Ok – the weekend beckons and time for a new one of these Open Threads for you to complete. I wrote something very similar one week ago and then watched the horrific events unfold in Paris. One week on, the BBC have reverted to the hateful but predictable mantra that Islam is the victim and that we can only defeat it by ..doing nothing. Anyway, the floor is yours….

Man dies in male prison.

Sad to hear, suicide always is, but the BBC chooses this headline for another reason.

A transgender woman who told her friends she would kill herself if she was sent to a male prison has been found dead in jail. Vicky Thompson, 21, was being held at Armley, Leeds, where she was pronounced dead on Friday. Friends of Thompson, who was born male but had identified as female since her mid-teens, said she had asked to be sent to a female prison.

Well for starters,  he could “identify” as a Martian if he wanted, but he was biologically a male. The BBC is to the fore in suggesting that just because someone “identifies” as something then they ARE it! I recall taking part in a BBC discussion about the ludicrous claims from Rachel Dolezal that she “identified” as being Black, when  she was white. I felt great hostility for pointing out the simple truth that it doesn’t matter she she thinks, it only matters what she IS. Same in this case. The prison authorities are not to blame.

I think many readers of this site may agree with me that the BBC Question Time that was broadcast a few days AFTER 9/11 was perhaps one of the most shameful examples ever of BBC bias. As what remained of the bodies were still lying in the ruins of the Twin Towers, the howls of anger AGAINST America from the BBC “selected” audience virtually reduced that US ambassador to Britain, who was on the panel, to tears.

Well, I watched Question Time last night, and was disgusted with the Panel and the vile audience. Given that it was once more from Londonistan, Islamic State were assured an easy ride and so it proved. There seemed to be a consensus that Assad, NOT Islamic State, was the pressing problem. So insisted a lady wearing a muslim veil in the audience. Mehdi Hasan’s dissembling was met with roaring applause, and Anna Soubry was anaemic at best. There was no voice that strongly called Islamic State for the murdering Islamic killers they are. There were NUMEROUS voices telling us that Muslims suffer the most after these events. Incredible stuff from the BBC.

The ONLY thing that cheered was up was the first one and half minutes of THIS WEEK and Andrew Neil’s bravura performance. Had he said it on Question Time, I am sure it would have been met with…silence.

Antarctic ice is increasing, which, as with the ‘pause’, is a bit of a problem for the BBC’s climate alarmists. Their solution to the ‘pause’ was to ignore the fact that no one has explained what has caused the pause and instead have chosen to claim that it is definitely caused by the ocean suddenly absorbing more heat at a faster rate than it has ever done before….why it should suddenly do this is left unexplained….as is the 30 plus other reasons given by the ‘consensus’ scientists for the pause.  The ‘ocean heat sink’ theory is one that of course fits neatly into Harrabin’s own private narrative about climate change.

In a similar vein the BBC pretty much ignores the ice growth in the Antarctic, or claims it is, naturally, due to climate change, global warming.

Not only does the BBC ignore the ice growth it in fact, somewhat dishonestly, claims that the Antarctic is in fact disappearing fast and will contribute to a large rise in sea levels.

This article by the BBC’s Jonathan Amos is a master class is deception and misdirection…..Big Antarctic ice melt scenarios ‘not plausible’

We are told that ‘Scientists say the contribution of a melting Antarctica to sea-level rise this century will be significant and challenging, but that some nightmare scenarios are just not realistic.’

What?!!  The BBC playing down climate change!  Clever tactic of course, it makes the BBC look more credible and the following narrative they peddle more believable….a narrative which is the same old same old just more carefully shaped to sound less alarmist whilst still trying desperately to alarm the reader.

Amos slots in a lot of phrases intended to lend an air of authority and credibility to his tale…..

‘The latest work, which appears in the journal Nature, was led by Catherine Ritz from the Université Grenoble Alpes, France, and Tamsin Edwards, from the Open University, UK.

It incorporates a lot of real-world physics – knowledge about the shape of the continent’s bedrock and how the ice moves over it.

It is also strongly anchored by the satellite observations that are tracking changes on the continent today.

“With our model we have done some 3,000 simulations,” explained Dr Edwards

Yes, 3,000 simulations….all with the same inputs, the same computer programmes and the same mindset….rubbish in, rubbish out.

Liked this….downplaying the possible sea-level rise at the beginning of the piece…’The most likely outcome is an input of about 10cm to global waters by 2100.  But the prospect of a 30cm-or-more contribution – claimed by some previous research – has just a one-in-20 chance.’….only to claim this was a likely scenario at the end….‘”Using the very best satellite measurements as a benchmark, Ritz and colleagues show that there is an outside chance that Antarctica could contribute 30cm to sea levels over the next century – substantially more than was anticipated at the time of the last IPCC report. “So although extreme ice losses are an unlikely prospect, there is no reason to be complacent about the impacts of climate change on our lifestyles,” he told BBC News.’

That ‘outside chance’ is given a lot of prominence by Amos for some reason…..Harrabin has taught him well.

Just more dodgy climate ‘science’ from the BBC.

Beyond satire…

“Lenny Henry talks to black British film director Isaac Julien about his work as an out-gay film-maker who has from the beginning of his career confronted issues of discrimination, police brutality, and homophobia within the African Caribbean community”

Yup. That bad.

Time for a new one of these and this is where you detail that abominable bias,

Roger Harrabin has spun a few comments by professor Richard Tol into a huge confection of pro-climate change pap to sugarcoat the usual bitter pill that Harrabin tries to ram down our throats on climate.

Harrabin starts with this rather dramatic headline…Society ‘to be hit by climate change’ 

What he is less inclined to emphasise is that what Tol is talking about are the economic effects of climate change and that they are relatively minor… Harrabin dodges Tol’s main conclusion that those effects will be far less serious than climate alarmists like to predict and that climate change is not the most pressing danger for the world…..’Statements that climate change is the biggest (environmental) problem of humankind are unfounded: We can readily think of bigger problems.’

Here is Tol’s latest conclusion which is not reflected at all by Harrabin’s sexed up headline…

‘Climate change will probably have a limited impact on the economy and human welfare in the 21st century.’

This is the ‘dramatic’ effect of climate change up to 2.5 degrees…

‘A global warming of 2.5ºC would make the average person feels as if she had lost 1.3% of her income. (1.3% is the average of the 11 estimates at 2.5ºC.)’

1.3% of your income?  You wouldn’t even notice….especially as by the time 2.5 degrees is reached your income will have increased by far more than 1.3%

Conclusion

In sum, breaking the 2ºC target is not a disaster. The most serious impacts are symptoms of poverty rather than climate change. Other impacts are unlikely to have a substantial effect on human welfare.

Interesting that Harrabin likes to use the word ‘Contrarian’ to describe climate sceptics…a word which suggests irrational, stubborn disbelief rather than a critique based upon genuine reason and science….Harrabin once again is trying to discredit and insult the sceptics.

Harrabin’s article, based upon his ‘Changing Climate’ programme is as dodgy, if not more so than that programme.

He sets up sceptic, Matt Ridley, up for a fall and places him in opposition to Tol…..now that is highly dishonest because Ridley bases his comments on the science of Tol…something Harrabin doesn’t mention in this article (but admits in this interview with Tol on a site run by Harrabin’s old mate and climate activist, Dr Joe Smith, from the propagandist CMEP which he and Harrabin used to manipulate the BBC’s climate programming via their infamous seminars……RH ‘I think he references you in order to make that conclusion.‘)

Here is Harrabin’s spin…

‘Human societies will soon start to experience adverse effects from manmade climate change, a prominent economist has warned. Prof Richard Tol predicts the downsides of warming will outweigh the advantages with a global warming of 1.1C – which has nearly been reached already. Prof Tol is regarded by many campaigners as a climate “sceptic”.  He has previously highlighted the positive effects of CO2 in fertilising crops and forests.  His work is widely cited by climate contrarians.’

Note how he tries to portray Tol as in the ‘contrarian’ camp….he does this in order to suggest that Tol has ‘seen the light’ and come into the climate change fold…when in fact he has always been a believer.

Then we get to what Ridley says…

‘Matt Ridley, the influential Conservative science writer, said he believed the world would probably benefit from a temperature rise of up to 2C.

“I think we probably will see 1.5 degrees of warming. The point is most people think 2C is when it turns catastrophic. That’s not right. The literature is very clear; 2C is when we start to get harm. Up until then we get benefit,” he said.’

Harrabin doesn’t tell us that Ridley is quoting Tol…curiously however he then tells us that Ridley is quoting another scientist and goes on to rubbish Ridley…

‘On fertilisation Matt Ridley refers to unpublished work by Professor Ranga Myneni from Boston University.

But he told BBC News Lord Ridley had accurately quoted his research on the impacts of current CO2 levels, but was unduly complacent about future warming.

“I am worried about how this work is being interpreted, by Lord Ridley.’

Ridley ‘interpreted’ that work like this…he also quoted another scientist to back him up, not mentioned by Harrabin…

‘As Dr Ranga Myneni of Boston University has documented, using three decades of satellite data, 31 per cent of the global vegetated area of the planet has become greener and just 3 per cent has become less green. This translates into a 14 per cent increase in productivity of ecosystems and has been observed in all vegetation types.

Dr Randall Donohue and colleagues of the CSIRO Land and Water department in Australia also analysed satellite data and found greening to be clearly attributable in part to the carbon dioxide fertilisation effect.’

Why does Harrabin not tell the reader that Ridley is quoting Tol?  Highly dishonest of Harrabin.

But what did Tol himself say originally?…

In 2009 he said this…

‘In short, even though total economic effects of 1–2°C warming may be positive, incremental impacts beyond that level are likely to be negative.’

Then in may this year, 2015, he said this….

‘Since 2009, however, more estimates of the economic impact of climate change have been published. These new results do affect the fitted trend, but not in the way suggested by Mr Ward. The new trend shows positive impacts for warming up to about two degrees global warming, just like the old trend did. The new trend, however, shows markedly less negative impacts for more profound warming than did the old trend. In other words, in the last five years, we have become less pessimistic about the impacts of climate change.’

Pretty clear…up to 2 degrees we still get benefits economically from climate change..the benefits reduce after 1.1 degrees but are still positive.

This is what Ridley said in 2013...the basis for Harrabin’s contempt…

‘There are many likely effects of climate change: positive and negative, economic and ecological, humanitarian and financial. And if you aggregate them all, the overall effect is positive today — and likely to stay positive until around 2080. That was the conclusion of Professor Richard Tol of Sussex University after he reviewed 14 different studies of the effects of future climate trends.

To be precise, Prof Tol calculated that climate change would be beneficial up to 2.2˚C of warming from 2009 (when he wrote his paper).

Now Prof Tol has a new paper, published as a chapter in a new book, called How Much have Global Problems Cost the World?, which is edited by Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, and was reviewed by a group of leading economists. In this paper he casts his gaze backwards to the last century. He concludes that climate change did indeed raise human and planetary welfare during the 20th century.’

Just how certain is Tol about the negative aspects of climate change?….‘The uncertainty is rather large, however. Taking the confidence interval at face value, the impact of climate change does not significantly deviate from zero until 3.5°C warming…At 3.0ºC of warming, impacts are negative and deteriorating, and its uncertainty is widening. It is likely that the world will warm beyond 3.0ºC. Yet, beyond that point, there are few estimates only. Instead, there is extrapolation and speculation.’

Let’s just see that again….’the impact of climate change does not significantly deviate from zero until 3.5°C warming‘….no significantly negative effects until we get to 3.5 degrees?

Here is Tol recently defending his 2 degrees conclusion….

The BBC has surprised us all…….a story about a Muslim who isn’t a hero…The myth of Zouheir, a ‘hero Muslim security guard’ in Paris

The BBC tells us that this is ‘A compelling story about a heroic Muslim security guard stopping a suicide bomber from entering the Stade de France on Friday, saving perhaps hundreds of lives, is making the rounds on social media. But it’s not true.’

How do they know it’s not true?…

‘The rumour sprang from a gripping account of the events outside the stadium which was published by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. The story quoted a security guard who asked to only be identified by his first name, Zouheir. The man described how one of the suicide attackers had a ticket to the match between France and Germany, but was turned away from the gates when guards found his explosive vest. The man backed away from security guards and detonated the explosives.

Zouheir gave a detailed account of events at the stadium, statements that were confirmed to the Wall Street Journal reporters by a police officer. But although the story relied on his account, it wasn’t actually him who turned away the bomber – a detail that was confirmed to BBC Trending by Journal reporter Joshua Robinson.‘

Hmmm….‘a detail confirmed to BBC Trending’……the BBC gives the impression that the WSJ story was misleading and it was ony the BBC’s intrepid investigative journalism that uncovered the truth about that ‘detail’.  However, that’s not true…the original WSJ story quite clearly stated that the security guard was not stationed at the bomber’s location and was merely relaying what the guards who were there had told him…

‘PARIS—At least one of the attackers outside France’s national soccer stadium had a ticket to the game and attempted to enter the 80,000-person venue, according to a Stade de France security guard who was on duty and French police.

The guard—who asked to be identified only by his first name, Zouheir—said the attacker was discovered wearing an explosives vest when he was frisked at the entrance to the stadium about 15 minutes into the game. France was playing an exhibition against Germany inside.

While attempting to back away from security, Zouheir said, the attacker detonated the vest, which was loaded with explosives and bolts, according to Paris prosecutor François Molins. Zouheir, who was stationed by the players’ tunnel, said he was briefed on the sequence by the security frisking team at the gate.’

Kind of suspect the BBC missed the ‘trending’ story about Zouheir and would have run it if they had known of it….now,  scrambling for a story try to take the professional high ground, they criticise their fellow journalists in the Press for their mistake.  The only disappointment must be that the hated Daily Mail got the story right…

‘The terrorist walked away from the guard after he was frisked and detonated his vest moments later.  Investigators admitted that all of the terrorists wore identical explosive vests. The Wall Street Journal spoke to one of the security team on duty at the stadium named only as Zouheir.  He said that one of his colleagues turned the terrorist away after frisking the suspect, who is believed to have had a match ticket. ‘

The story ran on Sunday originally so why does BBC Trending only pick up on it today (Bit ironic for a news service supposed to be ‘on trend’)….The BBC’s Mike Wending Tweets to the WSJ journo…..

  mike wendling ‏@mwendling 8h8 hours ago

@landauro @JoshRobinson23 just to be clear, he wasn’t the one who stopped the bomber at SdF, right? People jumping to conclusions…

@mwendling He was not. He was a source on the story that we later stood up with confirmation from a police source.

Liked this exchange…

Curious how a ‘hero’ has to be ‘Muslim’ but a terrorist most definitely is not!

Roger Harrabin.  What to make of him?  Liar, fraud, dishonest, untrustworthy, propagandist, in the pay of the climate lobby?  You decide.

Harrabin has just broadcast the first of his alarmist tracts on climate change designed to soften the listener up to accept, if not demand, action on climate change from politicians at the Paris climate talks.  The tone of the programme was every bit as insidious, malignant and dishonest as you might have expected from the BBC’s climate propagandist.

First, perhaps he reads this site….I have consistently reminded people that Harrabin is a climate change campaigner and not a science journalist, and definitely not a scientist….The most obvious evidence to use is what comes out of his own mouth…

‘I have spent much of the last two decades of my journalistic life warning about the potential dangers of climate change’

However today he changed that to…

‘A topic I have reported on for more than 1/4 of a century’

Like to think we have at least a small effect on his reporting…even if it is only to hide his own propensity for pro-climate change propaganda.

Interesting that the first programme was about ‘the science’…a subject that Harrabin and his climate lobby chums previously decided was settled and that the only question was how we should deal with the consequences of climate change.  So why the change, why does he now want to look at the science?  Well, he doesn’t.  There was no evidence whatsoever put forward to prove climate change was man-made…what we got was a definite statement from Harrabin at the end that ‘the world is warming and it is largely driven by man’.

Harrabin started with a cheap shot by trying to paint sceptics as idiots, uneducated, ill-informed and religious, right-wing nutters having selected, as an example of a ‘denier’, a US Republican who didn’t believe in ‘Evolution’…thus proving her intellectually incapable of understanding the science….the science that Harrabin himself studiously avoids.  Are there any climate alarmists who don’t believe in Evolution?  Harrabin didn’t tell us, picking his targets carefully to bolster his own narrative.  Could have chosen the current Pope of course…pretty certain he believes in God’s creationism…

Pope Francis has given the climate movement just what it needed — faith

What a nutter…obviously can’t believe a word he says….jut so lacking in credibility.

Then again belief in man-made climate change does seem to be more about ‘faith’ that fact.

Interesting that Harrabin feels able to use the words ‘denier’ and ‘denial’ throughout the piece in relation to sceptics, and the phrase ‘Lukewarmers’ uttered with a sneering condescension….loves the term ‘mainstream scientists’ though….uses it like a weapon or Kryptonite, perhaps even Holy Water, to vanquish all foes.

We were supposed to learn about the ‘science’ of climate change from wine and the effects of a changing climate upon it…but of course all that tells us is that the climate is changing, at least short term.  What it doesn’t tell us is why and by who or what.

Harrabin had on Matt Ridley who is in the moderately sceptical camp…but only to dismiss every thing he said….Harrabin let him speak and then wheeled in the ‘mainstream scientists’ to dismiss him out of hand….one told us Ridley was ‘a good story teller’….another suggested that his assertion that 1.5 degrees was a possible limit to warming was not at all viable (despite 1.5 degrees being in the IPCC’s own range of predictions)…he then came up with his own ‘viable’ possibility…of 6 degrees.

Harrabin denied there was a ‘pause’ in warming insisting that the heat had vanished into the oceans….question…why now all of a sudden, why not before 1998 then?  What suddenly made the oceans start absorbing all that heat…and where is the increase in water vapour that that would produce?…the BBC tells us there is no discernable increase….water vapour being the most effective planet warmer…so why the pause?  Logic suggests that the oceans, if they are warming, are doing so at the same rate as ever, and  that the ‘pause’ must be caused by something else other than heat absorbtion into the oceans.

Harrabin moans that the IPCC’s remit wasn’t to predict short term climate…and so they missed the pause….so how can they attribute current warming, short term, to any cause and claim that it as a long term scenario?

Harrabin contrarily then told us that the planet is subject to natural, short term fluctuations (unpredictable presumably?) that meant scientists missed the pause….how then can he attribute the pause to heat being ‘hidden’ by ocean warming if the ‘pause’ is the result of natural fluctuations such as solar energy increases?

He also dismisses the rise in ice in the Antarctic as the result of global warming producing more snow.  Neat how it all works out.

Harrabin declares we will definitely be getting 2 degrees plus warming and, cue the sad music, the poor will be suffering from extreme weather, they already are apparently…despite there not being an increase in extreme weather.  Don’t let the facts spoil a good story Roger.

Harrabin is quite happy to accept the ‘most scary scenarios’ or at least push them as a possibility despite there being no evidence.

I find Harrabin entirely untrustworthy and unconvincing.  This wasn’t about the science, it wasn’t journalism, it was a pro-climate lobby message.  Nothing new then from him.

BBC’s Six-Year Cover-Up Of Secret ‘Green Propaganda’ Training For Top Executives

• Date: 12/01/14
• David Rose, Mail on Sunday

The BBC has spent tens of thousands of pounds over six years trying to keep secret an extraordinary ‘eco’ conference which has shaped its coverage of global warming,  The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The controversial seminar was run by a body set up by the BBC’s own environment analyst Roger Harrabin and funded via a £67,000 grant from the then Labour government, which hoped to see its ‘line’ on climate change and other Third World issues promoted in BBC reporting.

At the event, in 2006, green activists and scientists – one of whom believes climate change is a bigger danger than global nuclear war  – lectured 28 of the Corporation’s most senior executives.