Bishop Hill BBC will stop being biased
Oct 13, 2010 BBC Climate: HSI Climate: Sceptics New editorial guidelines have been issued by the BBC and the Telegraph is reporting that these are likely to force the corporation to take a more balanced approach to scientific issues, presumably including global warming climate change disruption.
But the BBC’s new editorial guidelines, published yesterday after an extensive consultation that considered over 1,600 submissions by members of the public, say expressly for the first time that scientific issues fall within the corporation’s obligation to be impartial.
“The BBC must be inclusive, consider the broad perspective, and ensure that the existence of a range of views is appropriately reflected,” said BBC trustee Alison Hastings.
I feel certain that the head of factual programming will be telephoning to commission a miniseries based on The Hockey Stick Illusion, so I'll wait by the phone today...
Reader Comments (68)
Now why would I call you a cynic for simply stating the facts?
"As climate change claims its first victims in the form of displaced people from the Carteret Islands, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kenya and the Niger Delta, Tom Heap talks to victims of Hurricane Katrina and of the UK floods in the Autumn of 2000 to find out why they have taken their cases to court to seek compensation for meteorological events."
It's funny the way that for years all this stuff has been endlessly misrepresented as 'evidence' of AGW.
Carteret Islands: coastal erosion caused by mangrove felling, house construction, road and path building, clearing channels through the reef etc.
Bangladesh: massive clearance of coastal mangroves, delta subsidence, intensive ground water extraction.
Ethiopia: overpopulation, deforestation, ground water extraction.
Kenya ditto, with a special award to Daniel Arap Moi for really doing his bit to deforest the country and bugger up the hydrological cycle.
Niger: more or less same as Bangladesh. Deltas are made of mud, it compresses under its own weight an subsides. Relative rise in local sea level is inevitable misrepresented as global SLR - panic, doom etc.
They managed to miss one: Benin. Massive coastal erosion caused by constructing deep water ports in the 60s. A real mess-up, 100 per cent anthropogenic and absolutely not AGW-SLR.
How many people here actually believe that we have the ability to measure global SLR change to an accuracy of +/- 0.4mm? I don't for one.
Especially as I know that the calculation requires an estimate of glacial isostatic adjustment that is derived from a deglaciation model.
This process is fraught with assumptions and potential errors. Look at Wu et al. 2010. Fully half the estimated ice mass loss from Greenland appears to be an artifact of miscalculating GIA. Greenland is sinking faster than previously thought.
So, not much balance at all, really.
"The idea that they should dedicate a fixed percentage of time to either side of the issue is, quite frankly, ridiculous. What would be wrong with them, for example, simply reporting news stories (from either side) when they happen?"
Oct 13, 2010 at 4:12 PM | MackemX
Err - that would be a fixed percentage of time then. Namely, 50% each way. Which is clearly ridiculous, as AGW denial is a minority fringe view with very little science to support it.
Which leads us straight back to - how much time should be spent putting accross denier views? Do you lot seriously expect 50% of presentation on the subject to represent a tiny minority? If not - then what amount would you be happy with?
How about allowing skeptics to actually speak?
How about noting that Bob Ward is not a scientist but is a PR flack?
How about pointing out the times that AGW promoters are promoting false claims of 'consensus' or 'settled'?
For starters?
You misunderstand, which should probably not come as a surprise.
If, for example, there was a newsworthy story such as Mann's hockey stick being demonstrated to be a complete load of arse, then that should be reported, without the need to harp on about saving the children from global warming.
If a leading climate 'scientist' is arrested at some protest or other, that should be reported without the need to waste time waffling on about the fact that Manhattan will probably be under 20 feet of water a decade ago (pointing out when these predictions don't actually happen might be seen as worth at least as much coverage as the claims were given in the first place).
If a highly respected physicist retires from his professional association citing unscientific practices (amongst other things) as his reason for resigning, that should be reported.
To add some balance, if some new pro-AGW research comes out with a falsifiable hypothesis (in other words if there is some genuinely testable science produced) that should be reported.
Nobody is saying that every item has to give two sides of a story, simply that newsworthy events deserve to be reported in an unbiased manner.
Now, unless you can predict in advance how many newsworthy stories are likely to emerge in either direction it seems childish to dictate in advance what percentage of newstime should be devoted to coverage of said news.
Perhaps when research is published it might be nice if some attempt was made to explain the science (assuming there is any) rather than descend into silly scare stories about polar bears or flooded cities. Not too much to ask one would think.
I'll ask again, despite the fact you obviously have no answer, how do you fit the manner in which data and methods have been withheld/lost and the continual appeals to consensus/authority with either the scientific method or more specifically the way that is expressed by the RS's motto?
In your own time love.
@ZedsDeadBed
"Do you lot seriously expect 50% of presentation on the subject to represent a tiny minority?"
Although droves of Warmists are waking up and seeing this ideological scam for what it is, it's a bit premature to describe them as a tiny minority. Wait until the Cancun fiasco is over.
Come to think, to believe the BBC coverage of a topic should be allocated percentage-wise, means to believe that climate change is a purely political concept, and should be treated the way party politics is.
How did the BBC get this past Harrabin & Black? It would be impossible for the new guidelines to be at more odds with their personal views - If they can't do irrational biased reporting then why be there?
I suspect move's to WWF and Greenpeace in the offing. At least there, they can dream their dreams for a little longer. ;)
matthu -
the only reason the Beeb is interviewing Richard North is because tawanda w. johnson has sent out the APS response, as poor as it is:
APS responds! – Deconstructing the APS response to Dr. Hal Lewis resignation
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/13/aps-responds-deconstructing-the-aps-response-to-dr-hal-lewis-resignation/
as others have implied, CAGW is inserted into almost all BBC programming, so only time will tell if there is to be any real change.
btw tawanda is heavily involved in the APS Capitol Hill Quarterly:
April 2010: APS: Capitol Hill Quarterly: APS Commends President’s Fiscal Year 2011 Proposed Scientific Budget
by Tawanda W. Johnson
The American Physical Society (APS) is delighted that President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2011 budget proposal increases federal investments in transformational research that will keep the nation on a path of scientific advancement, technological innovation and economic growth...
The President has proposed hiking the DOE budget by $226 million to $5.1 billion. NSF is slated to have its budget increase by $550 million to $7.4 billion. NIST would receive a boost of $67 million to $587 million.
Scientists, who receive funding from these agencies, are engaged in research that will generate solutions to the country’s most pressing challenges, including developing technologies that create clean, affordable energy for all Americans...
http://www.aps.org/publications/capitolhillquarterly/201004/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&pageid=210763
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
also in the above issue:
Snapshots from Physics History:
The Birth of Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier
Discovering the ‘Greenhouse Effect’
Fourier’s other claim to fame is the discovery in 1824 of the “greenhouse effect”: namely, that certain gases in the Earth’s atmosphere could trap heat from the sun instead of having it radiate back into space, thereby increasing the surface temperature of Earth....
Zedbed
I have tried to engage you and I have been polite to you. However there is a well known phrase that the Bishop will not allow me to use on you and it end in OFF.
You have been given every chance but in my opinion you have now long overstayed your welcome.
I listened to tonights edition of "Saving the Earth" on BBC Radio 4. I just had to switch it off after 15 minutes. Its smugness of tone and certainty finally got to me. There's only so much input from the blessed that one can take. Ignoring the presenter on a mission, I got through the woman who invested her legacy to take on a cement company, a lawyer whom, amidst much lip licking, told us about lucrative pickings by taking on planet hating capitalists but when it came to the soft-spoken words of a lady who advocated studying the natural laws of indigenous groups to counter the human-centric laws that threatened the planet, I could take no more. Zilch. Nada.
I switched over and listened to jazz on Radio Scotland.
That's the first I've had to switch off/over a program on radio through sheer frustration. I've done that plenty on TV. That's why I and my TV parted company. But radio?
Forget about the BBC and fair play. Man made Climate change or Warming or disruption or whatever is
an unassailable belief. It's the "God created Heaven and Earth" start position but without the God bit!
No amount of evidence to the contrary that Man is raping the planet will ever penetrate that smugness of certainty that makes for the true believer. They've discovered their God, not a god of creation but of destruction.
Those who dare question any of the tenets of their belief? They are clearly evil and beloved of Shaitan.
Truly we are entering the Age of Unreason and Blind Belief.
And they call us the creationists? Their only defence is the worship of authority. Their only attack? Ad Hominem insults, gnat swallowing and cries that heretics conform to standards of probity and logic that far surpass their own.
Good on you Hal. Bad on those who are paid to report what you have said but didn't!
ZBD
as a lurker
i slagged you off for not engaging with people here on an earlier thread, then retracted my comment to give you a chance to prove me wrong after thinking about a observation/comment by Roy (i think).
please engage, no need to be so adversarial (we all may be wrong/right, just prove it one way or another scientifically & it's fixed).
as for BBC
don't get me started, grew up watching Horizon/Panama etc
BBC news = advertise website+latest survey done by BBC (3 random people with no idea)+advertise our investigation into blabla (don't we pay the police to do this?).
anyway Bish, got the book from my local library & am now reading (every library should have it)
@ZDB: On a quote from you:
"Which leads us straight back to - how much time should be spent putting accross denier views? Do you lot seriously expect 50% of presentation on the subject to represent a tiny minority? If not - then what amount would you be happy with?" (Oct 13, 2010 at 7:54 PM | ZedsDeadBed )
Since when is it ok for a government broadcaster to push some theory? In stead of asking why sceptics should get air-time, you could be asking why pro-AGW-ers should get it anyway.
To me it looks as though the penny is slowly, oh, so slowly, dropping. For sure nobody at the BBC, or in Parliament, has looked into the issues on climate change as presented by the sceptics, and they have also fallen big-time for the myths of settled science, assuming that anyone questioning the science is a "flat-earther" or "creationist". (As a by the way I'd let these nutters speak as much as they wanted on their favorite theory, the more you see them the more likely you are to assume that they are wrong. Whereas with climate science the activists have maintained the myth that sceptics are clouding a very clear acceptance of the "science" and this has been accepted hook line and sinker). What is beginning to sink in with the politicians, and maybe the BBC, is that there are a lot of sceptics, and for politicians that is enough to wake them up, hence no politician from any party has referred to flate earthers or deniers for a year or more. Now while it's not Notting Hill/Islington fashionable to be a sceptic the BBC has remained firmly in the denier/flat-earther mode, but the shift in the politicians is coming through.
Having said all that I don't think we'll see any significant moves anytime soon, these people see themselves as sophisticates who couldn't possibly be taken in by religious dogma, so with a lack of awareness only too common in smug bastards they continue to follow the environmental religion and accept anything that confirms their beliefs.
I like tea but I don't like the Tea party!
I like parties, but I don't like tea
"Zedbed
I have tried to engage you and I have been polite to you. However there is a well known phrase that the Bishop will not allow me to use on you and it end in OFF.
You have been given every chance but in my opinion you have now long overstayed your welcome."
Oct 14, 2010 at 12:24 AM | Dung
Patience you. I've not forgotten our conversations about carbon fingerprinting and I'll come back to you on that when I've found out a couple more things I'm waiting on.
However, when a sensible greeny lefty like me sees comments being printed like those on this thread, the temptation is too much to resist.
Incidentally - before you get too pious - check back through all the comments preceding this one on this thread, and count how many of them are scientific, and how many are baseless and crass. Judging me by standards you don't hold your like-minded posters to perhaps? Why didn't you wade in to the poster who cited the Oregon Petition? It's literally the most discredited petition in human history, yet nobody on this thread has had the integrity to pull her/him up on it.
I like tea parties, but I don't like, err,.....um,...Bob Ward?