Climategate 2.0 email 4894.txt shows just what Alex Kirby of BBC thinks of climate skeptics as he conveys it to Dr. Phil Jones. Clearly, there an incestuous relationship between climate science and the BBC.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
date: Wed Dec 8 08:25:30 2004
from: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.xx.xx>
subject: RE: something on new online.
to: “Alex Kirby” <alex.kirby@bbc.xxx.xx>
At 17:27 07/12/2004, you wrote:
Yes, glad you stopped this — I was sent it too, and decided to
spike it without more ado as pure stream-of-consciousness rubbish. I can
well understand your unhappiness at our running the other piece. But we
are constantly being savaged by the loonies for not giving them any
coverage at all, especially as you say with the COP in the offing, and
being the objective impartial (ho ho) BBC that we are, there is an
expectation in some quarters that we will every now and then let them
say something. I hope though that the weight of our coverage makes it
clear that we think they are talking through their hats.
—–Original Message—–
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
h/t to WUWT reader “varco”. If I lived in the UK, I’d stop paying my BBC TV and radio license.
Here’s the Wikipedia bio on Kirby:
Alex Kirby is a British journalist, specializing in environmental issues. He worked in various capacities at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for nearly 20 years. From 1987 to 1996, he was the environmental correspondent for BBC News, in radio and television. He left the BBC in 1998 to work as a freelance journalist. He also provides media skills training to companies, universities and NGOs. He is also currently the environmental correspondent for BBC News Online, and hosted BBC Radio 4‘s environment series, Costing the Earth. He has no formal scientific training.
He writes a regular column for BBC Wildlife magazine.
When I first saw this posted on another site, I assumed that the “ho ho” had been added in by the poster, indicating their scepticism about the BBC. Now I’ve seen it here, and checked the file myself, I’m appalled, and ever more annoyed at the spin doctorism and blatant bias that I am forced to pay for through my license fee.
`ho ho`
As in wink wink nudge nudge. These people have no shame.
Email is from 2004 before Harrabin and Black. Now it’s worse.
Biased BBC, a UK pressure blog, will have real fun with this little nugget.
A bunch of other links to Kirby, clearly considered to be a “sound chap” by the Team
2011 Email #2403 (1)
Regarding ECF and a media person. You could try Alex Kirby if Roger Harrabin is not free. Joe Smith will have other contacts. The other possibility is for a European link, possibly via a German magazine. Finally, if we try, we could penetrate The Economist as I have contacts there.
2011 Email #3935 (1)
1. Media involvement. I would suggest Roger Harrabin might be a better (alternate?) invitee to Alex Kirby. Simon Torok has recently had contact with him about media coverage of Jo’berg and he is also on the Advisory Board of Tyndall.
2011 Email #4028 (1)
>> > > phone
>> > > > chat with Alex Kirby, BBC, some time before the conference, where we
>> may
2011 Email #4655 (1)
For more mainstream people, I agree that Alex Kirby would make a good job
and is probably first choice. He would certainly come cheaper than Humphreys
I think everyone is taking this email out of context. As you can see it was sent in the month of December and Alex was doing his best Santa impersonation ready for the Christmas party whilst confirming that the BBC is an unbiased institution.
Kirby was soft compared to Richard Black, who is simply wall to wall hysterical AGW climate catastrophe.
also
2011 Email #0794 (1)
If you do it’s worth sending also to this guy, Alex Kirkby.
“Alex Kirby”
This guys higher up. He got them to check more the items they post
2011 Email #1485 (1)
I didn’t pursue with the BBC writing a follow up piece as it was so bad.
If you want to contact someone the Alex Kirby is the person to contact.
He is “Alex Kirby” . He is good. You might have
spoken to him when the GRL paper came out in 2003.
What are Alex Kirby’s qualifications? (if in anything)
“If I lived in the UK, I’d stop paying my BBC TV and radio license.”
Anyone who is caught watching a tv without a licence in the UK faces the death penalty.
REPLY: No, they don’t. That’s ridiculous. Just a fine. – Anthony
“No Pressure”
Alex Kirby has a PHD in excel trend plotting, a BSc in BS and he majors in Father Christmas impersonations (Ho Ho)
A bit confused here….the email is dated 2004, but the Wiki shows Kirby leaving the BBC in 1998, 6 years prior. Then he becomes a correspondent of the BBC, which is not a management or editorial position.
While I’d like to believe that Kirby can be held responsible for what is, or isn’t published in 2004, that’s not consistent with the record of his employment shown here. I’d appreciate some clarification, because on the face of it we’re opening ourselves up to the same critical review that we’re exercising. He’s not in the management echelon, so there are higher powers.
We’re all well aware of the media bias and the repression of stories that counter the AGW position. We’re also tired of seeing again and again anyone who agrees with the AGW hypothesis is a “climatologist”, and anyone who doesn’t is a “denier” or “skeptic” which shows a clear bias by the media.
Kirby’s stated mission:
I think this video is well worth watching, so you can hear for yourself….his bias.
Have a look Richard Blacks twitter page and its clear he has become Prof Jones official spokesperson/PR/ media spinner/ whitewash agent
RB is pure slime. At least have the integrity to stand up and declare your contempt for even attempting any kind of unbiased professional journalism
> REPLY: No, they don’t. That’s ridiculous. Just a fine. – Anthony
It is a criminal offense and, in the past, people could be jailed for not having a license. I don’t think that’s the case any more however.
I remember well being tuned to BBC World just after the start of Copenhagen, (I was a phone-in on a previous show) and was naively hanging around after my 1 minute of fame, anyhow the program presenter, clearly an AGW devotee, was ramping up the warming mantra, but nearly choked when he crossed to a reporter North of Copenhagen who informed us that “it is bitterly cold and snowing heavily”. It was the shortest crossing in BBC history.
DJ says:
November 24, 2011 at 11:17 am
“A bit confused here….the email is dated 2004, but the Wiki shows Kirby leaving the BBC in 1998, 6 years prior. Then he becomes a correspondent of the BBC, which is not a management or editorial position.”
Wikipedia does not consider itself a reliable source.
I want to add this little tidbit from today’s Guardian.
“There shouldn’t be someone else at UEA with different views [from “recent extreme weather is due to global warming”] – at least not a climatologist.”
• Phil Jones, UEA, to Melissa Murphy, UEA, 23 Aug 2004 (email 1788)
“The TV programme Tonight with Trevor Macdonald is going to feature a colleague of Jones, David Viner, arguing that (then) recent extreme weather was a result of global warming. Jones is responding to a request via the press office for another member of the Climatic Research Unit to appear making the opposite argument. Jones is arguing it would “look odd” if two people with opposite views were from the same department and suggests the TV production team “could easily dredge someone up” from elsewhere.”
Notice that Ms. Jowit, a Guardian journalist, fails to comment on Jones’ statement and simply repeats Jones’ outrageously prejudicial assumption that UEA has no debate over this matter.
Unimaginable! You set out to cherry pick a dozen or so quotations that you can “explain” and all you can do is repeat the offensive prejudice recommended by Jones? I expect that Ms. Jowit will soon hit the street. It could not be that the Guardian editors are this blind – could it?
Quite often the police will turn up with the license inspector, for added intimidation.
When it comes to Phil Jones and the BBC Confirmation of their Bias is indeed a good thing as it shows their confirmation bias.
Vince Causey says:
November 24, 2011 at 11:10 am
“If I lived in the UK, I’d stop paying my BBC TV and radio license.”
Anyone who is caught watching a tv without a licence in the UK faces the death penalty.
REPLY: No, they don’t. That’s ridiculous. Just a fine. – Anthony
Whether it’s a fine or a prison sentence you;d be left with a criminal record. They do take it quite serious not paying for Auntie. As for the death penalty, that’s now reserved for sceptics who dare to say the Emporer has no clothes.
Sorry, the Brit “gubmint” collects TV license fee by law and funds the BBC. Sorta like the CBC here in Canada – funded by the taxpayers. Naturally the CBC and the BBC are so far left and so pro climate change you’d need nukes to remove their heads from their AGW/leftists rear ends. Ordinary explosives wouldn’t even tickle that lot. Yesterday while you all were playing Climategate 2.0 the CBC featured their headline – Arctic sea ice loss unprecedented in 1,450 years.
To this point in time neither the CBC not Canada’s supposed “national” newspaper the Globe and Mail never mentioned more leaked climate files. Nor on television. Climategate may well be a story here on this site BUT for entire nations no one even knows. In other words – this is a non story all over North America if not the known world itself. And most likely a non story on a few recently discovered planets.
In the UK, the main thing to come from the recent releases may well turn out to be the realisation by Joe Public that the Beeb is not to be trusted.
Vince Causey says “Anyone who is caught watching a tv without a licence in the UK faces the death penalty.”
As Anthony says, “no they don’t”.
But the fine can be hefty and you can own a TV without watching it for broadcast programs, i.e. just for DVDs, and be harassed by officials who won’t go away and use threatening language.
These people aren’t scientists or science correspondents, they are PR hacks.
So Kirby is nothing more than a ho ho for the climate science pimp pimps. I see see.
Anthony, stop and enjoy Thanksgiving my friend!!! You do and have done enough!
>> REPLY: No, they don’t. That’s ridiculous. Just a fine. – Anthony <<
If you refuse to pay the BBC, why would you pay the fine? Eventually the guys with guns will show up at your doorstep.
strawbale says: “Quite often the police will turn up with the license inspector, for added intimidation.”
And he’s the one who gets to say: “Lassen Sie mich Ihre Papiere sehen!”
The joke is that if you stop paying, their privatised “inspectors” have no authority to search your home. If you refuse entry they can’t force their way in and have to find a magistrate and apply for a warrant – by which time the TV has been unplugged, packed into a box and stored in the loft. Their detectors can’t detect a flat screen and as long as you’ve not got a visible aerial …
It’s my understanding that a lot of people are starting to refuse to pay. The BBC is so biased to the Left it might as well be renamed as the Labour Party Mouthpiece. They are the single biggest subscriber to the other Left wing mouthpiece, The Guardian, and most of its “news” is just regurgitated from that.
Makes me glad I can no longer watch it at all – I’m outside their broadcast area.
Well it seems the BBC can’t influence you americans lol
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8889541/BBC-drops-Frozen-Planets-climate-change-episode-to-sell-show-better-abroad.html
The BBC has dropped a climate change episode from its wildlife series Frozen Planet to help the show sell better abroad.
British viewers will see seven episodes, the last of which deals with global warming and the threat to the natural world posed by man.
However, viewers in other countries, including the United States, will only see six episodes.
The environmental programme has been relegated by the BBC to an “optional extra” alongside a behind-the-scenes documentary which foreign networks can ignore.
Campaigners said the decision not to incorporate the episode on global warming as part of the main package was “unhelpful”.
They added that it would allow those countries which are sceptical of climate change to “censor” the issue.
Tom R,
The one thing they won’t show up with is guns.
But it is interesting – or what we expected, in fact – that I have seen nothing in the press nor heard or seen on the airwaves about the new e-mail release.
Missing meat found?
“AP, they found your missing caribou”
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/46673
BBC? Nada.
More BBC bias.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2063737/BBCs-Mr-Climate-Change-accepted-15-000-grants-university-rocked-global-warning-scandal.html
” … being the objective impartial (ho ho) BBC that we are … ”
And, we all know what a “ho” is, right?
Ah… “Costing the Earth” – I think they did a whole program base[d] on “80 litres of diesel in the tank of a 4*4 has enough energy to run an entire average British household for a year” gag …
When confronted by remonstrating listeners the producer at the time I think it was – blathered on about an order of magnitude difference being a “minor thing” and that the show was “jolly well done and entertaining” and that the mistake didn’t affect the point the “show” was attempting to make….
You couldn’t make it up, or in the case of Al Jabibi – See you can and do pretty much all the time and it’s exceeding tiresome.
BTW, the planet is warming, period. Fact – all of us Canadians wouldn’t have a Canada to call home if it wasn’t. Moreover, this isn’t my nation’s first rodeo with warming – I live in Alberta which was once covered by a vast inland sea all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. The results of that period is reflected in the oil sands here in Fort McMurray, Alberta. One is the resulting oil sands. Two – we often dig up intact remains of marine species from that particular period and can be seen in the Drumheller Museum in Southern Alberta.
Here I have given two examples of historical climate change – all without man’s intervention in any way. IN the current hysteria we’ve become lost in all the modern day studies intent on blaming mankind – somehow we’ve lost track of the historical facts as I mentioned. Historically, there IS something out there that switches the earth to ice and then back to warm. WHY? WHAT? And it sure as hell wasn’t mankind. Or Jones, or Mann. Why aren’t we even looking? Seriously?
py says:
November 24, 2011 at 11:05 am
I think everyone is taking this email out of context. As you can see it was sent in the month of December and Alex was doing his best Santa impersonation ready for the Christmas party whilst confirming that the BBC is an unbiased institution.
========================================
The positioning of the “ho ho” in the body of the text puts it perfectly into context.
I think the death penalty thing may have been a joke, possibly lost in trans-atlantic-lation….
I have to agree with another commenter. Nobody knows or cares about C2.0. Its not even been mentioned on most news channels. It has been smoothly raked over.
FOIA failed. So either he/she releases the password and we all hope that the rest of the emails contain real dynamite, or we buy generators for when the power fails and sit back and watch the gree movement take over the world.
“I hope though that the weight of our coverage makes it
clear that we think they are talking through their hats”
As opposed to the AGW brigade who talk through their a****.
Just had a thought after my last posting:
a**** can be either American with two s’s or British with rs!
Like I say, just a thought and totally irrelevant to this important debate.
If you don’t live in Britain, it is very hard to contexturalise just how much sway the beeb has over most British folk’s consciousness.
Without doubt, the beeb has been responsible for the insinuation of values and thinking antithetical to our British tradition. In doing so, the BBC has brought about a relentless and pernicious change in British society’s mores.
In Britain, the political elite and chatterati were and are decidedly left leaning and ineffably biased towards big government and the consequent micro-management of all facets of people’s lives. Constantly tinkering and not enabling the people [by dumbing down and infantilisation of education], because: the ‘proletariat’ cannot be trusted to chose and be masters of their own destiny.
There is little choice in the matter, from cradle to grave: the government ‘looks after you’ whether you like it or not.
Since 1973, when Britain joined the ‘common market’ now better known as the European Union, this vast social engineering project has gone on apace. To most, it is known as Cultural Marxism, the Beeb’s output is overtly politicised, from comedy through to documentaries and news programmes and the Cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt school ideologies pervades it’s corridors, offices, executives and studios.
In Britain, the beeb means everything pro EU ideals, which are; rigid equality and multiculturalism and an absolutist Political correctness, centralised federal and non-democratic control, permanent re-alignment of the Northern European demographic identity and much else besides.
Green issues and their Utopian [and impossible] ideals are the organic ‘meat and drink’ of the BBC. Small wonder then that the BBC fell for the great AGW scam – it meant terrestrial Nirvana and they fell into it with a fundamentalist glee.
Anyone who does not conform to the beeb perceived norm, is a loony – ho ho.
And if the BBC exhibited a bias towards one’s prejudices, would you notice? Or would you congratulate them on their fair and unbiased approach to the news?
I am quite happy to watch the BBC News and allow for bias, I haven’t discovered a lack of bias in any other news sources – so better the devil …
Vince Causey says:
November 24, 2011 at 11:10 am
“If I lived in the UK, I’d stop paying my BBC TV and radio license.”
Anyone who is caught watching a tv without a licence in the UK faces the death penalty.
REPLY: No, they don’t. That’s ridiculous. Just a fine. – Anthony
CORRECTION:- Sorry Anthony but they face a large fine and possible imprisonment
jason says:
November 24, 2011 at 12:50 pm
“FOIA failed. So either he/she releases the password and we all hope that the rest of the emails contain real dynamite, or we buy generators for when the power fails and sit back and watch the gree movement take over the world.”
China and Russia are part of the world.
Fred Streeter says:
November 24, 2011 at 1:01 pm
“I am quite happy to watch the BBC News and allow for bias, I haven’t discovered a lack of bias in any other news sources – so better the devil …”
I read the BBC news to see what the warmists are up to.
Sorry Anthony but you do not appreciate the seriousness of failing to pay the BBC licence fee in the UK. The Courts take a very dim view of this, otherwise the majority would do it. There is no defence that the courts seem to accept. All the political parties are in hock to the BBC and scared stiff of the consequences. It’s called freedom of the press except that the punters have no choice but to pay. if you are subject to a fine this results in a criminal record and results in all sorts of fearsome things such as a ban on looking after the young / old, increased insurance premiums etc,etc. So when Vince Causey says the penalty is the death sentence he is not being literal but speaking of the death of freedom.
Who are the loonies now Alex?
No surprise. Just watching their daily AGW doomsday ‘news’ coverage in the pre-Climategate era told anyone all they needed to know. So did the fact that they said NOTHING about the Climategate event until much later, when they were presumably forced to by the real world response – and then they just spun that story.
I saw the relative silence on Climategate as a proxy for the AGW bias in media organizations, and the BBC was among the top prize winners for that.
P.S. Just last night the BBC chose to feature some late-opening ski areas in Austria as an AGW poster child – complete with a mention of more frequent fires – although now they just imply the message rather than openly stating it. That is how they do things now. Subliminal. Like finding an example of some kind of ‘extreme’ weather to feature daily, even if it is a flooded street in some obscure town nobody would have ever heard of before video cameras were everywhere and the BBC was looking so diligently for them. And, now, no surprise, the IPCC wants to talk about extreme weather to the suitably softened up public.
In the meantime, somehow they forgot to report all the early ski hill openings in the Western US, or anything else that doesn’t fit their propaganda.
py says:
November 24, 2011 at 11:05 am
” I think everyone is taking this email out of context. As you can see it was sent in the month of December and Alex was doing his best Santa impersonation ready for the Christmas party whilst confirming that the BBC is an unbiased institution.”
Nope, that can’t be it, not with just “ho, ho,” – sure everyone knows that when it comes to Christmas: Jesus has Three Wise Men … and – Santa has three “ho’s”….
…e.g. “Ho! Ho! Ho! little man(n) have I got a surprise for you.
(This comment is certified double entendre free. Any similarity to double entendre’s living or deceased is entirely coincidental )
DirkH says:
November 24, 2011 at 1:19 pm
“I read the BBC news to see what the warmists are up to.”
Me too. Richard Black is almost a one-stop propaganda review, with his regurgitation of the latest spin. Same for the BBC televised news. Not nearly as blatant (and thus entertaining) as it was pre-Climategate, but still constant and more subtle. I do miss the daily doomsday reports from David Shukman. He was hilarious. Even the way he said “glaciers” (almost every day) made me laugh.
He was like the Monty Python version of an AGW reporter – but he obviously didn’t realize that.
Geo says:
November 24, 2011 at 12:27 pm
More BBC bias.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2063737/BBCs-Mr-Climate-Change-accepted-15-000-grants-university-rocked-global-warning-scandal.html
As always the comments are as interesting as the article.
My wife watches the BBC and listens to its radio broadcasts. Despite my efforts at avoidance I therefore find myself occasionally exposed to it.
Its policies on CAGW are the least of it.
I hope you don’t think me unkind in saying so, but if the BBC were to be wiped off the face of the Earth and all those in any way connected with it were to die most horribly in the ensuing holocaust, I might stretch to feeling mildly satisfied with the outcome.
Indeed, I doubt that I’d be much happier if I had hand in it myself. Frankly, I’m at a loss to think of any form of retribution that would quench my hate for this traitorous organism and those who run it.
The BBC is a cancer on Britons. The sooner it is excised the better.
The BBC has five billion in retirement funds invested in carbon trading. Five BILLION. There is no way on Earth it’s going to report anything that might endanger its investment. If global warming panic fades away, so does the value of its stocks. Bye bye, BBC retirement accounts….
I suspect many of the leading MSM outlets pushing the global warming meme in the United States are similarly invested. NBC and MSNBC are obviously up to necks in it, but someone should check out the NYT, ABC, and PBS.
Now that we know the World Bank is involved in promoting the scare stories, standing to make a fortune on carbon schemes, as are countless “non-profit” organizations like the WWF, perhaps skeptics should be focusing on the money side of the equation. Trillions of potential dollars are riding on this hysteria, but there is nothing to be had if no crisis exists. Moreover, those trillions of potential dollars do not represent profits from producing selling an actual product, but from selling carbon credits the sellers have no right to in the first place.
Skeptics are accused of taking money from Big Oil, but Big Oil is also heavily invested in carbon schemes, and stands to make far more money from carbon trading than from producing fuels. Take away the profit motive, and most of those screaming about climate change would instantly shut up.
It’s actually worse than that – they are forced to watch BBC 24/7 for a week – cruel and inhuman punishment if I ever saw it. 😉
Jason,
“I think the death penalty thing may have been a joke, possibly lost in trans-atlantic-lation….”
Hoorah, someone got the joke. Maybe I should have put a smiley at the end 🙂
As for the BBC, I’ve stopped watching their news (as well as Sky news). If you want a different perspective try Russia Today, which is in English language. I just finished watching the Keiser report where he highlighted a new government initiative in the UK to try and boost house prices. He slams David Cameron for gifting taxpayers money to the construction industry – whom he describes as corrupt and crooked – with so called subsidies to develop what would otherwise be uneconomic, whilst using still more taxpayer money to underwrites the mortgage loans. Ie, get the banks to lend, but bail them out (again) if the loans go bad.
An unbelievably condescending attitude from BBC, but not unexpected as anyone will attest, judging by their uncritical espousing of all things pro-AGW.
BBC have to fulfil their charter with output which is fair and balanced. However, in order to be fair you have at least got to listen to possibly controversial views before making an editorial decision on whether to broadcast. In the case of AGW no such fairness is possible if you automatically, actively, and insultingly, shut out any input which might question the AGW orthodox view.
This was not fairness, but comes perilously close to censorship.
I’ve known it for years about the BBC. I call them the British Bullshit Cult.
How tragic that the once great BBC has now become the pressure group along with WWF, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace et al.in their totally biased support of the AGW cause, even though those scientists and organisations who support ‘The Cause’ have been exposed so many times for their crooked activity through falsifying the results of their research and their complete exposure through the email revelations. And how on earth does Roger Harrabin expect us to believe him when he says he gives fair and balanced reporting on the whole AGW debate, when he is given £15,000 by the University of East Anglia for his ‘work’ on the subject. He is either naeive or believes his listeners are naieve if he thinks that the University would give him such money if he wasn’t going to fully support their cause by reporting favourably on their lies and crooked research, which of caurse he always does. He is not likely to bite the hand that feeds him is he? Was the money paid to him personally and paid into his private bank account.I wonder? And is this the only ‘Fee’ he or any other science reporter or producer in the BBC, has ever received from UEA or any other AGW organisation? I doubt it. Does anyone have the means of finding out? Is this a FOI exercise? Perhaps some sceptic within the BBC might care to do a bit of quiet investigation from the inside and send their findings to Mr. Watts, anonomously of course! Roger Harrabin should be sacked for accepting the money which to most rational minds must be seen as nothing more than a bribe.
Ho ho the new BBC catch phrase.
About time you Poms took a leaf from my fellow Antipodeans’ Convict ideas and stopped paying licence fees. We did it in the 1960’s and our Australian Broadcasting Commision survives quite well on 11cents a day per tax payer and from a very much smaller taxed population than the UK. Mind you we still have the same left wing biased numpties as the BBC does, but mostly the entire country just ignores them.
A couple of blogs here have picked up the climategate 2.0 story but apart from that nothing else has hit the news, yet..
Vince Causey says:
November 24, 2011 at 2:17 pm
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I try to avoid the BBC as much as possible since their bias infuriates me. Andrew Neal and Jwewmy Paxman can at times be good, but generally the quality of reporting is poor and investigative journalism sparse.
I too find myself often watching Russia Today. It is interesting to see a different perspective on events that should be reported and/or on the reporting of those events. Some of the current affairs programs are interesting and I would in particular recommend watching cross talk.
“If you don’t live in Britain, it is very hard to contextualise just how much sway the beeb has over most British folk’s consciousness. …” [Athelstan, November 24, 2011 at 1:01 pm]
Top comment, Athelstan. Unfortunately I hadn’t read it before I posted mine otherwise I would have acknowledged it as such. (BTW, I screwed up my sign in and posted under ‘johnwdarcher’).
“And if the BBC exhibited a bias towards one’s prejudices, would you notice? Or would you congratulate them on their fair and unbiased approach to the news?
I am quite happy to watch the BBC News and allow for bias, I haven’t discovered a lack of bias in any other news sources – so better the devil …” [Fred Streeter, November 24, 2011 at 1:01 pm]
Bully for you, Fred. Laudably open-minded of you.
Just one small matter – when I can I expect your cheque by way of reimbursement for your share of the money Al Beeb is extorting from me?
In case you are unaware, in Britain if one owns a televsion set and receives any broadcast television programmes from whatever source, one is required to pay Al Beeb their so-called Licence Fee, currently running at about £145 per annum, even if one never exposes oneself to their propaganda. Are you “quite happy” about that too?
The “ho ho” is out of context: it is in reference to the some of the friendly street goers they expect to pay for, er… dialogue with at the COP
The BBC is biased on everything. Meanwhile…
“Since I had a bit of a fling with the postman I haven’t been receiving my mail so I didn’t get my TV Licence reminder.”
“No-one watches TV apart from the parakeet. It calms him down and stops him ripping out his feathers.”
“I went to the PayPoint to pay for my licence, but I had to leave before I could pay as my kids were stealing sweets and I had to get them out fast.”
“My Payment Card fell in the toaster so I had to iron it and now the PayPoint machine won’t accept it.”
“I can’t afford a TV Licence now as the repayments on my brand new car are cleaning me out!”
“I never got the reminders because my two year-old hides all my post in her toy box”.
“I would have to sell my TV to pay for a licence so I can’t do that.”
“I don’t need a TV Licence, I already pay for my electricity bill.”
“I’m getting married and am too busy picking flowers, colours and things to buy a TV Licence.”
“I cannot go out to buy a licence because I am allergic to the sun.”
I have now complained to BBC, OFCOM (broadcasting regulator in UK), and my MP as follows:
“was pretty disappointed to see that your environmental correspondent Alex Kirby was clearly in league with the global warming activists and boasting that he stopped sceptical points of view being aired while at the BBC.
Why would this approach be sanctioned by and apparently the policy of the BBC?
Quote from email from Alex Kirby (from his BBC email address) to Phil Jones at CRU:
“Yes, glad you stopped this — I was sent it too, and decided to
spike it without more ado as pure stream-of-consciousness rubbish. I can
well understand your unhappiness at our running the other piece. But we
are constantly being savaged by the loonies for not giving them any
coverage at all, especially as you say with the COP in the offing, and
being the objective impartial (ho ho) BBC that we are, there is an
expectation in some quarters that we will every now and then let them
say something. I hope though that the weight of our coverage makes it
clear that we think they are talking through their hats.”
Would appreciate some honest answers rather than any politically biased cover-up.
I can report that things are just the same with colonial cousin the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. According to Gerard Henderson from the Sydney Institute who runs his own media watch dog:
“…the taxpayer funded public broadcaster still does not have one conservative presenter or executive producer for any of its key programs on television or radio. Not one. And the left-of-centre Jonathan Green edits the on-line edition of The Drum. In other words, the taxpayer funded broadcaster remains a conservative-free zone.”
And I can imagine that they are sitting back at the moment with smirks on their faces as The Gillard Government’s Green inspired media inquiry tries to smear the excellent News Limited outlets with the same reputation as the phone hackers of the London tabloids.
I am afraid that The News of the World has unwittingly provided Gillard with a lever to extinguish any criticism of the present government’s policies in “tackling climate change” and introduce taxes “in the national interest” because “it is the right thing to do”. Any any-one that criticises these moves such as Alan Jones or Andrew Bolt is portayed as “an extremist” acting against “the national interest”. Free speech is definitely under threat in this emerging Nanny State of Australia.
And the backbone of the Nanny State, the ABC is beavering away almost every day with some catastrophe that we will face unless we introduce Gillard’s reforms such as “tackling climate change” with taxes. Unfortunately we have no option here as to whether or not to buy a licence to fund the broadcaster. It is extravagantly funded from general revenue so we have to grin and bear it – for the time being – hi ho.
Kirby should be Boycotted as a professional journalist, because he is not. He is a propagandist for private interests.
All the more galling in view of the recent “investigation” by some allegedly independent study group. The “investigation” found that BBC was giving ENTIRELY TOO MUCH TIME to skeptics. Advised BBC to stop trying for “balance” on an issue which has no conceivable room for discussion.
Since BBC has never given one picosecond of time to skeptics, even to ridicule them, the advice was physically and logically impossible. You can’t give LESS THAN ZERO time to one side or MORE THAN ALL time to the other side.
Old England says (November 24, 2011 at 4:59 pm):
“I have now complained to BBC, OFCOM (broadcasting regulator in UK), and my MP….”
A couple of years ago I complained to Advertising Standards about the UK Government’s TV Climate Change Ad showing a puppy drowning as the waters rose. After 6 months there was a meaningless adjudication.
So it’s ok for the UK Government to tell the people “believe in climate change or your dog gets it”!
Kirby has just been featured in a complaint (yours?) here: http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/
The penalty for no tv licence is a fine. Maximum £1000.00.
No criminal record, because it is not a recordable offence anymore (no prison option in sentencing)
The licence is needed to receive any broadcast television: any.
You can however watch bbc programs on bbc iplayer as long as it is not being watched “live” (as broadcast)
Most bbc programs are rigidly middle-of-the-road and not biased…..that tends to not happen in climate science and some current affairs…..I suspect a considerable degree of infiltration by the wwf of the bbc is the fault, but since they have infiltrated most governments in the west AND the un…..and probably most univs as well.
I was wandering through several economics sites recently, and was most surprised by how many ex-goldman sachs employees are now ensconced within organisations such as wwf, the un and many government departments, as well as some becoming employees after leaving government.
Strange.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/complete-and-annotated-guide-european-bank-run
Have a look at the “family tree”, then look at a few green organisations.
Sorry, should read “infiltration of the bbc by the wwf”
It’s a bit late…
Kirby’s piece on Youtube giving advice to climate journalists quotes an excellent line: “Why is this lying bastard telling me this particular lie at this particular time.”
It is instructive to note that he tells his audience to apply this fine acid test only to skeptics.
I’ve mentioned this before but the discussion brings it back to mind. I gave up on the BBC when I heard an announcer describe Molly Ivins as a “presidential historian.”
I do not pay TV licence legally. This is how I do it.
-I do not own a TV that can receive live BBC programming.
-I own a large LCD screen without TV reception.
-I connect it to my XBox 360 which is exempt from license fee and watch Sky TV Go through broadband which does not have BBC programming, only Sky channels.
-I can also watch Sky TV Go through my computer, which is exempt from license fee unless it has a TV receiver which it does not.
-Even more channels are coming to the XBox 360 with the December 6th software update.
-The TV Licensing arm of the BBC can kiss my glutes as they do not have powers to enter your premises without your permission.
I don’t have a TV or a TV license and have not had one for about three years now since the “The Great Global Warming Swindle”,it was clear that a few people were determined to censor what could or could not be broadcast on british television.I am not going to pay a license to be told what I can watch.
BBC Churnalism where they just cut and paste government press releases…
Story covered by Biased BBC
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2011/11/bbc-churnalism.html
Complaint sent to BBC, not holding breath.
RE: DJ: (November 24, 2011 at 11:17 am)
“Kirby’s stated mission:”
It is obvious that Kirby believes in what he is saying. I am reminded of a denial of obvious bigotry in the literature of the past:
“I know nothing of the arcana of the Roman Catholic religion, and I am not a bigot in matters of theology, but I suspect the root of this precocious impurity, so obvious, so general in Popish countries, is to be found in the discipline if not the doctrines of the Church of Rome. I record what I have seen. These girls belonged to what are called the respectable ranks of society. They had all been carefully brought up, yet was the mass of them mentally depraved. So much for the general view; now for one or two selected specimens.”
‘The Professor’
Charlotte Bronté
BBC – Britsh Bias Confirmation
That video of Kirby is interesting. Two notable sentences, along the lines of….
“If this keeps up (skepticism), we will struggle to keepmour jobs…..”
“governments keep telling us to tell people how we are shaping a better world….”
In other words, AGW is all about, keeping your job, and social politics. Interesting.
.
My television packed up two years ago. I was laid up at the time, so I couldn’t go out and get a replacement. After three weeks or so I realised I didn’t miss it, so I never did replace it. No more license fee. I am told, however, that license inspectors sometimes get a tame magistrate to issue a search warrant, even though not having a license is no evidence of wrongdoing! It’s so nice to live in a free country. 🙁
“”””””“If I lived in the UK, I’d stop paying my BBC TV and radio license.”
Anyone who is caught watching a tv without a licence in the UK faces the death penalty.
REPLY: No, they don’t. That’s ridiculous. Just a fine. – Anthony””””””””””””
Actually 10% of court cases in magistrate courts in England are for non payment of the BBC tv licence, it averages out at 150,000 a year, several million people down the years have been prosecuted and thousands HAVE actually been jailed also.
There are 200 countries in the world the BBC’s annual income is also bigger than the entire GDP of 60 of them, 60!
@Jason “I have to agree with another commenter. Nobody knows or cares about C2.0. Its not even been mentioned on most news channels. It has been smoothly raked over.”
Indeed, the journalists and broadcasters had decided and agreed in advance what to do with another Climategate dump of emails.
This needs to be written up by someone with ‘auctoritas’, who can compile a summary of all that has been going on, referencing the emails placed in an appendix. It won’t get traction coming from relatively unknown climate sceptics. Few men and women of influence in a senior public position are going to put their head above the parapet because they will be shot at and character assassinated. It has to be from someone who is practically beyond that sniping. It needs to be someone who has the confidence of the public to be believed, even admired, for telling it as it is and delivering them from deception and certain ruin.
No-one has clearly emerged in that role, and until they do this cabal of journalists, scientists, broadcasters and environmentalists will continue to propagate lies.
Might just be that this is a case of seeing just what we want to see here. . . . AGW is still the consensus position, ie the neutral position – regardless of what the majority of commenters on here might think of it . . . . . . it’s therefore reasonable to expect that those who accept it in full (which may well be a completely reasonable thing to do. .) will be scathing about those who don’t go for it. Clearly Kirkby is a believer himself and though he takes a swipe (serious or not?) at the BBC’s neutrality it can’t definitely (or even reasonably) be deduced that he’s suggesting this is the case in relation to AGW.
The perceived truth is that for a majority of scientists AGW is the orthodoxy and scepticism is seen as no more significant and just as contrary as most of the conspiracy theories that most of us scoff at, or for example, claiming that smoking isn’t injurious to health. A neutral position isn’t halfway between an idiot or at least very weak position (how sceptics are seen by most of the relevant scientific community as yet) and the orthodoxy; it’s with the orthodoxy. Between two competing positions seen as equally possible then the situation would be different: neutrality would be somewhere between and the likes of the bbc would have to give equal weighting to both. AGW scepticism .hasn’t reached that stage yet, however confident any of us might be that the science is far from settled.
To assess the real value of these emails we have to strive resolutely to see the content objectively – not an easy thing to do.
Vince Causey says:
November 24, 2011 at 2:17 pm
Jason,
“I think the death penalty thing may have been a joke, possibly lost in trans-atlantic-lation….”
Hoorah, someone got the joke. Maybe I should have put a smiley at the end 🙂
Good idea. Must do that with my (even more 🙂 ) obscure jokes.
I haven’t had a TV for 15 years, but the licensing mob sent letter after letter for years, behaviour which would anywhere else be called harassment. This was in spite of being told repeatedly, in writing and by phone, that I do not have a TV. Eventually, one of their ‘inspectors’ turned up on the doorstep, but when I offered to let him in to check, he went away.
I have heard that if you point out to them that the BBC receives money illegally from the EU (more corruption; this is against the BBC charter), that they stop pestering you. (unconfirmed)
Thought you might like to see this email. It is a classic of BBC propaganda methodology. My comments are in the wiggly brackets.
date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 13:56:57 +0100
from: “Jonathan Renouf”
subject: Final thoughts
to: “Keith Briffa”
Hi Keith,
Good to talk to you this morning. Just a few thoughts to reiterate what we’re hoping to get
out of filming tomorrow.
1) Your interview appears at a crucial point in the film. Up until now our presenter (Paul
Rose, he’ll be there tomorrow) has followed two conflicting thoughts. On the one hand he’s
understood that the world is currently getting warmer. [b]But on the other he’s discovered
lots of historical stories (the Bronze Age, the MWP, the LIA) which tell him that climate
changes naturally all the time. [/b] In trying to resolve this paradox he’s come across this
thing called the hockey stick curve, and he’s come to you to explain it to him.
{{Ah, yes, the old propaganda technique of ‘I was a skeptic, but now I am a believer’ (cue the Monkees theme tune…}}
2) [b]Your essential job is to “prove” to Paul that what we’re experiencing now is NOT just
another of those natural fluctuations we’ve seen in the past. [/b] The hockey stick curve is a
crucial piece of evidence because it shows how abnormal the present period is – the present
warming is unprecedented in speed and amplitude, something like that. [b]This is a very big
moment in the film when Paul is finally convinced of the reality of man made global
warming. [/b]
{{This is a very big moment in the film, when we shall dupe the gullible public into believing our lies.}}
3) [b]The hockey stick curve shows that what Paul thought were big climate events (the Bronze
Age maximum, the MWP, the LIA) actually when looked at in a global context weren’t quite as
dramatic as he thought. [/b] They’re there, but they are nothing like as sudden or big.
{{But let’s not point out to the gullible fools in the BBC audience that the Hockey Stick had already been discredited by late 2005.}}
4) Paul can question you on things like: How reliable is the hockey stick curve? How do you
work out past climate (cue for you to talk about proxies)? What drives all the “natural”
fluctations in climate (this can be answered in very broad terms eg it’s down to changes in
the sun’s output, volcanoes etc)
[b]Hopefully this makes it clear what I’m trying to achieve. [/b]
{{It sure does, Jonathan, it sure does – deception and propaganda.}}
Look forward to tomorrow.
All best
Jonathan
Jonathan Renouf
Series Producer
Science Department
201 Wood Lane
London W12 7TS
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
Thought you might like to see this email. It is a classic of BBC propaganda methodology. My bold, and my comments are in the wiggly brackets.
date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 13:56:57 +0100
from: “Jonathan Renouf”
subject: Final thoughts
to: “Keith Briffa”
Hi Keith,
Good to talk to you this morning. Just a few thoughts to reiterate what we’re hoping to get
out of filming tomorrow.
1) Your interview appears at a crucial point in the film. Up until now our presenter (Paul
Rose, he’ll be there tomorrow) has followed two conflicting thoughts. On the one hand he’s
understood that the world is currently getting warmer. But on the other he’s discovered
lots of historical stories (the Bronze Age, the MWP, the LIA) which tell him that climate
changes naturally all the time. In trying to resolve this paradox he’s come across this
thing called the hockey stick curve, and he’s come to you to explain it to him.
2) Your essential job is to “prove” to Paul that what we’re experiencing now is NOT just
another of those natural fluctuations we’ve seen in the past. The hockey stick curve is a
crucial piece of evidence because it shows how abnormal the present period is – the present
warming is unprecedented in speed and amplitude, something like that. This is a very big
moment in the film when Paul is finally convinced of the reality of man made global
warming.
3) The hockey stick curve shows that what Paul thought were big climate events (the Bronze
Age maximum, the MWP, the LIA) actually when looked at in a global context weren’t quite as
dramatic as he thought. They’re there, but they are nothing like as sudden or big.
4) Paul can question you on things like: How reliable is the hockey stick curve? How do you
work out past climate (cue for you to talk about proxies)? What drives all the “natural”
fluctations in climate (this can be answered in very broad terms eg it’s down to changes in
the sun’s output, volcanoes etc)
5) In terms of filming my first choice is to do it as a projection in Zicer, where you show
the Mann curve, then flick up as many other ones as you think are important (within
reason!) and elaborate the point that what’s happening now is unprecedented compared to
these historic records. In my ideal world, you walk right up to the projector image and
point things out on the screen, with parts of the projected image falling on your heads and
shoulders. Stills of tree rings or anything else climate related eg ice cores, corals,
would also work as powerpoints, because you could talk about them as egs of proxies.
Hopefully this makes it clear what I’m trying to achieve.
Look forward to tomorrow.
All best
Jonathan
Jonathan Renouf
Series Producer
Science Department
201 Wood Lane
London W12 7TS
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
Here is the theme tune, to go with Jonathan Renouf’s BBC ‘documentary’ (above).
And what about the reported £15,000 Roger Harrabin received from UEA to press CAGW within the BBC. The BBC refuse to answer any question about this neither do they claim the report wrong.
In the YouTube video of Alex Kirby, he contradicts himself so much, it’s unbelievable! He says on the one hand that correspondents shouldn’t have a message, then says he believes the science of climate change so much that he thinks we should be much more ‘educated’ about it. It’s just this sort of two-faced approach that makes it so easy for it to be accepted by those who control what is broadcast.
Great post. Very interesting, and distressing. Clearly this thing should be dubbed the British Brainwashing Company.
It literally makes want to vomit. I mean really. Orwell. 1984.
OceaniaBrittania.Even though lots of folks say this, let me say it again … The books 1984, Animal Farm and Atlas Shrugged, and the movies They Live, Demolition Man, The Matrix, Idiocracy and the Star Trek Borg episodes, should be taken as warnings, NOT as instruction manuals!
I almost wish they had this coercive BBC arrangement here in the states just so we could destroy it ourselves. PBS (our liberals’ feeble attempt) never could approach the BBC, people would revolt. If they didn’t have Sesame Street they would never had any viewers at all.
This is far more dangerous to British society than a figurehead Queen. What’s next: ‘Hey let’s get rid of the Royals, keep the beeb’. I’ll pray for my British brothers and sisters, but as long as you have this thing you’re in deep trouble. Well, we’re all certainly in deep trouble as long as there are Socialists infesting our countries like diseased rats, but still, you’re in deeper trouble.
Fight the
PowerBBC.openside50 says:
November 25, 2011 at 1:22 am
There are 200 countries in the world the BBC’s annual income is also bigger than the entire GDP of 60 of them, 60!
Over 40 Nations….opsss….41
I’ll add one more …. Fantasy Island. (network television).
From one of the UK Guardian articles on Climategate 2, 23/11/11, by Juliette Jowit & Leo Hickman.
It seems “deadly CO2” has now gone nuclear in the eyes of one of your US Congressmen who’s calling for the email whistleblower/hacker whatever, to be hunted down. Wow! This is getting really serious!
“Further scrutiny was placed on the police investigation on Tuesday when Edward Markey, a Democrat congressman from Massachusetts who has long advocated for political action on climate change, called on the “US intelligence community” to assist the “British and others” in finding the perpetrator.
“If this happened surrounding nuclear arms talks, we would have the full force of the western world’s intelligence community pursuing the perpetrators,” he said. “And yet, with the stability of our climate hanging in the balance with these international climate treaty negotiations, these hackers and their supporters are still on the loose. It is time to bring them to justice.”
The Kirby quote gives refuseniks a justification that might stand up in court.
Yo-ho-ho.
Jolly Roger
Actually it is not BBC licence non-payers but smokers who are regarded as the most evil of transgressors. In Britain, Smoking in a public place could let to immediate incarceration or even beheading in the Tower.
.
I was scanning the emails, and found a few tidbits for you. The wiggly brackets are my comments. {{ }}
.
date: Tue Dec 7 16:23:04 2004
from: Phil Jones
subject: Re: FYI
to: Kevin
Kevin,
Wasn’t rung about this one !
What an utter load of rubbish. He should go back to the oil company who pays his salary. He should take the logic course he says we should go on. Claims climate can’t be predicted (as the weather can’t) and we can’t modify the climate anyway.
He should be working for the Bush govt, with this sort of logic !
Phil
{{ Not sure who this email is about – but he is a skeptic, and must be working for the oil companies ….. you know it makes sense. }}
.
date: Wed Feb 13 09:17:10 2008
from: Phil Jones
subject: Re: Feb 7-8
to: “James Hansen”
Jim,
Even though it’s been a mild winter in the UK, much of the rest of the world seems coolish – expected though given the La Nina. Roll on the next El Nino!
Cheers
Phil
{{ Ah, I see. Not waiting for AGW to ride to the rescue, but waiting for El Nino. Shame we got a big La Nina instead… 😉 }}
a French scientist called Vincent Courtillot. He is making Edouard Bard’s life awful in French. If you’re there on the Friday when Vincent is talking then tell him he’s just completely wrong. He will likely say the climate isn’t warming and even if it was it has little to do with greenhouse gases. So shouldn’t be difficult!! If you’re not there on the Friday, just make sure one or two reasonable scientists are aware that they have invited a bit of rogue!
Cheers
Phil
{{ If you are not a ‘believer’, then you are wrong and a ‘bit of a rogue’, and in need of dusting up a bit. Just threaten his grant supply, that will do it. }}
.
From Phil Jones
To Prof. Chris Folland
Research Fellow, Seasonal to Decadal Forecasting
Met Office Hadley Centre, Fitzroy Rd, Exeter,
Chris – I presume the Met Office continually monitor the weather forecasts. Maybe because I’m in my 50s, but the language used in the forecasts seems a bit over the top re the cold. Where I’ve been for the last 20 days (in Norfolk) it doesn’t seem to have been as cold as the forecasts.
{{ How dare you say the weather is ‘freezing’. Stay on message, the weather is simply ‘not as hot as during the summer’ }}
Tim, Chris,
I hope you’re not right about the lack of warming lasting till about 2020. I’d rather hoped to see the earlier Met Office press release with Doug’s paper that said something like – half the years to 2014 would exceed the warmest year currently on record, 1998! I seem to be getting an email a week from skeptics saying where’s the warming gone. I know the warming is on the decadal scale, but it would be nice to wear their smug grins away.
{{ Stay on message, Chris. I told you before, a lack of warming is ‘not warming quite as much as before’. }}
.
date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 16:39:06 -0000
from: “Robert Matthews” BBC Focus Magazine
subject: Re: BBC Focus magazine
to: “Phil Jones”
Great – thanks ! I see the (skeptic) story has been picked up on CC-NET; perhaps you should post this really handy rebuttal on there, before this story “gets legs” and is picked up by all the usual suspects. It’s the Christmas silly season, and the papers are desperate for stories……
Robert
{{ This is the BBC urging Phil Jones to stop a ‘cooling’ story on the net. They don’t call them the Biased Broadcasting Corporation for nothing. }}
.
date: Thu Nov 13 16:19:22 2008
from: Phil Jones
subject: Re: [Env.faculty] Global Environmental Change Projects
to: Claire Reeves
To almost all in-government circles (including the US from) the science is done and dusted. The reporting of climate stories within the media (especially the BBC) is generally one-sided, i.e. the counter argument is rarely made. There is, however, still a vociferous and small majority of climate change skeptics (also called deniers, but these almost entirely exclude any climate-trained climate scientists) who engage the public/govt/media through web sites.
{{ The good old Biased broadcasting Corporation can always be relied upon to be, well, biased. }}
.
date: Thu Jul 15 16:25:46 2004
from: Phil Jones
subject: Paleo data
to: Gabi
Dear All, Gabi,
I was answering one of the skeptics yesterday. The answer is below.
Susan Solomon was here on Tuesday getting an honorary degree. She says we will
have to deal with all these crackpots in the IPCC !
As for your email, there was some press activity related to this skeptic below {{McIntyre}}, but
managed to talk the BBC out of doing anything.
{{ The BBC were about to tell the truth, for once, but managed to talk them out of any such heresy. Pheww!! Can’t have the ‘great unwashed, knowing the truth. }}
.
date: 14 Oct 2009 18:21:07 -0400
from: Gavin Schmidt
subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
to: Michael Mann
cc: Tom Wigley , Kevin Trenberth , “Philip D. Jones”, Jim Hansen, Michael Oppenheimer
Kevin Trenberth wrote:
Hi all
Well I have my own article on ‘where the heck is global warming’? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low.
Kevin
Michael Mann wrote:
Extremely disappointing to see something like this appear on BBC. its particularly odd, since climate is usually Richard Black’s beat at BBC (and he does a great job). from what I can tell, this guy was formerly a weather person at the Met Office. We may do something about this on RealClimate, but meanwhile it might be appropriate for the Met Office to have a say about this, I might ask Richard Black what’s up here?
{{ Extremely disappointing to see the BBC telling the truth. Where was our pet rodent (Black), while all this was going on? – I’ll have words with him. No more freebee trips to exotic locations for at least two months….. }}
.
date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 12:48:13 -0000
from: “Gillian Watson”
subject: RE: sceptics
to: “Mike Hulme”
Mike,
I heard the Stott vs. Houghton item on the BBC Today programme this morning… There are a series of links to related web pages at the BBC online article today on “Sceptics denounce climate science ‘lie’ “ at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1833000/1833902.stm.
Links are included to the ESEF web site (http://www.scienceforum.net/) and the sites for George C Marshall Institute (http://www.marshall.org/) and Philip Stott (http://www.ecotrop.org/). Note also that the Tyndall web site is listed 3rd on the internet links section…
Gillie
{{ Oo-err, the BBC has twigged the truth. All hands on deck…. }}
.
From: Mike Hulme
Sent: 25 February 2002 12:35
To:
Subject: sceptics
Did anyone hear Stott vs. Houghton on Today {{BBC}} radio 4 this morning? Woeful stuff really. This is one reason why Tyndall is sponsoring the Cambridge Media/Environment Programme to starve this type of {{BBC}} reporting at source.
{{ In other words, if the media tells the truth (even the BBC, for once), you slap them down via as many political friends as possible. }}
In the meantime the Carbon Trust were very annoyed by the piece (also an article in The Daily Mail – surprise, surprise) and have talked to me about their best line of action. I have pursuaded them that a knee-jerk reaction is not the best. However:
Two questions can anyone help me with:
Are there any on-line web sources reporting on the US Panel that reported to Bush last June on the credibility of the IPCC Assessments?
Can anyone find out about this European organisation that published this report that has caused the flurry of activity? I’ve heard of it before but is there a web site?
{{ So we can send the CRU heavies around, with baseball bats. }}
Simon, could we have a chat about this soon, and Vanessa, please could you
buy me a Daily Mail today?
Thanks,
Mike
{{ Oh, the ignominy of it, Mike Hulme having to buy a ‘Daily Mail’ (a UK newspaper slightly to the right of Ghengis Khan) }}
.
date: Thu, 4 Sep 2008 13:06:31 +0100
from: “Michael Duffy”
subject: BBC Documentary
to: Phil Jones
Hi Phil,
Mike Duffy here from the BBC factual programming department. I wonder if you can help me. We’re researching a documentary about snow which will include the history of British winters. We’d love to do a bit about the Little Ice Age, taking in its causes and how it affected Britain socially and economically.
{{ This email appears to have gone unanswered… Ha, ha, ha….. }}
.
date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:07:00 -0000
from: “Bob Ward”
subject: RE: More nonsense on climate change
to: “Phil Jones”
Dear Phil,
Thanks for responding so comprehensively. I have plotted the data before, and as you observe, the trend is up but the result isn’t statistically significant, which I think makes it open to attack. …… I’m not sure how to argue against this point – it appears to imply that there is no statistically significant trend in the global temperature record over the past few years.
From: Phil Jones
Sent: 20 December 2007 13:58
To: Bob Ward
Subject: Re: More nonsense on climate change
Bob,
Quickly re-reading this it sounds as though I’m getting at you. I’m not – just at the idiots who continue to spout this nonsense. It isn’t an issue with climatologists. All understand. If I tried to publish this I would be told by my peers it was obvious and banal.
I will try and hide it in a paper at some point. I could put it on the CRU web site. I would have thought that this writer would have know better! I keep on seeing people saying this same stupid thing. I’m not
adept enough (totally inept) with excel to do this now as no-one who knows how to is here.
What you have to do is … work out the linear trend. The slope is upwards. Trend won’t be statistically significant, but the trend is up.
{{ More hiding of the decline (or the ‘no significant trend’). }}
.
cc: Tom Crowley
date: Tue Aug 10 15:47:04 2004
from: Phil Jones
subject: Re: Mann and Jones (2003)
to: Gabi Hegerl , “Michael E. Mann”
Michael E. Mann wrote:
Dear Phil and Gabi,
I’ve attached a cleaned-up and commented version of the matlab code that I wrote for doing the Mann and Jones (2003) composites. I did this knowing that Phil and I are likely to have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots in the near future, so best to clean up the code and provide to some of my close colleagues in case they want to test it, etc. Please feel free to use this code for your own internal purposes, but don’t pass it along where it may get into the hands of the wrong people.
In the process of trying to clean it up, I realized I had something a bit odd, not necessarily wrong, but it makes a small difference. It seems that I used the ‘long’ NH instrumental series back to 1753 that we calculated ….. Not sure why I used this, rather than using the CRU NH record back to 1856 for this purpose. …. Turns it, this has the net effect of decreasing the amplitude of the NH reconstruction by a factor of 0.11/0.14 = 1.29.
Mike
{{ Ahh, so under pressure from the ‘idiots’ at WUWT, Michael Mann discovers an error in his computer model. But no worry, it is only 1.29 (presumably 1.29 degrees per century) }}
.
date: Mon, 05 Feb 2007 20:13:54 -0500
from: “Michael E. Mann”
subject: [Fwd: IPCC and sea level rise, hi-res paleodata, etc.]
to: Curt Covey,
cc: Gavin Schmidt , Phil Jones, James Hansen
Curt, I can’t believe the nonsense you are spouting, and I furthermore cannot imagine why you would be so presumptuous as to entrain me into an exchange with these charlatans. What on earth are you thinking?
I find it terribly irresponsible for you to be sending messages like this to Singer and Monckton. You are speaking from ignorance here, and you must further know how your statements are going to be used. …..instead simply blurting all of this nonsense out in an email to these sorts charlatans you’ve done some irreversible damage. shame on you for such irresponsible behavior!
Mike Mann
{{ Naughty boy, Covey – stay on message, and don’t talk to anyone with different ideas – you may get, ‘contaminated’, and we may have to ‘deny’ you…. }}
.
This is a nice email from: Rod Eaton, MBA, DMS (Leeds), MCMI, FIET explaining why the CRU is wrong, and why Wiltshire County Council will opt out of the Nottingham Declaration on Climate Change (why does Nottingham have any such ‘declaration’? Isn’t local government about emptying the bins and maintaining the schools?)
.
date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 11:01
from: “Kevin Trenberth”
subject: Re: A couple of things
to: “Phil Jones”
Hi Phil
Kevin,
Finally, that idiot Lord Monckton or Brenchly, is making his own DVD, based on that awful Ch 4 program ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ !
Hopefully soon Ofcom (the UK group who assesses complaints against programs) will have ruled on that program – which had many more errors than Al’s DVD.
Cheers
Phil
{{ Beastly man, that Monckton – threatening our grants like that. Shouldn’t be allowed. }}
.
date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 13:56:57 +0100
from: “Jonathan Renouf”
subject: Final thoughts
to: “Keith Briffa”
Hi Keith,
Good to talk to you this morning. Just a few thoughts to reiterate what we’re hoping to get out of filming tomorrow.
1) Your interview appears at a crucial point in the film. Up until now our presenter (Paul Rose, he’ll be there tomorrow) has followed two conflicting thoughts. On the one hand he’s understood that the world is currently getting warmer. But on the other he’s discovered lots of historical stories (the Bronze Age, the MWP, the LIA) which tell him that climate changes naturally all the time. In trying to resolve this paradox he’s come across this thing called the hockey stick curve, and he’s come to you to explain it to him.
2) Your essential job is to “prove” to Paul that what we’re experiencing now is NOT just another of those natural fluctuations we’ve seen in the past. The hockey stick curve is a crucial piece of evidence because it shows how abnormal the present period is – the present warming is unprecedented in speed and amplitude, something like that. This is a very big moment in the film when Paul is finally convinced of the reality of man made global warming.
3) The hockey stick curve shows that what Paul thought were big climate events (the Bronze Age maximum, the MWP, the LIA) actually when looked at in a global context weren’t quite as dramatic as he thought. They’re there, but they are nothing like as sudden or big.
4) Paul can question you on things like: How reliable is the hockey stick curve? How do you work out past climate (cue for you to talk about proxies)? What drives all the “natural” fluctations in climate (this can be answered in very broad terms eg it’s down to changes in the sun’s output, volcanoes etc)
Hopefully this makes it clear what I’m trying to achieve.
Look forward to tomorrow.
All best
Jonathan
Jonathan Renouf
Series Producer
Science Department
201 Wood Lane
London W12 7TS
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
{{ How to make a propaganda documentary, in three easy lesson – by a BBC producer. Impartiality? What the hell is that?… }}
And here is the theme tune, to go with Jonathan Renouf’s BBC ‘documentary’ (above).
Vince Causey says:
November 24, 2011 at 11:10 am
“If I lived in the UK, I’d stop paying my BBC TV and radio license.”
Anyone who is caught watching a tv without a licence in the UK faces the death penalty.
REPLY: No, they don’t. That’s ridiculous. Just a fine. – Anthony
Fines, and imprisonment for repeat offenders, apparantly.
I have said this before and I shall say it again as it is appropriate: I have NEVER purchased a TV license in my life, and my TV goes on working just as well, and I haven’t been arrested, fined, imprisoned or shot yet. TV licensing officers have no right of entry into your home – they would need to be accompanied by a police officer with a warrant in order to gain entry, and in order for the police to obtain a warrant they would need reasonable suspicion that a crime is being commited. The fact of simply not owning a TV license is not justifiable cause to suspect the heinous crime of watching an unlicensed TV and break down someone’s door. The reason most people in the UK buy a license is that they are not aware of this simple fact, and think that if an officer comes knocking they must by law let them in. I can say from personal experience that this is not the case. Three times I have refused entry to a licensing officer (the last time was about 10 years ago).
Just don’t watch your TV by a window where prying eyes can see. Although this in itself would not be proof of watching broadcast TV, I would guess it would be enough to allow them to get a warrant.
Beautiful.
“Costing the Earth”, the BBC radio programme has a single underlying message: Development is bad for nature.
I’m shocked, shocked, …
“If I lived in the UK, I’d stop paying my BBC TV and radio license.”
Stopped paying AlJaBeeba telly tax years ago.
Fyi, here is the AlJaBeeba CG2 denial piece by that airhead Susan Watts from a couple of nights ago.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy9Ic4q4lJc&w=405&h=320]
If you are British, there’s no need to have a TV licence, even if you have a television. TV Licensing have no official powers beyond those of any other company trying to sell their wares. If you ignore their junk mail (correspondence), close the door or better yet don’t answer it to their salesmen (the Orwellian titled “enforcement officers”), they can do nothing. Only if you’re foolish enough to let one of them into your house and sign a confession for him can they prosecute you – otherwise, all you get is a threatening letter every month, so full of “if”s and “may”s as to be comical. Detector vans are an urban myth that have never been used as evidence in a court of law. Check out bbcresistance.com for further details – please don’t assume you have to subsidise the dreadful bias of the BBC.
Wow, englsnd really truly sucks. From cameras on every street to tv license? Yuk@ i rrally never want to step foot in that country. Very sad.
Just to be sure, you get fined up to £1000 for not having a license even if you never watch the drivel from the bbc. However, you can continually refuse to pay the fines, which by all accounts would most likely result in imprisonment.
Thus, while it may be inaccurate to say that the bbc enforces a prison sentence for non-payment of the fee, it is a legal possibility that incarceration could result from a series of failures to pay the requisite fines for not having purchased a license in the first place!
I say scramble the transmission for those that do not wish to pay the tax (fee) on the set top. Then taxpayers do not have to suffer the ignominy of being forced to pay – under the draconian threat of a fine and legal escalation for non-compliance – for people to promote political views and alignments they do not vote for or are partisan to.
And he’s the one who gets to say: “Lassen Sie mich Ihre Papiere sehen!”
love it!!!!
Hehe. You know what would really give Markey a stroke? Give this courageous heroic whistleblower the Congressional Medal Of Honor. We could do it now in absentia if he/she chooses to remain anonymous. Markey would be apoplectic as would be many others.
Now if we could get the Speaker of the House to pry himself away from golfing with the White House Occupier in Chief we can get something going!
Sorry, but the e-mail numbers from that long list I posted were deleted (I put them in chevron brackets).
They were, in order:
{email – 1635} FYI
{email – 4184} Feb 7-8
{email – 4195} Fellow, Seasonal to Decadal Forecasting
{email – 4370} BBC Focus magazine
{email – 4663} Global Environmental Change Projects
{email – 2317} Paleo data
{email – 2509} BBC U-turn on climate
{email – 2496} sceptics
{email – 2747} BBC Documentary
{email – 1885} More nonsense on climate change
{email – 3499} Mann and Jones (2003)
{email – 0112} IPCC and sea level rise, hi-res paleodata,
{email – 0665} Wiltshire County Council
{email – 5215} A couple of things
{email – 1683} Final thoughts
.
jason says:
November 24, 2011 at 12:50 pm
“I have to agree with another commenter. Nobody knows or cares about C2.0.”
It made The Drudge Report. Millions of people therefore know about it from that source alone. Hundreds of small newspapers mentioned it. It was reported in the Wall Street Journal. Time magazine’s website. Fox News. Senator Inhofe mentioned it. It’s making its way around and you can be sure everyone at the Durban conference knows about it.
But speaking of Durban, there are probably fewer people who know or care about Durban than know or care about Climategate 2. The whole climate change ’cause’ is falling apart at the seams and has been falling apart bit by bit for several years after it became apparent that despite no slowdown in carbon emissions the earth stopped getting warmer 10 years ago and there’s no sign of any negative effects from global warming and lots of positives. Believe it or not the general population actually preferred their increasingly mild winters and farmers prefer their increasingly longer growing seasons. I always suspected that climate would be the death of AGW because the climate just isn’t living up to the alarmist’s predictions and that’s exactly what’s happened.
t~om s says:
November 25, 2011 at 5:54 am
////////////////////////////////////////////
It is very sad since England truly use to be the land of the free, but with recent developments it is becoming ever closer to being a police state. .
The recent email release casts the BBC in a very poor light.
It is one thing to adopt the stance when reporting events which favours the consensus position over the minority view and restricting air time given to the minority view. Such partiality does not promote investigative journalism but arguably may be permissible as a matter of editorial policy. For example, in politics more air time is given to the main political parties and less to minority parties and this appears to be accepted practice.
However, the emails released give the impression that the BBC has gone a stage further and has actually become a green activist. That is quite a different matter and their charter does not permit them to be activists.
OK this is how you stop paying your TV Licence.
I have done it.
1. KNOW YOUR RIGHTS.
2. You DO NOT need a licence to use a TV to watch recordings, DVDs, play video cam footage, play XBox etc. You ONLY legally require a licence to watch LIVE TV programmes.
3. You DO NOT have ANY obligation to explain your lack of a licence to the BBC, just as you do not have to explain why you haven’t got a fishing licence.
4. You are under NO obligation to speak to anyone from the TV licence enforcement company, they are just a branch of the BBC & have no power to interview you OR search your home.
5. DON’T TALK TO THEM, REPLY TO THEIR RED LETTERS OR SIGN ANYTHING. THIS IS WHAT THEY USE TO CONVICT YOU.
6. No prosecution has ever used TV detector van technology to secure a prosecution. EVER. The BBC has refused to disclose what technology they have, how it works & what it is capable of detecting.
7. That’s it. At first, you will receive RED letters but if you do not communicate with them, they only way they can prosecute is by catching you red handed watching LIVE TV feeds.
I stopped paying about 9 months ago. I refuse to pay these corporate media whores & war criminals money to pay for their propaganda.
There is no risk or comeback.
Obviously you are responsible for your own actions & whether or not you decide to break the law.
I no longer watch live feed TV, I use the internet.
REBlade says:
November 25, 2011 at 7:53 am:
The real worry of, “Edward Markey, a Democrat congressman from Massachusetts ,” is that his name might appear in the 20,000 emails held “in reserve.”
Google for “Ho Ho BBC”
I suggest that everybody refer to the BBC in future as “Ho Ho BBC”.
They must be made to pay for being the worst alarmist media organisation.
Quote jayman
“They must be made to pay for being the worst alarmist media organisation.”
…& what better way than depriving them of revenue?
NOT paying your TV Licence fee is a moral act, particularly when you consider [SNIP: these are all topics Anthony has stated he doesn’t want discussed at WUWT. Please check the site policy. -REP] which is proven beyond doubt.
It’s subverting of science & obfuscating of truth is truly vile.
A weapon of mass destruction…
A weapon of mass deception…
Er….Py
“I think everyone is taking this email out of context. As you can see it was sent in the month of December and Alex was doing his best Santa impersonation ready for the Christmas party whilst confirming that the BBC is an unbiased institution.”
I think you need to read it in context.
“But we are constantly being savaged by the loonies for not giving them any
coverage at all, especially as you say with the COP in the offing, and
being the objective impartial (ho ho) BBC that we are, there is an
expectation in some quarters that we will every now and then let them
say something. I hope though that the weight of our coverage makes it
clear that we think they are talking through their hats.”
“Loonies” “Every now and then let them say something” “Weight of coverage….” …. need I go on?
Father Christmas is definitely out of context …. unless he’s been complaining that global warming is affecting his reindeers’ migration!!!
Watch the video of Alex Kirby’s speech and listen to the contempt in his voice for the BBC who spent too much money sending correspondents to the Chilean earthquake disaster and now can only send one to the next Climate Change talk-fest in Cancun. The BBC obviously has to get it’s priorities right!
Try 3757.txt for shameless partisan fawning. Absolute filth!
date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 12:37:59 +010 ???
from: ???@open.ac.uk
subject: Rio+10 ???and the media
to: ???@uea.ac.uk
Dear Mike
We are writing to some alumni of the University of Cambridge Media and
Environment seminars gathering ideas for the BBC’s coverage of the Rio+1 ???
Earth Summit in a year’s time. Before the Rio summit, the BBC held the One
World festival, which included some memorable broadcasting – particularly a
feature drama on refugees. Some broadcasting is already in the pipeline that
will relate to the themes of Rio+ 10, but this is an open opportunity for
you to put forward ideas that will be collated and circulated amongst
relevant BBC decision-makers.
* What should the BBC be doing this time in terms of news, current
affairs, drama, documentaries, game shows, music etc?
* How can the BBC convey the theme of sustainable development to
viewers and listeners who have probably seen all the issues raised before?
* Is there any scope for a global broadcasting initiative?
* What are the strongest themes and specific issues that should appear
in the media in the months and years following the conference?
If you have thoughts, please send your reply both to this email and copy to
???@aol.com. We will also draw on the information gathered in planning
a new three year programme of media seminars.
Best wishes
Joe and Roger
Joe Smith and Roger Harrabin
University of Cambridge Media and Environment Programme
As I recall, Michael Moore (the celebrated chronicler of Detroit’s tragic decline) produced a documentary series co-produced on either side of the Atlantic a few years ago. In the US, an episode about the death penalty in America was not broadcast in the USA, whilst in the UK a polemic about the imprisonment of unmarried mothers on state benefits for non-payment of TV licence was not shown.
On the subject of BBC bias, check out email # 1683 from BBC Journalist to Keith Briffa:
” Hi Keith, Good to talk to you this morning. Just a few thoughts to reiterate what we’re hoping to get out of filming tomorrow.
1) Your interview appears at a crucial point in the film. Up until now our presenter (Paul Rose, he’ll be there tomorrow) has followed two conflicting thoughts. On the one hand he’s understood that the world is currently getting warmer. But on the other he’s discovered lots of historical stories (the Bronze Age, the MWP, the LIA) which tell him that climate changes naturally all the time. In trying to resolve this paradox he’s come across this thing called the hockey stick curve, and he’s come to you to explain it to him.
2) Your essential job is to “prove” to Paul that what we’re experiencing now is NOT just another of those natural fluctuations we’ve seen in the past. The hockey stick curve is a crucial piece of evidence because it shows how abnormal the present period is – the present warming is unprecedented in speed and amplitude, something like that. This is a very big moment in the film when Paul is finally convinced of the reality of man made global warming. […] Hopefully this makes it clear what I’m trying to achieve. Look forward to tomorrow. All best Jonathan
Jonathan Renouf Series Producer Science Department”
Email # 1683 reads like a script for a bad propaganda film. Made with tax money.
Congrats to the Brits on having such a fair and objective public broadcasting corporation, full of honest, eager, investigative journalists of integrity to let you know what is going on. Tax money well spent! /sarc off
BBC has been completely infiltrated by WWF. Until lobbying is banned in Parliament their biased reporting will continue. This last week Susan Watts (BBS `science correspondent`) on `Newsnight` and Chris Huhne (member of the UK cabinet) on `Questiontime` revealed their dire and abject ignorance of the issues and in particular of research into the history of climate change over the last 2,000 years and, of course, long long before that. What can be done to show how biased and basically very very wrong these people are? They have no relevant qualifications (Watts may claim so but she is so out of touch as to be laughable) and it can only be hoped that the great British public will eventually see through their foolish statements, especially Huhne who was telling is what electricity prices would be in 2019 as the result of his green policies. `You can fool some of the people…..` but with people like this spouting so much trash it cannot be for much longer.
As a UK citizen, I strongly resent being forced to subsidise a left-wing propaganda organisation. I would definitely vote to have the licence fee scrapped. Funnily enough, I’ll be posting a cheque for £145 next week. I may include a note stating that I object to being forced to pay for the Biased Broadcasting Corporation (also known as the Brussels Broadcasting Corporation).
Their bias also extends to the euro and the European Union. If the BBC had its way, we would have joined the euro, and now we would be facing the catastrophic breakup of our own currency. Probably the only good thing that Gordon Brown was to keep us out of the euro.
There’s a perfect example of the BBC’s bias. When the UK’s joining the euro was a real prospect ten years ago, the BBC showed a program called, if I remember correctly, ‘Referendum Street’. Almost unbelievably, the person conducting the ‘no’ campaign for the program was a europhile! A bit like asking Michael Mann to head the sceptic side at the Oxford Union Debate!
Chris
I live in the south of England. I have just written (pen and old-fashioned paper style) to the BBC informing them that I will no longer be paying my license fee as I no longer watch their programs.
Let’s see who comes knocking at my door!
Al Gored says:
November 24, 2011 at 1:41 pm
“I saw the relative silence on Climategate as a proxy for the AGW bias in media organizations, …”
Then it might also be worth noting the same kind of “impartiality” toward Ron Paul. Given that the Australian media are scared witless to even mention his name, and will only show his face in distance shots, it’s a fair bet that his policies are threatening to the NWO and this whole worldwide political scam.
What is it with this “Emporer” stuff? Pretty weird. Even sounds weird. It’s “Emperor”. Honest.