Ecoterrorism in Canada

Updated on Feb 18, 2015 by Bishop Hill

Via GWPF, we learn that Canadian police are worried about violent extremists in the environmental movement:

The RCMP has labelled the “anti-petroleum” movement as a growing and violent threat to Canada’s security, raising fears among environmentalists that they face increased surveillance, and possibly worse, under the Harper government’s new terrorism legislation.

In highly charged language that reflects the government’s hostility toward environmental activists, an RCMP intelligence assessment warns that foreign-funded groups are bent on blocking oil sands expansion and pipeline construction, and that the extremists in the movement are willing to resort to violence.

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Our consensus

The Register has a fascinating story regarding a complaint to the BBC about its coverage of a scientific issue. Could We Survive A Mega Tsunami? was:

dramatised the effects of a giant ocean wave ("starting at one kilometre high"), far greater than the tsunamis created by earthquakes, and illustrated by (in the BBC's own words) "Hollywood-style graphics". The film showed havoc being unleashed upon European and North American seaboards.

Unfortunately, the mega tsunami theory appears to be viewed as comical among geophysicists, and has apparently been comprehensively debunked in the scientific literature. This, you might have thought, would therefore be an open and shut case, since the BBC has repeatedly said that they must follow the scientific consensus. A backdown and apology is surely in order?

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Climate change by numbers

Tamsin Edwards points us to the BBC's latest efforts on the climate change front, to be broadcast on 2 March at 9pm. Details are remarkably thin on the ground, but here's what they are willing to tell us:

Presented by 3 mathematicians, this programme gives a unique perspective on climate change by taking 3 key numbers to tell the story of our climate's past, present and future.

I gather from the comments at WUWT that the mathematicians involved are Hannah Fry of UCL, Norman Fenton of QMUL and David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge. Tamsin says she was involved as a consultant and I gather that Doug McNeall was on board too.

Not the usual suspects then.

Update on Feb 17, 2015 by Bishop Hill

Here's a (somewhat rough and ready) rip of the TV trailer.

Inside scientivism

The BBC's Inside Science had a fascinating section (from 30 sec) about the recent research by Cardiff University's Nick Pidgeon on the effect of last year's floods in the West Country on public perceptions of climate change. Pigeon found that those affected by the floods were more likely to develop a firm belief in manmade global warming than those who were not.

To his credit, presenter Adam Rutherford noted that linking flooding events to climate change is hard, but he was neatly parried by Pidgeon, who wheeled out the attribution paper from Myles Allen's group, with its silly claim that global warming has made floods 25% more likely in the UK. Listeners were not informed that this claim was based on an unvalidated climate model with no proven ability to model precipitation (no climate model has). It would also have been interesting to ponder whether this 25% increase in the likelihood of floods has produced actually made floods 25% more prevalent. I think not.

Still, the section was about Pidgeon's study. My abiding impression was of a BBC presenter and a social scientivist sitting about discussing the efficacy of what amounts to a con on the general public. Julia Slingo's desperate misinformation about the human link to last winter's floods has clearly done its work. And the sense you got of the reaction in the studio was of "how interesting" leavened with a bit of "oh goody", but not a hint of "people are not understanding" or "people are being misled".

Oh dear.

On choosing experts

Anthony Reuben, BBC News's statistics expert (allegedly) has an article up wondering whether shale gas extraction is economic at the current low gas prices. It's an interesting question, but rather academic because until some more exploration has been done we simply have no idea what the cost is going to be.

Nevertheless, Reuben has rounded up some views on the matter.

From Greenpeace.

And a professor of carbon capture and storage.

And a company that advises businesses on cutting their energy bills.

You have to laugh, don't you?

Diluting the truth

The first [concern about fracking is that it] uses huge amounts of water that must be transported to the fracking site, at significant environmental cost.

BBC on water requirements for shale gas operations

Estimates indicate that the amount needed to operate a hydraulically fractured shale gas well for a decade may be equivalent to the amount needed to water a golf course for a month; the amount needed to run a 1,000 MW coal-fired power plant for 12 hours; and the amount lost to leaks in United Utilities’ region in north west England every hour (Moore 2012).

The Royal Society on water requirements for shale gas operations

Truck movements could be minimised where water supply can be obtained from the public water mains, or by a licensed abstraction from a nearby waterbody.

Scottish Government expert panel on water requirements for shale gas operations

Live Earth 2

The news from Davos is that Al Gore is going to have another go at doing a Live Earth global telethon event.

A Live Earth music event to demand action on climate change will take place on June 18 across seven continents, including Antarctica, former US vice-president Al Gore and pop star Pharrell Williams announced on Wednesday.

Concerts will be staged in six cities - Paris, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Beijing, Sydney and Cape Town - in what will be the largest event of its type ever staged. The final Antarctic gig will be played by a band of scientists at a research station, Gore said.

It will be interesting to see if the BBC decides to get involved. Last time round the green fraternity with in the corporation moved heaven and earth to get the weight of the BBC behind it (see the Propaganda Bureau). However, there was something of an uproar and the corporation backed down. Ten years on, and with the CMEP scandal out in the open, one assumes that they will steer clear. But with bureaucracies you never can tell.

Those lovely BBC journalists

Most of the presenters on the BBC News Channel are a bit of an unknown quantity to me - anonymous, featureless, characterless. The exception was one particular guy, whose casual use of the d-word at the time of the Fifth Assessment Report marked him out as a campaigner rather than a journalist. I noted his behaviour and I have recalled it when he has appeared on my screen but that was the extent of my interest. The BBC is full of people who are campaigners rather than journalists.

That was until this morning when I learned that his name is Tim Willcox and he facing calls for his resignation, after some outrageous behaviour during the march for free speech in France.

A BBC reporter has faced calls to resign after he told the daughter of Holocaust survivors in Paris: 'Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well'. 

Journalist Tim Willcox sparked anger during his coverage of yesterday's rally in Paris, held in memory of the 17 victims of last week's terror attacks, including four Jewish people in a siege at a Kosher supermarket.

Potty mouthed, bigoted, biased. He's probably due for promotion.

In Our Time last time

Fifteen years ago this week the BBC's In Our Time show dedicated one of its shows to the subject of climate change (H/T Leo Hickman). In a break from its normal practice, Melvyn Bragg was joined by only two guests, only one of whom could even loosely be described as an academic. Sir John Houghton, the then chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, would best be described as a scientific administrator, having previously been the chief executive of the Met Office; George Monbiot is of course an environmental campaigner and journalist, although for the occasion - perhaps hoping to be taken more seriously - he also described himself as visiting professor of philosophy at the University of Bristol.

2000 was an interesting time in the climate debate. With the world having just entered the third millennium, thoughts of catastrophic futures seem to have found fertile ground and the global warming scare was therefore starting to gain ground. The IPCC's Second Assessment Report had laid the foundations for the scare a few years before; the ink was barely dry on the Hockey Stick papers and the onslaught of the Third Assessment was not far away. This is the context for the BBC's decision to use an environmentalist and a environmentally minded bureaucrat to provide what the corporation calls "due balance".

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Myles, Roger, and Chris hit Rotterdam

Readers may be interesting in this report of the proceedings of a climate change conference in Rotterdam back in September. One of the sessions was chaired by a familiar face

BBC correspondent and conference moderator Roger Harrabin took a moment between speeches to remind all those gathered that “politics is creeping along, whereas scientists say, we need to be racing forward in order to adapt to and mitigate climate change.”

And there was a fairly vacuous contribution from Chris Rapley:

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The ice holds up

Perhaps it's because it's the season of goodwill. Or perhaps because Greenpeace's vandalism of the Nazca lines has put Corporation noses out of joint. Whatever the reason, the BBC's decision to highlight the recovery in Arctic sea ice levels in the last few years represents a rare excursion out of its "OMG we're all about to fry" comfort zone.

Yes, the sea ice is going to disappear, we are told, but on much longer timescales than previously advised.

While global warming seems to have set the polar north on a path to floe-free summers, the latest data from Europe's Cryosat mission suggests it may take a while yet to reach those conditions.

The spacecraft observed 7,500 cu km of ice cover in October when the Arctic traditionally starts its post-summer freeze-up.

This was only slightly down on 2013 when 8,800 cu km were recorded.

Two cool summers in a row have now allowed the pack to increase and then hold on to a good deal of its volume.

Judge: rule of law challenged by greens

The tactics of the less reputable members of the environmental fraternity has long been to prevent any sort of industrial activity by making the cost of policing their protests so high as to wear public opinion into submission. One has to say that this approach has not been entirely unsuccessful.

It was interesting then to see the comments of Mr Justice Gilbart in rejecting FrackFree Balcombe's application for judicial review of West Sussex Council's decision to allow planning permission to the Cuadrilla project. There is a BBC report of the hearing here, but strangely the news of its rejection doesn't seem to have made the cut.

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The BBC's latest green recruit

Coinciding with the launch today of the Lima climate conference, the BBC has an article about a heatwave in Australia. The content is largely uninteresting apart from the revelation that the heatwave in question ended last week.

So why are they reporting it now? Presumably because of the Lima conference. If so it's yet another clear example of the BBC operating as a campaigning organisation on environmental matters.

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Finger puppets - Josh 302

As was noted here in the comments, by our host, maybe we should be

referring to Roger Harrabin as "Green blob spokesman Harrabin"

I think we can include Bob Ward too.

Cartoons by Josh

Roger throws down the gauntlet

This morning Roger Harrabin has written something about the Green Climate Fund, the latest wheeze for moving money from the pockets of poor people in rich countries to those of rich people in poor countries, while allowing environmentalists to take their cut. No surprise there.

What was interesting was the way he describes the GWPF:

Benny Peiser from the fossil fuel lobby group GWPF said international climate finance for low carbon development was "a detrimental use of aid money".

A couple of days ago I wrote to Roger about his coverage of the ODI report into fossil fuel subsidies, pointing out that it was essentially a work of fiction. He was apparently too busy to look into the problems with it.

Go figure.

Update on Nov 20, 2014 by Bishop Hill

GWPF are being fairly blunt

@RHarrabin 'Char comm ruled it wasn't a think tank' - yet another Harrabin lie.

As is Ben Pile:

@RHarrabin Withdraw the lie, and give a fair, truthful description of the GWPF. IT is not an insult to point out that you have lied.

Update on Nov 21, 2014 by Bishop Hill

The article has now been stealth edited:

Benny Peiser from GWPF said international climate finance for low carbon development was "a detrimental use of aid money".