Quiet satisfaction abounds

Lancashire county councillors have decided to reject Cuadrilla's Little Plumpton shale well planning application, throwing out the advice of their own planning officials. A second Cuadrilla application in the area fell at the first hurdle and never reached the councillors.

I assume there is scope for the government to step in and overrule, but I don't suppose that David Cameron has the parliamentary support to do anything like that, even if he had the gumption.

There will be quiet satisfaction in many places around the world tonight: at the BBC, in Saudi Arabia and in the corridors of the Kremlin.

Update on Jun 29, 2015 by Bishop Hill

This from the FT is good:

[The council] defied its legal advice to refuse Cuadrilla’s application, saying the large drilling rig would alter the rural landscape.

It almost beggars belief. Is this the councillors trying to come up with an excuse to appease their electorates - misinformed as they are by the green fraternity - but one so risible that it would be thrown out in an instant on appeal?

Is this a joke?

Readers will enjoy this transcript of an interview between the BBC's Adrian Goldberg and Professor Hugh Montgomery of the Lancet's health and climate thingy.

"Tell us just how how bad things are Professor".

"Well it's really, really bad Adrian. We're probably all going to die".

"I think listeners would like to know just how painful their deaths are going to be, Professor, or can I call you `sir'."

"Well, Adrian, I think it's going to be like purgatory, only more so"...

Sheesh.

The BBC and its experts

The BBC, which claims to agonise over neutrality in matters environmental, has come unstuck again. In the comments at Biased BBC comes an amusing story from reader Fred Stubber, who explained in a letter to the editor that an interviewee on the corporation's Look North Leeds show, was not quite what he seemed:

Your package on the closure of part of Ferrybridge Power Station was severely biased because of the follow-up interview, which was with John Grant, who was described as ‘an expert in renewable energy and climate change’. Why didn’t you describe him as a hard line environmentalist, which is what he is? Then the viewers would have known where he was coming from and could have adjusted their credibility accordingly. And why did you chose this man anyway, with his known bias on the subject? Why didn’t you interview someone who was a true expert in the whole field of energy production; someone who would take a more balanced and broader view? John Green gave totally one-sided answers which were narrowly focused on the conventional environmentalist mantra. He is absolutely committed to the environmentalist cause, unsurprisingly because he makes a good living from it.

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Roger's obsession with fairness and impartiality

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.

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BBC metropolitan elite, moi?

Result confirms my suspicion about uncaring ignorant Britain the moment you step outside of London.

Gaia Vince is not amused

Diary dates - here we go again edition

The BBC is going to look at fracking again today, with a programme by Scotland Environment Correspondent David Miller.

Scotland has a decision to make: to frack, or not to frack. The controversial technique could be used to release gas and oil from the shale rock which lies beneath central Scotland. Large energy companies are keen to do this, and say it is important for both our economic growth, and energy supply needs. But fracking has a bad reputation. Its opponents believe it is dangerous, with the potential to cause pollution and even earthquakes. The Scottish Government has announced a temporary ban, but for some that is just not enough. David Miller reports from the front line in the war over fracking, where the two sides are locked in a fierce battle for the hearts and minds of the nation. He sets out to find out whether shale gas extraction can be safe, and whether Scots can be convinced to give it the go ahead.

What's the betting we see the "flaming faucets" on screen again? There are some clips here to whet your appetites.

Another unthinking BBC correspondent

Helen Briggs, the BBC's latest environmentalist recruit has decided to throw herself - and the thus the corporation's considerable weight - behind the greens' divestment campaign. Her advertorial today appears to have been written for her by someone in Greenpeace or the Guardian, without even the pretence of having any news value.

The "pros and cons" section has to be seen to be believed. If you can credit it, the BBC has an employee who doesn't seem to realise that people in Africa are dying in their hundreds of thousands for lack of access to fossil fuels. Does Ms Briggs think that dead Africans are not a "con" of her campaign?

The climatologist's privilege

The BBC has infamously decided that climatologists should not be challenged on air. They are, in the corporation's considered view Science Personified; the very voice of truth. As if to emphasise the point, the Today programme this morning invited Sir Brian Hoskins on air to talk about climate change. Ostensibly this was to allow him to air his grievance that the election debate has largely eschewed consideration of the subject, but also gave him plenty of time to discuss his views on climate policy and what he sees as the need to prioritise climate over wealth creation. And all without a word of challenge from anyone.

The climatologist's privilege is creeping ever wider by the looks of it.

Audio below.

Hoskins, Today 22 April 2015

Update on Apr 22, 2015 by Bishop Hill

In Unthreaded, reader Harry Passfield notes that James Lovelock was invited onto Today last weekend to make the same point as Hoskins about the lack of climate change on the election agenda.

The Left does abhorrence - Josh 321

Divesting from Fossil fuels seems to be flavour of the week, see here, here and here, but leaves a bitter taste. Our House troll makes an appearance.

Cartoons by Josh

BBC joins Guardian divestment campaign

With Alan Rusbridger's divestment campaign being relentlessly hammered in the Guardian, it's no surprise to see Roger Harrabin answering the call to arms with an article at the BBC on the same subject. It's quite funny in parts:

Are we approaching the twilight of the fossil fuel era? A few years ago that question would have seemed absurd. But a combination of forces is squeezing carbon assets like never before.

The oil price remains stubbornly low.

And of course we can't burn the fossil fuels, blah blah.

The oil price is of course low because of a surge in production. I'm struggling to see oversupply of a commodity as the herald of its downfall. Readers should also rest assured that the consequences of divestment for the Third World are not addressed. For the BBC and the Guardian and their fellow travellers it is morally wrong to consider such unpleasantness.

Update on Apr 16, 2015 by Bishop Hill

I've adjusted one of the pics from the BBC piece slightly.

Not tired of climate change

As readers here are aware, Joe Smith's chief claim to fame is that in the first years of the 21st century he managed to pervert the BBC's environmental output, ensuring that the green political agenda was adhered to across the corporation's output, from comedy to current affairs.

During today's BBC World Service show  Are We Tired of Talking About Climate Change?, Smith seemed to admit that this had been a "tactical error" with the narrative of gloom and doom apparently switching the public away from the desired political programme and inducing little more than an extreme case of apathy. You have to admire his chutzpah.

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A lack of self-awareness

I caught most of Costing the Earth today, in which some of the problems with mainstream climate science were discussed. It featured a bunch of alarmists and ex-alarmists discussing aspects of the science that they had until quite recently decried sceptics for mentioning. Towards the end they wondered whether sceptics shouldn't perhaps be admitted to the debate. I'm not sure that they quite grasped the irony of this position and certainly, when the presenter asked about sceptics being presented as crackpots, nobody deigned to answer.

It's definitely worth a listen.

Simon's Caribbean climate capers

The BBC really is ramping up the pressure on climate change. Having made my way back to the episcopal palace late yesterday afternoon I collapsed in a corner to catch up on my reading. Meanwhile, on the TV in the corner was Simon Reeve's Caribbean, a travelogue show which this week featured visits to Venezuela and Colombia.

I wasn't paying any attention until, towards the end, I was forced to sit up by the (perhaps inevitable) introduction of the climate debate. This centred upon Reeve's visit to the Sierra Nevada mountains of Columbia and an Amerindian tribe called the Kogi. You got a hint of what was coming when the first Kogi interviewed told the camera that her people did not damage the Earth (from 51:00). But it really kicked off from 54:30 when the same interviewee asked:

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An unbalanced panel

I'm in Bath at the moment, appearing on BBC The Big Questions. The show was broadcast live at 10am here, but we are asked not to mention our involvement ahead of time. It should be on iPlayer in due course.

The subject is:

Are we right to impose environmental costs on future generations?

The show's panel also features Tony Juniper, Ben Harris-Quinney of the Bow Group and Hannah Martin of Christian Climate Action. This is what Helen Czerski would refer to as an "unbalanced" panel, no doubt.

In which a BBC presenter reveals what balance means

Hat tip to Barry Woods for pointing me to this Twitter exchange, in which the BBC's Helen Czerski reveals what the corporation understands "balance" to mean in the context of the climate debate:

@SellaTheChemist @theresphysics @MichaelEMann @4589roger @guynewey And actually, it's v. balanced in sense that there is no "skeptic" voice.

— Helen Czerski (@helenczerski) March 26, 2015