Tuesday
Dec272011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Buerk wants climate debate
Dec 27, 2011 BBC Climate: other BBC newsreader Michael Buerk has called for a meaningful debate into climate change, strongly criticising the BBC's treatment of dissenting views as heresy.
What gets up my nose is being infantilized by governments, by the BBC, by the Guardian that there is no argument, that all scientists who aren’t cranks and charlatans are agreed on all this, that the consequences are uniformly negative, the issues beyond doubt and the steps to be taken beyond dispute.
Barry Woods (to whom a tip of the hat is due) has further thoughts.
Reader Comments (60)
feels sorry for hengist McTrolll........if he were not so wedded to the idea of being stupid, I might offer him a ride...but I actually prefer that people with as little consciousness as him die witout reproducing.
Don't misjudge Hengist. He's an archetypical lefty, indoctrinated to the cause, but too bright to merge with the other Marxist drones..
There's a lot of hope for this guy as he realises us grey heads who have lived through previous lefty periods work out that this one's a cover for fascism based on fake science and we need the help of the Marxists/Fabians to combat the CO2 eco-fascist movement, modern eugenics married to carbon offset neo-colonialism.
The only puzzling conundrum is that Michael Buerk's observations and irritations are so rare in the media and political community, and even more so in the academic fraternity. He just represents the starting-block position for the normal inquisitive rational thinker. One of the default alarm flags for climate scepticism (realism).
Dec 27, 2011 at 8:42 PM edward getty
Judging by the ongoing balther from Richard Black this message is definitely not getting through to the BBC crusaders.
I've noticed that for the last couple of months Richard Black's stories aren't at the top of the BBC Science / Environment page. Perhaps a small sign of change? Just need similar treatment for Lean in the printed Telegraph to know things are on the move.
Sandy
"All-time", of course, being from 1957 when measurements commenced at the pole.
Hengist worries about warming, but it is probably fair to say that universally life form viability in both animal and plant kingdoms increases in diversity, prolificacy and exuberance with increasing temperature, given that the essentials of oxygen water and nutrients for animals and CO2 sunlight and hospitable substrate is present for plants. An example of a study supporting this for microfauna is here-
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/12/7841.full
Oh, how easier the alarmist task would have been, if only increased CO2 caused cooling, and reduced crop yield.
There might have been fewer sceptics, too.
Shame.
SandyS
Good point. I hope that is a sign. In the meantime, Black's most recent cherry-picking anti-American diatribe on the EU's new airline 'carbon' tax reached new depths of blatant ideological blather.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16306606
Since Black's masters all seem to worship China and India, he apparently needed to ignore their protestations over this tax and just blame the Evil Americans.
Black is the poster boy for the BBC's rapidly disappearing credibility.
John in France
Michael Beurck is past the normal BBC retirement age but I am uncertain if he has retired yet but one for certain is that he is no longer in the mainstream of BBC presenters. Even the old women have been reduced to the BBC childishly stupid midday programs.
@Stephen Richards 9:11 AM: Interesting remark, that.
Without erecting any conspiracy theory, one gets the impression that sceptics are being deliberately isolated through taking advantage of the ageing process. One would like to know how the interviewing of recruits takes place at the BBC these days, what sort of questions are asked. One thing is certain: as the global warming meme set in over the 90's, not every BBC journalist would have willingly toed the line and if they were sufficiently popular or sniffed-out the way the wind was blowing and "watered down their wine", as they say here in France, they would tend to stay in place the way Buerk has done. The agism thing would then be a consequence of this: we're none of us getting any younger and as old people have always repeated, "It will catch up with you sooner than you think, my lad."
Being a long-time Radio Four listener, I have been struck over the last year or so by the lowering in quality of the comedy shows. The latest batch of new ones is really dire, to me a sure sign of a generational change closely coupled to an increasingly politically correct programming policy.
"What gets up my nose is being infantilized by ... ... ..."
And being infantilized is the case for so many topics; not only AGW, but also drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco, eating vegetables, taking exercise, "modernising" society, ...
That there are people still around who can recognise it, means that the destruction of the education system in this country has not yet been hard enough, nor long enough.