Lord Monckton is rather upset with the producers of this show, so much that he filed a legal action for a right of reply according to Bishop Hill.
I was interviewed (captured really, they flagged me down in the conference hall foyer with no notice) by this production group at the Heartland conference last year in Chicago, giving well over an hour’s worth of an interview in which they asked the same question several times in different ways, hoping to get the answer they wanted. This is an old news interviewing trick to get that golden sound bite. I knew what they were doing, and kept giving the answers my way.
Then, they showed me the contract they wanted me to sign (no mention at the beginning before the interview) and I spent several minutes reading it, finally deciding that the contract basically amounted to me giving them all rights to my image, words, and opinion, with specific rights to edit them together in “any way they saw fit”. Yes, as I recall, that was exactly the way it was worded in the contract, and basically gave them a license to create their own alternate “Watts interview” reality as they desired. My years in television news have shown me how editing can be brutally unfair in the hands of somebody skilled, and I basically told them to “stuff it” and refused to sign the contract. They spent the next two weeks via email and phone trying to come up with contract variations to get me to sign and I still refused. The entire affair was rushed and unprofessional in my experience.
The “repeated questioning of the same topic” interview technique of these blokes was a tipoff for me that the interview was a setup. I wanted no part of it and refused to allow them legal rights over me by not signing the contract. After watching the trailer below, I’m glad I stood my ground.
Here’s the BBC video and intro text for the program (note: the BBC does not allow people outside of Britain to watch the video; some sort of cranial-rectal problem I’m told, a proxy server in the UK is needed to view it if you live elsewhere):
Filmmaker Rupert Murray takes us on a journey into the heart of climate scepticism to examine the key arguments against man-made global warming and to try to understand the people who are making them.
Do they have the evidence that we are heating up the atmosphere or are they taking a grave risk with our future by dabbling in highly complicated science they don’t fully understand? Where does the truth lie and how are we, the people, supposed to decide?
The film features Britain’s pre-eminent sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton as he tours the world broadcasting his message to the public and politicians alike. Can he convince them and Murray that there is nothing to worry about?
This is the trailer, which everyone can view:
h/t to Bishop Hill
UPDATE: James Delingpole of the Telegraph tells of his experience with this outfit:
Nine months ago, when I was at the Heartland conference in Chicago, I was approached by a louche, affable, dark-haired, public school charmer called Rupert Murray. With his friend Callum he was making a documentary about climate sceptics for the BBC and wondered if I’d like to take part.
“The BBC? Not bloody likely. You’ve come to stitch us up, haven’t you?” I said.
“Not at all,” said Murray. “Look, there’s something you need to realise. I’m an independent filmmaker, I have no big budget for this, so I’m dependent on my work being original and interesting. The very last thing the BBC wants to commission is another hatchet job on sceptics. How boring and predictable would that be?”
Very true, I thought. It really is about time the BBC examined the issue from the other side. They are a public service broadcaster, after all, not a green investment fund. (Ho ho).
Unfortunately, the ending Delingpole paints is worse that my own, be sure to read his take on it.
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Not sure it isn’t an own goal. Bed wetters already hate LCM and “Deniers” know what to expect from anything BBC. That leaves the people who had no idea there was any debate.
Kate says:
February 1, 2011 at 8:19 am
“…and the British criticize China for Internet censorship”
I tend to find that the UK has a pretty low level of official censorship, but more than makes up for it with a very high level of voluntary self-censorship.
Bruce Cobb says:
February 1, 2011 at 10:57 am
Lord Monckton does speak the truth, perhaps not always in the manner some would like.
I prefer to look at what he says, not how he says it, or whatever techniques he uses to get his points accross.
If Christopher Monckton is to scupper legislation in Australia and the US he must employ all the attention gathering techniques he possibly can. This is as much a political battle as it is an environmental. Pity he couldn’t scupper our Climate Change Bill which will be economically ruinous to us but of course there is no debate in the UK and the legislation was just rubber stamped by Parliament.
A clumsy “hatchet” job.
Politicians in the UK see.m to be regularly suckered by plausible interviewers.
Now the technique is being used on climate sceptics.
The message must be clear.
Mistrust anyone why sticks a microphone in your face and asks you to go “on the record.”
The BBC were never going to give a neutral both sides of the story broadcast.
Never have I felt like such a slave. I helped pay for this charade of a documentary – if you want to watch TV in the UK, you have to pay an involuntary subscription to the BBC of about $200 / year. And this is the rubbish we get for our forced labor.
“JJB MKI says:
February 1, 2011 at 10:15 am
………they are, and behave like a bunch of snobbish, bullying, bourgeois, reactionary, self-serving Hampstead-centric pseudo intellectuals who simply adore the smell of their own gaseous emissions.”
I am assured that the BBC is an ecologically sound organisation. They have been years ahead of their time in carbon capture and have usually recycled their gaseous emissions into their TV soap operas, but climate change orthodoxy seems to have inspired them to capture those same emissions now for the making of climate/science documentaries.
Looks like …., sounds like…., smells like…., is…..
In the BBC4 documentary it was said that the crux of the argument between ourselves (sceptics) and the warmists appears to be climate sensitivity; the warmists contend that a doubling of CO2 to 700ppm in the atmosphere would cause a 2 to 4.5℃ increase in temperature. This (temperature rise) of course is not true, in fact CO2 concentration in air could be doubled to 700ppm without any further contribution to global warming. Summarising spreadsheet analyses I have shown that:
(1) At 288 K the black-body radiation or total emissive power from Earth is 391W/m^2 (124 Btu/h-ft^2), CO2 in the atmosphere absorbs 79.8W/m^2 after 3600m (CO2 absorptivity 0.184 at 350ppm or PcL of 1.24 m.atm) and H2O in the atmosphere absorbs 248W/m^2 after 120m (H2O absorptivity 0.573 for a PwL of 2.77 m.atm). Note the shorter distance for H2O this because it is 100 times greater in concentration than CO2.
(2) Doubling CO2 to 700ppm would absorb the same 79.8W/m^2 after only 2000m (CO2 absorptivity 0.195 at 700ppm or PcL of 1.4 m.atm).
The reason there is no correlation between the rise in human caused CO2 and global warming is the rather limited capacity of CO2 to absorb infrared radiation. For CO2, with its characteristic absorption in certain spectral regions, the absorbable wavelengths are filtered out after a relatively short passage (3600 metres) through the earth’s atmosphere, and the transmittance thereafter for the remainder of the radiation approaches unity. The significance of this is that a doubling of the CO2 concentration from 0.035% to 0.07% would not absorb any more heat only reduce the distance from 3600 to 2000 metres for the absorption of the radiant energy in the spectral bands to take place. The heat balance remains unchanged and heat at lower levels of the atmosphere is mixed by convection currents to high altitudes (15 000 metres). This is the reason why there is no correlation between increased levels of atmospheric CO2 and global warming.
maxB & Kate
”
Kate says:
February 1, 2011 at 8:19 am
“…and the British criticize China for Internet censorship”
I tend to find that the UK has a pretty low level of official censorship, but more than makes up for it with a very high level of voluntary self-censorship.”
Your both hitting the nail on the head! Well done
Adrian
Anyone with a usenet subscription can download the “documentary/propaganda” via usenet.
Locate the files with nzbindex or binsearch (search for ‘ storyville sceptics’ ) and dowload it with a binary newsgrabber like lottanzb (linux) or sabnzbd (windows).
Both newsgrabbers are freeware.
I actually liked the preview, a superficially nice movie. I can’t imagine how a decent person could decide, because of this movie – if it is similar to the preview – that the sceptics are either evil or silly.
An interview on NPR Sunday with a Guardian columnist revealed that the newspaper’s environmental stance was a deliberate strategy to bring in traffic and it worked. The Guardian hired four environmental reporters and then developed strategic relationships with environmental websites to steer traffic from them to the Guardian. They touted this as a successful on line business model. I am sure the BBC is doing the same thing.
John Marshall says:
February 1, 2011 at 1:37 am
This is the BBC’s attempt to comply with the instruction to give more air time to the sceptic view of Climate change. Failed!
The BBC has no control on who views their programs. They beam to satellite so all is available with a Sky box. ie. most of Europe can receive Sky broadcasts. This may be difficult in the US though but it is available on the internet through-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer
This is the page that will play old programs. Look up BBCFour and a list will appear.There may be some filtering of out of UK sites but I doubt it. My daughter in Spain can access this site without any problem.
Best of luck Anthony.
The content recorded through iplayer only lasts 7 days, use a screen grabber like SNAGIT, TO RECORD VIDEO OR STILL IMAGES.
JJB MKI says: the last paragraph is probably a grossly flawed caricature
I couldn’t see any flaws from here… perhaps you should write some more…
Just don’t hold back next time 🙂
Anyone found a copy that will play overseas? I can sometimes get Youtube (but mostly even Youtube is banned).
.
No one seems to be able to answer my question: why did Monkton claim that Obama is from Kenya?
REPLY: Why not ask him? We can’t speak for him. Now quit cluttering up this thread with your rubbish. Also, learn to spell Monckton as well as your own email address properly.- Anthony
Mike says:
February 1, 2011 at 6:53 am
“I haven’t seen the film and so have no idea if it is fair or not. Certainly the film has a point of view and people watching would know this. But, Monckton is a public figure who has ridiculed others and has the means to distribute his rebuttal of the film. I recall he threatened a suit against Professor John Abraham’s university because of Abraham’s posted lecture critiquing Monckton. Monckton is no friend of free speech.”
UTTER RUBBISH, in every lecture Monkton gives he clearly states DON`T BELIEVE A WORD I TELL YOU.
Jeremy says:
February 1, 2011 at 7:00 am
I came in this thread to find a link to the video. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen a working link to what the BBC played yet. Perhaps BBC doesn’t allow Americans to see because they want to prevent Brits from seeing American commentary on their bias?
Anyone have a working link to the video in question?
John Marshall says:
February 1, 2011 at 1:37 am
…The BBC has no control on who views their programs. They beam to satellite so all is available with a Sky box. ie. most of Europe can receive Sky broadcasts. This may be difficult in the US though but it is available on the internet through-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer
Yeah, the site works just fine in the states. However, whenever you try to run a video it loads, then stops and says, “not available in your area.” This reeks of deliberate content blocking by the BBC to me.
Try this, open genuine BBC iplayer and follow instructions.
iPLAYER DOWNLOADER 4.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CC8QFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsnapshotmedia.co.uk%2Fiplayer-downloader-4-0%2F&ei=NX5ITZ2cCciKhQex1cTxBA&usg=AFQjCNGpZKIxL_yNprU87k-Vl3lZoh91RA
Pete Hayes says:
February 1, 2011 at 5:34 am
Interesting Dave! I seem to remember seeing emails from Black to her asking if she now approved! Time for a little digging…again!
I can help you there:
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=76
Robuk says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
February 1, 2011 at 1:50 pm
If you can get the content to run you can also copy it with SNAGIT, its on Pir8t* bay.
It was another bad piece of programming by the BBC, but I feel that some of the above reaction is too negative.
Firstly, the Brits are heartily sick of the grey suited politicians and the drip-drip of climate alarmism.
We like eccentric politicians who are not afraid to speak up. George Galloway (for all his faults) gained a great deal of respect when he went across to that Senate Committe (?) and gave them a good earful. Monckton would have been like a breath of fresh air to many people who just watched because the title drew them in.
And the Brits don’t like it when a powerful organisation like the BBC tries to pull down individuals. I dont think that would have gone down well with neutral observers.
More than that – I don’t think that criticising his audience on the basis of age would have been acceptable to many.
But – best of all – the programme showed Monckton to be SUCCESSFUL! It attributed the failure of the US and Aussie ETS schemes to Monckton’s campaigns.
The weak criticism of his misquotation measured up as nothing against the image of Rudd blubbing.
Chins up folks. The BBC is rattled and it is shooting own goals.
apologies, Murray Granger, I meant Rupert Murray but I was 20
…..(*&$%&^%)(* _)(_)W )N(VWLKJ ************ furious
Around 41 minutes into the video, they showed a presentation of what was purported to be a measurement of global warming which was much worse than IPCC predictions.
But, looking closely at the slightly blurry graph, I saw the words, TOPEX Poseidon at the bottom.
A bit of Googling later and I found the almost identical graph – at least, the cherry-picked few years of sea level rise data which happened to be higher than the IPCC projections.
I look at it this way – if this AGW business is on the level, then how come they feel so much need to lie and deceive?
They could have picked a much easier target than Lord Monckton. My god they could have thought about it, maybe asked some intelligent questions. Amateurs! Go get’em Ma’Lord, go get’em!
ad says:
February 1, 2011 at 5:11 am – “Mr Artwest it seems is also a contortionist.”
No, I am just trying to stop fellow sceptics look like easily written-off paranoics because they don’t know what they are talking about.
Anyone who knows anything about TV rights knows exactly why iPlayer programmes are not available outside the area for which they have been licensed – i.e. the UK. Any broadcaster anywhere has the same problem to deal with in this regard and, if they make material available online at all, have to deal with it in much the same way.
Let’s criticise the BBC for screening an appalling programme NOT over a sideshow which just makes us look ignorant and hands ammunition to the alarmists.