Author Archives: Robin Horbury

Let’s be clear. The EU Common Fisheries is a disaster that has wrecked the UK fishing fleet, created and has condoned for decades the practice of “discards” (EU-speak for compelling fishermen to throw billions of edible dead fish back into the sea) and has facilitated the systematic pillaging of UK fish stocks by rapacious French and Spanish fishermen. But for the BBC, which has under-and mis-reported EU affairs ever since it played a decisive role in rigging the 1975 EEC referendum, the European Commission is now the hero of the hour. It’s going to get rid of discards and reform the fishing policy to prevent “over-fishing”. As usual in this farce of reporting, there’s nothing from those who have been hurt by EU’s dictatorial, fascist meddling. All that counts is the view of greenies who want to perpetuate the lie that it’s the fishermen who are to blame.

How disingenuous, twisting and obfuscatory can the BBC get? This report about our government’s eco-nut plans to wreck the UK economy and force millions into fuel poverty suggests that the corporation will tie itself in any number of knots to not report the truth. Avoid-the-points Huhne’s bill is part of the government’s slow, deliberate act of national economic suicide, and its systematic plans to give massive subsidies to the rich by robbing the poor. The headline should be “Insane climate minister pours £110bn of our cash down the drain”. Instead, it is put across – exactly as the minister decreed – as an “investment”.

Everyone in government is momentarily obsessed with the sideshow of Murdoch-baiting. But it’s a diversion – the tragedy is that as the MPs engage in a mammoth show of self-righteous, hypocritical indignation, head cases like Huhne are getting on with their vicious, ideological sequestration of our cash. And the BBC is letting them get away with it by hiding the truth. Jo Nova, by contrast, gives the facts that Mr Huhne and his government henchmen so carefully ignore.

This latest posting from Phil Mercer in the Australian economic suicide story shows a superficial semblance of balance. He reports that proposals for the tax have “split the nation”, and quotes opposition leader Tony Abbott claiming that the tax is “socialism masquerading as environmentalism”, with another MP weighing in that the tax will destroy what’s left of Oz manufacturing industry.

But as usual, the devil is in the detail. What Mr Mercer carefully doesn’t report is this (from Murdoch’s The Australian newspaper):

Labor’s primary vote fell three percentage points to a record low of 27 per cent, while the Coalition’s support rose three points to 49 per cent for its highest primary vote since the Howard government in October 2001.

What he also doesn’t mention is that the Australian top 25 companies lost £7bn in share prices a single day after the tax was announced and that the measures will stop global temperatures rising by only 1/14,000 C°.

Against that absence, Mr Mercer gives oodles of space to the usual greenie claptrap from prime minister Julia Gillard (without a scintilla of balance) that the measures are vital to save us from freezing, boiling, drowning, dying of thirst and choking to death. He also includes, of course, the usual eco-fanatic clarion call that no matter what Ms Gillard does, it’s not enough.

And above all, he perpetuates the myth with compulsory BBC zeal that CO2 is “pollution”, and those who create wealth are “worst polluters”. What utter, poisonous tosh.

Autonomous Mind explains brilliantly why the closure of the News of the World is a triumph for the BBC-Guardian axis. Meanwhile Roger Harrabin continues to pump out greenie untruths which are making us all seriously poorer and show the power of the liberal-left media class. As usual, he ignores the real facts – a quarter of Brits live in fuel poverty as energy bills rocket.

Compare and contrast the way that Richard Black – the current BBC so-called environment correspondent- and David Whitehouse, a former BBC science reporter who, unlike Richard, actually has a science degree, handle a report which shows that – despite all the fanatical outpourings of greenies – there has been little significant warming since 1998. Mr Black is red hot keen at the very beginning of his report to savage sceptics who have “denied” global warming, because actually, he asserts, it’s all an illusion: the lull was caused by Chinese coal burning, which emitted sulphur particles that, in turn, reflected heat back into space. Mr Whitehouse, for his part focuses on the science, and concentrates instead on the devsatating impact the report has – and I’m going to quote him almost in full to show just how partisan Mr Black is and to convey what the real story is:

It is good news that the authors recognise that there has been no global temperature increase since 1998. Even after the standstill appears time and again in peer-reviewed scientific studies, many commentators still deny its reality. We live in the warmest decade since thermometer records began about 150 years ago, but it hasn’t gotten any warmer for at least a decade.

The researchers tweak an out-of-date climate computer model and cherry-pick the outcome to get their desired result. They do not use the latest data on the sun’s influence on the Earth, rendering their results of academic interest only.

They blame China’s increasing coal consumption that they say is adding particles into the atmosphere that reflect sunlight and therefore cool the planet. The effect of aerosols and their interplay with other agents of combustion is a major uncertainty in climate models. Moreover, despite China’s coal burning, data indicate that in the past decade the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere has not increased.

The researchers seek to explain the temperature standstill between 1998 and 2008. They say that the global temperature has increased since then.

This is misleading. There was an El Nino in 2010 (natural cyclic warming) but even that did not raise temperatures above 1998. In fact the standstill has continued to 2010 and 2011 appears to be on course to be a cooler year than any of the preceding ten years.

Tweaking computer models like this proves nothing. The real test is in the real world data. The temperature hasn’t increased for over a decade. For there to be any faith in the underlying scientific assumptions the world has to start warming soon, at an enhanced rate to compensate for it being held back for a decade.
Despite what the authors of this paper state after their tinkering with an out of date climate computer model, there is as yet no convincing explanation for the global temperature standstill of the past decade.

As usual, Richard Black, by contrast, goes on to give acres of space to the alarmists he habitually speaks to, in the way he usually speaks to them, and bends over backwards to convey that – without question – the report shows that we are all going to fry.

If I were writing this story, the headline would be clear: “Tory eurofanatics kill UK train-building industry”. For the BBC, however, the real meat is little more than a footnote in a quote from a union spokesman to the bloody-minded, blinkered decision by the callous Cleggerons to stick to EU tendering processes and award a train-building contract to the Germans, thereby condemning thousands of people in Derby to the dole queue and mercilessly wrecking yet another of our manufacturing industries. The reporter, as usual, bends over backwards to explain everything but the real story…and of course, those nice people at Siemens are our eurobuddies. So that’s OK then.

Professor Paul Valdes of Bristol university has been working assiduously for years to induce panic about the climate using models. He’s very unhappy that the level of panic is not high enough. He’s produced a new report that tells us that the problem with existing models is that they are too stable – they don’t show the sort of catastrophe that has happened in the past. The greenie message is loud and clear. We must spend billions more a year on taxing industrial production and end human activity as we know it.

Richard Black, of course, loves his message and seeks to report on it by making it clear that he approves of every syllable, while at the same time, putting two fingers up at sceptics. His way of doing so is ludicrous even by his standards. First he tells us patronisingly that models predict metal fatigue in aircraft. Gosh, what a revelation. Then he says:

In the acrid climate blogosphere there are many commentators who would agree with Professor Valdes’ contention about lack of confidence in computer models.Their conclusion, typically, is that society should not take any steps to mitigate emissions until the projections are surer. Going back to the analogy of aeroplanes, this is tantamount to arguing that it’s fine to get on board any craft unless it’s been shown to be unsafe.

Let’s get this straight. What a BBC so-called science correspondent clearly believes is that because “models” can predict metal fatigue (a relatively simple function of stress and a few other variables), they must also be able to predict climate (a system with so many variables that experts in the field can’t even agree on even where to start in their analysis).
This is a sub-moronic argument that I would blush to feed event to a three year old. Meanwhile, in the real world, genuine scientists are pointing out how complex the climate system actually is. Well worth a read.

It’s 18 months ago since I revealed that the investment strategy of the BBC pension fund is run on a day-to-day by Peter Dunscombe, who was then the chair of the steering committee of the Institutional Investor Group on Climate Change (IIGC) an allegiance of climate change fanatics who now boast that between them, they manage $12 trillion of assets. Mr Dunscombe openly flaunts his own climate change credentials, as here:

In 2000 he joined the BBC Pension Scheme to head up their small in-house team to oversee investment strategy and investment manager relationships. Over the last 9 years the Scheme has developed a significant exposure to alternative assets and has been active in the areas of responsible investing and climate change.

The one ray of good news for BBC pensioners is that Mr Dunscombe (info in latest BBC pension fund report here) has since resigned that IIGC post, but – surprise, surprise, – the BBC Pension Fund Trust still boasts openly that it is a member of the IIGC and meanwhile, the IIGC itself is pushing flat out to force its climate change policies on government and investors alike. Its efforts, outlined in a press release issued this week, include trying to jackboot Australia into carbon taxes, as revealed in this chilling phrase from their Australian spokesman:

We will strive to make thematic allocations but reallocation of substantial investment to the low-carbon economy requires policy makers to step up with certain and long term investment signals.

The IIGC is also pressuring our own government to adopt ever-more-stringent green policies as this patronising release from last month shows:

The new carbon budget set out today by the UK government demonstrates determination, is ambitious in scope and sends a signal to the UK public, financial markets as well as the wider international community. We hope that the ambition shown by the UK government sets a benchmark and has a wider impact at international level. However, the suggestion that the UK could review, and potentially weaken, its own commitments depending on progress elsewhere needs to be clarified to ensure certainty forinvestors beyond 2014.

So let’s get this clear. The BBC pension fund (on which Helen Boaden, its head of news, sits as a trustee) openly supports an organisation that is brazenly using immense financial muscle in pressuring governments round the world and here at home to adopt mad greenie policies.

Call me cycnical, but Richard Black’s efforts to stongarm us all into supporting climate change agendas assume a very, very sinister and conflicted light in this context.

But it doesn’t stop there. The BBC pension fund has now also openly signed up to another international greenie organisation to guide its investment strategy, the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI). This – masquerading, of course, like all UN activities, under a deluge of Newspeak – is another front organisation for greenie jackbootery. Its agenda is to attack every element of industrial activity. And, of course, it holds regular jollies around the world to discuss how better to enforce climate change fascism.

This, like Richard Black’s reporting efforts, stinks to high heaven.

Richard Black has posted yet another warmist homily, this time rubbishing the widely-reported claims here and here that a fall in solar activity could lead to a medium-term fall in global temperatures.

The claims originate from a warmist organisation and he can’t therefore use his usual ploy of shooting the messenger. So his first tactic is to say that the relevant paper is not yet “peer reviewed”. Not everyone in the science community has yet seen the paper and some don’t like it – so it might be suppressed. No doubt Mr Black is hoping that will happen.

Kick two is that he then points that the predictions “might not turn into reality”. Funny though, Mr Black rushes in to print as fast as his little legs will carry him when Phil Jones tells us that global temperatures are on the increase, or Greenpeace invent a cock and bull story for the IPCC that renewable sources will provide most of the world’s energy by 2050.

Kick three is that the sun’s activity would in any case have to fall more than the “man made contribution to the greenhouse effect”. Here, he descends yet again into blatant advocacy and puts a tendentious theory at the level of being beyond reasonable doubt Some people, Mr Black, outside your zealot’s bubble, don’t accept that the greenhouse effect is as important as you do. But of course that does not matter – the BBC has weighed scientific opinion, and has decided that the said “greenhouse effect” is as serious as any greenie wants it to be.

Kick four is that he reverts to his own authority. Mr Black reviewed solar activity four years ago and found that

• It is not the major issue on human timescales
• Any effect from modern changes in solar activity is likely to be dwarfed by greenhouse gas emissions and associated issues such as sulphate aerosols.

Well, Mr Black, all I can say is that David Whitenouse – unlike you a genuine scientist – reviewed your scientific endeavours recently and found them to be, well, lacking. Of course, you think more highly of your own efforts – otherwise you would not have invoked your own authority in this way – but I think I know who I would prefer to believe.

I’m getting bored with this – the litany of biased handling continues – and I won’t deal with every single point that I would challenge, including the perennial tiresome reliance on models that don’t prove a thing. But then, finally Mr Black invokes his usual trump quote card – evidence from a solar physicist who he believes shows beyond doubt that the predictions of cooling don’t count. It turns out that the said Joanna Haigh – surprise surprise – is a Met Office alarmist and an IPCC stooge who believes that CO2 warming will dwarf that of any sun cycle. That will be the same IPCC that publishes Greenpeace agitprop as fact.

I would expect better, even of Richard Black. This piece of writing stinks to high heaven for all the usual reasons and could have been compiled by a seven-year old climate change student.