UPDATES ARE CONTINUOUSLY BEING ADDED at the end of this story. Check below.
WUWT readers may recall this post last week:
The Secret 28 Who Made BBC ‘Green’ Will Not Be Named
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.
Now, thanks to the Wayback machine and Maurizio Morabito (omnologos) we can now read the list that the BBC fought to keep secret. [Damn those mischevious bloggers 😉 ]
This list has been obtained legally. (link to Wayback document.) My heartiest congratulations to Maurizo for his excellent sleuthing!
Maurizo writes: This is for Tony, Andrew, Benny, Barry and for all of us Harmless Davids.
The list from: January 26th 2006, BBC Television Centre, London
Specialists:
Robert May, Oxford University and Imperial College London
Mike Hulme, Director, Tyndall Centre, UEA
Blake Lee-Harwood, Head of Campaigns, Greenpeace
Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen
Michael Bravo, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge
Andrew Dlugolecki, Insurance industry consultant
Trevor Evans, US Embassy
Colin Challen MP, Chair, All Party Group on Climate Change
Anuradha Vittachi, Director, Oneworld.net
Andrew Simms, Policy Director, New Economics Foundation
Claire Foster, Church of England
Saleemul Huq, IIED
Poshendra Satyal Pravat, Open University
Li Moxuan, Climate campaigner, Greenpeace China
Tadesse Dadi, Tearfund Ethiopia
Iain Wright, CO2 Project Manager, BP International
Ashok Sinha, Stop Climate Chaos
Andy Atkins, Advocacy Director, Tearfund
Matthew Farrow, CBI
Rafael Hidalgo, TV/multimedia producer
Cheryl Campbell, Executive Director, Television for the Environment
Kevin McCullough, Director, Npower Renewables
Richard D North, Institute of Economic Affairs
Steve Widdicombe, Plymouth Marine Labs
Joe Smith, The Open University
Mark Galloway, Director, IBT
Anita Neville, E3G
Eleni Andreadis, Harvard University
Jos Wheatley, Global Environment Assets Team, DFID
Tessa Tennant, Chair, AsRia
BBC attendees:
Jana Bennett, Director of Television
Sacha Baveystock, Executive Producer, Science
Helen Boaden, Director of News
Andrew Lane, Manager, Weather, TV News
Anne Gilchrist, Executive Editor Indies & Events, CBBC
Dominic Vallely, Executive Editor, Entertainment
Eleanor Moran, Development Executive, Drama Commissioning
Elizabeth McKay, Project Executive, Education
Emma Swain, Commissioning Editor, Specialist Factual
Fergal Keane, (Chair), Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Fran Unsworth, Head of Newsgathering
George Entwistle, Head of TV Current Affairs
Glenwyn Benson, Controller, Factual TV
John Lynch, Creative Director, Specialist Factual
Jon Plowman, Head of Comedy
Jon Williams, TV Editor Newsgathering
Karen O’Connor, Editor, This World, Current Affairs
Catriona McKenzie, Tightrope Pictures catriona@tightropepictures.com
BBC Television Centre, London (cont)
Liz Molyneux, Editorial Executive, Factual Commissioning
Matt Morris, Head of News, Radio Five Live
Neil Nightingale, Head of Natural History Unit
Paul Brannan, Deputy Head of News Interactive
Peter Horrocks, Head of Television News
Peter Rippon, Duty Editor, World at One/PM/The World this Weekend
Phil Harding, Director, English Networks & Nations
Steve Mitchell, Head Of Radio News
Sue Inglish, Head Of Political Programmes
Frances Weil, Editor of News Special Events
For those who don’t know what this is about, read the back story here.
Here is the backup link to the original document just in case the original disappears:
Real World Brainstorm Sep 2007 background (PDF)
============================================================
UPDATE: Now this Climategate 2.0 email makes more sense, as they’ve just been carrying water for CRU and the eco-NGO’s all along. The meeting with the 28 was just a pep rally. From: this WUWT post:
BBC’s Kirby admission to Phil Jones on “impartiality”
Alex Kirby in email #4894 writing about the BBC’s “neutrality”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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
BBC and “impartiality”…”ho, ho” indeed.
UPDATE: ‘TwentyEightGate’ was coined by RoyFOMR in comments. I liked it enough to put in the title.
UPDATE3 – Barry Woods writes in an email to me:
Don’t forget Mike Hulme Climategate email. why he funded CMEP, to keep sceptics OFF BBC airwaves… (below)
Mike Hulme:
“Did anyone hear Stott vs. Houghton on Today, 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 reporting at source.” (email 2496)
let us also not forget, that Roger Harrabin BBC & CMEP – (and Greenpeace Bill Hare) were also on the Tyndall board from 2002 to at least Nov 2005.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/27/climategate-2-impartiality-at-the-bbc/
When did Roger Harrabin step down from Tyndall advisory board?
(and he no made no mention, when reporting Climategate, of connections)
Tyndall were funding CMEP seminars for years to persuade the BBC, so not just that seminar, but years worth of lobbying
UPDATE4: Bishop Hill makes this excerpt from correspondence the “quote of the day”:
We now know that the BBC decided to abandon balance in its coverage of climate on the advice of a small coterie of green activists, including the campaign director of Greenpeace. This shows that the “shoddy journalism” of Newsnight’s recent smear was no “lapse” of standards at all. BBC news programs have for years been poorly checked recitations of the work of activists.
UPDATE5: Maurizo has added some analysis.
Summary for those without much time to read it all: Why the List of Participants to the BBC CMEP Jan 2006 Seminar is important
http://omnologos.com/why-the-list-of-participants-to-the-bbc-cmep-jan-2006-seminar-is-important/
UPDATE 6: Maurizo asked to add this –
I have not “given” the 28Gate list any importance. In fact, not one of the bloggers and journalists and commenters has “given” the 28Gate list any importance. It has been the BBC that GAVE IMPORTANCE TO 28GATE by spending so much money on lawyers. Therefore, 28Gate is important.
The “public good” is determined by sustainability scientists and policy makers, who must pass legislation in cases where uncertainty is high but where the public might be harmed by some technology or resource.
The role of science is to determine environmental risk. The politicians apply the Precautionary Principle to protect the environment and the public.
A few thoughts and responses to earlier comments:
1 – Way up thread, someone asked what ‘Open University’ was. For those unfamiliar with the UK and BBC output, The Open University is a genuine university although it operates in a unique manner. Undergraduate students enroll and undertake their courses by distance learning (mostly part time), with some of the course material traditionally provided as televised lectures shown overnight on the BBC. Open University degrees are comparable in standard and status with those of any other UK University. Post-graduate and research work is undertaken in a manner similar to any other University (I had an interview for a PhD place there – it was weird being in a University with no students and very few teaching facilities, not helped by it being in Milton Keynes, possibly the oddest town in Britain).
2 – I’m not surprised by the presence of a number of environmental advocates and similar within the list of ‘Experts’. I am though surprised at just how few scientists there were. Someone listed the following above:
Scientists – 6
Robert May, Oxford University and Imperial College London
Mike Hulme, Director, Tyndall Centre, UEA
Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen
Michael Bravo, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge
Steve Widdicombe, Plymouth Marine Labs
Eleni Andreadis, Harvard University
Now I make that TWO active scientists: Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, a specialist in ice measurments, and Steve Widdicombe, a biologist/ecologist involved in ocean acidification research.
Professor May was a zoologist, and appears now to be mainly interested and active in the politics of science.
Mike Hulme is sort of the British equivalent of Roger Pielke jr – interested in the science/policy interface more than the pure science.
Michael Bravo similarly is more about politics and humanities than anything that passes my description of science (see http://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/people/bravo/ ).
Eleni Andreadis – a political science student, who was completing her Masters degree at the time of this seminar (appears to be a co-worker with Dr Smith of Open University).
3 – I think the bigger issues about this are not that the BBC sought and obtained partial advice regarding climate change (hardly a shock to anyone here), but relate to the financial workings involved in:
A – Fighting FOI release of the list of delegates for a document that turned out to be publicly accessible.
B – Probably more seriously, the indirect manner that this seminar was Government funded and so allowed the DFID (through funding the IBT, the hosts of this seminar) to influence BBC editorial policy.
4 – If this is to become a serious issue in the MSM, it needs to be picked up by someone other than Booker, Dellingpole or David Rose (Mail on Sunday). These guys are too easy for the mainstream to ignore because of their past history on climate change issues.
richardscourtney says:
November 13, 2012 at 9:01 am
Explain specifically which comment you think is a diversion, please. Don’t you think the BBC has failed to report the scope of the issue, by not reporting on the economically destructive policies perpetrated on the public? It seems the omissions are the other half of the failed reporting to me.
mischevious = mischievous, though so many people pronounce it incorrectly now, they might as well change the spelling.
Roger Knights says:
November 13, 2012 at 2:22 am
Can we call it the BooBoosomething? How about Auntie B’s great BooBoo.
cd_uk says:
November 13, 2012 at 2:16 am
As a license fee payer why the hell am I paying for all this, all on the say so a few activists? I’m getting really pissed off now.
_______________________________________
Seems like a great rally cry to just plain kill the BBeast. Why should citizens pay for government indoctrination from idiots who as Delingpole says…
Regarding the idea of the government deciding what information you need to hear, and fixing up a healthy diet for you, as decided by their media dieticians:
Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law buddy of Obama, was our Regulatory Czar. Sunstein has a couple views: first, he steps beyond our founding father principles to decide that they wanted a govt that was founded upon citizens who could be involved in govt – voting etc. – if and only if adequately knowledgeable on the issues of the day, and in the old days, there was not much interference to being up-to-date, so the founding fathers did not express this dimension of tehir views much, and instead focused on the liberty and direct aspects of involvement, such as electoral college, etc.
Having decided that the founding fathers had a tacit necessity for any citizen to be sufficiently informed on a range of issues, Sunstein makes the case that nowadays, each of us can stick ourselves in a media echo chamber, and so fail to be fully informed. Especially in need are those who disagree with Sunstein on issues such as global warming (see his ‘conspiracy theories’ writing).
So, he arrives at the “liberal” view that we ordinary people do not know better, so the govt has to develop media to feed us, so that we are sufficiently informed to participate in participatory democracy, or deliberative democracy.
This is where the ‘progressives’ are headed.
Here is a quote from 2001, with link if intersted:
http://bostonreview.net/BR26.3/sunstein.php
“The basic issue here is whether something like a “public sphere,” with a wide range of voices, might not have significant advantages over a system in which isolated consumer choices produce a highly fragmented speech market. The most reasonable conclusion is that it is extremely important to ensure that people are exposed to views other than those with which they currently agree, that doing so protects against the harmful effects of group polarization on individual thinking and on social cohesion.”
More is in other sources, such as infotopia, a book of his.
Many who are fortunate enough not live under the BBC regime probably cannot appreciate that whether the names are made public or not is as far away from the point as it is possible to get. The FOI battle was always about the BBC, as it is with all institutons in the UK, keeping itself unaccountable, period. Serfs need to be reminded of their place, often.
Simples.
@Bosse Johansson
” I do not think the media will pick up on this as long as it is described as “BBC lied about the secret meeting attendance” since it is too much of interpretation of who said what, and the BBC is sure to have used some weasel words in their descriptions. Too difficult. …..Why not describe it as the joke it is: “BBC hired 6 lawyers to refuse a blogger’s FOI request in court only to have the document found by another blogger on the internet a week later…”
Some possible titles:
“BBC spend millions in lawyer fees to hide a file that was in the web.”
(some British put a FOIA for how much money spent in that case)
“British Court denies a FOIA request for a BBC file that was online.”
Then they should stop broadcasting around the world spreading propaganda regarding co2.
For your information I used to work at the BBC Television Centre in White City, London.
This doesn’t help Michael Mann’s case against Mark Steyn.
If cover-ups of paedophilia and climate porn go hand in hand at the BBC (so to speak), why should Penn State be any different?
Richard LH says:
November 13, 2012 at 2:34 am
OK – sanity check. I can’t count. I think it is a 6-22 split.
Specialists – 28
Scientists – 6
Robert May, Oxford University and Imperial College London
Mike Hulme, Director, Tyndall Centre, UEA
Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen
Michael Bravo, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge
Steve Widdicombe, Plymouth Marine Labs
Eleni Andreadis, Harvard University
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
AHHHhh but are they CLIMATE scientists. The Oregon petition gets chucked because it is not CLIMATE scientists, the 97% poll was massaged to only include well published CLIMATE scientists, Goose and Gander and all that.
Robert May, Oxford University – Professor of Zoology – Not a climate scientist.
Mike Hulme UEA – Professor of Climate Change in the School of Environmental Sciences, BSc in Geography, PhD in Applied Climatology, Not exactly a heavy weight in physics and math but we will count him (1)
Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen – Reconstruction of climate records from ice cores and borehole data, Continuum mechanical properties of anisotropic ice. Ice in the solar system, M.Sc. in Geophysics, Copenhagen University; Ph.D. in Geophysics, Copenhagen University. (2)
Michael Bravo, University of Cambridge – Ph.D., History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University 1992, M.Phil., History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University 1987, B. Eng., Telecommunications Engineering, Carleton University 1985 Not exactly a heavy weight either. I would not count him as anything but an “advisor” on the HISTORY of science.
Steve Widdicombe, Plymouth Marine Labs – leads the PML strategic science area Marine Life Support Systems, marine ecologist. one of his papers is Predicting the impact of ocean acidification on benthic biodiversity: What can animal physiology tell us? Not a climate scientist just a Activist in a labcoat but I will count him as (2 1/2)
Eleni Andreadis, Harvard University – I had trouble finding this person. but Bishophill did find her. Eleni Andreadis, Harvard University was actually an undergraduate “specialising in documentary film making.” So not a scientist at all.
So you sort of could maybe make a case for 3 maybe 4 CLIMATE scientists but that is really stretching things.
Zeke says:
November 13, 2012 at 8:32 am
“It is merely an interdisciplinary combination of researchers and social scientists and artists who are working together for the public good, in an effort to create a sustainable planet.”
Bravo! Funniest thing I’ve read in a long time.
Philip Foster (Revd) says:
November 13, 2012 at 2:45 am
Oliver Cromwell’s dismissal of the ‘Rump BBC’ :
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Oh that lends itself to this so well with a slight change of a few words, especially with the Church of England sitting in on the scam.
Gale Combs says:
November 13, 2012 at 9:45 am
Roger Knights says:
November 13, 2012 at 2:22 am
Can we call it the BooBoosomething? BBC, three strikes and you are OUT, or is that too American?
Zeke says November 13, 2012 at 9:13 am
With great respect to RichardsCourtney (I won’t continue FTT)- and none to you, Zeke, that is just a crap-load of b*llox and spoken by an anti-democracy fool! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
I hope you are not serious on this.
There has to be some denial of access to broadcast on such an influential medium.#
WUWT/CA and many other sites prevent posts on e.g. barycentre, etc. Or if sufficiently controversial have vast disclaimers in the headers.
Would it be sensible to have programmes made by birthers, flat earthers, area 51ers, moon landing disbelievers.
You would seem to want a programme put out without BBC editorial control with no comments from the other side. That way leads to broadcasting madness. How many more MMR vaccine disinformation deaths would there be? How many dieing from alternative therapies that do not work?
Would you give pressure groups access to such a medium in an uncontrolled manner such as you are suggesting?
Reading the comments here is just unbelievable!
Roger Knights says:
November 13, 2012 at 2:52 am
The demand of the BeeBeeFee Slayers should be for civilian oversight of the BooBooWhee, the civilians being chosen at random from the list of subscribers. I.e., for a form of demarchy. (You can look it up.)
___________________________________
The demand should be to kill it completely. Anything else lends itself to the type of abuse we have just seen. Viewers should KNOW who is pushing what POV from the advertisers.
How about “Batsman Bowled Clean”? Or would this be too difficult to connect?
Or maybe “Broadcasters Bowled Clean”
Sergei, Your comment would make sense if the BBC had hosted a competent discussion about AGW. However, in practice what they did was about the same as allowing the wolves to decide on the shepherding schedule.
I would feel sorry for the British subjects of this command and control of thought monster called the BBC, but I’m too sad about the same process in play in the U.S. and the White House. An iron curtain has descended over the truth and reasonable thinking and policy making. The doors and windows are being cemented shut as we whisper online.
[“UPDATE4: Bishop Hill makes this excerpt from correspondence the “quote of the day”:
We now know that the BBC decided to abandon balance in its coverage of climate on the advice of a small coterie of green activists, including the campaign director of Greenpeace. This shows that the “shoddy journalism” of Newsnight’s recent smear was no “lapse” of standards at all. BBC news programs have for years been poorly checked recitations of the work of activists.”]
There is another dimension to this which BH has overlooked…..
The DG has gone, Patten is still tottering, but interestingly it’s descended into old scores being settled. The voices of Savile’s victims were previously silenced by Newsnight editor Peter Rippon dropping the story; now they are almost drowned out by the noise of media scores being settled. Newsnight staff who regarded Rippon as a David Brent figure are rejoicing at his comeuppance; Panorama staff are rejoicing at getting one over their rivals at Newsnight.
And over at ITV, which broke the story the BBC had spiked, it’s trebles all round for the man who commissioned the documentary – ITV director of television Peter Fincham, who was forced to quit as controller of BBC1 in 2007 after the row involving Brenda and photographer Annie Leibovitz. He has had to wait five years for revenge, but better late than never…
Rhys Jaggar says:
November 13, 2012 at 4:03 am
Mr Watts
I hope that your correct opinion that the BBC’s climate change coverage breaks its charter does not result in your site advocating the break up of the BBC ….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I suggest you contemplate the words of a man I hold in very high high esteem Dr. W. Edwards Deming.
“Quality starts in the boardroom.”
The BBC is a news organization and as such holds a very important place in society. ALL the people who work at the BBC had the option of doing investigative journalism and making up their own mind. They had the option of LEAVING as I have done more than once when the company I worked for proved dishonest.
2,500 are expected to DIE from the cold before Christmas and an estimated 40,000 more people are expected to die between December and March in the UK than would be expected from death rates during other times of the year. Those people you are trying to protect have DIRECTLY responsibility for those deaths and they should be booted out in the cold cruel world instead of mollycoddled.
Activist should be held responsible for the results of their activism and BBC is no longer a news corporation but an Activist propaganda broadcaster that has been caught in the act.
sergeiMK:
I am only writing in response to your post at November 13, 2012 at 10:29 am because there may be onlookers who are misled by it.
The subject of the BBC bias under discussion is the AGW-hypothesis. AGW is pseudoscience of precisely the same kind as the issues which you list.
And the subject of this thread is the nature of the meeting which decided to adopt the policy of promoting AGW to the exclusion of scientific reality.
Importantly, the BBC clearly ignored its Charter to adopt the bias.
Richard
PS I will not reply to any response you make to this post. This thread is too important for it to be side-tracked by nonsense from trolls.