Guest Post by Barry Woods
It is my opinion that the BBC in broadcasting the BBC 2 Horizon program ‘Science Under Attack’ did not treat the general public in the UK and at least one of the interviewees with the ‘good faith’ that they should be able to expect from the BBC. After the program aired, I contacted James Delingpole, who was one of the sceptics portrayed in the program and he told me how he was approached to participate by the BBC.
“I am making a film for BBC’s Horizon on public trust in science and I was hoping you may be able to help.” – BBC Producer
However, the programs underlying message to the general public came across to me as that climate science was under attack by climate sceptics or deniers of science who are on a par with those that deny Aids, vaccines and extreme anti GM environmentalist activists.
Yet, in discussion with a NASA scientist, the presenter Professor Paul Nurse apparently makes a gross factual error informing the viewer that annual man-made CO2 emissions are;
seven times
that of the total natural annual emissions. This raised a number of eyebrows and is now subject to some discussion amongst the blogs, including at Bishop Hill.
That such an apparent major error was presented to the public as fact, in the BBC’s flagship science program, should I think raise questions with respect to the handling of all the issues within the program.
Paul Nurse: The scientific consensus is, of course, that the changes we are seeing are caused by emissions of carbon into the atmosphere. But given the complexity of the climate system, how can we be sure that humans are to blame for this?
Bob Bindschadler[NASA]: We know how much fossil fuel we take out of the ground. We know how much we sell. We know how much we burn. And that is a huge amount of carbon dioxide. It’s about seven gigatons per year right now.
Paul Nurse: And is that enough to explain…?
Bob Bindschadler: Natural causes only can produce – yes, there are volcanoes popping off and things like that, and coming out of the ocean, only about one gigaton per year. So there’s just no question that human activity is producing a massively large proportion of the carbon dioxide.
Paul Nurse: So seven times more.
Bob Bindschadler: That’s right.
Paul Nurse: I mean, why do some people say that isn’t the case?
(from a transcript of BBC Horizon – Science Under Attack)
Following the program I contacted James Delingpole and he agreed to a telephone interview about the program. We had a few telephone conversations about the program and he sent me a copy of the email from a BBC producer at the BBC inviting James to participate in the program. (my bold)
“The tone of the film is very questioning but with no preconceptions. On the issue of who is to blame no-one will be left unscathed, whether that is science sceptics, the media or most particularly scientists themselves. Sir Paul is very aware of the culpability of scientists and that will come across in the film. They will not be portrayed as white coated magicians who should be left to work in their ivory towers – their failings will be dealt with in detail.”
– BBC Producer to James Delingpole
The contents of that invitation put the presentation of his interview in the program into a different context. In my opinion it demonstrates bad faith on the part of the BBC in failing to present to the public the details of the sceptical argument about climategate and ‘climate science’ yet allowing those involved to present their defence without serious challenge.
The premise will be ‘This is a turbulent time for science. After the debacles of Climate-gate, GM products and MMR, I want to explore why science isn’t trusted and whether we as scientists are largely to blame’. By looking at these different areas he will dig into the difficult questions of how to deal with uncertainty in science, the communication of this uncertainty, and the difficulties when science meets policy and the media.
– BBC Producer to James Delingpole
The BBC is the UK’s national public service broadcaster (funded by a per household TV Licence) and by its Charter it has a duty to its audience to be fair and balanced.
The Horizon program is the BBC’s flagship science program, so when it uses the weight of the BBC’s authority alongside, Sir Professor Paul Nurse, a Nobel Laureate and the new President of the Royal Society it has a clear responsibilty to the public to fairly present the detail of the sceptical views climate science and the issues around the climategate emails.
My interview with James Delingpole
James actually received a lot of criticism from sceptics for somehow ‘failing’ to get across the sceptical arguments in this program. When I spoke to him his frustration was obvious as he said he had spent three hours talking to Professor Paul Nurse about the detail of the climategate emails, the failings of the inquiries and the many and varied sceptical arguments with respect to man-made climate change.
James said he had explained in detail why sceptics describe the inquiries as whitewashes, this included the vested interest of the participants, the fact that no one actually asked Jones about whether he had deleted emails, the failure of scientists to provide data to critics and journals (as scientific process would expect) the importance of hiding the decline in proxies, the fact that scientist had become advocates for policy.
Yet in the program all that comes across is a fade to voice over where Professor Paul Nurse states that James believes the inquiries were whitewashes. Why not allow the public to consider some of these reason from James Delingpole
Why did Professor Phil Jones say to delete emails? Why did he ask colleagues to delete emails relating to the IPCC reports. And most importantly of all. Why did Phil Jones feel the need to ask colleagues to delete these emails?
Those question surely support James Delingpole’s view that the peer-review process and the IPCC processes had been corrupted.
Another question that has been often asked was, why did James trust the BBC?
To put the interview into context the BBC had received a number of complaints regarding both the BBC’s coverage of Copenhagen and the coverage of the climategate emails. The BBC had seemed genuinely surprised by this response from the public and had even launched a review of how science in the media handled subjects like climate science, vaccines and GM.
The invitation that James received from the BBC to be involved in this program appeared to be very much in this context.
“As an influential blogger on climate change, among other subjects, I’d really like Paul to meet you and chat to you about your views – how you see your role and that more generally the influence of the internet in changing the debate; your views on climate-gate and how that was handled by the media; the failings or otherwise of scientists in communicating the science.”
– BBC Producer to James Delingpole
James said that he had looked forward to this opportunity to discuss and present sceptical issues in the apparent spirit of the invitation.
The ‘trick’ and ‘hide the decline’
The BBC described the ‘trick’ and ‘hide the decline’ as at the crux of the climategate email scandal. Why would they not at least allow a sceptic to voice to the public the sceptical viewpoint on this issue.
Paul Nurse (voice over): Tree rings have been shown to be a good way of measuring ancient temperatures, and they’ve mostly matched instrumental measurements since the advent of thermometers.
However, after about 1960, some tree ring data stopped fitting real temperatures so well. The cause of this isn’t known. When Dr Jones was asked by the World Meteorological Organisation to prepare a graph of how temperatures had changed over the last 1000 years, he had to decide how to deal with this divergence between the datasets.
He decided to use the direct measurements of temperature change from thermometers and instruments rather than indirect data from the tree rings, to cover the period from 1960. It was this data splicing, and his e-mail referring to it as a “trick” that formed the crux of Climategate.
Phil Jones: The Organisation wanted a relatively simple diagram for their particular audience. What we started off doing was the three series, with the instrumental temperatures on the end, clearly differentiated from the tree ring series. But they thought that was too complicated to explain to their audience.
So what we did was just to add them on, and bring them up to the present. And as I say, this was a World Meteorological Organisation statement. It had hardly any coverage in the media at the time, and had virtually no coverage for the next ten years, until the release of the e-mails. (transcript)
The program was supposed to deal with the failure of the presentation of uncertainties regarding climate science, the criticism is that climate science has presented to politicians a narrative of ‘unprecedented’ temperature rise which ‘must be due to humans.
Yet the ‘complication’ that is not explained clearly to the public or politicians, is that temperature proxies declined when modern thermometers showed warming. Even the simplest of politicians could grasp that if the proxies decline when thermometers show warming it reduces their credibility of recording historic temperatures.
Yet somehow it is deemed to complicated, this is a prime example of scientist becoming advocates for policy and presenting the issues as certain when they are not. Remember this was the described purpose of the program.
An interesting response to ‘hide the decline’
James Delingpole wrote in his blog about how the mathematician Simon Singh, the best selling author of ‘Fermat’s Last Theorum’ had tweeted:
Sorry, but @JamesDelingpole deserves mockery ‘cos he has the arrogance to think he knows more of science than a Nobel Laureate
Simon Singh wrote a rebuttal in his own blog, yet in the the comments there arose an excellent rebuttal to the programs description of ‘hide the decline’ from a respected scientist Paul Dennis who is also at the University of East Anglia
Paul Dennis said…
Before I add anything further to the debate I should say that I’m an Isotope Geochemist and Head of the Stable Isotope and Noble Gas Laboratories in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia. I’ve also contributed to and published a large number of peer-reviewed scientific papers in the general field of palaoclimate studies.
I don’t say this because I think my views should carry any more weight. They shouldn’t. But they show there is a range and diversity of opinion amongst professionals working in this area.
What concerns me about the hide the decline debate is that the divergence between tree ring width and temperature in the latter half of the 20th century points to possibly both a strong non-linear response and threshold type behaviour.
There is nothing particularly different about conditions in the latter half of the 20th century and earlier periods. The temperatures, certainly in the 1960’s, are similar, nutrient inputs may have changed a little and water stress may have been different in some regions but not of a level that has not ben recorded in the past.
Given this and the observed divergence one can’t have any confidence that such a response has not occurred in the past and before the modern instrumental record starting in about 1880.
Paul Dennis was thought by many newspapers to be the potential ‘whistleblower’ of the climategate emails. He commented a few times at Simon Singh’s blog and his identity was confirmed at Bishop Hill
Thus it could be said that on this particular issue at least and that the ‘science is not settled’ even at UEA!
The Conduct of the BBC
I last spoke to James Delingpole after the BBC4 program Meet The Sceptics had been aired that focussed on Christopher Monckton. James had also been involved in the making of this program and had got to know the makers well and trusted them. (from his blog)
“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?”
Over the next few months I came to like and trust Murray. He was there filming Lord Lawson, Lord Monckton, Lord Leach and me when we debated at the Oxford Union. And he was there to capture our joy and surprise when we won – and to hang out drinking with us, afterwards, like he was our mate.
By this stage, we’d all come to accept that Murray was genuinely interested in presenting our case sympathetically. In fact, I must admit, I was really looking forward to seeing the finished product. “God this is going to be fantastic!” I thought. “At long bloody last, the BBC is going to do the right thing – and at feature length too.” – from James Delingpole’s blog
When I last spoke to him, James was genuinely angry and felt badly let down by the BBC. He had taken part in the making of both programmes in good faith, yet the BBC had basically said to the world in his view, that climate sceptics are deniers and an organised group of these deniers are responsible for stalling political action to ‘save the planet. It appears to me that this was the program makers intention all along.
I asked James if he felt concerned for his safety now, and he said absolutely that was a concern, following how sceptics were depicted in these programmes.
Prior to this program being aired apparently both people at the BBC and Paul Nurse spoke to the Guardian with comments that gives every reason for me to think the program was intended all along to present sceptics in a bad light.
I believe that in this type of BBC science program the public has an expectation that the BBC would present fairly both pro and sceptical arguments on the issues in enough detail to allow the public to take own view. If a respected main stream journalist can be treated like this by the BBC, what hope and expectations of being treated fairly should a member of the public or a blogger (like me – RealClimategate) have of the BBC?
The issue I have with this program and the BBC is not who is right or wrong in climate science, but the failure of the BBC to fairly present in the program the sceptical arguments in detail (which it must be fully aware of) with respect to climate science, the climategate emails and the inquiries to the general public.
I would like to leave the final words to James Delingpole that he said to me (and ones that he left in the comments at Bishop Hill) about why he participated in BBC Horizon – Science Under Attack program and trusted the producers of the BBC 4 program, Storyville – Meet the Sceptics.
Why shouldn’t one have faith in one’s national broadcaster to tell the other side of the story? – James Delingpole
Links/sources:
BBC Horizon -Science Under Attack – transcript
BBC Horizon – Science Under Attack – video (youtube)
The BBC email invitation to James Delingpole (my bold)
From: “Emma” [email address removed by author]
Date: 3 August 2010 19:25:08 GMT+01:00
To: James [email address removed by author]
Subject: BBC Horizon
Dear James
I hope you don’t mind me contacting you on this email address but I was given it by Louise Gray at the Telegraph.
I am making a film for BBC’s Horizon on public trust in science and I was hoping you may be able to help.
The film will explore our current relationship with science, whether we as a society do and should trust it. It is being presented by the nominated President of the Royal Society, Sir Paul Nurse. If he is voted in later this summer he will be taking over the at RS at the end of the year at around the same time the film will be transmitted so it would very much launch his presidency. The premise will be ‘This is a turbulent time for science. After the debacles of Climate-gate, GM products and MMR, I want to explore why science isn’t trusted and whether we as scientists are largely to blame’. By looking at these different areas he will dig into the difficult questions of how to deal with uncertainty in science, the communication of this uncertainty, and the difficulties when science meets policy and the media.
The tone of the film is very questioning but with no preconceptions. On the issue of who is to blame no-one will be left unscathed, whether that is science sceptics, the media or most particularly scientists themselves. Sir Paul is very aware of the culpability of scientists and that will come across in the film. They will not be portrayed as white coated magicians who should be left to work in their ivory towers – their failings will be dealt with in detail.
Now obviously one of the other great areas of contention is when science meets the media. Much as most scientists would like their papers to be published unedited in the mainstream media that obviously does not work. We will be visiting the newsroom of a national newspaper (most likely the Times although we have also been talking to the Telegraph) to explore the realities of where science fits in the news agenda, but I also want to explore the equally important role of the online world.
As an influential blogger on climate change, among other subjects, I’d really like Paul to meet you and chat to you about your views – how you see your role and that more generally the influence of the internet in changing the debate; your views on climate-gate and how that was handled by the media; the failings or otherwise of scientists in communicating the science.
Filming would be on the afternoon of 18 August ideally.
If you are interested please drop me a line or give me a call.
Kind regards
Emma [removed by author]
Producer/Director
BBC Vision Productions
Would UK TV licence payers have a case to stop paying their licence fees on account of evidence that the BBC is not being impartial, fair or balanced in its handling and reporting of climate change issues? Any views from a legal point of view?
Or would a court simply rule ..”if you have a tv, you have to have a licence ..end of”?
Does anyone else think there is something terribly reminiscent of the Nazis in all this. With this corruption of science by “post normal science” (i.e. science which looks for the evidence to fit a preconceived idea), and the propaganda machinery of the BBC, there is something appallingly similar to rise of Nazism with its pseudo-scientific Eugenics and Goebellian propaganda.
Can we forget that like the BBC Nazism was originally a left-wind organisation to restore national pride!
The real danger of course, is not this petty squabble about global temperatures. It is the way, the precedent has been set for any tin pot dictator to use these same tools to undermine democracy in a real crisis: to set aside the standards of science to allow it to “prove” the political desireable by the “consensus” of the (party) scientists and then use the state funded propaganda machine to inform the masses of this “proven” science that jews are … or whatever.
From climategate to an authoritarian regime like the Nazis isn’t that big a step:
1. Science that is tailored to fit the political need not the evidence (inverting the Null hypothesis).
2. Monolithic state-funded news machines that allow themselves to become political propaganda machines.
What next? “Re-education” camps for the deniers?
@Ryan Spear says…
…..Hmm, well an IQ of 137 certainly doesn’t make me a genius, but I think it is quite enough to detect the smell of scientific bullshit – and the pathetic attempts to sweep it under the carpet.
Well Ryan, I’m only a D O G but I could smell it too
I think a good way to express just how significant an error this is would be to imagine this scenario:
Imagine an economics documentary in the wake of the credit crunch. Two “top economists” are discussing the causes of the crisis. During a key interview both economists agree that the U.K. economy is 7 times larger than the U.S. and was therefore the driving force behind the world economy.
Can you imagine the reaction to such a grevious error? Why is this particular mistake not being treated even remotely as seriously?
frank verismo says:
February 3, 2011 at 2:55 pm
The BBC were the primary reason I evicted my television. Being propagandized in your own home and paying for the pleasure is not my idea of fun.
I entirely agree. I got rid of my TV set 2 years ago for exactly this reason. But it’s not just the BBC. The other terrestrial channels were just as bad, in my view.
For those who haven’t got rid of their TVs yet, the withdrawal symptoms aren’t too bad. For a few weeks or months you keep thinking of the programmes that you’d have liked to have seen. But after a while, you no longer know what you’re missing, and it doesn’t matter any more. And when you do see some TV programme round at someone else’s house, it all seems cheap and tawdry.
It’s a terrible shame. TV could be (and should be) a medium of public debate. The 21st century version of the town hall. But these days, about almost everything, the debate is over. It’s not just climate change. In the UK there’s no longer any real debate about the EU and the endless rain of health and safety rules and regulations. TV has become trivialised. It has become a medium of public propaganda, with a rigid editorial policy about more or less everything.
And so the real debate has moved to the internet, which is now the place to go to find out what’s happening.
I can just about accept that since Paul Nurse is not a specialist in the climate field that he could take the NASA scientist at face value when the NASA scientist makes a mistake as to the amount of naturally occurring CO2 emmissions which dwarf the manmade proportion. This mistake having been pointed out, both the BBC and the Royal Society should now issue a prominent correction of the true facts.
However, I cannot accept how Paul Nurse simply meekly accepted what Phil Jones said about the ‘hide the decline’ issue. Paul Nurse knows about data sets and would therefore know that when you have two data sets which should be showing the same result/trend and yet they do not, alarm bells ring. He must know that this means that there is a problem with one or even both data sets.
Further, he knows that this is one of the significant issues arising out of Climategate (the ‘Harry Read Me’ file, the pal review system, the control by the Team and Trenberth’s admission that it is a travesty that the missing heat can’t be found probably being more significant issues) and therefore if he was seeking to enquire in to this issue (or to act neutrally), one would have expected him to query Phil Jone’s explanation that it ‘complicated’ matters. The obvous response would have been ‘you mean that it was thought that including this data set would complicate matters since it would graphically show that either (i) the proxy record is wrong and unreliable such that one does not know what the temperatures were prior to the instrument record, or (ii) if the proxy is sound, the modern instrument record post 1960 is wrong suggesting that the earth has not warmed as much as the various data sets (HADCRU, GISS etc) suggest pehaps because they are being upwardly biased by UHI and/or other post record adjustments, or (iii) it is a combination of both of the foregoing.
The failure by Paul Nurse not to see the significance behind the divergence of the proxy record and instrument record, and not to question Phil Jones on this and hold him to account for his reasons behind the divergence and to what extent either record can therefore be safely relied upon is inexcusable for a scientific mind. Personally, I consider this to portray Pual Nurse in a very poor light.
PaulM
“The BBC news this morning is that the BBC has apologised for ridiculing Mexicans in a humorous motoring show called “Top Gear”.
Any chance they will apologise for ridiculing climate sceptics?”
The BBC hate Top Gear, even though they produce it. Top Gear is the antithesis of their world belief systems. In fact, so visceral is their hatred, that they have on more than one occasion, attempted to get the presenters killed. In one episode they were filming in the reddest of redneck territories in the Southern United States, and issued a challenge for each presenter to decorate the others car in such a way as to ‘get them killed.’ After the trio pulled into a gas station with slogans such as ‘man love rules’ and ‘Hillary for president’ emblazoned on their cars, they eventually had to flee for their lives.
Having failed in this attempt, and being stuck with the series by popular demand, they have no compunction about apologising for perceived offenses at every opportunity.
It has been interesting to note how the BBC have played certain news stories recently:
It filled the airwaves with news about the floods and storms in Australia, but hardly a mention about the snow and ice storms in the USA.
Lots of coverage about the lack of rain in the Amazon, not a word on the UN Forestry report.
Not that they are biased towards AGW (sarc mode).
The trouble for the BBC is that the coming cold will not be buried so easily.
AGW is the religion that gives the EU its raison d’être; and the BBC, like all the public (state-controlled) media in Europe, are the muezzins of this religion. Ireland, as broke as it is, continues to build windmills galore. As one moslemic country after the other in North Africa goes down in political instability, the Desertec planners in Hamburg and Munich assure us that Desertec will help to stabilize these countries by providing green jobs (i guess like in Spain).
Assuming the BBC would be neutral with regard to AGW would be like assuming the Pravda in Soviet times to report neutrally about communism. The same goes for Deutsche Welle, of course, and the other state-controlled media.
Interestingly, a search for “Sir Paul Nurse Baghdad Bob” now returns this very thread as its first hit.
Good for Sir Paul, long may his positive impact on science remain.
Here is the URL for those interested in monitoring the great man’s progress in scientific reporting: http://www.google.com/search?q=sir+paul+nurse+baghdad+bob
I wonder if an apology from Sir Paul might sever this soon to be permanent linkage?
Ultimately the weather will make it abundantly clear who was right and the betting at present is firmly on the side of the sceptics.
What infuriated and yet amused me most about Climategate was the tree ring fiasco with Al Gore fearing the game was up and ducking out of his trip to Europe, thus leaving the people (suckers) who had bought tickets for his lecture high and dry.
In the real world the the media would have been camped outside his house in America waiting for the moment to pounce and ask some very awkward questions.
The fact that they showed no interest speaks volumes.
With regard to Michael Mann and his tree rings theory, he should surely have been invited to debate the subject with Steve Macintyre on the BBC……with his no show a certainty it would have left Steve the simple task of a shoe in.
The overall picture when set against the climate of the last three years or so clearly underlines the desperation of the AGW’s and it is simply a matter of time before the game is up.
Expect early retirements as the pre-cursor to the like of Jones, Trenberth, Harrabin et al finally accepting they have screwed up without actually admitting they are wrong.
The writing is already on the wall in America where I understand that President Obama made no reference to the climate in his recent State of the Union Address.
“I hope you don’t mind me contacting you on this email address but I was given it by Louise Gray at the Telegraph.”
This should have had alarm bells ringing. Louise Gray is a well-known and much mocked warmist.
Following Mike Haseler response from the BBC acting commissioner of Knowledge Programmes I’ve just fired off the following email:
Dear Emma,
I’m writing to you to express my disappointment with the recent programmes, Horizon (anchored by Paul Nurse) and Meet the Sceptics.
I was hoping the BBC was going to drop its ingrained support for an unproven scientific hypothesis i.e. manmade Global Warming/Climate Change/Dangerous Climate Change/Climate Disruption etc and attempt to use its legendary powers of journalistic vigour and investigation to explain to the public the uncertainties and scepticism that’s rife in the scientific community about this issue. I watched the shows with friends who are both ‘believers’ & ‘sceptics’ and surprisingly the ‘believers’ commented that both shows, in different ways, were hardly concealed propaganda pieces in support of the so called consensus on manmade global warming. In fact an investigative journalist would have very little trouble undermining the consensus claim that is used all the time to state the ‘science is settled’. Science is very rarely ‘settled’ and doesn’t understand ‘consensus’ (if Galileo, Einstein and Newton were alive today they’d confirm their own struggle against the ‘consensus’ of their day)
We found it difficult to understand why the BBC had not sought out and conducted lengthy interviews with some of the very many reputable scientists who are sceptical about the impact of CO2 and mankind on the global climate. Why did the BBC seek to talk to journalists like Delingpole rather than sceptical scientists? One was left with the impression that across both shows the BBC was using the ‘speaking from authority’ tactic to support the manmade Global Warming position and aligning sceptics with ‘oddballs’ in order to undermine them.
It’s not difficult to look back over the last twenty years or so and see many examples where Governments, the media, NGO’s and academic experts have spread doom and gloom about some ‘disaster’ or another (AIDS, Millenium Bug, SAR’s, Bird Flu, WMD etc) only for that ‘disaster’ to be no more than a small problem or to go away altogether, or in the case of WMD be one of the key reasons (false though it was) to go to War. It’s intriguing that some of the supporters of Global Warming were some years back supporters of Global Cooling. And didn’t it strike anyone at the BBC making these programmes that if the Met Office was so wrong so often in its short range forecasts then why using the same computers and methodologies should we have any faith that their forecasts for what the climate might be doing in fifty to hundred years time was nothing more than an educated guess?
What the BBC should have done if it was genuinely serious about wanting ‘sceptics’ to have a platform was to commission one of the leading sceptical climatologists to explain the reasons for their position.
As a long standing supporter of the BBC I’m becoming increasingly aware of many people who are concerned about its impartiality and apparent siding with various causes of a political nature. Once the BBC loses its impartiality then its reason for existing in its current guise, or at all is undermined.
Yours sincerely
There have been a number of posts on the payment of a UK TV Licence fee.
My understanding of the law (which is not guaranteed to be correct and is put forward without guarantee) is this:
1. You do not need a TV Licence simply because you own a TV set.
2. A TV Licence is required if you use a receiver (TV, computer & monitor, telephone, video, hard-disk recorder) to watch (or record) material which at the time you are watching (or recording) the programme is being broadcast on a live basis.
3. You do not need a TV licence to watch catch up TV provided that at the time you are watching, the programme is not being simultaneously broadcast on live basis.
4. Following from 3, you can watch programmes on for example i-player (other than the news channel) without the need for a licence (unless you are unlucky and the programme that you are watching on catch up TV happens just by chance to being repeated over the ether by way of live broadcast).
5. Simultaneous live broadcast is given some leniency. For example, if you receive a programme by cable (or satellite), it is often being received some 2 to 6 seconds after its broadcast over the ether. The fact that you are watching something some seconds after it was broadcast would not be rgarded as catch up TV and would be considered as if you were watching a live broadcast.
6. It may be the case that a TV licence is not required to watch TV programmes which are being broadcast on live basis but where the broadcast does not eminate from the UK. I have not checked, but it may be that no TV licence is required to watch foreign satellite channels (although you may need a viewing card for those channels).
&. You need a TV licence if you watch any programme that is being broadcast (from the UK) on live basis. Accordingly, even if you were to disable the TV from receiving BBC channels, a TV licence would still be required.
7. It follows from 6 (in the absence of some relevant Human Rights legislation – and I am not aware of any) that it would be no defence to a breach of the law requiring a licence to argue that the BBC is biased and that is why you have not bought a licence.
9. It follows from 2, that a licence is not required to watch DVds or if using the TV as a monitor perhaps for gaming or the computer (provided always that in the case of the latter, you are not using the computer to watch live broadcast TV).
10. The state bears the burden of proof that you are using your TV to watch programmes that are being broadcast on live basis thereby requiring you to be in possession of a vaild licence.
11. It is best that the TV (hard disk.video recorder) is not coupled to an aerial if and when the licencing authority inspect the TV/appliance.
Given the growth in catch up TV, it is possible to watch a lot of TV without having to buy a licence.
For the sake of good order, I should observe that anyone who views TV should satisfy themselves that they are doing so legally.
In the last analysis, the BBC has let themselves down and finally burned their bridges with a previous generation of much more principled program makers and presenters.
Its like watching the flickering embers of a dying fire and remembering the light and heat that once emanated from it.
RIP BBC 1922-2011
SteveE says:
February 4, 2011 at 1:31 am
Smokey says:
February 3, 2011 at 6:41 pm
Jack Greer,
If you’ve read my posts as you say, then you know that I’ve repeatedly asked the same question of numerous believers in CAGW. Interestingly, not one has ever answered it.
As your post shows, the typical response is to divert the question onto another subject. I just want a simple, straightforward answer: can you show global harm due to CO2?
—————————-
I think the answer is not yet, but that like saying can you show any long term harm from having one cigarette?
No you probably can’t, however if you keep on having one cigarette a day for the next 20 years there’s lots of evidence that’ll show you the harm it’s caused.
Prevention is better than cure, and usually cheaper too.
SteveE, apart from not considering that the alleged cure to the alleged disease of CO2=CAGW is almost certainly much worse than the alleged disease, what you have just done is a form of what in logic is called, “begging the question”, in other words, simply presuming to be the case, or already proven, that which is instead the very question to be proven.
You have presumed to be the case, or already proven, all of the questions involved in the CO2=CAGW propositions, by presuming they’re “just like” what happens in the case of tobacco damage. Other warmists have presumed the CO2=CAGW hypotheses are confirmed because they’re “just like gravity”, and have likewise incorrectly used the presumption that CO2=CAGW scepticism is “the same as” the attempt of the tobacco industry to deny or cover up the damage done by tobacco, as proof of CO2=CAGW, when all they are really doing is getting nowhere by “begging the question”.
But the fact is that ipcc Climate Science has not proven that CO2 is causing GW or that GW is a net disease. It’s really quite pitiful, because all the ipcc Climate Science has done is to intentionally demonize fossil fuel CO2 and disasterize GW via a massive Propaganda Operation, which anyone could “prove” the opposite of if given the same funding.
Worse, ipcc Climate Science has led to an alleged cure of its alleged disease which would obviously lead to a bona fide disaster, nearly the same one the underdeveloped countries, India and China, are trying to escape from by massively increasing their use of fossil fuel!
Smokey says:
February 3, 2011 at 6:51 pm
Jack Greer,
I’ve read the UN/IPCC report. Answer my question.
But answer came there none………………………..
I know hindsight is great, but would it not have been satisfying if Delingpole had answered Nurse’s question on cancer specialists thus:
Sir Paul, as a cancer specialist yourself, you will be aware of the many wonderful achievements in your branch of medicine over the past 50 years or so. Just what is it that you believe Climate Science has achieved that entitles their views to the same deference or respect we would accord, for instance, your views on the development of a carcinoma? What predictions have they made, what insights have they revealed, what discoveries have they made?
Of course, had Dellers been so quick witted (as he probably was during the rest of the interview), it probably would have ended up on the cuttingroom floor like the rest of
the 3 hour interview
Would he then be living on borrowed time???
😉
A blast from the BBC past:
Confessions of a BBC liberal
Excerpt:
Yesterday morning Madonna King (612 ABC Brisbane) received a call from some eminent warmist. He said she was being irresponsible in letting ignorant people with no knowledge of climate science express themselves on air. Madonna replied that it was her task to be impartial and let everyone have their say.
Almost all the calls thereafter savaged the Green view that all climate events (floods, droughts, cyclones and blizzards were due to man made Co2.
At last an impartial talk show host at the ABC!
Great link, Brian. The co-author of ‘Yes, Minister’ knows a thing or two about how the world works.
It is not the views of the smug liberal ‘intelligentsia’ that I object to – in fact I share a few of them. It is the overweening certainty that anyone who disagrees has a deficit of intelligence, education, integrity, or all three. Like Jay, I got out of that closed circle in my youth and went out into the world. My friends who stayed there are often snap frozen in undergraduate infallibility, convinced that it is their duty to convert or crush, by fair means or foul, anyone with the temerity to have a different perspective.
My own view is simple. Stop trying to get the BBC to be fair on anything the Marxists within it have declared to be PC and start attacking — and informing the public — about what the BBC are doing and why. Pull down this perverted edifice and the problem goes away. Why spend year after year moaning about what they do when what they do never changes. The BBC is a dinosaur. The public pay them to brainwash them with left wing propaganda. So, start telling the public to stop paying them and explain why.
“Oh no. Can’t do that. It would be encouraging people to break the law!” I hear the wets bleating.
Well, possibly not actually. Some time ago I got talking to a bunch of people in a pub basement near the City that frankly I thought were a group of nutters. One of them explained his theory that not paying a licence was NOT illegal at all. I was sufficiently intrigued by his remarks to do some research of my own about his theory. Now, I am not a lawyer so I may have got this backwards. On the other hand, maybe not. Smarter heads than mine need to get to work on it. However, here is what I discovered:
It is against the law (Commercial law) to force another person into paying for a service that they have not contracted for. For a contract to be valid, both parties must agree to its content. (This may apply to statutory laws also but that is a whole different area). For this reason, I cannot be forced into a contract I do not like. Neither can you. The act of buying a TV does NOT lock you into a contract with anyone. Any more than buying a car forces you you to pass a driving test. You can legally purchase a TV without signing a contract or verbally agreeing to a contract. You can even watch it, if you wish. Unless the BBC — or the firm that does their dirty work for them and bangs on your door demanding to see a licence — physically provides you with a contract to sign in order to recieve their service and you agree to the terms outlined in that contract, you cannot be held liable for breaching the terms of it. They tell you that you can be held liable but that is a lie.
Now, if that is correct (any Barristers present?) then not only is it true that you cannot be held accountable for not signing a contract you never had, but also, the BBC owe everybody who has bought a contract (licence) under duress, their money back.
Food for thought anyway.
Right or wrong, the point remains the same. As long as the BBC remains it will go on pumping out leftist propaganda and virtually every program they make these days has within it, some nugget of that propaganda. So, pull down the beast and the beast will go silent and the people will be free once more to think for themselves. As Top Gear recently showed over their slagging off of the Mexicans, they do not fear complaints. So they say and do what ever they like, knock out a quick apology when the public complain ad do it all again next time. In other words, ladies and gents, they are out of control and could not give a stuff what the public thinks.
Welcome to the British Brainwashing Corporation. Screwing your head with your money. Cultural Marxism Frankfurt School style.
Doh!
Regarding George’ post at February 4, 2011 at 8:06 pm, I would refer people to my (richard verney) post at February 4, 2011 at 10:03 am 9 (I note that the paragraph numbering went astray after 6. What I had intended to be paragraph 7 in fact starts with ‘&’ and the paragraph numbered 7 was intended to be numbered 8 etc.). In summary, “If you watch or record television programmes as they’re being shown on TV you must, by law, be covered by a TV Licence, no matter what device you’re using.” see http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk. The trigger for the need for a valid licence is the simultaneous live transmission of the programme being watched (or recorded).
This is not a matter of contract law. It is a matter of statutory law. The UK government has decided that a UK TV licence must be bought by anyone who watches (or records) live broadcast material. It is essentially a tax paid to the government, not money paid to the BBC. The government then funds the BBC and it permits the BBC to take steps to enforce the law, ie., that someone who watches (or records) live broadcast material must have a valid TV licence (covering the property in which the appliance is being used).
This is rather like the law that anyone who drives a car or parks or otherwise uses a car on a public road must have a valid tax disk for the car.
George, you are right that buying a TV or hard disk recorder (or the like) does not in itself oblige you to purchase a TV licence. However, if you want to use the device to watch (or record) TV programmes which are being broadcast over the ether at the same (well broadly the same) time as you are watching (or making a recording), then a TV licence is required.
Nowadays, many modern TV’s have internet connection. This can be used to watch catch up TV such as BBC (i-player), ITV (ITV player), Channel 4 (4OD), Channel 5 (Demand 5). I have not researched this but it may be that one could use BT Vision and Virgin Media solely watch their catch up TV (ie., programmes that have already been broadcast and are not at the time you are watching (or recording) being transmitted/broadcasted) without the need for a TV licence.
The upshot is that there is plenty of material to watch and if you use these services one is being more selective as to what one is watching.
I agree that the BBC has for decades been unacceptably biased and I myself object to funding such a biased institution. I consider that it requires radical reform possibly requiring it to justify itself in the commercial market place.
George, I agree with you, but what to do?? The BBC got what they wanted. See a post from Richard Dawkins’ blog:
“Comment 6 by Nardia. Seven times more carbon emissions per year from human activity than from natural sources (NASA). You’d think that fact alone would be enough to convince everyone that we have a serious problem. Permalink Wednesday, 26 January 2011 at 7:14 PM | #584503 ”
This is EXACTLY what they intended – to advance BBC pension fund investments in windmills and to curry favour with the government in support of “green taxes” (not to mention propping up the fraudsters at the University of East Anglia and the Royal Society).
In my opinion, the only way to redress the balance is to get them on a technicality, and then kick the $hit out of them. It worked with Himalayan glaciers! Valid complaints, that are reasonable, articulate and inoffensive, will bring the whole pack of cards crashing down.