BBC still handing free airtime to greens

Readers will be much amused by the BBC's latest antics, launching a whole season of programmes promoting the climate change agenda on the World Service.

I listened to the one from the Philippines. It takes me back a few years to when the BBC was handing over the airwaves to environmental activists without a moment's compunction.

Nothing much has changed by the looks of it.

And funny that it should happen on the watch of Tony Hall, the man whose idea the 28gate seminar was.

Hugo's howler, Harrabin's howler

Updated on Nov 26, 2015 by Bishop Hill

The Spectator doesn't do a great deal on the climate front, but when it does, it does it very well. At the moment they have a long piece (£, but you may get a free look) by David Rose on Judy Curry, which although containing little that will be new to BH readers will be informative for many.

If it's pure entertainment you want, they also have a preview of Paris from Hugo Rifkind (£), a man with a wonderful facility for words, but also one who is just a moderately loud repeater of metroliberal certainties on the state of the climate. His effort this week is rather more thoughtful than usual, but he still retains some odd notions. Observing, quite correctly, that everyone in the UK is backing off green policy, he says that as a country we are starting to look a bit provincial:

Germany’s big push for renewables (which was admittedly predicated on an hysterical and frankly stupid post-Fukushima fear of nuclear) is surging ahead, in precisely the manner that Scotland’s could be if anybody still gave a damn.

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BBC: "To hell with your charter obligations"

This morning the Today programme welcomed Professor Paul Ekins onto the airwaves to discuss what he saw as the problems with government energy policy (audio below). Professor Ekins came over as a highly media-trained green activist, which is perhaps entirely unsurprising because that is what he is - as a former co-chair of the UK green party and the author of tomes such as "A New World Order: Grassroots Movements for Global Change", he has been in the forefront of green politics for 20 years.

It's just that the Today programme didn't want you to know that, and Professor Ekins was presented as just some disinterested academic brought in to provide some rigour to proceedings. Coming so soon after the episode in which the Today programme accidentally forgot to mention Jeremy Leggett's financial interests this is starting to look like policy rather than oversight.

And when you also take into account the decision of presenter Sarah Montague to let Ekins expound at length, with barely a word of challenge, the impression you got was that this was simply the BBC trying once again to fight battles on behalf of the green movement.

The message from the Corporation is, once again, "To hell with your charter obligations, we're on a mission from Gaia".

Ekins Today

Changing climate open thread

I have to go out shortly, so no time to write anything about Roger Harrabin's climate change programme.

Feel free to add your comments below.

Science (it says here)

Roger Harrabin has a new three part series on the science of climate change starting next week on Radio 4.

Climate talks typically end in disenchantment and disarray, so will this year's summit in Paris be any different? In this three part series Roger Harrabin examines the science, politics and solutions of climate. In the first of this series he looks at the science behind climate change. Predicting the future climate is a pretty tricky business and over the last twenty five years or so its had a chequered history. Roger talks to the scientists about their models and asks if they are accurate enough or should they just be consigned to the dustbin. He takes tea with the leading US politician who simply won't be convinced of man-made climate change. He meets the "luke-warmers" who believe in climate change but don't think the planet will warm as much as predicted. He will also examine the current predictions and how confident we should be.

Expectations are set to low.

Walport’s gloom

I think this article covers all the gloom and doom that can be rustled up on this topic, as yet another alarmist article leads us in to COP21.  

Any bets as to what the next article will be on - dying polar bears, melting Himalayan glaciers (or maybe melting polar bears and dying Himalayan glaciers), Maldives’ cabinet meeting under water again, shortage of water, shortage of heat (or increase in water and too much heat), increase in malaria,  increase in wars,  increase in immigration, reduction in size of … oh there’s lots to come.

Act now -the end may be nigh, but not of this nonsense unfortunately. TM

Express on Lilley's letter

The Express has a report on Peter Lilley's letter to Lord Hall, which will no doubt be of interest to readers.

Peter Lilley, a long standing member of the energy and climate select committee, has made a formal complaint to director general Lord Hall after discovering that mandarins had issued an apology following claims he made that the effects of climate change were being exaggerated.

Appearing on BBC Radio 4’s ‘What’s the Point of The Met Office’, Mr Lilley stated that, while he “accepted the thesis that more CO2 in the atmosphere will marginally warm up the earth”, he questioned the assertion that global warming would be as dramatic as is being portrayed in some scientific circles.

You read it here first.

Has the BBC banned all non-alarmist views?

Peter Lilley has just issued the following press release.

BBC PUTS IMPARTIALITY AT RISK BY ATTEMPTS TO CENSOR AND DISCREDIT MPs

The BBC is undermining its reputation for impartiality by apologising for “giving a voice” to two MPs and by putting a ‘health warning’ on the BBC website casting doubt on their credibility – even though the accuracy of what they said is not disputed: says Peter Lilley MP in a letter to the Director General.  

He added: “It is particularly outrageous that the BBC should try to discredit the only two scientifically qualified MPs who served on the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee; absurd to suggest my views are “outside the scientific consensus” when I said on the programme that I accept the proven science of global warming though my views on the likely amount of warming are at the “lukewarm” end of the range given by the IPCC; thoroughly unscientific to claim the Met Office views are upheld by scientists when, on the matter under discussion, their predictions had been falsified; and discourteous to publish these insulting and untrue remarks without even informing me.”

The letter in full:

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Unchaperoned views

Any sceptic views in the offing?A few weeks back we all had a laugh over Quentin Letts' What's the Point of the Met Office? and the ensuing rumpus. As I noted at the time, it was a fairly trivial show (transcript here), and I had actually made my original posting as a simple link because I didn't think it worth listening to myself. However, the rumpus continues and the latest reverberations were felt today.

Any appearance on the airwaves by a sceptical voice necessarily leads to a formal complaint, and the outraged party this time was one Andy Smedley, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Manchester. The result has been an abject apology from the BBC:

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Hidden advertising on the Today programme

The shale gas revolution is having its effect, and Shell has decided that drilling in the Arctic no longer makes economic sense. Radio 4's Today programme saw this as a valuable opportunity to give an environmentalist some airtime (audio below). Interestingly, the man chosen was Jeremy Leggett, best known as the author of a book about peak oil. I suppose we should recognise the BBC's chutzpah in choosing such a character to discuss the results of oversupply in the oil market.

Leggett was introduced as chairman of the "Carbon Tracker Initiative" and expounded at length about oil companies setting up renewables divisions. He also told us that it was not controversial to say that "droughts and floods and other horrors" are heading our way. More renewables are required.

With host James Naughtie listening on in docile fashion, the whole episode rather gave the impression that the people involved had something to sell. Certainly, Jeremy Leggett did, since as well as being involved in Carbon Tracker, he is also the director of a solar energy company.

The BBC forgot to mention that though.

Leggett Today

Countryfile does shale gas

The BBC's Countryfile programme is not normally somewhere you look for balanced coverage of environmental issues, so it was interesting to see a piece (from 6 mins) on the prospects for unconventional gas development in England that was not exactly balanced, but still a far cry from the corporation's early coverage of the subject.

So we heard it was "controversial", but only once, and fracking fluid was described as "a mixture of water and chemicals", which struck me as rather misleading. You could still have come away from the report thinking that fracking was a new or "untried" technology. But we did get to see what a completed well pad looked like and the focus was more on greenhouse gases than the wilder claims of the environmental movement.

I suppose this must count as progress.

Will removing cost make things cheaper?

The Today programme decided that it would invite two anti-capitalist greens on to discuss shale gas. I suppose we should at least be grateful that they picked two greens who had some minor disagreement, with Bryony Worthington wanting a domestic shale gas industry to develop and Friends of the Earth boss Craig Bennett adopting a zero-tolerance approach to any future development (audio posted below). Roger Harrabin's website report on the item also has a quote from Matt Ridley.

Worthington's view is that it's a waste to compress gas in Qatar, ship it thousands of miles and then decompress it again in the UK.

The important thing is to minimize the carbon emissions from gas. That means if we can get our own fracked gas, it's better to use that than importing gas that's been compressed at great energy cost somewhere else.

No doubt we should rest assured that removing this "great energy cost" from the equation will have no impact on gas prices in the UK.

Worthington Bennett fracking

Unbalanced - Josh 344

On Wednesday the BBC's Newsnight interviewed Emma Thompson on the newsworthy topic of left wing activists protesting about drilling for oil in the Arctic. And refugees. And voting for Jeremy Corbyn.

Emma clearly did not have a clue what she was talking about - even Richard Betts, from the Met Office, said she was wrong (good on you, Richard). Ed Hawkins, Climate Scientist, also tweeted "what Emma Thompson said was scientifically inaccurate & implausible." 

Sadly Emma had not got the memo on coal not being the 'dirtiest' fuel. It isnt, biofuels and wood burning stoves are worse - the Guardian is not very keen on them either.

Newsnight's Emily Maitlis suggested Emma get herself arrested. Hmm.

Cartoons by Josh

[Update: added Ed's Tweet]

Update on Sep 6, 2015 by Josh

David Rose writes about the interview in the Daily Mail and with more damning indictment of Emma from Richard Betts. You can read Richard's thoughts in full on the Helix website here.

In summary, Richard says Emma is wrong, unhelpful and probably making matters worse.

Emma, in response, asks if Richard is insane.

Oh dear.

In BBC world, only anti-capitalist opinions are valued

The BBC's new logoThe BBC's love of anticapitalist campaigners knows few bounds and there's a smashing example this morning in the shape of Matt McGrath's article about the UN climate talks. McGrath is riffing on the developing world's demands for "compensation for extreme weather events that they link to large scale carbon emissions".

Demonstrating an almost heroic ability to ignore the elephant in the room, McGrath manages to overlook the almost complete absence of any increase in extreme weather than might affect the developing world. East Pacific hurricanes for example. Or drought. Or flood.

But if McGrath cannot bring himself to note such inconvenient facts, he can always bring himself to find out what anticapitalist campaigners have to say. In his article, there are quotes from two of them:

• Julie-Ann Richards is a climate campaigner for Oxfam, whose campaigners are generally anti-capitalists, according to this insider.
• Harjeet Singh is from Action Aid, described here as "the most anti-capitalist of all the major development charities".

No other opinions seem to have been sought.

Another view that must not be heard

The BBC's Matt McGrath has been looking at a new report by a green think tank called the Stockholm Environment Institute. No surprise there - there is a general acceptance among BBC environment journalists that green think tanks are the ones that publish interesting stuff.

The report looks quite good, describing how many of the carbon credits awarded to Russia and Ukraine are actually fraudulent. This is, in itself, not surprising either - I made a similar point in the report I wrote for GWPF on the unintended consequences of climate policy.

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