As said in my last post this story was not reported on the BBC:

Doha: UK climate finance pledge conceals pro-corporate agenda
By Miriam Ross, 4 December 2012
The World Development Movement has warned that the climate finance the UK government has announced it will provide to developing countries risks putting money meant to help the poor into the hands of multinational companies.

However this one was…one which reveals Harrabin’s own agenda quite well……support for the ‘redistribution’ of money from rich to poor countries based upon his acceptance of man-made global warming and that it is the ‘West’ who are responsible, and therefore ‘guilty’, for imposing that and its consequences upon the poorest nations…who should therefore be ‘compensated’…..
‘Frustration at slow progress of the UN climate talks bubbled over when a spokesman for small island states (AOSIS) rounded on rich nations.
US representative Jonathan Pershing had been discussing plans to compensate poor nations for losses due to damage from climate change.
Mr Jumeau said that there would be no need for talk about compensation if the rich had cut their emissions in previous meetings.
The issue of compensation for climate losses looks set to become a major focus for negotiations at the conference.
“Governments must now also recognize that we are in a “third era” and redress the permanent loss and damage from climate impacts.…..Given historic inaction by developed countries we are heading for the biggest social injustice of our time.” ‘

WUWT has an article ripping into DOHA and its compensation culture:

‘This week, as United Nations luminaries gather in Doha, Qatar, for the 18th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres, the self-described “daughter of a revolutionary,” has presented her goals. The most important is a massive transfer of wealth – $100 billion a year – from soon-to-be formerly rich Europeans and Americans to UN bureaucrats who claim to represent the world’s “developing” nations and Earth’s poorest citizens.…..The gilded Lilliputians have gathered in Doha to strip the giants of their wealth.’

Note Harrabin acknowledges the problems with the word ‘compensation’.…
‘They urge governments to establish a formal mechanism for loss and damage (the word “compensation” is being avoided; some nations, including the US won’t countenance it because of the implication of guilt).’

But he has decided to use it for his own work…..

Climate compensation row at Doha

and continues to do so in his Tweets….
roger harrabin ?@RogerHarrabin
Compensation for #climate damage is crunch issue at #cop18 say NGOs. Liz from @e3g is “hopeful” of a deal. @CANEurope http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20613915 …

roger harrabin ?@RogerHarrabin
Angry islanders demand compensation for #climate damages – but we can’t use the C word. It equals blame. @gregbarkerMP http://bbc.in/VCZPY3

I guess he is fully onboard for that gravy train……

Harrabin has been pushing the notion that British climate action makes us loved by the world (Who says money can’t buy you love?)…..

‘Mr Jumeau, from the Seychelles, went out of his way to praise the UK for its leadership on climate change, especially for its re-stated pledges of increased finance to help poor nations get clean energy – £1.8bn by 2015.’

Here ‘Tallbloke’ questions Harrabin’s easy acceptance of AGW……but check out Harrabin’s answer….

Rog Tallbloke ?@rogtallbloke
@RogerHarrabin @Cartoonsbyjosh If they could prove loss or damage consequent on AGW in court. I doubt a jury would convict co2 these days

roger harrabin ?@RogerHarrabin
@rogtallbloke @Cartoonsbyjosh Not yet.

That’s right ‘Not Yet’…which means even Harrabin admits that the ‘science’ is not ‘settled’…there is no proof that CO2 is linked to rising temperatures.

Josh also questions the ‘proof’…..linking to an article on sea levels rising.…or not…

Josh ?@Cartoonsbyjosh
@RogerHarrabin “We’re now right into the era of loss and damage.” is there any science for that? @rogtallbloke http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/7438683/rising-credulity/ …

Is the sea rising?

The sea is not rising precipitously. I have studied many of the low-lying regions in my 45-year career recording and interpreting sea level data. I have conducted six field trips to the Maldives; I have been to Bangladesh, whose environment minister was claiming that flooding due to climate change threatened to create in her country 20 million ‘ecological refugees’. I have carefully examined the data of ‘drowning’ Tuvalu. And I can report that, while such regions do have problems, they need not fear rising sea levels.
My latest project was a field expedition to India, to the coast of Goa, combining observations with archeological information. Our findings are straightforward: there is no ongoing sea level rise. The sea level there has been stable for the last 50 years or so, after falling some 20cm in around 1960; it was well below the present level in the 18th century and some 50 to 60cm above the present in the 17th century. So it is clear that sea levels rise and fall entirely independently of so-called ‘climate change’.

So any of the trouble attributed to ‘rising sea levels’ must instead be the result of other, local factors and basic misinterpretation. In Bangladesh, for example, increased salinity in the rivers (which has affected drinking water) has in fact been caused by dams in the Ganges, which have decreased the outflow of fresh water.
Even more damaging has been the chopping down of mangrove trees to clear space for shrimp farms. In one area, 19 square miles of mangrove vegetation in 1988 had by 2005 decreased to barely half a square mile. Mangrove forests offer excellent protection against the damage of cyclones and storms, so inevitably their systematic destruction has drastically increased local vulnerability to these problems.
the best-known ‘victim’ of rising sea levels is, without doubt, the Maldives. This myth has been boosted by the opportunism of Mohamed Nasheed, who stars in a new documentary called The Island President. The film’s tagline is ‘To save his country, he has to save our planet’. It is a depressing example of how Hollywood-style melodrama has corrupted climate science. Nasheed has been rehearsing his lines since being elected in 2009. ‘We are drowning, our nation will disappear, we have to relocate the people,’ he repeatedly claims.
If this is what President Nasheed believes, it seems strange that he has authorised the building of many large waterside hotels and 11 new airports. Or could it perhaps be that he wants to take a cut of the $30 billion fund agreed at an accord in Copenhagen for the poorest nations hit by ‘global warming’?
the threat of rising sea levels is an artificial crisis.‘

And all this whilst CO2 rises to record levels

Record high for global carbon emissions

Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are set to rise again in 2012, reaching a record high of 35.6 billion tonnes – according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project, co-led by researchers from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia (UEA).
The 2.6 per cent rise projected for 2012 means global emissions from burning fossil fuel are 58 per cent above 1990 levels, the baseline year for the Kyoto Protocol.
Prof Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and professor at UEA, led the publication of the data. She said: “These latest figures come amidst climate talks in Doha. But with emissions continuing to grow, it’s as if no-one is listening to the entire scientific community.”

The real question that arises is still that of the connection between CO2 and Global Warming….does it really exist or is such a connection merely a political device to force through certain policies?

Here the Tyndall Centre draws a line saying real world emissions are too high to allow the meeting of CO2 reduction and global temperature targets…..

The 2012 rise further opens the gap between real-world emissions and those required to keep global warming below the international target of two degrees.

But are those targets…2 degrees…based on science or politics?

Could there be any other cause of global warming if it is happening to any extent?

Here is another story the BBC missed which shows the power of nature to effect climate…..

The beetles lay their eggs under the bark of pine trees, at the same time injecting a fungus that protects their offspring but kills the trees with the help of the larvae eating their insides. As trees are felled, the cooling effect of their transpiration, similar to human sweating, is also lost. The researchers measured a corresponding rise in summertime temperatures—about one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) over the affected areas, co-author Holly Maness from the University of Toronto told AFP. “The increased surface temperatures we observe are relatively large and may be sufficient to drive further changes in regional climate, such as changes to circulation, cloud cover and precipitation,” she said.

So deforestation…in this case caused by a beetle, caused temperatures to rise by 1 degree….and not just a ‘local’ effect.

In the last 50 years deforestation by man has leapt enormously…coinciding with the rise in global temperatures….and coinciding with the enormous population boom especially in the third world….all those people need to be fed and require both heating and cooking materials……usually trees or coal…..which are burnt….creating …em …CO2.

So if there is to be a simple ‘blame game’ it is easy to point fingers towards the very people who are pointing them at the developed world….and if you are really going down that avenue then of course in the BBC’s world Islam and the Muslims are ultimately to blame…..The Islamic ‘Golden Age of Science’ we are told led to our own industrial revolution….a revolution which is now kept running by copious supplies of ‘black gold’…oil….from mostly Muslim countries.  Case made.  It’s the Muslim’s fault.

So Are the targets really based on science or political expediency?

Climate Change is about politics and money….

Some quotes from Mike Hulme, they’re straight out of the Frankfurt School’s cultural Marxist playbook:

The idea of climate change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identities and projects can form and take shape. We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but to ask what climate change can do for us.
……
Because the idea of climate change is so plastic, it can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve many of our psychological, ethical, and spiritual needs.
…….
We will continue to create and tell new stories about climate change and mobilize them in support of our projects.
…….
These myths transcend the scientific categories of ‘true’ and ‘false’.

And look how those scientists scrabble for the cash…….All too often we are told that it is the ‘sceptics’ who are only being contrary for the money….

roger harrabin ?@RogerHarrabin
Hot air at #cop18. Schellnhuber says #climate change is inarguable. Then accepts Qatar cash for research foundation to prove climate change

and here is well known AGW advocate Alice Bell:

‘I know way too many science communication people who deliberately frame their ideas to have a biomedical theme so they can apply to Wellcome public engagment grants. If Grantham helped put together a climate version, I’m sure many would shift their energies, and that’d probably be a lot more productive in the long run than front page photos of Brian Hoskins occupying an oil rig.‘

She also puts the boot into that old lie about sceptics not being qualified enough to comment on climate…no scientific qualifications…well it seems almost anyone can be a ‘scientist’ if they put they have the right attitude…..

‘This kind of work doesn’t just have to be done scientists either, but other members of the scientific community: educators, public engagement officers, artists, psychologists, sociologists, writers, press officers, storytellers, filmmakers, all sorts. (Yes, these people are part of the scientific community – broadly defined – and many are very skilled too).‘

Let’s take a closer look at one scientific target…to keep gloabl warming under 2 degrees…….

‘Associated Press “reporter” Karl Ritter, for example, said the Doha battle “between the rich and the poor” is over “efforts to reach a deal to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2° C, compared to preindustrial times” ‘

The famous Dr Joe Smith, of CMEP fame, and Harrabin’s close ally, is still heavily backing that target…….

Today (Oct 1 2012) the Guardian publishes a joint letter I signed that states: ‘On current trends, there are around just 50 months left before we cross a critical climate threshold. After that, it will no longer be ‘likely’ that we will stay on the right side of a 2 degree temperature rise’.

There are around 50 months left before we cross a critical climate threshold. After that, it will no longer be “likely” that we will stay on the right side of a 2C temperature rise – a line Britain and the rest of the EU has sworn not to cross. If we don’t do more, it is hard to imagine what incentive poor countries will have to act.
Dr Joe Smith Open University
Here is something he adds:

Many more people describe the huge opportunities for economic recovery and better lives that could come from a great transition to a low-carbon, high well-being economy, but which are currently going begging.

Note that ‘Great Transition’ phrase…..it is a major plank of the NEF’s policies…..
Joe Smith works hand in hand with the New Economic Foundation (NEF) which is also a favourite of the BBC….the NEF being essentially a Marxist propaganda outfit that advocates radical economic and social changes……

‘Nef believes that a Great Transition to a climate-friendly and more equal society can improve life for all. Our work explores how.
The Consumption Explosion
In spite of the global recession, we are still over-consuming and over-polluting. The UK and other rich countries will have to undergo radical lifestyle change if we are to become sustainable.
Getting off the consumer treadmill will be chance for liberation and the discovery of what really matters to us. And with consumption in the rich world reduced, there will more space in the global commons for other people, who don’t yet have enough, to meet their basic needs.
The Great Transition 8 is a new kind of campaign. It began with report called The Great Transition.  We must re-engineer our economies to tackle debt fuelled over-consumption, accelerating climatic instability and volatile energy prices underpinned by the approaching peak in global oil production. It means re-thinking how we bank, generate energy, travel, and grow the food we depend on……growth is not making us happier, it is creating dysfunctional and unequal societies, and if it continues will make large parts of the planet unfit for human habitation.

We need to do things differently, and soon.

But remember that the best things in life are free: there plenty of activities which make life worth living – from flying a kite to talking to your friends – emit little to no greenhouse gas at all. ‘

All pretty much echoing the CRU’s  Mike Hulme who has  a few quotes of his own….. they’re straight out of the Frankfurt School’s cultural Marxist playbook:

The idea of climate change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identities and projects can form and take shape. We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but to ask what climate change can do for us.
……
Because the idea of climate change is so plastic, it can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve many of our psychological, ethical, and spiritual needs.
…….
We will continue to create and tell new stories about climate change and mobilize them in support of our projects.
…….
These myths transcend the scientific categories of ‘true’ and ‘false’.

But just how valid is that 2 degree target?  This research suggests it is a purely political device that has been set to suit vested interests……and not based on science….bare in  mind the author of the thesis fully accepts AGW…..

My research provides a valuable contribution to the climate policy debate by highlighting the weaknesses of a quantitative, target based approach and arguing instead for a participatory response to climate risk.
Policy is locked in to existing strategies because key players have too much invested in the process of targets and treaties to allow different approaches onto the agenda . Such a structural impasse may result in the very real danger of the two degree target merely being the precursor to the introduction of a four degree target. This thesis is an attempt to explain the need for a break from the targets approach to building climate policy.

International climate change policy is predicated on the claim that climate change is a phenomenon with a single, global dangerous limit of two degrees of warming above the pre-industrial average. However, climate science does not provide sufficient empirical evidence to determine such an exact limit.
Public commentaries play an important role in shaping public engagement with an abstract concept such as climate change. This research project examines how public discourses construct the dangerous limits to climate change decision making process.
The historical dimension of my analysis shows that public commentaries have ‘black boxed’ the genesis of the two degree dangerous limit idea. I demonstrate how claims of a consensus amongst elite policy and science actors are central to developing a dangerous limit ideology amongst influential public audiences. The two degree discourse elevates the idea of a single dangerous limit to the status of fact, and in so doing marginalises egalitarian and ecological perspectives.

I conclude that the two degree limit is a construct which makes possible an international environmental regime safe for the interests of elite actors.

I understand the proposing of a two degree limit to be an act of power which is deeply rooted in the project of modernity; the construction of climate change as a phenomenon manageable through quantification in essence assumes climate change is a problem solvable by modernity, rather than a problem of modernity.

Science has increasingly been offered up as a substitute for politics; scientific progress, in offering a speedier, trustier way to improve people’s lives offers the promise of escape from fragile and contestable human judgement . This thesis investigates the extent to which public discourses are attempting, through the reproduction of the two degree dangerous limit idea, to substitute politics with science.

So to sum up….Harrabin supports AGW and consequent ‘compensation’.  He doesn’t report that such monies end up in the pockets of big corporations and not in the outstretched hands of the ‘poor’.  His close ally, Joe Smith, supports a politically inspired 2 degrees limit and is working hand in glove with a radical socialist economic propaganda organistaton….and the science is far from ‘settled’.

The BBC is doing a grand job of reporting climate science.

The BBC are always slow to bring us stories about climate change that do not  support the ‘consensus’.

They sat on the CRU emails for a month, they were silent about Tim Yeo’s conflict of interests, they haven’t mentioned the story below at all when normally anything that shows ‘Big Business’ ripping off the ‘poor’ is headline news…..

Doha: UK climate finance pledge conceals pro-corporate agenda
By Miriam Ross, 4 December 2012
The World Development Movement has warned that the climate finance the UK government has announced it will provide to developing countries risks putting money meant to help the poor into the hands of multinational companies.

And this story is nowhere to be seen…despite coming out 3 days ago…..surely an important bit of ‘good news’ for the planet…..

Guido Fawkes brings us the glad tidings:

‘Good news. It seems the glaciers are not melting. Eco-loons had predicted glaciers in the Himalayas would be gone by 2035, but with 100cm of fresh snowfall in November, the Times of India reports that “the abundance of snow on the mountains has rejuvenated nearly one thousand glaciers in the Himalayas and has ensured uninterrupted supply of water for drinking, irrigation and hydel projects.

“While scanty snowfall and rising temperature in last decade had sparked the possibilities of fast shrinking of glaciers, good spells of snowfall in last three years have changed the trend with glaciers almost growing to their original size.”

It’s over! Rejoice!

or is it?..The snow is apparently in the wrong place…..

‘ “Snowfall is good but heavy snowfall in lower and new areas and scanty snowfall on higher areas is sign of global warming…..Global warming is a contentious issue but it’s a reality,” said J C Kuniyal, senior scientist with GB Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development, who is studying the behaviour of Himalayan environment for many years.’

This is an interesting point…‘The 11-km-long Bara Shigri is the largest glacier in Himachal, but is shrinking very fast. The Dhaka glacier in Chandrabhaga mountain ranges is also losing its length, width and height. This was proved beyond doubt when wreckage of an AN-12 aircraft which remained beneath the glacier since 1968 recently surfaced due to melting of snow. ‘

Hang on…think about that… a plane  crashed in 1968 on the surface of a glacier…..and  became buried…..it was then  uncovered as the ice melted…….back to 1968 levels.

Was there global warming in 1968…..or was it ‘global cooling’ as the big panic was then?

What goes up must come down, and what goes down………the climate is always changing.  Apart from the last 14 or so years when it has remained static……with no warming despite record levels of CO2 emissions…..whch is why the climate lobby are desperately trying to ‘communicate’ the ‘science’ to us….

Science: A New Mission to Explain

‘Too many who profess to practice journalism are the product of fashionable science communication courses that have sprung up in the past fifteen years…..It’s my view that this has resulted in many journalists being supporters of, and not reporters of, science. There is a big difference. Many have become advocates for science that are too close to the scientists they report on.’

Christopher Booker has his view of the BBC:

‘His report, The BBC and Climate Change: A Triple Betrayal, shows that the BBC has not only failed in its professional duty to report fully and accurately: it has betrayed its own principles.’

The BBC is of course a big player in the promotion of man-made climate change….it was an enormous coup for the green lobby to get the BBC ‘onside’.   The BBC has tremendous authority, respect and trust and can use that to give credibility to any pronouncement it makes…..even with the BBC plugging away the Public remain either mostly scpetical or undecided…..but it allows the politicians to accept AGW and introduce policies based on that theory that suit their own political agendas.

Without the ‘backing’ of the BBC, who should be always rigorously questioning any such policies but doesn’t, the politicians would have a much harder life than they do already selling us energy policies that seem mostly to provide excess profits for big businesses, many foreign, and those in a position to benefit such as already rich landowners like Cameron’s father-in-law….

‘This lip service is not good enough, and editors should wise up that science journalism has lost its edge and demand reform. It has also become uncritical and therefore not journalism.

Journalism is about not taking sides, or about being a cheerleader. It’s about shaking the tree, about asking award questions, about standing in the place of those who can’t ask such questions, and being persistent, unpopular and dogged. It’s about moral authority, something science in BBC News has lost, and it’s about old-fashioned scoops. It’s not about being part of the spectrum of communicating science…..It is a vital aspect of democracy. It is neither an extension of the scientific establishment, nor even its friend or on its side, and it is fundamentally different from science communication. That some active and contentious scientific topics, like climate science with all its unknowns, complexities and implications, are placed beyond debate because they are deemed “settled” is wrong.’

We all know the hypocrisy of the BBC…its well paid stars who criticise banker’s pay, the ‘hidden’ commercial side of the BBC that uses its state subsidy to crush commercial rivals, the criticism of ‘greed’ and ‘consumerism’…..and yet here they are, not satisfied with their BBC income, grubbing around for more.….for the odd speech or ‘appearance’…..
Jeremy Bowen
BBC Middle East Editor, Author & Television Presenter
Fee Group: £6k – £10k

Bowen seems to have the same billing as….
4 Poofs & A Piano
Jonathan Ross’ Former House Band on His Popular Friday Night Chat Show
Fee Group: £6k – £10k

Humphrys tops that….just….
John Humphrys
Journalist, broadcaster and television presenter (The Today Programme)
Fee Group: £11k – £15k

A different ‘Bowen’ smashes Jeremy’s pay limit……must be galling for the professional newsman to be out paced by an interior decorator…..

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen
One of The UK’s Most Established Interior Designers
Fee Group: £16k – £25k

A comedian gets even more…..

Graham Norton
Popular & Controversial Irish Chat Show Host
Fee Group: £25k +

And for comparison……a bike rider….

Bradley Wiggins CBE
Winner of the Tour de France (2012) and Olympic Gold Time-Trials (2012)
Fee Group: £50k +

And a computer whizzkid…
Bill Gates
Former Chairman & Chief Software Architect of Microsoft Corporation
Fee Group: £100k +

 
And the Left’s poster boy that never was….but who manages to rake in the money despite his political principles……
David Milliband
Labour politician and former UK Foreign Secretary
Fee Group: £16k – £25k

Here’s a supercharged piece of rhetoric from the pen of George Monbiot….calling for revolution to save the planet.

What’s interesting is that if you replace ‘Neo-Liberal’ with ‘BBC Liberal Left Elite’ it makes a whole lot more sense….the Left’s  ‘self hate’ of the West, the refusal to act against potent threats, the extreme political doctrine, the protection of elitist interests, the refusal to listen to the ‘People’, the determination to grab and hold onto power and influence, the suppression of democracy…..all symptoms of the Left as manifested in the BBC’s output…or as often as not in the omissions in what they broadcast.

Abridged to make sense of Monbiot’s words in the context of the BBC’s convictions…..

‘Humankind’s greatest crisis coincides with the rise of an ideology that makes it impossible to address.…..the world is in the grip of an extreme political doctrine….there could scarcely be a worse set of circumstances for addressing a crisis of any kind. Until it has no choice, the self-hating state will not intervene, however acute the crisis or grave the consequences. Neoliberalism protects the interests of the elite against all-comers.
But the self-hating state cannot act. Captured by interests that democracy is supposed to restrain, it can only sit on the road, ears pricked and whiskers twitching, as the truck thunders towards it. Confrontation is forbidden, action is a mortal sin.

What neoliberal theorists call shrinking the state looks more like shrinking democracy: reducing the means by which citizens can restrain the power of the elite. What they call “the market” looks more like the interests of corporations and the ultra-rich. Neoliberalism appears to be little more than a justification for plutocracy…..

Neoliberalism is not the root of the problem: it is the ideology used, often retrospectively, to justify a global grab of power, public assets and natural resources by an unrestrained elite. But the problem cannot be addressed until the doctrine is challenged by effective political alternatives.
In other words, the struggle…….cannot be won without a wider political fight: a democratic mobilisation against plutocracy.
But this is scarcely a beginning. We must start to articulate a new politics, one that sees intervention as legitimate, that contains a higher purpose…. that puts the survival of people and the living world above the survival of a few favoured industries. In other words, a politics that belongs to us, not just the super-rich.’

‘We must start to articulate a new politics’……yes, we must.  A new politics unadulterated by the malign influence of the BBC’s Leftist clique.

On 5Live Drive  (2 hrs 26 mins 40 secs) we had a report from the BBC’s Cairo correspondent Jon Leyne who told us that after the Muslim Brotherhood’s attempt to seize power and steamroller the ‘Revolution’  it had become ‘a very scary situation’ in Egypt….‘a very dangerous point’.

‘Police have fired tear gas in clashes with tens of thousands of protesters gathered near the presidential palace in the Egyptian capital Cairo.

Many of those gathered outside chanted slogans similar to those directed against the regime of former president Hosni Mubarak during protests in February 2011.’

How times change….events, dear Jeremy, events….and a willingness to admit that nothing has really changed….the Muslim Brotherhood were always likely to act in this way…….it is just that some, in the BBC especially, were not prepared to admit that…..which has a resonance for us in the West as we admit more and more Muslims into Europe but the ‘Establishment’ refuses to consider the consequences for the future……

I’m certain most people remember the BBC’s willingness to accept the benevolence of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Jeremy Bowen saying this:

‘The country’s only properly organised mass political movement outside the ruling party is the Muslim Brotherhood, and it would do very well in any free election.
Unlike the jihadis, it does not believe it is at war with the West. It is conservative, moderate and non-violent. But it is highly critical of Western policy in the Middle East.‘

I believe the BBC were forced to remove the word ‘moderate’ later on.

Michael Burleigh is not so impressed by either Bowen or the Muslim Brotherhood:

‘As usual, BBC television news coverage of events in Egypt is reduced to the spectacle of Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen getting teargas in his eyes. I’m surprised John Simpson hasn’t landed to share the experience. They could gasp, weep and wheeze in tandem. This low grade spectacle is what you and I pay £140 a year for.

Such ‘reporting’ tells us almost nothing about the fundamentals of a conflict which is hugely important since Egypt is a pace setter for trends across the Middle East.

The West is rightly fearful that the Muslim Brotherhood’s understanding of democracy consists of ‘one man, one vote, one time’.

The Muslim Brotherhood is remaining at arm’s length from the demonstrators. It wants elections as soon as possible, because it thinks its organisational strength mean it will win a majority.

It is being careful to stay on side with the army, with whom it has many links. It imagines that while the army preserves public order, it will be able to enact the sort of sharia regime it desires.

That is what is happening behind the drama of Mr Bowen’s tears.‘

Michael Weiss has more evidence of the BBC’s attitude:

‘On January 28, the BBC posted to its website an info-box summary of the Brotherhood’s orientation, which it unquestioningly described as “reject[ing] the use of violence and support[ing] democratic principles.”

An even more laborious attempt to sanitize the Islamist movement came from Middle East editor of the BBC News website Tarik Kafala, who published on February 20, “Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood promotes moderate path.” ‘

Michael Weiss has noticed something about BBC coverage that I  have noticed several times…that despite the ‘BBC’ knowing, for example, about the Muslim Brotherhood’s professed motives and intentions and possibly even investigating such characteristics the ‘frontline’ of the BBC, the reporters and the programme and news presenters, ignore, or don’t know about that, and carry on reporting as if on a different planet with an alternate view that doesn’t match the reality….. They only hear what they want to hear.

Here is Weiss’ summary of that attitude:

‘Given that the BBC has exposed the Brotherhood’s extremism in its broadcast programming, it’s remarkable that the BBC online editors remain wedded to a policy of presenting the organization in its own preferred terms.’

They only hear what they want to hear…and unfortunately that is all they want to tell us a lot of the time which distorts the perceptions of world events and therefore our reactions to them….which can have serious consequences….as in the predominantly anti-Israeli feeling, and all that entails,  engendered by pro-Palestinian reporting.

Why is the BBC wasting our money on JK Rowling’s socialist misery porn?

…asks James Delingpole.

That’s a question I also asked myself when I  read that the BBC are making a film based on Rowling’s latest effort…..Rowling publishes her book and the BBC are straight in there with their cheque book, and our cash, to produce a film that will no doubt be a ‘damning indictment’ of Cameron’s Britain…not the one produced by 13 years of Labour squandering and social destruction but  a Britain reduced to misery and ruin by Tory Austerity policies….the youth a lost generation, the old robbed of their pensions, the poor abandoned and grannies robbed to pay the millionaire’s  tax break.

James Delingpole has it sussed:

‘It’s no wonder the BBC has just forked out God knows how much licence-fee payers money for the rights to stage the TV version of The Casual Vacancy. Never mind that the book was universally panned by the critics for being schematic, depressing and unreadably dull. The reason we’re going to get it on our screens, whether we like it or not, is because its vision of the world conforms so perfectly with the BBC’s.’

The BBC have gone strangely quiet on this story from think tank ‘Cambridge Econometrics’:

‘Large-scale investment in offshore wind would generate more wealth for the economy and create more jobs than relying on gas-fired power plants, a report suggested on Tuesday.

Substantial deployment of offshore wind by 2030 would have only a marginal impact on electricity prices but would boost growth, cut dependence on gas imports and reduce emissions, the report for WWF-UK and Greenpeace said.’

Maybe they are being extremely careful as  the report was funded by WWF and Greenpeace…..it was on BBC Radio(no link) once this morning in an interview with Prof. Ekins from Cambridge Econometrics but haven’t heard a whisper since….and the BBC did mention the lobbyist’s funding…to Ekins’ embarrassment…..’Got to earn a living somehow‘.

The best their website comes up with is this  link to the story.

As Holmes might conclude the dog that doesn’t bark raises suspicions about the story’s merits…if even the ardently pro-AGW Harrabin & Co don’t bite is it any where near credible? …..Harrabin doesn’t even Tweet it.

Has the BBC got cold feet over global warming as the  warming has all but stopped for nearly 16 years as CO2 levels rise ever higher?

Probably not as Harrabin does come up with this nonsense ….read it and you get the distinct impression of a knife being slowly shoved through Osborne’s ribs by Harrabin…..the sole intent of the piece is to rubbish the ‘dash for gas’ and suggest Osborne has been swayed by malign influences…….

Here Harrabin is suggesting that the public outcry over wind farms will be repeated over Fracking….he hopes…..

‘DECC said it was “ridiculous” to suggest that two thirds of England would be fracked, adding that the British Geological Survey was still investigating how much shale gas might realistically be exploited.

But with constituents of some rural areas complaining that they do not like wind farms, the prospect of gas drilling in nearby fields may prove equally politically sensitive.’

His personal take:

roger harrabin ‏@RogerHarrabin

Don’t want to be waved at by windmills? Why not feel the earth move with shale gas? We all like energy so long as its nimby…

Harrabin’s description of a Greenpeace film obtained covertly is interesting…..a ‘sting operation’…’secretly filmed’…..funny how he doesn’t say that the film or ‘footage’ was ‘stolen’ or obtained in any way illegally or immorally….unlike his response to the CRU emails being hacked…or stolen, as he and his BBC colleagues like to call it.

‘Greenpeace claim that the chancellor has been over-influenced on the issue by his father-in-law Lord Howell, who was a government energy minister before climate change was a concern.

In a sting operation Greenpeace secretly filmed Lord Howell warning that the UK was dependent on gas from Qatar so that, “if jihadis took over Qatar we would be up shit creek.” ‘

Harrabin is in Doha at moment enjoying the sun at the climate conference….here is an interesting tweet:

roger harrabin ‏@RogerHarrabin

Bumped into a veteran #climate campaigner in #cop18. He said talks so far from scientific reality, its better to allow meeting to collapse.

Wonder just whose ‘scientific reality‘ we are talking about?

That’s right 6 Mouseketeers…count ’em…one, two, three…..er…maybe four…

The BBC’s own arithmetic doesn’t add up……Do you remember being asked abot animal testing by the BBC?…I wasn’t.

So where do they get the figure of 1/3 of Briton’s wanting a test ban?….the same figure has been used on news bulletins unqualified by the fact that the figure was derived from a poll of a mere 1,000 people……

Animal test ban favoured by a third in BBC poll

Almost one in three (31%) adults say the government should ban all medical research experiments on animals, according to a poll.

The poll, on indications of public attitudes to animal testing, was commissioned for BBC Radio 5 Live.

The BBC admits that ‘ComRes interviewed 1,000 adults by telephone between 30 November and 2 December 2012.’  but that’s not what the title says nor the first paragraph…the meaning is entirely different.

The BBC are going for broke  with this ‘research’ making it into a big story with Derbyshire covering it on her programme today.

Couldn’t bring myself to invest time to listen to her….so can’t say there is an ‘agenda’ either way….but the way the figure is presented suggests soemone has one…..

..In fact I’ve just done my own poll to find out whether people think the BBC have an agenda here…and 100% of them believe they do….from my poll of one person………thanks to Mike sat next to me.

So conclusive proof of BBC bias.

Paul Mason continues the class war…..

Paul Mason ?@paulmasonnews
Leveson day semiology: men in ties w plummy voices defending “freedom of press”; victims and relatives rarely given same status of voice

 
Really? Thought that was what Leveson was all about.…and hardly off BBC.

When do the people get a say on immigration or Europe or Islam on the BBC?

‘The media are indispensable to any attempt to answer a key challenge, that is, what might it mean for people to hear about and discuss climate in such a way that they decide to behave “dutifully”? ‘

‘The process of designing a mass media programme or campaign begins with a ‘messaging workshop’, where the results of formative research are analysed to produce a ‘messaging brief’. The brief describes which messages need to be communicated to achieve key behaviour change…..…we worked in partnership with media professionals, local authorities, and national and international NGOs to build public awareness of climate change and the need for national and regional environmental policies.’  BBC World Service Trust

BBC Trust statement.… ‘Impartiality is about breadth of view, and can be breached by omission’. (2007)

This is a ‘short’ heads up, a trailer if you like, for a longer post examining the BBC’s innumerable connections with the Green pressure and lobby groups, the scientists and the politicians, all with their own agendas and vested interests in selling us man-made global warming.

We were recently reminded about Dr Joe Smith’s (co-founder of the CMEP with the BBC’s Roger Harrabin) paper from 2005 which was essentially a ‘report’
detailing the discussions taking place within the CMEP seminars held at the BBC.

Held incidentally at the instigation, or authorised by, the new DG…Tony Hall when he was Director of News.

The presentation is 20 odd pages long and indicates that the BBC has long held the view that Climate Change is man made….but felt obliged to give the sceptics a voice.  That all changed, or rather was admitted openly, in 2007 when the BBC announced that the science was settled and sceptics would no longer have very much of a voice on the BBC.

The BBC was essentially ‘captured’ by the green lobbyists and is now their mouthpiece campaigning on their behalf to win the Public’s acceptance of AGW….it was a massive coup for them that put one of the most powerful and trusted voices in the media world on their side of the argument…and the science is still an argument however much the BBC et al deny it.

This is what Smith tells us about the power of the BBC:

The “capacity to define potential risks and hazards is broadly aligned with the distribution of power among ‘credible,’ ‘authoritative,’ and ‘legitimate’ definers of ‘reality’ across the media field.” ……[the BBC is] widely seen as an international leader in terms of balance, independence, and clarity. It is viewed as hegemonic within British broadcasting, helping to dictate the limits of what might be considered “news” in mainstream reporting.

The BBC ‘dictates the limits of what might be considered news’……in other words  if it reports something then it is likely that the rest of the media will follow their lead…and the Public will listen to that ‘trusted voice’.

They’d better be right then hadn’t they?

We now know that the seminars that ‘persuaded’ the BBC to adopt that stance on climate change were not based on what top, ‘expert’,  scientists were saying in them…there were few climate scientists there…we know that Professor Steve Jones who conducted a science review in 2010  for the BBC was hardly the impartial adjudicator of BBC science that such a review would demand…his career had stalled with no one willing to fund him and any of his research ideas…he was ‘rescued’ from obscurity and failure by the BBC who put him to work and paid him handsomely.

We know the science does not yet prove any link between CO2 and global warming…in fact it shows the opposite….warming leads to a rise in CO2.

But here is something else…one of those lobbyists, the International Broadcasting Trust, put in a submission  to influence (‘Our lobbying work has produced significant results. Both the BBC and Channel 4 now have remits which place internationalism at the heart of their output.‘) the BBC’s science review by Steve Jones and to attempt to change the way the BBC reports climate change…as did the sceptics such as ‘Bishop Hill’

It’s a funny thing but having read Dr Joe Smith’s 2005 presentation and then read the IBT 2010 submission it is apparent that they are almost identical…not word for word….but idea for idea, philosophy for philosophy and demand for demand in the way that they would like the BBC to report climate science.

There are at least 10 major points of similarity that stand out…..the conclusion I have come to is that either Joe Smith, or possibly Harrabin, wrote this submission for the IBT or someone at the IBT has taken Smith’s work almost verbatim, and submitted it to the BBC.

I would suggest that Smith wrote it…it is practically the CMEP ‘syllabus’….and Smith has a track record in working unacknowledged ‘behind the scenes’ on BBC projects and programmes that promote the idea of man-made climate change.

Those ten points are:
1.  Journalists must resist framing the debate by putting up pro AGW advocates against climate sceptics.

2.  Such an approach creates an impression of balance but  in fact demonstrates that ‘balance is bias’ …against the consensus and therefore wrong.

3.  It is important to train new, young journalists in a new approach to climate change because they will then either take that with them to the higher ranks of the BBC or move to other media organisations where they can then have influence over how the science is covered.

4.  Journalists must now present the science as a long term ‘process’ and not look for a ‘result’….do not debate the science…facts are not necessary.

5.  It is the Media’s role and responsibility to ensure the Public get the correct message about the science so that they then proceed to behave ‘dutifully’ in response.

6.  Sceptics lack the knowledge and scientific background to be qualified to challenge the consensus.

7.  Climate sceptics put in danger both Democracy and the Planet…..turn the debate into a ‘morality play’….guilt is good.

8.  There needs to be a new kind of reporting….as said science as a ‘process’ but also introduce new voices….ignore the science, look at the consequences of global warming and the necessary responses….bring on economists, historians, politicians, social scientists and businessmen who will ensure the Public are made fully aware of the dangers of climate change according to the consensus.

9.  Blur the boundaries between news and current affairs and other broadcast categories…drama, history, wildlife documentaries, anything that will further opportunities to influence the viewer’s perceptions and understanding of climate change.

10.  There are no more facts to be found…the science is settled…..that is now the ‘Orthodoxy’.

Here is a very small part of Smith’s 2005 paper followed by a similar abridgement of the IBT submission from 2010:

Dr Joe Smith:

This article explores the role of broadcast news media decision makers in shaping public understanding
and debate of climate change risks.   It focuses on media source strategies, on climate change  storytelling in news, and the “myth of detachment” sustained by many news decision makers.

Particularly significant is the disjuncture between ways of talking about uncertainty within science and policy discourse and media constructions of objectivity, truth, and balance.

The “capacity to define potential risks and hazards is broadly aligned with the distribution of power among ‘credible,’ ‘authoritative,’ and ‘legitimate’ definers of ‘reality’ across the media field.”    

[The BBC] is recognized as an important reservoir of journalistic talent; it is both a training ground for the early stages in many media careers and a destination for top journalists and editors. These conditions have led to the BBC being widely seen as an international leader in terms of balance, independence, and clarity. It is viewed as hegemonic within British broadcasting, helping to dictate the limits of what might be considered “news” in mainstream reporting.

The self-perception of news media is that they cast, direct, and stage-manage the public’s notion of life beyond immediate lived experience. Certainly, there is little arguing that the mass media are a key location for the social production—including the definition and evaluation—of risks. Hence the broadcast media’s treatment of climate change becomes central to any  attempt to unpick risk communication surrounding the issue.

Publics depend on news media to expand their knowledge about the world beyond the immediate horizons of lived experience.

Nevertheless, the balanced presentation of “pro” and skeptical climate change scientists was a persistent feature of climate change coverage into the late 1990s in Britain, and is still intermittently applied in the casting of broadcast news……research shows it to persist in the U.S…….. “[t]he continuous juggling act journalists engage in often militates against meaningful, accurate, and urgent coverage of the issue of global warming.”

[T]he communication and debate of climate change dangers will demand narratives that splice together uncertainty, social risks, and choices .

Editors acknowledge that climate change risks and responses demand public understanding and debate, and that they are inherently political.

Climate change can no longer be dealt with purely as a story about the reliability or otherwise of scientific data. Specialists have argued throughout the series of seminars since 1997 that it reaches into international affairs, food, mainstream politics, farming, transport, health, energy, taxation issues, and more.

Furthermore, not only program editors (the senior editor), but also their colleagues who are responsible for “out of hours” and minute-by-minute decisions, such as duty and news editors, need to be able to appreciate climate-change relevant strands within these categories.

The climate change dimension of the story can be set within established domestic news frames, the patterns of decisions about media content that organize, shape, (and limit) interpretations that are known to register with audiences. These might include: government competence, security of homes and insurance risks, and vulnerable social groups.  

It is important to note that the BBC and other media participants have been drawn almost exclusively from senior editorial staffs that do not have specialist expertise or experience in environment and development issues.  They have in almost all cases been invited to attend
by the BBC Director of News and are hence not self-selecting as “supportive” or “committed to” the issues under discussion.

Journalists have demanded to know what facts there are—or to demand “when are we going to get to the truth on climate change” and do not carry with them a sense that science is primarily a process of contestation.

This limited understanding of science compared with other fields of contemporary discourse among media professionals has frequently been acknowledged in discussions within the workshops—an admission that would be unthinkable for these media professionals in spheres such as economics or politics.  This is reflected in ignorance of even the most fundamental
aspects of science practice such as peer review.

Material and story ideas will not only be drawn directly from primary sources; the cue for a story will often come from other media outlets. The workshop discussions support U.S. research showing that even in technically difficult fields journalists turn to other journalistic sources in working up stories.

The intense competition among specialists within news organizations can compound narrow and repetitive patterns of reporting.

The confident assumption that there are facts to be found and communicated leaves editors poorly equipped to understand and negotiate the character of uncertainty within climate change science and policy, let alone facilitate exploration of the “postnormal” model of science and public participation that is increasingly emerging as an orthodoxy in science communication.

Disagreement about facts does not bar a story from getting on air. Far from it: but it will have to then conform to a rigid formula of presenting claim and counterclaim that is unsuited to the slowly unfolding exploration of narrowing bands of distribution of opinion that the science and policy of climate change implies. This is in pursuit of another professional obligation: a  commitment to balance and impartiality….…the trick with the BBC. . . is that we can say “here are the facts—unadulterated.” Where there is a political argument then we’ll try to make clear what the political arguments are.

Boykoff and Boykoff showed how reporting practices result in “balance as bias.” Their work concluded that “[t]he failed discursive translation between the scientific community and popular, mass-mediatized discourse is not random; rather the mis-translation is systematic and occurs for perfectly logical reasons rooted in journalistic norms, and values.”

When challenged about the limited nature of their climate change coverage editors are quick to see that the kind of purposeful social action demanded by the science and policy community carries them quickly out of questions about “good science” and into messy and editorially hazardous ethical-political terrain.

Discussions have shown a fear of being captured by the normative agenda implicit in  sustainability discourses via, e.g., ethical commitments to future and distant generations, and the nonhuman natural world.  As one journalist put it, to nods of assent from media colleagues: “you’ve got to understand this—we’re not here to tell the public how to behave—we’re there to tell them what’s happening”

There are signs from within the working groups at the seminars that those editorial decision makers who are sufficiently informed about climate change to appreciate the policy consequences of most mitigation and adaptation responses fear that to “buy-in” to climate change is to accept a predetermined set of value positions. Taking such a series of steps threatens not only the professional reputation of an editor but, in a highly fluid and insecure profession, his or her hardwon position…..climate change is value threatening and an ideological hazard is as true of news editors as it is of anyone. Editors are very wary of
values-based agendas, and insist that they are careful to avoid a close association between their outputs and a particular philosophical perspective on the world.

Non-media participants have questioned this stance persistently. Comparisons have been drawn with the evident normative stance in editorial lines on terrorism, human rights, and child labour.  Participants, particularly, though not exclusively, those from NGOs, have gone further, charging the U.K. news media with uncritically promoting the globalization of a narrow Western model of democracy, neo-liberal commitments to free trade, or the right to unlimited fossil-fuelled personal mobility. While there are signs that editors view “the facts about climate change” as something they should communicate to publics they are, to the frustration of many of the specialist participants, much more cautious about their role in signalling societal/policy paths in response to them.

Submission from the IBT:

The science and conclusions drawn from it have far reaching ethical and political implications.
There is an urgent need to improve debate .…on how to adapt to and mitigate the threat of climate [as it is now accepted as settled science].

In this paper we look In detail at the way in which climate change has been reported across the BBC and we make a series of practical proposals which we believe could not only enhance the BBC’s coverage but offer new opportunities for innovation [in the way climate change is presented by the BBC].
This submission focuses on broadcaster impartiality and must consider the media’s role and responsibilities with regard to wider science-policy-politics relations.

Journalists and programme makers should resist ‘debate framings…putting up opposing pro and sceptic climate change science opinion…[that gives a false impression of a balanced debate between supposedly equally informed and qualified players]

Programme makers should be more self-critical about their tendency to ‘ventriloquize’ public feeling…[and work to avoid representing ‘ill-informed’, i.e. sceptical, opinion.]

Programme makers must support the notion of the development of climate science as more of a ‘process’ than look for a ‘result’….[i.e. in other words the science Is not settled.…there is no ‘result…no proof of a link between CO2 and global warming.]

There are numerous online comments and complaints that charge the BBC with bias…there are signs that the BBC’s editorial and journalistic framing of the subject has been influenced by such comments and newspaper coverage as well as a swing in the public mood…really?

Climate disinformation online is a form of cultural and political malware every bit as threatening to our new media freedoms that harms not only democracy but also our planet.

Denier/sceptic/contrarian positions are backed by conservative think tanks, politically powerful bodies funded by wealthy foundations and corporations and the blogosphere provides almost unlimited capacity to communicate disagreement, controversy and conspiracy theories.

Public service broadcasters should be wary of influence by shifts in public opinion or wider media commentary.

The BBC is returning to a two sided discourse as if that represents an even handed account….such framings were common until the late 90’s [When the CMEP started its work?] and the BBC began to reflect what the ‘vast majority of scientists with authoritative knowledge believed’.

In the case of this programme the debate framing appears to be a carefully deployed editorial device intended to ‘invite in’ a body of the public who appear alienated from and mistrustful towards the scientific and policy communities that are arguing for action on climate change.  in effect the programme served as a restatement of the well-established scientific consensus…[and demonstrated no one really disagreed with that…even well known ‘sceptics’]

It will be a backward step to allow programme makers to go back to  a balancing of sceptical voices with those of the scientific consensus.…serving only to distort public understanding of the state of the science and the planet.

We recommend that programme makers and journalists resist debate framing that carry the implication of a balanced debate between informed players….essentially this is ‘balance as bias’.

Climate change is not just difficult and complex, with long term consequences and deep seated uncertainties, it has also become an orthodoxy.

There is a tendency to lose sight of the fact that the IPCC is a long term review process reliant on a broad and diverse science base where significant uncertainties remain in many branches of the science.

There are opportunities to use a new kind of reporting of climate change science to spearhead a fresh approach…..to communicate that science is a process not a result…demanding a commitment to new approaches to editing, conduct of interviews, scripting and presenting.

Opportunities should be sought to support younger media professionals and researchers given the role that the BBC plays in supporting the early stages of careers of people that go on to work elsewhere in the media and communications.

The quality of public debate would be greatly enhanced by identifying and encouraging new voices…..from social sciences, economics, philosophy, history, business, social entrepreneurs, political and policy talent.….[what of their knowledge and scientific qualifications?] shouldn’t there be others then who challenge such assertions…just as likely to be qualified to comment.