Category Archives: global warming

Meanwhile, back at the batcave …

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… Peter Rippon, editor of Newsnight, has responded to the complaints about how an audio clip of President Obama’s inaugural speech was spliced, had its order altered, and then was rejoined to make a new sentence never actually spoken by Obama.

The original post in Harmless Sky can be read here. My B-BBC post on the subject is here.

Mr Rippon writes,

We did edit sections of the speech to reflect the elements in it that referred to Science. The aim was to give people an impression or montage of what Obama said about science in his inauguration speech. This was signposted to audiences with fades between each point. It in no way altered the meaning or misrepresented what the President was saying.

I don’t think Mr Rippon’s response answers the objections raised.

Point one: fades, what fades? Listening to the audio clip there is a change in the quality of the background sound at the first splice point, which I initially heard as a faint sound but now think is just a discontinuity. No one who was not listening specifically for the break point would ever think it was anything other than a continuous flow of speech. Fades are meant to, you know, fade.

Point two: there is not even that at the second break point – it runs smoothly on.

Point three: what about the alteration of the order? Someone just offering up a montage of phrases doesn’t mess with the order such that a new, coherent (but never actually spoken) sentence is created.

Point four: the meaning was altered and TonyN’s original post in Harmless Sky explained very clearly why. He wrote, “Paragraph 16 does not refer to climate change in any way, but to economic and infrastructure problems. The reference to harnessing the sun, wind and soil could as easily refer to energy security as global warming.” But in the BBC version it does appear to refer to global warming.

I would add that in the original sentence as spoken by Obama, “We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost”, the fact that science being restored to its rightful place is immediately followed by a reference to healthcare gives me the strong impression that it was meant to refer to lifting restrictions on the federal funding of research into embryonic stem cells. The BBC version, “We will restore science to its rightful place – roll back the spectre of a warming planet”, makes it sound as if the restoration of science to its rightful place refers to President Bush’s alleged scepticism over global warming. This interpretation is reinforced by the whole tone of Susan Watts’ blog post and video essay: “But in climate change and other key challenges of science, Bush wouldn’t listen to the scientists. He didn’t like their view of the world, and he didn’t like what they were saying.”

Blimey, that sounds like something aimed at ten-year olds. I am not Obama’s biggest fan, but at least when speaking in his own words he sounds like he is addressing adults.

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BBC spliced and joined separate parts of President Obama’s speech in order to make it appear to take a stronger line on global warming.

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Steve T in comments pointed out this post by TonyN of “Harmless Sky”.

TonyN links to an audio clip of Obama apparently saying, “We will restore science to its rightful place, [and] roll back the spectre of a warming planet. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.”

But, as TonyN writes:

I didn’t seem to remember him saying that at all.

When the program [i.e. Newsnight – NS] was over, I went back to the text and this is what I found.

It would seem that someone at the BBC had taken the trouble to splice the tape so that half a sentence from paragraph 16 of the inauguration speech was joined on to half a sentence from paragraph 22, and this apparently continuous sound bite was completed by returning to paragraph 16 again to lift another complete sentence.

Read the rest of his detailed analysis. Incidentally, I couldn’t hear an “and” at the first splice-point of the audio clip, just an unidentifiable noise.

(Added later.) To make one sentence out of two widely separated half-sentences would be shabby and manipulative enough for a broadcaster. To then interfere with the order in which things were said, so that the sentence fragment about “a warming planet” has been falsely interposed between other phrases to which it had no real link, is yet worse. The BBC has gone beyond “dowdification” into something else. “Beebification”, perhaps.

(Another update.) You can hear the spliced audio clip directly from the BBC in the “video essay” at the base of this blog post by Susan Watts, Newsnight‘s science editor. Quite apart from the splicing, the Susan Watts post itself would provide material enough for another B-BBC post (“Scientists have grown used to attempts to silence them”) – but I have to be gone.

UPDATE 24 JAN.: There is a further post discussing the response of the editor of Newsnight to complaints about this here.

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Not a peep

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You probably don’t know that Slovenia (that little country between Austria and Croatia) has just experienced its lowest recorded temperatures – 47 degrees below zero. Even were it the case that other news sources had no interest in this information due to global warming enthusiasm, the BBC is supposed to compensate for the innate bias of non-public funded media- so it is usually argued. In fact, the Beeb is married to the Met, which does a nice line in giving global warming advice (but is rather poorer at getting the weather right). Corporate socialism you see- shielded, funded, its interests well and truly vested in convenient paradigms and worldviews. This is also known as b-i-a-s, and it’s what this website is concerned with.

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The climate inquisition continues…

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I hope Umbongo will forgive my posting his comment here, but it’s rather good. The glee with which criticism of The Great Global Warming Swindle was publicised by the BBC was noted, for instance here on EURef. Little wonder then that this point of view is amplified and repeated, just in case we missed it (actually, I think we did fail to mention it “up top” so to speak…), today on the BBC:

“Another landmark in “impartiality” was reached today in Lisa Jardine’s “A Point of View” Radio 4 at 8:45 this morning. In slagging off anthropomorphic climate change scepticism she shows her deep misunderstanding of the origins of legal process in England by claiming that the English confrontational system of trial is a direct descendant of the Roman Republican system epitomised by the trials starring Cicero. That England’s system derives from development of the Common Law brought here by our Anglo-Saxon and Viking ancestors escapes her. But, of course, she is trying to make another rather more serious and controversial point. That point is that the system of finding the “real” truth by setting out the opposing “truths” epitomised by “An Inconvenient Truth” and “The Global Warming Swindle” might confuse the punters.

For her the “closely argued” and consensually accepted truth of the Gore film (although she admits that in a court of law – ah you see where she’s coming from – some of the “facts” were found to be . . . er . . lies) is contrasted with the outpourings of a “vocal tiny minority” through the Channel 4 documentary. She doesn’t claim that any of the facts contradicting AGW in the “Swindle” were lies but relies on the finding that the warmist scientists quoted/interviewed were misled into taking part in a polemic. She likes polemics but not if they contradict her “truth”. So we have on TV a simulacrum of (to her) the discredited English system of getting at “legal” truth opposed by her preferred “false but accurate” argument of the BBC impartiality mind-set of which she is such an enthusiastic proponent. She closed the programme by wondering if the vocal non-consenting minorities should (a la Hansen) be silenced – if not prosecuted – for daring to oppose the consensus.

Lisa Jardine is the daughter of Jacob Bronowski. The final image of Dr B, in his “Ascent of Man”, standing in the mud at Auschwitz is implanted in my brain. He wept and said that Auschwitz and, by implication, all the other hell-holes constructed by Man, is the unavoidable destination reached by the denial and silencing of truth. Were he still alive I don’t think Dr B would be proud of his daughter.”

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Who ate all the pies?

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More nonsense reporting from the BBC. A generous portion of the BBC’s bias lies in giving credence to outlandish leftist notions- such as that the cause of food shortages is obesity.

Why exactly the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is calculating the costs of John Prescott’s sad “condition” is one of many unanswered questions from this report.

Let’s just consider some real news shall we? How about Alistair Darling’s attack on EU grain tariffs, which actually do keep food prices high? I couldn’t find a BBC story on it or the backlash. Or how about the story mentioned in this report of how the UK Treasury is dealing with its debt problems by raking in from the high fuel prices which make food so expensive?

How about a bit more on the impact of biofuels on food production? Some number crunching there would be more than welcome.

The war on fatties is pure diversion from the machinations of politicians. The BBC is entirely complicit in these. Politics, statism, and the manipulation of the populace is the BBC’s stock in trade.

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What do they think they’re doing?

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Well, hello, hello, hello. Simply incredible the certainty with which the BBC report the findings of one group of UK scientists on the sun-spots – warming link alleged link. Keep in mind the following is just the link descriptor, which is the first thing a viewer reads before clicking to read the article itself:


“The idea that the Earth’s climate is determined by cosmic rays and the Sun’s activity is discredited by UK scientists.”

Note the subtle avoidance of saying “disproved” by using something perhaps stronger- the great argument of all man-centred warmists, ridicule. Damn, those crazy sun-spotters are so past-tense they’re already finished- discredited no less.

But anyway, to proceed to the article, which begins in highly suggestive terms:


“Scientists have produced further compelling evidence showing that modern-day climate change is not caused by changes in the Sun’s activity.”

Well I always thought that outside of opinion pieces a journalist was supposed to source subjective judgements like “compelling”, but maybe that’s a quibble.

But then, I’d quibble with the following statement too:

“This is the latest piece of evidence which at the very least puts the cosmic ray theory, developed by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark at the Danish National Space Center (DNSC), under very heavy pressure.”

At the very least under very heavy pressure. Heavy stuff indeed. Yet which is it that was pressurizing the cosmic ray theory (hardly rocket science anyway)? Is it the implied series of pieces of evidence which preceded “the latest”, or is it “the latest”? It’s not clear to me, and do you know, I don’t think it’s supposed to be.

Bottom line (literally): …”we had better carry on trying to cut carbon emissions”.

So not a bit politicised at the BBC, is it?

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OFF THE RAILS

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. The BBC is a prime cheerleader for those who seek to use “climate change” as a convenient excuse for limiting our freedoms. I notice it carries a glowing report this evening suggesting that the UK needs a “modal shift” from road to rail if greenhouse gas emissions from transport are to be curbed. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) says changes are needed to government policies on transport pricing, energy and town planning. A train journey can produce about one tenth of the carbon emissions generated if the same trip is made by air. The report’s authors say substantial investment in the railways is needed. And as part of the war on motorists, we read Cliff Perry, vice president of IMechE’s Railway Division and a former head of Thameslink under British Rail declare “Eighty-five percent of transport emissions come from roads, so if we are serious about doing something, we must hit road transport.” I bet.

But since when did AGW become a fact rather than a theory? Why does the BBC continually imply that AGW is undisputed science? Government is determined to tax us for using our cars and this report, given all due prominence by the BBC, is just one of many designed to create the right mood music to help support what will be further strident impositions on the motorist who dares to travel without government approval. Doing Brown’s dirty work seems all they are good for!

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SAVE A PRAYER

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Whenever the Church of England gets a favourable headline on the BBC, you can be sure that it will relate to it embracing leftist causes. Global warming hysteria is one of the Left’s favourite causes – in fact I would suggest it has taken on quasi-religious importance to those who worship at the church of the Rev Al Gore. So maybe it’s no big surprise to see the prominence the BBC gives to the story that two senior bishops are urging people to cut back on carbon for Lent instead of the conventional chocolate or alcohol.

The Bishops of London and Liverpool, Dr Richard Chartres and James Jones, are launching the Carbon Fast at Trafalgar Square with aid agency Tearfund. They hope to encourage people to reduce their carbon footprint for 40 days. Bishop Jones, who is vice president of Tearfund, said: “It is the poor who are already suffering the effects of climate change. To carry on regardless of their plight is to fly in the face of Christian teaching.” One Tearfund employee will camp outside the charity’s offices in Teddington for a week in an attempt to reduce his emissions to that of an average Malawian farmer. God preserve us from liberal angst. Dr Chartres called for “individual and collective action”.

OK, so these two Bishops buy into the global warming alarmism so assiduously cultivated by the BBC. But why is that EVERY person who the BBC allows to comment on this story all share the one viewpoint? Whatever happened to plurality of opinion? Is there no-one that the BBC can find to oppose the AGW hysteria? There are MANY in the scientific community who do not buy into the carbon emission obsession, there are many within the religious community who also do not see it the same way as these two Bishops do. But time after time, when it comes to this topic, the BBC ONLY allows one view. That is neither fair nor balanced and it’s high time that the high priests of global warming hysteria in the BBC were held to account. We need less hot air from them.

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