had an excellent call-in.
JAPAN, and the extravagant, obstructive, irrational BBC-NUJ:
‘Today’s Naughtie, who is not an expert on eathquakes, and who doesn’t speak Japanese, flies out to Japan:
and from Japan, Naughtie talks to the Japanese ambassador who is in London!
At about 1hr 17 min the Beeboid children return to the stoical Hor Lacy with an air of incredulity & contempt as he refuses to shout “Panic!”. Williams in particular sounds like a sneering school boy as he petulantly buts in to the interview with “Well they said”, “so why” etc
Thank Gaia for this earthquake and tsunami. For a minute there, the Warmists were reluctantly allowing for the possibility of turning to nuclear power (see the ex-boss of Greenpeace’s comments). I know Black and Harrabin hated that trend, so they must be overjoyed to have what they perceive as an open goal.
Half of Europe (and most of France) would be in a literal Dark Age if they had to stop using nuclear power. The Beeboids would love that.
Suddenly (as early as Saturday night on BBC News 24) the BBC turned “sceptic” and voiced doubts (“some observers say . . . .”) about the statements of the Japanese government (and the IAEA) that the damage to the nuclear reactors is not a precursor to a Chernobyl-type disaster. I’ve never heard Black, Shukman or Harrabin admit to any doubt or uncertainty as to governmental or NGO veracity even when the most extreme and ridiculous warmist scare release is issued.
Predictably the Times (via its headlined reportage rather than in its editorial which is reasonably sensible) and the FT plus Geoffrey Lean in the Telegraph are also shouting that Armaggedon is imminent. As “Chris” above points out, in the real world the reactors have performed well above their design limits. OTOH I wonder how dams (supporting hydro-power) and windmills would have fared in the earthquake and the follow-up tsunami: such speculation is apparently not welcome at the BBC.
A good article on the nuclear reactors in general and the likeluy way the incident in Japan was played out
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/
I was waiting for B-BBC to post something along these lines. Practically every time the Japan tsunami thing comes on it gets used as an opportunity to sound off against how dangerous nuclear power supposedly is. This reactor took some pretty collossal hits, yet the core remained intact. Go figure.
If the luddites at the BBC had their way we’re still be living in the dark ages. No thanks, atoms for energy!
..”amidst continuing fears of”…
See how the soundbite liars ply their trade, peddling falsehoods, calling themselves “journalists”, hiding behind words with no attribution, of no substance, contrary to the facts, but neverless maintaining the narrative that fears have substance, without support.
Those dang “fears” just keep continuing…whose, I wonder?
Add the word “fears” to the word “cuts” on your B-S-detector.
Interesting quote from a vox popper on SKY just now via Skype…
“Here the media are working to help calm the population down. Meanwhile the Western media…”
Not advocating cover-ups (though public order can present a dilemma I don’t envy any pol… or editor), but the default setting from this side of the pond seems to to create panic at the drop of a hat.
Unique.
Nicky Campbell had a great phone-in on the issue yesterday:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zdhpm
I’ve just listened to the extract DV’s correspondent has referred to and the follow-up from Shay above (its actually more like 1:15 in).
M/s Burden was on the plaintiff side – based mainly, according to her, on a report that the Sunday Times had carried, but she gave the Kiwi prof his rein. Later on her colleague Phil Williams did throw an even more plaintiff ore in, but again the Kiwi prof was given his due space to respond.
On TODAY, when they’re agenda pushing, if someone has a good, calm answer to a ‘gotcha’ question they are very quick to chop the person up and harry and hector them to obliterate their response and carry on pushing their agenda. That wasn’t the case at all in this case.
The Kiwi (Aussie?) prof (scrolls up .. Ian Hor Lacy) was on 5Live again this morning giving his measured expert assessment of events.
All in all, I see no ‘meltdown’ levels of bias on Breakfast 5Live on this issue.
The TODAY programme is always emitting toxic radiation levels of bias.