Author Archives: Robin Horbury

AFRICAN HOT AIR

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EU referendum’s Richard North leads the way yet again today in exposing that the IPCC 2007 report not only got it drastically wrong about melting Himalayan glaciers and disappearing Amazon rain forest, but also about serious food shortages in Africa. It’s deja vu – all over again! – because the IPCC report depended on inflated claims from a pressure group rather than scientific fact. The BBC, of course, as Richard points out, swallowed the bogus claims hook, line and sinker and in a chart about the impact of climate change, has this about Africa:

Projected reductions in the area suitable for growing crops, and in the length of the growing season, are likely to produce an increased risk of hunger. In some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50% by 2020.

But the BBC’s involvement in spreading these untruths about climate change in Africa goes much deeper and is much more sinister. As I pointed out last week, the World Service Trust, funded predominantly by grants from our taxes by the UK government and the EU, runs a scheme to ‘educate’ African journalists about the dangers of global warming, and to train them how to spread propaganda based on the premise that the West – as the main originator of CO2 emissions – is responsible for virtually all Africa’s woes. The Trust is deadly earnest in its mission, and recently published a lengthy and lavishly produced policy briefing on the topic. This, in the light of Richard North’s revelations, is a tissue of political proopaganda and misinformation. You need to read it it to realise the sheer scale of this lunacy. It beggars belief. Masquerading as ‘research’, it is actually a vitriolic polemic against the West. This is a taster:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) places Africa at special risk from climate change, in part because of its lack of capacity to adapt to changing environmental realities. Sufficient support to enable African governments and citizens to adapt to climate change will be a key ingredient of any successful international treaty. A major policy conclusion of this report is that meeting the
information and communication needs of African citizens should be considered as a critical component of adaptation strategies around climate change. Providing African citizens with the information they need to respond and adapt to climate change is just one component of probable forthcoming debates around climate change in Africa. A central issue is one of environmental justice. African citizens will be among the most affected by climate change but are least responsible for the greenhouse gases that have caused it. They cannot make just demands on the rest of the world, or determine properly their own political and other responses to this emerging crisis, without being informed about its causes and its consequences. African citizens need better information on climate change, but they also need far better ways of communicating their reality and perceptions on the issue to those principally responsible for causing it.

Thus, the BBC is hard at work with your cash, hell bent on a political mission to persuade millions of Africans that a series of cobbled together lies are the truth. Its co-conspirators are the EU and the government.

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DOG’S BREAKFAST…

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The BBC very belatedly and no doubt even more begrudgingly has commissioned a poll probing views about global warming. Despite the years of BBC propaganda to the opposite, a total of 73% are not convinced that climate change has anything to do with humans; only 26% believe it is man-made, a drop from 42% a year ago when the Times newspaper conducted a similar poll. So who does the BBC turn for comment about the results? Why, of course, a spoksman from DEFRA, who professes himself “very disappointed”. What? – that the British people don’t accept being mugged by a battery of government climate change taxes?

It comes as no surprise that there is nothing at all in the report from the ‘sceptics’. And David Shukman, who reported the poll on BBC News 24 in funereal tones last night, blathered on about how people’s views went against what he said was unquestionably “mainstream science”.

Meanwhile, the Today programme this morning continued on its warming mission by bringing on a Green Party candidate and a carbon-obsessed academic to discuss how CO2 taxes must be introduced on everyone who owns a cat or a dog. I kid you not. It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic that the BBC’s editorial values have been traduced in this way.

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BBC STILL DEFENDS ‘CONSENSUS’

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Here’s a letter a colleague has just received from the BBC’s complaints unit. I reproduce it in all its glory so it can be fully savoured:

I understand you’re unhappy with the BBC’s reporting of climate change as you feel we’ve been biased towards the AGW’s point of view. The BBC is committed to impartial and balanced coverage when it comes to this issue. There is broad scientific agreement on the issue of climate change and we reflect this accordingly; however, we do aim to ensure that we also offer time to the dissenting voices.

Flagship BBC programmes such as Newsnight, Today and our network news bulletins on BBC One have all included contributions from those who challenge the general scientific consensus recently and we will continue to offer time to such views on occasion. You might be interested in the views of former Newsnight editor, Peter Barron, who explored this issue in an online posting at our Editors’ Blog and explained some of the editorial issues it throws up.

I can assure you that we’re committed to honest, unbiased reporting and are determined to remain free from influence by outside parties, whether political or lobbyists. Our Charter and Agreement allows us independence from political pressure and the licence fee gives us independence from advertising, shareholder or other commercial interests. Impartiality forms the cornerstone of BBC News and Current Affairs and we’ve nothing to gain by weighting our coverage in political terms or by allowing influence from any other outside body.

I appreciate you may still believe the BBC is biased with regards the climate change argument and so I’ve registered your comment on our audience log. This is a daily report of audience feedback that’s circulated to many BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive Board, channel controllers and other senior managers. The audience logs are seen as important documents that can help shape decisions about future programming and content. Thanks again for taking the time to contact us.

Regards

Joe O’Brien
BBC Complaints

Thrown up yet? Note that the official line is still that there is a consensus. Laughable, if it wasn’t so serious a subject. Meanwhile, the Spectator has a cracking piece which shows how totally cuplable the MSM have been in not reporting ‘climate change’ – and ends on a note that the BBC should be responding to.

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BROKEN TRUST…

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The BBC World Service Trust is an arm of the BBC that receives £17.9m a year – mainly from the Department for International Development and the EU (52%)- to train broadcasters to spread messages about development. Some of what it does is vital and laudable; for example helping to spread knowledge about HIV/Aids through the development of soap operas that are actually listened to. However, and as in everything the BBC does, it is a big caveat, there is a sinister side to its mission. It campaigns loudly about ‘the environment’, and inevitably, where BBC folk are involved, that actually means about ‘climate change’. Take, for example, Africa Talks Climate (do you notice the missing word?)about which the organiser says:

The drive to help people understand issues such as climate change and to have the opportunity to speak and act is at the heart of our work…In a partnership project funded by the British Council, ten countries have been identified in which BBC WST researchers will be conducting research: DR Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. The major objective of Africa Talks Climate is to identify the entry points to engage, inform and empower Africans in local, national and international conversations about climate change. To achieve this, the initiative will collate opinions and then amplify the voices of people at all levels of society.

Interestingly, this was all done with the British Council, which as EU Referendum has pointed out today, is another government-funded body which has been infested with ‘climate change fervour.

Back with WST, their efforts extend to the eastern Caribbean and South America, but also to India. Here, the trust’s aim was again to train journalists:

An extensive training programme for journalists and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) was carried out in nine Indian states to improve the quality and quantity of information published in the media and to create a better flow of information between environmental NGOs and the media.

Their partner in part of the enterprise was TERI (The Resources and Energy Institute) set up by none other than Ravendra Pachauri, the boss of the IPCC. TERI itself is not without controversy (to put in mildly), but, eh, this is ‘climate change’, so for WST, it’s simply “our non-profit partner”.

Now I’m all for Indians and Africans (and anyone else) becoming more aware of the need to treat the environment properly. But this, folks, as we well know, is not really about that. It’s about the BBC pushing their ‘climate change’ lies and propaganda, and nothing will get in their way. The truth is that the World Service Trust, funded by our taxes, is busily at work persuading journalists round the developing world to spread lies and to hate the West for the injustices they have heaped upon them through CO2 emissions. The BBC, whose motto is “Nation Shall Speak Peace unto Nation” is frantically stoking up hatred instead.

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FAT CAT CREAM

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The big oil companies, once the greenies’ villains of the peace, are now in bed with them. They are the cats that truly have the cream, because on top of their massive oil and gas reserves – which of course the world still needs – they are now also benefiting massively from the lunatic government subsidies for building wind farms and other so-called renewables. Their grasping greed is part of the sinister conspiracy that, as Ofgem pointed out yesterday, will lead to energy bills soaring to £5,000 a year by 2020 and regular power cuts well before then. So when Dr Anthony Hayward, the BP boss, comes down from his subsidy-fuelled castle to give – as fawning Evan Davis put it this morning on Today “a rare interview” – how is he treated? With sickening deference. Our chain-wearing Evan’s first question was, he obviously thought, quite a toughie (and designed to be a sop to all those anti-warming ‘deniers’ he clearly sneers at); whether the great doctor actually believed in ‘climate change’, despite all the recent controversy. The answer was “yes”, so naturally, this was treated as the gospel truth, and the rest of the exchange followed entirely predictable lines. It revealed nothing other than that BP is fat, complacent, and chillingly opportunistic.

What Davis should have asked the good doctor is how much he and his company stands to make from government subsidies in the massive ‘renewables’ scam. That is precisely the qestion that the BBC will never ask.

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FINGERS IN PIES…

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Guess what? The man responsible for looking after the fat pensions of the boys and girls at the BBC is a climate change fanatic, and he is part of an international group of investment managers who bust a gut to invest in ‘climate change’ schemes. He’s called Peter Dunscombe, and he runs the £8.2bn corporation pension fund, advising trustees on a day-to-day basis about their investments. Mr Dunscombe, who addresses conferences about ‘ethical investments’, is also chairman of the Institutional Investment Group on Climate Change(IIGCC), which has 47 members and manages four trillion euros’ worth of investments; yes, four trillion. Their goal is to find as many ‘climate change’ investment opportunities as possible:

The IIGCC Investor Statement on Climate change was launched in October 2006. Asset owners and asset managers who signed the Statement committed to increasing their focus on climate change in their own processes and in their engagement with companies and governments.

So now we really know why BBC staffers are so fanatical about ‘climate change’. It’s naked self-interest. In 2008, there were 18,736 contributors to the BBC pension fund; every man jack of them benefits from climate alarmism.

(h/t anonymous eagle-eyed B-BBC contributor)

Update: I’ve been going through the latest BBC Pensions Trust report, and it reveals that Helen Boaden, who is the overall boss of the BBC’s news and current affairs operation, was appointed to the trust in 2008. So the woman who tells environment reporters such as Roger Harrabin and Richard Black that the science is settled also works to maximise the returns of the pension fund with Peter Dunscombe. I thought that needed spelling out fully, just in case any subtleties might be missed.

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MORE THOMSON BIAS

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At the beginning of January, I reported that Peter Thomson, who is a senior environment editor for the BBC, is secretary of the campaigning greenie organisation the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ). Since then, I’ve been carefully tracking his work to see what impact his views have on his reporting.

How did he tackle the news that the IPCC had admitted that it had got it wrong about the Himalayan glaciers? Would it be to go to get a reaction from a leading ‘sceptic’ such as Anthony Watts, who has monitored such problems? Well no. He brought on to The World (the programme of which he is environment editor) the Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilpirin, a political reporter and Democrat supporter turned climate change fanatic who – from the list of her postings – clearly beats even the great Moonbat in her alarmist fervour. And was her reporting at all critical of the IPCC? Er,no. If you listen, you’ll find the fragrant right-on Ms Eilpirin thinks it was just one itsy bitsy mistake and the rest of what the IPCC does is perfect.

I listened next to how Mr Thomson reported the election of Republican Scott Brown to replace Teddy Kennedy in the US Senate. In this report, he speaks first to an energy industry spokesman who is pleased that this could mean the end of cap and trade CO2 emissions bill. That’s a cue for our Peter to spend the rest of the report exploring what must be done instead to stop what he unquestionably accepts is CO2 “pollution”. There’s not a flicker of a doubt that this is vital. And finally, on to Obama’s state of the union address. You may remember, the audience guffawed loudly when the great one mentioned the evidence about ‘climate change’. But for Mr Thomson, that’s not remotely the issue. He’s very excited that his hero the Democrat President is planning to do something about green jobs (and hence’climate change’), despite the ignominious drubbing in the poll.

When I originally reported on the issue of Mr Thomson’s bias, I looked mainly at what his organisation the SEJ was doing. That was alarming enough. There’s now clear and abundant evidence that the brainwashing techniques the SEJ advocates are fully in play in his reporting.

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HARRABIN OBN – WITH BARS AND STARS!

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Harrabin’s at it again. Damage limitation. The Sunday Times today contains another damning indictment of the IPCC, this one hinged on that it used WWF hype to reference claims that 40% of the Amazon rainforest will become savannah thanks to decreased rainfall caused by ‘climate change’. But our Roger is not phased. His view is that the IPCC referencing might be wrong, but the ‘science’ is correct:

My guess is that NGO reports often offer an easy synthesis of already-published evidence. In my experience, NGO papers are often both accessible and accurate – though clearly written from a point of view.

Read it carefully. What I think he means – astonishingly, even by his standards – is that no matter what greenie fanatic NGOs say about decisions that involve billions of pounds, it’s OK, because they mean well and they know what they are doing. Equally, that it’s fine if the IPCC lifts such material to pressure governments into panicking about non-existent climate threats. Now we see what the whole lying BBC edifice aound ‘climate change’ is built upon. The ‘experience’ of a dough-brained BBC reporter (who doesn’t even have a a science degree) and who admires greenie activists so much that in his book, whatever they publish is probably correct. For that, I think he deserves Private Eye’s OBN – with double bars and stars.

Update: Today’s MSM – the Sunday Telegraph, Mail on Sunday, the Sunday Times – is awash with stories about the IPCC scandal. For the BBC’s newspaper reviewer, however, the key story is rather different: it’s Ed ‘let’s have a tax scam orgy’ Miliband wailing in the Observer that the the sceptics are wrong, the science is settled and he’ll go on imposing those taxes and building windfarms come what may.

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RATS’ NESTS…

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Whenever you turn over a stone involving reports about ‘climate change’ at the BBC, it reveals a whole new rats’ nest of other problems. Take this report designed to show that, even if the IPCC has got it wrong about Himalayan glaciers, changes to rainfall patterns caused by ‘climate change’ will wreak havoc. It’s part, of course, of the BBC’s damage limitation efforts to shore up climate alarmism in the face of the growing revelations of lies and fraud. The reporter is Navin Singh Khadka, a Nepali journalist who files for the BBC World Service as well as online; over the years, he has written numerous ‘climate change’ panic stories. Mr Khadka, it transpires, is also a member of the Climate Change Media Partnership (CCMD), which exists – as far as I can see – entirely to spread warmist alarmism:

Just 11% of the 1500 journalists accredited to the 2007 Bali climate change summit were from developing countries, highlighting the urgent need to provide training and opportunities for journalists from these countries to report on climate change.

CCMD is supported, among others, by the International Institute for Environment and Development (the IIED), which receives funding from the UK government (DfID)and also Comic Relief. The BBC is therefore indirectly a supporter of both these organisations because the vast majority of Comic Relief funds come from its BBC exposure, and also senior BBC staff are trustees.

Thus Mr Khadka, I would contend, is yet another ‘climate change’ fanatic employed by the BBC. He recently gave an interview to the Nepal Monitor in which he stated:

But treating climate as a ceremonial issue (that is paying attention to it only when conferences take place or, say, when the world is observing environment day) has been our greatest weakness. The media need to wake up to the fact that it is an issue about our lives and the issue has to be conveyed effectively to the people.

It’s striking also that in his report about the Himalayn glaciers, the first authority he turns to is Mats Eriksson, a senior hydrologist with the Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). I checked out this body and guess what? Like Mr Khadka, it also supports warming alarmism, with this among its primary goals:

Globalisation and climate change have an increasing influence on the stability of fragile mountain ecosystems and the livelihoods of mountain people. ICIMOD aims to assist mountain people to understand these changes, adapt to them, and make the most of new opportunities, while addressing upstream-downstream issues.

I know I write about thes issues often, but it’s simply staggering to behold the extent to which the BBC is in bed with ‘climate change’ in all its lying, fanatical manifestations.

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HEADS IN SAND….

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It’s endlessly fascinating to watch how the BBC wriggles and turns to ensure that it keeps churning out ‘climate change’ lies. One technique used with obdurate single-mindedness is to report only the views of those who agree that there is ‘consensus’. Thus when the government’s chief scientist, Sir John Beddington, says that’s the case, that’s what the BBC reports. Never mind the latest revelations about the IPCC lies about the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035; never mind that Bin Laden is now using ‘climate change’ as a basis for the need to wreck the Western economy (I wait with bated breath to see how the politicians who support climate lies spin that one); and let’s also ignore that it was propaganda from Greenpeace (and WWF), rather than scientific research, that underpinned the IPCC latest report.

Let’s get on instead with wasting vast amounts of BBC licence fee payers’ money – £1.74m of it – on sending 177 BBC boys and girls to Glastonbury. That’s what our public service remit is all about!

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