Harrabin speaks!

Roger Harrabin has finally responded to the Jo Abbess furore. Writing on the BBC News Editors Blog he claims, incredibly, that the changes were not made in response to Jo Abbess at all.

[After publishing the article I] received suggestions that the article should offer more background. The WMO wanted to emphasise M. Jarraud’s view that a slight temperature decrease in 2008 compared with 2007 should not be misinterpreted as evidence of a general cooling. Some of the feedback seemed helpful so we altered and expanded the report - improving it substantially for the general reader, in my view.

Among my e-mail exchanges was one with an environmental campaigner who published our e-mails implying that we had changed our article as a result of her threat to publicly criticise our report. We didn’t change it for that reason. We changed it to improve the piece. But we’ve stirred the wrath of some of our readers as a result.

So we are asked to believe that between 10:57 am, when Roger was still arguing that the article should be left in its orginal form, and 11:28 am when he wrote to ask whether his changes were acceptable, he had suddenly changed his mind on the basis of new correspondence he had received from, among others, the WMO.

Colour me unconvinced.

I've left a comment on the BBC thread to ask if they will publish the WMO correspondence. At the moment, it doesn't seem to be accepting comments though. 

Colour me unsurprised.

Roger also responds to the argument that he should have made the changes to the story clear within the revised text. (You will remember that he failed even to change the timestamp, which would appear to be contrary to BBC policy). He claims, again apparently with a straight face, that the changes were minor and not worthy of note. By way of verifying this claim, let's just remind ourselves of the change which I highlighted in my earlier post:

Old version

This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory. But experts say we are still clearly in a long-term warming trend - and they forecast a new record high temperature within five years.

New version 

But this year's temperatures would still be way above the average - and we would soon exceed the record year of 1998 because of global warming  induced by greenhouse gases.

Roger, please stop digging.

Comments

[Rob]

Didn't he also email her to inform her of the changes and ask if they were OK?

[Andrew Duffin]

"a slight temperature decrease in 2008 compared with 2007 should not be misinterpreted as evidence of a general cooling. "

Whereas, a slight temperature <b>increase</b> in 2008 compared with 2007 would have been reported by the BBC in what manner?

I think we can guess.

[Andrew Duffin]

Huh? Escaped? That is escaped? Sorry.

[Bishop Hill]

We can indeed!