The BBC pits six lawyers against one questioning blogger, Tony Newbery of Harmless Sky, who was making an FOI request for the 28 names. In the process, the judge demonstrates he has partisan views on climate change.
Via Dr. Benny Peiser at The GWPF
As expected, the BBC has won its legal battle against blogger Tony Newbery. Newbery wanted the list of “scientific experts” who attended a BBC seminar at which, according to the BBC Trust, they convinced the broadcaster to abandon impartiality and take a firmly warmist position when reporting climate change.
When the Beeb refused to divulge who these people were and who they worked for, Newbery took the corporation to an information tribunal. Now the names and affiliations of the 28 people who decided the Beeb climate stance – acknowledged by the Corporation to include various non-scientists such as NGO people, activists etc – will remain a secret.
…
The other lay judge, former Haringey councillor Narendra Makanji, appears to have strong views on climate-change skeptics, as he tweeted here this year: “Michael Hintze who dines at no 10 is backer of Global Warming Policy Foundation, climate change deniers fronted by Nigel Lawson.” We asked the Information Commissioner’s Office how a lay judge with such partisan views on climate change came to oversee hearings so closely coupled to the subject of climate. Campaigning lay judges would not normally be appointed to sit on such a case, a spokesman noted, and concerns would be legitimate grounds for appeal.
–Andrew Orlowski, The Register, 9 November 2012
Newbery writes about the affair:
Harmless Sky in court – a fair hearing?
Andrew Orlowski of The Register has written a very accurate and fair account of happenings at the Central London Civil Justice Centre last Monday. This was the first day’s hearing of my appeal against the Information Commissioner’s decision that the BBC were correct to refuse a request for the names of the ‘best scientific experts’ who attended their seminar entitled ‘Climate Change – the Challenge to Broadcasting’ in January 2006. This expert advice was cited on page 40 of the BBC Trust’s excellent report ‘From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel: Safeguarding Impartiality in the 21st Century’ as the authority for a very important editorial decision.
I’ve written about this very strange seminar here and many other times at Harmless Sky.
==============================================================
Bishop Hill writes:
Tony Newbery has lost his FOI claim for the details of the attendees at the BBC’s climate change seminar. The decision was issued in an extraordinarily short period of ten days (it normally takes four weeks).
Andrew Montford has written a 26-page guide to the seminar saga, and the subsequent Freedom of information battle: you can buy it in ebook format here for ~75 cents.
Footnote: Given that the BBC is publicly funded, and has denied public disclosure of the information which by law should be public, this list of 28 won’t likely stay secret very long. In every organization, there’s usually a few people with a conscience. As we’ve seen in Climategate, it only takes one. – Anthony
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It probably involves some who turned Bloomberg green.
>> @RoyFOMR says:
>>Surely this is unprecedented or is it just par for the course nowadays?
It’s the “new normal.” Expect a lot more of it here in the US in the next 4 years.
RoyFOMR says:
“Goodness me. Here we have an organisation funded from public funds that has been accused of covering up internal claims of child abuse AND spending large amounts of money to maintain secrecy about its Climate Science investigates.”
Do you mean the Beeb or Penn State?
It was the BBC bias that started me down the road to understanding the AGW fraud. I had been looking for support that it was real as it would have enhanced my career in alternate energy sources. In Jan/Feb 2005 the BBC did a long piece on the melting of the arctic ice which the BBC described as being due to Pacific current changes pushing warm water into the Arctic which melted ice which created a positive feedback loop making the sea even warmer and melting more ice, and so on. Great I thought to myself. Someone is honestly assessing the cause of the warming and ice melting. Nope. After all the discussion of the cause being the Pacific currents what did the BBC conclude? That we need to reduce CO2.
The BBC is only kidding itself if it believes it can spin the news to give a conclusion opposite of common sense and the research. The 76% who don’t trust the BBC (mentioned above) is evidence of this.
If the aguments were truly scientifically compelling, they wouldn’t be afraid share them with the public. In fact, they wouldn’t be afraid to have them compete with opposing arguments in public. This leads me to the conclusion that the arguments must be politically or emotionally based, rather than being based on solid science. If the science was valid, there would be no fear to have their analysis publicly debated. I know of no other branch of science that behaves this way. I have read and watched hundreds of pieces over the years dealing with everything from string theory to genetics, presented for the layman, almost always chronicling many past and present contoversies, disagreements and uncertainties. Why is nothing ever done like this with climate change? The only thing we’re ever presented with is a simplistic little picture of solar rays bouncing off the earth and being absorbed by CO2. The articles and programs then go on with excruciating details of how this is going to cause the world to end, without ever questioning the premise. Odd. Truly odd.
“The other lay judge, former Haringey councillor Narendra Makanji”
Anyone from outside the UK wont know anything about the London district of Haringey
I wish they could as they would realize the significance of what this woman’s politics would have to be, to have been elected to this council.
Absolutely disgusting that the BBC can do this. But then they always have been and always will be the propaganda arm of the status quo /government. Any notion of impartiality is a joke.
Please follow up this post with an article about the way the BBC covered up for the pedophile Jimmy Saville, so that readers of WUWT can really appreciate the full glory of the BBC
How can it possibly be right to take the decision to give no time to the climate realist viewpoint and furthermore, go to court to defend the identities of the cabal of people who actually were the only input into that decision? How can you possibly defend giving something as important as the global warming question, the same unique protection you once gave to the policy of appeasement?
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/11/09/the-bbc-aunty-beeb-or-mummy-knows-best/
Pointman
How many more is the BBC hiding in its closet ?
The Savile affair was a “guarded secret” for many years because of a “consensus” view to bury it.
The warmists would have us believe they’re correct because of the “consensus” of scientists.
Using Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky’s methods…… Dare I say it????
I thought that 97% of climate scientists believed in CAGW. If all 28 ie 100% of the BBC advisers took that position before the BBC policy was formulated then they were unrepresentatiive of views and hence partial before they became partial. A disgrace up with which we should not put.
Scary stuff there from RT, GingerZilla
http://rt.com/programs/big-picture/climate-change-debunking-denial/
Why did I think RT usually provided something of an antidote to this stuff, or dies it just take extreme positions to rificule thrm ? Im never too sure how to take them.
Should the co2 climate alarmists succeed in harming the economy and increasing unemployment in the US just as the continuing lack of sunspots produce ever deepening cold causing some degree of hardship amongst the American people, I can understand why those advisors who are domiciled in the US would want to retain anonymity given the national gun culture that prevails over there.
Whereas in the UK we treat our national failures and economic destroyers of peoples livelihood rather differently by giving them multi million pound pensions to retire. Something of a time honoured practise over here.
“TwentyEightGate’s” first evelen?
Dr Michael Bravo
Andrew Simms
Richard Black
Dr Joe Smith
Stephen Peake (University of Cambridge)
Dr Matt Prescott
D. Steve Widdicombe of Plymouth University
Robert Andrew Spicer, Visiting Professor, State Key Laboratory, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing…
Joe Smith
Stephen Peake
Just ask’n
oops–nine! Sorry
Brainwashed Broadcasting Company
Blatantly Biased Company
Boo Boo Company
Biased Brainwashed Company
The BBC actively seeking to destroy the very foundations of democracy.
At least they have invested their pensions in their own ignorance of reality.
How is it possible to be so completely taken in by failed climate models which have been getting it very badly wrong since the eighties and are still no closer to reality 30 years on. Presumably they listened to 28 blinkered viewpoints yapping on about co2 and didn’t once see a graph of reality, Hansen’s glorious failure which climate models have yet to improve on.
You would think that if part of either of the ‘B’s in ‘BBC’ had ever stood for balanced that they would have sought more than one viewpoint, or that they would have had a public discussion on the matter. The saying “you cannot legislate against stupidity” comes to mind.
Perhaps WUWT can crowd source the names of the 28. If it turns out that the Sun which does generate heat rather than co2 which doesn’t generate heat is what controls temperatures on Earth, then these guys can be famous, everybody wants their 15 minutes of fame don’t they ?
thisisgettingtiresome says:
November 10, 2012 at 8:38 am (Edit)
Scary stuff there from RT, GingerZilla
http://rt.com/programs/big-picture/climate-change-debunking-denial/
Why did I think RT usually provided something of an antidote to this stuff, or dies it just take extreme positions to rificule thrm ? Im never too sure how to take them.
——————————————————————————————————————
First remember that RT is Russian propaganda that is always designed to reduce American self confidence.
That said I am appalled and astonished to see those three lying and exaggerating on RT. Appalled by the sheer mendacity of all three and astonished that the “team” has realised how poor their plight is that they need to convince a pile of self hating American conspiracists the we need to stop burning stuff because all the sensible folk see right through their nonsense.
Watch it guys. We can counter everything they say with data. Pure data.
They have become hopeless and beyond redemption. Joe Romm pfft.
Some of the BBC’s classical music radio output isn’t bad, although even thst’s not as varied and fascinating as it used to be. And, er, that’s it. The news programmes are biased crap, the science programmes are biased crap, and most of their “entertainment” seems to be aimed at those with an IQ somewhat below a usable average. Oh, and the technical quality of their output has sunk from outstanding to lowest passable. All we have now is a sort of zombie Beeb – it looks a bit like the BBC, it sounds a bit like the BBC, but it no longer has any authority or respectability left, as this farce proves.
Sad. I miss what they used to be, or at least what they used to seem to be.
“The other lay judge, former Haringey councillor Narendra Makanji”
Anyone from outside the UK wont know anything about the London district of Haringey
I wish they could as they would realize the significance of what this woman’s politics would have to be, to have been elected to this council.
*********************************************************************************
Yes, I clocked this too. One of the looniest of loony left councils, beyond doubt.
So, who actually gets to pick the people who sit on an information tribunal?
A Crisis of Trust
John Humphrys interviews the BBC’s director general, George Entwistle:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9768000/9768406.stm
I’m grateful to the BBC, because would it not be for the BBC’s grotesque global warming “climate change” propaganda I wouldn’t have spent time early on and educate myself on this subject.
It must have been just after that global warming policy meeting I started to discover the magnitude of this greatest of all scientific swindle and the political connections between the environmental movement, the politicians, big business and academia.
I remember reading on BBC’s website that frog were dying off in Costa Rica because of global warming.
Knowing that the temperature increase in the tropics should have been modest or maybe even non existent and that frog in Costa Rica could easily cool of by jumping up the mountain 50 meter or so. Costa Rica is hilly.
I asked myself how could the claim that the frogs were dying off because of global warming pass peer-review? Aren’t there any people in academia with common sense anymore?
The die off turned out later to be caused by a fungus.
The number of similar silly reports on the BBC’s website just got worse and worse.
I have to admit that to follow this subject has been most fascinating while at the same time the corruption is scary.
M White:”“You need to be covered by a valid TV Licence if you watch or record TV as it’s being broadcast. This includes the use of devices such as a computer, laptop, mobile phone or DVD/video recorder.”
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/
It says if you “watch or record” but in reality it’s more “own or have” just another tax.”
Not the case. You do NOT need a TV licence to watch ‘on demand’ TV programmes, using any internet device. As confirmed by TV Licensing themselves here:
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/faqs/FAQ103/
If you do not watch ‘live’ broadcasts then you are free to watch what you like at your own leisure.
Chris Wright says:
November 10, 2012 at 4:56 am
Soon I’ll be sending a cheque for £145 to pay for my TV licence…
____________________________
Makes me think of this where a Man writes check on 2-ply toilet paper to settle a bill over a dispute over his water bill.
.
The Biased Broadcasting Corporation has clearly earned its new title.
beesaman
Do you have URL’s I can’t find them!!!
If anybody else finds something, please put url in. particulalry interested in NGO type people.
POSSIBLES:
There is Mike Hulme see Wiki
BBC article on communicating climate change by Mike Hulme Chaotic world of climate truth (2006)
Possibly a representative from Futerra
pdf include an application form for a “Communicating Climate Change” master class in 2006
From Real Climate: (It is worth taking a look at the comments before they POOF)
GAG!
There is a whole manure bucket full of “Communicating Climate Change” conferences for journalists back in 2006. Anyone who does not believe that this was a full frontal propaganda attack only has to read a few of the 3,950,000 results pulled up by an internet search for [attended “Communicating Climate Change” BBC 2006 ]