I received this email this morning from Roger Harribin, the BBC’s environmental analyst. It’s interesting because I received an email from the Guardian yesterday asking if I’d like to write a 200 word guest piece. Unfortunately it somehow ended up in my spam filter (which I found this morning) so I missed the 3 PM GMT deadline today.
Here’s what Mr. Harrabin wrote. I hope WUWT readers will come to aid, especially since skeptics are now apparently getting a voice in UK MSM.
From: Roger Harrabin – Internet
Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 6:10 AM
To: [Anthony]
Subject: BBC query
Dear Mr Watts,
I am trying to talk to UK scientists in current academic posts who are sceptical about AGW.
I’m struggling to find anyone – but there may of course be a number of reasons for this. Please could you post my request on your website – and ask people to email roger.harrabin@bbc.co.uk.
We are looking for scientists, of course – not insults.
It strikes me that it might be useful to meet sometime to discuss a project I am planning on the weather.
I enclose my latest column
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8491154.stm
which touches on the difficulties of reporting climate change FYI.
I look forward to hearing from you
Yours
Roger Harrabin
If you know of a skeptical scientist in the UK that may be interested, please advise them of this. Thanks to all for your consideration. – Anthony
Anthony,
If the BBC and Roger were to publicly admit their guilt with regard to advocacy journalese, renounce their stated policy on climate reporting and give full details of who was at That Meeting that lead to the policy then there may be a foundation for tentative trust. Given that WUWT has a rapidly expanding global audience you may be in a position to request this…
Peter Miller (09:16:02) :
Steve Goddard (09:22:57) :
I’m a geologist and sceptic too. I did see some geologists as signatories on that pro-AGW list which was released not long after Climategate.
What about Jasper Kirkby, the particle physicist leading the CERN FULL CLOUD experiment? He’s a British scientist in an ‘academic’ post, he is certainly sceptical s. l. , as all true scientists should be, but whether or not he qualifies depends on Harrabin’s precise definition of ‘sceptical’. It is not clear-cut but rather a continuum of views on the state of knowledge and on the magnitudes of natural v anthropogenic processes and perceptions of negative or positive enviro-socialogical effects.
Here is a link to a useful Kirkby downloadable pdf paper
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0804/0804.1938v1.pdf
John (14:24:43) :
I guess the question is, are you smart enough to sell a world-wide media event and can you negotiate with BBC over the details on their behalf? ; )
__________________________
That’s why a professional publicist would be a good thing. This publicist should make himself/herself available to help set up the interview on behalf of whoever goes on air, and work with the interviewee on his or her narrative.
No one here doubts that the skeptics have the goods. It’s the framework that is critical.
Reply: You volunteering Tor? I’ll personally vouch for you to Mr. Watts in spite of your [snip] [snip] Norwegian attitude. ~ charles the moderator
Hi Anthony,
As a brit, and someone who has come to distrust the BBC ( I was quite a lefty in my youth, I have realised that the BBC lies by omission, and what I believed from them in my youth was only half the story, in full context, the opposite view was just as convincing).
Do not trust the BBC, do not trust Harribin.
Somebody famously once said that you can tell a mans character by the company he keeps. If RH had any real chracter, he would have left this debacle years ago, once it was obvious that ENSO held sway, and the CO2 theory was a myth, or at least he would have reported on it.
Are we to assume he is a stupid man? I do not think so, so we can only judge him by the company he keeps. Personally, I could not broadcast stuff I knew to be false, or at least suspect. He has chosen too do so. I cry no tears for RH.
Ok, as a Brit, I have to say that we are a people obsessed with ‘class’ structure, so what I am going to say now is maybe lost on our American friends but here goes…
Piers corbyn
Piers, I love your telly spots, the way you almost threw up when that Russian guy was pretending there was no maleria in the early 1900s was brilliant. I would be like you, frustrated that people could so blatantly lie. Trouble is, we are a snob culture, the Guardinistas look at your hair, accent, and turn off. Thats not my view, but its the view of our crap elitist establishment. The fact that you run a private enterprise is also a no no…’its easier for a rich man to get through the eye of a needle’ is the potent stuff of our upbringing…anyone with the audacity to run a business gets stuffed in our country. Sorry, its not you.
Viscount Moncton
Love the way you fight fire with fire. But sometimes you overcook it, Lucia suggests you don’t need to push the envelope quite so far. I don’t want you to become Michael Mann or Al Gore with the chartmanship. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe you do need to push hard.
Your involvement with Mrs T is going to set half the country (that half that does not realise that she was, overall, right – and remember I was on picket lines at the time) against you. Too much baggage. Sorry, its not you.
David Bellamy
Love the way you stuck to your views when lesser people went with the flow. But there is a generation that does not know who you are now, you would be spun as ‘out of touch’. Sorry, its not you.
Ian Pilmer
Whilst you may be right, Monbiot made you look like ‘red neck old man’…sorry, its not you.
Philip Stott
Possible. Academic that plays into our snob culture. Comes over as everyones fav teacher. Perhaps a bit too connected with the right of the political spectrum.
Roy Spencer
Sorry but the religion question would straw man the debate (though RJP as a someone who believes in re-incarnation gets a free pass of course…)
Ok…did I miss anyone? Apologies if so. The thing is RH did his homework. He knows no one is going to stick their neck out – they saw what happened to David Bellamy.
Personaly, I think you (we) need to produce a 10min clip which we insist is aired in its complete form, with clips from various people around the world covering salient points. The GGWS was almost it, but overcooked it, and the audience was not ready back then.
I would certainly have Bob Tisdales ENSO explanation as a prominent place, alongside all the competing theories and such to show there is really little need for CO2 as a driver, as its pretty much all wrapped up naturally (and spun with temp tweaks).
Points that make us skeptics should be stated as near one liners – Manns Hockey Stick debacle with He Who Must Not Be Named, the Yamal trees and Briffas ‘confession ref the MWP. Pielke Sr’s ‘wheres the OHC that you promised Mr Hanson’ article. EM Smiths march of the Thermometers. Anthonys SS UHI check. The Steig Antartica joke.
We should just do a list of all the things that observationally suggest CO2 is not a driver. We then say its very complex, we do not know. But we know enough to say its not CO2.
Thats it. If the BBC declines to show it, we tell the world, there is face book etc.
RH is trying to protect his turf. Do not give him what he wants (which is either “no-one willing to debate” or an edited hatchet job).
Give him something he does not want – a filmed slot he cannot edited and dare him to show it. And then suggest following ‘debate’ be held in a proper forum that they can film if they wish….alongside Fox and You-Tube.
Apologies to all the names I’ve slandered above and who’s shoes I readily admit I’m not fit to clean (theres that British ‘I know my place’ stuff again) and please understand its nothing personal, without all you guys we would be even more down the road to 1984.
I need to add here, on my list…
Richard Lindzen
Would be perfect..has a beard. Always good to have a beard, esp a big ‘I have not trimmed this for 111 years’ one like Richards. I’d love to meet this guy.
Roger Pielke Jr
Really really good on TV. Would make opponents look shrill. But Roger is a lukewarmer (no problem there, maybe I am too) and is not ‘british’
Some posters seem to have missed the point … that the AGW movement, like most of our our current politics, is a creature of the MSM. And the Titanic scale of the Copenhagen disaster not only killed-off AGW, but it has also killed off the power of the MSM. And, by extension, large chunks of our current political processes, too !
Frankly, who needs issues to be somehow made real by the MSM these days ?
Why should a return to proper climate science await a televisual ‘Dog & Pony show’ for it to be authenticated, validated, declared orthodox, and put on the agenda as it were?
Here, on Anthony’s excellent blog and in other places, is where you will find the new public forum. It is here in the Blogosphere that you will find proper meetings of minds, and discussions with consequence, rather than the Gog-Magog one-way transmissions of the MSM.
The MSM no longer controls the formation of ‘public opinion’ and the setting of the ‘political agenda’.
Anthony
How about ‘Richard S. Courtney’
More details about him are contained here:
http://www.globalwarmingheartland.com/expert.cfm?expertId=135
I would suspect that while he’d prefer UK, he might take some non-Candadian commonwealth types (Aussies) and then other english-speaking Euros as preferable over Americans and Canadians. . . just because American and Canadian skeptics (as we’ve seen all too often) have been heavily vilified as in the pockets of big oil. Harder to do that Aussies and most Euros (outside the Russians).
Jennifer Marohasy probably knows some Aussies to point at for him. . .
@Peter Miller (14:27:20) :
OK, then I suggest he is one of those many Scottish socialists etc
actually he is english not sure of his politics but he is a keen environmentalist – not that there is anything wrong with working for a clean, healthy environment- he possibly has an agenda for which AGW provides the nourishment
Anthony,
This may have been posted under an earlier heading, but is worth a reminder before you engage with the BBC:
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=109
It is from Harmless Sky, “Jeremy Paxman, the BBC, Impartiality, and Freedom of Information” and this, in turn, refers to this document:
The BBC Trust
FROM SEESAW TO WAGON WHEEL
Safeguarding impartiality in the 21st century, June 2007
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/review_report_research/impartiality_21century/report.pdf
The report, on page 40, states:
“Climate change is another subject where dissenters can be unpopular. There may be now a broad scientific consensus that climate change is definitely happening, and that it is at least predominantly man-made. But the second part of that consensus still has some intelligent and articulate opponents, even if a small minority.”
Guess who they are!
“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.”
It goes on to say:
“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.”
Note the words: “minority opinions”.
Harmless Sky makes this comment:
“Years of watching the BBC’s coverage of this subject – with growing astonishment – during which numerous ‘scientific experts’ who clearly hold very partisan views on climate change, have been interviewed to provide viewers with what they were lead to believe were objective opinions on the evidence for anthropogenic global warming, has made me despair of BBC impartiality. I am thinking of people like George Monbiot, Mark Lynas, Professor Chris Rapley, Lord May of Oxford, Sir David King and Professor Tom Burke in particular. Anyone who has followed this controversy will be well aware that, although such people may be experts on the subject, they are anything but impartial or objective.”
In an attempt to discover whether the BBC had organised this seminar in order to acquaint itself with the issues, or whether the purpose had been to obtain some kind of spurious authority for an editorial policy that had long since become ingrained in their news coverage, I thought that it would be worth trying to find out who had been invited to advise them. Under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act and the Environmental Information Regulations I made the following request to the BBC for information:
1. What was the name or title given to this seminar?
2. Where and when was this seminar held?
3. When did the seminar start and when did it end.
4. A copy of the invitation that was sent to prospective participants.
5. The agenda for the seminar together with any notes that were provided for the participants.
6. The names of all those who were invited to attend the seminar as participants, observers or in any other capacity together with their job description, organizational affiliation’s or any other information relating to their eligibility for being invited to be present.
7. The names of all those who attended the seminar as participants, observers or in any other capacity together with their job description, organizational affiliation’s or any other information relating to their eligibility for being invited to be present.
8. Any minutes, notes, electronic communications, recorded material or other records of the proceedings of the seminar.
After an exchange of letters, the application was referred to the Information Commissioner’s Office for adjudication. After a delay of almost a year, they are just beginning to investigate. Future developments will be reported on this blog. (For fuller details of the above and for future developments, follow the Harmless Sky link.)
I hope a new wind is blowing at the BBC; it would make the UK TV licence better value.
I give up – all the subsequent posts cite conspiracy and sweat paranoia…
As do all the former.
Engage with the man – he’s genuinely interested.
Is there anyone out there?
Why , you must ask, are the the Two main defenders of AGW, in the MSM, the BBC & the Guardian, all of a sudden coming out with this show of even handedness ???
Come on you Sceptics. Think about it.
How could the Guardian be so incompetent as to break with their Own, very first ever, ‘exclusive’ Expose on the Chinese Ground station data yesterday, which Proff. Jones was able to defend , and so effectively, on the BBC almost the same day ?
No, he was primed and ready for it.
It would be no surprise if the Guardian also knew it would be so easy defend.
Is this just designed to put you off your guard ?
Does it herlad a new style of attack journalism, realising the sceptics cann’t be dismissed and have to be taken seriously – not their arguments ‘though, just the threat they present ?
Mr. Harrabin’s article gives reason to conclude that he is still very much of the warmist faith, and hopes fervently that there will be solid science supporting his beliefs “that increasing levels of CO2 are stressing the planet beyond its capacity for self-regulation.”
I come at this last as a person with an undergraduate degree in biology, postgraduate training in medicine, and such “scientific” credentials as might be expected of a practicing physician who first began directing patients to disrobe for indignities back in the Ford Administration.
This understood, however, I have what might be called a fairly robust idea of homeostatic mechanisms on both the micro and macro levels, and I find it difficult to credit the concept that the very small present (or anticipated future) levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels could or would overload the Earth’s chemical and biological sequestration modalities, thereby “stressing the planet beyond its capacity for self-regulation.”
Is there really any justification for Mr. Harrabin’s sustained grope at AGW alarmism, or is he (in the immortal words of Mel Brooks) “just jerking off?“
Mike Spilligan (13:59:08) : “In any recorded discussion they may use only 5% in the final cut, and it’s often been noted that the sequence of recording has been changed to give a completely distorted message.”
If I were ever interviewed on camera by the BBC (BWAHAHA!) I’d insist on having a friend/colleague also record the interview, with the right to put my version on the internet (e.g. YouTube) after the program aired.
Paranoid? You bet!
watt in the world is going on?
does President Obama know about this change in tide in the global warming world??
mikef2 (15:16:52) :
I saw the Ian Plimer—Monboit video. Monboit was a rabid a@ur momisugly@.
Anthony,
I live in the UK, I listen to the BBC (mostly Radio 4) and I frequent their news web-site. I would urge you to consider a lot of the advice given in this thread, the most apposite being to avoid having anything to do with Mr. Harrabin.
He is BBC to the core. The Corporation is funded, via the licence fee (yes, we in the UK need a licence to watch TV) which is administered by the Government. The Beeb is very little more than the propaganda arm of our increasingly-vicious Socialist Government. Milliband the Younger has declared ‘war’ on the unbelievers and AGW heretics within the last couple of days.
Harrabin serves the same masters. He is searching for a presently employed academic ‘sceptic’? To step forward as a presently employed academic sceptic would be the fast track to being an un-employed academic!
Harrabin is looking for a some poor innocent to stand up in all honesty, only to skewer him or her with a carefully constructed set of questions and suggestions laced with innuendo.
I recommend that you rebuff him gently but firmly on the grounds that, until you receive unsolicited agreements from the individuals concerned you are unable to give any names to him. Please, please keep the BBC at arm’s length; be polite with them but try very hard to have little to do with them. They are not to be trusted. At all.
You might like to ask Roger Pielke Jr how he fared with the beeb, too.
Richard Tol who has been blogging with us on EU referendum and has worked with Pachauri (I think) I have not had time to read the thread sorry if this has been suggested
Prof. Dr. Richard S.J. Tol
•Research Professor, Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, Ireland
•Associate, Research Unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University and Centre for Marine and Atmospheric Science,Hamburg, Germany
•Professor of the Economics of Climate Change, Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
•Professor of the Economics of Climate Change, Department of Spatial Economics, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
•Adjunct Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Address: Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin 2, Ireland
+353 1 8632000/2120 (voice) richardsjtol (skype) +353 1 8632100 (fax)
richard.tol(at)esr
@Stuck-Record (09:22:56) :
“As a British BBC viewer I would add this warning:
Do not trust this man.
Repeat.
Do not trust this man.
Repeat.
Do not trust this man.
Repeat.
Do not trust this man.
Repeat”
I can only agree. Please, please
Do not trust this man.
Repeat.
Do not trust this man.
Repeat.
Do not trust this man.
Repeat.
Do not trust this man.
Repeat
Skeptics are gradually gaining ground, but so often only after dire lessons have been learned regarding how NOT to be sacrificed and eaten alive by warmists. Harrabin’s piece today http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8496365.stm clearly shows he still believes the warmist line implicitly. I think Harrabin needs to understand skeptics’ experiences here, and show he has understood by framing his invite to show this. I think the first requirement should be for Harrabin to read this WUWT thread and respond.
Having said that, I do want to emphasise four Brits here. And get Harrabin to concede that his request for UK academic scientists has already loaded the dice.
(1) Richard Courtney. Not a paid academic scientist IIRC. He understands the history of the vicious-circle that has biassed academia here more and more, that goes back to Maggie Thatcher.
(2) Peter Taylor. Not a paid academic scientist. He is beautifully cool in media situations, has written a whole book against AGW, has an excellent CV as Greenpeace advisor and qualified scientist – until he fell out with Greenpeace over their inexcusably bad partisan science.
(3) Christopher Monckton. Not a paid academic scientist. Just a brilliant mathematician who understands IPCC and can debate even with ordinary people as well as the most highly qualified, to demonstrate on how many levels the whole thesis is fraudulent science, bad economics, and bad for everyone.
(4) Martin Durkin, director of The Great Global Warming Swindle. Not a paid academic scientist but he sure knows his climate science rather better than most paid climatologists. I don’t know what has happened to him. Here http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Social/Ward-Durkin.htm is a superb record of email exchange he had with the infamous Bob Ward.
I also want to name some UK scientists I know personally who meet Harrabin’s specifications.
(1) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Cannot give the name as they have to stay anonymous while working to expose the bad science. If known, they would lose their job and prospects in the current climate of opinion.
(2) yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. Cannot give the name as they have to stay anonymous while working to expose the bad science. If known, they would lose their job and prospects in the current climate of opinion.
No doubt there are many more, who are unknown to me for identical reasons. Certainly I know some more, personally, who have been threatened, suffered removal of wheel-nuts, etc. Harrabin needs to understand this, and he needs to know that we know.
I’ll try to email a gentler version of this to Harrabin. Make sure he cannot fault me by the presence of anything he can call an insult.
(13:44:47) :
Hubert Lamb is still a great source, just not for an interview. (1913 – 1997)
@ur momisugly Pete (15:28:13) :
“I give up – all the subsequent posts cite conspiracy and sweat paranoia…
As do all the former.
Engage with the man – he’s genuinely interested.
Is there anyone out there?”
It’s not paranoia, it’s bitter, fully justified experience. The evidence is crystal clear. He’s only interested in silencing the sceptical criticism of his religion and if he has to appear open-handed to do it, he will. He has “… a lean and hungry look. Such men are dangerous.”
Don’t do it, don’t trust either the BBC or the Guardian. Record every transaction.
It seems to me that Mr. Harrabin might be invited to use Surface Stations as a resource. What he does with it would be worth watching.
Dave N (15:52:52) :
You might like to ask Roger Pielke Jr how he fared with the beeb, too.
He came over well.
Back to my nominations. Take a look at this site
http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com/
David Bellamy is a co-host but, no disrespect to David, Jack Barrett is the expert. There isn’t much JB doesn’t know about a CO2 molecule. The site is wonderful source of information relating to the physics and chemistry of the atmosphere.