Story submitted by Eric Worrall.
The BBC, the UK Government Broadcaster, has banned former Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Lawson from appearing on BBC programmes to talk about climate change.
According to a spokesman for the BBC, a series of complaints about an interview in which Lord Lawson expressed climate skepticism, led to a ruling in favour of the complainants by the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Board.
“This ruling found a false balance was created in that the item implied Lord Lawson’s views on climate science were on the same footing as those of Sir Brian Hoskins.”
However, this is not the first time the BBC has gagged unfashionable views.
Sir Winston Churchill, the WW2 leader of Britain, openly expressed the opinion that his views on NAZI Germany were gagged by the BBC, because his concerns about Germany were not what the BBC wanted the British people to hear.
History suggests the tactic will backfire:
According to the article on Churchill’s “gagging” by the BBC;
“There is no written evidence that Churchill asked the BBC for the opportunity to speak out against appeasement. However, he did complain to a young BBC producer who visited him on the day after Chamberlain returned home from Munich. A memo records their meeting. They spent hours discussing the Nazi threat and “Churchill complained that he had been very badly treated… and that he was always muzzled by the BBC”.
The BBC producer who tried to reassure Churchill about BBC bias was Guy Burgess. Burgess was the man who would later become Britain’s most infamous traitor, when he defected to Moscow with fellow spy Donald Maclean.
Story Title: BBC Bans Lord Lawson for Climate Skepticism
One line summary of story: A previous gagging led to disaster
h/t to Jo Nova
Wow. And I don’t use that word frivolously.
Eric/Anthony: The h/t could arguably have been given to one Richard Drake on Bishop Hill on 22nd October 2012. But I’d only read the Telegraph article because of someone else on a blog – perhaps not a climate blog – having pointed to it and couldn’t remember who so fair enough. It stuck in the mind though, as you can tell. 🙂
Wow, indeed.
The BBC is out of control as are most Anglosphere media outlets.
What did Goldfinger say about coincidence, happenstance and enemy action?
There is no pause in how they resist the existence of the “pause.”
There was a pol in the UK Daily Express about the licence fee on Monday. I voted to cancel the payments. If I want world news I now watch China TV on a satellite channel.
The BBC has a pretty poor record on ‘balance’ and has always had a ‘left-leaning’ bias. Churchill didn’t trust them, even in wartime when they were eager to co-operate with him, possibly a result of his political nous. Only a year or so ago, they were exposed as having made a decision to exclude all ‘deniers’ and all ‘unhelpful’ science reporting after a ‘seminar’ in which only one speaker was a ‘scietist’ in the sphere of ‘climate’ and the rest were PR and Advocacy people from Greenpeace, etc. Their reporting on anything ‘political’ is always biased.
I don’t think this is accurate as reported here and at JoNova’s.
There is no “ban” on Lawson. However, what may be more important is that this is about the so called “false balance”. It seems to be that that is declared to “not happen again”.
So this is much broader than Lawson. It is an attempt deny air time to anything sceptical of climate change.
And of course the whole idea of “false balance” is based on the FAKE studies claiming 97% agree on something so general and uncontentious that Lawson would probably also agree on it .
all MSM need to understand how little credibility they have with the general public these days:
9 July: Rasmussen: Only 20% Think Debate About Global Warming Is Over
Voters strongly believe the debate about global warming is not over yet and reject the decision by some news organizations to ban comments from those who deny that global warming is a problem.
Only 20% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the scientific debate about global warming is over, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Sixty-three percent (63%) disagree and say the debate about global warming is not over. Seventeen percent (17%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)…
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/general_lifestyle/july_2014/only_20_think_debate_about_global_warming_is_over
“Fair and balanced”. Yeah, right. The problem is that my british friends all seem to take what’s on the beeb for absolute truth. Just the normal propaganda if you ask me though.
Re Dan’s comment
“What did Goldfinger say about coincidence, happenstance and enemy action?”
I don’t think Goldfinger said anything like that. If he did, he was quoting Simon Templar – aka “The Saint” – of great and glorious memory.
Anyone remember wondering how the populations of the old “Communist Block” could possibly swallow the unrelenting stream of propaganda that spewed from their various institutions including news outlets? It would appear that “they” have become “us”. Yet another example of the ends justifying the means when those who think themselves “good” do battle with “evil”.
What marks this as absolute fascism, among other things, is the total dishonesty behind it.
Hardly a single news article about an environmental issue is aired by the BBC without an activist from Greenpeace or another extreme-warmist NGO being consulted – first and sometimes exclusively – when 99% of the time the arrogant loud-mouthed talking head has zero qualifications other than having been taught to speak by their mother – or by the TV (a large percent of the British population fall into this category). And now we are told that Nigel Lawson – with about as much scholarship as all of Greenpeace put together – is “not qualified” to give an equivalent opinion?
I am British (though not living in Britain) and over the last few years have been driven to the painful conclusion that Britain is no longer a force for good in the world that it once was – for instance in the time of Winston Churchill. Due to the craven submission of our ruling elite to the AGW global power-grab, we are now in the front rank of the world’s fascist regimes. We are now one of the bad guys.
If there is a future D-day for freedom and democracy it will land on our shores.
According to a spokesman for the BBC, a series of complaints about an interview in which Lord Lawson expressed climate skepticism, led to a ruling in favour of the complainants by the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Board.
There are many ways of expressing climate skepticism. There are the sky dragons, for example. Therefore, without watching the interview, I would prefer not to say a thing regarding whether the complainants were right or wrong.
Throughout history, intelligent people understood that enlightenment can only be obtained when freedom of thought and speech are sacrosanct.
BBC’s censorship of CAGW skeptics is not to protect the truth, but rather to hide their ignorance and protect their various political and social agendas.
The CAGW scam is in its death throes, and the only way to keep it alive is to limit skeptics’ freedom of thought and speech that dare expose and question its conclusions.
However, the more CAGW advocates try to suppress free speech, the more desperate they appear and the less plausible the CAGW hypothesis becomes.
I’m actually encouraged to see the BBC’s feeble attempts to shutdown the CAGW debate, because it only shows their anxiety is increasing and that the CAGW hypothesis is not the “settled science” they claim it to be.
The writer Chistopher Hitchens said it best, “My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.”
“[A politician] complained that he had been very badly treated… and that he was always muzzled by the BBC”
Now there’s a first!
For our foreign friends who are unaware of how the BBC is funded:
It broadcasts no paid advertising. Instead every household has to pay a Licence Fee of £145.50 every year, for the privilege of being able to watch broadcast TV. ie any live TV. Even if you watch no BBC, only it’s competitors. UK viewers have no choice in who they pay for their preferred flavour of propaganda.
It’s known colloquially as the “Telly Tax”
OK, now after finding and reading the transcript of the interview (a link should be provided in the article, IMO), it is absolutely clear to me that this decision by the BBC is ridiculous and will backfire.
The trasnscript:
http://www.thegwpf.org/Hoskins-vs-lawson-the-climate-debate-the-bbc-wants-to-censor/
The Bolshevik Broadcasting Cooperative really is a disgrace in a modern democracy and should be shut down, or the license fee to fund it, made voluntary, which would be much the same thing.
I think a FOI request may be needed to find out how many complaints, then skeptics can use the same ‘complaint’ tactic. Further FOI’s can be made to determine the level of complaint to see if there is any bias .. anyone game ?
Looks like the panic is starting to set it.
Why is it, when alarmists start hand-wringing over the GWPF that they seem to pathologically ignore the “POLICY” in the GWPF’s name?
If this approach were to be consistently applied at the BBC then no one could be given airtime on on any matters of policy where they are either not formally qualified in the closest appropriate scientific discipline or hold some kind of alternative/minority view separate from their views on policy.
From an article commenting on this ban. – “So, overall, I agree. Given that how, if at all, we should respond to climate change is a matter of economics and political judgement, not (emphatically not) atmospheric physics (for nothing whatever follows from any climate change model about what policy should be adopted in response to its findings), I entirely agree that when Lord Lawson debates climate change policy with climate scientists there is only one person there with relevant expertise and the other party is, at best, a semi-informed amateur. The relevant expert is Lord Lawson.” – read it all here – http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/andrewlilico/100027585/lord-lawson-the-climate-and-the-bbc-whos-the-real-expert/?fb
Village Idiot says:
July 9, 2014 at 11:17 pm
Did you read the article, idiot?
From the Telegraph article: “The [BBC] spokesman said: “Nigel Lawson has not been banned and nor is there a ban on non-scientists discussing climate change.”
There is not official ban on Lawson, neither is there a mechanism by which the BBC issues “gagging orders”. It would be better to stick to the facts.
There is definitely bias at the BBC and an organised attempt to exclude sceptic views, as was revealed by their secret meeting of their editors, NGOs and the US ambassador.
From the Telegraph article: “Lord Lawson wrote that Fraser Steel, head of the unit, apologised to Mr Chong “for the fact I was allowed to appear on the programme and to make clear this will not happen again”.
None of what I’ve read so far is based on either a written record of a complaint or a document of any decision. Most of this storey is a bunch of hearsay that this getting bigger and better at each retelling.
Daily Mail , The Telegraph, JoNova, now WUWT. More like a game of chinese whispers.
BTW it seems they misspelt the name of the original complainant. The “low-energy expert ” sounds like some stoner who gave his name as Cheech Chong.
He’s probably getting paid carbon credits for growing ‘bud’ in the basement, fertilised by CO2 sequestration.
Throughout history, intelligent people understood that enlightenment can only be obtained when freedom of thought and speech are sacrosanct.
BBC’s censorship of CAGW skeptics is not to protect the truth, but rather to hide their ignorance and protect their various political and social agendas.
The CAGW scam is in its death throes, and the only way to keep it alive is to limit skeptics’ freedom of thought and speech that dare expose and question its conclusions.
However, the more CAGW advocates try to suppress free speech, the more desperate they appear and the less plausible the CAGW hypothesis becomes.
I’m actually encouraged to see the BBC’s feeble attempts to shutdown the CAGW debate, because it only shows their anxiety is increasing and that the CAGW hypothesis is not the “settled science” they claim it to be.
The writer Chistopher Hitchens said it best, “My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my @$$#!.”
The original storey, by Lawson, at the Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2685405/Ive-banned-BBC-Ex-Chancellor-Lord-Lawson-passionate-climate-change-sceptic-accuses-BBC-bosses-silencing-debate-global-warming.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490
About a week after the Lawson appearance that sparked this, the ‘Social Anthropologist’ Christiana Figueres was on the same program. Her assertion that the exceptionally wet winter in the UK was a result of climate change was not challenged, despite it contradicting the views of mainstream climate scientists. That the BBC cannot be trusted to implement it’s own guidelines even-handedly clearly demonstrates how much their ‘balance’ is worth.
The BBC is fast becoming a bad joke in the UK. Just read the stories concerning Jimmy Saville & Stuart Hall, the BBC’s reputation is in tatters and IMHO will only sink further when the people learn about its biases.
Bishop Hill and Tony Newberrry have worked hard at exsposing how the BBC has become infiltrated by the Greens. This essay that can be brought here is well worth a read:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/propagandabureau/
Colour me disgusted by our national broadcaster.
@ Greg Goodman
No the BBC spelled his name correctly
He is Chit Chong, the “GREEN PARTY POLITICIAN”
– click my name to find his Green Party Website c.v.
He has also a vested interest commercial insulation business
which relies upon UK Government and Local Authority “Green”
grant aid, to generate much of its customer demand.
Obviously he perceived that Lord Lawson had threatened his position.
His complaint had NOTHING to do with the veracity or otherwise, of
what Lord Lawson has said in the programme. He simply wanted
the BBC to protect and promote his business, which is …..
www(dot)dorsetdraughtproofing(dot)co(dot)uk
Hmmm.
The BBC and the BBC Trust are just self serving jokes. The BBC gets £3,500,000,000 of public money every year and treats its viewers like idiots.
An interesting point about Burgess, during the period Winston Churchill claimed he was being gagged by the BBC, the Soviets were allies of NAZI Germany, so it is possible the Soviet spy Burgess was using whatever influence he had within the BBC, to provide at least some assistance to the Germans.
The Soviets and NAZIs didn’t fall out until Germany’s surprise attack in June 1941, Operation Barbarossa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa
The BBC has been a propaganda machine for years-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2266188/David-Bellamy-The-BBC-froze-I-dont-believe-global-warming.html
http://inquiringminds.cc/the-bbc-became-a-propaganda-machine-for-climate-change-zealots-says-peter-sissons%E2%80%A6-and-i-was-treated-as-a-lunatic-for-daring-to-dissent
& Professor Steve (snail man) Jones on BBC‘impartiality’ !!!
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-sceptics-get-too-much-airtime-bbc-told-2317718.html
Man Bearpig, yes it would be v interesting to know exactly how many complaints and more, whether the complaints were from ‘outraged citizens’ or activists posing as outraged citizens. The Left has a lot of form, in deviously presenting its bonkers views as ‘normal’.
Not only does the BBC get £3.5 billion in an imposed tax on citizens but it also receives £6.0 million from the E.C which explains its support for this appalling undemocratic institution.
‘Village Idiot’
It may have escaped your notice but it is indubitably true that the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Guardian, the Independent, which represent pretty much every political opinion under the sun are all scrupulously meticulous in censoring anything that doesn’t follow their desired political line.
The BBC is just like all the rest of them.
This is just the latest stage in the BBC’s propaganda campaign. The previous stage was where the two sides of the interview were “climate scientists” and non-scientists. That gave the BBC the opportunity to say that people who understood the science supported CAGW while non-scientists didn’t know what they were talking about and could be ignored. Then people like Lawson showed that they had a good understanding of the real science, so now they have to disappear from the “debate”.
“The BBC is looking like a self perpetuating oligarchy.”
That my friend is a phrase that I will be more than happy to use on a regular basis, with your permission! +100
The fact of the matter is that if sceptics are so wrong, then let them be heard and held to account. Unfortunately, the braying of warmists has reached such levels of ridicule that they cannot stand even the mildest alternative view, without danger of toppling into pile of dung they came from.
Rhys Jaggar – you are right – the BBC is just like the rest of them (ie our national newspapers) in exhibiting censorship.
However, there is a big difference. We can choose which newspaper we buy, whereas we are forced to pay for the BBC if we want to watch ANY live TV.
Because of this, the BBC has enshrined in its charter a statement stating that it must behave in an impartial manner.
The BBC is clearly breaking its charter on a daily basis and we are constantly fed, implicitly as well as explicitly, the global warming propaganda within it programs, including news programs.
Nylo says:
July 9, 2014 at 11:11 pm
According to a spokesman for the BBC, a series of complaints about an interview in which Lord Lawson expressed climate skepticism, led to a ruling in favour of the complainants by the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Board.
There are many ways of expressing climate skepticism. There are the sky dragons, for example. Therefore, without watching the interview, I would prefer not to say a thing regarding whether the complainants were right or wrong.
Well here is the transcript
thegwpf.org/Hoskins-vs-lawson-the-climate-debate-the-bbc-wants-to-censor
Now you can decide if the Green Party has the right to demand Lord Lawson is censored by the BBC
I disagree. Are you watching the same BBC that I am? They recently scraped the bottom of the barrel to find enough sceptics for news stories, everybody got air time. At least Lawson is telegenic, they won’t be letting him go like they did David Bellamy. Scientists do not generally make good TV fodder, the BBC learnt that when they put Sir Alexander Fleming, discoverer of Penicillin, in front of a camera. Everybody was dashing about looking for the clockwork key to wind him up a bit in the hope he would finish at least one remark before they had to run the credits. Mentioning no names one of the climate sceptic spokespeople came across as distinctly dotty when you saw him in the flesh, one seemed inarticulate, vaguely paranoid and one had a distinct flavour of Sheldon Cooper. I do not believe they will want to lose Lawson.
As soon as there is ‘gagging’ or censorship then the red warning light should go on with flashing ‘danger!!’ DANGER!!!! The rest will be history.
Robin Hewitt:
Congratulations on your post at July 10, 2014 at 1:39 am which is an example of exceptionally good concern trolling.
It concludes saying
What you claim to “believe” the BBC will or will not do has no relevance.
This thread is about what HAS done; i.e. “The BBC, the UK Government Broadcaster, has banned former Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Lawson from appearing on BBC programmes to talk about climate change.”
Richard
Natalie Bennett is the leader of the UK Green party. Like Lord Lawson she doesn’t have a climate science qualification either, nor does her predecessor Caroline Lucas. Yet both ladies have enjoyed (and will no doubt continue to enjoy) extensive BBC coverage of their views relating to almost all-things climate change.
It’s pure, political partisanship from the BBC, who are clearly afraid of the impact Lawson and his GWPF are having. Hence, rather than allow him to debate, they simply deny him airtime.
If there’s any justice the Streisand Effect will bite them on the arse.
Fraser Steel-
‘As you have pointed out, Lord Lawson’s views are not supported by the evidence from computer modelling and scientific research and I don’t believe this was made sufficiently clear to the audience.’
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2014/jun/26/commonsense-prevails-as-bbc-upholds-today-programme-climate-complaint
Now you know the real reason – computer models provide evidence of global warming.
BBC4 repeated the Horizon: Global Weirding last night where scientists presented as a fact the link between ‘extreme oscillations’ in the weather without a health warning that the ipcc consensus is that there is best a low confidence in a link between extreme weather events and climate change.
I have just submitted the following complaint:
============================================
The Horizon program presented as a fact the connection between global warming of ‘Nearly 1C’ and ‘extreme oscillations’ in the weather. This is not a view supported by either the Met Office or the IPCCThe scientific consensus is as given by the IPCC is that at best there is a weak link between weather events and global warming. Due to lack of space I cannot post all the quotes from IPCC AR5 that fail to support this but her is a sample:
“Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin”
“In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale”
“In summary, there is low confidence in observed trends in small-scale severe weather phenomena such as hail and thunderstorms because of historical data inhomogeneities and inadequacies in monitoring systems”
“In summary, the current assessment concludes that there is not enough evidence at present to suggest more than low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the middle of the 20th century due to lack of direct observations, geographical inconsistencies in the trends, and dependencies of inferred trends on the index choice.”
=====================================================
Unfortunately the web form only gives you 1500 characters and re-reading I should have put more into the complaint than the quotes.
The BBC needs to see that ‘balance’ works both ways. If they are going to silence rational optimism (H/T Matt Ridley) they have to put health warnings on alarmism that is not supported by the science too.
I’m on a mission. Every ‘expert’ that appears I will be asking why his funding and interests not made clear.
BTW it doesn’t end here. The radio 4 feedback program selected two telephone callers as representative of the complaints. They did not explain that they were both linked to green organisations or that they were likely part of an organised campaign. The Bish has more…but I can’t get over their. His blog is blocked in the work proxy for some reason. 😉
ABC aus is as bad, whole lot deserve to be shut down, not worth the taxes paid to keep them annoying the crap outta the public. their pro labor bias is still strident, recent coverage of refugee issues alone.
on warming theyre rabid.
“It may have escaped your notice but it is indubitably true that the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Guardian, the Independent, which represent pretty much every political opinion under the sun are all scrupulously meticulous in censoring anything that doesn’t follow their desired political line”.
“The BBC is just like all the rest of them.”
……..
No it isn’t. You don’t pay a yearly compulsory fee for any of these.
Regrettably, this is the sort of thing that happens when publicly financed institutions get captured by fringe groups.
The BBC gets big money from the EU as well as charging all UK viewers. 🙁
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/07/08/EU-hands-out-multi-millions-to-the-BBC-global-warming-propagandists-and-the-UN
You couldn’t make this up. They are now therefore going to ban Mr Pachoury, the RAILWAY engineer or Phil Jones the guy whose credentials for computer modelling are that he did a weekend workshop on Fortran in 1972?
And as a former chancellor, Lawson is way more qualified to discuss POLICY fallout than they are.
Though digging into peoples’ credentials here may not be such a bad idea, because the truth is, I’ll stick my neck out here, 97 % of the people talking about this have not looked into the DATA at all.
I think the BBC jumped the shark here, plus the “re -education”. Also when you look at who they’ve got to replace Attenborough. I cannot see how anyone looking into the splicing of historical data and satellite data can possibly have confidence in torturing it to 0.01 of a degree in good faith. They are comparing meaurements done in a canvas bucket with satellite sensors. Seriously how can anyone believe in this as more than a rough approximation?
And as to the fact that Lawson’s views are not born out by the computer modelling, that is the whole point. Lawson’s point is that REALITY is not born out by the computer models.
I no longer have any confidence in the BBC.
The ABC in Australia is known as the ALPBC (Australian Labor Party Broadcasting Commission). If you want to have a vomit for some reason or other, just turn it on any night and watch its endless gushing of politically correct diarrhea.
Sorry I forgot, Mr Pachoury the well known railway engineer and soft porn author is more credible than Lawson, or Anthony Watts or Big Mac-Intyre?
Guess what, when I wrote Mc, my spell check offered me McCarthyism. My spell check is on to something. George Orwell was pretty prescient too.
Anyway, sorry, rant over, but I used to so love the BBC and Its wildlife programmes. It’s been killed by political correctness. What they call “diversity ” I call monoculture..it’s worse than the 1950s
Rhys Jaggar
“The BBC is just like all the rest of them.”
Excuse me the rest do not get £3.5B of public funding and have a charter that is meant to ensure impartiality!
I thought the BBC plus their merry band of loyal warmists and fellow fraudsters.
Would be over the moon at being given unlimited wacks at us skeptics while we are sitting right there in front of them.
They could lecture us on their collective scientific superiority and how wrong we are with hard scientific evidence of that superiority.
They could slap us down and ridicule us live on national tv in the flesh for our rediculous common sense attitude to a non existent problem.
But no.
Instead they attempt to muzzle those that question the fraud and its motives.
With nothing to hide one would think the transparency of open debate would suit the warmists and alarmists.
There goes that common sense thing in me again.
It will end in tears for all who support this fraud and that end will not be pretty.
It will fell governments and irapairably damage good scientists.
Countrys will be bankrupted.
At the very least plunged into insurmountable debt.
Those scientists who sold their soul in turn will be asked, “was it worth taking the silver?”
Like the ABC in Australia, the BBC is nothing more than a propoganda arm for the socialist left.
Global warming and its accompanying hysteria being a perfect fit for their propoganda.
They really thought they were on a winner in global warming.
Now as it unravels around them.
They not only put up the shutters in an attempt to extinguish dissent, they nail them shut.
And still as a taxpayer I’m expected to continue to pay for this adolescent display by these and other global warming fraudsters.
“Cheshirered says:
July 10, 2014 at 2:19 am
Natalie Bennett is the leader of the UK Green party. Like Lord Lawson she doesn’t have a climate science qualification either, nor does her predecessor Caroline Lucas. Yet both ladies have enjoyed (and will no doubt continue to enjoy) extensive BBC coverage of their views relating to almost all-things climate change.”
As well they should, I have no problem at all with these people expressing their opinion. There’s an honest disagreement, it needs to be discussed. But they need to be anle to defend it against people who disagree.
Robin Hewitt says:
“Mentioning no names one of the climate sceptic spokespeople came across as distinctly dotty when you saw him in the flesh, one seemed inarticulate, vaguely paranoid and one had a distinct flavour of Sheldon Cooper. I do not believe they will want to lose Lawson.”
And you don’t think this was done deliberately by the BBC? They are notorious for abusing the concept of balance in debating by carefully choosing those who they want to represent their ‘black hatted’ guys. In other words, they choose those who are either i) not used to debating and therefore appear inarticulate, ii) not physically attractive, or iii) genuine fruit loops.
This strategy is as old as the hills and the BBC are past masters in implementing it.
As a result, and as far as the general public is concerned, the debate is balanced and the views expressed by the non-Establishment guys are not worthy of any further consideration.
They ban all discussion critical of AGW, they block the publication of any paper critical of AGW.
Then they turn around and use the fact that all discussion is pro-agw and most papers are pro-agw as proof that their bans are justified. After all, everybody agrees with them.
pat says:
July 9, 2014 at 10:35 pm
======
Later on in the same article, they reveal their own bias. They note that 47% of the people believe the media exaggerate the impact of global warming. In the next line they refer to this as am improvement from a previous survey where 54% of the people believed that the media was exaggerating global warming.
Man Bearpig says:
July 9, 2014 at 11:23 pm
=====
Your mistake is believing that all complaints will be treated equally.
Will Nitschke says:
July 10, 2014 at 3:07 am
=============
The problem is that publicly financed organizations ALWAYS get captured by fringe groups.
This is especially true of any regulatory agency.
Richard111 says:
July 10, 2014 at 3:20 am
The BBC gets big money from the EU as well as charging all UK viewers. 🙁
===============
That might explain why the BBC is so rabidly pro-EU.
Did not read prior comments. No time this AM. But, just a reminder that Stalin and Hitler had a pact at the time and so it would have been Guy Burgess’s marching orders at the time to not allow things on the BBC that were anti-Hitler or anti-Stalin and to try to get things aired that undermined the British Empire and their allies and any non-socialist/non-communist governments.
The warmists and their BBC fan club are 180 degrees incorrect.
CO2 is beneficial, global cooling is not. Covering your ears does block the conversation, it does not change the fact that the warming phase of the Dansgaard-Oechger cycle is over, cooling has started. it is a fact that are cycles of warming and cooling in the paleo record (both hemispheres, same periodicity), some of the warming cycles are followed by unexplained abrupt cooling events. Of course past cyclic warming events, in all cases followed by a cooling cycle, sometimes abrupt cooling, has a physical explanation, a physical cause. The past is a guide to the future.
http://www.lyricsboy.com/n/naughty-boy/naughty-boy-la-la-la-lyrics-video-ft-sam-smith/
I’m covering my ears like a kid
When your words mean nothing, I go la la la
I’m turning up the volume when you speak
Cause if my heart can’t stop it, I find a way to block it I go
La la, la la la…
La la, la la la…
I find a way to block it I go
La la, la la la…
La la, la la la…
What we are observing are people following the rules connected to a paradigm. This situation, time period, is peculiar, surreal. It is not possible to hide or talk away unequivocal cooling and there is a set of significant problems attached to what causes the cooling.
http://news.yahoo.com/earths-magnetic-field-weakening-10-times-faster-now-121247349.html
“Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Weakening 10 Times Faster Now
…Previously, researchers estimated the field was weakening about 5 percent per century, but the new data revealed the field is actually weakening at 5 percent per decade, or 10 times faster than thought. (WIlliam: 10 times faster than physically possible if the cause of the geomagnetic field changes is changes at the liquid core/solid core boundary. It should also be noted that the geomagnetic field strength has been dropping at 5% per century based on direct measurements up until the last decade when it suddenly started to drop 10 times faster, at 5% per decade. Obviously something significant changed to cause the geomagnetic field intensity of the earth to drop 10 times faster.) As such, rather than the full flip occurring in about 2,000 years, as was predicted, the new data suggest it could happen sooner.
Floberghagen hopes that more data from Swarm will shed light on why the field is weakening faster now….”
so it would have been Guy Burgess’s marching orders at the time to not allow things on the BBC that were anti-Hitler or anti-Stalin
Maybe, maybe not. He was a mole and may or may not have been activated at the time.
I find myself in an interesting position. I have no “official” scientific background at all. Yet currently I am among the leading experts in surface station placement (vis a vis heat sink), as a result of five years’ directed study. One might argue that I am a history student making a very typical historical statistical study of the history of US climate. In fact, it is the almost complete dismissal of station siting effect on trend by the scientific community which has given me this opportunity at playing “Citizen Scientist”.
Yet this would not qualify me for comment insofar as the BBC is concerned.
The BBC is the quintessential representation of the Mediacracy.
But well connected pedophiles get a free pass
In Canada we have a similar setup called the CBC. It is essentially a mouthpiece for what has been determined to be acceptable slant. It mirrors the BBC on the subject of CAGW perfectly. To make matters worse, a deluded, millionaire eco-loon (David Suzuki) gets prime coverage in ANY debate on the environment. He also earns a mint from contracts with the CBC. The situation is so bad that everyone I know is repeating the mantra of CAGW, including some science professor friends (who never bothered to actually read up on this).
Harper, our PM, has been vilified by seemingly everyone as the govt has been cutting back funding to the CBC. I now see this as a good thing. Freedom of the press should follow freedom of speech. There should be no degrees of these. One either has it or one does not.
But in the end, despite the best Bernaysian efforts, the media still cannot force us to believe anything. It is a matter of actually doing some work, some research and applying some critical thought.
Dudley Horscroft says:
July 9, 2014 at 10:45 pm
Re Dan’s comment
“What did Goldfinger say about coincidence, happenstance and enemy action?”
I don’t think Goldfinger said anything like that. If he did, he was quoting Simon Templar – aka “The Saint” – of great and glorious memory.
————————————————————————————————————————–
Goldfinger said: ‘Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”’
evanmjones says:
July 10, 2014 at 6:58 am
===========
Even so, he still would have known where his master’s interests lay.
The BBC is now filled with traitors like Burgess. Their allegiance is to the EU (who give them millions of euros) and also to the NGO climate activists, to whom the EU also give many millions of euros.
http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=85066
‘The database is a goldmine of information, telling us, for instance, that the EU paid the BBC €6,100,987 last year, Friends of the Earth (in all its incarnations) €4,188,230, WWF €5,344,641 and the RSPB €3,802,544. What is also of very great interest is that the EU subsidised UN institutions to the tune of nearly €140 million.
All this and much will be the subject of further reporting and analysis, but once again it brings to light the huge amount of taxpayer funding going to unaccountable NGOs, and especially (but not exclusively) climate change advocacy groups. ‘
Shona says:
July 10, 2014 at 3:28 am
“Anyway, sorry, rant over, but I used to so love the BBC and Its wildlife programmes. It’s been killed by political correctness. ”
Attenborough was an anti-population Malthusian all those years; Optimal Population Trust.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimum_Population_Trust#Patrons.5B12.5D
Buddy of Lovelock and Ehrlich and Crispin Tickell, who allegedly gave Maggie the idea to use CO2AGW against the miners.
Even so, he still would have known where his master’s interests lay.
Not an easy question in 1934, though. The Sovs were willing to cooperate on the Czecho as early as 1935, but London wasn’t buying. As a mole, he would have just gone along with whatever was most likely to keep him under cover. But it is very difficult to know exactly what was going on.
Rhys Jaggar says:
July 10, 2014 at 1:03 am
‘Village Idiot’
It may have escaped your notice but it is indubitably true that the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Guardian, the Independent, which represent pretty much every political opinion under the sun are all scrupulously meticulous in censoring anything that doesn’t follow their desired political line.
The BBC is just like all the rest of them.
============================================================
“The BBC is just like all the rest of them.” Really? Then then all those newspapers are funded by tax dollars? Really?
evanmjones says:
July 10, 2014 at 8:55 am
(replying to)
You are not looking at either the historic socialist practice of deep deception and “communist-interest-first-last-and-always”, but also so real world politics involved in strategic socialist/communist planning.
the French and British and German (to some extents, and greatly feared by the 20’s and 30’s Nazi Party!) unions were strongly controlled by communist controllers of the socialist leaders who controlled all of the three types of union members: the pragmatic whats-in-for-me, the idealist socialist members and the easily-cowed don’t-hurt-me-I’ll-keep-working members. As long as Russia and Germany were allied with each other in early WWII, and as long as Russia was getting German tooling and arms and commercial trade (in exchange for Russian oil and ore and wheat) the British, French and Belgium and Italian trade unions were actually opposing the on-going war between their countries and Germany: Between 1938 and extending long periods during the winter 1939-1940 “Sitzkreig” and even for a period after the Belgium/Denmark/French/Norway conquests, the trade unions in many European and British areas opposed the war and contributed to sabotage and strikes that helped Germany (and thus Soviet/Communist interests).
As soon as Germany invaded Russia in 1941, these same unions IMMEDIATELY began sabotaging German equipment and trains and armies and communications and shipments against the Nazi’s. Strikes were begun again to halt production of German arms and equipment and repairs in France, and Germany faced increased internal strife. The unions followed suite in America: Propaganda and strikes and opposition to a “European War” stopped immediately. Longshoreman and pro-socialist strikes ended immediately when the Soviet Union became an enemy of the Nazi’s. Training and “education” followed suite in the union headquarters and socialist newspapers in Chicago, New York City, Hawaii and San Francisco. (I say “immediately” somewhat incorrectly: Stalin had to overcome his manic-depression of the first 4 weeks of the invasion first. THEN, he began ordering the overseas and European unions to begin their actions opposing Germany.)
A socialist mole or director will keep only socialist goals and his or her actual orders and the socialist interests in mind at all times.
evanmjones says:
July 10, 2014 at 7:13 am
I find myself in an interesting position. I have no “official” scientific background at all. Yet currently I am among the leading experts in surface station placement (vis a vis heat sink), as a result of five years’ directed study. One might argue that I am a history student making a very typical historical statistical study of the history of US climate. In fact, it is the almost complete dismissal of station siting effect on trend by the scientific community which has given me this opportunity at playing “Citizen Scientist”.
Yet this would not qualify me for comment insofar as the BBC is concerned.
=========================================================
Yep would that not include Anthony here in that category also? Some of the best informed and leading figures and best informed communicators among the Skeptics have no Doctorate and so by the BBC’s ruling it seems that ALL of those type of people are not worthy of even being allowed to question someone with Dr. before their name on a BBC broadcast. And THAT was the intent it seem of the BBC’s action.
How many other topics are banned from the BBC?
After all, they have an Editorial Board which needs to do something. How big is their accumulated list of past actions?
From this UPI report (linked to at the BBC’s website), http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2014/07/07/BBC-refusing-airtime-to-deniers-of-climate-change-striving-for-gender-balance/7131404769105/ , I don’t see any need for paranoia, and it’s not about ‘banning’: it’s a reasonable (though obviously questionable) revision of the debated concept of balance. Of course, they’re mistaken in relying on the so-called 97% consensus, and their journalists should do some investigation of that!
Since reality is not conforming to the evidence presented by the models, and is adhering to a non-global warming policy, reality will no longer be allowed on the BBC.
This ruling found a false balance was created in that the item implied Lord Lawson’s views on climate science were on the same footing as those of Sir Brian Hoskins.”
BBC something that is true for once. Lord Lawson’s views are correct and Sir Brian Hoskins are not.
Pravda was very good at not telling the truth also, can we change the name of BBC to The Truth Network.
Interesting that Burgess was censoring Churchill. I did not know that. But nothing has changed, the BBC is still full of traitors. You only have to watch their news output for a couple of weeks, to find out that all other cultures and all other political systems are much better than the British equivalents. In the eyes of BBC producers, the sooner Britain is destroyed, the better. **
In addition, the BBC has a track record in Climate censorship. They did exactly the same to David Bellamy, the BBC’s favourite environmentalist, when he expressed doubts about AGW. if they can freeze out Bellamy, then none of us stand a chance against the BBC Climate propaganda bulldozer. The BBC needs to be attacked politically at its Achillie’s Heel – its funding.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2266188/David-Bellamy-The-BBC-froze-I-dont-believe-global-warming.html
Ralph
** A BBC executive said to me that the sooner Britain is destroyed the better, even if that meant the impoverishment or death of his own children. Why? Because he believes in a One World Government, and to achieve that you need to destroy all nation states. I said he was evil, and he was genuinely perplexed by my reaction – which says volumes about the general mindset and conversation within the BBC.
Is this is the same BBC which was found to have been infested with child molesters and teenage sexual predators since the mi- 1960s?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20026910
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/18/jimmy-savile-abused-1000-victims-bbc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yewtree
Yes, indeed. But the BBC is also an “unbiased” (ha ha) state broadcaster receiving public monies from a mandatory TV license. Over the years many people who do not even watch TV have complained about harassment from agents trying to enforce collection of the TV licence.
Large numbers of people have found themselves in court for not paying the BBC tax.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/10256679/TV-licence-offences-account-for-one-in-ten-UK-court-cases.html
These days some people post videos on youtube giving advice on how to deal with licence-fee harassment. For example:
nb
The BBC also gets revenue from adverts outside the UK (it is forbidden from showing adverts within the UK), but they don’t like to talk about it.
AnonyMoose says: July 10, 2014 at 9:46 am
How many other topics are banned from the BBC?
__________________________________
Oh, there are many prejudices within the Biased Broadcasting Corporation:
All fathers are latent child beaters and murderers.
All traditionalists are pompus little H!tlers.
Terrorists are Freedom Fighters in Syria, but if they dare go to Iraq they are suddenly terrorists.
All religion is contemptable, unless it is !slam.
Israel is a bit of dirt on the producer’s shoe.
Anyone from another country is superior to an Englishman.
If someone belittles a woman they are to be utterly condemned (unless they are !slamic) **
Anyone lacking meleanin is a worthless reactionary.
etc: etc: and etc: There are many more.
**. This one was priceless. The EU’s foreign minister went to Iran, and the Iranian minister refused to shake hands with her, because she was a woman. Suddenly, the BBC, who will condemn misogyny in the stongest of possible terms, refused to mention or condemn the Iranian minister’s actions. When i complained, the BBC said we must respect other views and opinions. Yeah, right. But what if George Bush or Benjamin Netanyahu had refused to touch the female EU foreign minister – there would have been all hell to pay.
There is no bias quite like BBC bias.
Over at Jo Nova is this quote:
Why apologize to an activist whose business depends on climate disruption? Chit Chong is the owner of Dorset Draught Proofing. Here is what they say on their home page.
The same Chit was probably not aware of the promised warmer winters made by the IPCC and other climate scientists. What a nut.
Linked in profile of Chit Chong.
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/chit-chong/b/267/82a
Michael hart.
The BBC also gets revenue from adverts outside the UK (it is forbidden from showing adverts within the UK), but they don’t like to talk about it.
_________________________________
The BBC also gets income from selling its output across the world. Programms like Top Gear earn tens of millions a year. And also from the sale of its many magazines, which upsets other magazine producers (because they do not get any subsidy).
If the BBC is so popular and successful, it should be privatised. Lets see how long it would last in the real (non-subsidised) world.
Ralph
As some readers of WUWT may be aware, Rangers FC is a football club which plays at Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow, Scotland. The club was created a few years ago when its predecessor of much the same name went bankrupt. Its average home attendance in season 2013/14 was 43,000. It draws its support predominantly from people of a Protestant (or claimed Protestant) background. Among its strongest supporters are Protestants with links to Northern Ireland. For many years its official policy was not to employ any Catholic players. (Nice club I hear you say.) In 2013 a BBC reporter made a comment which annoyed several hundred Rangers supporters. They complained to the BBC. The result: the BBC made a grovelling apology:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/bbc-says-sorry-over-spences-rangers-comments.22092189
In the same year a BBC presenter made the statement that the words ‘priest’ and ‘paedophile’ were almost synonymous. When I complained I was told that the comment was ‘fair and accurate’. When I complained again, I was told by someone high up in the BBC complaints system that the only question he had to ask was whether or not the statement would have misled the average listener to the programme. (He held that they would not.) Nothing to do with whether or not the statement was ‘fair or accurate’. I detect a certain amount of inconsistency, to put it mildly, between the BBC’s response to the comment about Rangers and the comment about priests. (For readers who might be woefully misinformed and wish to support the BBC presenter’s view on priests may I just point out that my complaint is to do with the criteria the BBC uses in dealing with complaints. My point is that if you have people highly-placed in the BBC who are associated with a particular organisation or viewpoint you are more likely to have your complaint upheld. Hence the success of Mr Chong – and my failure.)
Perhaps the following explains the BBC’s actions. Tip: their pensions are heavily invested in carbon schemes. They are a member of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, having invested plenty pension funds there.
Now, the funny thing is that the BBC Pension fund has also invested in BIG OIL, natural gas and tobacco companies too. You have to wonder how concerned they really are about climate change. It looks like they just want to make a buck, no matter where their money goes. I thought we had a planetary emergency.
BBC Pension – Top equity Investments at 31 March 2013
Altria Group [Tobacco]
Drax Group [Electricity generation]
BHP Billiton [Oil & mining]
British American Tobacco
BG Group [Oil & natural gas]
BP [Oil & natural gas]
Royal Dutch Shell [Oil & natural gas]
Imperial Tobacco
Centrica [Natural gas & electricity]
Reynolds American [Tobacco]
Petrofac [Oilfield services]
Occidental Petroleum [Oil & natural gas]
The above list “Does not include any assets held in pooled funds.”
There may be more in the “pooled funds”.
Here is an example of the BBC seeking to use opinion polls at taxpayer cost in place of observation to allegedly combat climate change. They could start with their own carbon footprint and benefit us all on many levels.
“The BBC has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money asking 33,000 people in Asian countries how climate change is affecting them.
The £519,000 campaigning survey by little-known BBC Media Action is designed to persuade the world to adopt more hard-line policies to combat global warming.
It was immediately condemned yesterday as a flagrant abuse of the Corporation’s rules on impartiality and ‘a spectacular waste of money’ by a top academic expert.
Every year, BBC Media Action gets £22.2 million from the taxpayer via the Foreign Office and Department for International Development.
BBC Media Action has a £40 million annual budget, and the proportion not funded by the taxpayer is paid by the European Union, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the US government.
Richard Tol, professor of economics at Sussex University and a leading authority on climate change impacts, said the BBC ‘would have been better advised to invest this money in proper research’.
He said the survey’s assertions are often contradicted by more reliable sources. He said: ‘Objective data do not corroborate the survey’s reported impacts on health, droughts, predictability of rainfall, and crop yields. Attribution of any of these effects to climate change is by and large beyond the current level of scientific knowledge.'”
More at:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/06/30/bbc-bias-spends-519k-on-campaigning-climate-survey-while-gagging-sceptical-voices/
One has to wonder if there are undiscovered “burgesses” stealthily influencing the organization. They couldn’t, or didn’t want to, discover Savilles behavior, a nasty self-evident sexual pervert, so likely little chance of them detecting a burgess in their ranks.
So they apologized for having him on? Do you know where the BBC has stuffed large amounts of its pension money? You need to read “From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel – BBC”. You also need to read about the “secret 28”. It has been a long time in the making.
From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/our_work/editorial_standards/impartiality/safeguarding_impartiality.html
BBC Pension investment in co2 scheme
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mypension/aboutthescheme/responsible.html
Secret 28 (The BBC based their bias on mostly comedy producers and Church of England workers)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/12/breaking-the-secret-list-of-the-bbc-28-is-now-public/
You are not looking at either the historic socialist practice of deep deception and “communist-interest-first-last-and-always”, but also so real world politics involved in strategic socialist/communist planning.
I have no illusions — whatever — regarding same. But, generally speaking, a mole is inactive until activated. His public persona might be stridently anti-soviet even after activation; it’s good cover. (Not blowing cover is absolutely essential to communist interest.) Double games have their own esoteric logic.
A few points which need correcting in this thread:
1. The BBC is not a left wing organisation. At the recent European Elections, it received record numbers of complaints over the amount of coverage it gave UKIP (right wing climate sceptic party). The UKIP Leader Nigel Farage has been on the BBC’s flagship political debate programme Question Time more than any other politician in recent years.
2. It is very rare for the BBC to accept a complaint or for it to be ruled against on a formal complaint. Almost all complaints result in no action at all. Chit Chong’s complaint was one of many about the Lawson interview.
3. Chit Chong is not a “nut”. Anyone was says that obviously does not know him.
4. The Green Party has consistently had disproportionately low coverage from the BBC in its political and news coverage. This has gone on for years and resulted post the recent elections in a petition of 50,000 people calling for fairer coverage. For the European elections in May, OfCom ruled that UKIP should be treated as a major party, which the BBC complied with enthusiastically. The Greens, who have significant and growing status in the UK and actually a wider range of elected representatives (though not numbers) than UKIP, were largely sidelined by the BBC.
5. References to Stalin, Churchill, Nazis, etc are completely irrelevant.
6. Lord Lawson’s GWPF is overtly anti-Green, one-sided climate sceptic, pro-fossil fuels and vehemently against forms of energy that are anything other than fossil fuel based. It notably promotes gas and coal. It has recently been asked by the UK Charity Commissioners (following over a year of investigation work which I contributed to) to cease using its status as a registered “educational charity” to propagate its lobbying activities and has itself announced that (expected soon) it will carry those activities from a separate non-charity body. Clearly there is nothing wrong with being a lobby organisation for a particular type of energy – its just that you cannot do it as an “educational charity”.
7. The GWPF has on many occasions (I have researched this for 2 years) changed the titles of sourced articles to suit its lobbying stance and has on many occasions (I have contacted sources) done this without the consent of the original authors or publishers. So articles that circulate around websites all over the world under typical GWPF banners such as “Green Madness … ” usually were not written with that title.
“The BBC is not a left wing organisation”
Oh yes they are.
‘James Abbott says:
July 10, 2014 at 4:23 pm
A few points which need correcting in this thread:’
~yawn~
The BBC, like many public services, local and central government and many NGO activist groups employ many people who have been through Common Purpose leadership training or who they themselves have sent to be trained by it. The ‘graduates’ of CP even include the Prime Minister (who visited one of its projects in India on a recent visit there).
Their aim, amongst others, is to develop ‘global leadership’ at all levels to ‘lead beyond authority’ – their own motto. Their agenda is essentially to promote a utopian communitarian ‘solution’ to the world’s problems, essentially from a globalist Marxist standpoint, in which their ‘global leaders’, supported by the useful idiots they have trained up as well, should run things. They are a left-wing version of the Freemasons but more like the masons of the 18th century in that they advance their aim in secret, through networks of ‘graduates’ whose loyalties are to the aims of CP, especially in the media and politics. They are being trained for ‘post-democratic’ leadership when Britain is dissolved inside the EU and national governments are history in Europe (and don’t think that can’t happen). One view is that they are the left’s equivalent of the right’s old boy network but there’s more to it than that.
Tin foil hat stuff? No, they exist, here’s their website.
http://www.commonpurpose.org.uk/about
This below is from an investigative website here:
http://www.tpuc.org/692/
‘Although it has 80,000 trainees in 36 cities, 18,000 graduate members and enormous power, Common Purpose is largely unknown to the general public. It recruits and trains “leaders” to be loyal to the directives of Common Purpose and the EU, instead of to their own departments, which they then undermine or subvert, the NHS being an example.
Common Purpose is identifying leaders in all levels of our government to assume power when our nation is replaced by the European Union, in what they call “the post democratic society.” They are learning to rule without regard to democracy, and will bring the EU police state home to every one of us. ‘
You should also consider that the UKIP is a fringe political party that is making gains at the expense of the traditional “right wing” (whatever that means) i.e. the conservatives and has taken the opposite views to the mainstream political parties on “climate change”. Denying the UKIP another platform to attack the government is more likely to be a higher ranking consideration of the BBC governors than simply banning sceptics.
James Abbott, the Green Party are anti-free speech and are every bit as dispicable as the BNP. See this piece of Stalinism and hate speech from Natalie Bennett:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26187711
My view is that Lawson, Bennett, Griffin should be allowed to speak & debate in an open forum. Let them shoot themselves in the foot if they are talking rubbish – let the public decide. I want to know and make up my own mind. Not be dictated too by Green groups.
No surprises here that Chit Chong is a green party activist:
http://westandsouthdorset.greenparty.org.uk/people/chit-chong.html
RAH says:
July 10, 2014 at 9:13 am (Edit)
Yes, that would include Anthony (long story) — in spite of the fact that he has 4 climate papers published.
Jack Cowper:
Thankyou for your post at July 11, 2014 at 1:59 am which says
Yes! Hear, hear!
These extremist totalitarians rightly need to be treated with the distrust afforded to them by MI5. They are a threat.
Richard
I am really surprised at the reaction to my complaint. After all, Nigel Lawson has not been banned from the BBC – a bleat of “Wolf!” if ever there was one. The truth is that the BBC would have to scrap the bottom of the scientific barrel to find scientists to say that climate change is not going on. Instead, they go for the people like Lawson who draw in the crowd. Fine if the discussion were about the policy reaction to climate change but not if it is about what the scientific position on the link if any between climate change and the floods as was the programme I and many others complained about.
That said, I think that the Lawson economic legacy is not as rose tinted as he would like us to remember since his policies probably laid the foundations of the 90s property crash. Also, the energy policy that he thinks is wonderful has us paying for Saudi oil, so that Saudi people can donate a portion to Al Qaeda. The policy also fritted away our own natural gas for little recompense from oil companies, so much so that we are now at the beck and call of President Putin. A truly unpatriotic energy policy.
I find it really sad how much anger is coming through on many of the posts here. It seems to be to be the case of hollow vessels talk louder, but strangely, we are all using the abundant fruits of science to do our loud talking. I think that we all laud the mathematicians who have come up with the algorithms which enable us to buy things safety on Ebay or the physicist, chemists and engineers who cram such an unbelievable number of transistors on a pinhead. But when these eggheads go over to become climate scientists their findings are pilloried.
Why? I suspect that it is because their message undermines some of our most cherished foundations of our society. Our lawful activities like driving an overpowered car or flying off to Australia at a drop of a hat are harming people – principally our children, grand children and their kids to come. The message from the scientists is that we must change and seriously reduce our emissions, but like a teenager glued to Call of Duty too many are digging our feet in.
But things change, it was not long ago that smokers would think little of blowing smoke in your face in train carriages. Also it was not long ago that cat calls to women and slaps on bottoms were commonplace – now many men must be looking back at their lives and thinking, Did I go too far? or fearing that the threshold of prosecution will be steadily whittled down from the clear reprehensible wrong Rolf Harris to our own bit of “naughtiness” at that Christmas party in ’83.
What we once thought was legal or sanction by custom changes with time and rightly so. So too with climate change. Can you look into the eyes of your children and grandchild if climate change proves as bad as the scientists say. I can’t.
Chit
Chit Chong
I am really surprised at the reaction to my complaint. After all, Nigel Lawson has not been banned from the BBC – a bleat of “Wolf!” if ever there was one. The truth is that the BBC would have to scrap the bottom of the scientific barrel to find scientists to say that climate change is not going on.
Nobody here is suggesting climate change is not happening, and most skeptics thing humans contribute to some degree.
The question is whether climate change is a global emergency, or whether the money that is currently wasted chasing the climate dragon is better spent on schools and hospitals.
As for “scraping the bottom of the scientific barrel”, there are serious, well credentialed scientists who dispute the urgency of the climate issue, as well you know.
Instead, they go for the people like Lawson who draw in the crowd. Fine if the discussion were about the policy reaction to climate change but not if it is about what the scientific position on the link if any between climate change and the floods as was the programme I and many others complained about.
BBC management have made it very clear they consider presenting a one sided view of climate science to be “balanced”. Editors who step out of line get censured, as appears to have happened in this case.
That said, I think that the Lawson economic legacy is not as rose tinted as he would like us to remember since his policies probably laid the foundations of the 90s property crash.
Lawson acknowledges mistakes, according to his Wikipedia article. I suspect though you would find few economies who suggested that the Thatcher Era, of which Lawson was an important part, left Britain poorer than she found it.
Also, the energy policy that he thinks is wonderful has us paying for Saudi oil, so that Saudi people can donate a portion to Al Qaeda. The policy also fritted away our own natural gas for little recompense from oil companies, so much so that we are now at the beck and call of President Putin. A truly unpatriotic energy policy.
Only because greens like yourself tend to be so vehemently opposed to fracking. And you will find there are low carbon sources of energy which many on this blog support, such as nuclear power – which if adopted has the potential to virtually eliminate CO2 emissions, in a way renewables never will – a position supported by Dr. James Hansen.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/31/a-conversation-with-dr-james-hansen-on-nuclear-power/
I find it really sad how much anger is coming through on many of the posts here. It seems to be to be the case of hollow vessels talk louder, but strangely, we are all using the abundant fruits of science to do our loud talking. I think that we all laud the mathematicians who have come up with the algorithms which enable us to buy things safety on Ebay or the physicist, chemists and engineers who cram such an unbelievable number of transistors on a pinhead. But when these eggheads go over to become climate scientists their findings are pilloried.
Why?
Climategate.
I suspect that it is because their message undermines some of our most cherished foundations of our society. Our lawful activities like driving an overpowered car or flying off to Australia at a drop of a hat are harming people – principally our children, grand children and their kids to come. The message from the scientists is that we must change and seriously reduce our emissions, but like a teenager glued to Call of Duty too many are digging our feet in.
We are not opposed to reducing CO2 emissions, what we object to are green efforts to use CO2 and climate issues as an excuse to try to restructure society. Given that there are options, such as nuclear power, which would appear to give us all what we want, we are puzzled that many greens appear to put imposing socialism and subsidised renewables, ahead of cutting CO2 emissions.
If there is any anger, its from watching hypocrites like Al watzisname buying beachfront properties and flying about everywhere, while preaching we should all make sacrifices to help save the planet.
But things change, it was not long ago that smokers would think little of blowing smoke in your face in train carriages. Also it was not long ago that cat calls to women and slaps on bottoms were commonplace – now many men must be looking back at their lives and thinking, Did I go too far? or fearing that the threshold of prosecution will be steadily whittled down from the clear reprehensible wrong Rolf Harris to our own bit of “naughtiness” at that Christmas party in ’83.
Climate change = Rolf Harris? And you wonder why you are losing your audience.
What we once thought was legal or sanction by custom changes with time and rightly so. So too with climate change. Can you look into the eyes of your children and grandchild if climate change proves as bad as the scientists say. I can’t.
I will look into the eyes of my beautiful daughter, and any children she has, and say with pride that Dad did his bit to ensure she inherited the same freedom and opportunities that I enjoyed.
It’s against nuclear?
If all the BBC Trust is requiring is that future interviews with contrarians must be prefaced with an announcement that they’re in the minority, that isn’t really a gag. It’s more like a sop thrown to alarmists.
It would be interesting to hear the human rights take on those imprisoned for not paying the licence fee.The compulsory levy was justified in that it was supposed to be an impartial presenter of information. Now it is clearly a mouthpiece for “I don’t care who dies from fuel poverty as long as we save the planet” and the “I make a packet from the subsidies so don’t you dare say a word against them” groups this levy is no longer justified. They are no longer even pretending otherwise.
It surely should be considered a violation of human rights to have to pay for ones own brainwashing against ones own interests, and on top of that not even be allowed to hear why what you are told is total lies.
On a digfferent point
Chit Chong says
I am really surprised at the reaction to my complaint. After all, Nigel Lawson has not been banned from the BBC – a bleat of “Wolf!” if ever there was one. The truth is that the BBC would have to scrap the bottom of the scientific barrel to find scientists to say that climate change is not going on.
Since the claim is that the climate has changed because of CO2 the climate scientists are not the experts on that question, so what does it matter what they think. The experts on whether a signal follows a given pattern are signal analyst who are mostly engineers with a few from marketing. They have shown at least fifty years ago the structure of the temperature waveform and it has to a greater degree than ever conformed to that same pattern since.The fact that the pattern in a far more complex one than used by climate scientists just rubs in what a load of narrowly educated, self centred clique they are. They also fail to listen to historians and literature specialist who point out the error of their claims from diaries of literary figures of the time.
If they had a real case surely all it would take is to publish the figures for the temperature rises firstly minus any adjustments and secondly after the adjustments with reasons for those done and not done when questioned out by proper experts from data collection engineers, not the jobbing builder jack of all trades master of none, climate scientists.
When it comes to their computer models surely it should be obvious even to the dullest witted of the public that a computer model that does not model the natural biological and geological inputs and outputs of the main variable it is hardly a model that is beyond question. In fact it in a normal QA assessment would not get even junk rating. It would get how dare you waste my time on rubbish like this.
The years BC ( Before Computer) models showed clearly that fossil fuels actually reduce and narrow the band of temperatures as seems to be likely from the southern V northern industrial changes. A proviso on this also from the work BC using physical chambers was that SO2 removal provided a step increase of nearly a degree..
Eric Worrall:
I agree much of what you say in your post at July 11, 2014 at 5:20 pm.
Also, to be clear, I agree with Lord Lawson’s views on climate and climate-related issues. I have shared platform as a Conference speaker with him.
But I write to warn against being side-tracked onto debate of his time in government long ago because he was Chancellor in the 1980s Thatcher era.
Contrary to your assertion and contrary to right-wing myth, that period was an economic disaster for the UK. Thatcher deliberately switched the UK economy from having a productive base to having a service base. 20% of the entire UK economy was destroyed, and this was only possible because the losses were made up by North Sea oil revenues which were then coming on stream. The effects were long-term. ‘All eggs in one basket’ is risky and the service industry was mostly banking. A generation passed before a hole in the basket had its inevitable effect. When America had a banking crises the UK had an economic disaster because 40% of the UK economy was financial services: the UK is still to recover from that disaster.
So, it is wise to stick to supporting Lord Lawson’s present actions concerning climate. His actions in the Thatcher government were long ago and best forgotten.
Richard
Just a few words before i close down on this – if only to show that I am not frit. Eric you said “Nobody here is suggesting climate change is not happening, and most skeptics thing humans contribute to some degree.” reading the posts on this blog gives me and I am sure you as well that a good few of your compatriots think exactly that.
As for Climategate, as I recall, they were cleared of cooking the books, but it strikes me as odd why no one has hacked into Exxon or the Heritage mob that pays for a lot of skeptic organisations. Or that even more important question, who paid the hackers to go for the University of East Anglia to find that pittance of wrong doing – more like swiping a few paper clips from the office rather than the smoking gun that the people who paid the hackers wanted of misleading the scientific community, governments and the public.
As far as fracking is concerned, I think you will find that the strongest opposition is from Telegraph reading nimbyist in Hampshire, that said I think we should be thinking long-term and I doubt that the British Geological Survey covered the integrity of borehole casings for 100 year plus periods. Indeed to the drilling engineers know how long a capped and decomissioned well will last? In which case our descendants will loose some of the aquifers we depend on now. Its not just entrapped methane which is relatively easy to deal with but the carcinogenic aromatic hydrocarbons that I worry about. And all for what? Listening to Cameron on this issue is like finding North Sea oil again. Its not as the Americans are finding out. Some of their fracking wells halve their output in a year. This quote from an article in Business Week – U.S. Shale-Oil Boom May Not Last as Fracking Wells Lack Staying Power, here a geologist says “I look at shale as more of a retirement party than a revolution. It’s the last gasp.” If so we should be looking at the few years of shale gas as time to get out of under Al Qaeda and Putin’s thumb and establish our low carbon economy, that is if we think it is worth stealing our grandchildren’s water for.
As for nuclear, low carbon solutions must be applicable worldwide because CO2 knows no boundaries, so are you happy to give the Taliban a few nuclear power stations to set-up their low carbon economy when Afghanistan goes the way of Iraq?
Finally Rogers point: “If all the BBC Trust is requiring is that future interviews with contrarians must be prefaced with an announcement that they’re in the minority, that isn’t really a gag. It’s more like a sop thrown to alarmists.” Exactly right, its a sop, so lets explore why there has been such a fuss over it. Not much digging needed – Hollow vessels sound louder.
Chit
Chit Chong:
I do not know why you suggest that anybody thinks you are “frit” when you write at July 12, 2014 at 12:55 am. Your writings here do not suggest that: they suggest that you are very misled about the issues.
Firstly, and to clear the air, climate realists do NOT get funded by energy companies but climate alarmists do. For example, the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia Uni, was established using funding from oil companies and still obtains funds from oil companies: one of the issues revealed by ‘climategate’ was the effort they expend to maintain their funding from the oil industry. Please tell me how I could get such funding because I would take every penny.
Most scientists refute the warmunists’ claims and tens of thousands have signed declarations to say they do. Attempts to obtain similar numbers of signatories from scientists supporting the climate-scare have all failed abysmally.
Importantly, climate realists support science and that is why they oppose the nonsense from warmunists. In attempt to help you understand this, I again explain the Null Hypothesis.
The Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed a system has not experienced a change unless there is evidence of a change.
The Null Hypothesis is a fundamental scientific principle and forms the basis of all scientific understanding, investigation and interpretation. Indeed, it is the basic principle of experimental procedure where an input to a system is altered to discern a change: if the system is not observed to respond to the alteration then it has to be assumed the system did not respond to the alteration.
In the case of climate science there is a hypothesis that increased greenhouse gases (GHGs, notably CO2) in the air will increase global temperature. There are good reasons to suppose this hypothesis may be true, but the Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed the GHG changes have no effect unless and until increased GHGs are observed to increase global temperature. That is what the scientific method decrees. It does not matter how certain some people may be that the hypothesis is right because observation of reality (i.e. empiricism) trumps all opinions.
Please note that the Null Hypothesis is a hypothesis which exists to be refuted by empirical observation. It is a rejection of the scientific method to assert that one can “choose” any subjective Null Hypothesis one likes. There is only one Null Hypothesis: i.e. it has to be assumed a system has not changed unless it is observed that the system has changed.
However, deciding a method which would discern a change may require a detailed statistical specification.
In the case of global climate no unprecedented climate behaviours are observed so the Null Hypothesis decrees that the climate system has not changed.
Importantly, an effect may be real but not overcome the Null Hypothesis because it is too trivial for the effect to be observable. Human activities have some effect on global temperature for several reasons. An example of an anthropogenic effect on global temperature is the urban heat island (UHI). Cities are warmer than the land around them, so cities cause some warming. But the temperature rise from cities is too small to be detected when averaged over the entire surface of the planet, although this global warming from cities can be estimated by measuring the warming of all cities and their areas.
Clearly, the Null Hypothesis decrees that UHI is not affecting global temperature although there are good reasons to think UHI has some effect. Similarly, it is very probable that AGW from GHG emissions are too trivial to have observable effects.
The feedbacks in the climate system are negative and, therefore, any effect of increased CO2 will be probably too small to discern because natural climate variability is much, much larger. This concurs with the empirically determined values of low climate sensitivity.
Empirical – n.b. not model-derived – determinations indicate climate sensitivity is less than 1.0°C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 equivalent. This is indicated by the studies of
Idso from surface measurements
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/Idso_CR_1998.pdf
and Lindzen & Choi from ERBE satellite data
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
and Gregory from balloon radiosonde data
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/OLR&NGF_June2011.pdf
Indeed, because climate sensitivity is less than 1.0°C for a doubling of CO2 equivalent, it is physically impossible for the man-made global warming to be large enough to be detected (just as the global warming from UHI is too small to be detected). If something exists but is too small to be detected then it only has an abstract existence; it does not have a discernible existence that has effects (observation of the effects would be its detection).
To date there are no discernible effects of AGW. Hence, the Null Hypothesis decrees that AGW does not affect global climate to a discernible degree. That is the ONLY scientific conclusion possible at present.
Richard
Very telling that Mr Chong does not deal with the freedom of speech issues raised here and the hateful stance of Natalie Bennett, I quote the BBC article:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26187711
“The Green Party of England and Wales has called for a purge of government advisers and ministers who do not share its views on climate change.”
If this is not the sort of thing done by dictatorships then I do not know what is. I am concerned that the UK is walking in to this blindly. Mr Chong talks about Climategate and how nothing incriminating was found, we now know for sure he has not done his homework – he can read here what Jonathon Jones a Professor of Physics at Oxford University thought of climategate:
http://unsettledclimate.org/2011/02/25/hide-the-decline-2-pictures-for-2000-comments/
Thank you Richard Courtney.
Jack
For a little historical perspective on internal BBC culture and staffing:
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?118107-Confessions-of-a-BBC-liberal