Guest Post by Barry Woods
The respected BBC journalist, Michael Buerk has a short podcast entitled Michael Buerk on the Climate Summit at a new blog that I have just come across called The Fifth Column. It has some thought-provoking and challenging concerns for the BBC Trust, the Guardian, media and politicians with respect to the reporting of ‘climate change’. Some extracts below, with thoughts very rarely heard from the BBC:
And actually there has been no significant rise in global temperatures for more than a decade now.” – Michael Buerk, 16 December 2011
“What gets up my nose is being infantilized by governments, by the BBC, by the Guardian that there is no argument, that all scientists who aren’t cranks and charlatans are agreed on all this, that the consequences are uniformly negative, the issues beyond doubt and the steps to be taken beyond dispute.” – Michael Buerk, 16 December 2011
“You’re not necessarily a crank to point out that global temperatures change a great deal anyway. A thousand years ago we had a Mediterranean climate in this country; 200 years ago we were skating every winter on the Thames.
I would just like to highlight and comment on a couple of extracts from the podcast. A full transcript of the podcast is included at the end of this article. I would hope that it reaches a wider audience, so that the public, media and politicians may consider a respected BBC broadcasters concerns about reporting of climate change. Which seems to many people to be more about driving an environmental cause, to the detriment of serious critical journalistic analysis of the more catastrophic AGW environmentalist claims.
“I want a genuine debate about the assumptions behind the more apocalyptic forecasts.
As recently as 2005, for instance, the UN said there would be 50 million climate refugees by 2010.
That was last year.
OK – so where are they?
I would like to hear a clash of informed opinion about what would actually be better if it got warmer as well as worse.” – Michael Buerk, 16 December 2011
So who is Michael Buerk
Michael Buerk is a very well know figure in the UK, a senior BBC journalist and currently the chair of the BBC Radio 4 program – The Moral Maze and arguably one of the most respected BBC broadcasters of his generation.
He is perhaps most well-known for his series of reports of the Ethiopian famine in Africa 25 years ago and as the main presenter of the BBC’s flagship evening news program (BBC Nine O’clock News 1976 – 2000, BBC Ten O’clock News 2000 – 2010). Earlier this year Michael Buerk expressed a number of concerns about the BBC, whilst reviewing the memoirs of a fellow BBC journalist Peter Sissons.
“The veteran presenter accuses staff at the Corporation of an inbuilt ‘institutional bias’ and warns that they read the left-wing Guardian newspaper as if it is ‘their Bible’.
Reviewing a memoir by his former colleague Peter Sissons, Buerk endorses his view that the BBC is warped by the prejudices of its staff.”
“… This year Michael Buerk in his review of a fellow BBC journalists Buerk also accuses BBC reporters of an ‘uncritical love affair with environmentalism’. – Daily Mail, April 2011
Anyone who has followed the debate about climate change for any length of time, will have come across the argument put forward, that the older generation don’t care about ‘climate change’, because they are selfishly in denial of the damage their lifestyle will cause future generations. Michael Buerk expresses his resentment of this accusation in his Fifth Column podcast.
“I resent the implication that the exercise of my reason is “inappropriate”, an act of generational selfishness, a heresy.
I want a genuine debate about the assumptions behind the more apocalyptic forecasts.” – Michael Buerk, 16th December 2011
It is very much my personal opinion that anyone expressing these thoughts of ‘generational selfishness’ to Michael for his concerns, should take a moment’s pause and ask themselves why he is saying this, what are his motivations. A quarter of a century ago (1984), Michael Buerk made a series of groundbreaking reports about the famines in Ethiopia for the BBC, one of those video reports inspired Bob Geldof to start the Band Aid and Live Aid Campaigns for famine relief. Those readers in the USA, of a certain generation may remember the CBC ‘The Famine Video’ using video footage from Ethiopia, forever now associated by the Cars song ‘Drive’.
Michael Buerk has reported first hand on famine, death and suffering on a truly biblical scale caused by droughts in Africa and man actions (war, drought, politics not climate change) In light of this, the following extracts from Michael’s podcast that refer to droughts and Africa particularly drew my attention.
“….Droughts aren’t increasing. There are fewer of them, and less severe, than a hundred years ago….”
“….Where do you see reported the extraordinary greening of the Sahel, and shrinking of the Sahara that’s been going on for 30 years now – the regeneration of vegetation across a huge, formerly arid swathe of dirt poor Africa….”
I can only imagine Michael’s thoughts on those that would accuse him and others of ‘generational selfishness’ for raising concerns about the media reporting of climate change and would perhaps seek to label him as some sort of uncaring old climate sceptic for expressing his concerns about his perception of the BBC’s ‘culture of environmentalism’.
I wonder what Michael Buerk’s thoughts are, for those in the media, or politicians, or media climate scientists who advocate for the ‘climate change cause’, that seize on any natural disaster, drought, famine, flood. Then instantly pronounce it as proof of man-made climate change, then seek to use these disasters to push for climate policies, despite expert opinion that it is not possible to attribute these current extreme weather and climate events to man-made climate change.
It is perhaps a sad reflection on the BBC the fact that he is broadcasting these thoughts at a new media blog – The Fifth Column – and not at the BBC. As I would think it a perfect topic for the BBC’s – The Moral Maze.
The Fifth Column – About
Welcome to The Fifth Column
The name implies a spirit of subversion.. .
Yes, but not in the predictable, ultimately tiresome, sense of arguing with everything and everybody.
Rather in what will be the refreshing sense of saying the un-sayable or asking the un-askable when nobody is saying it or asking it because of behind-the-scenes’ deals, old pals’ agreements, eyebrow-raising scruples, or an unwillingness to offend or to be offended.
Our business will be stories, issues, controversies in the public consciousness. Which deserve more, sometimes deeper, investigation. Truth, after all, is hard to find – it’s usually subjective, and always complex.”
The Fifth Column Blog is apparently only a couple of months old, and at time of writing has only a 113 Twitter followers:
“Thought provoking podcasts on topical & controversial issues, with contributions from some of the most respected names in UK journalism as well as new talents.” Twitter Bio:
I wrote an article recently at WUWT – ‘Climategate 2.0 – Impartiality at the BBC’ explaining how I believed that the culture of environmentalism has perhaps taken hold at the BBC. It is easy for the BBC to dismiss a sceptical blogger (writing at an obviously easily perceived partisan sceptical blog) concerns about the impartiality of the BBC’s reporting on climate change.
I would just hope that The BBC Trust and the senior management at the BBC would seriously reflect on the concerns expressed about the BBC reporting on climate change, from such an experienced and respected journalist as Michael Buerk.
Podcast – Michael Buerk on the Climate Summit
Podcast Transcript – The Fifth Column –
Michael Buerk on the Climate Summit
The latest so-called Climate Summit, that’s been taking place in Durban, hasn’t made many waves. It could be because global warming seems less daunting if you can no longer afford heating bills. It could also be that we’re getting fed up with the bogus certainties and quasi-religious tone of the great climate change non-debate.
Now, I don’t know for certain that man’s activities are causing the planet to heat up. Nobody does. We simply cannot construct a theoretical model that can cope with all the variables.
For what it’s worth, I think anthropogenic warming is taking place, and, anyway, it would be a good thing to stop chucking so much bad stuff into the atmosphere.
What gets up my nose is being infantilized by governments, by the BBC, by the Guardian that there is no argument, that all scientists who aren’t cranks and charlatans are agreed on all this, that the consequences are uniformly negative, the issues beyond doubt and the steps to be taken beyond dispute.
You’re not necessarily a crank to point out that global temperatures change a great deal anyway. A thousand years ago we had a Mediterranean climate in this country; 200 years ago we were skating every winter on the Thames.
And actually there has been no significant rise in global temperatures for more than a decade now.
We hear a lot about how the Arctic is shrinking, but scarcely anything about how the Antarctic is spreading, and the South Pole is getting colder.
Droughts aren’t increasing. There are fewer of them, and less severe, than a hundred years ago. The number of hurricanes hasn’t changed, the number of cyclones and typhoons has actually fallen over the last 30 years.
And so on.
There may be answers, I think there probably are – to all these quibbles – I would like to hear them.
I don’t want the media to make up my mind up for me.
I don’t need to be told things by officialdom in all its forms, that are not true, or not the whole truth, for my own good.
I resent the implication that the exercise of my reason is “inappropriate”, an act of generational selfishness, a heresy.
I want a genuine debate about the assumptions behind the more apocalyptic forecasts.
As recently as 2005, for instance, the UN said there would be 50 million climate refugees by 2010.
That was last year.
OK – so where are they?
I would like to hear a clash of informed opinion about what would actually be better if it got warmer as well as worse.
Where do you see reported the extraordinary greening of the Sahel, and shrinking of the Sahara that’s been going on for 30 years now – the regeneration of vegetation across a huge, formerly arid swathe of dirt poor Africa. More warming means more rainfall. More CO2 means plants grow bigger, stronger, faster.
I would like a real argument over climate change policy, if only to rid myself of the nagging feeling that sometimes it’s a really good excuse for banging up taxes and public-sector job creation.
It’s not happening. It’s a secular issue but skepticism is heresy.
They talk the language of science, but it is really a post-God religion that rejects relativist materialism.
Its imperative is moral.
It looks to a society where some choices are obviously, and universally held to be, better than others.
A life where having what we want is not a right and nature puts constraints on the free play of desires.
To reinvent, in short, a life where there is good and bad, right and wrong.
As with all religions, whether the underlying narrative is true, has become beside the point.” – Michael Buerk, 16 Dec 2011 Transcript
Chris Edwards says:
January 4, 2012 at 3:41 pm
Care to be a little more precise, and intelligible, with your comment, Chris?
Interesting – for those who didn’t see the climate section of the series Ice Planet, it’s coverage of the Antarctic was absurdly biased with the total focus being on the warming antarctic peninsula, with no discussion at all on areas of cooling. Surely they know, but decided to report only the facts that supported a particular perspective. No wonder, objective reporters are beginning to ask questions. Reminds me of the old maxim – “You can fool some of the people all of the time and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time”.
Here is a nice article on why the Sahel is greening. Farmers are working hard to restore millions of acres using many techniques.
It is a good read, even with the prerequsite global warming comment, included almost as an afterthought.
http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/oc64ch07.pdf
Jim G says:
January 4, 2012 at 8:33 am
“Harken back to Sodom and Gomorrah. Cities breed dependency and deviance, they always have. Just look at the left wing vote in the US and where it was strongest in recent elections. Europe is, in many areas and many ways, like a city due to its population density.”
Re deviance: There is the so-called drift phenomenon; simply meaning that persons with certain special interests agglomerate in cities that provide them with what they seek.
Re Europe as a city: We don’t have as much sprawl as the US due to zoning regulations. So even in Germany, densely populated with 200 inhabitatns/km^2, you can find a stark contrast between the megacities and the rest of the country. Due to the drift phenomenon, the smaller cities lose their deviants to the larger ones; keeping them a little (well actually a lot) saner than they would otherwise be.
Hypothesis: The drift phenomenon is self-accelerating, leading to a power law distribution of cities on the scale of insanity. So in a given nation, the most insane city should be expected to be twice as insane as the next insane one, and three times as insane as the third. (I don’t have the resources to prove that, but the succession for Germany would be Berlin – Hamburg – …)
In honor of this, I did a search of the F.O.I.A.-2011 emails for BBC.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/foia-bbc-index-and-false-hits/
One interesting bit? Ok, but only one (out of many)
Working through the entire email one bit at a time. There's a link to an online archive in the article for folks interested in seeing the whole thing. Just click on it, then pick the email number you want to see.
We’re dealing with zealots and sheep. It wouldn’t matter if Jamaica started getting a foot of snow in July, the zealots would claim it was STILL AGW, and the sheep that are following them will still most likely follow them. I do understand that we’re trying to get a few of the sheep to wake up and rub the wool from their eyes, but it gets depressing how the media just hums along to the tune…
Some people are under the mistaken belief that Roger Harrabin has left the BBC. He has not. He is now their “Environmental Analyst”… whatever that is.
The BBC’s charter requires it to be politically neutral. But the BBC does not believe that it is required to be neutral as regards climate change (where it acts as a propaganda machine for AGW), the European Union (where Eurosceptics are still sometimes referred to as Europhobes), the Euro (although it is beginning to prepare for the inevitable withdrawals and possible collapse), the USA (which can do no right and where Democrats are always good and Republicans always bad), Israel (where daily rockets aimed at civilians in cities such as Beer Sheva, Ashdod and Ashquelon are routinely ignored but a single airstrike in response gets headline treatment or where all TV pictures of Gaza show the appalling living conditions of its poorest citizens but never the well-stocked shops in the fancy Mall(s), the swish villas and posh hotel). These are some of the more permanent biases but others, some temporary, include anti smoking, healthy eating, anti hunting, against cutting public expenditure, pro any demonstrations and sit-ins which support the same biases as the BBC while ignoring or playing down any counter demonstrationtion.
Michael Buerck has showed tremendous courage.
BBC Pension Fund:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mypension/sites/helpadvice/pages/top-100-investments.shtml
http://www.iigcc.org/about-us/members
UK Sceptic says: January 4, 2012 at 2:53 pm
Agree with much, but think it will get worse before there’s a hope of it getting better. What matters is that we use our energies to keep sound commonsense principles, look the monster in the face, speak the truth clearly, try and cooperate with Great Spirit / God, and stay unfailingly courteous. Like our host here. As I understand it, this is what builds up the requisite power skills – and enables what I can only call Grace to appear – as did FOIA in our case. It takes time – but well-prepared long-suffered reform is infinitely preferable to revolution.
DirkH says:
January 5, 2012 at 12:27 am
“Hypothesis: The drift phenomenon is self-accelerating, leading to a power law distribution of cities on the scale of insanity. So in a given nation, the most insane city should be expected to be twice as insane as the next insane one, and three times as insane as the third. (I don’t have the resources to prove that, but the succession for Germany would be Berlin – Hamburg – …)”
Dirk,
I like your theory in general but here in the US, not so much. LA with about 12mm folks is probably at least 2x as insane as NYC with about 20MM people. This is, of course, my personal evaluation as I am also lacking in the resources to prove this. Most informed and sane people would agree, however, that San Francisco is by far the most insane city in the US with perhaps only 1-2mm population. Parts of California are, as you probably know, badly infected with insanity by the movie industry and the Hollywood thing. So that may account for it not following your linear progression. In any event, your analysis is much more scientific than much of what I see from the Warmistas.
Dirk,
Excuse me, I guess that would be a nonlinear scale.
I wait to hear criticism of the AGW narrative. Tie pure negativity and doomsday prophesy. The Man-Made Global Warming scam becomes evident when one looks at the narrative that spews from the alarmists. Only evil and suffering can come from a warmer Earth.
Why can’t it be :
“Congratulations children, The Energy sources that fuel our economies and our prosperity, give us long life and comfort, these fossil fuels will also cause our planet to warm gently, about 4 degrees over the next century. What luck!
With the warmth and extra CO2 for plant life, millions of acres of tundra will become forests. Millions of acres of frozen steppe will become arable. Starvation will end. Prosperity will reach even the poorest people. We must keep searching for and burning oil and coal so we can improve our climate and prosper. Humanity will become wealthy. With this wealth we can preserve habitat for animals, protect the rain forest. We will clean the oceans and the land. Our future is bright. We are entering the age of abundance. “
The Earth is not warming of late though. Too bad.
The Man-Made Global Warming scam becomes evident when one looks at the narrative that spews from the alarmists. Only evil and suffering can come from a warmer Earth.
Why can’t it be : “Congratulations children, The Energy sources that fuel our economies and our prosperity, give us long life and comfort, these fossil fuels will also cause our planet to warm gently, about 4 degrees over the next century. What luck!
With the warmth and extra CO2 for plant life, millions of acres of tundra will become forests. Millions of acres of frozen steppe will become arable. Starvation will end. Prosperity will reach even the poorest people. We must keep searching for and burning oil and coal so we can improve our climate and prosper. Humanity will become wealthy. With this wealth we can preserve habitat for animals, protect the rain forest. We will clean the oceans and the land. Our future is bright. We are entering the age of abundance. “
The Earth is not warming of late though. Too bad.
“I want a genuine debate about the assumptions behind the more apocalyptic forecasts.
Exactly: open, public, legally adjudicated debate between scientists: presidential style, not Oxford smart ass rhetoric!
In Australia the cowards in govt and their lackey scientists refuse debate because the science is settled.
My God. .. Blind leading the dumb in white coats.
Hi Barry Woods,
Thanks for the above, Hi this is James from the BBC World Service programme “World Have Your Say”.
We’d like your thoughts on this topic today.
What sort of reaction do you have to this story?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4250264a4560.html
Posters of a newborn baby have provoked controversy in Italy because the infant is shown wearing a wristband name tag with the word “homosexual” written on it.
The poster is part of an anti-discrimination campaign launched by Tuscany’s regional government.
Some gay rights groups have welcomed the campaign – but conservative politicians have condemned it.
Is this kind of campaign going a step too far in confronting prejudice? Or are shock tactics the only way to confront prejudice? And, should we confront prejudice?
How do people tackle prejudice in different parts of the world: racism, homophobia, prejudice against disabilities?
Come and take part in our interactive discussion show – email me james.harrod@bbc.co.uk or call +44 207 557 0635.
Keep up the posts!