A Place to Stand

I sent this yesterday to numerous BBC emails & also to the programme's presenter Professor Iain Stewart. I quickly got a reply from Professor Stewart & the correspondence is reprinted. I don't think it needs explanation.

I have not yet received any response whatsoever from any BBC representative, disputing in any way the accuracy of my accusation. I don't think that needs explanation either. I will be notifying them & Professor Richard Tait Chairman of the BBC Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee & if any of them do choose to factually dispute that the BBC are "fascist" & "censors in a manner reminiscent of the era of Lysenkoism" I will certainly publish their defence.
trust us on that

I understand that the BBC has recently publicly alleged that they will, in future, make a serious attempt to maintain something approaching impartiality, as required by their charter, at least on the subject of alleged catastrophic global warming. I was thus disappointed, though I admit not surprised, to see Sunday's episode of Making Scotland's landscape. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vjvyw I think you will agree this 1 hour programme about alleged catastrophic warming made no attempt whatsoever to balance the hypothesis that we are in the process of experiencing catastrophic warming with the observed fact that we are not.

There were numerous factual untruths in what can only politely be described as a pack of untruthful ecofascist propaganda, with lots of mood music, fitting the assumption that the practical purpose of the BBC is to promote scare stories designed to keep the people cowed & eager to be led by authoritarian big government fascists.

2 particularly egregious lies:

Firstly the "experiment" of testing 2 bottles, one filled with air & one allegedly filled with CO2 were exposed to sunlight & the latter was observed to become 2.5 C warmer. What was omitted was that the actual increase in CO2 is approximately 1 part in 10,000. Thus for the "experiment" to be meaningful the sample used would have had to be of the same order. Had the BBC broadcast an experiment showing alleged "catastrophic global warming" to be 0.00025 C that would have been accurate & acceptable (in theory to both sides) though you might have found some difficulty in accurately measuring it.

Second was the claim of catastrophic warming that "the level of consensus is greater than in any other area of science". Ignoring the fact that even one of its major proponents, Professor Jones, has acknowledged that there is no statistical evidence of warming having happened over the last 15 years whereas I have just produced evidence of Isaac Newton's Law working by placing a pen in mid air & observing it fail to float. Even taking the new view of science as a matter of counting opinions rather than of evidence that claim is untrue. The Oregon Petition shows 31,000 scientists who dissociate themselves from the warming scare (probably many more now). If the BBC was being remotely truthful they would be able to name at least 32,000 scientists who reject the consensus that gravity works in the manner described by Newton, as slightly amended by Mr Albert Einstein. I will be interested to see if the BBC claim to be able to find 1/10,000th as many & are that thus any employee of that organisation is able to claim being 10,000th of the way to remotely truthful.

Professor Stewart & the BBC should apologise for all untruths in a manner as public as the original programme.

I would also like to know if, in an attempt to even appear balanced, the BBC intend to show a programme produced by a scientific sceptic, in which he is free to speak without interruption as Professor Stewart was, within the next 2 months? I assure you, in the interests of balance, that if such a sceptic demonstrated the same untruthfulness as professor Stewart, for example claiming that CO2 is a lifeform native to the planet Zarg, I would be equally scathing. This is known as balance. Fortunately, as I'm sure you know, no sceptic has demonstrated anything close to that ignorance or dishonesty endemic in the alarmist movement.

So far the BBC have made no slightest attempt to show such balance, Their so-called 'news" consistently censors or denigrates scientific scepticism, usually both, in a manner reminiscent of the era of Lysenkoism.

Were the BBC to be remotely interested in even appearing not to be fascist censors or indeed were they not fully convinced that "catastrophic warming" is indeed a fraud that cannot survive open examination they would long ago have been willing to broadcast a genuine debate on the subject. Their continuous, deliberate & total refusal to allow free debate demonstrates their continuous & total commitment to propagandising & lying in the fascist cause.

Or do either Professor Stewart or anybody at all in the BBC dispute the facts in any way?

Neil Craig
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Your message regarding the Climate episode emphasises that it was dealing with catastrophic warming, and that is not the case. The word ‘catastrophic’ was employed in one sentence, near the end, which simply noted…

“Unchecked, climate change could be catastrophic. But, unlike the people of Skara Brae or Culbin Sands, we now have the knowledge and technology to do something about it.”

In other words, this was a nod to future worst-case scenarios. So, instead about peddling an extremist notion of dangerous warming, I think our outline of how we got to where we are today was fairly modest and conservative.

I shall let the BBC employees comment on the new editorial guidelines, which ask for balance in proportion with the scientific consensus not 50:50 ‘impartiality’. It is that balance that I want to address. I am not a BBC employee, so I do not represent the BBC’s views on climate change. Instead, as a geoscientist, I represent my geoscience community. In that regard I follow the consensus of earth scientists, some of them climate scientists, who support the prevailing hypothesis of human-accelerated warming. The Geological Society of London, the Geological Society of America, and the American Geophysical Union are among the long list of international scientific bodies that have produced clear position statements arguing that the climate is warming, that the warming relates to human action, and that action is principally the burning of fossil fuel leading to rising greenhouse emissions. To suggest that this is a BBC led view is preposterous, unless you feel the world’s major academic institutions are following a media cabal.

Moreover, this isn’t just the case of a few politically-motivated geoscience groupings. The latest review of geoscience opinion on the issue of climate change, published last year in the American Geophysical Union’s Transactions, found overwhelming agreement (>80%) among geoscientists (and >97% among climate scientists) with the statement that ‘ human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?’ They concluded their review with the remark.

‘It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long- term climate processes. The challenge, rather, appears to be how to effectively communicate this fact to policy makers and to a public that continues to mistakenly perceive debate among scientists.’

Source: Doran, P.T & Kendall Zimmerman, M. 2009. Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change. EOS Transactions, volume 90 number 3 20 january 2009

I have little doubt that this will induce no change in your view that ‘global warming’ is a myth. But it really ought to make you appreciate that the BBC is not the target. Your target will need to be the whole geoscience community.

Thanks,

Iain
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Thank you for your very prompt reply. I will look forward to seeing if anybody working directly for the BBC replies at all.

On the point of catastrophe, even leaving out the fact that you did use the term, if warming is merely within historical parameters & I believe the evidence is that it is clearly well within them, then it is not a matter requiring action let alone scaremongering. The entire coverage implies that it is catastrophic.

We may also legitimately discuss the degree of "consensus" among scientists. I have asked organisations representing hundreds of thousands of alarmists to name 2 scientists who support the alarmist case & are not ultimately funded by government & have only twice received even 1 - Professor James Lovelock from the environment editor of the Independent & from somebody on a South African site - Professor James Lovelock. As you may know Lovelock has, since the emails came out, reconsidered his position & now says only the sceptics have kept the discussion "sane". You may know more but you will understand that I find a "consensus" that excludes the large majority of its putative members unimpressive.

The BBC should change their minds & acknowledge the propriety of broadcasting genuine debate on the subject. Something they have repeatedly refused. I hope you agree that would be more in keeping with true science than their wholly one-sided reportage. It is certainly infinitely more in keeping with their purported commitment to balance.

I note you do not dispute either of my specific complaints. We may leave it at that for now until the BBC have had time to say whether they believe I am wrong.

Once again I thank you for courteously responding so much faster than anybody at the BBC has felt able to.

Neil Craig
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Thanks Neil, but confused by your take on Lovelock’s stance. I know the piece that you refer to, in the Guardian, in which he celebrates the sceptical stance for making climate scientists take more responsibility. But in no way does he distance himself from the view that climate change is reality,

e.g.

‘I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.’

‘I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change. We're very active animals. We like to think: "Ah yes, this will be a good policy," but it's almost never that simple. Wars show this to be true. People are very certain they are fighting a just cause, but it doesn't always work out like that. Climate change is kind of a repetition of a war-time situation. It could quite easily lead to a physical war. That's why I always come back to the safest thing to do being adaptation.’

Those don’t seem to me to be the views that suggest it isn’t happening.

iain
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No the article I referred to was in the Sunday Times http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7061020.ece

“I think you have to accept that the sceptics have kept us sane — some of them, anyway,” he said. “They have been a breath of fresh air. They have kept us from regarding the science of climate change as a religion. It had gone too far that way. There is a role for sceptics in science. They shouldn’t be brushed aside. It is clear that the angel side wasn’t without sin.” ...

But he is concerned that the projections are relying on computer models based primarily on atmospheric physics, because models of that kind have let us down before...

“What would you bet will happen this century?” a mathematician asked him. Lovelock predicted a temperature rise in the middle range of current projections — about 1C-2C — which we could live with.


I did subsequently read something in the Guardian which, to my jaundiced eye, seemed to be long on what the Guardian journalist had been told to say & light on phrases the interviewee had said. You may know how journalists work.

I suspect the reality will be less than the 1-2C change he still expects & higher than the 0.00025 C your experiment, done correctly, would seem to suggest but both are well within historic experience.& therefore provably not catastrophic.

That our politicians have passed laws requiring the destruction of as much as 80% of our electric capacity (which is closely linked to GNP) bringing us back to Victorian standards, for the purpose of ameliorating such a, historically largely beneficial, rise does indeed seem to me to be insane. Unfortunately I do not think anybody relying on your programme alone could have come to any conclusion but that such insanity was desirable. Since you have already described the claim of "dangerous warming" as "extremist" I hope you will accept how regretable that was.

Neil Craig

Labels: Fear, global warming, Media