ClimateGate 2 Emails Show BBC Routinely Asking Global Warming Zealots To "Vet" Their Newscripts, Offer Advice on How To Better Evangelize for Global Warming

Truly awful bias.

The BBC, by the way, "rejects" the charge of impartiality, despite this welter of evidence, and despite their own official editorial statement that the issue is so one-sided that their reportage will be similarly one-sided.

And despite the fact that the University of East Anglia (where Phil Jones was head) and other environmental zealots specifically lobbied the BBC for just this result.

In 2007, the BBC issued a formal editorial policy document, stating that ‘the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus’ – the view that the world faces catastrophe because of man-made carbon dioxide emissions.

The document says the policy was decided after ‘a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts’ – including those from UEA.

The ‘Climategate 2’ emails disclose that in private some of those same scientists have had doubts about aspects of the global warming case.

For example, Professor Phil Jones, the head of the CRU, admitted there was no evidence that the snows of Kilimanjaro were melting because of climate change, and he and his colleagues agreed there were serious problems with the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph – the depiction of global temperatures that suggests they were broadly level for 1,000 years until they started to rise with industrialisation.

But although there is now more scientific debate than ever about influences on climate other than CO2, prompted by the fact that the world has not warmed for 15 years, a report from the BBC Trust this year compared climate change sceptics to the conspiracy theorists who blame America for 9/11, and said Britain’s main sceptic think-tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, should be given no air time.

The whole article is loaded with new anecdotes about BBC hands "blocking" (in their own words) coverage of global warming sketpics -- and bragging about this to Phil Jones and his cronies, and begging Jones' forgiveness for the one or two skeptics they weren't able to block.

Worst of all, I think, are emails by one Professor Smith, a close friend of the BBC's "environmental analyst." Smith set up "seminars," funded by the World Wildlife Fund, to preach global warming to BBC reporters, writers, and producers, and lobbied for one-sided coverage (which, again, he got, and then some, to the point where Phil Jones had to basically tell them "you've shut the other side out extremely effectively, but shutting them out still further -- 100% -- might look biased.")

Smith lays out the next steps:

In July 2004, in an email to Prof Hulme that asked him to continue funding CMEP seminars, Prof Smith explained: ‘The only change I anticipate is that we won’t be asking WWF to support the seminars: Roger particularly feels the association could be compromising to the “neutral” reputation should anyone look at it closely.’

He needn't have worried -- who would look at it closely? Certainly not the supposed watchdogs of the media.

Prof Smith told Prof Hulme that the seminars’ purpose was to influence BBC output.

He spoke of finding ways of getting environmental issues into ‘mainstream’ stories ‘by stealth’, adding: ‘It’s very important in my view that research feeds directly back into decision-maker conversations (policy and above all media). I hope and think that the seminars have laid the ground for this within the BBC... There is senior BBC buy in-for the approach I want to pursue.’

He now claims that when he said "by stealth" he meant a series of completely unrelated words having nothing to do with stealth, and also nothing to do with clear expression of meaning:

Yesterday he said he had always ensured there was a range of views at the seminar, while by using the phrase ‘by stealth’ he simply meant that ‘sustainability stories are elements of mainstream stories, but the complexity and uncertainty inherent in them make them difficult to report in isolation’.

See, when I said I'd sneak into the warehouse "by stealth," I meant I'd sneak in "with the complexity and uncertainty inherent in sustainability stories that make them difficult to report in isolation."

Thanks to Arthur, who seriously sent this hours ago, before it was headlined at Hot Air.

posted by Ace at 04:06 PM

| Access Comments