Author Archives: Robin Horbury

The eco-loons are at it again on the BBC: this time quoting that impartial body the WWF (aided an abetted by nutters from our own Met Office)as saying that the heat and smog in Moscow, as well as the cold in Siberia, the number of jellyifish seen this summer – not to mention a “large number of birds dropping dead in the skies” (to throw in the kitchen sink) – are all the result of global warming and a lack of a centralised plan by Russia to deal with it. Katia Moskvitch, who has form in terms of her reporting fantasies, has filed a story that reads more like a medieval end of the world diatribe than science. But as Richard North so deftly pointed out on Sunday, what’s going on in Russia is balanced by unseasonal cold in Siberia, and one of the coldest winters on record in the southern hemisphere. It used to be taught in elementary geography that weather is not climate – but not to the BBC; every weather event (selectively chosen, of course) is an opportunity to praise the zealots of WWF and spread the false mumbo-jumbo creed of AGW.

The full facts are not yet up on the BBC complaints site, but the Mail on Sunday today reports that the corporation has apologised to the vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia because John Humphrys suggested on the Today show back in December that the Climategate emails may have shown that Phil Jones, the head of UEA’s climate research unit (CRU), had manipulated data. Stephen Mitchell, the BBC’s head of news programmes, has reportedly written to the vice-chancellor apologising for such impertinence and stating that the question was “misconceived”.

The corporation clearly operates in an alternative universe. Climategate showed beyond doubt that those involved were – to put it mildly – lacking in transparency in the way they handled and presented climate data. But to the BBC jackboots who now control editorial policy, even hinting that something may be amiss with the climate change scam is now officially considered a crime. The Today programme’s coverage of climate change is already ludicrously one-sided; the editor, Ceri Thomas, is an activist in the cause. It now seems that the Ministry of Truth has fully taken over.

Melting glaciers are an essential part of the BBC’s AGW alamist narrative. Yesterday it was Greenland alarmism; back in June, it was that Mount Everest is becoming treacherous because of a deluge of meltwater. Mark Hendrickx has done some very thorough digging into the Everest claims, and found that at their root, as usual, is exaggeration and distortion. The source was a paper quoted in the IPCC AR4 report which – it was claimed – showed that Himalayan weather station readings showed rising temperatures. Mr Hendrickx notes first that none of the stations are actually in the most mountainous parts of the Himalayas; and second that they show rises that are so small as to be statistically insignificant. Two of the stations actually showed falls. As Mr Hendrickx concludes:

The case for dangerous man made global warming hangs on the wall like a frayed medieval tapestry. By pulling just one loose thread the whole thing starts to unravel. We pulled one of those threads recently…

But the BBC goes blundering on, always reporting the alarmist drivel and never the work of those who show the lies for what they are.

An iceberg four times the size of Manhattan has calved from one of the main Greenland glaciers. As What’s Up With That? quickly pointed out last night, it’s entirely normal for this to happen; a far bigger iceberg similarly calved from the same glacier in 1962, well before even the most ardent warmists claim that CO2 was fomenting our doom. WUWT also warned that the media would be swift to blame AGW, even though the press release from the university that noticed that calving was careful not to do so. True to form, first off the block in warmist zeal is the BBC. The web story doesn’t actually say that AGW is to blame, but the prominence given to the story, together with the immediate juxtaposition of the bald statement (hotly disputed in sceptic circles) that the first six months of 2010 have been “the hottest on record” make it plain that as far as the BBC is concerned, this is global warming writ large. The only thing missing from their alarmism is the Richard Black by-line.

Regular readers of Biased BBC may recall that I have previously revealed that BBC environmental ‘journalist’ Peter Thomson is also a political activist in that he is secretary of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), an organisation which, while masquerading as ‘objective’ on climate change, is actually a world leader in warmist propaganda. American Thinker, the influential US blog that the BBC doesn’t mention because it’s right-wing, has been doing some digging in this area, and it makes fascinating reading. Writer Russell Cook has found that the excuses for not putting on air so-called climate sceptics sound eerily similar among news organisations, and for this, he blames the efforts of the SEJ. The BBC also trots out similar wording when it is challenged on the topic – for example, Today editor Ceri Thomas.

Mr Cook. also notes that of 212 items about climate change/global warming since 1995 on PBS (for which Mr Thomson also partly works, because the relevant BBC US initiaitive is jointly with PBS) only three (yes 3) contained material from sceptics. I haven’t done the precise equivalent sums for the BBC in the UK , but my bet is that on this front too, they are in tune with the SEJ-inpsired PBS agenda.

The vile Prescott’s wife, Lady Prescott, is joining BBC1’s The One Show to front roving reports and as a presenter. The show’s editor, Sandy Smith, says that, “having been in the position she was…makes her a good person for us. We think she is, in a number of ways, typical of our audience”. What more can you say about the BBC’s editorial mindset?

I posted a couple of days ago about the ludicrous and slavish BBC reporting of a paper which suggested that the US would be swamped by Mexican immigrants forced out by global warming. The internet has done the job (that the BBC does not do) of providing balance. This article shows that, according to GISS, Mexico is not warming; and second, the statistical basis of the claimed correlation between crop yields and movement of people is utter nonsense. What are BBC journalists being paid for?