Wednesday 31 March 2010

TODAY EDITOR IS CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIVIST - Biased BBC

TODAY EDITOR IS CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIVIST: "In Mongolia, it's sadly been so cold this winter that a million animals have died, and many of the nomadic herders and farmers are said to be in desperate need of aid. The Today programme reported this story this morning, but guess what was missing from the equation? Any mention of that dreaded phrase 'climate change'. This fits a pattern. Today reporters grind on about AGW every time there is a claim - however tenuous - that temperatures are getting hotter; but never when the reverse applies. Of course, one extremely bad winter does not prove cooling, but on Radio 4's co-called flagship news programme, the topic is never discussed properly.

Could this be because Ceri Thomas, the editor of Today, is yet another BBC executive who is a climate change activist? Mr Thomas, it transpires, is on the board of a body called the Science Media Centre, another shadowy outfit that has been created, according to its own blurb, to act as:

first and foremost a press office for science when science hits the headlines. We provide journalists with what they need in the form and time-frame they need it when science is in the news - whether this be accurate information, a scientist to interview or a feature article.

An admirable objective, if - but only if - the Centre was properly neutral on matters of scientific controversy. But it it isn't. It's yet another collection of warming fanatics. It runs a number of briefings for journalists which show the reverse is true; everything they do on the climate front is geared towards the AGW perspective. So when Copenhagen was looming, who did the centre choose as its speaker to make sure journalists were properly in the picture? Why, none other than Vicky Pope, of the Met Office, who might be described as one of the UK's warmists-in-chief. Others of these briefings follow exactly the same pattern and format, for example this one on so-called carbon sinks, which assumes as the start point that AGW is happening:

Efforts to control climate change require the stabilization of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, which in turn depends on the balance between our own emissions and natural carbon sinks. The Global Carbon Project has evaluated all the available evidence on carbon sinks and sources, the results of which have been published in Nature Geoscience. Two of the authors of the paper briefed journalists in their findings at the SMC.


I could go on, there's tons more, but I have made the main point. Mr Thomas deems it acceptable that he is an active member of a body which is grafting away behind the scenes to prejudice the debate about climate science towards the warmist viewpoint.I know from other sources that he also responds to complaints about the programme's climate change coverage by using sweeping warmist statements such as that there is a 'great consensus' about climate change science, therefore there is only the need for him to afford 'due impartiality' to sceptics - which means in practice that they rarely, if ever, appear on Today. And, in turn, that the programme is totally biased in its approach to the topic.

I submit that because of his activism, Mr Thomas is not fit to edit Today - or any other BBC programme. He should resign immediately.

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