In response to Paul Homewood: On climate change the BBC is once, twice, eight times a liar,
Gary Ashe wrote:
Unfortunately it is a fact that the BBC’s coverage of climate change has been unreliable for many years, and has long since abandoned any pretence of impartiality. It has got so bad that Fran Unsworth, the BBC’s director of news and current affairs, sent out a missive to all her staff last year, itself full of factual errors, directing staff how they should report climate change and how they should marginalise sceptical scientists.
James Delingpole in The Spectator writes:
‘There’s a reason for all this – one that the BBC has spent six years trying to conceal. The story goes back to a seminar, held in January 2006, where the BBC (to quote one of its own reports) gathered “the best scientific experts” who concluded that “the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus” on anthropogenic climate change.
‘Now clearly, if you’re the kind of trusting soul who believes everything the BBC tells you, then none of this will be the cause for much concern. Others, however, might well wonder: who exactly were these “best scientific experts” whose testimony at that January 2006 seminar was so persuasive that the BBC felt justified in disavowing its charter obligations to be fair and balanced, and to start coming over more like the official broadcasting arm of Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace?
‘This was a question that also troubled North Wales pensioner and blogger (“Harmless Sky”) Tony Newbery. So much so that he decided to make it the subject of an FOI request to the BBC. Though he knew that the seminar had been chaired by the (virulently alarmist) Lord May, formerly head of the (virulently alarmist) Royal Society, what interested him were the identities of the other 28 people known to have attended.
‘The BBC very much didn’t want him to find out. For a week this month, it has been spending perhaps £40,000 a day on a crack team of lawyers trying to persuade – successfully as it turned out – an information tribunal that this should remain confidential. Sadly for the BBC, another enterprising blogger called Maurizio Morabito unearthed the details anyway and published them on Monday via the website Watts Up With That?
‘So who were all these “best scientific experts” who did so much to shape the BBC’s climate policy (and by extension, one fears, government policy too)? Well, two were from Greenpeace; one was from Stop Climate Chaos; one was a CO2 reduction expert from BP; one was from Npower Renewables; one came from the left-leaning New Economics Foundation . . . Only five of those present could, in any way, be considered scientists with disciplines even vaguely relevant to “climate change”. And of these, every one had a track record of climate alarmism. No wonder the BBC tried so hard to keep the list of 28 a secret. Its claim that its policy change was based on the “best scientific” expertise turns out to have been a massive lie.’
