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.
@Karen Hoffhein
“The world is flat. Does anyone want to interview me? To offer a balanced perspective to all those who say it is spherical?”
No great need. I have just contacted the Royal Geographical Society, who say that your beliefs are completely without scientific foundation, and eccentric to the point of idiocy. So we won’t be including you on our program. If you want, I can send you a copy of their letter and you can talk to them.
Note the difference between the way I am dealing with you and the way the BBC would deal with you. I have conferred with an authoritative source, and given you full details of the reason that I am rejecting your proposal. By contrast, the BBC would have claimed to have contacted ‘top experts’, then fought a costly legal battle to prevent you finding out exactly whom I had taken direction from. Finally you would have found out via a blogger that I had been to a party run by the ‘Doughnut-Shaped Earth Society’, and agreed that I would consider them the experts, and allow no other proposals to be aired on my TV station…..
“The world is flat. Does anyone want to interview me? To offer a balanced perspective to all those who say it is spherical?” Karen H.
Karen, here’s just one science thread to the contrary, from the last 20 years:
Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark publishes on a link between high energy cosmic rays and clouds in the mid 90’s, suggesting a link to climate. Is denounced by the IPCC chair as being “Naive and irresponsible”.
British physicist Jasper Kirkby subsequently proposes a CERN experiment CLOUD, “cosmics leaving outdoor droplets” to investigate the link between galactic cosmic rays (GCR) and cloud formation, using a CERN particle beam and a chamber whose atmosphere can be tightly controlled. Gets and then loses funding, circa ’98, after publicly stating his opinion that the effect could account for from one half to all off the warming attributed to feedbacks driven by anthropogenic CO2.
German/Canadian geochemist Jan Veizer creates an ocean temperature record spanning 500+ million years by analysing oxygen isotope ratios in fossil strata. It correlates very poorly with CO2, and Veizer considers abandoning his research as it isn’t correlating very well with anything known to affect climate. Instead, an Israeli astrophysicist from Israel, Nir Shaviv, who had been investigating GCR and any other possible effect on the Earth supernovae might have, found a near perfect correlation between his plot of Carbon 14 creation (by GCR in our upper atmosphere) and Veizer’s temperature curve, and their 2003 paper, “Celestial driver of phanerozoic temperature” was the result.
Svensmark and associates perform a simple experiment, SKY, in a Copenhagen basement lab, in essence, CLOUD only using natural background radiation and publishes results. Armed with that, Kirkby’s CLOUD funding is restored circa 2007, the apparatus constructed and the earliest results have been published. The science is solid and we’re at least a decade behind where we should be, all because of catastrophic AGW alarmists who interfered in the scientific process.
None of the folks mentioned above are flat earthers, a designation more descriptive of the alarmist crowd. And not one was invited to any BBC AGW reporting policy steering meetings.
>>>kguy
>>>Snog, Marry, Avoid! That’s got to be BBC? Yes! That’s the BBC!!!
Awww, I like Snog, Mary, Avoid — it clearly demonstrates how the liberal Department for Education has completely failed an entire generation of children, and produced ignoramuses who are an embarrassment to a traditional ignoramus.
.
It is worse than johnbuk says: November 14, 2012 at 12:04 pm
In the UK we have to pay the BBC its license fee if we watch or record ANY tv channel on ANY platform.
So if I were to watch or record via a terrestrial, cable, satellite or smart phone, I have to pay to do so, even if I do not watch the BBC…….
UK folks here is your chance to add your name to the petition to scrap the British Bias Corporation.
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/40667
How about?
Do you deny this observation? The longer it goes on the worse it gets. Dig into this particular issue and you will see that if it continues for a few more years then your goose is cooked. It’s over. Don’t believe me, look into the issue over the next few days and you will see my point.
@Karen Hoffhein
“The world is flat. Does anyone want to interview me? To offer a balanced perspective to all those who say it is spherical?”
Not sure you even understand this point of view. it was originally used by skeptics to show that a consensus is often wrong. Later it was used by alarmists to claim that skeptics are stupid because it’s like thinking the world is flat. See the irony?
Karen Hoffhein says:
November 15, 2012 at 6:26 am
The world is flat. Does anyone want to interview me? To offer a balanced perspective to all those who say it is spherical?
Ah yes, someone repeating some propaganda they’ve heard. A clear indicator we have a member of the “there’s one born every minute” club.
You see Karen, the problem with your attempt at an analogy is that it is fallacious. Those that repeat this kind of nonsense only make themselves look bad. Now that you’ve been educated by a couple of comments above what will you do? … As if I didn’t know.
Did the Climate Orthodoxy’s ‘thought police’ take Climate Etc’ off line?
Soon after I posted a comment, ‘Climate Etc.’ was taken off air by WordPress. When the site came back, my comment had been deleted, but apparently no other changes.
There’s more about the sequence of events here http://judithcurry.com/2012/11/14/policy-rhetoric-and-public-bewilderment/#comment-267886
The now deleted comment said:
Did my now deleted comment cause Climate Etc to be taken down for a day?
Did the editor of ‘The Conversation’ lodge a complaint with WordPress about my comment?
Did Professor Stephen Lewandowski or his legal team lodge a complaint with WordPress about my comment?
What really caused Climate Etc. to be taken down soon after I posted my comment, and why has my comment been deleted?
Will we ever know?
How powerful are the climate orthodoxy’s thought police?
Jimbo says: ”UK folks here is your chance to add your name to the petition to scrap the British Bias Corporation.”
Should apply also for the Australian’ ABC botanical name (The Lefty’s Trumpet) Australian Brainwashing Corporation
I accidentally put this in the wrong thread, so for everyone following this one:
OOPS! I accidentally used “fr**dul**t” in a previous post. Lesson: cool off first. Thanks for posting it anyway. I abase myself before the moderator.
I am a U. S. citizen who listens to BBC World Service via NPR. I intend to bring this and the sex scandal to their attention as forcefully as I can, and demand full reporting of both. I also intend to contact the New York Times, especially about Mark Thompson. I am tired from WUWT-TV and the normal hassles.
People in the UK or have “news” provided by the BBC should contact the individuals involved, the attorneys on both sides, the BBC hierarchy, the judge in the case, each of the “specialists”. They should point out some at the BBC necessarily did not tell the truth, the actual policy of the BBC directly violates their charter, and is contrary to their announced policy. They should point out Mark Tompson was paid twice his normal severance fee, “so he would go quietly.” Appropriate quotes from the charter and policy statements should be included. This should be done by both e-mail and snail mail with dated proof of delivery. I don’t know what this is called in the UK.
I am in the process of compiling such quotes. The trouble is this is only tangentially about WUWT’s purposes. Does anyone know where I could post them? I do not want to clog WUWT with extraneous material.
Unfortunately I quickly discovered the BBC was “privatized” in 1997, so technically FOI does not apply. This is foolish as the BBC is funded by taxes via The Secretary of State. Lawyers have always been able to “strain gnats while swallowing camels”. I suggest people in the UK contact their MPs and ask them to apply FOI to the BBC because of this, also to all other tax funded organizations.
Philip Tomas (@BadScience) says:
November 15, 2012 at 12:34 am
Is the BBC covering up something else?
The Telegraph reports that a BBC worker’s son was killed in the recent Israeli airstrike on Gaza.
It is reported that the BBC World Editor circulated this note
“Our thoughts are with Jihad [that is the BBC worker’s name] and the rest of the team in Gaza.”
The worker’s name. My, my. Sure about that? Sorry, but any parent who calls their child ‘Jihad’ is hardly going to be a moderate.
This is another trouble with the BBC, is that it has become a left-wing political pressure group, publicly funded to the tune of nearly £2 billion. In recent cases we had Orla Guerin, the BBC reporter in Israel who was the greatest anti-semite since Joseph Goebbels. And it showed in her reports too. We finally got her shipped off to Pakistan, where the only violence against Muslims was by, err, other Muslims. Now we have a UK enquiry into press standards, where the octopus linking all of the enquiry is Common Purpose – a strongly left wing pseudo Masonic society. And the BBC has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds sending executives to Common Purpose training seminars.
The BBC is no longer a media company, it is a political pressure group funded by us to covertly undermine our lives. It is high time it was closed down.
This is a conspiracy. Document all of this. Twenty years from now all of these folks can and should be sued for damages. Perhaps an American relative of some of the 2,700 dying each year from “fuel poverty” brought on by these wretched people can sue here too. Can you imagine a class-action or RICO (“Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations” Act) suit? Decades after asbestos was used innocently the manufacturers, miners, and industrial users were collectively sued for damages, bankrupting many… The BBC might be out of reach but the individuals aren’t. Neither are Greenpeace and WWF, etc…
That was Entwhistle.
@Jimbo: I think there is a problem with scrapping the BBC. That ends up throwing out the baby with the bath water. As I am certain you are aware, there is a distinct lack of independent, unbiased media in this world. For around 50 years the BBC was bright light in that universe. Something for others to aspire to.
The idea of a media/broadcasting organization that is truly independent and can produce programming that doesn’t have to depend upon ratings and ad revenue for its existence, doesn’t have to be produced with an eye to minimum expenditure/quality for maximum revenue, can report news and current affairs without having to worry about offending shareholders, advertisers or the government is something we should want to encourage.
The BBC’s problems, as with many other current problems is due to what can only be described as piss-poor management by the BBC trust and the board of governors before that. They allowed, and perhaps even encouraged the continued employment of people with an agenda. More egregious still, they didn’t react when those agendas started to drive content and values within the organization, possibly because they agreed with them.
Yes, the BBC has always attracted and employed upper class twits, but in general they used to be able to control their impulses and desires and work for the common good of the BBC and its audiences across the world.
Now we have direct evidence that the BBC trust managers conspired to hide a deliberate act contrary to the charter, either by wilfully lying in commissioning/producing the wagonwheels paper, or by not doing their duty in fully reviewing it and asking the somewhat basic and easy questions.
What really needs to happen is a clean-out of virtually every employee that has had a hand in producing content in contravention of the charter, and hopefully some form of legal action against current and past governors/trust members for gross dereliction of duty.
I am totally in favor of tearing down the BBC as it stands, but equally in favor of re-building it according to principles laid down in its charter.
Funding is really a separate issue. The current scheme seems to be unworkable. There are other possibilities, which don’t include ad revenue (at least, not ads shown on the BBC).
This is fantasic, well done to Maurizo.
I just found this comment on Tips & Notes
Here’s an idea. The UK should pass a law requiring TVs to have a “dongle” that blocks the receptions of BBC broadcasts unless it is refreshed by having an RFID passed nearby it that certifies that a license fee for the upcoming period has been paid. That way, BBC-avoiders wouldn’t have to pay anything, and enforcement costs would drop.
PS: I should have said, the dongle would unscramble a scrambled signal. That’s the simplest and surest way to do it.
Did I hear someone ask where were the scientists and then someone else noted Dorthe Dahle Jensen was at least a boots on the ground scientist? Same old boots and all by the sounds of it-
“From the Earth’s point of view, [climate change] isn’t the problem. The problem is people.”
Well you gotta admit you are a problematic lot of people here at WUWT.
Silver Ralph
“The worker’s name. My, my. Sure about that? Sorry, but any parent who calls their child ‘Jihad’ is hardly going to be a moderate”
So your point is? An innocent child deserves to die because of his name? Your comment is disgraceful. Apologies mods for going off topic but the sneering at the killing of an innocent child is unconscionable. I realise we are a broad (rational, secular and science respecting) church here but there are limits.
“From the Earth’s point of view, [climate change] isn’t the problem. The problem is people.”
That is bordering on a fascist totalitarian statement. The “Earth’s point of view” could just as easily be substituted by “For the Purity of the Fatherland”. It frames things by appeal to a moral absolute that is not open to debate rather than the challenge itself: “from humankind point of view our challenge is to understand and to collectively manage the impact our activities have on the environment in order to balance our needs with long term sustainability and protection of our natural heritage”.
Extremely scary.
Philip Peake re Scrapping the BBC
I think the answer to this conundrum is actually staring us in the face. The question is, why do a fair number of UK citizens wish the BBC to exist? Your comment here encapsulates the issue I think:
“The idea of a media/broadcasting organization that is truly independent and can produce programming that doesn’t have to depend upon ratings and ad revenue for its existence, doesn’t have to be produced with an eye to minimum expenditure/quality for maximum revenue, can report news and current affairs without having to worry about offending shareholders, advertisers or the government is something we should want to encourage.”
I suspect however the issue will be overtaken by events, indeed it already is. TV broadcasting just as the MSM is on borrowed time – the internet is the new medium and I suspect there will be several “providers” who will identify the need and attend to it.
The MSM and BBC have conspired to write their own suicide note (you’ll have read a poll today that suggests “79% did not trust senior BBC figures to tell the truth”). The rest of the MSM, given their lamentable performance over CAGW et al will be no loss.
“the MSM is on borrowed time – the internet is the new medium ”
Have you seen the size of the BBC website?
Alexa Traffic Rank
Global Rank 48
Rank in GB 5
435,835
Sites Linking In
Tallbloke – yes, I’ve seen the BBC website, I’ll even confess I visit it regularly (good for sport).
Interesting position, you run a blog, imagine the costs running a huge site like that! You’ll be aware there have been murmurings for some time now about the perceived iniquity of this situation.
Now the UK has moved from analogue to digital broadcasting all the BBC’s output is delayed relative to real time. Can someone explain the legal difference between a BBC broadcast delayed, say, 2 seconds and one on Iplayer? Which, of the plethora of different ways the BBC broadcasts, at different broadcast delays, is the one any legal judgement of reception licence requirement would hinge on?