Bishop Hill The IBT: the same, but different
Nov 13, 2013 BBC Climate: other Media ;)
The International Broadcasting Trust is an environmentalist-funded group that has tried, mostly successfully, to encourage broadcasters to become advocates for the green movement. It is best known as one of the co-hosts of the 28gate seminar. It recently issued a report on the state of green TV which can be seen here. Along the way they interviewed a number of people involved in the climate debate, including many of the usual suspects - Joe Smith, Nick Pigeon, Steve Jones, John Beddington. However, in what looks to me like a change in tack, they have also included a couple of sceptics - David Whitehouse of GWPF and Martin Durkin of Great Global Warming Swindle Fame - although the impact of the latter two is hard to discern.
They seem to be worried:
..most concerning, in the light of the importance of non-news TV in helping to inform and educate the audience, is the fact that during our year’s research we found no factual long form programme dealing head on with the issue of climate change or the growing debate about how to mitigate or adapt to it, and none dealing with another major issue, population growth. This finding raises serious questions about broadcasters’ will or ability to reflect some of the most important scientific research and policy decisions we face today.
From my perspective this is almost certainly a case of the chickens coming home to roost. The IBT set out to pervert the output of the television networks for the benefit of its backers and pretty much succeeded, as suggested by Clive Edwards, the BBC’s Commissioning Editor for TV Current Affairs,
The BBC went through a period when it was seen as a sort of zealot in the climate change debate. It backfired badly. Audiences got caught up in it too back then, but now they are not as enthusiastic.
If the audience is no longer listening to the environmentalists' message then the blame must reside squarely with the IBT, their environmentalist funders, and the broadcast journalists who dance to their tune.
The report is to be commended for addressing the question of ecoauthoritarianism in the shape of those who try to silence dissenting voices. The report quotes Dorothy Byrne of Channel Four on the subject of their documentary What the Green Movement Got Wrong:
..some environmentalists thought we should not challenge or question what they say. They also objected to some of our interviewees being on the programme as they didn’t agree with them. I found the whole experience extraordinary. It was as if I was attacking their religion.’
The BBC has also been criticised for ‘false balance’ in the climate change story, equating the sceptical point of view with mainstream opinion. This is something the BBC 'has moved on from,’ David Jordan told the select committee, though he made it clear the sceptical point of view should still be given air time.
...this report argues for a more energetic attempt by broadcasters to find that ‘something different’ that will help increase public understanding of important events that develop over time .
Reader Comments (51)
All in all, encouraging. The high-water mark has been reached, perhaps around the time the 28 met, long before they became a -gate. The ebbing away began with the public, whose support was never 'as strong as it should have been' in the minds of the green alarmists and is now in free-fall with energy bills easily more important. We might as well enjoy the moment before the next stage of hard slog resumes :)
I don't think they invented this deception - I recall many years ago politicians being made to look foolish by always blaming poor election results on "failing to get the message across" and never once considering that they had in fact been rejected because they had got the message across.
"and none dealing with another major issue, population growth."
The IBT's misanthropic tendencies become apparent. Guardian readers will love that.
Concerning population growth, I guess they weren't aware of Hans Rosling's excellent programme on BBC2 last week...
http://www.statslife.org.uk/news/1026-hans-rosling-tv-show-to-air-on-bbc2-on-thursday
...though the message it conveyed probably wasn't the sort of thing they want the ordinary citizen to hear.
The IBT have little interest in getting the message across. Their real aim is to close down the debate so that only their message is received and any contrary message is silenced. There are names for that sort of thing, and none of them are polite.
Dave Salt: Completely agree about the excellent Don't Panic - The Truth About Population by Hans Rosling. (Only one day to go on iPlayer, UK residents.) The very last section deals with the climate threat in a way that would lead Richard Lindzen, say, to have a few informed comments to add to the good news up to that point. But Rosling cheerfully admits that this is not his area of expertise. He's already shot down all the worst current climate policy prescriptions in any case, for the very best humanitarian reasons. His insights on population growth, peak births and the much later peak population of around 11 billion, with the very interesting implications for energy use to avoid the worst forms of poverty, are absolutely essential to grasp, as are all the other indicators of very good news. A major antidote to groundless pessimism not just from the green lobby like IBT but many others in the very-badly-educated west. Highly recommended.
Dave salt and Richard Drake. I recorded Hans Rosling's "Don't Panic - The Truth About Population" and have watched it twice. An excellent programme. as was his previous programme. Statistics made understandable.
Gosh it really isn't easy being green is it? Maybe they lack resources.
Can I borrow a hanky?
I spoke to a researcher on two occasions, once for almost two hours. I had a lot to say about media coverage of climate science, the false balance nonsense, the narrowness of the selection of stories to cover and how they reflect a certain predetermined approach to climate science (I gave examples), the BBC's history of coverage, the fact that sceptics are misrepresented, the lack of representation of the breadth of peer reviewed climate science, the over use of a small number of experts and an unhealthy concentration on too few journals, the power of press releases and other things.
Quite a lot of good points I think from my relevant perspective.
The only comment of mine that ended up in the final report was a trivial one about the debate being nasty and personal. The report in no way deals with any of the points I made.
The report is a wasted opportunity. It says nothing that is new.
What would be good would be to read transcripts of the interviews. They do exist. I was asked if I would allow my transcript to be passed onto Joe Smith for further research. I refused.
creepy
The Green Taliban and its main outlet (BBC) have no real message other than we are all doomed if we continue to sin. It doesn't matter how daft they are or how many people die of the cold/malaria, they are right because they are saving the planet.
Once they have made their pitch, there is nothing else to them. One dimensional nutcases!
So what they really want is to put population growth and agw together into a double-headed, stop-breeding-little-carbon-footprints doomsday bomb of a ten part Malthus-fest docu-drama for peak-time viewing, just to ensure they labotomise the viewers.
The BBC is to the Greens, what Pravda was to the Soviet Communist Party.
If they want a breakthrough in audience "communication", I suggest filming Beddington, Jones, Smith and the rest in the stocks whilst a large group of pensioners forced into deepening fuel poverty are generously supplied with rotten fruit, eggs and so on.
I'm sure it would be a great success.
Baby steps. At least some questions are beginning to be asked.
But the BBC still struggles because it has inadequate experience of employing questioning scientists as journalists, preferring instead "analysts" who view science as a subdivision of "the environment". I suspect this blind-spot has been exacerbated over the years by the success of marvellous programming depicting the wonders of nature as narrated by Attenborough et al.
Thus Roger Harrabin again regurgitates more of the "it's going to be one of the top 10 warmest years on record", as if this is proof of something extremely significant. If it has warmed in the recent record (and I certainly agree that appears to be true), then you will expect to see more warm years. If the warming was completely natural then you expect to see exactly the same. Whatever one believes about the causes, warming is warming.
But who at the BBC is capable of asking these questions? Instead the BBC article above just keeps digging, repeating claims that even the IPCC is backing away from, and attempting to attribute most extreme weather events to human causes.
If the BBC is not able to question spurious claims from perceived authority, then it is because they have failed to educate themselves as an institution.
Joe Public.
It was worth saying twice.
I have just watched my local ITV Meridian Tonight news programme and an item on a new method of detecting volcanic ash came on. The presenter said quite casually that we could expect more volcanic eruptions "due to climate change". Does anyone know of any mainstream science to support such a claim?
Hans Rosling made it pretty clear that he would be very happy if every woman in the world had a washing machine - obviously she would allow the man of the house to operate it.
Do not think that the AGM-ists are ready to go away. They are not. They are like cockroaches(1), which however hard is the effort and materials to eradicate them, will always return. In the case of "roaches", the rerun starts after 10 days, which is the gestation period. Similarly the AGM-ists will quieten down for a period to regroup, to re-idea up. A clue is in the first quotation, which has "....dealing with another major issue, population growth...". That will be the new battleground. Preliminary skirmishes can be seen from time to time.
(1) the comparison may appear disgusting to the majority of readers, mainly as a result of stereotypes of 'roaches, which are really just insects like all others, and serve a useful purpose. No disgust is meant, However 'roaches propagate furiously and must always be kept down by vigilance and products. Similarly ASGM propaganda ebbs & flows.
These battlehardened armchair warriors of the ministry of we know best look too comfortable. They've had it easy thus far. Nothing like 'Socialism masquerading as environmentalism' to wake the sheeple-up, a few dire winters and more than seventeen years of 'pause'. The dank, grasping, green fingers stealing livelihoods and robbing them of their very souls is bound to founder on the rocks of observation, reason, freedom and independence. It has before. It will again.
UEA support being devious on TV : (Something I found & posted on Unthreaded this morning)
Five Reasons Not to Cover Climate Change 06/11/2013 from UEA wacky dept
When an AGW protagonist goes on at me about the dangers of it, I ask one very simple question - "What are you (as an individual) doing about it? i.e. how have you managed to reduce your "carbon footprint" to zero?
Of course the true answer is "Nothing, it' not my responsibilty, it's everyone elses"
As for the Hans Rosling's population programme it was reassuring in many ways, BUT it didn't address the subsequent issue of how we feed 11 billion people after all the fossil fuels have been exhausted - I'd love to know!
There appears to be a disconnect in their interpretation of events.
They say 'there's a failure to communicate the message' but what they really mean is 'how the hell can we keep this wagon on the road after 17 years of no warming and almost total computer model-predictive failure'?
They are the ones in denial. That's the disconnect.
You have got to admire this odd combination of wide-eyed acceptance of human desecration of the planet with a no less certain belief that only a more or less total extinction of precisely those human activities that have created the economic circumstances that allow said zealots to proclaim their message should now be ended, whatever the consequences for them and us.
There is a kind of wonderful, almost miraculous, logical dislocation taking place. Precisely those complex activities that have allowed me, as worthy green zealot, to tell you, beneficiary as I am of said activities, how to forgo said benefits will simultaneously prevent me from enjoying these benefits and hence telling you how to forgo them.
Barmy.
Or am I imagining things?
On Hans Rosling:
It seems as if you do not know of "Gapminder" (established by Rosling), a brilliant site for analysis that you can do on your own. Very highly recommended!!
If you go there you will find that Africa south och Sahara still is still very much of a problem (and I mean very). There are really no clear indications of drops in fetility..
@crowcatcher - I ask the question online - why are you sitting in front of a PC made of plastic (oil), metals (refined using fossil fuels) and electronics instead of turning this off, going "off grid" and living the dream you have.
The answer is that they are evangelists, there to tell us evil skeptics what we should be doing.
Maybe they could form a committee or something so they can do this via one outlet, thus saving the CO2 producing emissions of all the others.
I also ask them why they haven't headed for the hills to survive the impending doom, and if they do please could they leave their stuff and tweet me their address. I haven't had a tweet so far but I'm on the lookout for a MacBook to play with...
Crowcatcher,
Given that:
we have recently found several hundred years' worth of methane with which to make nitrogen fertiliser (and heat our homes);
that phosphate reserves are at least of a similar order;
and that human population is forecast to peak substantially lower than 11 billion towards the end of this century...
I'm really not sure what we have to get alarmed about.
Maybe we could make invent a scare story by inventing fraudulent statistical methods and getting the UN to publicise their output? Not very original, but it worked last time around.
I have had some interesting 'interactions" with my french friends and neighbours in recent times. It is abundantly clear here that something has changed the weather we have experienced over the past 4 years. Now these people are farmers and farm gardeners like me and you notice when your crops don't produce as they have before. You notice when winters become longer and springs colder and autumns wetter.
That's what we have noticed in the past 4 years and yet they are all, to a man and woman, utterly convinced by the AGW meme. They will confirm what you say; Cold springs etc but still are not convinced but then I asked the question "what would convince you that the climate has changed for the colder". Like all good french people they shrug their shoulders.
That ladies and gentlemen is what you/we are facing.
Gösta Oscarsson: Rosling made clear that Africa remains a major challenge. Thank you for the reminder, the week my sister seeks, with friends, to set up a viable medical centre in a remote part of Cameroon.
Interesting that the document says that "Great global warming swindle" was the most commented on film in the interviews. That is the only context in which Durkin is mentioned.
Should they rename as the International Malthusian-Nonsense trust?
Derek says
'I have just watched my local ITV Meridian Tonight news programme and an item on a new method of detecting volcanic ash came on. The presenter said quite casually that we could expect more volcanic eruptions "due to climate change". Does anyone know of any mainstream science to support such a claim?'
If this is an instance of what the IBT concluded 'Virtually all our interviewees agree that what works is storytelling, vivid campaigns and ‘smuggling in’ more weighty or complex subjects via topics audiences can identify with such as food, the weather, gardening or architectural design.'- it is so demonstably ridiculous that it will have spectacularly failed, and recruited yet more sceptics.
Well I found that report very heartening. Pretty much says the public are pig sick of climate change and programme makers know it. Like vegitables and a fussy kid, they're sneaking greenery in where they can but the diet isn't making us grow up big and green. ROTFLMAO. Seriously, if Andy Hamilton can't make AGW amusing then they have no chance because I think it's screamingly funny without his added wit. They just need to see it from our side.
I sometimes wonder what they expect of the public. What sign are they looking for that would tell them the message has got through? The public have got the basic idea that CO2 is going to crisp the planet unless they insulate their home and change their lightbulbs. It's such a simplistic message it fails on all fronts. The problem isn't communication it's their lack of anything new or sensible to say.
re volcanoes and climate change.
This is the kind of stuff you get from Bill McGuire
http://www.amazon.com/Waking-Giant-changing-earthquakes-volcanoes/dp/0199678758
He regularly shows up on the Discovery network spouting his theories of Armageddon. Occasionally see him on some BBC disaster type programs that are said to be documentaries. I personally regard much of what he says as Science Fiction though he does manage to tell his stories with a scary voice that probably frightens the kids.
during our year’s research we found no factual long form programme dealing head on with the issue of climate change
... if you tell everyone the science is settled, why on earth would anyone want to listen to a non-debate.
... but if you tell everyone the science is settled and it is not (Climate: what we know and what we don't) then why would anyone believe your "factual" programmes?
The phrase is "hoisted on their own petard".
One problem is that environmental 'journalists' are so woefully innumerate, unable to distinguish between an absolute value (what is the temperature this year) and a trend (is it getting warmer or colder?).
So the SMH trumpets "2013 likely to be the 7th hottest year on record" as though this were a harbinger of global disaster. (Actually, if AGW theory were absolutely correct, it should be the hottest).
Similarly, the silly ' Six of the hottest 10 years ever have occurred since 2000' headlines.
But trying to explain this to liberal arts graduates would be a thankless task, I fear.
- Well the people involved in the IBT are part of the Fundamentalist Five percent the eco-evangelists. Firstly religion turns a lot of people off, but also if you look at the public 95% have the same CO2 footprint they had 20 years ago. They are just not into the practice of the new religion, so they are probably not going to be interested in watching TV stuff about it. What the evangelists have taken to doing is shoehorning CAGW religion into other progs like currebt affairs, polar bear docs, and especially the news. Every evening somewhere on TV they'll be dramagreens going emotional, but failing to mention their GreenBiz connections.
- Note how the Inconvenient Truth is never on TV ? Is it cos then people would see the errors & laugh/cry ?
- Apart from hippy people & brainwashed youngsters, almost everyone I meet is a skeptic. And of course skeptic programme makers have a lot of interesting ideas and fascinating stories that the public would like to hear about it, but we are banned.
So programme financers won't often feels like putting money into progs that less than half their audience is gonna consider watching, cos you have BANNED the viewpoint of more than 50% of the potential audience !.
- Re 15th hottest year etc. ..There's more than 10% of the year to go ..not very scientific to claim records yet, is it ?
I got mildly Spooneristic with "environmentalist funders" and ended up with "viral fundamentalists".
By the way, I take it that the Steve Jones mentioned is Snail-Boy. How do they justify including him as any kind of authority in this context? "Global warming", after all, wasn't actually the supposed subject of his infamous report, even though he plainly distorted his brief to concentrate on it.
Ref
"He regularly shows up on the Discovery network spouting his theories of Armageddon. Occasionally see him on some BBC disaster type programs that are said to be documentaries. I personally regard much of what he says as Science Fiction though he does manage to tell his stories with a scary voice that probably frightens the kids."
Isn't much of the BBC's pension fund invested in stuff that is based on the green madness?
IBT is a very creepy organisation whose desire to interfere with broadcasting goes way beyond eco-madness.
But why would any broadcaster want to have anything to do with them? It is not as though they control the funding?
Something rotten is afoot.
Still hoping to find that new magical lipstick to put on the old climate change pig.
I love the way Progressives stick to the dogma when all the evidence suggests its cobblers. Thus, "failure to communicate" is the excuse for the broad masses + peasants + soldiers + artists and intellectuals not demanding that big-oil funded politicians ACT NOW! Whereas actually the message has been communicated perfectly well to broad masses etc, who have either yawned or muttered 'BS'. In the same way, Progressive on Today prog the other day insisted that, while no social mobility pre 1944, and none after 1970 (or whenever grammar schools disappeared) the 1944-1970 social mobility COULD NOT POSSIBLY be attributed to grammar schools because ..... Wait for it .....a peer-reviewed report said so. Actually progressives are never going to accept re-introduction of grammar schools because of their fantasy that grammar schools capture and embourgoisify the natural leaders of the working class and so blunt its revolutionary potential. You couldn't make it up......
Martin Durkin the Ian Dury of Climate Skepticism.
Though he always denied it Ian Dury was the man that got a generation into Punk
Martin Durkin the man that got a generation including many from here into Climate Skeptism.
Myself it was Durkins Channel Four Equinox Documentary Green House Conspiracy that got to me
Up to then Equinox documentaries had been about Formula One and Theme Park Rides.
Also Frank Fureidi defending "Against Nature" Documentary on Channel Four Right to Reply
The Iraq war got a lot of people into Left Wing Politics and Climate Skepticism has got a lot of people into
Right wing politics.
Maybe that is the real point arguing dots on a graph has made us all politically aware.
An interesting exchange with my wife in the car this morning (she is normally of the: 'Oh, for chrissake - you're not on that bloody global warming website again' school...)...
She: 'They say there's going to be a lot of snow this winter..'
Moi: 'They don't know diddly squat. They can only forecast a few days in advance.'
She: 'But what about this global warming..?'
Moi: 'That's all done by computer models.'
She: 'That's all..?'
Moi: 'Yep.'
She: 'So - they could feed in anything they like..?'
Moi: 'Precisely...'
As has been said - baby steps...
An interesting exchange with my wife in the car this morning (she is normally of the: 'Oh, for chrissake - you're not on that bloody global warming website again' school...)...
She: 'They say there's going to be a lot of snow this winter..'
Moi: 'They don't know diddly squat. They can only forecast a few days in advance.'
She: 'But what about this global warming..?'
Moi: 'That's all done by computer models.'
She: 'That's all..?'
Moi: 'Yep.'
She: 'So - they could feed in anything they like..?'
Moi: 'Precisely...'
As has been said - baby steps...
Apologies, folks - I didn't get the 'your post has been submitted' message so I pressed 'create post' again...
The summary I saw of the BBC programme about population contained nothing which our grandson hadn't learned for GCSE Geography.
The summary I saw of the BBC programme about population contained nothing which our grandson hadn't learned for GCSE Geography.
To get the 'population' thing into perspective - didn't I read somewhere that the whole population of the planet could stand on the Isle of Wight..?