Author Archives: Robin Horbury

I’m not a scientist, but I do often smell a rat in BBC science stories, and here we go with another corporation special, this time a major glacier scare.

Melting mountain glaciers are making sea levels rise faster now than at any time in the last 350 years, according to new research.

For years they have been telling us that the snows of Kilimanjaro are about to disappear because of AGW (they aren’t); and now the greenie BBC zealots are pushing another obscure research-grant paper – one that claims we are going to drown because of massive glacial melt. This time, according to the doomfest headlines, the glaciers of South America are melting 20 or 30 or even a 100 times faster than was previously thought. The cause (implied not stated), as usual, is nasty humans and those vile “emissions” that started with the industrial revolution.

Smelling that rat about the alleged rising sea levels, I dug around a little. Steve Goddard here provides a series of facts that – surprise, surprise – the BBC report does not mention. Like sea levels have been rising since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago at a more or less constant rate. That there’s been no change in the rate of increase (c.2cms a decade) since 1880. And finally, in the last 30 years – when those nasty CO2/farty cow emissions have been at their highest – the rate has remained stubbornly constant.

Mr Goddard concludes:

Sea level is rising, and the abuse of this information is one of the most flagrantly clueless mantras of the alarmist community. Even if we returned to a green utopian age, sea level would continue to rise at about the same rate – just as has done since the last glacial maximum.

In short, there’s a rather inconvenient but major contradiction that the BBC fails to mention. If these glaciers are melting so damn fast, where is the water going? And if they are melting and there’s no sea level rise, what’s the problem? Especially as South America has just endured one of its coldest winters in living memory. Answers on a postcard, please.

BBC Moral Maze presenter and former newsreader Michael Buerk has reviewed Peter Sissons’ memoirs – When One Door Closes, in which he attacks the BBC with both barrels – for Standpoint magazine. It’s a delicious, grumpy read in which Mr Buerk makes it clear that he concurs that the BBC is stuffed full of right-on, Guardian-reading, tree-hugging, mostly incompetent lefties. My day was made by this par:

Sissons bowls over the other targets like a crusty old farmer shooting rabbits. Autocuties, “Elf ‘n’ Safety”, the Corporation’s now pathological aversion to risk of any kind, its culture of conformity, its vulnerability to political pressure, its uncritical love affair with environmentalism, the callow opinionising of some of its reporters, the flatulent masses of its middle management and, as he sees it, the BBC’s complete lack of leadership. Bang, bang, bang.

However, Mr Buerk qualifies this by contending that the Sissons attack on BBC management is not entirely fair. I don’t think it went far enough.

For me, the news that there might be a new and cheap source of fuel off the coasts of Britain is a major cause of celebration. North Sea oil generated billions of pounds in revenues and jacked up living standards for everyone in the land. Roger Harrabin, though, doesn’t give a stuff about that; in this piece about new moves to extract gas from the shale offshore from Blackpool, his only concern is to give a puff to an obscure (and no doubt highly delighted) local Green party zealot, who – in true Luddite fashion – tells us that we will all be engulfed with environmental poison if this nasty drilling goes ahead. As usual, there’s not a peep from anyone who can inform us about the potential benefits of the exercise, although Roger begrudingly tells us that the government wants the scheme to go ahead. That aside, it’s an open goal for Mr Harrabin to bellyache (again) about the perils of nuclear power and to allow his little green Hitler to claim that we are going to hell in a handcart:

Risks to human health; to ground water and drinking water; and to the environment due to the huge amounts of waste this produces and the huge amount of water it consumes. Also I think the impact of drilling rigs on the countryside will be totally unacceptable to the British people. I think this is something we’ll live to regret

.

That’ll be the same Green party that is so relentlessly cheering the erection of thousands of wind turbines. Oh, and the green cause is so popular in the Blakpool area that it did not even contest the seat in 2010. But never mind, the irony is lost on Mr Harrabin – don’t let the facts get in the way of another greenie sermon. And compare his approach to Channel 4’s Siobhan Kennedy – to her, it’s striking gold in Blackpool.

h/tip george R.

BBC Greenies love farting cow stories. And when their favourite fart-gas – methane – is the subject of a government report that could lead to new emissions laws, they are clearly in their seventh, miasmic, heaven. It defies belief that a time when we are supposedly making record cuts, DEFRA spends countless and undisclosed oodles of our dosh in working out the relationship of feedstuff to gas (though this story also indicates that DEFRA has at best a very tenuous grasp on sanity). Especially as other research showed as long ago as 2008 that despite the frantic greenie alarmism, methane emissions have stablised. Never let the fug of a marsh gas fog get in the way of a good BBC scare.

Even I blinked with disbelief when I saw this. Thousands of dogs, cats, and millions of people pass from the UK and Europe and back each year; with them travel lots of unwanted insect life. Now, intrepid researchers at Bristol university have found that surprise, surprise, five (yes five) examples of a European tick have been found on a sample of 3,500 British dogs. My first reaction as an ex-reporter is to ask who the hell sanctioned such a lunatic waste of money. Not so Victoria Gill of the BBC. Instead, it’s a major new front in the climate change alarmism. She accepts without question the hooey from these nutty, priofligate academics that this is proof that the said ticks are spreading because it’s getting hotter. Their models say so, she faithfully reports.

Dogs retrieve sticks; BBC reporters pursue AGW tick stories with the same puppy-dog faithfulness and alacrity.

A survey conducted among 24,000 schoolkids by the BBC (clearly the frenzied cuts message has not yet got through the thick skulls of those at the corporation who so liberally spend out money) has found that 49% of them rate climate change as the second biggest threat facing humanity. Confirmation for the boys and girls at the BBC, if it were needed, that their daily alarmism is working a treat – Hitler was not alone in targetting youth.

If that’s not enough, there’s another nice scarefest wheeze afoot – the BBC’s very own climate change game. I kid you not. They’ve spent God knows how much of our money devising it, and this is how it is introduced:

Why make a game about climate change?

Currently there is a growing consensus amongst climate researchers that Earth’s climate is changing in response to manmade greenhouse gas emissions. The main debate amongst scientists is focussed on the amount of climate change we can expect, not whether it will happen. With the current level of debate in mind, the BBC decided a game might be a good introductory route into climate change and some of the issues this creates for governments around the world.

The producers’ primary goal was to make a fun, challenging game. At times it was necessary to strike a compromise between strict scientific accuracy and playability. For this reason, Climate Challenge should not be taken as a serious climate change prediction.

It goes on – seriously folks! – using such liberal dollops of cod science, vapid generalisation and crass misinformation. And it also betrays the BBC mindset in all this. They are actually playing a huge propaganda game with us in which they treat us all like morons. The most vulnerable and impressionable in our society – our kids – are the victims of this horrendous, vicious scam. How many of them lie awake in their beds worrying at night because of BBC climate lies?

Shame on every man jack of them.

I have not until now commented on the BBC’s coverage of Fukushima. The reason is that the safety of nuclear plants is a fearsomely complex subject, as I discovered many years ago when I covered for the BBC parts of the endless inquiry into the Windscale station. Even the experts were bamboozled by the evidence and obfuscation that went on.

But it’s becoming pretty clear now that, short of highly unusual new developments, what is happening at Fukushima falls far short of nuclear catastrophe. Far more important in human terms is the immense suffering that the Japanese are enduring in consequence of the tsunami itself. They have lost their homes during a bitterly cold winter and thousands are being forced to take shelter wherever they can, including in the compounds of nuclear power stations. And ironically, one of the biggest hardships they face is lack of power.

But nothing will stop the BBC in its greenie crusade. For the newsroom, Fukushima continues mostly to be an opportunity for full-scale anti-nuclear propaganda. Never mind the suffering, let’s focus on Armageddon. Yesterday, for example, Chris Hogg excitedly led a scarefest report with the news that radiation levels off the Japanese coast are at 1,250 times safety limits. Shock, horror, hold the front page, let’s evacuate everyone. Mr Hogg then goes on to amplify his alarmism by larding the piece with words like “unpredictable” and news of people being taken to hospital. The tone is undisguised hatred of nuclear power.

The place for such garbage should be the spike. Here, Anthony Watts explains why. First the radiation levels involved are well within safety limits, second, a nuclear plant that is 40 years hold has survived being battered at a level higher than it was ever predicted, and third the real story of Fukushima is the humanitarian distress.

To be fair, some at the BBC are not happy with this flagrant alarmism. The fragrant Fiona Fox of the alarmist Science Media Centre here warns on the BBC College of Journalism site that much of the reporting of Fukushima has been overblown. But as Ms Fox is a partner-in-crime for most of the green frenzy at the BBC, it’s definitely a pot/kettle/black lament.

As David Vance notes below, Nicky Campbell is continuing the BBC pro-riot love-in today. Here (scroll down to find the dedicated comment piece), Peter Hitchens explains how the anti-cuts frenzy party began on Friday night and continued at fever pitch through the Today programme with BBC “presenters” excitedly looking forward to the action ahead. Says Peter:

The atmosphere of much of its coverage was what might have been found in a Left-wing London household as Granny got out her old Aldermaston marching shoes, the head of the household dusted off his anti-Thatcher placards and the children dressed excitedly for their first demo.

Shame the BBC could not find room for a reality check like this, which puts the feeble Cleggeron cuts into their true, left-wing perspective.

As Richard North sagely notes this morning, the most important priority with budgets is to watch what the chancellor is doing with his other hand or behind his back. Wee Georgie slipped in the news that the government was chillingly pressing ahead with plans to triple investment (to £3bn) in the Green Investment Bank, and also to put an insane floor on the cost of UK CO2 emissions. So the 1p fuel duty “relief” has to be seen in the context of intensifying plans to create more fuel poverty, ratchet up domestic fuel tariffs and to add more layers to the bureaucratic straitjacket that is crippling British enterprise and innovation. Richard Black, of course, is worried that this is not enough. He goes for his hectoring quotes first to an outfit called Transform UK, which is a predictable alliance of green fascists on the make. Next stop is EDF energy, one of the companies that is at the forefront of conning us about so-called green energy investment. And finally, of course, he brings in John Sauven, of Greenpeace UK, to warn that – despite Mr Osborne’s craven acceptance of the need for spending billions more on green lunacy – his tactics amount to suicide and a failure to meet green policy promises. Anything that attacks a Tory chancellor will do.

As usual, Mr Black ignores any opinion that might suggest alternatives, and funnily enough, I especially don’t see a quote there from groups representing those such as pensioners and the poor who are facing continuing needless hardship as a result of all this idiocy and profligacy.

John Horne Tooke posed an interesting – if idealistic – question in his comment on my posting yesterday about Richard Black’s slavish continued reporting of climate change sensationalism. He pondered:

If only the BBC would employ people with enquiring minds, people who want to search for the truth, then they may be worth the licence fee.

Evidence that it won’t actually came my way when I was sent a copy of the latest application form for the BBC graduate producer training scheme. Question 1 for these BBC leaders of tomorrow is this:

Scenario: You are working as a researcher on the weekly science programme ‘Bang Goes the Theory’. The series is due to be broadcast in eight weeks. Your producer has asked you to write a brief on the subject of climate change and energy usage based on a recent article he has read by a highly regarded journalist in a leading science magazine.

What’s your approach?

Please rank the options below in the order you would do them.

Please select your 1st task.

( )Contact general experts in the field of climate change and energy usage
( )Contact the BBC producer who made a programme on climate change 6 months ago
( )Contact the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) to secure an invite to their next session in Abu Dhabi
( )Read the original article.
( )Contact the two scientists who wrote the original research on which the article was based
( )Conduct google / web based research for wider background
( )Contact the journalist who wrote the piece.
( )Order tea and coffee for the Bang Goes the Theory presenters.
( )Contact scientists who disagree with the argument presented in the original article

Thus, right at the beginning of the recruitment process, it seems that those who run the BBC are now checking out attitudes to climate change. It’s a fascinating insight into how deep the propaganda culture pervades the editorial process and even recruitment. If the BBC had journalistic credibility, the correct answers would be first to read the original article and then pretty rapidly to dig among those who disagree in order to decide whether it genuinely merited a programme.

What Richard Black and his cronies actually do is a travesty of such inquiry. They usually a) find scientists who agree with the original piece and use their supportive comments to big-up the propaganda impact to maximum extent; b) worship at the altar of the IPCC and c) don’t ever refer to anybody else.

I think the purpose of this questionnaire is actually much more sinister and blatant. It’s to weed out anyone who disagrees with their worldview at the very first hurdle. It boils down to that they are actively seeking climate change propagandists. How much lower can you get in the deployment of Stasi methodology?