The alarming rumours about George Monbiot that began to circulate on the internet last night have now taken a more sinister turn. Apparently the alarm was raised when he failed to turn up at the BBC Television Centre for a cocktail party to launch their Climate Change Causes Poverty season of documentaries. If even half of what is being said is true, then this should be a matter of grave concern to both warmists and sceptics.As yet, reliable information is hard to come by, but according to a report on the BBC’s website (which has now been taken down) the climate activist has been deeply depressed about new research that is due to be published in Science later this month. Apparently this provides robust evidence of solar influence on recent variations in global average temperatures. Continue reading »
In the months leading up to the recent climate change conference in Copenhagen, politicians and the media were pretty quiet about global warming. Not any more!
It is difficult to resist the idea that this conference was a high profile vehicle for launching a coordinated campaign to bring climate back into the news. Many observers seem to believe that the next conference in Copenhagen, in December this year, may be the last chance to get a worldwide deal on CO2 emissions, and for the first time things are not all going the alarmist’s way. Very real economic turmoil has trumped speculation about climate catastrophe.
So how does one set about assessing what happened at Copenhagen?
Well the first thing to remember is that it is unwise to try and reach any conclusions while the conference is taking place or in its immediate aftermath. A glance at the organiser’s web site reveals that among their ‘Media Partners’ were Time magazine, Scientific American and National Geographic, all of which have very definite positions on climate change. We can be sure that so far as media coverage is concerned, the main stories will have been carefully planned well in advance and that the conference will be promoted by a very high profile PR campaign. One might ask, however, why what purports to be a scientific conference needs ‘Media Partners’?
We can also be sure that these stories will carry precisely the spin that the organisers wish and that they will also be dramatic. The Media Partners would be very disappointed if they were not. Continue reading »
In December, the Welsh Assembly Government finally gave the go-ahead for Kemble’s take-over of the Llanbedr Airfield. Now only the matter of planning permission has to be resolved before Kemble can, at last, begin operations. This will involve either an application for change of use, which will be considered by the Snowdonia National Park Authority’s Planning Committee, or the granting of a Certificate of Lawful Use by their legal department.The Snowdonia Society has vowed to continue their campaign to torpedo Kembles efforts to bring the airfield back to life, but here is the opening of an opinion piece on the Snowdonia Society’s website by Rob Colllister, one of the society’s trustees:
So, the first battle over Llanbedr airfield has been fought and lost. The Assembly Government will lease the land of the old RAF base to Kemble Ltd and the Snowdonia National Park Authority will without doubt grant permission for it to be re-opened as a civilian airport. From it tourists will be able to take scenic flights over Snowdon and politicians and businessmen will look forward to flying to Cardiff or Dublin. Out of this lamentable affair, two depressing truths emerge.
If we set aside the unsubstantiated claim that Llanbedr airfield is about to become an ‘airport’, what are the ‘depressing truths’ that the Snowdonia Society alone seem to be lamenting? In Rob Collister’s view these are Assembly Government’s lack of doctrinaire rigour in its commitment to save the planet and an ambivalent attitude on the part of some Welsh politicians towards the role of national parks.
The latter point is, perhaps, the more disturbing. Continue reading »
Back in August last year, I reported that I had made an application to the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act for the names of the ‘best scientific experts’ who attended their climate change seminar in January 2006. It’s time for an update.My original request was made on 20th July 2007, and on 21st August 2007 the BBC replied. I was told that the information that I required was held ‘for the purpose of journalism, art or literature’ and therefor they were not obliged to disclose it under the terms of the legislation.As this seemed to be stretching a very well used loophole just a little too far, I then wrote to the Information Commissioner’s Office, on 5th of September 2007, asking them to require the BBC to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. The ICO is the watchdog charged with ensuring that public authorities not only comply with the legislation, but do so promptly.
During the next eleven months I received two identical letters from the ICO explaining that they were very busy and unable to start investigating my complaint. A request for them to do so immediately was ignored.
Eventually, at the end of July 2008 – over a year after I had written to the BBC – I was told that the case had at last been allocated for investigation, and a letter had been sent to the BBC asking them to explain why they had rejected my request for information about the seminar. It looked as though progress was being made at last.
During the next six months, I received a succession of emails from the Senior Complaints Officer who was dealing with the case. Most of them looked like this: Continue reading »
This is part of a comment that turned up on another part of Harmless Sky:
Robin Guenier says:
March 6th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Here an interesting story: this weekend, the University of the West of England is holding a conference on “Climate Change Denial”, organised by (wait for it) the Centre for Psycho-Social Studies. It will be “bringing together a group of people – climate change activists, eco-psychologists [!!], psychotherapists and social researchers – who are uniquely qualified to assess the human dimensions of this human-made problem”. Professor Hoggett, who is helping to organise the conference, says:
We will examine denial from a variety of different perspectives – as the product of addiction to consumption, as the outcome of diffusion of responsibility and the idea that someone else will sort it out and as the consequence of living in a perverse culture which encourages collusion, complacency, irresponsibility.
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=63&cp=31#comment-12166
Robin goes on to make the point that the usual cause of scepticism is a lack of convincing evidence; a perfectly rational response to uncertainty.
Apparently this has not occurred to the organisers of this conference, who seem intent on treating climate scepticism as a pathological condition. Perhaps they have never wondered whether likening anyone who just happens not to share their convictions to holocaust deniers is altogether normal? And what might they think about Christian fundamentalists who refer to the followers of other faiths as heathens?
But it was the reference to eco-psychologists that really caught my eye. What on earth could that be about? A vegan shrink who rides a solar powered bicycle perhaps?
I had to go no further than the Daily Green website to find out: Continue reading »
Following on from my last post about the problems of making a complaint to the BBC about Susan Watt’s report on President Obama’s inauguration speech on Newsnight, time continued to slip by.Given the way in which my response to Mr Graham’s message had been mangled when I tried to send it via the BBC Complaints website, I hardly expected it receive a reply. So I searched around for some way of moving things on.Eventually I found that the BBC has a Complaints Coordinator, and I sent him the following message:
A month ago I attempted to make a complaint to the BBC concerning
Susan Watts´ report on President Obama´s inaugural speech, broadcast
by Newsnight on 20th January 2009. The extraordinary progress of this
matter through the BBC´s complaint system is reported on my blog
here:http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=157
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=158
Would you please provide me with contact details of someone who can
help resolve this matter without further waste of time and
embarrassment to the BBC. All I want to do is respond to the message
that I received form Mr Graham of BBC Complaints and move on to the
next stage in the complaints procedure.I would be grateful for your help.
I pressed the send button at 12:55 on Monday 23rd February and just eight minutes later, at 13:03, the following reply had reached my mailbox: Continue reading »
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