Sunday
Dec112011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill CMEP: the back story
With Climategate 2.0 putting the story of the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme into the mainstream media, I thought it might be useful to tell the full story of how I stumbled across the partnership between Harrabin and Smith and how Tony Newbery and I spent four years trying to uncover what it did.
The results are in a short ebook which I am making available today. Details of how to get hold of it are here.
Reader Comments (50)
Thank you Andrew, just purchased. I now need to find time to read it (no doubt more than once, like THSI). Back to the DIY now.
Mail on Sunday:
The Corporation is under pressure following The Mail on Sunday’s disclosure two weeks ago that senior BBC journalist Roger Harrabin accepted £15,000 in grants from the University of East Anglia, which was at the heart of the ‘Climategate’ scandal, and then reported on the story without declaring this interest to viewers.
Under BBC rules, employees must register shareholdings, outside corporate work, voluntary positions, book contracts and relevant interests of family members and partners. But the BBC has refused to make public details of the register, despite a Freedom of Information request from this newspaper.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2072645/MPs-say-BBC-reveal-details-journalists-commercial-deals.html#ixzz1gDY5dW6Z
Excellent!
Many thanks Andrew
Got it (notwithstanding a few technological glitches in getting the pdf version), and good on ya. Thanks so much for (once again) keeping me up beyond my bedtime!
Interesting interaction between Andrew Marr and David Attenborough on The Andrew Marr Show just now, after both Simon Jenkins and Nigel Farage had poured scorn on wind farms earlier in the programme. After a friendly chat Marr asked Attenborough about the final episode of Frozen Planet and the global warming issue - a phrase he noted the famous presenter had chosen not to use. Marr at once tipped his hat to the critics of the BBC, mentioning both Christopher Booker and Nigel Lawson, and I thought the tone from both men was not the normal sneering. Marr pressed on whether human beings could adapt and whether geo-engineering should be considered. On the latter Attenborough made the extremely good point that such an effort by a few affecting the many was highly problematic - suggesting the word fascist. All credit to him for that clarity. He was also clear that what one should do about warming was a matter of politics and seemed to me to be backing off some of his recent activism as he said this. He did say we should try to limit warming though he was sure we couldn't stop it. All in all I got the impression that Booker was being taken seriously for the first time in a mainstream BBC news programme, albeit in his absence.
Well done to Christopher, to Lord Lawson and also to Andrew and Tony Newbery for doing so much of the legwork on this. Whatever happens to the likes of Harrabin and Smith, God only knows.
It was particularly striking to have Simon Jenkins and Attenborough on the same show, because Attenborough held out against the CAGW line for many years, was eventually persuaded to fall in line and this conversion led to Jenkins also saying, reluctantly, that he too had to accept that there was a real problem. Climategate 1 seemed to bust up this little consensus at the top end of the UK media, with Jenkins reverting to his critique of scientific scaremongering of all kinds (a genre of debunking at which I think he's one of our very best). Jenkins rightly I thought at the start of the Marr programme described the global warming issue as gradually and silently slithering off the agenda and looked perfectly happy at the prospect. Andrew Marr was starting to reflect the BBC's growing scepticism at the way it's allowed itself to be used in this area. Credit to Andrew Neil for being one of the few presenters not to lose his marbles when the going was really tough. But the direction of travel was for me totally clear.
All this and the delights of Nick Clegg trying to appease his backbenchers while clinging on to power in the face of the Cameron veto in the early hours of Friday. Again, Booker should take a bow. He's owed a lot.
Richard
I think it is likely that this will be a case of rolling with the blows. I would expect normal service to be revealed in a few weeks.
Thanks Andrew, just downloaded.
Thanks also Richard Drake, for that interesting report and insightful analysis on the Marr show.
Andrew, tummy rumbling from lack of breakfast and wife gone off in a huff 'cos I haven't been out for the Sunday papers - but I just finished it.
A powerful piece indeed - written with your usual combination of readability and remorseless clarity.
My only question is - where do we go from here? In the US there are well funded right-of-centre activist groups like Heartland Institute who would fund some sort of judicial process on much less evidence than this - but here I can't think of a single entity who would risk the £100k plus cost of a Judicial Review against the infinitely deep-pocketed BBC monolith.
The only possibility I can think of is for GWPF to use it's reasonably high media profile to leverage a specific campaign to raise funds for a JR .
Is anything in the pipeline?
Andrew, I agree that there are some highly dedicated and highly unethical ideologues present and they won't be giving up in a hurry. But the wide criticism of imbalance in the aftermath of the Cameron veto on top of the broadside from Booker and GWPF will do 'em all a power of good. The ultimate solution is to cut the ties with government or failing that reduce the operation in line with Antony Jay's recommendations. But it was a fun one today.
Just finished reading it. It was like inviting gloom into my study on this sunny day. On the good side though, the superb writing, the pleasure that all this is 'on the record' (in our subculture at least!), and even just a bit of exhiliration from seeing such investigative work pursued to this conclusion so calmly and diligently. But the gloom, the gloom is to see laid out before me the decadence of the BBC, and its supine vulnerability to slick-talking zealots such as Smith and Harrabin. The letter from North was revealing about the lack of informed debate and discussion during the infamous seminar in 2006. It sounded like the BBC managers were like feeble junkies attending to get topped up with the drivel they craved and apparently absorbed like sponges. I suspect in their defence, if they get pushed somehow to feeling they need one, they will say 'But, but, it was Lord May wot told us.' Or, put differently, 'we checked in our brains at the door of that seminar, and picked them up later full of what to say'. It hardly needs saying that such people are not fit and proper occupants of their positions of great influence. But who will turf them out? Are they to be left as Bourbons, or evicted as Buffoons? I'd guess the former. More gloom in the room.
Well that's the BBC. Meanwhile down here, our ABC is heralding the "Durban Declaration" as the greatest thing since Hannibal crossed the Alps.
Downloaded and read while waiting at airport - excellent prose and a damning indictment of the mess the BBC has got itself into..
At a time of austerity it is essential that a national broadcaster funded by compulsary levy is unquestionably deserving of that status - something that this commendable work calls directly into question. Worryingly, what is described appears to be a concious and systemic failure of both broadcaster and regulator.
I fully support that a judicial review into BBC editorial standards, or lack of them, and the abject failure of the BBC Trust in maintaining standards is long overdue.
You say
Should the first occurence be "Cambridge Media and Environment Programmes (CMEP)"?
[BH adds: yes, you are right. Fixed it.]
This quote seems to hit both nails (journalists v academics) on the head:
By what authority are you saying that?
"When journalists started accepting that truth was beyond their ken, they found a willing audience – and body of work – in the form of academics who had completely given up on the very notion of truth, and certainly of empirical evidence, all the better to pass off their innate conservatism as "transgressive".
During the 1990s we saw journalists beat a hasty retreat from their traditional position of objective reporting of events and sorting of facts. Most obviously this was seen in the so-called "journalism of attachment" that arose from a post-Cold War crisis in war reporting. What it amounted to was taking sides in complex conflicts and reducing them to simple, emotive and easily digestible morality tales. Journalists abandoned their claims to objectivity and, crucially, authority, saying both were not only impossible, but in fact morally suspect."
http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/blog/1263901-what-authority-are-you-saying
Surprisingly Global Warming isn't mentioned in the article!
Speaking from across the pond (and so with little close experience of the BBC's activities), to what extent does the phenomenon of 'churnalism' in BBC reporting reflect a subservience to a few key message-makers? Forgive me if the question has been addressed fully here before, but I've just been exploring such information on these sites:
http://dailybayonet.com/?p=9354
http://i-squared.blogspot.com/2011/11/ammo-churnalism-churning-environment.html
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2011/11/churnalism-frenzy.html
Fascinating to read how the BBC dug its heels refusing to reveal a list of attendees' names.
Inevitably the question that arises is why? What was being protected by not revealing who took part in the meeting of a public body the purpose of which is to publish information? Note that they went as far as tthe desruction of the simple visitors' log to refuse disclosure. Presumably CCTV camera footage for that day was also erased.
Personalities that seem to act as "glue", suddenly appearing in the warming camp to coordinate action and to direct activities, are another fascinating feature. Here we have the zoologist, who just happens to have a knack for media policy planning, rubbing shoulders with BBC tob nobs. In an older post we had the flying dutchman who managed to land the job of senior environmental consultant at the UK embassy in Washington. Who knows what other such serviceable personalities will surface in the future.
These people have the knack of being at the right place, at the right time, with the right connections to land the cushy jobs. Is there a seminar somewhere that teaches this knack?
Nik
As we know from Watergate, the cover-up is usually worse than the crime. If the BBC weren't guilty of something, they wouldn't need to hide or destroy the requested information. The BBC condemns itself by its actions to cover-up whatever it has been doing.
Nik "These people have the knack of being at the right place, at the right time, with the right connections to land the cushy jobs. Is there a seminar somewhere that teaches this knack?" It isn't a knack (at least as far as the UK senior civil services, and public bodies are concerned), it is a matter of going to the 'right' school and the 'right' university, being in the 'right' social network. In fact it's all very incestuous.
Sep: Just because something's mentioned in one email doesn't mean that it's relevant, or that we know what it's up to, or that we know what its relationship is with CMEP (which might be measured, for example, by the number and importance of overlapping attendees). I consider it a red herring. But thanks for pointing to 1265.txt - weird but worth exploring at some point.
Bish
thanks for your efforts. I have sent a copy of the report to my MP. hope you don't mind. I thought if I told him he would have to pay 75p it would have ended up with an expenses claim for half a million.
At some point this whole charade has to come before the courts. The lying and the cheating would not withstand the probing of an experienced barrister.
On a related note, Nik, I was surprised to learn that Tom Wigley thought that Crispin Tickell was a 'snake in the grass'.
Excellent investigation.
In the final paragraph: "The time has now come when ministerial, or even parliamentary, intervention is required."
Hear hear. What's the next step?
Peter Lilley has published items such as "Global Warming As Groupthink" in the WSJ. Maybe one of his constituents could ask his advice?
Should be getting a Kindle for Christmas. Will get myself copy of this then.
Great stuff.
I suspect this will provoke superficial bluster, but will in reality hit the BBC intellectuals in the solar plexus. They do, surprisingly, take criticism from libertarians seriously. Especially erudite criticisms.
You rival McIntyre with your forensic skills but write much better prose than he does. How you keep all the balls in the air at the same time is both a mystery and a source of wonder.
There are a couple of telling comments in the paper. North's email is fascinating as it shows how badly briefed senior people at the BBC are[not that most contributors here would be surprised]. The removal of Harrabin's name from a website article is also telling.
Smith does not see his behaviour as being in any way inappropriate. Sadly the zealot rarely does recognize what is right from what is wrong and is quite happy to deny what is obvious to others.
One can only hope that the lurkers here who can influence policy and decisions on the future of the BBC will take due note.
Sherlock Montford. Great read, and I think I should send a copy to my MP too - happy to pay another 75p of course!
Martin A:
Great questions. Peter Lilley studied natural science and economics at Cambridge - a useful combination for the global warming debate - and was one of the five MPs who voted against the New Labour's Climate Change Act in 2008. One of the others was Philip Davies who rightly boasted in a debate on onshore wind power in February:
Why is that signficant? Because as Andrew points to in another thread the Mail on Sunday revealed today that Davies is one of two members of John Whittingdale's media select committee who has big plans for the forthcoming questioning of the two major BBC bigwigs:
I'm sure Peter Lilley will be fully supportive but Davies and Collins have the key opportunity. I wonder if either will mention the role of Neil Wallis doing the PR for UEA after Climategate, using his News International contacts for the key, highly misleading “Poor Phil” article, given the Whittingdale committee's other famous string to its bow: Hackgate.
I'd say it's all warming up rather nicely.
Andrew, thanks for an engrossing read! I'm curious about the following:
[email from Harrabin:]
[Following which you noted:]
Without betraying the confidentiality to which you had agreed, can you share with us whether or not Harrabin did actually tell you what you wanted to know - and was it helpful? Or did you get the sense (either then or now, with the benefit of hindsight and/or more information) that he was merely trying to head you off at the pass, so to speak?
So the whole thing seems to be:
UEA via CRU help crank up the alarmism on AGW through their influence on "The Process" at the UN IPCC. Then they cash in on the resulting policy via Tyndall Centre consulting to DEFRA to implement the policy recommendations stemming from their manipulation of the IPCC process. In the meantime, they fund a propganda effort via CMEP in order to stem any public dissent of all of this money being diverted to non-productive uses as it is absolutely "vital" even though any CO2 reductions realized by the UK would be completely negligible on a global atmospheric scale.
So they create a fear that the world is going to melt and then attempt to assure people that if they simply hand over enough cash and allow the global socialists to manage national policy of all the countries on the planet, they can make the bad things go away.
Absolutely astonishing.
This is the most comprehensive and sophisticated robbery scheme ever pulled off.
Smith suddenly claiming the transcripts had been "lost" sounds familiar to certain weather data at CRU. It seems when someone gets close to getting some information from this lot the information simply goes "lost". That could be an entire comedy skit:
A: Well, it appears the transcripts are lost.
B: You mean you can't find them?
A: No, I mean the transcript doesn't know where it is, it is lost, and if it doesn't know where it is, how should I be expected to know.
B: So you have lost the transcript?
A: Oh, I didn't lose it, it got lost. It's not my fault the information got lost.
B: Well ask someone else, maybe they've seen it.
A: I can't
B: You can't? Why not?
A: Binghamton House Rule
B: What, pray tell, is that? I've never heard of it.
A: If information becomes lost one must never ask anyone else if they have seen it. It is to make sure the information doesn't feel intimidated so it might return in its own time.
B: Good grief.
...
RE: Chatham House rule:
Quite convenient.
I find most of the emails that reference Asher Minns in any way to be particularly fascinating. For example there is one I found interesting from Mike Hulme to Asher Minns and Kevin Anderson. It quotes an email from From: "Hernandez Tino (Mr AF)" <Tino.Hernandez@dti.gsi.gov.uk> where Mr. Hernandez says:
Maybe all this has been mentioned here before and I haven't looked at all the emails pertaining to Minns but doing:
grep -i minns * | cut -d":" -f1 | sort | uniq | wc -l
on a linux box in the mail directory brings out 48 emails. Every one that I have looked at are PR related so far.
The Chatham House rule always used to mean that nothing that was said could be attributed. There was no restriction on reporting who attended. The Chatham House site has changed its website quite recently to say that you can't identify participants.
3137.txt has them figuring out how to "reinvent" BBC economics news where Asher and Hulme are arranging a lunchtime meeting:
Is there a non-paypal way of acquiring this?
Secondly, I looked at the self-publish at Amazon option. Does it cost anything to get it going?
Crosspatch - an elegant and devastating summary. You got it in one!
"UEA via CRU help crank up the alarmism on AGW through their influence on "The Process" at the UN IPCC. Then they cash in on the resulting policy via Tyndall Centre consulting to DEFRA to implement the policy recommendations stemming from their manipulation of the IPCC process. In the meantime, they fund a propganda effort via CMEP in order to stem any public dissent of all of this money being diverted to non-productive uses as it is absolutely "vital" even though any CO2 reductions realized by the UK would be completely negligible on a global atmospheric scale. So they create a fear that the world is going to melt and then attempt to assure people that if they simply hand over enough cash and allow the global socialists to manage national policy of all the countries on the planet, they can make the bad things go away."
I suggest that this is widely distributed.
Shub
For articles, Amazon's cut is 70%. Not worth it. I see Paypal alternatives on the horizon, but nothing suitable as yet.
Bilderberg is off topic
Bubble declared to be illegal and abolished accordingly (12 July, 1720):
"For carrying on an undertaking of great advantage; but nobody to know what it is."
from Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
I've always found it sinister that the murky and lavishly publicly funded "Common Purpose" organisation holds all its get-togethers for public servants under "Chatham House Rules".
What on earth is the point of introducing FOI legislation and then encouraging, and funding, people in the public service to meet and plot anonymously behind closed doors like a bunch of Freemasons.
Politicians have even dragged MI5 & MI6 out into the open in the interests of "transparency" - but apparently any rag-taggle bunch of jumped up town clerks, quangocrats and 2 A-level "climatologists" can plot away in secret like the friggin' Cosa Nostra.
Gosh "a plot by environmentalists and BBC journalists to subvert the corporations output, excluding global warming sceptics from the airwaves."
Meanwhile in the real world global warming skeptics go on high impact shows like Question Time and spout nonsense like the earth is cooling . So I think we can safely file this latest opus from Andrew Montford under fiction.
Great link from 2 years ago, Hengist, one I had not seen so many thanks for that. Note the date, 27th Nov 2009, just a few days after Climategate 1.0.
Impressive with how much Melanie Phillips had gleaned in the few days since the emails were released, isnt it.
Hengist
Have you actually read it? It doesn't look very impressive if you call it "fiction" without actually having seen what it says.
@Bishop Hill,
No of course I haven't read it, I don't think it's appropriate to hand over any more of my hard earned to discover the *skeptic* narrative. It's usually you complaining about warmists not being open enough . If you've really got a case there I figure you wouldn't be charging us to see it . Sorry to sound so miserly but your work does fall under the ambit of controversial and you can't expect those that might not agree with what you are saying to pay you for it. Good luck with it however.
@Josh, yes and after BEST the skeptic narrative changed again to 'The issue of “the world is warming” is not one that climate skeptics question' one of my favourite quotes from Anthony Watts.
Hengist, v happy to pay the 75p so you can read it. I think I can send you a PDF via your website/blog, is that right? Otherwise email me and I will email it back to you.
Hengist
So you described it as "fiction" without actually having read it. I think that confirms quite a lot.
@Bishop Hill, My comment was based on the fact that climate *skeptics* still get access to the BBC airwaves , here's a prominent advocate positioned as skeptic getting unchallenged access to the airwaves and being lauded by the presenter as a "global warming expert" to boot.
Can I clarify something therefore. You agree that there has been an attempt to exclude sceptics from the airwaves, but you think it has been unsuccessful?
No, Ive said nothing of the sort. I know nothing of any plot to keep sceptics from the airwaves (other than the abstract of your work here). I don't know where you get the notion that I agree with you from. My position is based on he fact that skeptics still get airtime. And also page 40 of From See Saw to Wagon Wheel which says" 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. ..."
And of course In August of last year we were treated to your performance on BBC Newsnight
Well just come back when you've read it.
For McStone
Regardless of global warming, the quotes from Climategate II regarding incorporation by "stealth" in programming were put in context. The picture is disturbing..
IAs a journalist. I was shocked by the "stealth" reference. Because it creates public acceptance of a position by making it part of the collective consciousness, bypassing debate or open discussion. In this particular instance comedy shows were one of the vehicles proposed.
So, McStone, forget the warming bit. Read it to learn how other "causes" may be promoted by "stealth". If it happens in this, it surely happens in other topics.