Search Results for: climate

RICHARD BLACK: AVOID CLIMATE SCEPTICISM – LEARN ANOTHER LANGUAGE

A couple of days ago he was getting his panties in a bunch about those evil Koch Brothers, today it’s the Anglo-Saxon world in general:

To those who despair of the success of sceptical lobbying, the message is clear: learn one of the languages of Brazil, China or India.

Even French might do at a pinch.

Black’s article – which bemoans the apparent undue influence of climate scepticism in English-speaking countries – is based on a report by a former BBC journalist (naturally) from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. The RISJ is funded in part by George Soros – a good-guy evil capitalist who uses his money to promote the sort of left-wing propaganda approved of by BBC journalists. Other funding for the RISJ comes from the BBC, the BBC World Service and the British Council, which means we pay for it at least three times over. And one of the ubiquitous Joseph Rowntree trusts is involved too, of course.

Anyway, I hope it’s all true. Altogether now (to the tune of U-S-A! U-S-A!): AN-GLO-SAX’N! AN-GLO-SAX’N! AN-GLO-SAX’N!

KEY BBC TRUSTEE IS CLIMATE ACTIVIST

I wrote yesterday that the BBC Trustee’s report into science coverage is a travesty. It is worse. Professor Steve Jones says that too much space is given to climate “deniers”. Yet at least five years ago the BBC gave up all pretence at balance in climate reporting. It wrote:

The BBC has held a high level seminar with some of the best scientific experts (on whose and what measurement) and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of consensus.

That was justification for a propaganda mountain, which I have chronicled. Richard Black and his cohorts have been following that approach with relish. Their hated “deniers” are routinely ignored – or if they are mentioned – misrepresented and denigrated. So Professor Jones in his “inquiry” could not even spot what was blatantly obvious and instead unleashed another series of hate lies against those who dare to disagree with the BBC worldview.

The man who sanctioned this travesty is BBC trustee Richard Ayre, who has a pivotal role among the trustees because he is on the Editorial Standards Committee – he is one of only two professional journalists on the body and in charge (on our behalf!) of journalistic integrity.

He’s supposed to be independent, but of course isn’t – for a start, he’s a BBC pensioner (reliant on funds derived from a climate change investment portfolio)- and he worked for the corporation for almost 30 years before taking “early retirement” and going to work for Ofcom, that other arm of so-called regulation that perpetuates liberal-left media bias.

I know Mr Ayre reasonably well from contact with him during the 1990s when when he was controller of editorial policy. He believes without question he is fair minded and balanced, but it’s simply not true. He’s totally infected with the BBC mindset and it’s obvious from the moment he opens his mouth.

External evidence is easy to come by to support this, although Richard himself won’t and can’t see it. First he deliberately flaunts that his partner is the homo-eroticist artist Guy Burch, a militant “humanist” and contributor to the Pink Paper. Not part of the right-wing establishment, then. Second he himself is a highly active member of the Article 19 human rights and press freedom group. Such evocative touchy-feely, conscience touching words!In reality, it’s a worldwide militant force camapigning for…wait for it, climate change activism. Look at this from its website:

People living at risk of climate change or environmental degradation need to understand what is happening and take part in deciding how best to cope. ARTICLE 19 is working to ensure that people are informed and governments are held accountable for their environmental policies.

So let’s get this straight. The man who is jointly in charge of a so-called objective journalistic review into the BBC’s scientific coverage endorsed findings from a so-called independent “expert” (used regularly by the BBC for contributions) who could not even see what the corporation had being doing in terms of partisanship for years, and then went on to have the effrontery to call for overt increased censorship. Not only that, this “trustee” himself is a major supporter – it says so on the BBC trustee website -of an organisation that is camapaigning for…climate change activism.

You couldn’t make it up, could you?

NB – I wrongly stated in earlier versions of this report that Richard Ayre is the sole journalist on the ESC. It’s actually chaired by trustee Alison Hastings, who worked for many years in regional newspapers, and is a former editor of the Evening Chronicle in Newscastle. But that doesn’t alter the main point about Richard Ayre. And Ms Hastings it was who vigorously defended in April a Panorama documentary about the Israeli boarding of the Mavi Marmara as “accurate and impartial” overall. She may once have been a good editor…but BBC arrogance addles even the best of brains.

CLIMATE "GAMES"

A survey conducted among 24,000 schoolkids by the BBC (clearly the frenzied cuts message has not yet got through the thick skulls of those at the corporation who so liberally spend out money) has found that 49% of them rate climate change as the second biggest threat facing humanity. Confirmation for the boys and girls at the BBC, if it were needed, that their daily alarmism is working a treat – Hitler was not alone in targetting youth.

If that’s not enough, there’s another nice scarefest wheeze afoot – the BBC’s very own climate change game. I kid you not. They’ve spent God knows how much of our money devising it, and this is how it is introduced:

Why make a game about climate change?

Currently there is a growing consensus amongst climate researchers that Earth’s climate is changing in response to manmade greenhouse gas emissions. The main debate amongst scientists is focussed on the amount of climate change we can expect, not whether it will happen. With the current level of debate in mind, the BBC decided a game might be a good introductory route into climate change and some of the issues this creates for governments around the world.

The producers’ primary goal was to make a fun, challenging game. At times it was necessary to strike a compromise between strict scientific accuracy and playability. For this reason, Climate Challenge should not be taken as a serious climate change prediction.

It goes on – seriously folks! – using such liberal dollops of cod science, vapid generalisation and crass misinformation. And it also betrays the BBC mindset in all this. They are actually playing a huge propaganda game with us in which they treat us all like morons. The most vulnerable and impressionable in our society – our kids – are the victims of this horrendous, vicious scam. How many of them lie awake in their beds worrying at night because of BBC climate lies?

Shame on every man jack of them.

"Blah Blah Climate Change Blah Blah"

As has been pointed out in the open thread this morning’s edition of Today went pretty big on a Cambridge academic planning to study the language and culture of the Inughuit. By using the magic words “climate change” and “global warming”, not only has Dr Stephen Leonard secured funding for a year-long gig in Greenland, he also earned himself a couple of slots on Radio 4’s flagship news programme talking to both James Naughtie and science correspondent Victoria Gill (@1hr 07.25). Gill’s segment reminded me of something:

TODAY EDITOR IS CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIVIST

In Mongolia, it’s sadly been so cold this winter that a million animals have died, and many of the nomadic herders and farmers are said to be in desperate need of aid. The Today programme reported this story this morning, but guess what was missing from the equation? Any mention of that dreaded phrase “climate change”. This fits a pattern. Today reporters grind on about AGW every time there is a claim – however tenuous – that temperatures are getting hotter; but never when the reverse applies. Of course, one extremely bad winter does not prove cooling, but on Radio 4’s co-called flagship news programme, the topic is never discussed properly.

Could this be because Ceri Thomas, the editor of Today, is yet another BBC executive who is a climate change activist? Mr Thomas, it transpires, is on the board of a body called the Science Media Centre, another shadowy outfit that has been created, according to its own blurb, to act as:

first and foremost a press office for science when science hits the headlines. We provide journalists with what they need in the form and time-frame they need it when science is in the news – whether this be accurate information, a scientist to interview or a feature article.

An admirable objective, if – but only if – the Centre was properly neutral on matters of scientific controversy. But it it isn’t. It’s yet another collection of warming fanatics. It runs a number of briefings for journalists which show the reverse is true; everything they do on the climate front is geared towards the AGW perspective. So when Copenhagen was looming, who did the centre choose as its speaker to make sure journalists were properly in the picture? Why, none other than Vicky Pope, of the Met Office, who might be described as one of the UK’s warmists-in-chief. Others of these briefings follow exactly the same pattern and format, for example this one on so-called carbon sinks, which assumes as the start point that AGW is happening:

Efforts to control climate change require the stabilization of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, which in turn depends on the balance between our own emissions and natural carbon sinks. The Global Carbon Project has evaluated all the available evidence on carbon sinks and sources, the results of which have been published in Nature Geoscience. Two of the authors of the paper briefed journalists in their findings at the SMC.

I could go on, there’s tons more, but I have made the main point. Mr Thomas deems it acceptable that he is an active member of a body which is grafting away behind the scenes to prejudice the debate about climate science towards the warmist viewpoint.I know from other sources that he also responds to complaints about the programme’s climate change coverage by using sweeping warmist statements such as that there is a “great consensus” about climate change science, therefore there is only the need for him to afford “due impartiality” to sceptics – which means in practice that they rarely, if ever, appear on Today. And, in turn, that the programme is totally biased in its approach to the topic.

I submit that because of his activism, Mr Thomas is not fit to edit Today – or any other BBC programme. He should resign immediately.

CLIMATEGATE BBC TERROR ALERT

Fishy. Some days ago, the excellent Bishop Hill site broke the news that – rather bizzarely – the police National Domestic Extremism Unit is involved in investigating the ClimateGate leak at the University of East Anglia. The BBC has finally woken up to the story, and there are worrying signs that it is somehow part of the saga. First of all, it adamantly describes the leak as a “hack” even though this has not yet been established. Second, they have this extremely odd quote from the police:

“At present we have two police officers assisting Norfolk with their investigation, and we have also provided computer forensic expertise. While this is not strictly a domestic extremism matter, as a national police unit we had the expertise and resource to assist with this investigation, as well as good background knowledge of climate change issues in relation to criminal investigations.”

If I had been the journalist covering this story, I’d be asking first of all what the hell a terrorist unit is doing involved in ‘climate change’and what “expertise” in this field they claim to have. Second, with the world still on terrorist alert after the latest attempt to blow up a plane, how can a terrorist unit spare resources to investigate file hacking (if indeed, that is what it was) when the only ‘victim’ of this alleged crime is academic internal mail – and the leak was in any case in the public interest?

But not the BBC. It’s creepy beyond words that Climategate should be bracketed by the police as a terrorism incident, and equally so that the BBC should broadcast this chilling quote without asking such basic questions. My guess is that the police asked the BBC to carry the story as damage limitation because they suddenly realised that linking Climategate to terrorism was extremely questionable. In overall terms, the BBC has dismissed the importance of Climategate, but if it will provide material to attack ‘deniers’, they are on the case like a rat up a drain pipe.