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George R spotted this New Year gem in the Mail on Sunday about how the BBC were euphoric ten years ago when euro notes and coins were introduced. Actually, it’s not the first time this classic BBC ‘we love the EU’ material has been used. Glen Owen has probably recycled it from Peter Oborne’s Guilty Men paper for the CPS published in September which I highlighted here. That’s not to denigrate Mr Owen’s piece, it’s great that the MSM is finally waking up to just how biased the BBC has been for so long in its coverage of the EU. And what’s also interesting is that, apparently, a cross-party group of MPs, including Labour’s Kate Hoey and the impressive Philip Hollobone are to meet BBC News chief Helen Boaden sometime soon to discuss the sustained bias in EU coverage. There’s lorryloads of evidence, as this site shows. What’s the guessing though that Ms Boaden will do her usual and deny all? Even though the BBC on this issue – as with AGW and Israel – is so nakedly partisan?

Just as a point of interest, I will be reviewing tomorrow’s papers on BBC R5 Live tonight at 11.30pm. First time I have had the chance to do this so tune in you get the chance or even phone in. I’ll be on for half an hour.

Well, it’s been an interesting year here on Biased BBC. I wonder have you an outstanding moment of bias that still outrages you from the past year? If so, let’s be hearing from you!

Since the IPCC admitted last year telling huge porkies about the dangers from Himalayan glaciers, dozens of greenies have clearly been sent there to prove that they were right after all. Last month, for example, Richard Black faithfully reported, on a sample size of 10 out of 54,000 glaciers, that ‘ice loss was accelerating’, underlining the need for massive new taxes at the Durban climate talks. It was rubbish, of course. Now Mr Black’s colleague-in-arms, Jonathan Amos, has filed a Boxing Day tale of woe as part of the IPCC’s continuing campaign. His worry is that near the Cho Oyo peak, a new ‘enormous’ meltwater lake called Spillway (who called it that, I wonder?) could – because of undoubted warming – bring menace:

The concern is that this great mass of water could eventually breach the debris dam and hurtle down the valley, sweeping away the Sherpa villages in its path. The threat is not immediate, but it’s a situation that needs monitoring, say scientists.

As usual, despite the uncertainty that he clearly acknowledges, it’s a onesided rant about impending peril. The source of it appears to be mainly Ulyana Horodyskyj, from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado in Boulder, US. And her qualifications? She’s reading for her doctorate in geological sciences. Well golly gosh, our future is in safe hands.

The rest of the piece is larded with claims such as that that the region is like Swiss cheese and that this is an ‘exponential (meltwater) growth area’.

Put alarmist greenies guzzling on fat research grants into an area, and they will find a problem. And the BBC will be faithfully there to report it.

Just working out if I can blog from my mobile?

Richard Black is the man most obviously at the delivery end of the BBC’s deeply biased approach to greenie reporting, as readers of this blog well know.

This post unusually requires going back in time because I have only just got access to the transcripts, they take time to prepare. It’s worth re-visiting because they show the extent to which Mr Black works with others at the BBC to pursue and exaggerate the green agenda.

Back on November 14, he decided that – at the bidding of an extremist outfit called Client Earth (motto: ‘Justice for the Planet’; patrons, those scientific experts – Coldplay)- he would elevate the perennial greenie bogymen ‘atmospheric pollutants’ (in this case, especially nitrogen dioxide) to a whole new level of menace.

And in the process he had a willing partner, Today presenter James Naughtie. Between them, they told us that because of this new peril, triggered, of course, by vile capitalist activities such as power generation, flying and driving, we now face in the air that we breath a bigger daily danger than the London smogs of the 1950s.

For Mr Black the story had a double bonus, because the rise in nitrogen dioxide, he claimed, was due to two factors: flouting of that nice, benevolent EU’s atmospheric standards laws, and (boo hiss) second, “government cut backs” that had led to a failure to test for the gas properly.

To reinforce his utter outrage that EU standards are being breached , he turned to those nice, totally non-baised people at Client Earth, who obligingly stuck in the boot even further: they blamed the government’s “localism agenda” for this flagrant crime against humanity. What’s needed, therefore, is billions to be spent in introducing new car emissions laws (those nasty motorists must be curbed at all or any cost) – and by the way, we must also abandon any idea of a third runway at Heathrow. That would allow too many proles to be able to fly abroad on their holidays.

In other words, this was a perfect storm for Mr Black, all his green propaganda targets rolled into one alarmist orgy.

Now, I am not an expert in air pollution and don’t claim to be. But I have spent some time looking very carefully at the evidence about atmospheric gunk and the one thing that is clear is that if nitrogen dioxide at current atmospheric levels is the killer that it’s claimed to be, the evidence is not exactly easy to find, nor can it be described as a definite killer (which even the UN admit). Of course if you breath too much of it in, it has side effects; but even the most alarming of greenie sites have nothing that nails a massive area of risk.

And on the other side of the coin, there is clear evidence that the greenie obsession with amospheric pollution is another of the scares that has been totally over-cooked. Junk Science, for example, here demonstrates that one of the eco scares regarded as the nadir of nasty industrial smog was not as lethal as was claimed. The World Health Organisation, of course – in line with their UN anti-capitalist agenda – claim that millions are dying every year because of such pollution, and the EU says that 310,000 of its citizens meet a similar fate. But my guess is that this is trumpeted on the same basis as most greenie scares. Scratch the surface, and those figures (as Junk Science shows) are built on statistical sleight-of-hand linked with dubious models.

Which brings me to the second phase of the Black-Naughtie manipulation of this story.

Today carried an item that morning which was an interview with Joan Walley, the strident and blatantly alarmist Labour MP who chairs the parliamentary select committee responsible for air quality. Naturally, her committee, being part of the Westminster bubble, has swallowed the alarmist view of the topic wholesale. Miss Walley wanted, of course, massive increased spending on dealing with nitrogen dioxide to meet EU standards, and so-called “interviewer” James Naughtie sounded suitably aghast as she recounted the tale of woe.

But did he challenge the evidence? Did he ask on what basis such figures of doom are conjured up? Did he ask her why we must slavishly follow EU laws? Did he for one second think about the consequences on the cost of motoring and flying of tougher emissions laws?

Er, no. Mr Naughtie’s main concern was simply to amplify Ms Walley’s alarmist message. he asked:

What you’re saying, in effect, is that as many people are suffering, and indeed dying early, now, as a cause of pollution than they were when the smogs were a subject of public outrage in the 50s?

This, of course, was the cue for Ms Walley to deliver another sharp kick the government’s way, and to amplify her alarmist message still further – and she duly delivered, exactly as Mr Naughtie intended.

And there we have it. Richard Black set the agenda, and Today obligingly followed and magnified it. I am not clear where the evidence is that nitrogen dioxide is killing as many people as the London smogs of the 1950s, but it certainly was not provided by Mr Black or Mr Naughtie, and if it’s common knowledge, I have not been able to find it. And the UN actually state in its report on the gas:

The few long-term studies have not shown evidence for association between NO2 and mortality.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Of course, Mr Black would deny he influenced Mr Naughtie, and vice versa. But this shows how the BBC climate propaganda machine works -hand in glove with any alarmist who shouts loudly enough.

Electricity bills to rocket by 25% because of ‘green’ targets, says Government

Low-carbon technology ‘will not mean big bill rises’

Spot the difference. The fatcat quango the Committee on Climate Change – a supposedly ‘independent'(ho ho ho) body set up to check the government’s climate change policies, but actually stuffed with alarmist zealots – has published a report that purports to dispassionately examine the impact of these fanatical policies on fuel bills. Actually, it can’t avoid the truth completely and says through gritted teeth that some bills are going to rocket, as the first headline – from the Daily Mail – shows. But the eco freaks at the BBC have followed the Commission’s honeyed dissembling entirely and constructed a version of the story designed from beginning to end to deceive. The second headline is from the BBC website. Their reporting of the survey tells us that any fear of rising bills is totally misplaced, and in any case – as the econut head of the Committee declares – we should be grateful because the tipping of billions down the drain on renewables will lead to better “energy security”.

In reality, the report is alarmist claptrap from beginning to end. Anything from Lord Adair Turner should have such words emblazoned on the cover. The BBC have here acted like propaganda whores, recycling the same old tired lies about energy policy that they always do.

Richard Black is very happy this morning. The thousands of fatcat eco freaks at the Durban boondoggle have reached an “agreement” that will lead to £100bn being transferred from the urban poor in the developed world to the kleptocrats who run Africa’s developing economies. And he crows that this lunacy is now enforced by law. His reporting throughout the fortnight he has been in Durban has been a one-sided trumpeting of the BBC eco creed, laced with quotes from his cronies. It’s all summed up here.
But the horrendous reality of Durban is here:

“The fear of the negative consequences of the emission of CO2 is being used as a tool to bludgeon the developed world into economic and political suicide. We in the west are told that we must commit this suicide because we must commit to a “Fair and equitable allocation of the atmospheric space, taking into account the criteria of historic climate debt and population…”

Roger Harrabin has responded to the clear evidence that he (and the BBC)were bunged thousands of pounds to work with climate “scientists” at the UEA to indoctrinate BBC journalists about climate alarmism. Sadly I haven’t the time to dissect his “I’m right, you’re wrong” response in full – and commenters at Bishop Hill have already done a magnificent job. I urge you to read his weasel words in full. What I will say is this:

1.Mr Harrabin clearly inhabits a parallel universe, where he still bloody-mindedly refers to a “consensus” among scientists for his authority for peddling propaganda. He seems totally oblivious, still, to the irony that the BBC event that decided there was such a consensus was stuffed full of warmist bigots (invited by him and his eco fascist colleagues)who had only one agenda, namely to spread more alarmism.
2.He tells us, in effect, that the reason he accepted the UEA cash and organised the seminars, and then went on to virtually exclude sceptics from talking on BBC programmes was because his bosses in BBC News (Tony Hall and then Helen Boaden), as well as the trustees, sanctioned it. Well that’s OK then. Bosses at the BBC are always right and don’t have agendas. Do they?
3.Mr Harrabin then tells us that HSBC, Vivendi, WWF, Economic and Social Research Council, Dept of Environment, Shell, as well as the Tyndall Centre for climate research, were all keen to have a “better” public debate about climate change”. Like hell they were. Those that didn’t have a direct axe to grind (eg the eco fascists at WWF) were clearly keen to get their snouts into the climate change subsidy trough and to ensure that the BBC was doing its bit to spread approporiate alarmism.

What’s terrifying about this missive is its total disregard for the obvious. Mr Harrabin still believes he’s done nothing wrong and is not even aware of the stench his actions have generated. And clearly those above him have not moved one iota, either.

A Biased BBC reader notes;

“A new article on the BBC website headlined CO2 climate sensitivity ‘overestimated’ By Jennifer Carpenter, starts off hopefully with the statement; “Global temperatures could be less sensitive to changing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels than previously thought, a study suggests.”
Then we immediately get in the next paragraph; “The researchers said people should still expect to see “drastic changes” in climate worldwide, but that the risk was a little less imminent.” And as we near the end we get; “The results of this paper are the result of the analysis of [a] cold climate during the glacial maximum (the most recent ice age),” he told BBC News. “There is evidence the relationship between CO2 and surface temperatures is likely to be different [during] very cold periods than warmer.” Scientists, he said, would therefore prefer to analyse periods of the Earth’s history that are much warmer than now when making their projections about future temperatures.”

This comes across to me as a blatant admission that they won’t look at data that won’t support their point of view.