BBC: "propaganda machine for climate change zealots"

25 January, 2011 by

Blows the lid off the BBC

In another damning article in the UK’s Daily Mail, former BBC newsreader Peter Sissons blows the lid off the institutional climate change bias at the BBC. The results are truly shocking, if not entirely surprising. For “BBC” you can substitute most other news organisations, ABC, Fairfax, AFP… Bias against climate realism is endemic in the left-leaning media, it’s only a question of degree:

For me, though, the most worrying aspect of political correctness was over the story that recurred with increasing frequency during my last ten years at the BBC — global warming (or ‘climate change’, as it became known when temperatures appeared to level off or fall slightly after 1998).

From the beginning I was unhappy at how one-sided the BBC’s coverage of the issue was, and how much more complicated the climate system was than the over-simplified two-minute reports that were the stock-in-trade of the BBC’s environment correspondents.

These, without exception, accepted the UN’s assurance that ‘the science is settled’ and that human emissions of carbon dioxide threatened the world with catastrophic climate change. Environmental pressure groups could be guaranteed that their press releases, usually beginning with the words ‘scientists say . . . ’ would get on air unchallenged.

On one occasion, after the inauguration of Barack Obama as president in 2009, the science correspondent of Newsnight actually informed viewers ‘scientists calculate that he has just four years to save the world’. What she didn’t tell viewers was that only one alarmist scientist, NASA’s James Hansen, had said that.

My interest in climate change grew out of my concern for the failings of BBC journalism in reporting it. In my early and formative days at ITN, I learned that we have an obligation to report both sides of a story. It is not journalism if you don’t. It is close to propaganda.

The BBC’s editorial policy on climate change, however, was spelled out in a report by the BBC Trust — whose job is to oversee the workings of the BBC in the interests of the public — in 2007. This disclosed that the BBC had 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’.

The error here, of course, was that the BBC never at any stage gave equal space to the opponents of the consensus.

But the Trust continued its pretence that climate change dissenters had been, and still would be, heard on its airwaves. ‘Impartiality,’ it said, ‘always requires a breadth of view, for as long as minority opinions are coherently and honestly expressed, the BBC must give them appropriate space.’

In reality, the ‘appropriate space’ given to minority views on climate change was practically zero.
Moreover, we were allowed to know practically nothing about that top-level seminar mentioned by the BBC Trust at which such momentous conclusions were reached. Despite a Freedom of Information request, they wouldn’t even make the guest list public.

READ IT ALL.

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Himalayan glaciers "advancing"

24 January, 2011 by

Glaciers not retreating…

Inconvenient Fact of the Day. The ABC has to grit its teeth to report that a significant proportion of Himalayan glaciers are actually advancing, contrary to the expectations of the global warmenistas. But of course, nothing changes the IPCC predictions, and how long will it be before someone chimes in with the inevitable: “advancing glaciers are consistent with global warming”?

The researchers believe a blanket of dust and rock debris was apparently shielding some glaciers in the world’s highest mountain range from a thaw, a factor omitted from past global warming reports. And varying wind patterns might explain why some were defying a melt.

“Our study shows there is no uniform response of Himalayan glaciers to climate change and highlights the importance of debris cover,” scientists at universities in Germany and the United States wrote in the study of 286 glaciers.

The findings underscore that experts in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were wrong to say in a 2007 report that Himalayan glaciers could vanish by 2035 in a headlong thaw. The panel corrected the error in 2010.

The report says 58 per cent of glaciers examined in the westerly Karakoram range of the Himalayas were stable or advancing, perhaps because they were influenced by cool westerly winds than the monsoon from the Indian Ocean.

But just in case you think this is all too good to be true, the ABC brings us back to earth with a bump:

Elsewhere in the Himalayas “more than 65 per cent of the monsoon-influenced glaciers … are retreating,” they write in the journal Nature Geoscience of the satellite study from 2000 to 2008. Some glaciers that were stable in length were covered by a thick layer of rocky debris. (source)

Another “science is settled” moment, I think…

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Climate sense from Miranda Devine

24 January, 2011 by

© SMH

Climate sense

In her inimitable style, Miranda Devine exposes the lunacy of the green policies that are putting lives at risk:

Eco-catastrophists always cite the precautionary principle: if they are right and we don’t reduce CO2 emissions, we face Armageddon. If they are wrong, all it costs is dollars.

But when money is allocated and attention prioritised to making contingency plans for vague hypothetical scenarios in the distant future, real priorities are neglected and real risks overlooked.

When leaders proclaim climate change as the greatest moral challenge, the entire machinery of government becomes preoccupied with the busy work of solving an imaginary problem. It is then easily blindsided by a real emergency.

This all-too-human phenomenon of selective attention is depicted in the famous psychology experiment with a gorilla. Volunteers have to watch a video showing a group of people passing a ball and count the number of times the ball changes hands. Most people concentrate so hard on the ball they don’t notice the big gorilla that walks through the middle of the screen.

We have been so busy fretting about carbon dioxide that we have neglected the real challenge — how to adapt and protect ourselves from natural disasters. (source)

And on a similar subject, Marc at ABC News Watch shows just how “unprecedented” the current floods really are:

Of note are the following headlines from the Sydney Morning Herald February-March 1893: “Trememdous downpour in Toowoomba” “Terrible Floods in Queensland“, “Floods in the Tweed District“, “Flood in the Clarence“, “Floods expected in the Hunter“, “Grafton Flooded“, “The flood in the Richmond“, “Another terrible flood in Brisbane“, “Lismore Flooded“,  “A flood at Bowral“, “Heavy Flood at Bega“, “Great Flood at Branxton“, “Disastrous Flood at Maitland“, “Great Floods in New Zealand“.

There’s waaaay more… here.

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Green Climate Monster to cause "more natural disasters": expert

23 January, 2011 by

Blamed for more extreme weather

Look, he actually says global warming and greenhouse gases (which he refers to as if they are just two sides of the same coin, rather than totally independent phenomena) but readers of this blog know better. The Green Climate Monster causes all these natural disasters and severe weather events, but people haven’t woken up to the fact yet. Give it time.

An expert says Australia will see a higher incidence of extreme weather events like the flooding in Queensland.

Global Change Professor Peter Grace from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) says greenhouse gases and global warning are contributing factors, whether people want to accept it or not.

He says it will not happen tomorrow, but it will happen in years to come and people will come to know major flooding. [Like they “came to know” the severe flooding in 1893 and 1974, before the global warming scare was more than a twinkle in Bert Bolin’s eye – Ed]

“We will have an increased frequency of quite major events similar to what we had, particularly the flooding event in south-east Queensland,” he said. [I mean, has he actually looked at the flood records for SEQ? – Ed] (source)

Perhaps Professor Grace could let us know what climate signal or weather phenomena would demonstrate that the Green Climate Monster wasn’t to blame…

We can’t stop the Green Climate Monster – he will just keep on doing whatever he wants. All we can do is adapt and prepare for it – and look at history to remind ourselves (we have very short memories) that nothing that’s happened in the last few weeks, tragic though it is, can possibly be regarded as unprecedented, even just taking into account our tiny record of 150 years, let alone in any longer timescale.

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Cosmic rays "contribute 40% to global warming"

22 January, 2011 by

Cosmic ray shower

From The Science is Settled Department. This is what happens when you decide on a pre-conceived politically-motivated conclusion (that man-made CO2 is solely to blame for climate change) and then set up an entire bureaucracy (the IPCC) to build a scientific case to support it. You only look at matters that will support your case, and you shut your eyes to anything that might challenge that case – and the result is not science at all.

So it’s little wonder that independent researchers who have no political axe to grind are constantly making discoveries about the climate that the consensus boys don’t want to hear. Like this:

A key belief of climate science theology — that a reduction in carbon emissions will take care of the bulk of global warming — has been questioned in a scientific paper released by the Environment Ministry on Monday.

Physicist and the former ISRO chairman, U.R. Rao, has calculated that cosmic rays — which, unlike carbon emissions, cannot be controlled by human activity — have a much larger impact on climate change than The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims.

In fact, the contribution of decreasing cosmic ray activity to climate change is almost 40 per cent, argues Dr. Rao in a paper which has been accepted for publication in Current Science, the preeminent Indian science journal. The IPCC model, on the other hand, says that the contribution of carbon emissions is over 90 per cent.

‘Cosmic ray impact ignored’

Releasing Dr. Rao’s findings as a discussion paper on Thursday, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh noted that “the impact of cosmic ray intensity on climate change has thus far been largely ignored by the mainstream scientific consensus.” He added that the “unidimensional focus” on carbon emissions by most Western countries put additional pressure on countries like India in international climate negotiations.

The continuing increase in solar activity has caused a 9 per cent decrease in cosmic ray intensity over the last 150 years, which results in less cloud cover, which in turn results in less albedo radiation being reflected back to the space, causing an increase in the Earth’s surface temperature. (source)

Expect to see this story reported widely on the ABC and in Fairfax…

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Was the Brisbane flood avoidable?

22 January, 2011 by

Spillway at Wivenhoe

The Australian publishes an article analysing the events surrounding the releases from the Wivenhoe Dam (previously reported here at ACM) and its possible effect on the Brisbane flood. The inquiry will certainly have its work cut out::

For reasons that are now highly controversial, in the early hours of Thursday, January 13, Australia’s third-largest city was devastated by a major flood in the Brisbane River. Thousands of homes and businesses were severely damaged; priceless possessions including artefacts and photographs of incalculable sentimental value were destroyed; and a multi-billion-dollar bill was inflicted on the River City. Large swaths of a spectacular city were submerged as the sun shone.

At first it was put down to the wrath of Mother Nature. The video footage of vehicles and people being swept down large streets in Toowoomba (700m above sea level on the Great Dividing Range) by a raging torrent of dirty-brown floodwater after a freak downpour on January 10 was powerful. There were remarkable images of families safe on the roofs of their houses surrounded by floodwater in the Lockyer Valley, below Toowoomba and west of Brisbane (and outside the Wivenhoe catchment).

But, as engineers and hydrologists model increasing amounts of data from the Bureau of Meteorology and SEQWater on the performance of the dam – its inflows from the vast catchment, its releases during crucial periods, the changes in river heights and flow rates, and the manual that the operators are instructed to follow – a very different picture emerges.

The picture being painted before the start of a commission of inquiry, headed by Supreme Court judge Cate Holmes, is that the Brisbane River flood was largely the product of water released from the dam.

These calculations, yet to be tested by SEQWater, show that the urgent release from the dam of huge volumes at unprecedented rates of flow of up to 7500 cubic metres per second, when the operators were gravely concerned late on January 11 that the dam’s rising levels could trigger a collapse of the system, produced most of the flood in the Brisbane River. (source)

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Gillard: addicted to tax and spend

21 January, 2011 by

Old fashioned socialist

We all appreciate that those who have suffered from the floods in Queensland and Victoria deserve financial help from the federal government to help them rebuild their lives and their homes. However, why is it that Julia Gillard’s immediate reaction is to consider a one-off “levy” (translation: tax) rather than the many alternatives? Tax ‘n’ spend is good old fashioned socialism, of course, which Julia with her crypto-communist past would be well aware of.

How about one of these instead:

  • postpone or abandon the pointless National Broadband Network, which will be out of date before it’s even completed. By the time our “state of the art” network is operational, having dug up every street in Australia to lay fibre cables, the rest of the world will have moved on to n-th generation wireless at a fraction of the cost;
  • postpone or abandon the pointless price on carbon, which will do nothing for the climate, nothing to “encouragize” China or India to cut their emissions, and will add massive costs to businesses trying to rebuild and huge increases for those struggling to pay their energy bills;
  • abandon the political posturing about returning the budget to surplus by the artificial deadline Labor itself has set. Vanity is the only thing preventing flexibility here;
  • stop wasting money on rubbish policies like cash-for-clunkers or the Pink Batts fiasco;
  • cut rafts of other wasteful government spending;
  • [readers are invited to fill in the blanks – Ed]

Of course, the federal government should contribute to this tragedy, but not via yet another slug on the poor Australian public.

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World's media: 2010 "hottest year evah"!

21 January, 2011 by

Cooler than 2010, according to world's media

“Ever”? Really? What hotter than when the planets coalesced from a swirling disk of white hot stellar matter 4.5 billion years ago? Well no, of course not. But the media regularly make nonsensical statements like this because they haven’t a clue about history, or any concept of time.

What they mean is “since about 150 years ago.” The fact that 2010, like 1998, was a major El Niño year, and therefore tells us very little about what global temperatures are really doing, is of no consequence. It is likely that 2011, influenced as it will be by a strong La Niña, will be significantly cooler. But there will be wall-to-wall excuses for that – “just a blip”, “warming will resume faster than evah next year” – because a cooling blip is just a blip, whereas a warming blip is evidence of man-made global warming. Add that to a slow recovery from the depths of the Little Ice Age over the past 200 years means that it is almost inevitable that each decade will be warmer than that preceding it.

However, the media’s love of scare stories and the gullibility of the general public ensures that idiotic headlines like this go largely unchallenged.

Both the ABC and Fairfax (natch) fall into the trap of demonstrating their ignorance of any concept of history by copying the same headline from AFP:

Fairfax: 2010 warmest ever year, says UN weather agency

ABC: 2010 officially the hottest year ever

The articles go on to cover much the same ground (but always remember, the WMO is a body operating under the auspices of the UN, just like the IPCC, which, as any fule kno, is little more than a corrupt mouthpiece for a bunch of politically-motivated environmental activists):

The UN’s World Meteorological Organisation said Thursday that 2010 was the warmest year on record [at least they say “on record” here, but they don’t go on to explain that means 150 years, or 50 atoms across on the Age of Earth Ruler – Ed], confirming a “significant” long-term trend of global warming and producing exceptional weather variations.

The trend also helped to melt Arctic sea ice cover to a record low for December last month, the WMO said in a statement. [Nobody ever mentions the Antarctic of course, because that end of the planet isn’t playing ball – Ed]

Last year “ranked as the warmest year on record, together with 2005 and 1998,” the WMO added, confirming preliminary findings released at the global climate conference early December that were based on a 10-month period.

“The 2010 data confirm the Earth’s significant long-term warming trend,” WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said. “The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998.”

Which is like saying the 10 warmest days this year happened since the end of winter. Shock. It says nothing about the cause – we all know the cause (it’s the Green Climate Monster). But that doesn’t stop typical “cracked record” remarks from the Grantham Institute’s Bob Ward, wading in for no other purpose other than to bash sceptics (and alarmists are much better at bashing sceptics than they are at playing by the rules of science, like actually sharing their data and models for example):

“Self-proclaimed climate change ‘sceptics’ may still try to claim that global warming stopped in 1998, but they cannot explain away the fact that nine of the 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 2000,” said Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE).

“Self-proclaimed”? And what’s with the quotes around ‘sceptics’? Following that lead you’re a self-proclaimed ‘alarmist’ whose livelihood is funded by the climate scare, then? Actually most sceptics don’t claim warming stopped in 1998, I certainly don’t. 1998 is a poor year to choose because of the large El Niño spike, but I would suggest that temperatures (as measured by satellite, rather than the fudged and homogenised surface records) have been largely static since about 2002. But of course Phil Jones of CRU previously went as far as to say that there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995…

But it’s all meaningless. None of this says anything about the cause, and that’s really all we’re interested in.

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Daily Bayonet GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

21 January, 2011 by

Skewering the clueless

As always, a great read!

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MTR 1377 interview on YouTube

20 January, 2011 by

Last night’s interview with Luke Grant is now on ACM’s YouTube channel (link), and is also on the new ACM Media page (link).

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