Bishop Hill Roger's obsession with fairness and impartiality
May 18, 2015 BBC Roger Harrabin is positively revelling in his role as agitator for the green movement today, with an article on the views of Unilever boss Paul Polman, who is apparently demanding decarbonisation.
This is an astonishingly poor article. For a start, we have to wonder why the views of a businessman nobody has ever heard of are considered newsworthy. Of course it fits the BBC's agenda, in a way that "people dying from lack of fossil fuels" just doesn't ("lifting them out of poverty", Roger's concession to the facts on the ground, is not exactly the same as "stopping them dying", in my opinion). Again and again we see the news agenda being set by whatever green-tinged press release happens to pop into its correspondents' inboxes of a morning. GWPF press releases, or even things like the Ecomodernist Manifesto go straight in the bin.
The content of the Polman piece is derisory:
"The reality is, if we don’t tackle climate change we won’t achieve economic growth.”
Mr Polman said Unilever had faced business costs €300m-to-€400 million (£216m-to-£316m) higher than normal due to extreme weather.
This is, not to put too fine a point on it, a breathtaking display of ignorance, given that there has been no discernable change to extreme weather (unless you accept the IPCC's Orwellian inclusion of daily temperature maxima and minima as "weather extremes"). What is it about green bilge that Roger Harrabin finds so enticing that he feels that it is worthy of dissemination to a wider audience and without a word of comment? Is there an agenda here perchance?
Perhaps we get a clue later on in the article, where we get a quite stunning display of Koch derangement syndrome.
But for every CEO who makes promises in Paris this week, others will warn against a rush away from CO2.
America’s fossil fuel giants, the Koch Brothers, are spending $900 million on political advertising to make their case.
This is, not to put too fine a point on it, a dirty piece of political propaganda, inviting the reader to believe that the Koch brothers are spending the best part of a billion dollars on climate change activism. But if you read the linked article and you find that the money is actually being spent on things like Tea Party groups and the American Chamber of Commerce.
GWPF gets a mention too, with Harrabin describing them as "fossil fuel advocates". You can't imagine him describing the Grantham Institute as an environmental advocacy group, can you? (You also have to wonder how all 1290 articles about nuclear power on the GWPF website have escaped his notice.) GWPF refer to themselves as a "think tank", but it appears that Harrabin considers this too polite a term to use for the non-green side of the climate debate, being reserved for organisations such as E3G, who are honoured with just this description in the same article.
Finally, we shuld also note who Roger felt he should talk to for his article:
- "Nick Mabey, who runs the green think tank E3G"
- "The World Bank's climate chief, Rachel Kyte"
- "Polly Courtice, who runs the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership"
Harrabin claims that the BBC "obsesses about fairness and impartiality". You can't fault his sense of humour at least.
Reader Comments (54)
Roger is not unintelligent. It is strange though how he can't recognise propaganda when he publishes it.
Link?
The anti-carbon divestment generals are lining up for the Final Push to Paris which may see many lives lost, many pockets picked, many livelihoods destroyed - all for the Greater Good of the War on Climate Change. Harrabin is but a pen-pushing lieutenant in their employ, sacrificing brains for devotion to duty.
Global cereal production has been rising steadily for the last few decades (for whatever reason), and last year was a record.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/global-food-production-rising-steadily/
Same with coffee, and no doubt most other products
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/03/04/kew-use-coffee-scare-to-drum-up-more-funding/
And last year's "weather" in the UK also brought record harvests.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/warmest-year-brings-record-harvests-for-uk/
I have no doubt that every year brings some bad weather somewhere or other, which impinges on some particular product locally, but this has always been the case.
There BBC Charter is under increasing threat from people like Roger Harrabin who use the license fee to promote their own political agenda.
What is the BBC trust doing about him?
@Bish
Polman is, of course, a big fish in the corporate world. Unilever has been very green, perhaps because it fears a consumer boycott.
There has been a move for some time to try and appeal to all mind sets. So if you want to reach youngsters you use celebs, Christians would listen to the Pope, Royalists, Prince Charles, etc. It follows in the minds of Roger and his buddies that business leaders are the equivalent for sceptics. Of course it doesn't factor in the reality of many adults being unimpressed by this tactic to the point of actively resenting it. Why would we expect the busy leader of a company to know more about the issue than anyone else? The greens' obsession with what the Koch brothers are thinking is their trigger, not mine. Why should I assume that just because a person was clever/successful in one area of their life, it follows that they're smart in all areas? The newspapers prove the opposite on a daily basis.
Why does it never occur to them to ask what would impress us? Possibly because the words 'quality control' makes them think of a machine to brainwash the public, not a way to sort the dreadful climate science from the good.
Wasn't Harrabin picked up before for calling GWPF fossil fuel advocates? And didn't he end up having to withdraw that claim?
The Koch claim is shockingly misleading. Anyone following the link can see that the money is to do with the 2016 US election campaign, nothing to do with climate at all.
The True Believers are multiplying as years of propaganda promote group think and encourage panic. They are getting desperate about the climate, which as far as I can see, is perfectly normal.
Polman is an economist (soap salesman). Where's the physics in that?
Any chance that these costs will appear before Unilever shareholders, so they can make their own judgement as to whether the CEO has a good grip on reality, or is just trying to blame the climate for incompetence under his management?
Does ocean acidification damage the blue whiteness of washing powder? Or maybe the nonexistent rise in temperatures is not boosting deoderant sales, as they had planned.
Any company associated with washing, cleaning and food wants to come across as only using natural, healthy resources. The truth is they are a chemical company with all that implies in terms of energy consumption and raw materials. I resent the BBC giving them free PR on agenda that neither of them is doing more than paying lip service to.
It seems that bare faced lying is a natural product and has an almost inexhaustible supply.
Unilever greenwashes better.
Pure propaganda ahead of Paris. Time to shut down the BBC.
According to Wikipedia Harrabin attended Cambridge and his claim to fame is starting the student newspaper. No reference to his English degree course, only that he attended, so he has no qualifications at all.
One wonders why this ill informed CEO has jumped into the fray, only that perhaps Unilever has some snake oil climate change product they will soon market as the magic answer to the perceived problem. Let us hope that the shareholders realise and vote him out at the next shareholder's meeting.
Bish, you should send this excellent piece to John Whittingdale's office - and let BBC News know that you have done so.
Paul Polman also happen to be Chief Executive Officer for World Business Council for Sustainable Development
Ah, now it makes sense. he has a vested interest.....just like all the others. Who'd a thunk it?
So "extreme weather" has increased Unilevers operating costs by about 1%. These events are nowhere identified, perhaps tropical storms have damaged the yield of their Palm Oil plantations or perhaps increased the cost of forest clearance. Green peace have interesting things to say about Unilever.
Whats really wrong is it that the likes of Harrabin earn their wages from it. Thats the wage type that does not arise from tangible value or anything similarly valued added. Its the BBC poll tax and again highlights its purpose. Paying money does not mean quality....necessarily.
BBC regularly jails people.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/bbc/11394253/BBC-licence-fee-dodgers-are-still-criminals.html
It does not inform because it deals with those way up the food chain who likely don't give a toss. Or do in the likely event that they may move to the lower end of the food chain if they don't comply with fellow peckers.
Resides under the heading of contempt in my view.
I've just skimmed through Unilever's annual report and here are the risk factors they list:
Brand Preference.
Portfolio Management
Sustainability
Customer Relations
Talent
Supply Chain
Safe and High Quality Products
Systems and Information
Business Transformation
External economic and political risks and natural disasters.
Treasury and Pensions
Ethical
Legal and Regulatory
If extreme weather is going to cost the company an extra €300m-to-€400 million then it should have been listed amongst the risk factors. By not listing it, or issuing a statement to the stock exchange for their investors, Unilever would be breaking the rules of most of the world's stock exchanges.
Here he states:
As I recall, Unilever’s biggest product line is detergent, whose principal ingredient is, er, oil.
I caught a bit of discussion on the BBC World Service in the small hours of this morning, involving Jeremy Leggett and a fracking supporter who worked for Breitling Energy. Curiously, the BBC completely avoided mentioning that JL was most famous for founding a solar PV company, Solarcentury, while the Breitling connection was immediately revealed for the other guy...
Re Basingstoke talk tonight 7pm- The speaker can't come to give his talk on The Future of Conventional Power Generation .. instead of a speaker, they will be watching and discussing a couple of talks from the science channel TED.com ..7pm -9pm remember the organiser is a greenie.
Should a campaign be launched to disinvest from Unilever, or is this part of their business strategy, to appear Green, whilst remaining a giant in oil and chemical consumption?
It is almost as though their strategy is to buy off Green activists, and Greens are operating a protection racket.
son of mulder
For 15 years of my life, Unilever were my biggest competitor — so be nice about soap salesmen, or else!
In those days we certainly treated Unilever with respect as a competitor not to be ignored or underestimated. They probably still are but it seems that they have ended up with an environmental activist for a boss and I can see nothing good coming from that in the long run.
For a while now the BBC has been trying to push a business angle on their green propaganda whenever the opportunity presents itself. And often when the opportunity doesn't present itself.
Thus, yesterday, they wrote an article on their green page about people in plastic boats in Seattle complaining about Shell drilling for oil in the Arctic. Then they wrote a different headline and also placed the same linked story in the Business pages. Neither of them mentioned that plastic is made from petroleum sources.
Agenda or what?
I sometimes wonder to what extent the Koch brothers, cigarette - merchants of doubt memes work on the public. I suspect they play better in the US than the UK (not least because nobody has heard of Koch). Obviously it appeals to conspiracy ideation but the UK right, are much less paranoid about government/business plotting than our US counterparts. Here it’s much more of a left wing thing. I know I get very annoyed when people try too hard to draw a link between a bad thing and something they want to look like a bad thing. I see it as evidence they haven't got any better arguments. Is this a normal reaction?
If Dr Lew was any kind of serious scientist we might know the answer.
BBC 5 live did their bit for The Cause this morning - in an article about...wait for it...the loss of domestic driveways.
The reporter (correctly) stated that concreting over driveways can add to flooding risks (because water isn't absorbed directly into the earth, instead it runs off into the road and into drains which can on occasion become over-loaded) He then helpfully added the loss of front garden plants and shrubs could 'add to global warming' because 'there's fewer plants to absorb CO2'! I kid you not.
It seems they just can't help themselves.
TinyCO2, if Dr Lew was a serious scientist, he would write a serious scientific paper.
If Roger Harrabin was a serious journalist, .......... the BBC would not employ him.
Is it not time for the pampered champagne socialist to go on another sabbatical off our backs while his little bed remains spread out at the Bolshevik Brainwashing Circus??
Bad link concerning the lack of coverage of the Ecomodernist Manifesto at the BBC. I suspect the desired link is this.
Warmist caravan in tow, advocate and snake oil pedlar Harrabin - how does he get away with hawking these preposterous 'cure alls' - and only at the BBC.
Back in the day, it's probably a good job that I was never fortunate enough to be able to attend a lecture given by Professor Freeman Dyson, for I fear that my head would explode with the infinite array of possibilities his words would open up unto me and in that moment would come the realization that, my cognitive abilities weren't up to just merely tagging along and at that, a long way behind.
Doctor Richard Lindzen, makes me sit up with a start, anything he utters immediately charges you with an acute attentiveness, he speaks - you learn. Watch an episode of the bbc's 'Civilization' narrated by Kenneth Clark, it makes your brain tingle, and why try to remake something that's already superlative?
Attenborough, has a way with him, thank the Lord he mainly allows the subject matter to do his talking, even if latterly he is given using too much imagination without engaging much with the grey matter, all in all he is still watchable.
These days politicians leave me cold, this last election campaign was a turgid slow motion, poorly done farce and if proof were needed, it confirmed what a shower of charlatans and bodgers they all are. Although, I don't have much truck with Ed Balls, his economics and his Socialist leanings but at least he does it with passion, the rest of them - was like watching a shoal of fish, glazed ichthyoid eyes and all pretty shapes with no end product.
Which brings me further down to journalists and in particular al beeb drones. Now I don't half mind being patronized providing it is someone who is worth his salt and knows his subject.....aye knowledgeable - but if there are any knowledgeable bod's knocking about in the corridors of the bbc these days - we don't much get to hear and see them. I baulk at, being lectured to by someone who knows very little about which he declaims on and become agitated beyond reasonableness when I hear Roger Harrabin spluttery gibberish on all things man made mythologizing - on the great scam.
"sustainable development" - wow and who writes this s&*7 anyway? Nah - sorry no prizes for guessing.
Finally, who was the idiot who gave Rog' a job, because both of them should be sent - down the road.
"The reality is, if we don’t tackle climate change we won’t achieve economic growth.”
Or maybe it is trying to tackle climate change through massive subsidy regimes, inefficient and complex re-engineering of simple infrastructure, bad central planning and imposing greater costs on consumers that is damaging economic growth.
With all his knowledge about everything (see Athelstan's link) it amazes me that Harrabin is not giving advice on the Green credibility of contestants in the Eurovision Song Contest. He is available for hire.
My Euro vision, is that there may be trouble ahead. It's guaranteed to be a loser for taxpayers.
" I sometimes wonder to what extent the Koch brothers, cigarette - merchants of
doubt memes work on the public. "
I think the 'fossil fuel companies are evil' theme is fairly well embedded. I'm sure you can even have a long chat about it while on your long haul flight somewhere...... I do find the constant attack on them really odd considering they do a difficult job extracting something that most people depend on every day.
I think the 'fossil fuel companies are evil' theme is fairly well embedded. - Rob Burton
I can understand the roots of that. It's a cross between resentment from genuine pollution or other environmental incidents and the very real profits that oil companies make. Turns out people don't like to pay a lot for their own CO2 footprint. But as a non smoker I never associated the smoking companies with why smoking continued. I don't recall a single incident where Benson & Hedges lit their own product and puffed it into my vicinity. As you wrote, why resent a company for producing something you want?
Guido joins in -
"in an effort to remain fair and balanced, Harrabin informed readers that other business people don’t share Polman’s views with a classic oil-barons-own-politics smear."
"In fact the Koch’s aren’t spending $900 million on anything – they are part of a group of 300 donors who plan to spend that amount on next years presidential race.. as do the other side."
Paul Matthews, Ben Pile, anyone else .... , any news on Jeremy Grantham's net investment in Green propaganda?
His Lordship is on the case at WUWT.
Harrabin, like Black before him is little more than a mouthpiece for all things Green , I would take a good guess WWF etc have got his number on speed dial , and it is worth remembering that although he was not at the infamous '28 meeting' he was one of the brains behind it in the first place.
When in your mind you 'know' all that you do is good then it is very easy to assume those that do others wise are 'bad' and therefore unworthy of coverage in the first place.
Although to be fair to many journalist their just lazy sods who 'photocopy' anything their feed from their favoured groups , knowing that as long as ties in with the editorial line , they are home free.
May 18, 2015 at 12:52 PM Mike Jackson
My apologies Mike, Soft soap salesman. That's gentler.
Any one still trust the BBC after the election opinion exit polls debarcle.and should,nt Harrabin be retired by now.
Schrodinger's Cat, I look forward to seeing many Monkton bite marks in the BBC ass.
I'm conflicted on dismissing him as a "business nobody", it's just that these corporate types right now think it's in their best interests to give lip service to keep the hippies at bay. They are just far too short sighted, in part due to their average stints at the helm being relatively short. Somehow we need to make these bosses feel that playing to hippies and against people looking at the long-term best interests of UK industry is not an easy calculation. I'm loathe to say it but maybe there needs to be organisation in terms of boycotting products of companies whose bosses short-sightedly play into the agenda of the green blob.
It's rather troubling how the BBC and Harrabin can continue to be together on the back of mounds of scandal. Rather confusing also when putting in context of the exit of Richard Black a while ago. Harrabin is extremely well protected.
@Bish
Polman is, of course, a big fish in the corporate world. Unilever has been very green, perhaps because it fears a consumer boycott.
May 18, 2015 at 11:01 AM | Unregistered CommenterRichard Tol
Big business never changes. The CEO are at the beck and call of their boards and shareholders. They will follow any bandwagon that they hope will give them money or at least open a door to it. Green does that for the moment. A good CEO will know when to jump off a bad one will be dismissed with a golden parachute. Nothing to lose !
Polman got the chance to propagandise his views sustainability on the Peter Day 'In Business' green programme on BBC Radio4 here.
During the fifties, as a pupil at a boys' school in NZ modelled on the British grammar school, we were addressed in an assembly by a luminary/broadcaster from the Head Office of our own NZ Broadcasting Corporation on 'How broadcasting standards are set in the English-speaking world by the BBC'. In those just post WWII days, we were dedicated acolytes of the Motherland, which abruptly ended when Whitehall decided in the sixties that us pale colonials were embarrassing and unfashionable and best discarded in favour of the then European Common Market. A bit painful for us at the time, but a lucky break as it turns out now, as it's a bit of a stretch to remember when we paid a license fee to be lied to about climate.
"The reality is, if we don’t tackle climate change we won’t achieve economic growth …”.
=============================
Hah, that’s a good one, reminds me of Karl Kraus’s oft-quoted quip:“Psychoanalysis is the mental illness it purports to cure”.
Athelstan (May 18, 2015 at 2:17 PM): I went off Attenborough a few years ago, when he invited us to listen to a never-before-recorded bird song – to have this song totally swamped with background “music”! Since then, he has done little to redeem himself, preferring instead to wax lyrical about the threat of AGW, completely overlooking the irony of his own carbon footprint.
Cheshirered (May 18, 2015 at 1:25 PM): at least that reporter managed to get his English (almost) right: “…there are fewer plants to absorb CO2.” He could have said, “…there’s less plants,” a common failing of reporters of all shades, nowadays, along with: “…here we are, sat round this table..” and, “I am stood under this bridge…” I wonder if he knows the correct placement of commas? (Beady eyes fixing upon Golf Charlie and Athelstan…)
I plonked this on the BiasedBBC website, having had the misfortune to hear the awful Harrabin spouting, yesterday morning:
"....Unilever very keen to make this a carbon-free world, and go to great and expensive lengths not to put CO2 in the atmosphere at Port Sunlight. The CEO is going to strut his stuff at Paris. Of course, this is music to the ears of one Roger Harrabin, who is still convinced that CO2 is evil, even though there isn’t a shred, or an iota of evidence to prove that it does the climate (and the planet) any harm, whatsoever. Indeed, in times of greater amounts of atmospheric CO2, all life thrived, and even now, with levels at a mere 400 ppm, the globe is slowly greening.
So why should we even contemplate trying to reduce the gas? Not that we could make a ha’penceworth of difference to the changing climate, anyway.
They are all up their own arses with this rubbish, and will not be convinced of anything other than what they believe (or rather what will affect their agenda, and consequent funding), even with contrary evidence staring them in their faces..."