BBC Global warming deceit

Fair enough but surely as we are equipped (well at least I am) to be able to judge, disect, and base our opinions on information gleaned and assembled from a number of sources–as indeed you are doing, the BBC is supplying a source of information.
Can you seriously name a one stop news media that you would completely trust..??

BBC has a Charter which requires it to be impartial, particularly in regard to news and current affairs. It cannot be said to be impartial on AGW if it deliberately leaves out swathes of relevant information. It is therefore in breach of its Charter, and we cannot dismiss this lightly.

The Charter was put in place so that the public could have some degree of trust in BBC, without checking every fact or needing to seek alternative sources of information to see what BBC might have left out. Funding for BBC is compulsory, and if BBC is in default on its Charter, then we have every right to take away that funding.

Peter Sissons provides us with confirmation of the BBC’s determination to present only one side of the story, in wilful breach of journalistic ethics and flying in the face of the corporation’s own claims of impartiality and balance:

“At the end of November 2007 I was on duty on News 24 when the UN panel on climate change produced a report which later turned out to contain significant inaccuracies, many stemming from its reliance on non-peer reviewed sources and best-guesses by environmental activists.

But the way the BBC’s reporter treated the story was as if it was beyond a vestige of doubt, the last word on the catastrophe awaiting mankind. The most challenging questions addressed to a succession of UN employees and climate activists were ‘How urgent is it?’ and ‘How much danger are we in?’

Back in the studio I suggested that we line up one or two sceptics to react to the report, but received a totally negative response, as if I was some kind of lunatic. I went home and wrote a note to myself: ‘What happened to the journalism? The BBC has completely lost it.”

http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/peter-sissons-on-the-bbcs-climate-change-propaganda/

Steven

I agree with your last sentence but nevertheless believe it is incumbent on the BBC as a publicly funded organisation to make doubly sure its output is scruplously balanced and scruplously accurate. We should expect nothing less.

I don’t actually see why we should expect that. It might be desirable but I wouldn’t expect it.
I’d say it was more incumbent upon it to feed ‘the great unwashed’ the Government (or better still the establishment) line.
Something it’s been doing for a long time.

Re 138
Charliehunt

Charlie,

Thank you for that confirmation. I thought that I had digit trouble ! My problem with Google is that it often leads me to sites like Wikipedia.

Re 141
Grey Area

Blimey. Now you’re cooking the books. Must be infectious.

You can’t afford me.

Re 145
Derekf

If you keep repeating that, nine times out of ten you’ll believe it.

I agree with your last sentence but nevertheless believe it is incumbent on the BBC as a publicly funded organisation to make doubly sure its output is scruplously balanced and scruplously accurate. We should expect nothing less.

Fair enough but surely as we are equipped (well at least I am) to be able to judge, disect, and base our opinions on information gleaned and assembled from a number of sources–as indeed you are doing, the BBC is supplying a source of information.

Can you seriously name a one stop news media that you would completely trust..??

I tend to assemble my ‘World view’ from a number of different places.

Andy

Actually I listen to Radio 4 a lot and despite what people here are saying, I find much of it informative and reasonably well balanced.
Of course I look at every issue from the view-point that the rich are trying to screw the poor, and governments are trying to screw each other and everyone else, etc, etc.
I agree that if you only watch television or worse BBC1, then you’re likely to learn very little useful, apart from the prizes on ‘Pointless’ are sh*t–and infact, that ‘Pointless’ is indeed that–pointless.
If I tend towards believing the BBC has any bias, I tend to see it as ‘HMG’s Propaganda Ministry’. Whatever the government of the day is, they tend to fall in line with the establishment.
Well, I suppose as they all went to Oxbridge together that follows.

On the issue of BBC misleading on the topic of AGW, it is not a question of wheher it appears that they were biased, they have actually been shown to have omitted whole reams of material which could have been used by viewers to form their own opinions. This is made worse by the ‘ratchet’ effect, where a news item is presented sensationally with many dramatic or overstated claims. The claims may later be refuted, but by then the clamour has declined, leaving most viewers with the exaggerated, superficial impressions, and not with the calmer and more rational understanding. The recent case with David Attenborough’s comments on warming in Africa, is a recent example of this.

Further back we have:

The 2007 Bridcut Report for the BBC Trust contained a strong warning for the Corporation. “The BBC has many public purposes of both ambition and merit – but joining campaigns to save the planet is not one of them,”

This is compounded by BBC’s obsession with secrecy over the key people involved in its decision to slant AGW coverage. This desire for secrecy even spills over into more innocuous reporting, as this enquirer found out.

You would think that asking for and receiving the names of the judges of a set of BBC awards would be a straightforward matter. The corporation’s own awards guidelines, available on its website, demand transparency. So it was surprising that when I asked who chose the winners of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards….. I was told it was a secret.

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/01/bbc-radio-2-folk-awards-bottom-of-the-class/

BBC has a long way to go to be trusted on the important matters, if the minor ones are treated with such haughty disdain.

Steven

As far as the original question is concerned, I think it was an error rather than any sort of deceit. C**k-up wins over conspiracy 9 times out 10.

No – I have never been in their employ. But have had several friends who worked for it over the years and a couple who still do in senior positions.

As you will know from other threads I have a poor view of the BBC, the way it is structured, managed, and the way it uses/wastes the taxpayers money.

charliehunt, Did you get fired from the BBC or something? You seem to have a particular vendetta against them.

steven_wh. Thank you for clarifying your post. I still think your original point that the plants were being closed due to CO2 directives was not strictly accurate but thank you for your explanation.
As far your proposed programme guide-line is concerned, why do you expect the BBC to do it? If you are interested, and I’m guessing you are, why not find the facts out for yourself?

For an organization that gets a lot of abuse on here, an awful lot of information seems to still come from there. If it is that bad and tells you lies, why watch it?

Then again there may be a useful programme about making tin-foil hats on one day. 😀

Actually I listen to Radio 4 a lot and despite what people here are saying, I find much of it informative and reasonably well balanced.
Of course I look at every issue from the view-point that the rich are trying to screw the poor, and governments are trying to screw each other and everyone else, etc, etc.
I agree that if you only watch television or worse BBC1, then you’re likely to learn very little useful, apart from the prizes on ‘Pointless’ are sh*t–and infact, that ‘Pointless’ is indeed that–pointless.

If I tend towards believing the BBC has any bias, I tend to see it as ‘HMG’s Propaganda Ministry’. Whatever the government of the day is, they tend to fall in line with the establishment.

Well, I suppose as they all went to Oxbridge together that follows.

Andy

I don’t blame the BBC for not telling me anything – I blame the BBC for telling me things I prefer not to hear.

Fixed that for you.

Shall I send my invoice to the usual address? 😎

What would I give for that programme??!! But I have no need to worry because it will never happen. And emphatically not on the BBC. Pitch it to a few independents, Steven – you never know…..:)

😉

The EU directive about power station emissions was do with curbing acid rain, not global warming. steven_wh put CO2 in his post incorrectly.

I did not mention the LCPD as the primary reason. We knew that the older coal fired power stations would have to spend money to comply with this directive. The other legislation which costs them additional money was added later, namely the need to purchase carbon offsets for the CO2 that they produce. Given the deadline to comply, the producers opted to spend on CO2 offsets, running the coal power stations as much as possible on the maximum, and avoiding the LCPD by closing the plants early. Without CO2 emission charges the money would have been spent on the LCPD, keeping the plants economic.

The LCPD is targeted at power stations producing the kind of emissions which come from from coal or oil. It therefore did not need to include explicitly CO2 emissions, the effect and intent was the same.

But back to BBC omissions. My list of programme topics, over say six one hour slots, to rectify the lack of information on AGW would include (not necessarily in this order):

Additionally, a follow-up open panel Q&A session, plus Web interactive discussion.

Steven

John

Google is a search engine. Like Yahoo and dozens of others. It doesn’t supply you with facts, falsified or not. Wikipedia is to be found when you search via Google or anyone else. I agree that relying on Wikipedia is dangerous since it is not necessarily compiled objectively.

I don’t blame the BBC for not telling me anything – I blame the BBC for telling me lies.

As for Google I rank them alongside Wikepedia.

It isn’t the same thing at all but whatever :rolleyes:

As I’ve said before, I can only surmise that if you need falsehoods and made-up stories to further your argument then that’s your affair.

You can try and blame the BBC for not telling you anything but a simple Google search will tell you all you kneed to know.

Part and parcel of the subject under discussion.

The EU directive about power station emissions was do with curbing acid rain, not global warming. steven_wh put CO2 in his post incorrectly.

Derekf

Whether it’s by accident or design – I suspect the latter – you miss the point made in the preceeding comment by Steven wh.

We will be shortly exchanging a proven, certain and guaranteed method of generating energy for the nation, for an uncertain, idiosyncratic and non guaranteed method of generating energy for the nation.

All of this resting on the back of a lying, cheating, deceitful web of chicanery we know as ‘global’ warming or’ ‘man made climate change’.

If this changeover from ‘certain’ to ‘uncertain’ rested on rock solid and empirical science, then the anti lobby would have nothing about which we could be suspicious.

Such is not the case. As I’ve written before, the time scales involved are too lengthy to make a satisfactory case upon which to spend vast sums which would be better spent elsewhere and to greater effect.

Interesting viewpoint.

As far as I can work out, the power plants are being closed down because of this, the

Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD, 2001/80/EC)

which, according to DEFRA , does this:-

The LCPD aims to reduce acidification, ground level ozone and particles throughout Europe by controlling emissions of sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) and dust (particulate matter (PM)) from large combustion plants (LCPs) in power stations, petroleum refineries, steelworks and other industrial processes running on solid, liquid or gaseous fuel.

Strangely, no mention of CO2. The date is interesting though. 2001. It is now 2013 and we’re acting surprised?
The EU have given everyone 14 years to comply and the UK has fallen short – big surprise. I’m struggling to see how this can be the fault of the EU?

As far as I can see, powers stations can opt in or opt out. By opting in, they have to put measures in place to curb the emissions above. By opting out they have to close by the end of 2014, or earlier if the are used for more than 20000 hours. That is what has happened. It is clearly the fault of the UK that measures haven’t been taken to mitigate against these closures not the EU.