Hypocrisy of the BBC

11 July, 2014 by

BBC: loves Gore, hates Lawson

BBC: loves Gore, hates Lawson

Censorship now rules at the British publicly funded broadcaster, the BBC.

On a current affairs programme in February of this year, Lord (Nigel) Lawson of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) was brought in to debate Sir Brian Hoskins of the (ultra alarmist) Grantham Institute, home of the odious Bob Ward.

Subsequently, a Greens activist (naturally) complained that the BBC was guilty of giving ‘false balance’ to the flat-earthers. Hugh Muir of the Grauniad takes up the story:

It still sends a frisson down the spine of certain producers to give airtime to the former chancellor Lord Lawson so that he can chip away at the widespread scientific agreement over the causes and impact of climate change. The temperature is always a little higher with a heretic in the room. And yet this route towards excitement has its dangers. As the go-to guy in the thinktank of his own creation, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Lawson was called in February to the studios of the Today programme for debate with Sir Brian Hoskins, a climatologist from Imperial College London.

Things did not go as they should, and the broadcast became the subject of a complaint from Chit Chong, a Green party activist. Reviewing the broadcast, the BBC’s head of editorial complaints, Fraser Steel, took a dim view. “Lord Lawson’s views are not supported by the evidence from computer modelling and scientific research,” Steel says, “and I don’t believe this was made sufficiently clear to the audience … Furthermore the implication was that Lord Lawson’s views on climate change were on an equal footing with those of Sir Brian.”

And they aren’t. Sceptics have their place in the debate, Steel says in his provisional finding, but “it is important to ensure that such views are put into the appropriate context and given due (rather than equal) weight.” Chong is only partially satisfied. He’d like a right of reply and perhaps a balancing programme. And others say “due weight” should mean not having Lawson on at all. Still, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Furthermore, the Telegraph reports:

Lord Lawson wrote that Fraser Steel, head of the unit, apologised to Mr Chong “for the fact I was allowed to appear on the programme and to make clear this will not happen again”.

In other words, they won’t be inviting Lawson back, effectively censoring his contribution to the debate.

But let’s look at whether the BBC sticks to its own rules, and, guess what? Surprise! The ‘false balance’ argument only applies to sceptics.

A Google search of “Al Gore” and climate on the bbc.co.uk site reveals nearly 12,000 hits, and top result is from just three days ago! Didn’t they get the memo? You can’t have unqualified people speaking about climate! We all know that Al Gore has no science qualifications and therefore has no right to speak on climate change, apart perhaps from having made a ludicrous and inaccurate propaganda video in 2007.

But that doesn’t stop the BBC giving Gore a platform to spout yet more propaganda, unchallenged.

See? It’s not a question of false balance, it’s a question of getting the right message out – the alarmist message. As Lawson rightly says:

“If there is to be a ban on non-scientists discussing climate change issues (which I do not, of course, support), this should in the best BBC tradition be an even-handed one. That is to say, they should also ban non-scientists such as energy secretary Ed Davey, Ed Miliband, Lord Deben (chairman of the government’s climate advisory committee), Lord Stern (former adviser to the government on the economics of climate change and development) and all the others who are regularly invited to appear.”

Let’s have a look at the ABC (the Australian Bolsheviks Collective) here in Australia. Top of the list must be cracked-crystal-ball-wielding Tim Flannery, he of the many and varied dud predictions. A Google search of his name on the ABC web site reveals nearly 7,000 hits with ‘climate’. Just last week, the ABC spruiked Flannery as a ‘climate scientist’ (see image).

Flannery a 'climate scientist'?

Flannery a ‘climate scientist’? [click to enlarge]

He is nothing of the sort, of course. He’s a mammalogist, palaeontologist, environmentalist (whatever that is), and… ta da! … ‘global warming activist’. Thus spake Wikipedia. So it doesn’t matter if you’re not a climate scientist, global warming activist will do just as well.

We can add to our list other favourites of the ABC, Stephan Lewandowsky (psychologist), Clive Hamilton (no idea, but certainly not climate science), Robyn Williams, etc etc. So it’s all fine and dandy for our public broadcaster to drag in unqualified persons to rattle on about climate change, as long as it’s the approved message they’re spouting.

But think about the reverse – if engaging Lawson to debate Hoskins is false balance, how about the BBC get on the phone to Dr Roy Spencer, or Pat Michaels, or Richard Lindzen? They are as distinguished climate scientists as you could hope to get, so that should satisfy the ‘false balance’ conundrum, right?

Er, no. Roy Spencer manages a tad over 300 mentions on bbc.co.uk, and only one in the last 12 months… and a fair amount of those hits may also be reader comments.

Surely Lindzen will do better?

Nope. The learned professor manages just over 200 mentions, and in the last four years, just three…

How about Pat Michaels?

Zero. Nada. Zilch. Zippo.

Clearly the BBC isn’t trying very hard to find any kind of balance on climate, and would rather censor debate in its own Stalinist fashion.

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Lindzen, Christy and Curry appointed to APS climate statement review panel

20 March, 2014 by

Realistic at last?

Realistic at last?

That faint noise you can hear in the distance is the sound of John Cook’s and Dana Nuccitelli’s heads popping.

The American Physical Society, which previously issued a highly alarmist statement regarding climate change, is to review it, and has appointed three climate realists to the panel of six. The news release states:

Preparations are under way by the APS Panel on Public Affairs (POPA) to review and possibly update the society’s statement on climate change. In the coming months, the APS membership will have a chance to weigh in on any proposed revisions before the society adopts a final draft.

“We intend to keep the membership informed at every stage in this process,” said Robert Jaffe a physicist at MIT and Chair of POPA. “We’re quite eager to make sure that the revision of the climate change statement is done in the most open and orderly way.”

The subcommittee of POPA that is conducting the review posted its background and research materials to the APS website, along with its charge. The research materials include the transcripts of the subcommittee’s January workshop, biographical information on outside climate experts who participated in the workshop, and their slide presentations. These materials are now available online.

The APS recognises that Richard Lindzen, John Christy and Judith Curry have a great deal to contribute to the climate debate. How long will the headbangers at Un-Skeptical Pseudo-Science continue to refer to them as ‘climate misinformers’ (i.e. people we disagree with)? Or perhaps they will simply add the APS to the list instead…! Nothing would surprise me.

Tony Thomas at Quadrant Online has much more here.

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Richard Lindzen at the House of Commons

29 February, 2012 by

UPDATE: Unfortunately, only the first half of the talk is available. I will post a link when the second half is uploaded.

Professor Lindzen was speaking at the UK House of Commons at the invitation of a group seeking to repeal the UK’s barking mad Climate Change Act, which is guaranteed to send the UK’s economy into a terminal nose dive.

PDF of the presentation can be downloaded here.

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Scientists: no need to panic about "global warming"

27 January, 2012 by

WSJ Online

Sixteen scientists, including such luminaries as Lindzen, Kininmonth, Happer and Shaviv, write to the Wall Street Journal, expressing the view that the global warming scare is completely overblown, and that AGW alarmism may result in increased research funding. Shock!

What heresy! Wait for the excuses: they’re not the “right” scientists, of course. They’ve all been “bought off” by big oil. They’re all probably suffering from delusions caused by mental illness. The fact that they may have reached these conclusion by means of proper impartial scientific enquiry wouldn’t occur to the alarmist head-bangers (given they haven’t a clue what “impartial scientific enquiry” is – “Surely science is avoiding FOI requests, deleting data and fudging results? That’s what I was taught!”).

Cue collective warmist head-pop in 3, 2, 1…

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word “incontrovertible” from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question “cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.

Read it all.

That distant explosion was Monbiot, by the way…

(h/t Climate Depot)

UPDATE: Check out Un-skeptical Pseudo-Science’s hilarious over-reaction to this article here (the only reason I know about it is because they linked to me as a “denier blog” – LOL!)

UPDATE 2: Lubos Motl assembles links to all the hysterical responses from the headbangers here. Probably best to be sitting down when you read them.

UPDATE 3: Add to the list Andrew Glikson from ANU writing at The [One-sided] Conversation. Glikson cites NASA GISS (i.e. Hansen) data for global temperatures, and Munich Re (alarmist insurers) for “evidence” of more extreme weather. Would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. Go here (if you really must).

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