Spare a Thought for the BBC Journalists’ Pension Plans

(thanks to SBC for pointing this one out)

In a sentence: the BBC Pension Trust has been investing left, right and centre in climate-change-related products. If the AGW bubble bursts, so many a journalist’s pension funds will evaporate.

It is surely a coincidence that the BBC Climate Change Propaganda Committee has been remarkably active in pumping up the case for Anthropogenic Global Warming for quite some time now.

Investors fall short on climate risk assessment – IIGCC
London, 17 April: Investors are more aware of climate change than previously, but are failing to fully assess the risks it poses when the financial implications are not clear, according to the European investor body Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC).

In its first report of members’ activities, the IIGCC found that investors are struggling to assess the risk posed by uncertainties over future climate change regulations and the physical impacts of global warming. But an increasing number of asset managers are focusing on the issue and are expanding their ability to analyse the effects of climate change.

“The IIGCC’s report highlights that the investment community has come a long way in understanding and analysing the investment implications from climate change, but also that there is room for further progress from investors, companies and government,” said Peter Dunscombe, chairman of the IIGCC and also the head of investments for the BBC Pension Trust.

The report also found that asset managers increasingly are looking to invest in low-carbon or clean energy funds, are working with companies to improve their disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions and are using environmental rankings or analysing climate change impacts on their whole portfolio. And around 80% of pension funds and asset owners are asking their managers to exercise their voting rights on climate change issues.

But only 30% of respondents are integrating climate change considerations when appointing fund managers or seek advice on the matter from their advisors, reports the IIGCC. Investors are also failing to engage with companies on unavoidable climate change risks and climate-friendly products.

The BBC Stumbles on “Cosmic Climate Link”

Letter sent to the BBC via their website:

The title of Richard Black’s article “More doubt on cosmic climate link” is wrong, as Mr Black proceeds in the second part of the article to illustrate a relationship between cosmic rays and “local” polar temperatures. A better choice would be “New findings in cosmic climate links“. How on Earth can an effect on both poles be considered as “local”, I cannot understand. The maps published in the article seem to show cosmic rays changing temperatures over large parts of the globe.

Some hope! Since I am not a pro-AGW rabid activist threatening the reputation and livelihood of Richard Black or any other journalist, chances are my comments won’t be taken into consideration.

 

BBC’s Unbound Climate Zeal: Again!

After a few days of rest, aimed perhaps at calming down the furore around the Harrabin-Abbess story, the BBC Climate Change Propaganda Committee is running at full steam once again. Now is the turn of Richard Black to be on-message with a new scary piece about sea levels in fabled year 2100.

There are several interesting points to consider.

(1) Mr Black mentions how the new “scientific analysis” by Svetlana Jevrejeva and others “from the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL), near Liverpool, UK”, provides results of the same order of magnitude as other efforts in the past, for example by “German researcher Stefan Rahmstorf”.

Unfortunately there is no mention of the fact that the pages of Science magazine are hosting a peer-to-peer debate among Rahmstorf, the POL group and others, about the very significance of Rahmstorf’s linear-modelling methods.

(2) For some reason (more about this later), Mr Black leaves unchallenged the notion that “for the past 2,000 years, the [global average] sea level was very stable, it only varied by about 20cm” adding that according to POL’s Simon Holgate “There is some limited archaeological evidence [based on] the sill heights of fish enclosures that the Romans used, that’s probably the strongest evidence that there hasn’t been any significant change in sea level over the last 2,000 years”. Some major news would that indeed be: compare it to the POL’s much nuanced FAQ (e.g. “Changes in ocean level due to climate change can be greater in some places than others because the ocean circulation will adapt to accommodate the new climate regime”).

And go look for Roman sills and sea levels in the POL website, if you can.

(3) Mr Black doesn’t involve himself that much in numbers. Too bad. Here some results. If the current rise rate of 3-mm per year is true, by the year 2100 the sea level will have risen by 28 centimeters. For that level to reach “between 0.8m and 1.5m”, the yearly rate must go up to 9-16 millimeters per year (3 to 5 times more than today), or more. One would hope that measurement systems able to “see” 3 millimeters with any significance, will be able to measure a three- to five-fold increase. By when that is going to happen, we are not told.

(4) Funnily enough, it’s at the end of the article that we are told that “Dr Jevrejeva’s projections have been submitted for publication in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”. So the whole the piece was about a poster presentation at the EGU conference? So much for a major breakthrough deserving front-page space in the BBC News website.

If anybody asks me, that’s the strongest evidence for climate-change zeal…

There is more…looking around Google News, it becomes evident that the news story originated with a Reuters reported at the EGU conference in Vienna. Apart from the BBC, most if not all news media are now reporting the Reuters piece verbatim. On the BBC site, Mr Black does not mention Reuters, and is reported as actually physically being in Vienna himself.

The whole BBC article looks like original research: perhaps it is. Suspiciously, though, the same people are mentioned by Mr Black and by Reuters…

Troubled BBC

The Harrabin-Abbess story has not died yet (here’s Bishop Hill on “Jo Abbess’s fifteen minutes of fame“; a video of Noel Sheppard on CNN’s Glenn Beck Show; and Melanie Phillips on The Spectator hardly containing her glee on the “emerging truth” of the BBC showing its pro-AGW bias for all to see).

In the meanwhile, Freeborn John demonstrates that another BBC journalist, Richard Black, is not immune from that same reporting bias, in matters of climate change (Mr Black knows very well my thoughts on the BBC warming bias); in the process, Freeborn John exposes a curious stealth-editing BBC policy.

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Folks at “the Beeb” better play it safe on global warming for a few weeks now…because if something else just as fishy pops up, then I can already imagine huge anti-BBC blogging and journalistic armies will be unleashed.

Skeptics Society: How Broadcast Journalism Is Flawed

I have already exposed in the recent past the obvious bias in global warming reporting by publicly-funded BBC.

Around very similar notes, but with a much much wider outlook, the Skeptics Society has now published a very interesting essay by investigative and feature journalist Steve Salerno, titled

Journalist-Bites-Reality!
How broadcast journalism is flawed
in such a fundamental way that its utility as a tool for informing viewers is almost nil..

It exposes broadcast journalism as reporter-of-nothing, when not creating panic out of that same nothingness. And it is especially critical of “campaign journalism”.

A couple of quotes:

“In truth, today’s system of news delivery is an enterprise whose procedures, protocols, and underlying assumptions all but guarantee that it cannot succeed at its self described mission. Broadcast journalism in particular is flawed in such a fundamental way that its utility as a tool for illuminating life, let alone interpreting it, is almost nil. “

“You’re in Pulitzer territory for writing about something that — essentially — never happens.“

In upcoming blogs I will return to parts of this essay that may be used to explain pretty much all the Climate Change scares that have ever (not) happened.

For now I strongly recommend reading it in full.

China and the BBC Warming Bias

(here and here and here some more thoughts on the all-too-apparent bias at the BBC towards global warming and doom-and-gloom news in general)

There is almost no need to comment the following at all…

(1) Almost six years ago
BBC News - Wednesday, 17 July, 2002, 07:53 GMT 08:53 UK
“Seven die in Chinese heat wave“

[...] The heat has intensified in recent years as a result of the increase in vehicles on the roads, which raise street temperatures.

(2) One year ago
BBC News - Tuesday, 6 February 2007, 12:34 GMT
“Climate change ‘affecting’ China - Unseasonably warm weather in north China has been linked to climate change“
(page is chock-full of climate change links)

At least 300,000 people in north-west China are short of drinking water because of unseasonably warm weather, which officials link to climate change. Parts of Shaanxi province face drought after January saw as little as 10% of average rainfall, state media say. Frozen lakes are melting and trees are blossoming in the capital Beijing as it experiences its warmest winter for 30 years, the China Daily reported.
[...] The country’s top meteorologist, Qin Dahe, said the recent dry and warm weather in northern China was related to global warming. [...]

(3) January 2008
BBC News - Thursday, 31 January 2008, 13:53 GMT
“Food warnings amid China freeze - Millions of people have been affected by the severe snow“
(not one climate change link in sight)

China is struggling to cope with its worst snowfall in decades, with officials warning of future food shortages as winter crops are wrecked.[...]
Dozens are thought to have died as much of the country endures one of its harshest winters for half a century.

How many people died in the 2007 heatwave? Perhaps…zero.

(4) How about Shaanxi? Sadly, no space for it this year on the BBC (at least, so far). Here’s what is happening though:
rediff - January 30, 2008
“Snowstorms paralyse China“

[...] In northwestern Shaanxi province alone, 1,200 people were reportedly ill or injured in snow-related incidents [...]

UPDATE: This particular post has become quite popular having been linked from “Biased BBC”