Post by Teddy Bear on Aug 31, 2010 16:46:53 GMT
While I'm well aware that the BBC is completely biased in their coverage of 'global warming', I lack the interest or scientific curiosity to investigate each of their articles or listen to their programmes on the subject. So its always good when an article comes out on the mainstream media about it by those more in the know.
This one by the excellent James Delingpole in today's Telegraph spells it out from the word go. So far it has attracted 681 comments.
How the BBC pretended to be balanced on 'climate change'. And failed, obviously.
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: August 30th, 2010
I have just been listening to Uncertain Climate, the first in BBC “Environment Analyst” Roger Harrabin’s two-part Radio 4 investigation into the politics of climate change. The announcer introduced it as a programme “on an unusual aspect of global warming that you won’t have heard in the news headlines”. This was touching, but would only have been accurate had it added the phrase “if your only source for those news headlines is the BBC website”.
Anyhoo, I listened to it so that you don’t have to. The programme was rather what you would have expected the BBC and Environment Analyst Roger Harrabin to make on global warming – which is to say apparent sweet reasonableness and noble questing-for-truth disguising a deal of disingenuousness, special pleading, (presumably) unconscious bias, and economy with the actualité. (Hat tip: Nick Mabbs)
Its slipperiest trick, to my mind, was giving so much space – almost unchallenged but for some (heavily edited) interpolations from an underrepresented Nigel Lawson – to former UN ambassador Sir Crispin Tickell.
When the final lofty analysis of the CAGW scare gets to be written up by Sir Christopher Booker’s or Lord Delingpole’s grandson in about 2050 (by which time it will have become superabundantly clear, as polar bears maraud outside the freezing walls of Carlisle, and Mount Kilimanjaro becomes the favoured skiing destination of Boris Johnson’s descendants, that global cooling is and always was the far greater threat), at least one chapter will be dedicated to the deleterious influence of this pompous, insufferable mandarin in skewing the climate debate with his hysterically overblown claims of the eco disasters awaiting us. (In the 1970s he wrote a book worrying we were all going to be done for by Global Cooling. But Sir Crispin doesn’t much talk about this any more.)
Fair enough that the programme should have included a long spiel in which Sir Cwispin was allowed to preen and boast about how he personally had turned Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher into a (temporary) Warmist. (For further details – including of how Thatcher later strongly recanted, see here.) But why on earth did it allow him to get away with this statement below?
Shown by whom, exactly, Sir Crispers? And is “pretty conclusively” the same as “conclusively” – or is that additional “pretty” a cunning qualification which renders the “conclusively” entirely meaningless?
Can you think of any other subject of comparable importance where a public figure would be allowed to make such a blatantly distorted and misleading claim without being called to account?
Almost as bad was Sir Crispin’s claim that media organisations like the BBC had striven to be far too balanced in their reporting of the AGW debate. Apparently (Sir Crispin claimed) “When you get a climate scientist you’ve also got to get some nutcase in front of you who thinks it’s all an invention”.
Really, Sir Crispin? And what planet, pray, do you currently inhabit?
Talking of pro-CAGW advocates being allowed to make preposterous statements entirely unchallenged on programmes like the BBC, there was at least one glorious moment on the documentary where Harrabin, to his great credit, decided to act like a proper journalist rather than a campaigner on behalf of Greenpeace. This was where he called to account Dr Robert Watson.
Once hailed as a “hero of the planet” by Al Gore, Bob Watson is one of those government scientists who has long since crossed the line which divides science from political advocacy. That’s why President G W Bush conspired to have him sacked as chairman of the IPCC.
Watson defended his record thus:
“What we tried to say was what would happen if we continued to emit greenhouse gases, what would be the consequences for climate…”
Harrabin wasn’t having it: “You said you talked about what the consequences would be. Shouldn’t you have talked about what the potential consequences should be [given the level of scientific uncertainty on AGW].
“I would agree we should talk about projections and therefore what we project should occur. I agree with that completely,” said Watson.
“But you didn’t say that a moment ago,” said Harrabin, skewering Watson as brilliantly and mercilessly as I’ve ever heard this veritable Conger among slippery eels skewered.
His heart’s in the right place, that Harrabin’s. Such a pity that his brain remains all the BBC’s.
This one by the excellent James Delingpole in today's Telegraph spells it out from the word go. So far it has attracted 681 comments.
How the BBC pretended to be balanced on 'climate change'. And failed, obviously.
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: August 30th, 2010
I have just been listening to Uncertain Climate, the first in BBC “Environment Analyst” Roger Harrabin’s two-part Radio 4 investigation into the politics of climate change. The announcer introduced it as a programme “on an unusual aspect of global warming that you won’t have heard in the news headlines”. This was touching, but would only have been accurate had it added the phrase “if your only source for those news headlines is the BBC website”.
Anyhoo, I listened to it so that you don’t have to. The programme was rather what you would have expected the BBC and Environment Analyst Roger Harrabin to make on global warming – which is to say apparent sweet reasonableness and noble questing-for-truth disguising a deal of disingenuousness, special pleading, (presumably) unconscious bias, and economy with the actualité. (Hat tip: Nick Mabbs)
Its slipperiest trick, to my mind, was giving so much space – almost unchallenged but for some (heavily edited) interpolations from an underrepresented Nigel Lawson – to former UN ambassador Sir Crispin Tickell.
When the final lofty analysis of the CAGW scare gets to be written up by Sir Christopher Booker’s or Lord Delingpole’s grandson in about 2050 (by which time it will have become superabundantly clear, as polar bears maraud outside the freezing walls of Carlisle, and Mount Kilimanjaro becomes the favoured skiing destination of Boris Johnson’s descendants, that global cooling is and always was the far greater threat), at least one chapter will be dedicated to the deleterious influence of this pompous, insufferable mandarin in skewing the climate debate with his hysterically overblown claims of the eco disasters awaiting us. (In the 1970s he wrote a book worrying we were all going to be done for by Global Cooling. But Sir Crispin doesn’t much talk about this any more.)
Fair enough that the programme should have included a long spiel in which Sir Cwispin was allowed to preen and boast about how he personally had turned Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher into a (temporary) Warmist. (For further details – including of how Thatcher later strongly recanted, see here.) But why on earth did it allow him to get away with this statement below?
It has been shown pretty conclusively that something like 97 per cent of scientists are aware of the climate change issue and what it means and that the other three per cent are digging their toes in and refusing to do it.
Shown by whom, exactly, Sir Crispers? And is “pretty conclusively” the same as “conclusively” – or is that additional “pretty” a cunning qualification which renders the “conclusively” entirely meaningless?
Can you think of any other subject of comparable importance where a public figure would be allowed to make such a blatantly distorted and misleading claim without being called to account?
Almost as bad was Sir Crispin’s claim that media organisations like the BBC had striven to be far too balanced in their reporting of the AGW debate. Apparently (Sir Crispin claimed) “When you get a climate scientist you’ve also got to get some nutcase in front of you who thinks it’s all an invention”.
Really, Sir Crispin? And what planet, pray, do you currently inhabit?
Talking of pro-CAGW advocates being allowed to make preposterous statements entirely unchallenged on programmes like the BBC, there was at least one glorious moment on the documentary where Harrabin, to his great credit, decided to act like a proper journalist rather than a campaigner on behalf of Greenpeace. This was where he called to account Dr Robert Watson.
Once hailed as a “hero of the planet” by Al Gore, Bob Watson is one of those government scientists who has long since crossed the line which divides science from political advocacy. That’s why President G W Bush conspired to have him sacked as chairman of the IPCC.
Watson defended his record thus:
“What we tried to say was what would happen if we continued to emit greenhouse gases, what would be the consequences for climate…”
Harrabin wasn’t having it: “You said you talked about what the consequences would be. Shouldn’t you have talked about what the potential consequences should be [given the level of scientific uncertainty on AGW].
“I would agree we should talk about projections and therefore what we project should occur. I agree with that completely,” said Watson.
“But you didn’t say that a moment ago,” said Harrabin, skewering Watson as brilliantly and mercilessly as I’ve ever heard this veritable Conger among slippery eels skewered.
His heart’s in the right place, that Harrabin’s. Such a pity that his brain remains all the BBC’s.