Bishop Hill Roger's obsession with fairness and impartiality
May 18, 2015 BBC Roger Harrabin is positively revelling in his role as agitator for the green movement today, with an article on the views of Unilever boss Paul Polman, who is apparently demanding decarbonisation.
This is an astonishingly poor article. For a start, we have to wonder why the views of a businessman nobody has ever heard of are considered newsworthy. Of course it fits the BBC's agenda, in a way that "people dying from lack of fossil fuels" just doesn't ("lifting them out of poverty", Roger's concession to the facts on the ground, is not exactly the same as "stopping them dying", in my opinion). Again and again we see the news agenda being set by whatever green-tinged press release happens to pop into its correspondents' inboxes of a morning. GWPF press releases, or even things like the Ecomodernist Manifesto go straight in the bin.
The content of the Polman piece is derisory:
"The reality is, if we don’t tackle climate change we won’t achieve economic growth.”
Mr Polman said Unilever had faced business costs €300m-to-€400 million (£216m-to-£316m) higher than normal due to extreme weather.
This is, not to put too fine a point on it, a breathtaking display of ignorance, given that there has been no discernable change to extreme weather (unless you accept the IPCC's Orwellian inclusion of daily temperature maxima and minima as "weather extremes"). What is it about green bilge that Roger Harrabin finds so enticing that he feels that it is worthy of dissemination to a wider audience and without a word of comment? Is there an agenda here perchance?
Perhaps we get a clue later on in the article, where we get a quite stunning display of Koch derangement syndrome.
But for every CEO who makes promises in Paris this week, others will warn against a rush away from CO2.
America’s fossil fuel giants, the Koch Brothers, are spending $900 million on political advertising to make their case.
This is, not to put too fine a point on it, a dirty piece of political propaganda, inviting the reader to believe that the Koch brothers are spending the best part of a billion dollars on climate change activism. But if you read the linked article and you find that the money is actually being spent on things like Tea Party groups and the American Chamber of Commerce.
GWPF gets a mention too, with Harrabin describing them as "fossil fuel advocates". You can't imagine him describing the Grantham Institute as an environmental advocacy group, can you? (You also have to wonder how all 1290 articles about nuclear power on the GWPF website have escaped his notice.) GWPF refer to themselves as a "think tank", but it appears that Harrabin considers this too polite a term to use for the non-green side of the climate debate, being reserved for organisations such as E3G, who are honoured with just this description in the same article.
Finally, we shuld also note who Roger felt he should talk to for his article:
- "Nick Mabey, who runs the green think tank E3G"
- "The World Bank's climate chief, Rachel Kyte"
- "Polly Courtice, who runs the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership"
Harrabin claims that the BBC "obsesses about fairness and impartiality". You can't fault his sense of humour at least.
Reader Comments (54)
Whoever wrote this Marxist Claptrap is not only a climate change hoax drone - he or she hasn't a clue about what's going on in American Politics. It's as if they're parroting the talking points of George Soros funded Media Matters. Note to the ignorant tools of the left authors: The Chamber of Commerce is part of the Establishment and definitely not funded by Koch bothers, in fact, The Chamber of Commerce gets more than a half billion in Tax Dollars each year -money which it doles out to its own list of politicians and crony capitalists.
And since nitwit Marxists never take the time to research the facts they're given to repeat - allow me to educate you. This is the most recent data available from America’s most recent elections. There are 9 people not including George Soros, making it at least 10 people who give far more money to Democrat Political campaigns than the Koch Brothers contribute to Republican politicians. Unfortunately, the author qualifies as one of the tool, "drones", repeating the noxious "Koch Brother are the Boogie Men" propaganda talking points. Stop embarrassing yourself - Here are the facts:
Analysis of United States campaign filings finds that the 100 biggest donors combined to give $323 million during the 2014 midterms - almost as much as the $356 million given by 4.75 million small donors. Here are the top 10 biggest donors, according to the analysis.
Name Resides Source of wealth Total donated
Tom Steyer San Francisco Farallon Capital Management (hedge fund) founder $74.3 million
Michael Bloomberg New York Bloomberg L.P. founder and CEO $27.7 million
Sheldon Adelson Las Vegas Las Vegas Sands Chairman and CEO $13.2 million
Paul Singer New York Elliot Management Corporation (hedge fund) founder and CEO $12.6 million
Fred Eychaner Chicago Newsweb Corporation founder and chairman $9.7 million
Bob Mercer Suffolk County, N.Y. Renaissance Technologies (hedge fund) co-CEO $8.4 million
Jim Simons New York Renaissance Technologies (hedge fund) founder $8.3 million
Joe Ricketts Jackson Hole, Wyo. TD Ameritrade founder $6.8 million
Dick Uihlein Lake Forest, Ill. Uline, Inc. co-founder and CEO $6.7 million
David Koch New York Koch Industries Vice President $6.2 million
Harribin is quite right - the BBC indeed "obsesses about fairness and impartiality" - religiously avoiding it at all times.
muon
thats what i was thinking as well..
especially about their own comfortable entitled positions, rh a fine case in point.
separate from the larger question whether we really need 25k taxpaidfor employees pile on the info glut , we should
quickly make sure the mobility churn and equall access to promotions and especialy DEmotions in the bbc is at a par with the rest of society. better they should be a showcase in dynamism. whats the risk? is not that anyone is going to die when we say swap the top 100 mgrs there overnight.
time to stress the system a bit for these clowns
I find it very strange that a man with a degree in English degree is in his position at the BBC to report on Science. Obviously he does have some talent for spinning a yarn with that background. No doubt the Arts editor is a theoretical physicist.