Britannia Radio

 

FAT CAT CREAM

>> THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 04, 2010

The big oil companies, once the greenies' villains of the peace, are now in bed with them. They are the cats that truly have the cream, because on top of their massive oil and gas reserves - which of course the world still needs - they are now also benefiting massively from the lunatic government subsidies for building wind farms and other so-called renewables. Their grasping greed is part of the sinister conspiracy that, as Ofgem pointed out yesterday, will lead to energy bills soaring to £5,000 a year by 2020 and regular power cuts well before then. So when Dr Anthony Hayward, the BP boss, comes down from his subsidy-fuelled castle to give - as fawning Evan Davis put it this morning on Today "a rare interview" - how is he treated? With sickening deference. Our chain-wearing Evan's first question was, he obviously thought, quite a toughie (and designed to be a sop to all those anti-warming 'deniers' he clearly sneers at) whether the great doctor actually believed in 'climate change', despite all the recent controversy The answer was 'yes', so naturally, this was treated as the gospel truth, and the rest of the exchange followed entirely predictable lines, reavealing nothing other than that BP is fat, complacent, and chillingly opportunistic. 

What Davis should have been asking the good doctor is how much he and his company stands to make from government subsidies in the massive 'renewables' scam. That is precisely the qestion that the BBC will never ask.

"stretching the available facts"

>> WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 03, 2010

Matt Prescott, the well-connected eco-activist behind such ventures as the BBC's failed Planet Relief project (see Bishop Hill here and here for details on Prescott's connections with various BBC luminaries and for links to articles he has written for the BBC), has donned his recycled tinfoil hat to offer these observations on Climategate in the comments at the Guardian website:

Without doubt, whoever orchestrated this combined computer hacking and smear campaign was extremely sophisticated and would make a world-class PR spin doctor look amateur.
It is hard to believe that the average hacker has the PR skills required to pull of something so devastating, in terms of timing and content, single-handedly.
A large pool of people and organisations, much larger than just the UEA, will almost certainly have had to be hacked in order to provide the most juicy morsels and divert attention in particular directions.
Surely, it would have taken a long time and thus substantial resources to read thousands of emails and to pick out the key conversational threads, scientists and issues?
Again this feels like a very large project which would have need to be funded by individuals or organisations with extremely deep pockets and the ability to maintain absolute secrecy.
Given the size, wealth and skills found within the intelligence community the idea that the CIA, NSA or some other shadowy organisation has been up to something naughty, which would suit their national interest, is not a bad guess, but it should probably have been labelled as a guess, if this is all it was.

After all that, he concludes without any sense of irony:

If there is one lesson from "climate gate" it is that scientists need to be crystal clear about when they are discussing a view backed up by hard, empirical evidence and when they are speculating or stretching the available facts.