Roger Harrabin…Bob Ward’s Lapdog?

 

 

H/T  Is the BBC Biased

 

 

 

 

On the Today programe we had a strange lttle report that came from nowhere, (0835) bearing little relation to anything in the news ( the charity commission story is well out of date) and seemingly inserted at the instigation of the BBC’s climate activist Roger Harrabin in order to continue his personal campaign against Lord Lawson’s Global warming Policy Foundation.

It was purely a series of smears oozing out of Harrabin’s report…the GWPF had  a ‘simple message’…don’t bother stopping greenhouse gas emissions, it is a political organisation (knowing nothing about science) out to destabilise the climate debate and derisively questions climate scientists integrity.

Of course the likes of Harrabin think there is no debate to be had and to allow any scepticism at all is to ‘destabilise the debate’….which is no debate at all as we know from the BBC itself which, under pressure from Harrabin and his mates, has been persuaded and gulled into closing down all debate on the science….as for the scientist’s integrity…..

Harrabin does praise the GWPF….but only as a device to slip in the notion that the ‘science’ is now more robust than ever as scientists improve their work.

 

Harrabin tries to smear the GWPF and link it to the ‘Climategate’ emails:

Lawson, who launched the foundation in November 2009 to exploit the controversy surrounding the so-called ‘Climategate’ e-mails that were hacked from the University of East Anglia, has made vigorous efforts to dispute the science of climate change.

 

One reason Harrabin might not like the release of CRU emails…the Tyndall Centre being set up to promote the science of global warming:

Why Tyndall sponsored CMEP

Email 2496 explains why the Tyndall Centre funded the Harrabin/Smith seminars – the Real World seminars of the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme

Mike Hulme:

Did anyone hear Stott vs. Houghton on Today, radio 4 this morning?  Woeful stuff really.  This is one reason why Tyndall is sponsoring the  Cambridge Media/Environment Programme to starve this type of reporting at source.

 

The Tyndall Centre seeks to influence the debate and policies surrounding climate change:

Vision

To be an internationally recognised source of high quality and integrated climate-change research, and to exert a seminal influence on the design and achievability of the long-term strategic objectives of national and international climate policy.

 

Guess handing Harrabin a wodge of money for his own climate propaganda unit, the CMEP, was just part of that operation.

 

Bob Ward, climate propagandist, claims that the GWPF has no scientific credentials:

This was a complete mismatch. Professor Hoskins is a scientific expert, while Lord Lawson instead heads a campaign group which lobbies against the Government’s climate change policies.

 

However the GWPF has many scientific advisors and is set up on a similar basis to the Tyndall Centre…just pointing in a different direction.  Curious how Harrabin and Co can’t stomach the climate sceptic GWPF but not only work closely with the Tyndall Centre but took money from it as well.

Curiously the BBC has no problem with one of its journalists being funded by a clearly partisan organisation:

‘The BBC is aware of the funding arrangements for the Real World seminars. They have been considered against our editorial guidelines and raised no issues about impartiality for the BBC or its output.’

 

 

Then we get to the real source of this latest story…that same Bob Ward…that non-scientist whom the BBC has decided is allowed to comment on science whilst refusing to allow Lawson in to discuss the issues about climate…based on Ward’s campaign to get the BBC to do exactly that.

Now we learn that he has launched yet another campaign and another complaint against the GWPF…and just by coincidence Bob Ward’s old mate, Roger Harrabin, pops up to do a hatchet job on the GWPF.

Harrabin tells us that:

The Charity Commission investigated the Global Warming Policy Foundation following a complaint by Bob Ward, a science communicator who works with Lord Stern’s climate change team at the LSE.

He also complained that the foundation breaches charity rules by “continually disseminating inaccurate and misleading information”.

 

What he doesn’t tell us is that the Grantham Institute that Ward works for, is itself a highly politicised organisation that campaigns relentlessly on climate change….funded by money from Big Oil….and that Bob Ward isn’t a ‘science communicator’…that might indicate he knew something about the science…and he’s not a scientist, especially not a climate scientist, he is a propagandist who has also worked closely with the insurance industry in regard to risk and climate.

Just so you get a measure of the ‘man’ that is Bob Ward here’s his objective and intelligent take on the GWPF:   ‘a rather disparate band of mostly old, white and male contrarians.’

 

It’s a small world…one that hasn’t got any warmer in 17 years….and they still can’t explain that.

 

The GWPF is an educational organisation:

THE GLOBAL WARMING POLICY FOUNDATION IS AN EDUCATIONAL CHARITY. ITS MAIN PURPOSE IS TO ADVANCE THE PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING OF GLOBAL WARMING AND OF ITS POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES, AND ALSO OF THE MEASURES TAKEN OR PROPOSED TO BE TAKEN IN RESPONSE TO SUCH WARMING.

 

 

Harrabin seems pretty keen to let you know his thoughts on the subject with 4 tweets all in a row:

 

 

I’m not the only one to find the BBC’s obsession with the GWPF odd:

 

 BBC ‘Today’ Programme Obsesses Over Climate Sceptic Group

 

BBC Radio 4’s flagship ‘Today’ programme this morning dedicated a whole feature on the charitable status of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), despite management effectively ‘banning’ its head, Lord Lawson, from the airwaves.

The story focussed on the fact that the GWPF will relaunch in September with separate charitable and campaigning wings, following a ruling by the Charity Commission that it should not use charitable money for campaigning. A report also appeared on the BBC News website.

The decision to report the story has left the GWPF especially mystified as it was first reported in the press over two months ago.

 

 

 

 

 

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5 Responses to Roger Harrabin…Bob Ward’s Lapdog?

  1. GCooper says:

    If the trials ever begin as, in a properly run country they eventually would, Harrabin would be one of the first in the dock.

    With absolutely no expertise in his chosen subject, other than that to which he has chosen to listen, he has played a significant part in influencing the energy policy which has done such damage to the lives of people in this country.

    This is is not a crime that should go unpunished.

       29 likes

  2. john in cheshire says:

    Activist equals trouble-maker; i.e. someone championing bad things rather than good. At the moment, until the communists debase it, people who do good things are better referred to as campaigners. So, on that basis, Mr Harrabin no campaigner.

       11 likes

  3. Marconi says:

    Harrabin makes me spit – if I paid the licence fee I’d be really angry !

       7 likes

  4. Rob says:

    I said the BBC would start with the Climate Change Crap again once their 272 staff had returned from the World Cup

       9 likes

  5. Richard Pinder says:

    It looks like survival of Harrabin and the BBC is dependent on censorship of Journalism as well as censorship of politicians, scientists, science and scientific debate. As well as censorship of anyone who may disprove BBC beliefs that some people deny that the climate changes or that the academic advisory council of the GWPF is full of scientists who want to destabilise a censored debate, which is over.

    I think investigations into the BBC’s environmental activists will find that the Tyndall Centre, Grantham Institute and the BBC all now seek to censor the debate, but the GWPF has got Professor Henrik Svensmark on its advisory council, so he can explain why the world hasn’t got any warmer in 17 years. That’s one piece of evidence for BBC censorship.

       3 likes