Here you go, a brand new open thread to see us off into the wild blue yonder of the weekend! Detail the BIAS here!

Have a read of THIS BBC report on Gaza. Note how it suggests that Hamas terrorist-in-chief Khaled Meshaal has been “exiled.”  No he hasn’t. He chose to leg it when Israel dispatched his predecessor Sheikh Ahmed Yassin for an early meeting with the 72 virgins. This vile thug, driven by an almost demonic hatred of Israel, is afforded the “Arafat” treatment, sanitised of the terror and murder he presides over, and painted as a victim of those evil Jews. When it comes to all matters Hamastan, the BBC could NOT be more biased.

Gotta love the BBC. Today I noted a reference to the “right of centre” Policy Exchange (Today 8.52am). Now, I am unsure who decides what is the “centre” of British politics but if it is the BBC then I fear that Policy Exchange are more likely to be slightly right of hard Labour. But that’s not my point. Yesterday, the same BBC trailed the economic commentary from the Institute of Fiscal Studies as a means of bashing Osborne. There was no other caveat such as “left of centre” which is curious given THIS.    Part of my beef with the BBC is that downplays some bias (IFS) BUT upweights other bias (PE). It should be consistent in how it describes these “think tanks” rather than duplicitous. Don’t you think?

As said in my last post this story was not reported on the BBC:

Doha: UK climate finance pledge conceals pro-corporate agenda
By Miriam Ross, 4 December 2012
The World Development Movement has warned that the climate finance the UK government has announced it will provide to developing countries risks putting money meant to help the poor into the hands of multinational companies.

However this one was…one which reveals Harrabin’s own agenda quite well……support for the ‘redistribution’ of money from rich to poor countries based upon his acceptance of man-made global warming and that it is the ‘West’ who are responsible, and therefore ‘guilty’, for imposing that and its consequences upon the poorest nations…who should therefore be ‘compensated’…..
‘Frustration at slow progress of the UN climate talks bubbled over when a spokesman for small island states (AOSIS) rounded on rich nations.
US representative Jonathan Pershing had been discussing plans to compensate poor nations for losses due to damage from climate change.
Mr Jumeau said that there would be no need for talk about compensation if the rich had cut their emissions in previous meetings.
The issue of compensation for climate losses looks set to become a major focus for negotiations at the conference.
“Governments must now also recognize that we are in a “third era” and redress the permanent loss and damage from climate impacts.…..Given historic inaction by developed countries we are heading for the biggest social injustice of our time.” ‘

WUWT has an article ripping into DOHA and its compensation culture:

‘This week, as United Nations luminaries gather in Doha, Qatar, for the 18th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres, the self-described “daughter of a revolutionary,” has presented her goals. The most important is a massive transfer of wealth – $100 billion a year – from soon-to-be formerly rich Europeans and Americans to UN bureaucrats who claim to represent the world’s “developing” nations and Earth’s poorest citizens.…..The gilded Lilliputians have gathered in Doha to strip the giants of their wealth.’

Note Harrabin acknowledges the problems with the word ‘compensation’.…
‘They urge governments to establish a formal mechanism for loss and damage (the word “compensation” is being avoided; some nations, including the US won’t countenance it because of the implication of guilt).’

But he has decided to use it for his own work…..

Climate compensation row at Doha

and continues to do so in his Tweets….
roger harrabin ?@RogerHarrabin
Compensation for #climate damage is crunch issue at #cop18 say NGOs. Liz from @e3g is “hopeful” of a deal. @CANEurope http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20613915 …

roger harrabin ?@RogerHarrabin
Angry islanders demand compensation for #climate damages – but we can’t use the C word. It equals blame. @gregbarkerMP http://bbc.in/VCZPY3

I guess he is fully onboard for that gravy train……

Harrabin has been pushing the notion that British climate action makes us loved by the world (Who says money can’t buy you love?)…..

‘Mr Jumeau, from the Seychelles, went out of his way to praise the UK for its leadership on climate change, especially for its re-stated pledges of increased finance to help poor nations get clean energy – £1.8bn by 2015.’

Here ‘Tallbloke’ questions Harrabin’s easy acceptance of AGW……but check out Harrabin’s answer….

Rog Tallbloke ?@rogtallbloke
@RogerHarrabin @Cartoonsbyjosh If they could prove loss or damage consequent on AGW in court. I doubt a jury would convict co2 these days

roger harrabin ?@RogerHarrabin
@rogtallbloke @Cartoonsbyjosh Not yet.

That’s right ‘Not Yet’…which means even Harrabin admits that the ‘science’ is not ‘settled’…there is no proof that CO2 is linked to rising temperatures.

Josh also questions the ‘proof’…..linking to an article on sea levels rising.…or not…

Josh ?@Cartoonsbyjosh
@RogerHarrabin “We’re now right into the era of loss and damage.” is there any science for that? @rogtallbloke http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/7438683/rising-credulity/ …

Is the sea rising?

The sea is not rising precipitously. I have studied many of the low-lying regions in my 45-year career recording and interpreting sea level data. I have conducted six field trips to the Maldives; I have been to Bangladesh, whose environment minister was claiming that flooding due to climate change threatened to create in her country 20 million ‘ecological refugees’. I have carefully examined the data of ‘drowning’ Tuvalu. And I can report that, while such regions do have problems, they need not fear rising sea levels.
My latest project was a field expedition to India, to the coast of Goa, combining observations with archeological information. Our findings are straightforward: there is no ongoing sea level rise. The sea level there has been stable for the last 50 years or so, after falling some 20cm in around 1960; it was well below the present level in the 18th century and some 50 to 60cm above the present in the 17th century. So it is clear that sea levels rise and fall entirely independently of so-called ‘climate change’.

So any of the trouble attributed to ‘rising sea levels’ must instead be the result of other, local factors and basic misinterpretation. In Bangladesh, for example, increased salinity in the rivers (which has affected drinking water) has in fact been caused by dams in the Ganges, which have decreased the outflow of fresh water.
Even more damaging has been the chopping down of mangrove trees to clear space for shrimp farms. In one area, 19 square miles of mangrove vegetation in 1988 had by 2005 decreased to barely half a square mile. Mangrove forests offer excellent protection against the damage of cyclones and storms, so inevitably their systematic destruction has drastically increased local vulnerability to these problems.
the best-known ‘victim’ of rising sea levels is, without doubt, the Maldives. This myth has been boosted by the opportunism of Mohamed Nasheed, who stars in a new documentary called The Island President. The film’s tagline is ‘To save his country, he has to save our planet’. It is a depressing example of how Hollywood-style melodrama has corrupted climate science. Nasheed has been rehearsing his lines since being elected in 2009. ‘We are drowning, our nation will disappear, we have to relocate the people,’ he repeatedly claims.
If this is what President Nasheed believes, it seems strange that he has authorised the building of many large waterside hotels and 11 new airports. Or could it perhaps be that he wants to take a cut of the $30 billion fund agreed at an accord in Copenhagen for the poorest nations hit by ‘global warming’?
the threat of rising sea levels is an artificial crisis.‘

And all this whilst CO2 rises to record levels

Record high for global carbon emissions

Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are set to rise again in 2012, reaching a record high of 35.6 billion tonnes – according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project, co-led by researchers from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia (UEA).
The 2.6 per cent rise projected for 2012 means global emissions from burning fossil fuel are 58 per cent above 1990 levels, the baseline year for the Kyoto Protocol.
Prof Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and professor at UEA, led the publication of the data. She said: “These latest figures come amidst climate talks in Doha. But with emissions continuing to grow, it’s as if no-one is listening to the entire scientific community.”

The real question that arises is still that of the connection between CO2 and Global Warming….does it really exist or is such a connection merely a political device to force through certain policies?

Here the Tyndall Centre draws a line saying real world emissions are too high to allow the meeting of CO2 reduction and global temperature targets…..

The 2012 rise further opens the gap between real-world emissions and those required to keep global warming below the international target of two degrees.

But are those targets…2 degrees…based on science or politics?

Could there be any other cause of global warming if it is happening to any extent?

Here is another story the BBC missed which shows the power of nature to effect climate…..

The beetles lay their eggs under the bark of pine trees, at the same time injecting a fungus that protects their offspring but kills the trees with the help of the larvae eating their insides. As trees are felled, the cooling effect of their transpiration, similar to human sweating, is also lost. The researchers measured a corresponding rise in summertime temperatures—about one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) over the affected areas, co-author Holly Maness from the University of Toronto told AFP. “The increased surface temperatures we observe are relatively large and may be sufficient to drive further changes in regional climate, such as changes to circulation, cloud cover and precipitation,” she said.

So deforestation…in this case caused by a beetle, caused temperatures to rise by 1 degree….and not just a ‘local’ effect.

In the last 50 years deforestation by man has leapt enormously…coinciding with the rise in global temperatures….and coinciding with the enormous population boom especially in the third world….all those people need to be fed and require both heating and cooking materials……usually trees or coal…..which are burnt….creating …em …CO2.

So if there is to be a simple ‘blame game’ it is easy to point fingers towards the very people who are pointing them at the developed world….and if you are really going down that avenue then of course in the BBC’s world Islam and the Muslims are ultimately to blame…..The Islamic ‘Golden Age of Science’ we are told led to our own industrial revolution….a revolution which is now kept running by copious supplies of ‘black gold’…oil….from mostly Muslim countries.  Case made.  It’s the Muslim’s fault.

So Are the targets really based on science or political expediency?

Climate Change is about politics and money….

Some quotes from Mike Hulme, they’re straight out of the Frankfurt School’s cultural Marxist playbook:

The idea of climate change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identities and projects can form and take shape. We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but to ask what climate change can do for us.
……
Because the idea of climate change is so plastic, it can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve many of our psychological, ethical, and spiritual needs.
…….
We will continue to create and tell new stories about climate change and mobilize them in support of our projects.
…….
These myths transcend the scientific categories of ‘true’ and ‘false’.

And look how those scientists scrabble for the cash…….All too often we are told that it is the ‘sceptics’ who are only being contrary for the money….

roger harrabin ?@RogerHarrabin
Hot air at #cop18. Schellnhuber says #climate change is inarguable. Then accepts Qatar cash for research foundation to prove climate change

and here is well known AGW advocate Alice Bell:

‘I know way too many science communication people who deliberately frame their ideas to have a biomedical theme so they can apply to Wellcome public engagment grants. If Grantham helped put together a climate version, I’m sure many would shift their energies, and that’d probably be a lot more productive in the long run than front page photos of Brian Hoskins occupying an oil rig.‘

She also puts the boot into that old lie about sceptics not being qualified enough to comment on climate…no scientific qualifications…well it seems almost anyone can be a ‘scientist’ if they put they have the right attitude…..

‘This kind of work doesn’t just have to be done scientists either, but other members of the scientific community: educators, public engagement officers, artists, psychologists, sociologists, writers, press officers, storytellers, filmmakers, all sorts. (Yes, these people are part of the scientific community – broadly defined – and many are very skilled too).‘

Let’s take a closer look at one scientific target…to keep gloabl warming under 2 degrees…….

‘Associated Press “reporter” Karl Ritter, for example, said the Doha battle “between the rich and the poor” is over “efforts to reach a deal to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2° C, compared to preindustrial times” ‘

The famous Dr Joe Smith, of CMEP fame, and Harrabin’s close ally, is still heavily backing that target…….

Today (Oct 1 2012) the Guardian publishes a joint letter I signed that states: ‘On current trends, there are around just 50 months left before we cross a critical climate threshold. After that, it will no longer be ‘likely’ that we will stay on the right side of a 2 degree temperature rise’.

There are around 50 months left before we cross a critical climate threshold. After that, it will no longer be “likely” that we will stay on the right side of a 2C temperature rise – a line Britain and the rest of the EU has sworn not to cross. If we don’t do more, it is hard to imagine what incentive poor countries will have to act.
Dr Joe Smith Open University
Here is something he adds:

Many more people describe the huge opportunities for economic recovery and better lives that could come from a great transition to a low-carbon, high well-being economy, but which are currently going begging.

Note that ‘Great Transition’ phrase…..it is a major plank of the NEF’s policies…..
Joe Smith works hand in hand with the New Economic Foundation (NEF) which is also a favourite of the BBC….the NEF being essentially a Marxist propaganda outfit that advocates radical economic and social changes……

‘Nef believes that a Great Transition to a climate-friendly and more equal society can improve life for all. Our work explores how.
The Consumption Explosion
In spite of the global recession, we are still over-consuming and over-polluting. The UK and other rich countries will have to undergo radical lifestyle change if we are to become sustainable.
Getting off the consumer treadmill will be chance for liberation and the discovery of what really matters to us. And with consumption in the rich world reduced, there will more space in the global commons for other people, who don’t yet have enough, to meet their basic needs.
The Great Transition 8 is a new kind of campaign. It began with report called The Great Transition.  We must re-engineer our economies to tackle debt fuelled over-consumption, accelerating climatic instability and volatile energy prices underpinned by the approaching peak in global oil production. It means re-thinking how we bank, generate energy, travel, and grow the food we depend on……growth is not making us happier, it is creating dysfunctional and unequal societies, and if it continues will make large parts of the planet unfit for human habitation.

We need to do things differently, and soon.

But remember that the best things in life are free: there plenty of activities which make life worth living – from flying a kite to talking to your friends – emit little to no greenhouse gas at all. ‘

All pretty much echoing the CRU’s  Mike Hulme who has  a few quotes of his own….. they’re straight out of the Frankfurt School’s cultural Marxist playbook:

The idea of climate change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identities and projects can form and take shape. We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but to ask what climate change can do for us.
……
Because the idea of climate change is so plastic, it can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve many of our psychological, ethical, and spiritual needs.
…….
We will continue to create and tell new stories about climate change and mobilize them in support of our projects.
…….
These myths transcend the scientific categories of ‘true’ and ‘false’.

But just how valid is that 2 degree target?  This research suggests it is a purely political device that has been set to suit vested interests……and not based on science….bare in  mind the author of the thesis fully accepts AGW…..

My research provides a valuable contribution to the climate policy debate by highlighting the weaknesses of a quantitative, target based approach and arguing instead for a participatory response to climate risk.
Policy is locked in to existing strategies because key players have too much invested in the process of targets and treaties to allow different approaches onto the agenda . Such a structural impasse may result in the very real danger of the two degree target merely being the precursor to the introduction of a four degree target. This thesis is an attempt to explain the need for a break from the targets approach to building climate policy.

International climate change policy is predicated on the claim that climate change is a phenomenon with a single, global dangerous limit of two degrees of warming above the pre-industrial average. However, climate science does not provide sufficient empirical evidence to determine such an exact limit.
Public commentaries play an important role in shaping public engagement with an abstract concept such as climate change. This research project examines how public discourses construct the dangerous limits to climate change decision making process.
The historical dimension of my analysis shows that public commentaries have ‘black boxed’ the genesis of the two degree dangerous limit idea. I demonstrate how claims of a consensus amongst elite policy and science actors are central to developing a dangerous limit ideology amongst influential public audiences. The two degree discourse elevates the idea of a single dangerous limit to the status of fact, and in so doing marginalises egalitarian and ecological perspectives.

I conclude that the two degree limit is a construct which makes possible an international environmental regime safe for the interests of elite actors.

I understand the proposing of a two degree limit to be an act of power which is deeply rooted in the project of modernity; the construction of climate change as a phenomenon manageable through quantification in essence assumes climate change is a problem solvable by modernity, rather than a problem of modernity.

Science has increasingly been offered up as a substitute for politics; scientific progress, in offering a speedier, trustier way to improve people’s lives offers the promise of escape from fragile and contestable human judgement . This thesis investigates the extent to which public discourses are attempting, through the reproduction of the two degree dangerous limit idea, to substitute politics with science.

So to sum up….Harrabin supports AGW and consequent ‘compensation’.  He doesn’t report that such monies end up in the pockets of big corporations and not in the outstretched hands of the ‘poor’.  His close ally, Joe Smith, supports a politically inspired 2 degrees limit and is working hand in glove with a radical socialist economic propaganda organistaton….and the science is far from ‘settled’.

The BBC is doing a grand job of reporting climate science.

The BBC are always slow to bring us stories about climate change that do not  support the ‘consensus’.

They sat on the CRU emails for a month, they were silent about Tim Yeo’s conflict of interests, they haven’t mentioned the story below at all when normally anything that shows ‘Big Business’ ripping off the ‘poor’ is headline news…..

Doha: UK climate finance pledge conceals pro-corporate agenda
By Miriam Ross, 4 December 2012
The World Development Movement has warned that the climate finance the UK government has announced it will provide to developing countries risks putting money meant to help the poor into the hands of multinational companies.

And this story is nowhere to be seen…despite coming out 3 days ago…..surely an important bit of ‘good news’ for the planet…..

Guido Fawkes brings us the glad tidings:

‘Good news. It seems the glaciers are not melting. Eco-loons had predicted glaciers in the Himalayas would be gone by 2035, but with 100cm of fresh snowfall in November, the Times of India reports that “the abundance of snow on the mountains has rejuvenated nearly one thousand glaciers in the Himalayas and has ensured uninterrupted supply of water for drinking, irrigation and hydel projects.

“While scanty snowfall and rising temperature in last decade had sparked the possibilities of fast shrinking of glaciers, good spells of snowfall in last three years have changed the trend with glaciers almost growing to their original size.”

It’s over! Rejoice!

or is it?..The snow is apparently in the wrong place…..

‘ “Snowfall is good but heavy snowfall in lower and new areas and scanty snowfall on higher areas is sign of global warming…..Global warming is a contentious issue but it’s a reality,” said J C Kuniyal, senior scientist with GB Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development, who is studying the behaviour of Himalayan environment for many years.’

This is an interesting point…‘The 11-km-long Bara Shigri is the largest glacier in Himachal, but is shrinking very fast. The Dhaka glacier in Chandrabhaga mountain ranges is also losing its length, width and height. This was proved beyond doubt when wreckage of an AN-12 aircraft which remained beneath the glacier since 1968 recently surfaced due to melting of snow. ‘

Hang on…think about that… a plane  crashed in 1968 on the surface of a glacier…..and  became buried…..it was then  uncovered as the ice melted…….back to 1968 levels.

Was there global warming in 1968…..or was it ‘global cooling’ as the big panic was then?

What goes up must come down, and what goes down………the climate is always changing.  Apart from the last 14 or so years when it has remained static……with no warming despite record levels of CO2 emissions…..whch is why the climate lobby are desperately trying to ‘communicate’ the ‘science’ to us….

Science: A New Mission to Explain

‘Too many who profess to practice journalism are the product of fashionable science communication courses that have sprung up in the past fifteen years…..It’s my view that this has resulted in many journalists being supporters of, and not reporters of, science. There is a big difference. Many have become advocates for science that are too close to the scientists they report on.’

Christopher Booker has his view of the BBC:

‘His report, The BBC and Climate Change: A Triple Betrayal, shows that the BBC has not only failed in its professional duty to report fully and accurately: it has betrayed its own principles.’

The BBC is of course a big player in the promotion of man-made climate change….it was an enormous coup for the green lobby to get the BBC ‘onside’.   The BBC has tremendous authority, respect and trust and can use that to give credibility to any pronouncement it makes…..even with the BBC plugging away the Public remain either mostly scpetical or undecided…..but it allows the politicians to accept AGW and introduce policies based on that theory that suit their own political agendas.

Without the ‘backing’ of the BBC, who should be always rigorously questioning any such policies but doesn’t, the politicians would have a much harder life than they do already selling us energy policies that seem mostly to provide excess profits for big businesses, many foreign, and those in a position to benefit such as already rich landowners like Cameron’s father-in-law….

‘This lip service is not good enough, and editors should wise up that science journalism has lost its edge and demand reform. It has also become uncritical and therefore not journalism.

Journalism is about not taking sides, or about being a cheerleader. It’s about shaking the tree, about asking award questions, about standing in the place of those who can’t ask such questions, and being persistent, unpopular and dogged. It’s about moral authority, something science in BBC News has lost, and it’s about old-fashioned scoops. It’s not about being part of the spectrum of communicating science…..It is a vital aspect of democracy. It is neither an extension of the scientific establishment, nor even its friend or on its side, and it is fundamentally different from science communication. That some active and contentious scientific topics, like climate science with all its unknowns, complexities and implications, are placed beyond debate because they are deemed “settled” is wrong.’

The BBC have found a new flag bearer for all that is right in the world ..yes, Margaret Hodge is the new Vince Cable.  Leading the Starbucks Jihad, this hypocrite is treated as if she is the very incarnation of fiscal decency. She has been all over the BBC claiming all sorts of imagined “victories” for “the people” (Labour)…. the small matters of her difficulties over MP expenses and her million pound shareholding in a tax avoiding company has been sanitised.  I am no fan of Starbucks  but the BBC has been manipulating news today to damn them even when they do change their corporation tax strategy.

This is the sort of informed critique of Biased BBC that comes my way…for your edification;

“I find it utterly ridiculous that you claim to be exposing the bias of the BBC while you are actually just asserting your own! Here in America the professionally that the BBC has is completely un-matched. The BBC is the most reputable news source in the world, That may be disputed, but only by fools who do not have the proper perspective, fools like you.

Also your senseless condemnation of Palestine and ought right Zionism is totally and completely un-warranted and heavily biased.  I Despise you and all your type. I hope that one day you can understand that what you are doing is dead wrong and that you will fix the harm that you extremists have done to our international community. Especially in regards to Palestine.”

For now go in peace, Aden Qamar”

I wonder what “for now” means?

Touching to see the BBC lead the news this morning with the Ed Balls line that “working families will suffer” as a consequence of Osborne’s benefit reduction plans. It’s a favoured Labour line to suggest that most Benefit goes to those in work but on modest income. Rubbish. Labour’s favoured clientele, the wilfully idle, are the primary recipients of this cash  and this is the Leftist way to try and obscure this central  fact. And when we are at, did “working families” suffer when Labour all but bankrupted the economy? Did those TRYING to get work suffer when Labour opened pour borders  to millions of immigrants? The hypocrisy from Labour does not vary but the BBC peddles a line that is virtually identical. It is an echo chamber for Labour talking points.

Here you are folks, a brand new Open Thread and on time! Detail the bias here….