This former BBC man, Alex Kirby – whom I have fingered before as being linked indirectly also to the UN and Television Trust for the Environment propaganda machines – is emerging as one of the shadowy stars of the Climategate 2 emails. Mr Kirby, who, as can be seen for example here, is a long-standing strident alarmist, has for 20 years been one of the corporation’s main disseminators of climate change propaganda. This is what he told the PANOS institute:
I have a very short memory span, and every time I have to write something about climate change I have to look up the latest statements from the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) or the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) or whoever it is.
So that’s it, then, objective climate reporting, BBC style.
So what’s new? It emerges loud and clear from the Climategate 2 emails that Mr Kirby was close, very close (as was Roger Harrabin, of course) with Phil Jones and his henchmen at the University of East Anglia. So nice and cosy was the relationship that in 2004, Mr Kirby wrote to Phil Jones (email 4894) in the build up to COP-10:
Yes, glad you stopped this — I was sent it too, and decided to spike it without more ado as pure stream-of-consciousness rubbish. I can well understand your unhappiness at our running the other piece. But we are constantly being savaged by the loonies for not giving them any coverage at all, especially as you say with the COP in the offing, and being the objective impartial (ho ho) BBC that we are, there is an expectation in some quarters that we will every now and then let them say something. I hope though that the weight of our coverage makes it clear that we think they are talking through their hats.
So to the BBC, sceptics were loonies way back then. In 4655, Mr Kirby is again discussed, this time in an email to UEA climate fanatic Mike Hulme. He is recommended as the chairman of a forthcoming conference to warn of the perils of climate change. The same email also notes a discussion with Roger Harrabin about “strategy”, so Mr Kirby and Harrabin were clearly both regarded as safe and trusted pairs of hands involved in peddling the right messages.
Then in 0794, Mr Kirby is in the frame again, this time in an exchange between Mr Jones and Michael “hockey stick” Mann. It’s clear here that Phil Jones regards him so highly that he should be the first point of contact about complaints that the BBC output has not been strident enough about climate change.
This adds up to unambiguous further evidence (if any were needed) that the BBC was firmly in bed with climate hype from the very beginning. Phil Jones & Co clearly regarded Harrabin, Kirby and Black as the attack dogs of propaganda who would easily and unwaveringly do their bidding.
(Note: I haven’t linked directly to the latest Climategate emails, they can be viewed via this link)
RH
Sorry to throw water on this fire but the “fix” which I noted in another thread appears to be working only too well. Climategate 2 has, AFAIAA, dropped out of the BBC broadcasting product. Also, this morning, there was no coverage at all in the Telegraph and I found nothing in the Times. I don’t know about other sections of the MSM but I’d be surprised if it’s different.
On a personal basis I attended a meeting this afternoon of an advisory board of a fairly well-known public company. There were no “celebrity” business people there: the company in question wants considered advice not publicity. Only one other member of this group (of 8 people) besides me had any idea of the dynamite in this release (and she was fairly hazy about the details). All the others took the BBC line (per Newsnight) as gospel considering that this was either the same old same old and that, anyway, the scientists had been cleared of wrong-doing.
This is not a group of lefty airheads. These are well-informed, knowledgeable people who (usually) think for themselves. I recommended they refer to “Bishop Hill”, “WUWT” and similar websites. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. Maybe they think “there goes Umbongo again on his crusade against the BBC”. We’ll see. But, so far, to coin a phrase “the BBC’s got it about right” about the way to keep the lid on this.
I fear you could be right.
The danger with the BBCs strategy is that if (or when) the people they have lied to find out that they have been hoodwinked there will be a lot of very disgrunted people out there. These people will not trust the BBC so readily again. And that will be a good thing.
Oh come the day!
That statement from Kirkby is simply beyond belief. What a c**t!
And yet still the MSM remain silent and the press wonder why the public no longer trust them.
The public are way ahead of the gormless media in tihs whole climate scam.
Posted this further down on the Climategate 2 comments but thought it worth repeating here. I don’t suppose it proves anything but, as a commenter pointed out it just illustrates the “mindset” of the BBC.
It’s interesting to note that the East Anglian Film Archive is very much part of the UEA. Anyway here it is, polar bears begin to die at around a minute in.
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=192324587518125
There is a poster at WUWT called Lucy Skywalker – sounds to be someone who was deep into “Green” but then started to doubt all the Warmism. She has brought all her diggings into the debate on to one website – all in fairly clear prose :
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Curious.htm
Her summary of ClimateGate I :
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Climategate/climategate.htm
There’s a post on this over at WWUT including a video of a Kirby speech which includes many feel-good sound bites about impartiality (ho ho) totally at odds with the opinions he expresses in the emails.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/24/bbcs-kirby-admission-to-phil-jones-on-impartiality/
I wonder if Kirby/Harrabin/Black have watched this.
How could you finger that guy? He’s not even attractive. Gross.
As far as I’m concerned, our national broadcaster will forever henceforth only be known as ” The impartial (ho ho) BBC”
More muck on the BBC planning to lie to us :
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/11/24/the-blessed-plot.html
Ok so we have prima facie evidence that the BBC have failed in their duty to provide impartial news. What can any of us actually DO about it? They are a law unto themselves and the BBC trust always backs its own.
The BBC must be exposed as the fraudulent corrupt liars they are, but short of ranting on blogs, what can we actually do about it? How can we launch an official complaint against them and have them properly investigated?
I think individual bbc personnel need to be dragged through the courts. That means having a slick barrister to front the case(s), which means lots of money to pay for them. If someone wants to establish a fund for such a purpose, I’d contribute.
I’ve just finished watching poor old David Attenborough’s Horizon piece on “How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?”. Same old Malthusian dread; same desperate “Man, Destroyer of Worlds” tropes from the early ’70’s; same old bleached coral cliché’s exposed by dozens of writers and most eloquently by Matt Ridley.
The thing that struck me most (after the recent scandals revealing the BBC’s Green funding) was how it scanned precisely the same as any other Greenpeace or WWF film I’ve seen recently.
It wouldn’t suprise me at all that the Beeb is using WWF production crews to film and edit it’s “science” documentaries. What truly galls is that it wouldn’t bother the Beeb one jot if we could demonstrate that, either. As BBBC observed over the partisan BBC tweets, they really are laughing at us. They’re so sure the establishment is signed up to the cause they feel they can operate without censure or shame.
What’s the art or science of reading faces? Kirby’s mouth says “smile” but the rest of his face says “hatred”.
Having read his emails, I am suprised he dare show that face in public. What does this fellow-travelling green bag carrier get paid I wonder. What are WE paying him I should say. Safe pairs of hands are usually coin-calloused. His loyalty will be well rewarded.
Dont expect the BBC to be reporting this anytime this side of never, the windmill fraud and its enviromental consequences. When the free money runs out, the carpet baggers disappear with their money leaving junk, and dangerous junk that goes on killing wildlife. Still, dont expect big eco to give a sh*t, where money and wildlife conflict big eco goes for the money every time. As the money runs out the carpet baggers fade away leaving a the ugliest of testaments to greed and ignorance, the greed of the carpet baggers and the ignorance of the marks who fell for it all.
‘Green’ debacle: Tens of thousands of abandoned wind turbines now litter American landscape
Literal beacons of the “green” energy movement, giant wind turbines have been one of the renewable energy sources of choice for the US government, which has spent billions of taxpayer dollars subsidizing their construction and use across the country. But high maintenance costs, high rates of failure, and fluctuating weather conditions that affect energy production render wind turbines expensive and inefficient, which is why more than 14,000 of them have since been abandoned.
Before government subsidies for the giant metals were cut or eliminated in many areas, wind farms were an energy boom business. But in the post-tax subsidy era, the costs of maintaining and operating wind turbines far outweighs the minimal power they generate in many areas, which has left a patchwork of wind turbine graveyards in many of the most popular wind farming areas of the US.
“Thousands of abandoned wind turbines littered the landscape of wind energy’s California ‘big three’ locations which include Altamont Pass, Tehachapin and San Gorgonio, considered among the world’s best wind sites,” writes Andrew Walden of the American Thinker. “In the best wind spots on earth, over 14,000 turbines were simply abandoned. Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills.”
Walden speaks, of course, about the birds, bats, and other air creatures that routinely get tangled in and killed by wind turbine propellers. And as far as the “post-industrial junk” language, well, if it costs too much to run the machines in the first place, then it definitely costs too much to uproot and remove them post-construction.
This whole wind energy mess just further illustrates how the American people have been played by their elected officials who bought into the “global warming” hysteria that spawned the push for wind energy in the first place. And now that the renewable energy tax subsidies are gradually coming to an end in some places, the true financial and economic viability, or lack of wind energy, is on display for the world to see.
“It is all about the tax subsidies,” writes Don Surber of the Charleston Daily Mail. “The blades churn until the money runs out. If an honest history is written about the turn of the 21st century, it will include a large, harsh chapter on how fears about global warming were overplayed for profit by corporations.”
SOURCE
That quote deserves a permanent place in the right-hand column with champagne bottles and Persil.
“and being the objective impartial (ho ho) BBC that we are, there is an expectation in some quarters that we will every now and then let them say something. ”
An admittance from within the Beeb is anything but impartial, ho-ho indeed.
WattsUpWithThat has of course been following ClimateGate II – and has made some specific comments in various updates to the main post on how close the BBC staff are to the Warmists. There is no point in just perverting science – you have to broadcast the perversions, which the BBC does with gusto.
WUWT has made a specific post about Kirby – he really is that bad !
When did the BBC ever link to WattsUpWithThat ? – it is by far the busiest website in the whole world on climate issues.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/24/bbcs-kirby-admission-to-phil-jones-on-impartiality/
Comments to the post includes video of Kirby stating his total mission – to block any criticism of Warmism.
(If you visit WUWT – please try to add to the comments from this side of the pond, emphasising that we are forced to pay for the BBC’s propaganda. And ? mention it is part of a whole series of issues on which the BBC shows serious bias)