Author Archives: Robin Horbury

Another day, another BBC climate change scare. Maybe I am wasting my time by writing about these items, they are so predictably biased and so blatantly political; but I hope that charting the extent to which the BBC churns out this relentless tide of propaganda is of interest. It’s our money and the fact that the BBC pours shedloads of its resources into this mindless drivel is obscene. Don’t just take my word for it; even ardent greenie academics like Dr Denis Rancourt now think the whole climate change hyopthesis is a mental disease. To the BBC, of course, he’s just another denialist nutter.

Today’s BBC scare is that Mexicans will become so hot because of climate change that almost 7m of them will flee to the US by 2080. It’s made by a team led by a member of the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change (not biased, of course) and the findings are presented, as usual, without a word of balancing comment from someone with some sanity. Or mention that the US has just gone through its snowiest winter on record, and that South America is currently in the middle of its biggest cold snap in living memory. So maybe those Mexicans will head the other way!

Richard Black, in his weekly BBC propaganda column, disgracefully suggests that those who won’t swallow climate change lies are linked to the white supremacists Stormfront. He argues that those who have advocated massive global warming taxes such as Stephen Schneider – who died this week – have been subjected to unwarranted abuse and are working under a constant barrage of nasty threats from sceptics. He doesn’t spell it out, but the implication is very clear; those who deny climate change are immoderate, right-wing thugs.

I challenge Richard, therefore, to write something equally as trenchant about warmists in the context of the tale of obfuscation, brick-walling and sheer bloody minded obstruction that met Australian scientists Jennifer Marohasy and John Abbot when Mr Abbot approached the Met Office in the UK under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the data that underpinned the notorious hockey-stick. This is their conclusion:

This case study provides evidence that there is a culture of antagonism towards anyone who may wish to make independent appraisals of information relating to climate change and particularly if it relates to variations in global temperatures and greenhouse gas emissions. This is shown through both the CRU emails and the approach to Mr Holland’s request to the Met Office. The reluctance to comply with the Fol legislation does not result from bureaucratic misunderstanding of relatively recently enacted legislation. Instead it stems from an antagonism by institutional climate scientists towards those who may wish to independently examine evidence for climate change and its causes. The dangers revealed lie both in operating an effective Fol system, and openness and transparency in an area of immense scientific importance.

It’s a long read, but I urge you to persevere; it illustrates that to warmists, there is nothing they will not do to cover up shortcomings in their data. Chances of Mr Black covering this to balance his outpouring against sceptics? Don’t hold your breath. After all, to him, the likes of Marohasy and Abbot are something you find under your shoe.

PS. Richard, the paper containing the information is not published on the sceptic blogs you often sneer about (and occasionally threaten to sue)from your BBC ivory tower. It’s in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Law and Management.

I cheered today when the government announced that it was closing the useless and highly wasteful quango, John Prescott’s Orwellian-sounding Sustainable Development Commission. I hissed when I read that burqa-loving Caroline Spellman, the Cleggeron environment secretary, said that the government remained as green as ever in its aims, and clearly believes that the Commission’s work will continue through Defra.

To the BBC, of course, it’s an unmitigated disaster. Their environment fanatic Mark Kinver reports on the closure, turning mainly to his chums at the Friends of the Earth for comment. Like him, they are in mourning, and take any chance they can to kick the Tories. But as James Delingpole notes in his Telegraph blog, the real story is the terrifying news that the Carbon Trust – a quango that gobbles an astonishing £86m a year – has not been axed.

The greenies at the BBC hate coal as a central tenet of their religion. Despite the fact that it was the bedrock of the industrial revolution, despite the fact that it brought – and continues to bring – heat and light and comfort to billions round the world, it’s a nasty, noxious substance, because when it burns, it emits that “poison”, CO2. The leader of those trying to stop its use, and force us back to fuel poverty, is, of course, the EU. Aided and abetted by fanatical green lobbyists such as Greenpeace, they have a declared suicidal agenda of shutting down as many coal mines and coal-fired power stations as possible, even though this will seriously harm the economies of almost every member country. Today, they have announced in true, jack-booted EU Commission style that they are stopping subsidies to “uneconomic” coal mines, forcing 100,000 miners out of work, and further precipitating the decline of European competitiveness.

The BBC have reported the story here. But guess what’s missing from their finely-honed propaganda? There’s not a mention of the real story, that it’s the green fanatics inside and outside the Commission that have forced the loss of 100,00 jobs. To the BBC, it’s been sanitised so that the closures are necessary only because the mines are “uneconomic” and “loss-making”. Astonishing, even by BBC standards.

Checking the BBC website today, it’s clear that there’s a relentless, systematic torrent of climate change propaganda, without a breath of a dissenting voice. Yet all of the measures described are gobbling vast amounts of our cash, most of which is being poured down the drain. Richard Black fawningly reports Tim Yeo’s suicidal call from his parliamentary select committee to “de-carbonise” the UK economy, and introduce obscene new taxes on cars, energy and the air that we breathe (via carbon credits). Then there’s a report about David Willetts launching a new multi-million pounds “earth observation hub“, the main purpose of which seems to be to reinforce lies and prejudice about climate change. And last, but certainly not least, is the EU’s sickening 12% increase in its science research budget with the prime intention of hobbling EU economies still further by introducing yet more green taxes and climate change idiocy. That’s another 5.4bn euros wasted.

Meanwhile, China powers ahead. The importance of this is totally lost on the morons who call themselves BBC journalists.

BBC News 24, reporting the government’s apparent intention to at last cut the extortionate, ever-rising BBC licence fee, described culture secretary Jeremy Hunt as being “aggressive” towards the corporation. How dare he suggest that the BBC should be part of cuts was the indignant tone, especially as sacrifices such as the closure of the Asian network were being made. Would that the same language was applied to Palestinian terrorists and other “activists” described in BBC reporting of acts of outrageous (real)aggression in the middle east.

Without a breath of irony, the next item on News 24 was a reverential reference to that Jonathan Ross had presented his last show on BBC1. Why that was considered “news” in a national bulletin defeats me (except in the context of BBC self-worship), but that will be the same Jonathan Ross who has been paid millions by the corporation, despite his intrinsic, gratuitous unpleasantness – and is one of the reasons why the licence fee is so high.

BBC website serial fantasist Mark Kinver spends his time combing the world looking for climate change alarmist tosh. His latest foray into the field is a full-scale scare story aimed – as ever – at terrifying our kids into believing that Red Sea coral reefs will stop growing by 2070 because sea temperatures will by then have risen so much that they will die. There’s just one problem in this scenario, Mark, and it’s rather a big one. The records demonstrate that sea temperatures are not rising, despite intensive efforts by alarmists to suggest otherwise. The whole scare, as so often the case, is based on the false predictions of dodgy models. Why, oh, why, can’t he refer to the debate as a whole?

More than £3.6bn a year now floods in to the grubby palms of the overpaid executives who supposedly manage the BBC. The licence fee has gone up over the past five years by almost 15% to £142.50. But spending on new shows is plummeting, a survey by Ofcom has found. It has dropped from 65% of revenues in 1998 to only 56% now, and over the past three years, the amount of money spent on first-run programming on BBC 1 has fallen by 10% and that on BBC2 by 15%. By contrast, Ofcom found , spending in the same period by commercial television companies on their programmes increased, despite the recession.

No prizes for guessing where the cash has gone: into the bloated pay packets of the propagandists who call themselves journalists and programme-makers.