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Press Release
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GWPF
Calls For New BBC Seminar On Global Warming And Climate Policy
Coverage
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London, 17
December: Lord Lawson (Conservative), Lord Donoughue (Labour) and
Baroness Nicholson (Liberal Democrat), three Trustees of the all-Party and
non-Party Global Warming Policy Foundation, have called upon the BBC’s
new Director-General Designate to convene a new high-level seminar in order to
re-assess the BBC’s treatment of global warming and climate policy
issues.
Over many years, the BBC’s treatment of climate change issues has
been marked by bias, ignorance, credulity and – in the latest episode –
unwarranted concealment. The behaviour of the Corporation throughout has failed
to measure up to professional standards.
In
their letter to Lord Hall, the GWPF Trustees have asked the Director-General
Designate also to reconsider the implications of the controversial global
warming seminar held in 2006 which has shaped BBC policy on climate-related
issues ever since.
In their letter the Trustees write:
“We
refer to the now notorious seminar on global warming held in 2006, involving 28
senior BBC staff and 28 outsiders. As the BBC Trust subsequently explained, ‘The
BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and
has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space
being given to the opponents of the consensus [on climate change and climate
change policies]‘. Ever since then, the BBC has fought tooth and nail, at
considerable public expense, to keep secret the identity of ‘the best scientific
experts’.
As you may be aware, it now emerges that, of the 28
present, there were only two (hand-picked) climate scientists; and the bulk of
the rest were either green activists (including two from Greenpeace alone) or
non-scientists with a vested interest in promoting renewable energy. So the BBC
stands convicted not only of culpable imbalance, but also of rank
dishonesty.
We hope that, once you have grappled with the more
immediate challenges facing the BBC, you will revisit this important issue. We
suggest that you might start by convening a new high-level seminar, this time a
more balanced one, whose non-BBC participants would be qualified climate
scientists, energy and environmental economists, and experienced policy-makers –
whose names, incidentally, would be made known. The Global Warming Policy
Foundation would be happy to be represented in any such
seminar.”
LETTER
TO LORD HALL FROM GWPF TRUSTEES
The Global Warming Policy
Foundation – 14 December 2012
Dear Lord Hall,
As Trustees of the
all-Party and non-Party Global Warming Policy Foundation, we would like to wish
you every success in your new and important post of Director General of the BBC.
It is clear that you have a number of urgent matters to attend to in your post.
But when you have done that, we hope you will find time to turn your attention
to a matter which, although not urgent, is of considerable importance: the BBC’s
treatment of global warming and climate change issues.
That the BBC
recognises the importance of these issues is clear from the lecture given at
Oxford University last month by your predecessor but one, Mark Thompson, who
opened with an extensive quotation from the Director of this Foundation, Dr
Benny Peiser, which he then proceeded to discuss at considerable length. While
he was, of course, speaking in a personal capacity, it is reasonable to suppose
that his lecture reflected the present view of the BBC on how it should treat
climate change issues; and since it is the fullest statement of that view
currently available it merits close attention.
We wish to be fair to Mr
Thompson. In places his discussion betrays a welcome acknowledgment that perhaps
the BBC has not got its treatment of global warming and climate change issues
quite right. And he does seem grudgingly to concede that the Global Warming
Policy Foundation has a point when it insists that these issues need to be fully
and openly debated.
However, against this have to be set a number of less
commendable aspects of the lecture. His account of what the Global Warming
Policy Foundation is and does is a travesty, wholly ignoring the fact that (as
our name clearly implies) our principal focus is the policy response rather than
the science. He refers, in patronising terms, to the detailed analysis by
Christopher Booker of the BBC’s coverage of climate change issues which we
published last year, a fully-documented and peer-reviewed report, without
deigning to address any of the serious charges it made.
He also shows
(as, it must be said, does the BBC as a whole) considerable ignorance of many of
the issues he discusses. In particular, he seems to imagine that the issue is a
simple yes-no question, namely, whether man-made carbon emissions are likely to
warm the planet. He shows no awareness of the fact that there has been no
recorded global warming for the past 15 years or so (despite an accelerated rise
in carbon dioxide emissions), no awareness that climate scientists are deeply
divided over how great or small any future warming is likely to be, and no
awareness of the complexity of what the impact, for good or ill, of any such
warming might be.
Above all, he shows no awareness of the crucial
question of what the most cost-effective response might be, a matter on which
economists are divided and on which scientists have no expertise to bring to
bear. Nor, incidentally, does he recognise that what might be a sensible policy
for the world as a whole may not be sensible for the UK on its own. These are
all distinct issues deserving the most careful scrutiny and debate; yet the BBC
appears to maintain that there is one single issue which is no longer a matter
for debate at all.
The lamentable report to the BBC Trust, earlier this
year, by Professor Steve Jones fell into precisely this error, arguing that the
BBC should in future allow even less airtime to dissenters from the conventional
wisdom, on the grounds that “For at least three years, the climate change
deniers (sic) have been marginal to the scientific debate, but somehow they
continued to find a place on the airwaves”.
Curiously, since he was in
post when the event occurred, but perhaps revealingly in the light of recent
events, Mr Thompson fails to mention what has come to be known as ‘28gate’. We
refer to the now notorious seminar on global warming held in 2006, involving 28
senior BBC staff and 28 outsiders. As the BBC Trust subsequently explained, “The
BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and
has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal [ie
more than derisory] space being given to the opponents of the consensus [on
climate change and climate change policies]“. Ever since then, the BBC has
fought tooth and nail, at considerable public expense, to keep secret the
identity of “the best scientific experts”.
As you may be aware, it now
emerges that, of the 28 present, there were only two (hand-picked) climate
scientists; and the bulk of the rest were either green activists (including two
from Greenpeace alone) or non-scientists with a vested interest in promoting
renewable energy. So the BBC stands convicted not only of culpable imbalance,
but also of rank dishonesty.
We hope that, once you have grappled with
the more immediate challenges facing the BBC, you will revisit this important
issue. We suggest that you might start by convening a new high-level seminar,
this time a more balanced one, whose non-BBC participants would be qualified
climate scientists, energy and environmental economists, and experienced
policy-makers – whose names, incidentally, would be made known. The Global
Warming Policy Foundation would be happy to be represented in any such
seminar.
In the light of the public interest in this issue, we shall be
posting this letter on the Foundation’s
website.
Signed
Lord Lawson (Chairman)
(Conservative)
Lord Donoughue
(Labour)
Baroness Nicholson (Liberal
Democrat)
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