As some of you have already pointed out in the comments, the BBC is broadcasting another documentary about climate sceptics on Monday. This film (once again made by a true believer and funded by the licence fee) will be broadcast under the banner of BBC 4’s Storyville. I’ve found a promo, presumably for its theatrical release (a couple of right-on documentary film festivals and a green conference would be my guess). Try not to laugh during the opening narration:
“This is a story about the world of climate scepticism and my journey as I put aside my environmental beliefs, rid myself of any bias, and try to really understand why some people think that our carbon dioxide emissions are not a problem.”
It looks like a cross between Michael Moore’s style of carefully spliced hit-piece propaganda (complete with gun-toting rednecks) and some sub-Louis Theroux faux empathy (“Was I becoming one of them?” Oh come on now, you’re not kidding anybody with that bullshit.)
Can you imagine the BBC funding a film by a climate sceptic in which the likes of George Monbiot and various BBC environment journalists are challenged about all the contradictory nonsense they’ve produced over the years?
If “Meet the Climate Sceptics” is as tendentious as last week’s Horizon effort on the same subject (and the evidence of this promo suggests it could be) it may be fair to assume that our state broadcaster has now decided that its role is not merely to uphold climate alarmist orthodoxy but to use whatever means possible to attack those who dare oppose “the consensus”.
I’m sure I’m not alone in finding that somewhat sinister.
(Then again, perhaps film-maker Rupert Murray really does end up on the sceptical side. I’m willing to bet 500,000 Czech carbon allowances that’s not the case, though.)
UPDATE 9pm. Interesting, isn’t it, that film-makers like Ann McIlhenny and Phelim McAleer never get Storyville editor Nick Fraser’s seal of approval (and therefore BBC cash)?
UPDATE 9.20pm. BBC4 Storyville editor Nick Fraser writes in today’s Observer:
No single organisation in Britain outside the BBC can set out to challenge the drift of culture, and appear to do so successfully. The Sundance Institute survives by means of donations from sponsors and donors such as the Ford Foundation and George Soros’s Open Institute, with a budget of $25m a year. Within the next 10 years it aims to extend its reach globally. Isn’t it time for our own Sundance?
I guess we won’t be seeing an expanded version of this film on the BBC, then:
Quite apart from offering an unwelcome challenge – in BBC terms – to “the drift of culture” it would upset Mr Redford, and that would never do if Nick Fraser wants to continue visiting Park City, Utah, every year.