In February 1963 Ridley Scott was named in the title credits as “Designer” for a BBC television Tonight programme about the severe winter of 1963.
He went on to famously direct science fiction ‘horror’ films Alien and Blade Runner and recently Prometheus.
The BBC likewise, it might be said, has taken a similar path, producing climate ‘horror’ films based more on science fiction than fact.
The BBC don’t miss a trick. Their ‘Spring Watch’ programme is highly successful with high audience ratings. They have expanded the franchise to include ‘Autumn Watch’ and ‘Winter Watch’.
All probably guaranteed a wide and credulous audience of nature lovers who are easily ‘persuaded’ or ‘nudged’ along a certain path …because of course they ‘care’ about the wildlife….so any suggestion that something is harming the wildlife, the BBC hopes, will spur them into action to provide a remedy.
And if that harm is ‘climate change’….
The most recent ‘Winter Watch’ was a curious piece that for a long time had me perplexed. It consisted of the above mentioned BBC film of the 1963 winter which was one of the severest for decades.
The BBC these days always has an agenda in such programmes….so what was the purpose of this particular Winter Watch?
It could just be a fascinating piece of historical film…it certainly was that.
It could be a subversive thumbing of the nose at Roger Harrabin…after all this was an ‘extreme weather event’ happening in 1963.….long before the scientifically accepted consensus that global warming was only affected by man made causes from the 1970’s onwards.
It could be a cunning ploy to scare the hell out of us with tales of food shortages, power failures and half the bird population of Britain dieing in the cold and blaming it all on climate change and extreme events…..and by inference suggest this is what is coming if you don’t start to reform your behaviour.
Any guesses which one it turned out to be?
Here’s a clue…presenter Chris Packham’s parting words….
‘What an extraordinary story of how we and our wildlife lived through the hardest winter in the last two centuries.
Will it happen again?
Well….given that we’re experiencing more and more extreme weather events which scientists are putting down to global climate change I wouldn’t be at all surprised!’
First…1683-84 is acknowledged as the coldest and harshest winter on record long before the ‘invention’ of ‘man made CO2’.…secondly are we experiencing ‘more and more extreme weather events’?
Thirdly is any of that related to global warming?…and fourthly is global warming related to anything mankind does? And fifthly is it specifically CO2 that is the main culprit? Oh and sixthly….has global warming stopped completely, slowed, or merely plateaued?
It might also be useful to remember this :
1955: Britain’s big freeze Deep snow and freezing temperatures continue across Britain leaving many parts of the country cut off from essential supplies.
Temperatures have fallen below 28 degrees Fahrenheit (minus three degrees centigrade) – four degrees below freezing and the lowest for 30 years.
Or of course the winter of 1947.
It does look as if the BBC are plucking any old statistic out of the air and claiming it as extreme and unprecedented when a cursory look at the records show it to be anything but. So called extreme events have happened frequently over centuries whether flooding, drought or freezing cold.
Hundreds of people living on the east coast of Britain have died in some of the worst storms ever recorded.
I can only imagine that there is a plan within the BBC that links all its programmes into the theme of the day. It maybe Islam, homosexuality, or climate….but it is apparent that programmes from all genres…drama, science, comedy and children’s, are used to promote the current fashionable thinking and to slip the ideas subliminally into our little heads.
They bombard us with these ideas…no longer bothering with the ‘science’ but presenting them as if the ‘science’ is settled…all the viewer has to do is accept that and look to the BBC et al for the remedy.
You now know something is wrong, you know the cause, all that is needed is a plan of action. And it undoubtedly will include wind turbines.
This was a blatantly dishonest and misleading piece of climate propaganda worthy of any production by Al Gore…..all the more devious because of the particular audience it targeted.
BBC nature programmes, perhaps ironically, have become the new ‘Top Gear’ of the BBC’s output…….where Top Gear used to be about boot space, reliability and economy it has evolved into an entertaining cartoon of itself dealing in acceleration, speed and handling of outrageously expensive supercars.
The BBC nature programmes seem to have similarly evolved now more intent on bringing us devastation, disaster and extreme weather than in looking at the feeding habits of the water vole.
Perhaps we could have less politics and more water vole.
After all…..CO2 exists in the Earth’s atmosphere as a trace gas at a concentration of 0.039 per cent by volume.
…..man produces less than 5% of the world’s total CO2 output, and of that Britain produces less than 2%….or put another way, Britain produces just 0.1% of the world’s total CO2 output…man made and natural combined….Iran produces more CO2 than us (or did before the sanctions kicked in).
And yet we need to close down all our industry and despoil the countryside with ever more expensive wind turbines that don’t work anywhere nearly as efficiently or with the constancy of a regular power station tipping more and more people into fuel poverty as the rich land owners get even richer raking in the government subsidies so generously provided to persuade them of the benefits of the wind turbine.
The BBC needs to stop the propaganda and start looking at the science, and listen to all those who have something to say not just those with enormous vested interests whether ego, reputation, career credibilty or massive ‘research’ funding.
I DEMAND A “CLIMATE GLOBAL WARMING CHANGE” PROGRAM AND A JUDGE LED INQUIRY 😉
Better off with a Judge Dredd inquiry!
Chris Packham is one of the BBC’s new cadre of useful idiots and is being groomed for much wider exposure on the Beeb; just watch, he will pop up on more and more programs completely outside his area of expertise until he becomes as ubiquitous as Fiona Bruce.
Indeed, Packham is little more than a standard-issue CAGW BBC troll, dutifully willing to spout any manner of climate-related nonsense in order to mug it up before the cameras. The man lacks any real sense of credibility and as his latest comedy turn demonstrates, more often than not his contributions result in unintended mirth. I feel genuinely sorry for serious natural history film-makers who are elbowed aside to give muppets like Packham expensive airtime.
As for the showing of the 1963 documentary (which I did watch) – well, this was clearly intended by the BBC to ‘message’ subliminal reinforcements to their on-going ‘extreme weather = CAGW’ meme (even though, by default, the documentary put paid to any suggestion that the BBC’s favourite ‘common purpose’ cause (CAGW) had anything to do with such a naturally-occurring freak weather event). One wonders if the BBC takes us all for fools? Do they seriously imagine we can’t see right through idiot ploys such as this?
An utterly pathetic (and desperate) attempt to whip up CAGW fears. In other words, the kind of wretched, dishonest behaviour we’ve sadly come to expect from the BBC.
…and Clare Balding…
I saw this and a very odd little show it was. The 1963 documentary had all the feeling of being put together in a hurry back then and had no real historic value. So as Alan says why now ?
Both myself & Mrs1327 have had the feeling of late that the Beeb has been making the snow a far bigger issue than it actually is. To me it looks like a standard enough winter as I remember from the 1980’s i.e not as bad as the 70’s winter snow tended to be. Yet the Beeb is playing it up as extreme weather etc etc. My own feeling is that now the weather is coming out a little warm cycle which has been around since the mid 90s and is now going into a little cold cycle. To me this is nothing special but to the believer in climate change (nee global warming) his is heresy and must be explained away. Hence this rather odd repeat and the useful idiot telling the citizens the correct way to think at the end.
Global Solutions demand Global Problems…
If you’ve already decided what the solution is i.e. Global Governance (non-democratic, dominated by big business, large supra-national entities such as the EU, all under the auspices of the UN), then you need to retrospectively invent a global problem to justify it. It used to be the threat of war; now it’s the threat of so-called Global warming, which also has the added benefit of being a nice little earner for those in power. Windfarms, research grants and eco-taxes all round, anyone?
Hampstead HARRABIN: still apologist for Met Office.
Harrabin is virtually saying now: ‘OK, it’s not global warming, it’s global weird weather’.
Harrabin’s Notes: Isn’t it warm enough?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21066534
‘the BBC are plucking any old statistic out of the air and claiming it as extreme and unprecedented ‘
I was going to preface TBF, but more on a ‘multiple wrongs make a rating, or enhance a narrative’, they are all at it.
The latest data tweaking I’ve noticed is to measure iconic catastrophes in terms of money or casualties.
Thing is, when ‘it was a different’ time, they usually give us today’s money. Oddly inflation doesn’t figure when comparing Krakatoa to Boxing Day tsunamis, especially when it comes to these days there being a few more rich Swedes parked on mangrove-depleted coastlines to nudge the carnage up.
I used to love my monthly National Geographic, but now their science-bereft climate gush pervades almost any topic, I may have to forgo the lush photography to protest the editorial stance.
At least, with them, I can.
You forgot that the focus on CO2 and the high cost of energy and all this bollocks kills 25,000 people a year in Britain – OAP’s mostly, dying from cold because they can’t afford heating. This happens every year, and we call ourselves a civilised, caring society!!
The Hale Magnetic Cycle is a climate oscillation or long scale weather event that lasts four solar cycles or an average of 44 years but does not effect long term climate change as the effect evens out over four solar cycles. This is caused by the Suns magnetic polarity changing every two solar cycles allowing an increase and decrease of cosmic rays as the Earths magnetic poles line up with the Galactic magnetic field. A positive north pole of the Sun leads to an open heliosphere where cosmic rays reach the Earth more easily. This oscillation causes the Northern hemisphere weather to alternate between a cooling phase and a warming phase every two Solar cycles, especially during low solar activity, the current cooling phase started 5 years ago as did the 11 year thermal lag, but lags mean that the Global Cooling towards a mini-ice age is not due to be noticeable until the Winter of 2018-2019 at the earliest.
I started asking questions why when the BBC cancelled ‘A Question of Sport’ and replaced it with a 30 minute programme on the current weather!