Green disinformation: worse than we thought

The other day, I mentioned a report by a pair of NGOs on the subject of fossil fuel subsidies, noting that the usual suspects in the mainstream media had failed to mention that in the UK oil companies are subject to a supertax on top of the Corporation Tax to which all companies in the country are subject.

It now seems that the report was even more misleading than we thought.

The report by Oil Change International is a complete distortion of facts. The authors have described as “subsidies” normal deductions of expenses and capital costs from revenues for calculation of taxable income. These are procedures which are followed in all fiscal systems in all countries for all forms of business and investment endeavors. Under normal definitions of “subsidy” the United States has no subsidies for the oil and gas industry which is why Obama has taken no steps to reduce them.

I wonder if Roger Harrabin is going to investigate?

Another disinformation frenzy

Another day, another wave of environmentalist disinformation mindlessly regurgitated by the mainstream media. This time the great green propaganda machine is looking at a report by a pair of NGOs concerning what it calls "subsidies" to oil companies.

The UK Government is providing £750m a year in tax breaks to North Sea oil and gas, despite a pledge five years ago to end fossil fuel subsidies, campaigners said.

A further £414m in public money is going into fossil fuel exploration overseas — from Siberia in Russia to Brazil, India and Nigeria — a report by the Overseas Development Institute and Oil Change International said.

So once again we have the old canard about removal of double taxation being a "subsidy", repeated without question by STV and old BH friends like the Herald's Rob Edwards, the BBC's Roger Harrabin, and of course the Guardian.

Not one of them mentions the double taxation that is charged to oil companies. Not one.

Update on Nov 11, 2014 by Bishop Hill

Remarkably, the Carbon Brief's coverage is less biased in a green direction than the BBC's.

BBC coverage of sceptics

Ben Pile has a must-read post about the BBC's coverage of climate sceptics, and in particular Roger Harrabin's latest pieces claiming that sceptics have been moving towards mainstream views and Iain Stewart's Climate Wars, which reached similar conclusions:

The only ‘surprising’ thing revealed — as the punchline — by the second of three episodes of Climate Wars is that Stewart was ignorant of the debate he was reporting on. He had begun his film with a preconceived idea about the climate debate, as one divided into two camps — sceptics and deniers — disagreeing about a single proposition: “climate change is happening”. And then, when he encountered the more nuanced reality, he imagined that it was sceptics who had changed their position. It was Stewart’s desire to frame the debate that led to his misreporting.

Read the whole thing.

Sceptics on Radio 4

I gather that there was a segment on Radio 4 about climate sceptics this morning, with an interview with Nic Lewis. I'm going out shortly so I can't record it for you, but you should be able to listen again here in a few hours' time.

Update on Nov 1, 2014 by Bishop Hill

Nic Lewis emails:

As you know, Roger Harrabin's piece on global warming that included excerpts of his interview with me aired at 7.15 this morning on Radio 4.

Unfortunately, his piece confusingly muddled up both CO₂ emissions with CO₂ concentrations and equilibrium climate sensitivity with the transient climate response level. Both equilibrium climate sensitivity and the transient climate response relate to a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ concentration, but the equilibrium sensitivity is higher because the transient response refers to the global warming that occurs over decades rather than the centuries it takes for the ocean to fully warm up and equilibrium to be reached.

Harrabin said "if we double CO₂ emissions - which we are likely to do later this century - we are likely to provoke a temperature rise of about 1.7°C", or similar words. What I had told him was that, based on instrumental observations, I estimated the equilibrium climate sensitivity to be 1.7°C warming for a doubling of CO₂ concentration.

Political neutrality at the BBC

Michael Marshall, the deputy editor of BBC Earth tweets:

Shock: Tory MP is ignorant about climate change RT @James_BG: Ann Widdecombe's attack on Climate Change Act http://t.co/V55Fl7aPbv

— Michael Marshall (@m_c_marshall) October 31, 2014

Update on Oct 31, 2014 by Bishop Hill

Marshall's tweet about the ignorance of Conservatives is amusing when one recalls what a pig's ear he made of his article about climate sensitivity last year.

Interestingly, Marshall has also been using his Twitter account to campaign for the Green Party.

Yup RT @ZacGoldsmith: The Greens deserve to be in the Leaders debate. Same number of MPs as UKIP; higher in the polls than the LibDems.

— Michael Marshall (@m_c_marshall) October 31, 2014

Numbskull or nefarious?

Still on the subject of the National Grid report, Nicky Campbell on Radio Five Live interviewed Jeremy Nicholson of the Energy Intensive Users Group and Sally Uren, the CEO of Forum for the Future. This was a remarkable segment in more than one way.

The thing that has struck commenters here at BH was something Ms Uren said about the reliability of renewables. Accepting that the wind sometimes doesn't blow and the sun sometimes doesn't shine, she said:

...that's not a worry when we're thinking about security of supply from renewables because we have these things called "storage units" and so we have this grid that allows us to store energy and deal with peaks and troughs in demand and so this notion that when the sun stops shining and the wind stops blowing so does our energy, it's just not true.

Click to read more ...

Nuclear brouhaha

It looks as though there's a bit of a kerfuffle developing over Friends of the Earth and their stance on nuclear power. It seems that the Today programme (via Roger Harrabin, I think) has reported that FoE is in the process of reversing its stance of complete opposition. FoE staff are furiously tweeting that it is not true.

I haven't heard the Today segment, so I can't comment either way. I'll update if I hear anything.

Update on Sep 10, 2014 by Bishop Hill

Roger Harrabin tweets:

FoE spokesman says "no new policy" but the group does NOT want to shut the UK #nuclear industry. It opposes new-build mainly on cost.

The BBC Board and its climate alarmists

David Keighley has in interesting article up at the Conservative Woman, which looks at the membership of the new BBC Executive Board. Several of its members seem to be keen on climate alarmism.

Not a surprise.

BBC and Nigel Lawson

There is a letter in the Spectator from the Deputy Director of BBC News and Current Affairs on the subject of the BBC's spat over Nigel Lawson's appearance in discussion with Brian Hoskins.

H/t Is the BBC Biased

No ban on Lawson

Sir: You write that the BBC ‘has effectively banned’ Lord Lawson from items on climate change unless introduced with ‘a statement discrediting his views’ (Leading article, 12 July). There’s a lot of muddled reporting of this story. Lord Lawson hasn’t been in any sense ‘banned’, and the Editorial Complaints Unit finding didn’t suggest that he shouldn’t take part in future items. It found fault with the way the Today item was handled in two respects: firstly that it presented Lord Lawson’s views on the science of global warning as if they stood on the same footing as those of Sir Brian Hoskins, and secondly that it didn’t make clear to listeners that Lord Lawson represented a minority view. There is also no ban on other non-scientists discussing climate change. The BBC is absolutely committed to impartial and balanced coverage on this complex issue. Our position remains exactly as it was — we accept that there is broad scientific agreement on climate change and we reflect this accordingly. We do, however, on occasion offer space to dissenting voices where appropriate as part of the BBC’s overall commitment to impartiality.
Fran Unsworth Deputy director, BBC News and Current Affairs
Happy valleys

Soft on greens, soft on greenery

Paul Homewood points us to this incredibly soft BBC interview with Al Gore, who is in Australia promoting his pet climate project. The powers that be at the corporation seem to have decided that they want to put their considerable weight behind Mr Gore's campaign and interviewer Paul Donnison is right on message, apparently viewing his role as providing the maximum PR opportunity for Mr Gore:  most questions are along the lines of "are your opponents dishonest or irresponsible" and there is litte by way of challenge to the great man.

Click to read more ...

Thought for the day, Stern edition

If the BBC thinks that non-mainstream or non-expert views need to be flagged as such, will Lord Stern's future appearances on the airwaves be so caveated? Will his funding by the Mr Grantham warrant a mention?

Somehow I think not.

The BBC's internal contradictions

The reverberations of the BBC's recent announcements on how to deal with the climate change issue continue unabated. Radio 4's Feedback programme recently considered two separate instances related to the corporation's coverage of climate change (audio below). The first of these a "tidal wave" of complaints they had received in relation to Bob Carter's appearance at the time of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report. Interestingly these complaints seem to have been rejected, except in that Carter's funding arrangements were not made sufficiently clear.

Then there was the Lawson/Hoskins event and, as for the previous case, we had some vox pops to illustrate the complaint. Firstly we had someone called Liz Mandeville from Lewes, who turns out to be part of the Transition Towns movement and a director of a community renewables company. Then there was Neil Spencer from Ashreigney in Devon, who turns out to be a former director of a company called Renewable Futures Ltd. Amusingly, the show featured an interview with Alison Hasting, the chairman of the BBC Trust editorial standards committee, who reckoned that:

Click to read more ...

Is it 'cos he's a green?

Updated on Jul 7, 2014 by Bishop Hill

Updated on Jul 7, 2014 by Bishop Hill

The BBC has announced a series of measures to make it more difficult to challenge green narratives on the BBC, and this is obviously going to lead to new waves of ecodrivel on the national broadcaster's output. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the Guardian's Catherine Bennett is exuding a certain cheeriness and general satisfaction with this state of affairs.

Following successful complaints, we should soon be hearing much less – on the BBC at least – from the climate change hobbyist Lord Lawson. An edition of the Today programme that treated the former chancellor's outlandish hunches to the same sober consideration as the evidence-based conclusions of Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, of Imperial College London, has led to an apology – and a further reconsideration of editorial balance. Having assessed the Lawson v the Academic Mainstream dialogue, in which the former remarked that 2013 had been "unusually quiet" for tropical storms, the head of the BBC's Complaints Unit said: "Minority opinions and sceptical views should not be treated as if it were on an equal footing with the scientific consensus."

Click to read more ...

Matt Ridley on the ecocorporation

Matt Ridley takes a look at the BBC's recent surrender to the greens in the Times.

The BBC’s behaviour grows ever more bizarre. Committed by charter to balanced reporting, it has now decided formally that it was wrong to allow balance in a debate between rival guesses about the future. In rebuking itself for having had the gall to interview Nigel Lawson on the Today programme about climate change earlier this year, it issued a statement containing this gem: “Lord Lawson’s views are not supported by the evidence from computer modelling and scientific research.”

The evidence from computer modelling? The phrase is an oxymoron. A model cannot, by definition, provide evidence: it can provide a prediction to test against real evidence. In the debate in question, Lord Lawson said two things: it was not possible to attribute last winter’s heavy rain to climate change with any certainty, and the global surface temperature has not warmed in the past 15 to 17 years. He was right about both, as his debate opponent, Sir Brian Hoskins, confirmed.

The GWPF has the rest.

BBC range free - Josh 282

Another BBC meeting, same old story.

Cartoons by Josh