Harrabin admitted he was a climate change campaigner:
I have spent much of the last two decades of my journalistic life warning about the potential dangers of climate change.
…bearing in mind his personal beliefs you can only admire his self control and determination to downplay his excitement at this from a few years back:
The business of going green
A small but influential group of CEOs are stepping up to face the climate change challenge. Roger Harrabin reports
It was a story many environmental activists could only have dreamed about a few years ago: top business leaders worry about climate change at World Economic Forum.
So what brought about this turn of events? The hardening of climate science was a factor, like the increasing acceptance of climate as an economic risk. But this revolution did not just happen? the CEOs have been led by a few key individuals whose names may one day be written in the annals of climate policy (if the mainstream scientists are proved right).
The green bandwagon
Thanks to the climate of opinion informed by leaders like these, the green bandwagon is rolling – Marks & Spencer and Tesco have amazed environmentalists by promising to join HSBC Bank in the carbon neutral club.
The ‘annals of climate policy’ eh….Harrabin will be up there with them…alongside his mate at the CMEP, climate activist Dr Joe Smith…
For over a decade (1996 – present) I have designed and facilitated strategic level seminars aimed at improving coverage of complex environment and development issues, working with the BBC and other partners. This work has been devised and implemented in partnership with the BBC’s Environment Analyst Roger Harrabin….In the tradition of action research my findings are feeding directly back into decision-making within media and related organisations.
In other words he pumped out climate change propaganda….essentially Harrabin and Smith were trying to work out how to force a sceptical public to believe in climate change….’the role of broadcast news media decisionmakers in shaping public understanding and debate of climate change risks. ‘
But let’s not forget all the close contacts Harrabin has with the University of East Anglia…and the Tyndall Centre:
BBC’s Mr Climate Change and £15,000 grants from university rocked by global warning scandal
Did anyone hear Stott vs. Houghton on Today, radio 4 this morning? Woeful stuff really. This is one reason why Tyndall is sponsoring the Cambridge Media/Environment Programme to starve this type of reporting at source
Makes you ask what note came with the money?
Seemed to have an effect though……
“The seminars have been publicly credited with catalysing significant changes in the tone and content of BBC outputs across platforms and with leading directly to specific and major innovations in programming,” – Dr Joe Smith
“It has had a major impact on the willingness of the BBC to raise these issues for discussion. Joe Smith and I are now wondering whether we can help other journalists to perform a similar role in countries round the world” – Roger Harrabin
‘Following their lead [Harrabin and Smith’s] has meant the whole thrust and tone of BBC reporting has been that the science is settled, and that there is no need for debate,’ one journalist said. ‘If you disagree, you’re branded a loony.’
Veteran Hampstead Harrabin is, and has been an explicit political campaigner of about 30 years standing; and his politics colour everything he writes as a Beeboid.
Harrabin’s activities exemplify BBC bias.
The BBC justifies its actions because of the ‘overwhelming consensus’ of scientists.
How this consensus was measured nobody has ever explained, but it’s a tricky one as there are something like 5 million research scientists in the world.
In fact, you might begin to think it’s just another Warmist mantra (and you’d be right).
Not that a consensus validates a scientific theory anyway. As the Royal Society motto says: ‘Nullius in verba’ – or, loosely translated, ‘on the word of no-one’. So the views of just one dissenting scientist should be heard as they could turn a ‘consensus’ on its head, in theory. Not that The Royal Society operates in any way like that now; Sir Paul Nurse, its president, acts just like any other Warmist (he too reckons ‘the science is settled’) and prefers insult to debate – witness his insinuation that The Global Warming Policy Foundation is funded by big oil when asked by Nigel Lawson to debate ‘climate change’ with his GWPF colleagues (the ‘debate’ did go ahead, but – at Nurse’s insistence – under Chatham House Rules, so no members of the press could be present and the outcome could not be published).
What is for certain is there is a consensus amongst the establishment in this country. Somebody – and we’re probably looking at a senior political leader – needs to break free and take a stand as has happened in some other countries. The current situation is not only bad for science, it also has more than a whiff of totalitarianism about it.