COPENHAGEN CHALLENGE

 

COPENHAGEN CHALLENGE

>> WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 09, 2009

So far, the BBC is totally silent on the Copenhagen Climate Challenge, anopen letter to the UN signed by 141 leading international scientists who work in relevant fields. It challenges them to provide hard evidence on 10 questions relating to alleged AGW, including whether CO2 rises are causing harm, whether surface station measurements are accurate, and whether there has been a threatening rise in sea levels due to 'climate change' or an increase in hurricanes. I would like to be pleasantly surprised by seeing this splendid initiative reported soon by the BBC - it would make a lively item on Today, for example. But I'm not holding my breath.

You might be biased if...

>> TUESDAY, DECEMBER 08, 2009

... even the presenter of your Newswatch show makes comments like this on Twitter:

THAT SINKING FEELING

Wonderful letter here from a genuine expert on the science of sea-level changes to the president of the Maldives saying that - despite his publicity stunt in which the cabinet met underwater - his fascist little fiefdom is not going to sink between the waves. What do the BBC do? Report the president's demands for more money to deal with the impending (non) disaster:

Mohamed Nasheed said there was so little money offered to vulnerable nations that it was like arriving at an earthquake with a dustpan and brush.

Not a peep that he's completely, utterly wrong.

BLACK IS WHITE (AGAIN)

This morning, the Times reported that the World Meteorological Orgainsation, using data from CRU, and with the clear purpose of influencing the discussions at Copenhagen, had claimed that this year had been the fifth warmest on record. Hours later, our dear BBC environnment correspondent Richard Blackreports the same story. He mentions that there's some controversy about the figures - and about CRU - but without a peep about the key propaganda point. He seems to take the whole thing at its face value, and ignores completely that these weather organisations are involved in a massive rigging exercise. Not only that, his story is illustrated with a blazing sun and a rigged graph that is a crude schoolboy variation of the hockey stick. How much more blatant can you be?

ONE MAN AND A BLOG!

The BBC's job is to report impartially what goes on in the world. To pursue that task, it receives at least £750m of your money every year, and it has almost 5,000 staff who are directly involved in journalism. So when steel-making on Teeside, one of our oldest manufacturing industries, faces closure, with the loss of 300 years of tradition and 10,000 jobs, you would expect the corporation to be in the forefront of explaining why. 

You would be wrong. Richard North, writing on his excellent EU Referendum blog, brings us today in glowing technicolour the real reasons why Tata steel have mothballed the Redcar steelworks (losing immediately 1,700 jobs, but in the longer term almost 9,000 more who support or whom are dependent on the plant). In an nutshell, it is being "mothballed" (but more likely permanently closed)not because of "falling demand", but as a direct casualty of the pernicious gravy train that is the EU emissions trading scheme. This makes it more lucrative for the host company to suspend production at the plant and use it instead to accumulate 'carbon credits' on its balance sheet. The cumulative worth of this sleight-of-hand juggling is, according to Richard, a staggering £1bn+. Against such forces, the poor saps in Middlesbrough did not stand a chance. 

I searched the BBC website for more than half an hour looking for any mention of this. There are dozens of stories and backgrounders about the closure, and lots of hot air from Mandelson and his henchmen, but not a whisper of this crucial angle. It seems also that BBC reporters were present at the press conference where Kirby Adams, the Redcar divisional boss, told the Times that the EU rules were behind the closure. They ignored what he said. So when it comes to climate change issues, the BBC are not only not reporting the truth, they are in cahoots with government ministers in deliberately hiding it. Their passion for global warming zealotry is so great that they simply cannot bring us facts that do not support it. And one man and his blog are more effective in bringing us the truth than all the wind and puff of the BBC's £750m news machine.

Deniers

>> MONDAY, DECEMBER 07, 2009

The BBC Trust's From See-saw to Wagon Wheel, p 40:

The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus. But these dissenters (or even sceptics) will still be heard, as they should, because it is not the BBC's role to close down this debate. They cannot be simply dismissed as 'flat-earthers' or 'deniers', who 'should not be given a platform' by the BBC. Impartiality always requires a breadth of view: for as long as minority opinions are coherently and honestly expressed, the BBC must give them appropriate space.

Evan Davis on the Today programme this morning: "climate change deniers"

BBC Scotland political editor Brian Taylor on his blog today: "climate change deniers"

BBC presenter Ros Atkins on the World Have Your Say blog: "climate change deniers" (and on more than one occasion during this programme, even after Christopher Booker had pulled him up on it)

The advice of the mysterious "experts" they take. The rest of it, not so much.

(Reminder re. that seminar of scientific experts - there is at least one FoI request outstanding.)