Wednesday
Aug282013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill He's off
Aug 28, 2013 Media Long time BH sparring partner Leo Hickman has announced that he's leaving the Guardian and heading for pastures new. He is to take up the role of chief climate change advisor to WWF. I'm sure we all wish him well.
Obviously the Guardian is in pretty dire financial straits, so shedding of staff is no great surprise, but it may also be symptomatic of the continued demise of the environmental journalist, a profession that should never have existed in the first place.
Reader Comments (67)
Pharos: Ouch. I will try very hard not to resemble that remark.
So there's a switch of hats. Big deal. Makes little difference really. They're still swimming around in circles in the consensus trough to busy to notice that its slowly draining.
Fay Tuncay ( 8:12 PM) - yes that's a good candidate song for them and their odious movement.
Here is another song from Germany that might do for those of us who take a contrary view:
Die Gendanken Sind Frei.
There is an abridged version in mixed English and German by Pete Seeger here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017136123
WWF eh?
Raise the 'yellow jack'.
It's good, to keep all the green swamp hounds - corralled in the same quarantined area. That way, the contagion and green madness - is contained.
the BBC's Richard Black has popped up at the Global Ocean Commission (h/t Paul Matthews)
http://www.globaloceancommission.org/about-the-commission/secretariat/
remember this
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/21/saving-the-world-and-the-ocean-one-activist-opinion-at-a-time-another-greenpeace-flap-this-one-duped-global-media/
I feel certain I used to see Hickman blogging on the Telegraph to a rather hostile reception a few years back but cannot find any confirmation from the internet or his bio. Anyone else remember this?
Obviously the Guardian is in pretty dire financial straits, so shedding of staff is no great surprise...
A couple of days ago I searched Twitter bios for people claiming to be current Grauniad editors. (Yes, I know, but at the time it seemed a better option than tidying up the garden.) Astonishingly, there are about 140 of them. About 25 are obvious fakes - accounts that seem to have been set up for opaque purposes all at once several years ago - and there are a few obvious duplicates, but I reckon there are at least 100 current Grauniad editors on Twitter.
A quick hunt of Telegraph bios started to reveal similar numbers, so I assumed I was being ignorant and threw the search results away. If anyone wants to duplicate the effort, followerwonk.com is the place.
Didn't see the job advertised: WWF must have seen his business card in a phone box.
WWF almost made 60 billion USD at the Copenhagen 2009 from Brasilien rainforest they had "control" over? Guess who was going to pay for this? You and Me! Him going to WWF tells it all so nicely?
Roger Pielke Jr has an interesting thread on this as well:
Environmental Journalism and Environmental Activism
He has drawn comments from (inter alia) "Climate Central" [which, IIRC was the group that broadcast Trenberth's demand for "apology" and resignation of that poor Editor - whose name escapes me at the moment - for having had the temerity to publish a perfectly valid (but climatically incorrect) paper that Travesty Trenberth didn't like].
Climate Central have declared that they are not an advocacy organization. But the view from here, so to speak - as I had expressed over there - is that this could only be the case if Climate Central has ... uh ... redefined "advocacy"!
Thank you Foxgoose for the extra verse it fits well. It’s a pity we don’t have ‘Not the Nine O’Clock News’ to sing it for us. That would have been fun. And yes - the WWF/IPCC thinks it can predict the future and therefore owns it.
And thanks John Shade for the Pete Seeger song here:http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017136123 He has done some wonderful protest songs.
The “big deal” with Hickman has more to do with ‘New Environmentalism’, which is admitting its failure to get people to sign up to its core values and ideology. The bottom up approach of “let’s create a mass grassroots movement” did not work. So Plan B is a top down approach - here the WWF is consolidating its power in the business sector by pulling together a new elite class and helping to create a green energy cartel.
This sort of work can’t be left to a bunch of ageing New Age eccentrics like Johnathan Porritt. So new blood like Hickman is essential to speed up this work and the collapse of capitalism, which is their ultimate aim.
On this matter the WWF’s long-term strategy of afforestation and creation of National Parks everywhere has already worked - because the possibility for investment around the world has been
blocked by these animal parks. Over £26 trillion is being kept idle in international bank accounts with no where to go! Some say capitalism is on strike, but I think capitalism has just been banned.
UK readers may not know the Guardian has recently started an Australian online edition, which will further erode the market share of existing media amongst the committed leftist/warmist demographic. Fairfax media was toast before this, but it will accelerate their demise.
The url is http://www.theguardian.com/au
Nah, he ain't! All he is doing is changing a bit of his email address.
Actual location will always be the same, limbo having passed him by!
Not unhappy to see Hickman being thrown to the wolves. I was once banned from CIF for suggesting that as the last of the teletubbies he should be put on the endangered species list.
Sparring partner = code speak for Moe Ron.
Mark
Is Hickman's departure somehow related to this?
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/aug/28/cooling-pacific-dampened-global-warming
That seems quite an about-face for this newspaper, and possibly too much for some journalists to have to swallow.
So much for comparing sceptics to the tobacco lobby.
One of the founders of the wildlife and climate campaigning WWF is Dr. Anton Rupert. The now deceased Dr. Rupert made his fortune from the cigarette manufacturing company called Voorbrand, re-named Rembrandt, now consolidated into Rothmans.