This latest exercise in naked partisanship by Richard Black has already been noted by B-BBC readers, but I was away yesterday and could not let it go without further comment. What it shows is that Mr Black is now such a fanatical propagandist that he is avidly snapping up any chance he can to rubbish the views of those who dare to disagree with him. The reality of the “story” – puffed up to be lead item on the warmist section of the BBC website – is that the editor of an alarmist science journal resigned after readers ganged up on him and told him that he had published a report that gave too much credence to evidence from dreaded sceptics which suggests more heat escapes from the earth into space than warmists say.
The guts of the situation – as is explained here – is that the editor appears himself to be a spineless propagandanist who has caved in, despite the powerful evidence contained in the paper. But as pounce_uk has already astutely noted, the key part of Mr Black’s predictably haughty, patronising put down of the offending research is the caption of Dr Roy Spencer, one of the joint authors:
Dr Spencer is a committed Christian as well as a professional scientist.
That, of course, to the BBC is the ultimate insult. He might as well have called him by the n* word. In the BBC lexicon, utter contempt is meant by such a description. To me, this marks a new low – the descent into a vicious, Inquisition-style vendetta against all who dare to challenge the alarmist orthodoxy. The gloves are off.
I’ll repost what I just replied to pounce_uk; hopefully Black or a minion look out for comments about him so I can say that Richard Black is the other ‘c’ word, the one they keep mixing with Hunt on the BBC.
Would Richard Black care to answer truthfully the question ‘If the scientist had been a ‘commited’ Muslim would Black or the BBC have used that in the photo caption?’
Michael Gove on Andrew Marr
“we will not allow extremists like CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS to set up free schools”
what is a Christain fundamentalist?
The idea of Christian Fundamentalism first emerged as a movement in the 19th century within various Protestant bodies, who reacted against the rising tide of evolutionary theories and modernist Biblical criticism. From a Bible conference of Conservative Protestants meeting in Niagara in 1895, a statement was issued containing what came to be known as the five points of fundamentalism:
1. The verbal inerrancy of Scripture,
2. the divinity of Jesus Christ,
3. the virgin birth,
4. a substitutionary theory of the atonement, and
5. the physical resurrection and bodily return of Christ.
so if you beleive the above,the Conservative Education Secretary considers you to be “an extremist”
we live in dangerous times…….
…and a perfect example of how language is abused. Muslim Fundamentalists aka Muslim EXTREMISTS kill people and want to kill more so what better way to assauge that description AND ‘stuff’ Christians at the same time.
ltwf1964, a question, were those words prompted? i.e. did Marr “suggest” that this may happen so Gove was ‘forced’ to deny using the same terms?
I had just flicked over but from what I heard it was Gove who lumped christians in along with islamofascists without prompting
which makes it seem even more insidious
Incredibly, Marr actually hypothesised about an extremist Muslim organisation establishing a free school.
Gove then did the thing you have to do to avoid resigning from Cameron’s cabinet and mentioned extremist Christians too. To be honest, I often think that we are now past the sinister and into the ridiculous with this type of explicit relativism.
Ignoring the elephant in the room …… the one with the beard.
In a week when Dawkins is quoted as wanting evolution to be taught by force to 5-year olds etc, then it is clear who the “fundamentalists” are.
A moral pigmy like Gove-and the whole lot of the political class-are in the claw of the Islam/Atheist militants. They fear them.
Yet they pick on Israel/Christians just to show their bully chums that they shouldn`t be so nasty to the faintheart Reverend BlueJeans types like themselves.
Unfortunately for them…they`ll be wiped out long before the faith of Christ and the bedrock of that faith which is Judaism.
That Islam and “Science” presume to take on God and his people only helps us…you`ll not get that from the BBC though…God has long left them to their own devices.
Sheol is a Salford suburb!
The Green Reich marches on, with Richard Black acting as Goebbels on Lord Haw Haw news.
Funny how Mr Black avails us of details of Dr Spencer’s world view and activities to discredit his research as biased, but neglects to do so with Bob Ward of the ‘Grantham Institute’.
Well, for those who seek the balance they’ll never find from the Goebbels of the Green Reich Mr Black, at least we can always depend on James Delingpoe:-
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100058818/what-on-earth-is-bob-ward/
Now if an American Hedge Fund investor wishes to fund an AGW propaganda unit with his capitalist lucre and employ a PR man like Bob Ward on a spectacular salary that’s entirely up to him, but whoever has embezzled the BBC license fee to fund Roger Black’s propaganda post should face criminal charges.
Judging by past totalitarian form, it is fair to surmise that the editor of Remote Sensing resigned after enduring the type of maelstrom of hate that Mr Black and his partners in crime like Bob Ward are so adept at whipping up.
Let’s hope the fondness for power games of over-grown adolescents like Mr Black never manage to plunge us into the abject darkness that they’d like to inflict on us.
Dellers writes:-
”
Let me make one thing clear: I’m not criticising Ward on the grounds that he is a PR man. He is as entitled to speak out on “Climate Change” as I – a mere Oxford Eng Lit grad blogger and hack – am. But note, pray, one key difference. If ever I am called to debate about climate change on the BBC or wherever I will always be introduced as a climate change “sceptic.” Ward, on the other hand, though as virulent an activist as anyone on my side of the debate, will be introduced as a spokesman for the Grantham Research Institute – thus lending him an aura of dignity, neutrality and lofty expertise he simply doesn’t merit.”
Quite.
Poor old Richard Black. Let’s not be too hard on him, after all, his world view is crumbling all around him.
If only reality didn’t keep raising its pesky head…
The real ice story: BBC misses the boat again
Another little parable for our times is the story of Sweden’s refusal to lease its most powerful ice-breaker to help the United States in supplying its McMurdo base in Antarctica. The Swedes told Hillary Clinton that they need the Oden at home, after two years of unusually thick winter ice have brought shipping to a halt in the northern Baltic. The Americans have relied on the Oden’s services for five years because, as revealed by the Autonomous Mind blog, they have run down their own ice-breaker fleet, believing that global warming would render it unnecessary.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8739451/The-lights-may-go-out-in-Germany-even-sooner-than-in-Britain.html
“…I see a greenie, and I want it painted Black…”
Black is now a bad joke and spent force.
His latest blog post (can’t quite suss what decides between his outings there and broadcast only efforts) hinges around him reading a book in the bath (bit of a ‘don’t do as i do’ there too).
Guess he’s not much of a Douglas Adams fan, as he does seem B-Ark science officer material, if not captain.
“Oh, it was doomed, as I said,” said the Captain, “Apparently it was going to crash into the sun or something. Or maybe it was that the moon was going to crash into us. Something of the kind. Absolutely terrifying prospect whatever it was.”
http://www.geoffwilkins.net/fragments/Adams.htm
“Trouble with a long journey like this,” continued the Captain,”is that you end up just talking to yourself a lot, which gets terribly boring because half the time you know what you’re going to say next.”
Indeed.
But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. (Albert Einstein, 1941)
That final image, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind”, is the sense of inclusiveness that rejects the attempt to use ‘christian’ as a negative.
Of course, there are narrow minded and uninformed manifestations of religion but that is not an argument that a Christian cannot be an excellent scientist.
Dr Spencer’s beliefs are not known to me.
Are they relevant in this case. I suspect not.
But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. (Albert Einstein, 1941)
It is the reason why the very greatest of scientists were devout Christians or imbued with the Christian ethos.
1. Isaac Newton
2. John Dalton
3. James Clerk Maxwell
4. Gregor Mendel
Each of these profoundly changed the way we view the universe.
There are many many more, but they do not rank at the same level as above.
Add to the above list Michael Faraday.
…but all those scientists listed, with the exception of Einstein, lived and worked in an age where to NOT be a Christian was almost unthinkable. That is not the case today.
Whether a scientist’s work might have the possibility to be compromised by their religious beliefs depends upon which branch of science they are engaged in. Were an evolutionary biologist to be a committed believer, it might clearly be possible to have an affect on the outlook and the direction of their research. Scientists must take a neutral approach to the outcome and findings of their research, and not let their beliefs taint or guide their work. The only agenda in science is the truth. That being said, I see no reason why the work of a scientist who is also a believer must automatically be diminished by that belief or considered to be untrustworthy. Scientific reasearch should stand independently on it’s own merits. Isn’t this the reason for peer review?
I do agree with the main point of this post, though. The sole intention of the caption on the photo was to place the idea in the viewer’s mind that this scientist’s work should be carefully scrutinised for any leading agenda. Perhaps the writer of the article, who is a science journalist after all, could have done that. Then there would have been no need for the underhanded caption. Lazy.
The BBC would not describe an islamist scientist as a committed muslim simply because there are no muslim scientists?
Now if you want scientists of a particular religion? Then visit Israel 😀 the country is chock full of every kind of scientist you can imagine, so many there are not enough jobs for them to fill. Some of the worlds most advanced theoretical science is now done in Israel from A to Z, a land of learning to stand among the great nations of the earth.
Now obviously the BBC has a blanket ban on reporing positive stories on and about Israel and we know that the BBC is determined that we see Israel through the lens of islamist hatred and Jew hating prejudice. The BBC narrative demands that Israel is viewed as merely an aggressor state making war on its neighbours. After all, if we saw the real Israel not defined by its struggle against an evil enemy we would start to sympahise with Israel and that is something the BBC can never allow.
THE BBC: THE JEWS ARE OUR MISFORTUNE, THEY MAKE OUR ISLAMIST FRIENDS AND ALLIES LOOK LIKE SAVAGE HEATHEN BARBARIANS.
There’s this infamous example, where INBBC uses phrase:
‘Dr Khan, Pakistan nuclear scientist’ –
“Pakistan frees nuke scientist who helped Iran, Libya, and North Korea with nuclear technology”
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/02/pakistan-frees-nuke-scientist-who-helped-iran-libya-and-north-korea-with-nuclear-technology.html
More proof that it’s a religion.
Dr Spencer sounds like my kind of guy!
Probably could do with a new ‘general’ thread?
Anyhoo, just completed my morning surf, and guess what…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14761015
A bit of early ‘watertight oversight’ there. 3 days and 26 comments. Not quite a Robinson, but not too shabby.
Maybe things were going downhill further and quicker than usual?