Monthly Archives: April 2011

Spot what’s missing and what’s included in this BBC account of a damning, slamming report about the inadequacies of windpower. The report, by the John Muir Trust, a conservation organisation (so definitely not in the pockets of big oil or the nasty industrialists that greenies claim are behind anything that goes against their creed) concludes that windpower is not available when it’s most needed, that windfarms routinely generate substantially less than their claimed capacity, and that peak demand for the output from the turbines usually happens when there’s little or no wind.

James Delingpole spells out here what the report actually means to the government’s energy policies. Given that the government is spending billions on these monstrosities, not to mention moulding most of our energy strategy around them, you would think the BBC would treat the report as high priority, a subject that needs just as much scrutiny as – let’s say – spending cuts.

Well, er, no. First, the account of the John Muir report merits just 450 words, compared to the 1,200 words that were deployed earlier in the week when Roger Harrabin bust a gut to tell us why we should not exploit shale gas. Second, there is no quote from anyone involved in the preparation of the report, and only around 20 words from the report itself. Let me remedy this omission by spelling out what Stuart Young, the author of the report, actually said:

“Over the two-year period studied in this report, the metered windfarms in the U.K. consistently generated far less energy than wind proponents claim is typical. The intermittent nature of wind also gives rise to low wind coinciding with high energy demand. Sadly, wind power is not what it’s cracked up to be and cannot contribute greatly to energy security in the UK. It was a surprise to find out just how disappointingly wind turbines perform in a supposedly wind-ridden country like Scotland. Based on the data, for one third of the time wind output is less than 10% of capacity, compared to the 30% that is commonly claimed”.

Rather interesting, and very relevant don’t you think? Not to the BBC reporter, though. In addition, the press release about the report actually very lucidly spells out five main findings. With greenie press releases, Richard Black and his cohorts routinely regurgitate every single word and every nuance. Not so here, only two findings are referred to, and the rest are ignored.

Finally, having thus glossed over most of the report’s findings, a full 125 words (more than a quarter) of the BBC account are taken up by Jenny Hogan, of Scottish Renewables (no axe to grind there, then). By contrast, with pro-green creed reports, Black, Harrabin and company usually completely ignore any idea that there might be opposition to the nonsense being spouted. The said Ms Hogan actually tells us that “no form of electricity worked at 100% capacity, 100% of the time”. The inclusion of such vapid drivel in a so-called serious piece of journalism defies belief. First because the Muir report does not mention anything about 100% delivery, it actually spells out that wind turbines are routinely working at less than the 30% that is claimed, and often only at 10%. The rest of her quote is simply green-creed propaganda and not related in any meaningful way to any of the report’s findings at all.

Overall, therefore, this feature adds up to a clumsily-contrived effort to actually bury the report. The contortions involved are par for the course. This is not journalism – it’s lip service hot air.

Here we go again. Like a rat up a drainpipe, Richard Black gleefully regurgitates the outpourings of research scientists who are being paid – in this case indirectly by the EU – to find climate scare stories. This one is the old chestnut the ozone layer, a favourite of greenies the world over since the 1980s and the topic on which, as this post points out, they cut their teeth in their shamanism and political agitation, the warm-up, as it were, for the global warming and climate change activism that has ensued. Mr Black accepts unquestionably – as usual – claims from these grant-guzzling warmist zealots that there’s a big new hole over the Arctic caused by a lethal mix of nasty industrial chemicals and climate change. The subtext of his every word is triumphant panic: “I told you so”.

There’s a major problem with this theory, as Joseph D’Aleo ably points out in the link above from January. A paper (actually in the warmists’ handbook Nature) has noted that much more research needs doing on this topic before conclusions can be reached, because the processes involved are highly complex and not yet understood. The basic problem is that the Antarctic hole in the ozone layer has not gone away, despite the Montreal Protocol ban on CFCs in 1987. Others have warned that much of the data on which the panic that led to the Montreal Protocol was based was crudely rigged to fan political activism.

That doesn’t stop Mr Black, and nor does he quote a smidgeon of doubt. I don’t pretend to fully understand the science behind this highly complex subject. But I am sure that what Mr Black presents is one-sided, purposeful propaganda. Much is yet to be done before we understand the processes. So why the hell does he present it in the way he does?

Today, we have a corking example of the brazen articulation of the BBC green creed through one of their self-appointed “experts” and prophets. Step forward the totally self-regarding (see here) wildlife programme presenter Chris Packham who is telling us solemnly from his corporation eyrie that we must stop breeding, tax those who do not, buy local food, and Generally See The Error of Our Ways. Packham, in fact, is an interesting specimen of the BBC greenie zealot breed. This is how he describes himself on his website:

A precocious young scientist, swat and nerd in training he studied Kestrels, Shrews and Badgers in his teens and undergraduate days at the Zoology department of Southampton University. He also embraced Punk Rock and played in a band and the DIY ethos and determination to never take ‘no’ for an answer are forcefully retained. Post graduation and a cancelled PhD, (the Badgers were getting a bit much), he began taking still photographs and trained as a wildlife film cameraman.

Well slap my thighs. And with those impeccable credentials in green activism, he’s now taken on a new role at the head of the BBC green crusade. His main beef is that we are breeding too fast, and that leads this “cancelled PhD” expert to a call for sweeping new taxes to encourage those who, exactly as under Chinese state fascism, restrict themselves to one child. His message in morals and life management is coupled with an equally solemn intonation that we must buy and cook ourselves local food (and presumably therefore forget the Africans who rely on food exports to avoid starvation). It’s clear that in Mr Packham’s books, those who don’t are plebeian oiks who don’t know what is good for them.

Mr Packham’s message – passed from on high via the official BBC mouthpiece, the Radio Times – is liberally larded with the usual offical greenie-line claptrap. he says:

‘There’s no point bleating about the future of pandas, polar bears and tigers when we’re not addressing the one single factor that’s putting more pressure on the ecosystem than any other – namely the ever-increasing size of the world’s population.’

I note, however, that Mr Packham’s homily on the evils of mankind and its nasty proclivity to breed, does not mention a BBC unmentionable word – immigration. Actually, Britain’s headlong hurtling towards a population of 70m+ is being caused almost entirely by largely uncontrolled immigration, a tide that the government is powerless to stop because of their worship of the EU.

And beautifully crafted as it may seem (in BBC green propaganda terms), on close inspection, I think Mr Packham’s message may actually be strangely off-message. Tell me if I’m wrong, but I think there is a blatant racist slant in what he saying. Those who are breeding most in the UK are the so-called ethnic population. So his sermon is thus aimed directly and disproportionately at the said ethnic minorities.

I thought that doing that was the biggest sin in the BBC right-on/Human Right manual. It’s probably OK in this case, though, because the need for greenie propaganda, however clumsily formed, out-trumps everything else.

Update: I see my post has attracted comment from a pro-Malthus acolyte. I deliberately did not analyse that part of the Packham message here, because I am so tired of it, but I will leave it to the very capable Willis Eschenbach to do so. Malthusian pessimism is bunk that is at at the heart – as well as a prime driver – of the greenie creed. If you doubt me, try this.

I’m not a scientist, but I do often smell a rat in BBC science stories, and here we go with another corporation special, this time a major glacier scare.

Melting mountain glaciers are making sea levels rise faster now than at any time in the last 350 years, according to new research.

For years they have been telling us that the snows of Kilimanjaro are about to disappear because of AGW (they aren’t); and now the greenie BBC zealots are pushing another obscure research-grant paper – one that claims we are going to drown because of massive glacial melt. This time, according to the doomfest headlines, the glaciers of South America are melting 20 or 30 or even a 100 times faster than was previously thought. The cause (implied not stated), as usual, is nasty humans and those vile “emissions” that started with the industrial revolution.

Smelling that rat about the alleged rising sea levels, I dug around a little. Steve Goddard here provides a series of facts that – surprise, surprise – the BBC report does not mention. Like sea levels have been rising since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago at a more or less constant rate. That there’s been no change in the rate of increase (c.2cms a decade) since 1880. And finally, in the last 30 years – when those nasty CO2/farty cow emissions have been at their highest – the rate has remained stubbornly constant.

Mr Goddard concludes:

Sea level is rising, and the abuse of this information is one of the most flagrantly clueless mantras of the alarmist community. Even if we returned to a green utopian age, sea level would continue to rise at about the same rate – just as has done since the last glacial maximum.

In short, there’s a rather inconvenient but major contradiction that the BBC fails to mention. If these glaciers are melting so damn fast, where is the water going? And if they are melting and there’s no sea level rise, what’s the problem? Especially as South America has just endured one of its coldest winters in living memory. Answers on a postcard, please.

As not quite seen on the BBC.

Campaigners for the AV voting system have been accused of “airbrushing” white actor Tony Robinson out of leaflets sent to part of the country.

The “Yes to AV” campaign used his picture on literature used in most parts of the UK, but featured another supporter – the black poet Benjamin Zephaniah – in London, the Sunday Telegraph reports.

The “No” campaign said its rival was “ashamed” of the actor’s backing.

But the “Yes” campaign called the allegation “a new low”.

It said it varied the celebrity backers featured on its leaflets as there were “a number” to accommodate.

Yes to AV’s literature urges people to support a switch from first-past-the-post Westminster elections to an alternative vote in the nationwide referendum to be held on 5 May.

Celebrities Joanna Lumley, Eddie Izzard, Colin Firth, Honor Blackman and Stephen Fry appear on both sets of leaflets shown by the Sunday Telegraph.

In locations including Sussex and Cornwall a picture of Mr Robinson, the star of the BBC comedy Blackadder and the Channel 4 archaeology show Time Team, is reportedly included, with the actor quoted demanding an electoral system that “makes everyone’s vote count”.

But in near-identical leaflets, reportedly sent to London, he is apparently replaced by Mr Zephaniah, the poet and musician.