Wednesday
Mar032010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill BBC presenter can't question AGW
Mar 3, 2010 BBC Climate: other I'm grateful to Charles Crawford for this item, in which BBC Radio Five Live's Peter Allen tells a listener that he is not allowed to question manmade global warming. The programme will soon disappear from the BBC website so an excerpt is attached below.
Reader Comments (53)
I'm not sure there's much by way of a conclusion that could be pinned on a single throw-away line, but it requires clarification. The BBC's response to the "Climategate" scandal led directly to many of us questioning the BBC's impartiality on the subject. I wonder if it's time we began asking for details of editorial instructions to journalists/presenters with regard to climate change in advance of FOI requests, if they should be needed.
I remember listening to this at the time and found the comments by both the woman being interviewed regarding global warming excellent (I don't believe in global warming) and Peter Allens comment.
Try telling this bloke
http://www.anorak.co.uk/240979/media/global-warming/eu-top-thinker-says-global-warming-caused-chile-earthquake.html
Simon
Instructions to journalists re AGW are not covered by FoI law, so we can't know.
I've dropped a line to the show asking them whether Peter could comment here or on air about what he said. I don't suppose we'll get a response, but you never know.
I'm not sure we should take this too seriously.
Anyway, lest the interview disappears into the ether, never to be heard of again, here's the end of the interview between Peter Adam (PA) and Angela Dingwall (AD), "Manager of one of the ski centers in the resort [of Glencoe]". Angela speaks with nice, sexy, scottish accent. Peter Adams doesn't.
PA: Well, it's a funny year Angela.
What do you think - is it your Global Warming that's doing it?
What do you think?
AD: No. it's just ...
PA: Just ...
AD: I don't believe in Global Warming.
I am afraid it's, er just er ...
PA: You don't!
AD: It comes and goes.
PA: Well you're allowed to say that, but I'm not!
AD: (laughs)
PA: Um, (laughs), um ...
Sorry, sorry - Peter Allen, not Peter Adams!
I wouldn't over-cook that item! Peter Allen sounded perfectly jovial about it - if he said 'I quite agree with you, it's all bollocks' he would be deluged with complaints, it's only a chat show.
Bish - the written evidence sent to the 'hapless' Muir Russell (I love Canadian humour), especially that of Mann - will we get to see that evidence?
Also didn't you think that Acton came across as a comedy plonker? When he said that UEA had gone from a standing start to ruling the world in climatology, I reckon it went down badly, presenting UEA as a great British export, and therefore unquestionable, whereas it sounded to me as probable that they must have cut a few corners to get there, with their staff of 3 and limited filing capacity. He was the least credible act of all the witnesses.
I would not take the remark seriously if there were some serious debate about climategate on the BBC. As it is, I feel like people must have felt in East Germany - listening to amazing news from over the border, but nothing at all on the official media.
I am starting to ask just how much censorship has crept into journalism in Britain.
@ Bishop: Darn it. My first ever FOI request, and it's going to fall on deaf ears :o( I should have hit refresh a couple more times here before submitting my request on WDTK. When will I learn?
It surprises me that we're not allowed to know. I understand that material content - video feeds etc - that go to make up the substance of programming can't be forced, but I would have thought that in the interest of ensuring unbiased reporting (a tenet of the BBC), some form of publicly facing check and balance should be in place. Ahh well.
There's an interesting comment in "The Fat Bigot Opines" (back blogging thank Dog!) -
"This was not the first time I have encountered a senior BBC broadcaster say this sort of thing, I correspond from time-to-time with one who has confirmed to me that the policy line is strict. My correspondent must remain anonymous but Friday afternoon's interviewer was Peter Allen..."
I suspect Peter Allen's comment is very telling of the BBC.
Just why did he say that?
People tend to make a joke of things that irk them, if they cannot do anything to lift the restrictions.
Why did he say that?
Can anybody ask him?
"I don't believe in Global Warming."
No, she can't say that. Every time you say you don't believe in warble gloaming a climate research application dies. Or am I thinking of something else?
A very good spot, thank you. It was much more powerful than Peter Allen saying "global warming is bollocks". The way I read it he clearly agreed with the woman but he was also having a dig not just at his employer but the anti-free speech tactics employed by the alarmist lobby as a whole. He's a pro. They're starting to break ranks. Wait for the avalanche.
Sums it all up in a nutshell, as they say!
Peter Allen is a fine presenter who makes something of a trademark of 'cocking a snook' at received wisdom. He has been around a long time and knows exactly what he is saying and how he wants it to be understood. It was a good way of revealing what the house rules at the BBC are - at the moment :-)
If a skeptic opinion leader said openly that he or she was not allowed to discuss how wonderful AGW theory really is by his paymaster, that would be news worthy, to say the least.
But we are so de-sensitized to the corruption of the public square that most people are willing rationalize this, or pretend it is of no significance.
Perhaps there is a way to preserve what he said before it disappears down the memory hole?
This is all getting very, very, silly.
The next thing you know there'll be calls for Peter Allen's suspension, with articles in the MSM about "Can't-Say-That-Gate".
His comment means precisely nothing. Can we move on? There really is nothing to see this time.
How about discussing something interesting - like "Can the CRU survive"? Or: "Are the days of Post Normal Science numbered"?
Will the BBC now apply to the High Court for a Super-Injunction?
Paul
The idea that the BBC has an official line on climate change is one that I've written a great deal about in the past. On its own, this might be a throwaway comment, but in context it's another piece in the jigsaw.
It is the sort of throw away comment many of us make in a real live forum when we encounter b*llsh*t. And have a little dig back at the right moment just to highlight how ridiculous something is, usually when group think is in effect.
It is something many of us on this blog would probably do (maybe to the detriment of our careers) and can empathise with the likely scenario.
My guess is Peter Allen knows perfectly well when he encounters the smelly stuff.
Peter Allen can’t say on air that he does not believe in global warming its not that he can’t question AGW. He was just trying to avoid sounding bias, now someone has read into it more than they should have…….
It is too ambiguous. Clarification from Allen is clearly needed. We can all be guilty of hearing what we want to hear and seeing what we want to see, i.e., confirmation bias. COnfirmation bias is one of the reasons that Jones and the HS Team are in their current predicament.
I can see how a presenter would want to maintain "impartial" status at work, despite holding their own private opinions.
However, I have long (since the late 1980s) suspected that the BBC avoids having certain questions aired which would be awkward for the administration.
My own suspicions were raised in the aftermath of the Hungerford murders, but for most of the time since then, such suspicions could be dismissed by many as irrelevant minority viewpoints or just plain paranoia (anyone remember slurs about a "Well funded and powerful gun lobby"? - any parallels wit a "well funded denialist lobby"?).
The question of correcting any bias at the state broadcasters is perhaps like re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic - yes, anyone with a TV is compelled to buy a license and fund the Beeb (or in my case RTE), but as I don't have or watch a TV, and the blogs do a far better job of news reporting, the state broadcasters don't influence my opinion, and I suspect that fewer and fewer people get their news from the beeb - or any other lame stream media outlets.
The BBC DOES have an official line on AGW: in the early days of climategate, there was a document which said the BBC considered the evidence to be so strongly in favour of AGW, it wasn't prepared to give sceptical viewpoints equal airtime.
I'll try to find it again.
Ah, found it (easier than I thought): it's called From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel: Safeguarding Impartiality in the 21st Century.
The relevant bit is this:
"Climate change is another subject where dissenters can be unpopular. There may be now a broad scientific consensus that climate change is definitely happening, and that it is at least predominantly man-made. But the second part of that consensus still has some intelligent and articulate opponents, even if a small minority. ... The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus. But these dissenters (or even sceptics) will still be heard, as they should, because it is not the BBC’s role to close down this debate. They cannot be simply dismissed as ‘flat-earthers’ or ‘deniers’, who ‘should not be given a platform’ by the BBC. Impartiality always requires a breadth of view: for as long as minority opinions are coherently and honestly expressed, the BBC must give them appropriate space."
Paraphrasing this
But these dissenters (or even sceptics) will still be heard, as they should, because it is not the BBC’s role to close down this debate. They cannot be simply dismissed as ‘flat-earthers’ or ‘deniers’, who ‘should not be given a platform’ by the BBC.
"They may be total and utter idiots, and we will treat them as such, but we have to humour them occasionally anyway."
Using the terms 'flat-eathers' and 'deniers' in this context is so loaded. Even though claiming the labels are unimportant, by using them it strengthens them.
"Some may say she is ugly, but we will still print her photo." Totally loaded.
@ Phillip Bratby : '...I suspect Peter Allen's comment is very telling of the BBC.....'
No 'suspect'; rather absolute fact!
After over 3 years of obfuscation from all departments of the Beeb (ncluding the BBC Trust - 'The voice of the licence payer within the Corporation' [excuse me while I throw up!]) I have got precisely no-where in seeking answers to their craven bias towards the 'Consensus'.
I swear I picked up from someone that those "high-level experts" whom the BBC consulted were, er, biassed or something. Imagine Geoffrey Boulton for instance. Or Sir John Houghton "he of Hockey-Stick-icon-for-IPCC fame". Scientists seem to have forgotten that most basic law, Henry's Law, that oceans warming the tiniest amount outgas vast quantities of CO2... Scientists in front of their computer screens, who've forgotten the vastness of the ocean volume, and forgotten how the oceans hold vastly more CO2 in solution than exists in the air... really simple cross-disciplinary science.
It's not the upper echelons of scientific cleverness, it's the basic stuff that has been wrecked - which is why the man in the street knows what the PhD cannot see (and the BBC cannot allow), as Richard Lindzen says.
Building up and up on baseless foundations - this is the literal meaning of "superstition".
The fact we can only speculate the meaning of Peter Allen's comment is attestation to the mans proffessionalism as a journalist/presenter.
Compare that to Richard Black and other hack journalists who took part in the Oxford University discussion meeting last week.
Do we need to speculate on?:
RB: 'I agree that a short term disaster would be effective in persuading people'
This, from the man supposedly offering an olive branch to sceptical points of view.
If the BBC was serious in wanting to reach out... they have picked the wrong man.
I like Peter Allen and listen to Five Live quite a bit at work.
I get the impression that Mr Allen is broadly sceptical of the alarmist hype surrounding global warming, and this clip tends to confirm that -
Allen: "Do you think [all this snow] is global warming then?"
Interviewee: "No, I don't believe in global warming I'm afraid"
Allen: "Well - you're allowed to say that, I'm not"
I listen to 5-live Drive every day and I can tell you that Allen has never, in all the years I've been listening, asked an even remotely sceptical question of any of the enumerable "experts" he's had to interview (I've turned the radio off during such interviews too many times to count!). I have no doubt he has attended "seminars" on AGW at BBC HQ and that it's more than likely he is completely ignorant of any counter arguments, much like a lot of BBC personnel.
It's going to take a long time to turn the tanker around.
Well, the Finnish meteorological institute has been organizing climate change courses to the media for years already. 300 euros/reporter/day. Next course is on March 15th. No wonder that Finnish media has ignored climategate when they are brainwashed early on.
The BBC formalised its house view on climate at a seminar on 26 January 2006. Blogger Tony Newbery was stonewalled in his efforts to find out the agenda or the attendees. He finally got a brief statement
Not sure what "invoke imagination to allow the media to deal with the scope of the issue" means but it sounds very different to what I want to hear ( "report events in a neutral and factual way").
He also covers an account from one attendee, Richard D North. (Not the EU referendum man who is only Richard (no D) North):
Big respect to TonyN.
bbc's advocacy extends to programs like 'click' and 'fast-track' and no doubt other progs with items on carbon emission reductions in technology (click) and maldives' plan to be carbon-free (fast-track) and such-like.
no program is safe.
plus it's always about the generic 'climate change' and NEVER about CATASTROPHIC ANTHROPOGENIC CLIMATE CHANGE. why are the MSM so careful not to name what it is they are advocating? when the mantra is 'sceptics deny climate change', we look like a bunch of wackos, which is precisely what they want to convey.
it's way past time to call the media out on this fundamental issue.
Here's a copy of some questions I posted for Richard Black on his BBC earthwatch blog, as yet he hasn't seen fit to reply, I wont be holding my breath,
Richard,as the mod's deem my post at 255 to be a breach of copyright I will re word it..
Were you the enviroment correspondant who attended the training session on 26/27 march 2007 for the Al Gore training initative at Cambridge University? along with the BBC Director of Global news,at which the stated rationale was to inspire senior leaders across the uk who share a common lanquage to take action not just individually but collectively to become a significant force in their respective communities,if so was there a cost to the licence payers directly or indirectly as a result, could you also confirm if it was you did either or both of you became members of the Alumni as a result.
I note also that the BBC director of enviromentally sustainable productions and news was listed to attended a seminar entitled the Climate Leadership programme recently run by Cambridge University whos costs were advertised as being £3950 and that after atending such a seminar states that "you will join an international community of Climate Leadership programme alumni".
Do you believe that attendance at these sort of events allows for unbiased reporting of the AGW debate within the BBC.
I'm not sure what Peter Allen thinks of global warming but he is very entertaining and doesn't put up with a lot of nonsense normally.
As an example here's an edited clip to a non climate related UK economy interview with Ed Balls (The media strongly believed Gordon Brown recently wanted Ed Balls as chancellor).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkeXbhhbDbA
Taken in isolation, this could be a throwaway line of no importance, but as others have noted, the BBC has been remarkably reluctant to question the prevailing orthodoxy.
The curiously oppressive feeling that this produces has been noticed by others, such as http://indepconsultants.co.uk/blog/6000016/goodbye-carbon-footprint
The obvious point, which no one seems to have picked up on, is why not ASK Peter Allen?
I've emailed his show, to let him know that his remark has led to much speculation, and to invite him to participate on this thread.
Some of you may know we in the US ALSO have a tax-funded media to tell us how to think.
Here's a gem from NPR, cadged from Wattsupwiththat:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/03/a-question-to-the-usgs-and-npr/
…
“RAZ: Give us a sense of how much ice [on the Antarctic peninsula] has been lost over the past, say, 10 years.
Ms. FERRIGNO: I think I’ll go back 20 years, and in the last 20 years, I would say at least 20,000 square kilometers of ice has been lost, and that’s comparable to an area somewhere between the state of Texas and the state of Alaska.
RAZ: So about the size of the state of Texas in terms of ice has been lost in the past 20 years. ”
Ms. FERRIGNO: Well, this is a fairly small amount of ice when you consider the whole Antarctic continent consists of about 13 million square kilometers of ice.
... But the thing that we’re really interested in seeing is that this is a sort of a red flag because if the warming continues, if the retreat continues, if the amount of ice on the continent starts to flow into the water, then there will be substantial impact to the sea level.
RAZ: That’s Jane Ferrigno. She is a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
****
Well, actually as WUWT points out, you could fit THIRTY 20,000 km2 into Texas.
So I cant see how someone who should have a visual scale of land area in their heads can make that mistake unless it was for 'dramatic' purposes.
But the other question this begs is: Can it be a change in CURRENTS, not temperature? and is there a net loss of ice mass in Antarctica? And how does that correlate with the supposed increased of land ice toward the coasts and what happens to it? What SHOULD happen to it?
Here's the whole prop...uh.. interview transcript:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124178690
- - - - - -
On that page's sidebar you should note: 'It's all about carbon' Where the whole problem is elegantly explained for us plebians:
**
In fact, this arrangement is so stable, carbon with two oxygens — or carbon dioxide, as you've called it most of your life — is very hard to pry apart. Once a CO2 molecule forms, it tends to stay intact. You can find it in rocks, in the oceans; it is escaping into the atmosphere.
CO2 does have an enemy: trees. Trees "eat" CO2.
But unfortunately, we are adding more CO2 to the atmosphere than we are planting trees. The trees can't keep up. And as countries grow richer and build more factories and engines and homes and cars and planes and trucks, we are using more oil, more coal. And as we've learned, burning oil and coal "breaks" carbon bonds. Carbon then grabs onto oxygen, which creates more and more CO2. We now have so much "new" CO2 in the atmosphere, it is trapping sunshine, which is warming our globe, creating the problem we now call global warming.
....
Carbon has been bonding with oxygen, forming CO2 molecules and behaving predictably for billions of years. So if we have a "carbon problem," the mechanics are not mysterious. Carbon is merely following nature's laws. If anything is going to change it will have to be us. But considering that we humans (water aside) are two-thirds carbon ourselves, we carbon life forms will have to solve our carbon problem.
In the end, as we said in the beginning, it's all about carbon.
_______
..errr... now I wonder what the hell I'm doing doubting such obvious logic.
CO2 traps sunshine.
I see.
The ABC is pretty much the same!
I know first hand from someone in BBC News that the editors and producers putting news on air are never given instructions to bias output on this or any other topic. The tone for the coverage of lots of issues though, especially this one, is set by the "specialist correspondents" who were introduced during John Birt's reign.
So maybe the trick is to have the right specialist correspondents in place, which is a much simpler task than trying to orchestrate the daily decisions of thousands of ordinary journalists. Combine that with the awesome agenda-setting clout of the state working in tandem with highly organised and well-funded NGOs and you start to understand how the bias is created. The 24 hour news era has a voracious appetite for experts to speak to and let's face it, there are hundreds of organisations offering up articulate experts on "climate change" so they fill the airwaves.
I don't think there's any large-scale orchestrated and directed bias, but I do think there's a certain mindest that BBC journalists tend to have and a certain climate they work under which acts as an amplifier when specialist correspondents feed their biases into the machine.
Someone should write a thesis on how the instutionalised left/liberal bias of the broadcast media, especially the BBC, came into existence and thrives, because it's not an easy one to pin down.
@cool dude
Maybe someone needs to document the groupthink of the BBC. If you've experienced it, please note it down somewhere. One day, it will out. I went to Uni with some of the people whose 'media studies' and journalism courses would have led them into apparatchik roles in the media. They were all - I Mean ALL - members of SWSO or Labour militants. I was scared then. I'm bricking it now.
I've heard reputable sources echo Cool Dude's statements about there being no top-down direction of BBC journalists. I'm therefore trying to understand what the Seesaw to Wagonwheel Report discussed earlier in this thread was about, if not providing guidance to journalists.
"I don't think there's any large-scale orchestrated and directed bias, but I do think there's a certain mindest that BBC journalists tend to have and a certain climate they work under which acts as an amplifier when specialist correspondents feed their biases into the machine.
Someone should write a thesis on how the instutionalised left/liberal bias of the broadcast media, especially the BBC, came into existence and thrives, because it's not an easy one to pin down."
John Lott did a simillar study on anti gun bias in the US lame stream media back in the early part of the last decade.
It could provide a framework for designing a simillar study of UK media and AGW / natural variation coverage.
The published book from the study:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bias-Against-Guns-Everything-Control/dp/0895261146/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267696546&sr=8-1
Links to his data sets and methodology from here:
http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/
I'd like to come back on the Bishop's post where he says "I'm therefore trying to understand what the Seesaw to Wagonwheel Report discussed earlier in this thread was about, if not providing guidance to journalists."
You make a good point and one I meant to address pre-emptively. The BBC, like so many large organisations and especially public sector organisations, just loves producing these weighty, glossy policy documents. I think that one runs to 80 pages or something doesn't it?
I would wager that if you stood outside any BBC building and asked every journalist entering or leaving if they had ever seen or were aware of, let alone read that document, you'd be unlikely to find any that had, except the very careerist and those in management roles. Those types may well be aware of it, but those on the coal face won't be, and as mentioned in my last post, they're not given instructions on applying bias to issues.
I could well imagine though that all sorts of things go on at dinner parties and restaurants among senior executives which result in major projects or major appointments that help set the tone of coverage and frame the news agenda.
For example: who to deploy at major events such as climate change summits; what special programming to put on, the level of deployments to these events, which will heavily affect the amount of coverage they get.
If that's correct, then we have the BBC and others funding Roger Harrabin and friend to run seminars, haul in experts from all over the country, produce glossy reports and so on, all to no useful purpose whatsover.
Sounds perfectly feasible.
Cool Dude:
You say:
"Someone should write a thesis on how the instutionalised left/liberal bias of the broadcast media, especially the BBC, came into existence and thrives, because it's not an easy one to pin down."
The Wagon Wheel report is precisely that, and they have pinned it down pretty damned well. It's required reading for anyone who wants to understand the BBC's editorial policy on climate change and after the first few rather turgid sections it's a page-turner right to the end. The problem is that no one on the top floor at the BBC seems to have read it either. You can find the report here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/review_report_research/impartiality_21century/report.pdf
You also say:
"I could well imagine though that all sorts of things go on at dinner parties and restaurants among senior executives which result in major projects or major appointments that help set the tone of coverage and frame the news agenda."
Try Anthony Jay's 'Confessions of a Reformed BBC Producer':
http://www.cps.org.uk/cps_catalog/CPS_assets/629_ProductPreviewFile.pdf
It describes precisely what you are talking about.
There is no mystery about what the problem is, or how it is happening, or even whether the BBC Trust at least acknowledges that there is a very real problem. The big question is why the executive has not been prepared to take remedial action in this specific area of climate change.
Perhaps the announcement of a new review of science reporting this year is a hopeful sign, but if its fate is the same as the Wagon Wheel report what difference will it make?
Surely this is just standard practice for all BBC-employed journalists. The interviewer is not allowed to state their own beliefs, opinions or prejudices, whichever side they are on. They have to remain impartial. I'm convinced that is all that Peter Allen was trying to say. Just in the same way he would not say whether he thought lower taxes were a good policy, whether Obama was doing a good job, whether he thinks the EU is good or bad.
I'm on the side of the people who believe that there is no big problem with having more CO2 in the atmosphere. It is relatively insignificant. But we have to make sure we make a fuss about things that are blatantly screwy about the warmist agenda and the BBC treatment of it. This incident is most likely to be perfectly innocuous.
I am not sure I like the idea of this being pursued too hard. If the BBC does have a policy that prevents presenters from stating they do not believe in AGW, allowing them to infer like this is desirable. Pointing out ways the presenters can push the envelope helps them to enforce that policy.