Richard Black attracts a lot of attention in these pages. Biased BBC’s Alan notes…
“You have probably heard that the science is settled, that the debate is over….because the consensus is that AGW is real. However that may not be the case…it seems the consensus is only of importance when it ostensibly backs up your own case…or in this case, Richard Black’s case.
As the remorseless tide of public opinion and mounting evidence says the science is far from settled Black has decided that the consensus is irrelevant…what counts is the truth:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16906738
A couple of years back, at one of the UNFCCC meetings in Bonn, I had a long chat with Viscount Monckton. As a scholar of Classics, he was able to detail with Classical derivation the reasons why consensus matters far less than simply being right. And he is surely correct; after all, in more recent times, Galileo, Darwin, Einstein and Hawking are among those whose work broke with the consensus, yet turned out to be correct. But if the presence of a consensus is irrelevant, so, logically, is its absence; which makes the continued use by sceptics’ groups of the “consensus is cracking” meme a bit mystifying.’
So you see when the consensus is no longer a consensus….it no longer matters what the numbers say.
So you see the BBC’s refusal to allow sceptics a fair hearing based on numbers of scientists who oppose them is, according to Black, wrong….what matters is what is right….so before it seems that if enough people claimed something was true the BBC science journalists would print the legend as fact!
Black is very definitely on the defensive now….he firstly reduced the amount of space for comments on his blog…presumably because that makes it so much harder to rebut his fallacious claims, and now he has retreated behind Twitter from where you have to track down his blog.
I guess he doesn’t really want to engage with the public because the public were having great fun shooting ‘fish in a barrel’…namely his journalism, so called.
Melanie Phillips has a very interesting article with some recent updates on AGW (or lack of) developments.
The compelling case against Ed Davey
Sever not found?
Try this one
I think Black is even more irrelavent now than he was before. No one listens to him. I expect the only people who read what he says are B-BBC bloggers.
Black seems to have been deserted by his guru The Harrabin and he is getting to be a very small voice within the debate. Just as soon as the money runs out on AGW funding (and it will), Black will be by himself, with nothing to say because there will be no one left to dictate his articles to him. Sad, but never mind.
The government currently backs the AGW theory.
The BBC is totally dependent on the government for its income. That alone makes the BBC’s opinion on the matter utterly untrustworthy.
A government funded news service, backed by the criminal law for its funding, is never going to be a credible source of news on anything government related, or anything else for that matter.
Quite true – so Boedens boast that the purpose of journalism is to “hold power to account” does not work here because they are siding with government. Even if we use the accepted definition of journalism they also fail because they are not reporting facts but giving opinions. They are definately not unbiased when it comes to AGW. I think the conclusion can only be that they are not carrying out their duties as stipulated in their Charter.
“The Agreement accompanying the BBC Charter specifies that we should do all we can “to ensure that controversial subjects are treated with due accuracy and impartiality”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/page/guidelines-editorial-values-charter/
So Boaden wants to “hold power to account”, eh? Like Greg Dyke’s nepotistic power?As soon as he was made chancellor of York University, Dyke gave three of his old lefty pals honorary degrees – Melvyn Bragg, Trevor Phillips, and yes, Helen Boaden. He didn’t nominate anyone else.
http://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2004/honorary-grads/
“…So Boaden wants to “hold power to account”, eh?”
No, not really. But as a meaningless phrase it looked quite good on the front page of some seminar cover. The very idea that the supine, grovelling, unprincipled BBC should hold anyone ‘to account’ is laughable. These intellectual cowards wouldn’t know truth and ‘impartiality’ if it were explained to them as if they were an infant.
Mr Black, for his unedifying part, may continue to ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ his interminable tracts on behalf of his pro-AGW congregation (dwindling as it is) until such time as he becomes wholly irrelevant and actually a bit of an embarassment, even to the blinkered morons writing the current narrative. For the time being, his resolutely unciritical missives provide, if nothing else, some light relief for the rest of us.
The BBC will cling to it’s pro-AGW mantra for as long as it reasonably can; stuck in the afterglow of thirteen years of NuLabour largess, the triumph of gross Statism, an era of unbridled public funding when it seemed the money might flow forever unchecked, it simply doesn’t wish to abandon it’s sentimental loyalty to a cause it saw as complimentary to it’s own: squeezing the public purse dry in the name of some ‘higher purpose’, some lofty idealistic goal.
Now, as the false edifice of AGW begins to shatter and crumble beneath the weight of its own duplicity, the Corporation is unable to grasp the true reality, remaining trapped, rabbit-like, in the headlights. Still waving at a parade long since passed-by, still erroneously pumping out the same propaganda in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
We should perhaps avert our gaze. It’s not nice to stare at someone so obviously in great distress.
‘fail because they are not reporting facts but giving opinions’
ACROSS.THE. BOARD.
And the oversight/complaint system is a travesty.
‘sceptics’ groups of the “consensus is cracking” mime a bit mystifying.’
LOL so just out of interest
1 who are these ‘groups’ ?
As all I see is individuals from many different fields and country’s who’s only connection is their desire for facts if the best he can do is the terrifying GWPF and their half a million quid budget then he should be slapped !.
2 can any one find me these repeated ref’s to ‘cracking’ by evil ‘D’ worders maybe he misspelt it he means ‘fracking ‘ ?
3 which side came up with the phrase ‘consensus’ and the now famous joke of the ‘97%’?
As he seems to be implying that it is only evil ‘D’ worders that rely on that lie Hey Black make a sentence out of the following =
Man you straw halfwitted making are argument Bell a you end!
Thinking about the BBCs opinion about a consensus on Climate Change and an episode of Blackadder.
You could produce a consensus by killing everyone in the world that disagrees with you.
A message from Richard
“Ah, well, perhaps the globe isn’t warming quite as much or as quickly as we thought (and told you) – but it did warm a bit, somewhere, some time. So it’s not warming at the moment – but it will, soon, mark my words – the heat is “hiding” at the bottom of the sea. Well, yes, it is cold at the moment, and yes, I grant that there’s a lot of snow about – but there won’t be, soon – it’ll all melt soon enough, because of the warming, which is coming back with a vengeance.
Yes, I know CO2 is a good gas, really, and there’s not that much of it, and even less of it is ours, and it’s good for life BUT the IPCC has said it’s very bad and we must stop producing it – immediately, and the EU is taking our money to make sure that we do, because it is warming the atmosphere in a very dangerous way, we ALL know that – Hansen said so, and my old Mucker (and looky-likey) Mickey Mann backed him up with his hockey stick, and Al Gore – he’s the guru – HE said that we were all doomed, so it must be true. And this consensus thing, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but now, of course, it’s meaningless – we ALL knew that, really, all along…
Shame about Mr. Huhne, though.”
Will this be happening among BBC-greenies soon?
“‘Germany’s George Monbiot’ turns climate sceptic ”
(by James Delingpole)
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100135592/germanys-george-monbiot-turns-climate-sceptic/
I have to applaud the first comment, from Phantomsby:
“For you ze warm is over!”
Priceless.
“Lawson: Abolish DECC”
Fraser Nelson
[Excerpt]:
“Did we need to replace Chris Huhne at all? Nigel Lawson, a former editor of The Spectator (amongst other things), has an intriguing idea in a letter to today’s FT: just break up the Department for Energy and Climate Change. It has done nothing to encourage the development of shale gas, which — as we argue in a leader in tomorrow’s Spectator — could keep Britain in energy for the next 100 years without the need to build another windmill. ”
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/7637228/lawson-abolish-decc.thtml
Lord Lawson gets to the heart of the issue, as ever. Shale gas finds in the UK could dramatically transform our economy, just as finds in the US are already tranforming that nation’s fortunes. The Greens do not want this knowledge made public. They do not want to discuss it. They want to shut down all mention of shale gas and pretend it doesn’t exist, or that if it does, it is a toxic material that will destroy mankind.
Wiser heads may hopefully prevail. Shale gas has the potential to be a transformative catalyst in the UK’s economic future – jobs, cheaper bills, secure domestic energy… these are some of the reasons why the climate alarmists do not want any of this getting into the wider public domain. The BBC is doing it’s bit to shut down shale gas discussion – you’ll find hardly a mention of this staggering new energy source in the BBC’s copious output. It has been decided that this game-changer should be struck off the discussion for fear that Joe Public might put two and two together and rumble the whole sorry lot of them, so instead they stick to the agreed narrative; that of pimping entirely discredited ‘renewables’ which don’t work, are uneconomic and nobody wants.
Thankfully, the economic crisis might actually circumvent all the prevarication and bluff; in the end the lure of this potential bonanza will prove too magnetic and too sensible to resist.
The death of language: “renewables” – peddling false fear of running out of things. The only things we will never run out of are stupidity and hypocrisy. The Greens are living proof of that. We can have cheap abundant energy, but that won’t do for the eco-facists.They want us to fear running out, so they can dictate how we should live. Human ingenuity will always find ways to deal with scarcity, but there is no scarcity in energy supplies, if we choose those which are cheap and abundant over those that are”renewable”.
The other lie is “clean energy” Obama’s recent address kept repeating it like it meant something. Fear of “dirty” energy. I will have gas, coal and nuclear thanks. Let the Greenpeace hypocrites freeze with their clean renewables: do you think Greenpeace or the bBC hypocrites like Black and Harrabin have their heating turned off for the good of the planet? Its cold.
You know the scam is nearing its end when a lefty like Jim Sillars dares write this:
“Climate con will feel a chill wind“
Review of James DELINGPOLE’s new book, ‘Watermelons’
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/884/review_watermelons_by_james_delingpole