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.
Out of the frying pan and into the soup.
A quick way for the BBC to be cleaned up would be to appoint Jeremy Clarkson as chairman and let him crack the whip. 😉
The bbc has far more to. Worry about than this at the moment, sacking and litigation city.
Well done, Maurizio.
Well done, Maurizio!
The trouble for the BBC with this list is that it directly proves coverage of AGW by the BBC was never about the science and solely about delivering a certain message. In fact the less science the better it seems, as they know facts and figures easily turn people off from a message.
It’s a pure call to arms for a one sided message: dam the science, its for the greater good. Unfortunately history is littered with expensive and dangerous events when science has been cast aside for the greater good; this seems to be a lesson hard to be learnt.
With the whole BBCpedo story atm, there is a risk this could get lost in the post – please make sure this is spread far and wide, and ideally to your local political representatives.
And the BBC equivalent in Australia is the ABC, and they have most certainly been up to the same type of shenanigans, as evident in “the drum”
No climate change articles since Aug 29.
2 and a half months of silence.
Trying to get the public to forget the carbon tax.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/thedrum/specials/climate-debate/
So they have gone from abusing skeptics to silencing them.
Who are they, where is the ABC list?????
Maybe its this cannon fodder?
http://theconversation.edu.au/climate-change-deniers-are-rarer-than-we-think-10670
28gate? No. It’s the Voldemort List
Here are some words that rhyme with Auntie”–maybe someone can make a ruthless rhyme out of them:
banty, bacchante, vigilante, panty, ranty, chanty, shanty, scanty, slanty, dilettante
97% of the attendees at this seminar were not scientists.
What a surprise!
Ivor Ward
Well done, Maurizio!!!!!!
You are one of the very rare persons who make me proud of being an “Italian”!!!!
The “impartiality” of BBC is rivalling with that of TeleKabul here in Italy…
For non – Italians: in Italy, we have THREE Government-owned TV, named RAI1, RAI2, RAI3.
The RAI3 channel was designed in the late ’70s to be, in fact, “owned” and controlled by the then Communist Party (now self-renamed “Democratic Party”); in the ’80s, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, RAI3, owing to his “impartiality”, was nicknamed “tele Kabul” after the official Afghan TV, owned by the pro-Soviet puppet government…
Aviva was Norwich Union, and Sir Robert Bignold, head of the Norwich Union, matched funding by
UNEP Finance Initiative: Online Course: Climate Change Risks & Opportunities for the Finance Sector
MENTORS’ BIOGRAPHIES
Dr. Andrew Dlugolecki (Course mentor for weeks 1 & 2):
Dr. Andrew Dlugolecki worked for 27 years in Aviva insurance group, in a number of senior technical and operational posts with UK and international responsibilities, retiring from the post of Director of General Insurance Development in December 2000. Modelling the effect of weather on insurance claims in the 70’s and 80’s led to his involvement with global warming from 1987 onward. He served as the chief author on Financial Services for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its 1995 Assessment Report, and has been an author, reviewer or review editor in later Assessment Reports. IPCC named him as a key
contributor when they received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. He carried out similar duties for the official UK and EU reviews of climate change. In 2009 the UK’s statutory committee on adaptation to climate change appointed him as a member with specialist knowledge on financial services. He chaired three studies of climate change by the Chartered Insurance Institute (1994, 2001 and 2009).
Andrew is a special advisor of the Carbon Disclosure Project and has been an advisor to UNEP FI on climate change since 2001, having written, edited, or project-managed several of their reports and briefings.
He also consults privately from his home in Perth, Scotland and includes UNFCCC as one of his clients.
http://www.unepfi.org/fileadmin/training/climate/cc_course_biographies.pdf
History of the Climatic Research Unit
Acknowledgements
This list is not fully exhaustive, but we would like to acknowledge the support of the following funders (in alphabetical order):
Norwich Union (now Aviva)
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/about-cru/history
Linkedin: David Viner
Programmer Norwich Union / Aviva
November 2001 – March 2003 (1 year 5 months) Norwich, United Kingdom
Senior Programmer Anglia Campus
January 1999 – September 2001 (2 years 9 months) Norwich
Java, PHP, Perl programmer.
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/david-viner/38/255/752
Dec 2008: Uni of East Anglia: Norwich Union (Insurance) sponsors new university chair
Norwich Union and The University of East Anglia (UEA) have announced a new chair within the University’s School of Computing Sciences. The appointment, which is sponsored by the insurer, part of Aviva, will be the Aviva Chair in Insurance Statistics…
The new arrangement will strengthen existing relationships between Norwich Union and the University, and will help to further advance the statistical capability within the business. The initial agreement is for three years…
Professor Vic Rayward-Smith, Head of the University’s School of Computing Sciences, says: “We are delighted to receive this sponsorship. The funding of this chair will strengthen further the already strong relationship between two of Norwich’s most important organisations.
“Statistical techniques are a major research area within the School and for many years, we have worked with Norwich Union helping them to analyse their own customer databases and to develop accurate pricing and marketing strategies.
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2008/dec/Norwich+Union+sponsors+new+university+chair+
May 2003: Uni of East Anglia: Norwich Union signs up WeatherQuest
The market for insurance weather services sees a new player this month, as Norwich Union sign up WeatherQuest to provide their weather claims validation information and weather forecast support services.
WeatherQuest, with its headquarters at the University of East Anglia’s (UEA) School of Environmental Sciences, has been providing a pilot service to Norwich Union for the past six months, and following a successful review has now been signed up for a three-year service.
“We’re delighted to be working with Norwich Union,” said WeatherQuest Managing Director, Jim Bacon. “Our experience is that over 30 per cent of weather related insurance claims are not backed up by the weather records, so we believe we’re helping Norwich Union save money as well as providing them with the daily, up to date information they need…
With weather and climate remaining high on insurance agendas, WeatherQuest benefits from close links with UEA’s internationally renowned climate expertise, with both the Climatic Research Unit and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research also being based in UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences.
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2003/may/Norwich+Union+signs+up+WeatherQuest
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Project Duration: April 2001 to May 2003
Contact: Prof. J. Palutokof
Climatic Research Unit
The work undertaken in this project has been extremely limited by data availability.
•HadRM3H data were not made available until April 2002 (12 months into the project timetable) due to delays in the launch of the UKCIP02 scenarios.
•HadAM3H data are still incomplete.
•Access to insurance claims data has proven problematic. This is primarily due to the fragmented nature of the Aviva group (Norwich Union, Commercial Union and General Accident), a consequence of several large mergers. However, Royal Sun Alliance has provided claims data for five storms…
There is broad scope for further work:
includes:
The insurance industry in particular would benefit from information regarding windstorm activity for earlier future time slices than the 2080s available currently for HadAM3H and HadRM3H e.g., for the 2020s and 2050s.
Socio-economic scenarios designed specifically for the insurance and forestry industries, taking into account factors such as future building stock distribution, insurance coverage and forest cover, could improve the vulnerability predictions for the future.
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/content/final-project-overview-15
Wikipedia: Hubert Lamb
Climatic Research Unit
At first his view was that global cooling would lead within 10,000 years to a future ice age and he was known as “the ice man”, but over a period including the UK’s exceptional drought and heat wave of 1975–76 he changed to predicting that global warming could have serious effects within a century. His warnings of damage to agriculture, ice caps melting, and cities being flooded caught widespread attention and helped to shape public opinion. He gained the unit sponsorship from ***seven major insurance companies, who wanted to make use of the research of the unit when making their own studies of the implications of climate change for insurance against storm and flood damage…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Lamb
Mann (pun intended), the BBC has a lot of “Heads”.
Off with their “Heads”!
How much did this panel of experts cost the licence holder? I am outraged.
@Bertram Felden
“..I think that you are kidding yourselves if you think this revelation will change anything. For one, the timing is really bad – the beeb is so wrapped up in child abuse allegations and hypocrisy at the moment that nothing else will see the light of day ….”
This revelation will certainly not change the AGW activists’ minds. If clear data cannot do this, then revealing one of the underhand tricks they used to force Climate Change down people’s throats certainly will not. But it will help in two ways:
– it will help persuade the average viewer that the BBC is not to be trusted. At the moment the main reason the man-in-the-street ‘believes’ is that he has been told to by an authoritative source. In this case the timing is actually good – people are much more open to believing bad things about the Beeb at the moment.
– probably more importantly, it will have a chilling effect on the pro-global-warming party’s planning. They will now be much more secretive, always looking over their shoulder, much more prone to making mistakes. They are already moving into illegal territory with Heartgate – as they keep on being exposed they will find it harder and harder to expand and keep taking over establishment bodies in the way that they have done up to now. Sunlight turns out to be a good disinfectant, and cockroaches don’t like it….
What this list and the PDF on the link show beyond all doubt is that there has been – and continues to be – a concerted and determined political effort at the BBC to ‘weird’ it’s output across current affairs, entertainment, drama and comedy (in fact, across all genres) so as to favour and to highlight issues such as CAGW (hiding, of course, beneath a veneer of ‘developing world’ issues). It’s subtle; it’s organised and it’s both impartial and political in nature and intent.
The BBC have already decided to break with their historic requirement to provide ‘impartial’, ‘balanced’ coverage to their audience – we know this not only because they have told us they took an editorial decision to ignore climate sceptics, but also because the BBC re-wrote their own Charter to change their historic requirement to provide ‘impartiality’ to something they re-named ‘due impartiality’. A sly, clever move to allow the BBC itself to decide what is and isn’t ‘due’ ‘impartial’ coverage. See, when you run a massive, publicly-funded broadcasting behemoth, untroubled by crass commercial concerns, you can pull these kind of moves and nobody blinks. After all, who is actually paying attention?
Remember; this is a public service broadcaster, funded by what is essentially a tax on every UK household (£145.00 annually – and everyone in the UK must buy a TV license; this in turn funds the BBC to the tune of £4billion annually. If a person refuses to pay for a TV license, and doesn’t watch any BBC output, the BBC can technically have them put in prison for non-payment).
The BBC stand exposed as a blatantly left-wing, ideologically-driven organization, determined to work to their pro-CAGW agenda in the face of mounting evidence that ‘the science’, far from being ‘settled’, is perhaps more patchy, more uncertain, than ever. The BBC are a disgrace and are in clear breach of their mandate to provide impartial, honest coverage of major issues to its audience. They know this: they are just hoping nobody else notices.
But who will ever call them out on this? Who can? They are a huge, faceless organization, resistant to change, indifferent to their critics and with £4billion a year of public money to work with why should they ever have to give a damn..? It’s a tragedy.
Well done Maurizio for tracking this down, and to Anthony for posting it. You have put a smile on the face of this old fool for the rest of the day. The blowing of tens of thousands of quid by a national broadcaster trying to hide the truth has been noted by this UK taxpayer, too.
RBerteigasks “Is it really all that important to make sure that BBC comedies and dramas include the right amount of AGW indoctrination?” – RB, if you had to listen to them, you’d know it was, to them at anyrate. Last Christmas they did a programme about fairies for the kids and managed to invent and lever in the evil “global warming fairy”. They really are that bad.
Head of Comedy present?
Not surprising at all.
Comedy is one of their most effective propaganda weapons. A good example is the BBC’s very popular Now Show which regularly trashes global warming “deniers”.
meant to say:
Sir Robert Bignold, head of the Norwich Union, matched funding by Lord Mackintosh, who made an appeal to raise funds to finance the building of UEA, according to page 52 of Michael Sanderson’s book, The History of the University of East Anglia. you can find Sanderson’s book if u do a search, but i can’t copy from it. Mackintosh & Norwich Union did not put up the whole amount:
4mins 26secs: VIDEO: East Anglian University
The first propositions for a university in Norwich had been made many years before the plans for the University of East Anglia were finally accepted. It wasn’t until national demand for university places increased in the 1960’s – as the post-war ‘bulge’ generation began to reach university age – that the government supplied a grant for the project to go ahead.
The first half of this film, shot in 1962 – the year before UEA accepted its first students – documents an important day in the early history of the University. As regional television presenter, Dick Joice explains from Earlham Golf Course, ‘that morning’ the Lord Mackintosh, Chancellor Designate of the University had launched an appeal at Norwich City Hall, in the hope of raising an additional £1.5 million to supplement the existing government grant…
http://www.archivealive.org/video/index/id/154
BBC’s former Director-General Mark Thompson was interviewed as he arrived at his new job at the NYT. He said he didn’t like to see [snip] was the pratt that did it. Poor ‘ole dozy Entwhistle just stepped into the 6m wide cowpat that Thompson left behind. What a bastard??
Maurizio Mauribito = you are the number 1.
And one can see why the BBC didn’t want to publish the names. The list reveals that activist cranks are ensconced right in the heart of the rotten-to-the-core BBC decision making politburo.
There is already a 28Gate on Twitter https://twitter.com/28Gate
It is a vintage clothing store.
Does B.B.C stand for British [snip] Children? or British Behind Communism?
This is a summary of the IBT seminars 2004-2007. (from Maurizo)
http://web.archive.org/web/20071108153956/http://www.ibt.org.uk/all_documents/dialogue/Real%20World%20Brainstorm%20Sep%202007%20background.pdf?PHPSESSID=646ac9912b785ecd5f9230ff4d8b8ac6
Its interesting to see that there are 10 people affiliated with drama, and 11 with comedy. This would indicate that one of the intents was to incorporate the appropriate, politically correct content, to BBC drama and comedy series.
I find this much more disturbing than the fact that the seminars were warmist group hugs.
And how the heck did Richard North get to one of these?
Re Claire Foster. This link says oit all: http://www.chpublishing.co.uk/feature.asp?id=2396104