Lord Lawson: BBC bedient zich van Stalinistische praktijken
Na een BBC-interview met Nigel Lawson over het klimaat brak de hel los.
Eerder schreef ik over een nieuwe oekaze die door de BBC was uitgevaardigd om de klimaatsceptici geen podium meer te geven. Aanleiding daarvan was een interview waarin Nigel Lawson, voormalig minister van Financiën onder Margaret Thatcher en oprichter van de klimaatkritische 'Global Warming Policy Foundation' (GWPF), onder meer zijn opvattingen gaf over de door verschillende Britse politici gesuggereerde relatie tussen de opwarming van de aarde (die zo'n 17 jaar geleden is gestopt) en de overstromingen in Engeland. Volgens vele groen bevlogenen had de BBC hem daarover niet aan het woord mogen laten.
Nigel Lawson is er niet de man naar om dit soort zaken over zijn kant te laten gaan. In de 'Mail Online' sloeg hij terug hoffelijk, maar met dodelijke precisie.
Nigel Lawson:
Over the years, both in and out of government, I have frequently been invited to appear on BBC radios flagship Today programme, usually to discuss economic issues.
But despite the fact that I had written a thoroughly well-documented book about global warming (An Appeal To Reason), which happily became something of a best-seller, and the following year founded a think-tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (which is advised by a number of eminent scientists), I was never invited on Today to discuss any aspect of climate change.
That was until earlier this year, when I was asked on to discuss the recent bad weather, which had caused widespread flooding in parts of England, the extent to which this may have been connected with man-made climate change, and what should be done about it.
My opposite number was the scientist Sir Brian Hoskins. It was an appropriate pairing, since Sir Brian is no remote and unworldly academic: he is chairman of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change, a lavishly-funded alarmist pressure group, and a member of the Government-appointed Climate Change Committee, which exists chiefly to promote the abandonment of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) by the UK.
It was a thoroughly civilised discussion, ably refereed by presenter Justin Webb. Following the programme, on February 13, all hell broke loose.
The BBC was overwhelmed by a well-organised deluge of complaints many of them, inevitably, from those with a commercial interest in renewable energy, as well as from the Green Party arguing that, since I was not myself a scientist, I should never have been allowed to appear. ...
Ceri Thomas, head of programmes for BBC News, pointed out that, after six weeks of flooding, this was the first interview on Today with a climate change sceptic?, and that as a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, I was well qualified to discuss the most cost-effective policy response to the flooding.
But the orchestrated complaints continued and it now seems, from widespread leaked reports which the BBC has nowhere denied, that poor Mr Thomas has been overruled.
The head of the BBCs Editorial Complaints Unit, a Mr Fraser Steel, whose qualifications for the job are unclear and whose knowledge of the complex climate change issue is virtually nonexistent, has written to a little-known but active Green Party politician called Chit Chong to apologise for the fact I was allowed to appear on the programme and to make clear this will not happen again.
Among the reasons given in Mr Steels letter for upholding Mr Chongs complaint and over-ruling the BBCs head of news programmes is the mindboggling statement that: As you have pointed out, Lord Lawsons views are not supported by the evidence from computer modelling.
Evidence? However useful computer models may be, the one thing they cannot be is evidence. Computer climate models are simply conjectures, expressed in the form of mathematical equations (the language of computers), which lead to forecasts of future global temperatures, which can then be compared with the evidence on the ground.
En zo gaat Lawson een tijd door.
Over alles en nog wat laten nietdeskundigen hun mening horen in de media. Waarom zou dat niet over klimaat mogen?
Lawson:
I might have suggested, too, that if there is to be a ban on nonscientists discussing climate change issues (which I do not, of course, support), this should in the best BBC tradition be an evenhanded one.
That is to say, they should also ban nonscientists such as Energy Secretary Ed Davey, Ed Miliband, Lord Deben (chairman of the Governments Climate Advisory Committee), Lord Stern (former adviser to the Government on the Economics of Climate Change and Development) and all the others who are regularly invited to appear.
The truth is that the BBCs outrageous behaviour is nothing whatever to do with whether I am a climate scientist or not. Indeed, it is not about me at all. ...
The fact is that, on this issue, the BBC has its own party line (indistinguishable from that of the Green Party) which it imposes with quasiStalinist thoroughness.
The one occasion, last February, on which it permitted a balanced and civilised discussion is now seen by the Corporation as a colossal error for which it must grovel and undertake never to repeat. This amounts to a policy of outright political censorship.
It is hard to imagine a more blatant breach of its charter, which commits it to political balance, or a more blatant betrayal of the peoples trust, on which the continuation of its licence fee depends.
The BBC justifies its unique compulsory funding model a television tax by claiming that it provides a fair and balanced public service. Its treatment of climate change shows this is simply not the case.
It is little wonder that a recent poll found most people would like to see the licence fee scrapped.
Lees verder hier
Aldus Lord Lawson over dit bastion van ecozeloten: de BBC.
Hebben we de laatste tijd overigens nog iets gehoord over klimaatscepsis in de Nederlandse media?
Voor mijn eerdere DDSbijdragen zie hier.
PS,
De Heartlandklimaatconferentie die thans in Las Vegas plaatsvindt, is hier te volgen.
Theo Wolters is onder de deelnemers. Hij brengt regelmatig verslag uit op Climategate.nl.
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