BBC: Richard Black’s Farewell
Let’s hope the reporter who replaces him is more balanced.
For those who do not know, Richard Black is / was the environmental and global warming reporter for the BBC .
I’m sorry for the short post; I’m sending it from my phone from a fast food restaurant along Interstate 5.
hat tip to WUWT reader Pat
Good riddance to very, very bad biased journalism.
Anyone interested in knowing what has happened to the BBC, Bishop Hill wrote an essay on this which is essential reading:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/conspiracy-in-green/
£0.75 approx $1 for PDF and Kindle is well spent IMHO.
I complained to Black some time ago about a report of his about Ocean Acidification with rising atmospheric CO2 levels. It was wrong and ignored several important points which I mentioned. He got his mate, the senior course writer, Oceanography at the Open University reply to me calling me all sorts of idiot. I replied to him sating that having just completed the OU Oceanography course I thought I was correct but if the science had changed since the course was written, or the books were wrong, then what was the new data. I got no reply. So bully Black has friends of similar ilk.
Glad he is going. Could have been sooner but—-?
Oceans????
How are you celebrating Shark Week this year?
Black’s position at the Beeb became even more untenable after his gleeful defence of Gleick and BlacksWhitewash highlighting of his outside activities at Rio, Shareholders Forum etc.
The Beeb lost all pretense of impartiality when they closed the Blog of Bloom over 2 years ago http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/climatechange/
I’ll miss him – it was so easy to show how little he knew about climate sensitivity – something he never understood
Well I guess the warmists are fundamentally unbalanced and unstable. They believe that the Earth’s climatic system is unbalanced, unstable and the Earth is heading towards a fiery doom.
I get the impression that there is a lot of “repositioning” going on. The bluster brigade have failed in the frontal assault on climate realism and are being quietly sidelined. Mann on sabbatical, seemingly forever. Black off to the Oceans. Uk Chief “scientist” resigned and changed. I am sure there are more examples but I don’t have time to look it all up. Maybe coincidence or we are about to face a more subtle assault from the sappers now the cavalry have failed. Just a feeling. Too much money involved for the troughers to walk away, but too many visible mistakes by the bluster brigade allowing the public to glimpse snippets of reality through the fog.
My apologies for excessive metaphors. George Orwell will turn in his grave.
Ivor Ward
The BBC still has Harrabin. The Daily Telegraph still gives prominence to Louise Gray and Geoffrey Lean.
Post lunch brainstorm. There’s Shukman too.
Jeremy says:
August 31, 2012 at 8:07 pm
He was pushed out. Changes were made in January of this year after a BBC review which found a lack of impartiality with respect to several science subjects including climate change.
See this article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/16/bbc-david-shukman-science-editor
Actually, the review found too much impartiality… you couldn’t make it up. See the article at the link you gave:
” an independent review of the BBC’s science output which concluded that its drive for impartiality lends too much credence to maverick views on the MMR vaccine, climate change and genetically modified crops.”
jonathan frodsham writes: “Good riddance to bad rubbish”.
The BBC should be closed down and in Australia the ABC. It gets my goat that they spend my tax money on propaganda .
And I would add our own National Propaganda Radio (NPR) to the list. Why can’t the “free” world’s governments keep their mitts off of “news”/disinformation?
eyesonu says:
August 31, 2012 at 12:56 pm
Black, Mann, Hanson, and one other I can’t think of his name at the moment, they all look alike. Is there some kind of genic link?
__________________________
They have common ancestry with Homer Simpson?
Bye folks and thanks for all the fish!
DaveE.
Bring back David Bellemy ……. oh forgot they sacked him for refusing to promote C02 GW
They’ll most likely now take a more cunning subtle ‘tack’ to promoting the perseption.
After all C02 is £34 billion a year to the UK tax coffers & apparently only spend £4 bill on green issues & I would bet half of that goes to keep various climate change committees in place.
So they’ll not want to loose that.
This is the BBC we are talking about. There is as much chance of getting a balanced replacement as there is of Southend United winning the FA Cup!
TWE says:
August 31, 2012 at 1:33 pm
eyesonu says:
August 31, 2012 at 12:56 pm
Black, Mann, Hanson, and one other I can’t think of his name at the moment, they all look alike. Is there some kind of genic link?
You mean Black, Mann, Hansen and Schmidt – Yes they all do look strangely similar.
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It’s because they all smile at you the same way, while sneering at you on the inside (because they believe they’re so clever and know so much more than you do).
sunsettommy says:
August 31, 2012 at 7:24 pm
“Does anyone really hope that the BBC will go rational and decent and hire someone rational and decent to replace an irrational and indecent man?”
No, I don’t. No way.
kwik says:
September 1, 2012 at 10:04 am
sunsettommy says:
August 31, 2012 at 7:24 pm
“Does anyone really hope that the BBC will go rational and decent and hire someone rational and decent to replace an irrational and indecent man?”
No, I don’t. No way.
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The BBC is controlled by strings, from above. There is an agenda. To me it’s blindingly obvious.
OK, maybe I’ve just been visiting too many alternative news sites over the years – drunk on conspiracy theories, so to speak. Maybe I should try and watch/read more MSM, maybe I’d get it then
Let’s hope the reporter who replaces him is more balanced.
Triumph of hope over experience Anthony ?
‘Guam says:
August 31, 2012 at 12:48 pm
I thought this was a joke at first, given his well publicised bias, this is a step in the right directiom.
Now we just have to hope moonbat gets moved on :)’
You mustn’t call him Moonbat. I did that in the blog to his latest rubbish about arctic ice and my comment was cut.
You must call him His Royal Highness King George Monbiot (about whose madness no film has yet been made, because of course no madness exists…..)
SgtCupcake says:
August 31, 2012 at 4:04 pm
Tony B:
Care to explain what religious beliefs were throw at you as “facts”? Should all news organizations present “both sides” of everything they cover? So if the BBC started talking about evolution, they should also equally cover creationist nonsense? Perhaps I might agree with this, if they didn’t present the creationist argument as fact(because it isn’t).
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What on earth are you talking about? What has Creationism got to do with this?
The religious beliefs I am talking about are those of the cAGW Cult, who refuse to accept that their beliefs have no foundation in science, yet continue to chant them incessantly in the hope that everyone with a brain will eventually give up and chant along with them.
Clearly you are convinced by the BBC’s specious argument against discussing anything which disagrees with the cAGW religion because “97% of climate scientists agree…blah blah”.
News organisations should be un-biased.
The BBC is not, as it is staffed by so many “believers” like Black.
And don’t even begin to think about calling me, or anyone else who does not accept the cAGW message, a “Creationist”
Blackout at the Beeb.
Kitefreak says:
September 1, 2012 at 10:29 am
“OK, maybe I’ve just been visiting too many alternative news sites over the years – drunk on conspiracy theories, so to speak. Maybe I should try and watch/read more MSM, maybe I’d get it then”
The BBC journalists got schooled by futerra to report CO2AGW as proven fact, not as a hypothesis. That’s not a conspiracy; it’s a documented published fact.
http://www.futerra.co.uk/
This link used to point to a rather interesting article… but it’s been wiped…
http://www.futerra.co.uk/blog/715
Hint, the wayback machine has a copy…
Scottish Sceptic says:
August 31, 2012 at 3:46 pm
“Good.
When I made a complaint his reply was just insulting.”
Me too. And he took over a month to treat me like excrement. He wasn’t even witty in his rebuffing email.
Hopefully, my license fee will be spent on a more eloquent propagandist from now on.
I often got his articles amended by the BBC and his climate reporting was very very poor, almost always inaccurate… but on other topics he wrote some good stuff…. he has talents so I am not sure why he has wasted the past few years making a fool out of himself on the BBC….
I would love to think my exposing the unprofessional links between Richard Black and Stakeholder Forum had something to do with this wonderful news. But I suspect he just got offered more cash to write stuff.