Author Archives: Robin Horbury

LAPDOG HARRABIN

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Roger Harrabin, like the lackey he is, faithfully reports the House of Commons whitewash about the University of East Anglia leaked emails. Not a whisper of a challenge or alternative view to that the committee involved has laughingly claimed that the science behind climate change is intact – even though it did not have the competence or remit to do so. One day, politicians will wake up with a revolution on their hands because they are so drastically out of touch with public opinion and are treating with malicious contempt their constituents. For genuine opinion about what people think of the House of Commons report, you have to look elsewhere, for example, the comments here. In the meantime, the BBC will be making no efforts to report the true picture on climate change, or anything else that’s outside their liberal-lefty worldview.

Update: for an excellent assessment of why Harrabin’s account is so dishonest and disingenuous see Frank Furedi here at Spiked.

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TODAY EDITOR IS CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIVIST

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In Mongolia, it’s sadly been so cold this winter that a million animals have died, and many of the nomadic herders and farmers are said to be in desperate need of aid. The Today programme reported this story this morning, but guess what was missing from the equation? Any mention of that dreaded phrase “climate change”. This fits a pattern. Today reporters grind on about AGW every time there is a claim – however tenuous – that temperatures are getting hotter; but never when the reverse applies. Of course, one extremely bad winter does not prove cooling, but on Radio 4’s co-called flagship news programme, the topic is never discussed properly.

Could this be because Ceri Thomas, the editor of Today, is yet another BBC executive who is a climate change activist? Mr Thomas, it transpires, is on the board of a body called the Science Media Centre, another shadowy outfit that has been created, according to its own blurb, to act as:

first and foremost a press office for science when science hits the headlines. We provide journalists with what they need in the form and time-frame they need it when science is in the news – whether this be accurate information, a scientist to interview or a feature article.

An admirable objective, if – but only if – the Centre was properly neutral on matters of scientific controversy. But it it isn’t. It’s yet another collection of warming fanatics. It runs a number of briefings for journalists which show the reverse is true; everything they do on the climate front is geared towards the AGW perspective. So when Copenhagen was looming, who did the centre choose as its speaker to make sure journalists were properly in the picture? Why, none other than Vicky Pope, of the Met Office, who might be described as one of the UK’s warmists-in-chief. Others of these briefings follow exactly the same pattern and format, for example this one on so-called carbon sinks, which assumes as the start point that AGW is happening:

Efforts to control climate change require the stabilization of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, which in turn depends on the balance between our own emissions and natural carbon sinks. The Global Carbon Project has evaluated all the available evidence on carbon sinks and sources, the results of which have been published in Nature Geoscience. Two of the authors of the paper briefed journalists in their findings at the SMC.

I could go on, there’s tons more, but I have made the main point. Mr Thomas deems it acceptable that he is an active member of a body which is grafting away behind the scenes to prejudice the debate about climate science towards the warmist viewpoint.I know from other sources that he also responds to complaints about the programme’s climate change coverage by using sweeping warmist statements such as that there is a “great consensus” about climate change science, therefore there is only the need for him to afford “due impartiality” to sceptics – which means in practice that they rarely, if ever, appear on Today. And, in turn, that the programme is totally biased in its approach to the topic.

I submit that because of his activism, Mr Thomas is not fit to edit Today – or any other BBC programme. He should resign immediately.

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GREEN WASTE…

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Here’s the BBC’s Richard Black at his best, positively beside himself with glee because China is now wasting more money on “renewables” than that nasty place of over-production and excess, the USA. His tone throughout is one of adulation for what China (and Britain – alarmingly for us now in third place) have achieved in tipping money down the drain. Note, too, that there is no mention in his report of the most crucial factor, namely that Spain’s policy over eight years of busting a gut to invest in green projects was a national disaster. A survey – the most detailed of its kind – by Spanish academics found:

Optimistically treating European Commission partially funded data, we find that for every renewable energy job that the State manages to finance, Spain’s experience cited by President Obama as a model reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the US should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about nine jobs lost for every four created, to which we have to add those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would have created.

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CONSPIRACY (PART2)

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Following up the COMplus post, something that those who do not work in television might not realise is that organisations that are linked to it, such as the Television Trust for the Environment (TVE) would not exist unless they were adept beggars and propagandists and because of the BBC. TVE poses as an independent production company but it is not; the organisation is only economically viable because it receives lavish support from a clutch of warmist NGOs, including WWF, Oxfam, Christian Aid and World Vision.

All of these, of course, as I noted in the original post, have a massive climate change/political agenda, and they receive funds from governments and the EU. They turn to TVE to make films (supposedly “independent” but rigidly sticking to the warmist agenda) because it’s cheaper to fund a specialist producer on a collective basis. They might not get exactly what they want, but it’s damn close.

It’s also true that TVE could not exist unless it had a guaranteed outlet – and the BBC has provided that certainty for 25 years. In turn, the BBC itself leeches on TVE’s subsidies because it uses its capacity often, not only on regular slots like Earth Report, but also to make material for programmes such as Newsnight, where TVE’s alleged “environmental expertise” is judged to be the reason why it is qualified to make and publish such material. The reality, of course, is that the resulting programming spreads the greenie propaganda message – exactly in line with the NGO agenda. Time and time again, in such BBC programming, spokesmen for warmist NGOs appear, but sceptics never do.

Thus the BBC does far more than work with TVE. It provides it with its very lifeblood, access to airtime. In turn, the BBC – by using TVE programmes – gets access to the millions of pounds of donor cash that go to NGOs. I wonder how many of the donors that so generously give to charities such as Oxfam know how their hard-earned cash is actually being spent? To me, it’s fraud on a massive scale.

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CONSPIRACY?

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B-BBC has already established that the BBC World Service Trust is an organisation that exists mainly to spread climate change lies. Now, the redoubtable EU Referendum has gone a very important step further. The so-called trust is a founding partner of a body called COMplus, which describes itself as a “diverse global alliance of organisations committed to scaling-up the impact of sustainable development communications through partnership and collaboration.” Thus the BBC is a prime mover in shadowy – but highly organised – international efforts to foist the greenie ethos upon us all. To add insult to injury, COMplus, surprise, surprise, is funded by your money, via the Department for International Development (and of course through WST itself).

The scale and modus operandi of this activity beggars belief, and the BBC is in every sense a key component, putting it firmly in bed with the main greenie activists around the world.Look for example, at just one of the COMplus partner organisations, the Television Trust for the Environment (TVE). Naturally, its main goal is to make greenie propaganda (the annual report is a manual about the chilling art). The main outlet is on the BBC World television service; its programmes such as Earth Report reach 172 countries and notch up audiences of 100m plus. Principal funders of TVE include the World Wildlife Fund, Christian Aid, and Oxfam – the usual suspect NGOs who, in their pursuit of climate change nonsense, have become polticial activists whose main aim is to spread the lie that the West is to blame for all the developing world ills. Predictably, TVE is run by one Cheryl Campbell, a former BBC journalist (and greenie fanatic) who was also communications chief of Christian Aid.

Also in on the act is the Reuters Foundation, which, as B-BBC also established in a previous post is the founder of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. This body is run partly by BBC journalist James Painter, a climate change activist who is a model of his type; Goebbels would have been proud of him.

Before the AGW myth was formed, I was not a great believer in conspiracies. But in every stage of investigation of climate change, there’s evidence that this is a propaganda exercise on and unprecedented scale. And the BBC is at the epicentre of it all. It’s no coincidence that men like snout-in-trough and ultra Blairite Stephen Byers are also involved as one of the main cheerleaders for COMplus.

Update: Hat Tip to B-BBC reader Cassandra King, who (I had not seen) had posted on this earlier; also to EU Referendum’s Richard North, who told me last night about COMplus and also ensured that the previous B-BBC postings on WST were linked to his post.

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PIE IN THE SKY…

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You’ve got to hand it to the BBC. They won’t give up one some things – and especially their relentless advocacy of AGW. No matter what the facts, they will twist them. Take this item, on wind power on Orkney. It’s one long commercial for the joys of “renewables”, an ode to the importance of us all buckling down and accepting these bird-chopping, landscape-defacing monstrosities. Notice that the one thing missing from the article is the “s” word, the elephant in the room: subsidy. The author recounts how the community will benefit by £200,000 a year from their new toy, but he fails to spell out that without the government’s huge subsidies for wind power, wind turbines would be prohibitively expensive. Notice, too, that there is no mention of another vital issue – that the wind is so unreliable as a source of power that no matter how much propaganda is spread about the benefits,it will never, ever, be able to provide anything but a small fraction of our overall power needs. But eh,ho, it’s a nice patronising story about country folk doing nice greenie things. And that’s all that matters to the BBC.

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SPHERES OF INFLUENCE…

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Oxfam, one of the BBC’s favourite political organisations – spreading dissension and hate in the name of climate change – has spent megabucks of donor cash (no doubt given in the mistaken belief that it would help the poor)in a project to try and understand how the blogsphere supports sceptical thought about the causes of warming. In so doing, it’s drawn up this diagram (with the heading “how to combat sceptics”) showing the “pro” and “anti” sides. Guess which organisation is at the centre of the “pro” side? There’s dear old auntie, right next to the Guardian, the New York Times and the World Bank. I suppose this only confirms what we already know – but now it’s official. The greenie fanatics know exactly what they are doing and they know that the BBC is a an ultra-safe pair of hands and friend, ready to do their bidding and puff any alarmist press release that’s spewed their way.

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HOT AIR (AGAIN)

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Put together a potty, unneccessary EU directive abour air quality, an EU-fanatical greenie nutter like Tim Yeo, and the BBC, and what do you get? A well-tried formula of alarmism warning us that unless we stop keeping ourselves warm with nasty power stations, refrain from using petrol, and wind down our industrial base completely, we’re all gonna die. One thing missing from the equation? Recent peer-reviewed research that shows that all the scare stories about air-borne pollutants should be taken with a huge pinch of salt, and that claims of massive death tolls from the type of matter involved in the EU directive are abject nonsense. But that, of course, can’t be mentioned because it would spoilt the political agenda; the boys and girls at the BBC want to send us all back to the greenie idyll of the stone age.

Oh, and build thousands of wind farms to replace the pollutant-belching fossil-fuel power stations. Ignoring completely the fact that they are hugely expensive, subsidy-guzzling monstrosities that don’t work.

Update: apologies, but this last link didn’t work when the blog was first posted, but it should do now.

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MORE SNAKE OIL…

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Here’s another BBC warming fanatic. He’s James Painter, who for the past decade has been filing warming alarmist stories from his beat in his various roles as BBC World Service Spanish American editor and Miami bureau chief. He came to my my attention because he’s led the field in reporting alleged climate change related drought problems in the Amazon, one of the areas where the IPCC report has been found to be discredited; Richard North reveals today why it’s bunk.

He’s now moved on to become a lecturer and research fellow at the Reuters Institute in Oxford, but this is partly funded by the BBC and he is still a BBC Latin American analyst, filing stories on the impact of drought and the shrinking of glaciers. So Mr Painter remains a BBC man through and through. He is clearly of that BBC breed that believes climate change is a crusade. He recently gave the annual keynote lecture to the Society of Latin American Studies. It’s well worth a careful read because his speech is a case study of the extent to which bias has infected every aspect of BBC journalism in this area. He says:

To summarise then, climate change is happening, it’s happening faster than expected, and it will have a huge impact on Latin America. Of course there are all sorts of scientific uncertainties, but uncertainty should not be an excuse for lack of coverage in the media. In the same way that climate adaptation policies have to be incorporated into governments’ development strategies, global warming as an issue has to be mainstreamed into the media.

Basically, this fanatic believes that 90% of scientists accept global warming, and therefore the views of sceptics should not be reported; that the Arctic is melting, that the Amazon will be badly affected by drought , and vast parts of South America will become desert. He thinks also that the 2007 IPCC report did not go far enough:

…there is plenty of evidence to suggest that by some key performance indicators – the rate of warming, the rate of melt in some parts of the world and the rise in GHG accumulation – real-world changes are at the upper bound or beyond the worst-case scenario presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) last year.

The main thrust of his argument is that media organisations must stop reporting other news, and focus their main efforts on climate change. I’ve noted before that if you scratch the surface of the nature of BBC journalism, you find that it’s actually a propaganda machine, and that almost every reporter that is examined is actually a political activist. Mr Painter fits that profile; the tragedy is that he clearly believes – from the tone of his lecture – that’s he’s an objective reporter. He’s not, he’s a peddler of snake oil.

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MANKY BAN KI

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Richard Black strikes again…he reports that the IPCC is going to be reviewed, but fails to tell us the most important point: that all the national scientific organisations chosen to conduct the process long since sold their collective souls to the climate lies machine. Guess what they will find? And old manky Ban Ki has already made up his mind. The science is “robust”, he declares, without an ounce of doubt. I am reminded of the Papal deliberations on infallibility during the Reformation.

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