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Matt Ridley observes in his excellent book The Rational Optimist:

Despite a doubling of the world population, even the raw number of people living in absolute poverty (defined as less than a 1985 dollar a day) has fallen since the 1950s, let alone the percentage living in such absolute poverty. That number is, of course, still all too horribly high, but the trend is hardly a cause for despair. The United Nations estimates that poverty was reduced more in the last 50 years than in the previous 500.

He goes on to explain that population growth has not led to the mass starvation that greenies have been predicting with monotonous regularity since the 1970s. There has been a revolution in food production that has tripled the yield of staple plants and ensured that – while there is still a long way to go – most on our wonderful planet have full bellies and increasing life expectancy.

But that doesn’t stop the BBC from trumpeting this alarmist report about starvation caused by climate change as if it were a certainty. They stick to their unquestioning acceptance of the green creed emblazoned on every BBC door: millions are going to die because of our nasty, selfish, capitalist ways. The subtext makes International Socialists look subtle. The report is from the same Doomsday script as has been rehearsed dozens of times before, based on the same flimsy models. And the reporter quotes without a trace of balance the preposterous opinion that we can limit – as if we had supernatural powers – global temperature rises as easily as switching a thermostat. Jennifer Carpenter is clearly yet another of the army BBC climate-change activists without the remotest comprehension of science or development history.

Once upon a time, Britain was a land of enterprise and development. Our brilliant inventions, our exploration and ability to push back the margins in pursuit of better lives for the many changed the world immeasurably for the better, and gave us full bellies and cheap energy. Now, our civil servants – when they are not doing the bidding of our masters in Brussels – spend their time drawing up useless regulations, and even worse, measuring our “ecosystem assets” in pursuit of greenie moonshine. At a time of supposed austerity, bucketloads of cash have been tipped down the sewers in an effort to map out how much of the UK divides into coast, farmland, forestry and so on. The man responsible for this luncacy, Bob Watson, chief scientific adviser to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and co-chairman of the NEA, pontificates that this is a terribly important exercise that will benefit us all.

But make no mistake, the agenda involved is not to make the world a better place. Richard Black, like a rat up drainpipe, of course loves the report, because it fits in with his political creed. Bob Watson is clearly the new hero of the hour, and he quotes him lovingly:

“Professor Watson said this did not imply an end to development, but that costs and benefits of each proposed development could be assessed more accurately in advance.”

Be afraid, very afraid, because finding news ways of stopping economic development IS the real agenda here. Skilfully woven into Richard’s piece are supporting words from all the usual sources he uses – the government-supported “charity” the RSPB and lefty academics included. All of them make it very clear that they want to find new ways to use this loathsome report to halt economic growth and take us back to that pristine age when we were all greenies and at one with nature.

Richard Black is the willing mouthpiece for this dangerous tripe. He thus continues his political campaign relentlessly. I suppose that’s to be expected – what else has he ever done? – but what’s shocking is that Britain is fast becoming the world centre of anti-enterprise because of the greenie poison he spreads.

Richard Black seems hell bent on telling us that the oceans are turning acid. Two days ago, he posted this, and now, today, he’s added this – he faithfully and uncritically recycles alarmist predictions that clownfish are going to choke to death because of rising CO2. These clown researchers are being paid to find problems like this, and they do so, using their ju-ju models that predict doom on every level.

Other more rational and less politically motivated souls look coolly and calmly at the evidence. First, rising carbon dioxide levels are good for us and good for the planet because the trace gas enhances plant growth. This is a long report, but well worth a read.

Second, the measurement of ocean “acidification” (whatever Mr Black chooses to call this process) does not support the idea of catastrophic change, even on IPCC projections – it only happens in laboratories deliberately set up to pander to alarmist fantasies. And third, even if there is significant change, there is abundant evidence that life on coral reefs adapts to the changed ecology.

Mr Black is clearly impervious to any contrary facts, is determined to maintain an alarmist paradigm and selectively ignores evidence that does not accord with his own extreme political views. My observations about him are repetitious because he is manically repetitious. But I will not let go because it is a disgrace that our money is being used to support him in his deliberately one-sided campaign.

A new week, a new Open Thread. Go get ’em!

One of the key points of the BBC’s agenda about climate change (as David skilfully also points out in his post below) is the enthusiastic backing of the political, liberal elite/ruling class in their determined efforts to foist unwanted energy taxes on those who can’t afford them and in the steps towards world government. The tiresomely self-righteous actress Cate Blanchett, who can afford solar panels on her Sydney mansion (no doubt partly because of extensive government subsidies that benefit the rich) and who has forced Sydney Theatre Company “to go green”, is part of that noisome elite. And so BBC Australia correspondent Nick Bryant – who regularly recycles greenie claptrap with relish – here sees a big story in darling Cate’s fascist call for Australians to commit economic suicide by adopting Gillard’s hated carbon tax. The rest of the world may be seeing a glimmer of sense by finally rejecting renewal of the Kyoto protocol, but not Ms Blanchett. Mr Bryant, it is true, gives prominence to opponents of darling Cate’s elitist stance. But I think that veils his main purpose, which is contained in the carefully chosen words to explain why some Australians are resisting the tax:

The attacks on Cate Blanchett also reveal an instinctive suspicion of people in Australia perceived to be part of a cultural or educational elite – especially by the populist right.

That’s right, it’s those nasty “populist” right-wingers again. How dare they?

Whether you prefer the term “ocean acidification” or the less compelling but more accurate “ocean de-alkalisation”, there’s little doubt that the addition of carbon dioxide to the seas threatens to change them fundamentally over the course of the century.

With his customary brilliant scientific insight and knowledge, Richard Black thus begins his latest blog and greenie sermon, which culminates in a cloud-cuckoo land plea that Micronesia climate nuts can force the abandonment of highly-sensible Czech plans to build coal-fired power stations in order to save shellfish from a preceived threat from the said acidification. You could not make it up; he’s hoping that political activism will stop all development of schemes that involve the use of fossil fuels.

Richard, in reaching these Mickey Mouse conclusions, claims that the science involved is “documented” (I think he means actually settled beyond further discussion) because the UN and the Royal Society have decreed it. This is his usual nicely-phrased but vicious two-fingered put-down of hated sceptics and deniers. As usual, too, he pays not one iota of attention to evidence that suggests a) that the science of so-called acidification is not settled and b) that inter-agency panels on climate change issues are invariably stuffed with eco-nuts whose sole aim is to reinforce their own prejudices and speed the manic drive towards world government.

There’s oodles of evidence that “acidification” or “de-alkalisation” is nothing more than yet another eco-nut fantasy, but Mr Black, as usual, prevents it as proven, undisputable fact.

The people of Wales don’t want windfarms and the associated forests of pylons. The economics of windfarms are those of the madhouse. But we now have a ruling class that – in greedy pursuit of their own self interest, energy taxes and subsidies, and driven by eco-potty ideology – are hell-bent on ruining the countryside of Wales. The people protest, the Welsh Assembly, aided an abetted by the Cleggerons, sticks two big fingers up at them. The BBC, as usual, busts a gut to make the protestors seem like unreasonable Luddites. Note the acres given to the government position – basically, that Welsh people have to put up with whatever is decreed in the mad pursuit of “renewables” – and the total absence of the arguments against these monstrosities. Such protests in Wales may not seem mainstream, but the drive to green energy is tyranny at its worst, and the BBC is totally complicit in the erosion of our fundamental rights.

Remember that meeting hosted by Amnesty? The one entitled Complicity in Oppression, Does the Media Aid Israel?
I mentioned the speakers, ex BBC Tim Llewellyn and the BBC’s resident Israel-bashing buddy, bulgy-eyed Abdul Bari (call me Barry) Atwan, Greg Philo and Victoria Brittain. Here’s Richard Millett’s review of what sounds like quite a night.
They brought up such tired old clichés – as though the audience hadn’t heard them a million times before. “But Hamas was democratically elected” “All political parties are completely and utterly dominated by the you-know-what lobby” etc. etc.
“The BBC waits in fear of phone calls from the Israelis” – I recall that laughable quote from Peter Oborne’s ridiculous television programme about the Jewish lobby.

Poor old ”Barry” Atwan complains that he’s not on the BBC enough. They seem to have dropped him on one occasion in favour of the likes of PM Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. (Jewish Lobby again.) Tim Llewellyn has gone off his rocker. He feels sorry for poor Jeremy Bowen, who’s obviously so constrained by the Zionists at the BBC. He’s not completely mad though. One thing he said sounds rather sane. “………… the BBC didn’t properly address his complaints. He referred to one response from the BBC as a “tendentious piece of garbage”.
Haha.
The BBC is busy celebrating Amnesty’s 50th anniversary. BBC News 24 just interviewed one of its representatives, Dr. Champa Patel, most ingratiatingly. Apparently Dr. Patel works within the anti-racism and community development sector.
Physician, heal thyself.

Is the BBC news operation now simply the formal mouthpiece of a number of environmental activists? The WWF – probably the world’s wealthiest group of eco-fascists, swimming in billions of dollars of cash – is bellyaching that strawberry growing in Spain is a scandal. Don’t get me wrong; I am all in favour of sensible preservation of wetlands, and illegal water extraction can be a a menace. But this is more than that, it’s fervent, idealistic hate-the-farmer grandstanding. Never mind the 50,000 souls who depend on soft fruit growing; WWF has decreed they are wicked and it’s trying to stop them making a living. In fact, strawberry growing, it seems, is a greenie hornet’s nest of soul-searching about carbon footprints; here, a pair of intrepid investigative reporters at the Guardian have calaculated to the nearest ounce the respective “carbon footprints” of strawberries from Spain or Scotland. Golly gosh, how wonderful it is that they have so much time to pursue such vital public-interest stories.

The BBC, of course, is up to its neck in this activism and backs it to the hilt. Back in 2007, it was faithfully reporting the WWF eco-fascist efforts in Spain and printed virtually line-for-line its call for a boycott on buying strawberries. Yesterday, it re-visited the story, presenting exactly the same facts, in the same strident, one-sided way. Clearly, the original propaganda burst did not do the trick – and those pesky, selfish farmers are still trying to make a living.

As the BBC constantly reminds us, it’s an era of public spending cuts and these nasty right-wing policies are allegedly hurting us all. Not, however, when it comes to tipping money down the drain on green schemes. Here the BBC doesn’t discuss the cost or impact at all – it instead routinely gives platforms for greenie zealots to pontificate why even more of our cash should be wasted.

NuLabour decreed back in 2009 that, despite the recession, at least £30m should be spent on providing charging points for electric cars – those inefficient, ugly CO2-guzzling death traps that only zealous eco-fanatics actually want. They are only being made because of the availability of huge manufacturing subsidies. Green-nut Boris Johnson, however, thinks they are a good idea, and he’s spending every penny of the available government subsidies on wheeling out thousands more charging points. True to form, the BBC mentions nothing at all about the cost, doesn’t take the opportunity to discuss the important (and only relevant) news point about the embarassingly low take-up of electric cars, and quotes a Green party member who predictably bellyaches that the shiny new points don’t use electricity from renewable energy. You couldn’t make it up.