Category Archives: Peter Thomson

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.

On Monday, I posted about BBC The World editor Peter Thomson, who it turns out, is secretary of the fervent climate change group the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ). What actually does this mean? Well for starters, according to the SEJ website, he’s very keen on pushing, as well as his own organisation’s climate change guide, another publication that seeks to influence and underpin journalists everywhere. It’s called the CRED Guide: The Psychology of Climate Change Communication, published by the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University. CRED was established back in 2004 with a grant from the US National Science Foundation (another fervent warmist institution). Its master work is a truly terrifying document in terms of its ambitions in brainwashing and the patronising way it regards the public and – especially – non-believers in their religion.

For example, let’s start with how CRED suggests dealing with non-believers. It found that, stubbornly, despite the barrage of AGW publicity, people in the US are not convinced that it is something that affects them. So here’s what to do:

To counteract this problem, an effective communicator should highlight the current impacts of climate change on regions within the US. Research suggests that it may be more effective to frame climate change with local examples in addition to national examples. For example, references to droughts in the Southwest may resonate more with US audiences than talking about droughts in Africa. Similarly, climate change becomes a more personal threat to a New Yorker when hearing how New York City’s subway system will suffer as the result of a rise in sea level compared to hearing about the effect of a sea level rise in Bangladesh.

In effect, let’s make it up, never let the facts get in the way of a good story, and let’s scare them all to death. Note, especially, the scientific nonsense: the chance of the New York subway being inundated on current evidence of sea level rises is next to zero.

CRED’s pearls of wisdom continue:

Because such extreme weather events are vivid, dramatic,and easily understood, especially to the locals who suffer through them, they provide effective frames for the potential impacts of future climate change. The numerous examples of extreme events that may occur in a given year provide recurring “teachable moments” communicators can use to relate climate change to the experience of a local audience.

I’d love to go on. The whole publication is shot through with such alarmist, non-scientific nonsense. It truly is a textbook in propaganda. But this is a platform where brevity counts, so I will leave it there and recommend you to read it.

So what does that tell us about Peter Thomson? Presumably, as SEJ secretary, he practises what he preaches and is engaged in a crusade within the BBC and on a wider stage to implement what CRED suggests. That’s why people in general take office in such organisations. In so doing, Mr Thomson, I would submit, is acting well outside the normal accepted rules of conflict of interest. There is no consensus on “climate change’ yet he is pushing very hard that there is, and not only that, actively conspiring to persuade journalists throughout the world to say that there is.

The evidence of his campaign is not hard to find, it’s there in the deluge of ‘climate change’ claptrap that pours out of the BBC every single hour. Such as this New Year’s Eve propaganda-fest from our friend Richard Black in which he assesses (or rather, reflects gloomily about) the way forward after Copenhagen.

We know from the Harmless Sky blog that the BBC long since took a high-level decision to support the ideas of the kind advocated by CRED. Is that the result of the work of Mr Thomson and his ilk?

On that rather sobering note, I wish all Biased-BBC readers who wade through our postings a Happy New Year!