Author Archives: Robin Horbury

So far, the BBC has done virtually nothing about Climategate, and as David notes in the previous post, if anything, has cranked up its AGW reporting to fever pitch. This is what Richard Black says on his blog this morning:

As far as I’ve been able to ascertain, climate politics elsewhere remains unimpressed by allegations that the CRU documents undermine the very basis of the forthcoming negotiations; but it’s a question that I will be asking when the Copenhagen talks open.

I don’t know where he’s been doing his “ascertaining” (he could try, for simple starters, here,here or here)but such a response is deeply, deeply dishonest, and illustrates just how seriously wrong the BBC is on this issue.

I will await with interest to hear just how hard he pursues the question he intends to put. But don’t hold your breath. He’ll probably be as tough and persevering as Evan Davis was when he ‘interviewed’ Bob Geldof this morning on Today (that is, he listened admiringly to every word of nonsense he uttered).

James Delingpole, of the Daily Telegraph, here, has an excellent assessment of Roger Harrabin’s role in reporting what is now being called Climategate.

Diane Abbott MP, as those who worked with her in the early days of TV-am will attest, is not the brightest tool in the box. But she knows a political opportunity when she sees it. Last night – miracle of miracles – the BBC1 programme on which she reguarly appears, This Week, mentioned “climate change”, and there was a sensible exchange between Michael Portillo and Andrew Neil in which the ex-MP mentioned the CRU emails and said the affair illustrated the need for politicians to exercise caution in backing expensive measures that almost certainly were not needed. Bravo!

Ms Abbott’s response? To pronounce, without any doubt or hesitation (and no evidence, either), that the Cockermouth floods proved that “climate change” was definitely happening and must be halted. An audience member on last night’s Question Time made the same blunt assertion. The culprit responsible for this inanity? Well it must be in no small measure the BBC itself. On the back of its relentless tide of pro-warming propaganda, Ms Abbott – and millions like her – have become self-declared scientific experts, influenced by the “climate change” soundbites the BBC push out round the clock. And Ms Abott – as well as people like last night’s Question Time panellist the charmless Marcus Brigstocke – seize on this propaganda with relish because it accords with their lefty agenda to cripple our economy and create their ultimate goal of a Stalinist state.

One day, the story of how climate change hysteria took over the BBC will be told. Just like CRU, they have disgracefully refused FoI requests to reveal how they shadily arrived at the outrageous political decision to back the scam with every sinew and every resource at their disposal.

Meanwhile, their journalists continue to act like bigoted charlatans when they discuss anything to do with the topic. This morning, Today presenter Sarah Montague and political reporter James Landale discussed as if it were a serious topic a lunatic idea from the Department of Health that we should kill one in three cows in Britain to reduce methane emissions and thereby also improve the nation’s health by reducing meat intake. Landale betrayed his climate change fanatacism by saying admiringly that the idea was “courageous”. Montague tought the whole thing was a bit of a giggle because someone had pointed out that dairy and cattle farmers might be offended.

If the BBC were a true journalistic organisation, the story here would have been an investigation of what the hell the DoH is doing wasting our money by coming up with inane reports that are an insult to the intelligence of a three-year-old.

Yesterday, I said that remarkable things seemed to be happening at the BBC in terms of reporting that there were problems in the global warming/climate change scam. I spoke far too soon. Roger Harrabin and his fanatical, deeply politicised lefty chums have clearly been fighting behind the scenes to push warming up the agenda to blitz levels. Today on the website are at least four stories all of which illustrate just how deeply enmeshed in the scam the corporation is.

First there’s a report that African conflicts go up when the weather is warm, thus showing that global warming is to blame for the continent’s miseries in more ways than one. The idiotic compilers even blame the Darfur fighting on carbon dioxide. I have read a lot of history that is deterministic tosh, but that takes the biscuit. I suppose the boys and girls at the BBC think the heat is more important than fanatical Islam fundamentalism?

Second on the list, is the news that the government/quango employees at the Forestry Commission, aided an abetted by environment secretary Hilary Benn are wasting millions more of our money by urging the planting of millions of trees “to suck carbon out of the atmosphere”. Of course, there may well be some environmental sense in planting more trees, but hoovering up CO2, a perfectly harmless gas, is not one of them. To the BBC, of course, it’s the number one reason.

Third is that the Met Office – which works closely in tandem with the discredited CRU centre in Norwich – is predicting that this year could be the third hottest in the history of the world, ever. Putting aside that such data is hotly denied by “sceptics” (why can’t we call them something less negative, such as “realists”)because the methodology of measurement is hotly disputed, Harrabin has reported such baloney yet again as accepted fact.

And fourth, heavy prominence is gven to the idea that part of East Antarctica may be melting. There’s hardly a peep in the report that, even according to the paper itself, it might not be – because the measurements involved are highly speculative.

What is entirely missing from the BBC website (as far as I could see) is a report about the real impact of all the “climate change” measures the government are introducing. Namely, that thousands more pensioners die in winter than summer because they can’t afford the fuel bills that have been vastly inflated by the EU’s emissions directives and the madacap rush to build hugely expensive and inefficient renewable sources of energy.

Truly astonishing things are beginning to happen at the BBC over the CRU emails. First, Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics yesterday posed some decent questions about what had gone on at CRU and about the climate change record generally. Second, a genuine climate change sceptic (Professor Fred Singer) was allowed to speak, only the second time in recent history that I’ve seen this happen. Thirdly, Neil worked hard to expose the vacuity of the warmist stance.

I’ve never seen an interview like that on the BBC, ever, and believe you me, I’ve searched.

Next, the fanatic warmist Harrabin actually seems to be treating the CRU hacking as a story that might matter. Perhaps it’s because his chum George Monbiot has called for the resignation of CRU boss Phil Jones, but whatever the reason, I’ve seen correspondence that shows him to be on the case. And last night, he actually broadcast a piece on Radio 4 which, to quote the excellent Bishop Hill, was “not a complete whitewash”. That’s a miracle.

Finally, there could be even further reverberations to come. It seems that the BBC weather reporter Paul Hudson – he who last month shocked us all by becoming one of the first BBC staffers to admit that there were holes in warmist propaganda- has revealed on his blog that he had received, and had been sitting on, the hacked email files from CRU for more than a month. You couldn’t make this up.

As a fervent Scot, and son of the manse, Gordon Brown hates Britain’s past; anything to do with the empire and with colonialism, especially. So, of course, does the BBC, which leaps at any opportunity to denigrate British achievements. The government’s absurd and patronising decision to “apologise” for the way children from broken homes were sent to Australia and elsewhere in the Commonwealth to start new lives is thus naturally front page BBC news this morning. Yes, some of these children were badly treated, and it is deeply sad and regrettable that they were. But standards of childcare, and understanding of childcare issues, were very different then. The idea of “apologising” for what happened is preposterous and nauseating.

What’s next? A grovelling apology to Oz for James Cook landing there in the first place? Or to Spain, for beating them in the Armada, thereby postponing the colonisation of British fishing grounds by Spanish fishermen for four hundred years?

Would that this Prime Minister (and the BBC) would focus instead on issues that really matter. How long will it be before one of his successors will be forced to “apologise” for his headlong, wreckless rush towards causing fuel poverty for millions by his fervent belief in global warming? And for wrecking British social fabric and culture by encouraging unrestrained immigration?