Over-selling West African ‘megadroughts’

Posted by TonyN on 27/04/2009 at 11:49 am The Climate 4 Responses »
Apr 272009

A recent report by Richard Black on the BBC’s Science & Environment website is headed ‘West Africa faces ‘megadroughts’. Most climate sceptics who visit blogs like Harmless Sky will anticipate what is coming next – but in this case things aren’t quite so simple.

The article refers to a new research paper published in Science by a team from the University of Texas. They have been sampling sediments from Lake Bosumtwi in Ghana which indicate that this area is regularly subject to severe droughts which last not just for years, or even decades, but for centuries.  The most recent one ended about 250 years ago, comfortably before human activity can be blamed for climate change.

Apparently the researchers are baffled about what causes these phenomena. Recurrent droughts lasting a decade of so are thought to be associated with variations in ocean currents, which in turn influence the intensity of rainfall. But these ‘megadroughts’ are on an altogether different scale and no explanation of the cause is being offered.

Such events should not be confused with the appalling drought in the Sahel during the 1970s and 1980s which is estimated to have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

Here is what one of the scientists has to say: Continue reading »

BBC Newsnight - complaint to the Editorial Standards Unit

Posted by TonyN on 18/04/2009 at 10:56 am BBC and Freedom of Information 10 Responses »
Apr 182009

It’s now nearly three months since Susan Watts’ extraordinary report for Newsnight about President Obama’s inaugural speech. After jumping through a multitude of hoops (here, here, and here) as part of the BBC complaints process, I have finally received a letter from the Editorial Complaints Unit with some kind of substantive content. This is what they have to say:

I’m writing to notify you that your complaint about Susan Watts’ report for Newsnight on the environmental challenges faced by President Obama is being entertained by this unit. I would also like to sincerely apologise for the delay in doing so as a result of having mislaid your letter.

To ensure that we have a correct understanding of the basis for your complaint, the BBC’S complaints procedure requires that, at this stage, we set out the main points of complaint as we understand them, and the elements of the Editorial Guidelines that we believe to be most relevant to them. In this instance we understand your complaint to be that the editing of excerpts from President Obama’s inaugural speech in this report distorted their intended meaning. The relevant section of the guidelines is that on Accuracy which says, in a section headed Misleading Audiences:

We should not distort known facts, present invented material as fact or knowingly do anything to mislead our audiences. We may need to label material to avoid doing so.

If you have any comments on this summary of your complaint and the relevant guidelines, please let us have them by 22 April so that we can take them into consideration in the course of our investigation, the outcome of which we’ll aim to let you know by 6 May.

For information, the full Editorial Guidelines can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/

And the BBC’s complaints process is explained at http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/handle.shtml

Yours sincerely

Complaints Manager

Editorial Complaints Unit

There is something positively Dickensian about the use of the word ‘entertain’ in the first paragraph, but as the last paragraph refers to an impending ‘investigation’, we seem to be on roughly the right track at last. What comes in the middle is a little more worrying. Continue reading »

BBC Newsnight - Susan Watts tries to get all the right answers

Posted by TonyN on 10/04/2009 at 1:37 pm BBC and Freedom of Information 8 Responses »
Apr 102009

At the end of last month, Newsnight returned to the delicate subject of what President Obama said – or did not say – about science in his inaugural speech. For anyone new to this topic see: BBC Newsnight – Warming up President Obama’s inaugural speech?Here’s what happened in the most recent episode which was broadcasted on 26th March 2009:

Lead-in from Emily Maitlis, the programme presenter: In his policies, George Bush never disguised the fact that he put God many rungs higher than science. So how will life change now there is a US president who believes passionately in the subject. In a wide ranging interview, Harold Varmus, a Nobel Prize winning cancer specialist charged with the task of restoring science to its rightful place talks to our Science Editor Susan Watts.

Ms Watts’ report started with a sound bite from the inaugural speech, part of which will be familiar to many Harmless Sky readers:

President Obama: We’ll restore science to its rightful place, and wield technologies wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.

The last time we heard, ‘We’ll restore science to its rightful place ….’ on Newsnight, the rest of the sentence seemed to be, ‘[and] roll back the spectre of a warming planet’. Unless you happened to have a very good memory, or had just read a transcript of the speech, you would have thought that was exactly what the president had said. Not at all the same thing as the complete sentence accurately quoted above. But where climate science is concerned, can we expect the BBC to concern itself about a trivial matter like misquotation provided that the message is ‘correct’? Using the same seven-word phrase twice in little over a month in such very different contexts leaves one a little breathless.

Evidently Newsnight were not prepared to risk repeating the so-called ‘montage’ that they used in their original coverage of the inaugural speech, in spite of claiming that there was nothing wrong with it.

This is Susan Watts’ introduction to her interview with Professor Varmus: Continue reading »

George Monbiot: the strange affair of the disappearing climate activist

Posted by TonyN on 31/03/2009 at 11:59 pm Uncategorized 11 Responses »
Mar 312009

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 »

After Copenhagen - what really happened?

Posted by TonyN on 28/03/2009 at 11:59 pm The Climate No Responses »
Mar 282009

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 »

Llanbedr Airfield Update

Posted by TonyN on 23/03/2009 at 9:42 pm Llanbedr Airfield 8 Responses »
Mar 232009

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.

http://www.snowdonia-society.org.uk/news.php?n_id=44

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 »

Is the Information Commissioner a toothless watchdog?

Posted by TonyN on 14/03/2009 at 7:04 pm BBC and Freedom of Information 5 Responses »
Mar 142009

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 »

Eco-psychologists and a very strange conference

Posted by TonyN on 07/03/2009 at 5:44 pm The Climate 4 Responses »
Mar 072009

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 »

Warming up Obama - The BBC's Complaints Procedure Revealed: Part 3

Posted by TonyN on 01/03/2009 at 2:00 pm BBC and Freedom of Information 5 Responses »
Mar 012009

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 »

Warming up Obama - The BBC's Complaints Procedure Revealed: Part 2

Posted by TonyN on 20/02/2009 at 2:21 pm BBC and Freedom of Information 8 Responses »
Feb 202009

As I said in Part 1 of this post, by the time that Dave of the BBC Trust had confirmed that my complaint had been forwarded to BBC Management I had received an initial response from them. Given that they had received the documentation on 9th February and they replied on the 11th February, this was pretty quick. But as I have said previously, their attempt to justify what was broadcast in Susan Watts’ report for Newsnight on 20th January was totally implausible:Thank you for your email regarding ‘Newsnight’ which was broadcast on 20th January.

Your correspondence has been forwarded by the Trust Unit to BBC Information for a reply on behalf of the BBC’s Executive as it concerns matters which are the responsibility of the Executive, rather than the Trust, in the first instance. This department, BBC Information, has a wealth of knowledge about BBC programmes and policies and is experienced in the workings of the Corporation and so is authorised to reply on behalf of the BBC’s Executive.

I understand you felt that Susan Watts’ report on Barack Obama’s plans for the environment edited clips of his inauguration address in a way that was misleading.

This was one part of a 50 minute programme exploring the start of the Obama presidency from various angles. ‘Newsnight’ edited sections of the speech to reflect the elements in it that referred to science as a way to give people an impression or montage of what President Obama said about science in his inauguration speech.

This was signposted to audiences with fades between each point. It in no way altered the meaning or misrepresented what the President was saying. the report then went on to explore the challenges facing the President in this area.

I appreciate that you had serious concerns about the editing of the speech and I have registered your complaint on our audience log. This is the internal report of audience feedback which we compile daily for the ‘Newsnight’ production team and all programme makers within the BBC, and also their senior management. It ensures that your points, and all other comments we receive, are circulated and considered across the corporation.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact us.

Regards

Barry Graham
BBC Complaints

Even ignoring the complacent and condescending tone, this seemed a pretty low level response so I resigned myself to moving on to a higher level of management where a more objective view might be found, and decisions taken. So I emailed the following response to Mr Graham:

Continue reading »

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