Author Archives: Robin Horbury

I have every respect for the sherpas; but since when were they climate experts? And how, exactly, do they measure that ice is melting in the Himalayas and be able to say with any degree of certainty that in their 20 years of experience or so, it’s worse than what has gone before? No matter about such niceties, to the BBC, it’s a good climate change scare story and it supports the IPCC, and because it involves ice melting, it must be true. At least the sherpas don’t pretend to be scientists – unlike this shower from Ohio State University, who have decided that they can prove through proxies that Arctic ice is at its lowest level ever. Their methodology?

When we look carefully at various chemical and biological components of the seafloor sediment, and how the sediment is distributed — then, with certain skills and luck, we can reconstruct the conditions at the time the sediment was deposited.”

A bit like scriers and necromancers, then. And sherpas. But no worry, to the BBC, it’s all proven, consensus science. If it’s scary it must be news.

Tony Blair, while for some obscure reason being prime minister of the UK, laid the foundations for the greenie legislation that costs UK taxpayers an eye-watering £18bn a year in perpetuity. Now, the BBC reports glowingly, he’s joined the fast-expanding greenie venture capital gravy train that, in general, advises greedy corporations how to make an obscene fast buck or two by forcing people into fuel poverty and by pushing the the third world to abandon measures that help them out of poverty. For the BBC, of course, this is simply a great story; they report it without any qualifying comment in their eco-freak mutual admiration society. Their fervent wish is the resurrection of St Tony.

Sadly, I missed this response from Roger Harrabin on April 7. It deserves a wider airing for its surprise value (to put it mildy). At least he has not so far resorted to BBC lawyers, as one of his sensitive colleagues has:

Here is the official BBC comment: “It is well known that BBC correspondents are often invited to act as an independent moderator for events, sometimes for a fee. Our Editorial Guidelines allow correspondents to do so, as long as they do not undermine the impartiality of the BBC. There is no evidence here suggesting this expectation has been breached.

“To give more context: Roger Harrabin also undertook a chairing role at a lecture by the climate sceptic Vaclav Klaus; the RSA meeting mentioned in this blog featured a proponent of GM crops as well as the Soil Association, and for the recent Economist meeting Mr Harrabin requested a climate sceptic speaker on the panel.”

Personally I find some of the comments in this blog objectionable. I do not have a fixed view on climate change, and have always tried to depict it as a Risk issue rather than a case of rigid scientific fact. This will have been clear in my recent interview with Prof Phil Jones which was widely appreciated by both sides of the debate.

I note that this blog does not complain about bias from those high-profile BBC presenters who also chair conferences and who regularly make on-air remarks ridiculing climate change.

Just as sceptics attack the BBC for being biased on climate change, so greens attack the BBC for giving to much prominence to climate sceptics. In a very complex debate we’re trying to get it right.

First – “objectionable”. The reason why remarks on this blog (from this writer at least) are robust and at times pungent is that the BBC is reporting climate change with “due impartiality”, that is, it has assumed that there is a consensus on the subject and is affording warmists very significantly more airtime than so-called sceptics. No matter what is said or missed, or established to the contrary, BBC reporters pough on like the Triffids.

Almost every day, the BBC website posts another warmist alarmist story; the occasions when balance is given to these ludicrously one-sided reports are extremely rare. Worse, sceptical sites such as WUWT, Bishop Hill, EU Referendum, Icecap and dozens more are routinely and deliberately ignored. Thus, in Mr Harrabin’s own report of the International Conference on Climate Change, he suggested that the hockey stick was disbelieved by sceptics; nowhere has he analysed why people like Andrew Montford have comprehensively demolished the assumptions made in its compilation. This is at best lazy disregard of the truth; at worst, extremely poor journalism.

Second: greenies complain that Mr Harrabin’s coverage is not greenie enough. That’s an old nonsense that the BBC has used at least since I was a BBC publicity officer. It didn’t wash then and it doesn’t now; the existence of complaints from both sides of a debate does not mean that what is complained about is balanced. The facts that matter in this connection are that, as I posted earlier this week, when people like Richard Black write a story about climate change, in 99 cases out of hundred the only people quoted are from the eco-freak side. Harrabin, Black&co. ignore sceptics in a systematic, unprofessional way. They are thus on a mission of agitprop, not journalism. I have reported dozens of examples where simple attention to the other side of a debate would have created balance. But it doesn’t happen.

Third: The meetings and conferences which Mr Harrabin chairs or presents at are also attended by sceptics. The evidence speaks otherwise. If this is genuinely the case, I’d like to know from him the balance of sceptics to warmists at the events he has chaired over the past two years. I’d like to know how much he has earned from chairing the events; and to see the briefing letters and notes he has prepared. Has he put the sceptics’ case at any of them them? Has he told people why the hockey stick has been comprehensively demolished, about the work of Anthony Watts, of Andrew Montford, and of all the thousands of sceptics round the world? I expect not, though if I am wrong, I will happily say so.

Finally, I can think of only Jeremy Clarkson and Andrew Neil who have ever said anything against climate change on the BBC. If there are more examples,as Mr Harrabin asserts, I would be delighted to know who they are, when they expressed their scepticism; and how this balances out with the thousands of biased reports that Mr Harrabin and his cohorts have filed.

I look forward tio your reply, Mr Harrabin. And rest assured, anything you furnish that proves my perception of the way you operate is wrong will be properly aired.

Compare and contrast these two accounts of the Fourth International Conference on Climate Change, one by the BBC’s Roger Harrabin, the other by a genuine journalist who attended the event. Mr Harrabin’s sole intent, it soon becomes apparent, is to pour scorn on the conference; to him the 700 who gathered in Chicago were steak-eating, libertarian, republican, right-wing Yanks. In the BBC’s rogues’ and vermin gallery, you can’t get any lower (unless, perhaps, if you are from UKIP). No mention of their qualifications, the range of expertise they encompassed, or anything else that might gave credence to the proceedings. His sole intent is to rubbish what went on.

Not only that, his pay-off line – in accusing Lord Monckton of not being a scientist (and therefore, presumably, in Mr Harrabin’s book, not qualified to make the closing address) – falls heavily into the domain of the proverb involving kettles and the colour black. The writer will be the Roger Harrabin who mainiacally pontificates to the world about the dangers of global warming from his privileged BBC pulpit, even though he himself has no science degree. It will also be the Roger Harrabin who, despite being a self-proclaimed expert (in churning out the material that he does), confuses weather with climate:

His (Lord Monckton’s)closing words were delivered in a weeping whisper, a soft prayer of praise to the American constitution and individual liberty.

As the ecstatic crowd filtered out I pointed one delegate to a copy of the Wall Street Journal on the table. A front page paragraph noted that April had been the warmest on record.

“So what?” he shrugged. “So what?”

h/tip George R

May is my favourite time of year and have you noticed that – after our rather cold winter – it’s a fantastic month for, well, the mayflower? I travelled from Brighton to London yesterday by train and mile after mile of hedgerow was filled with that wonderful blossom. Strange, then that the BBC isn’t reporting it – especially as in 2007, after a winter that was a tad warmer – it was inundating us with reports, for example here (at 7.42am)and here, that tried to panic us in to believing that early flowering hawthorn is a certain harbinger of the global warming disaster that Richard Black and his cronies tell us is going to engulf us all. The more that BBC so-called ‘science’ reports are examined, the more they seem to resemble the ramblings of deranged necromancers.

The Daily Telegraph’s James Delingpole reports back from the International Conference on Climate Change which has just finished in Chicago. To him, this stellar gathering of climate scientists has established beyond reasonable doubt that only morons now believe in global warming. By contrast, to Roger Harrabin, of the BBC, who was also there, the whole event was easily dimissed as a gathering of right-wingers. Mr Delingpole has interesting observations about Mr Harrabin’s approach to his job.

The other main objection I heard – from the BBC’s Roger Harrabin – is how utterly ridiculous it was that a total know-nothing like James Delingpole was speaking on a “Science” panel with meteorologist Joe D’Aleo, climate expert Fred Singer, and economist Ross McKitrick (co-destroyer – with Steve McIntyre – of Michael Mann’s hockey stick). Indeed, when I introduced myself to him, he snapped back “I’m not sure whether I should shake your hand. I want to punch you.” He sounded jolly cross indeed – and ranted that I was utterly irresponsible and had disseminated lots of lies – though he later apologized to me saying he was jet-lagged and had confused me with Christopher Booker. Hmm.

In the interests of fairness, I would point out that we have only Mr Delingpole’s account to go on that this exchange happened; but I have no reason to disbelieve him, and a hundred reasons to believe that Mr Harrabin’s reporting of this issue is exaggerated, one-sided, left-wing fanatasy.

Anthony Watts, of the admirable Watts Up with That? blog is currently at the Fourth International Conference on Climate Change, where genuine climate scientists – as opposed to the buffoons who advocate global warming – are currently gathered in Chicago. It transpires that an amateurish, grubby, sharp-practice, wet-behind-the-ears BBC-funded crew is prowling the corridors of the conference hotel trying to misrepresent what is going on and to twist the words of participants. Anthony has filed an account of his meeting with this sordid BBC operation, and I reproduce it in full because every word deserves to be savoured:

I gave a couple of interviews today. The interview I had in the evening after the keynote dinner with an independent crew working for BBC on some documentary on “The Skeptics” was unscheduled. They caught me in the grand hall asking if it could do an interview. It started out pleasant enough, but soon deteriorated. They had no organization at all and had no idea where to shoot it. They suggested we shoot the interview in my room, because they wanted to have me set in front of my computer. I thought that was more than a bit forward and suggested the foyer, we got there, setup and then after starting decided they didn’t like the setting. They they suggested that we go to the media room (which they apparently just discovered) so they tore down and went there.

After a couple of false starts the questions started coming. I started to wonder where they were going with this, and when they started asking about what I thought about Dr. Phil Jones “wanting to commit suicide” I realized that it wasn’t going to be factual, but more emotionally spun. I told them flat out that question and what went on in Dr. Jones mind/intent wasn’t something I could or would comment on since I have no information beyond the press report.

These two independent filmakers were just kids, early 20′s and were struggling to come up with questions. They kept trying to get me to use the word “fraud” as applied to Dr. Jones. There were about five attempts to do so in questions, asking essentially the same question over and over again in different ways.

They also asked why climate skeptics are so “angry” and why there are so many nasty comments on forums. I pointed out that they should visit some of the entertainment forums where people talk about celebrities like Britney Spears etc if they wanted to see some real vitriols, and that nasty comments are a part of the blogosphere, particularly when anonymous commenting is involved. Alarmists make a lot of nasty comments. Look up dhoghaza and Joe Romm.

The capper came at the end when they asked me to sign a release form. I was shocked, because standard procedure is to have the interviewee look over and sign the release form before the interview.

Reading it was like reading no other release form I’ve ever seen. It had a clause that said “gives us the right to use your content however we see fit” which concerned me because usually an interview for a documentary is limited to that venue. For all I know they may put me on a political comedy show.

Then there was something I’ve never encountered in all my years of television. An oath of “honesty and factual accuracy” was in the release. While I certainly thought I answered honestly and factually, this clause concerned me. When somebody interviews me on a contentious subject like climate, I’m giving my opinion. Opinions are almost always disputed. I was sure mine would be. To have such a clause connected to one’s opinion is just insane because then someone can hold up anything and say “but scientific consensus says..etc…etc…so Mr. Watts lied and violated his contractual oath in the release form”. It’s not a court of law, it’s an interview. Jeez Louise!

The release was obviously written by amateurs, and I refused to sign it. They then admitted that “it’s being revised to ‘simplify it’ and ‘could we send you a revision?’. I said I’d look at it, gave them my card with email address, told them that I thought they had the process backwards and that I was unhappy with being confronted with flawed legal language after giving a good faith interview, and left.

How low can the BBC stoop? Let’s remind these cretins that Anthony has spent 25 years in the weather business and unlike the BBC, bends over backwards to ensure that the warmists he so fervently disagrees with are properly represented in both postings on his site and in cross-links. The BBC, for its part, distorts everything it reports to include a warmist spin. And clearly, it doesn’t give a damn how it gets there.