Six-year cover-up exposed.
“The BBC has spent tens of thousands of pounds over six years trying to keep secret an extraordinary ‘eco’ conference which has shaped its coverage of global warming,” says the Daily Mail.
“The controversial seminar was run by a body set up by the BBC’s own environment analyst Roger Harrabin and funded via a £67,000 grant from the then Labour government, which hoped to see its ‘line’ on climate change and other Third World issues promoted in BBC reporting.
“At the event, in 2006, green activists and scientists – one of whom believes climate change is a bigger danger than global nuclear war – lectured 28 of the Corporation’s most senior executives.
In applying for the government funding – the International Broadcasting Trust (IBT) – a lobby group with close links to green campaigners – “promised Ministers the seminars would influence programme content for years to come.”
The BBC began its long legal battle to keep details of the conference secret after an amateur climate blogger, Tony Newbery, 69, from North Wales, spotted a passing reference to it in an official report, asked for further disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
The BBC’s resistance to revealing anything about its funding and the names of those present led to a protracted struggle in the Information Tribunal. The BBC has admitted it has spent more than £20,000 on barristers’ fees. However, the full cost of their legal battle is understood to be much higher.
In a written statement opposing disclosure, former BBC news chief and current director of BBC radio Helen Boaden, who attended the event, admitted: ‘In my view, the seminar had an impact on a broad range of BBC output.’
Boaden is now the director of BBC radio.
In an internal report, the IBT boasted that the seminars organised with Mr Harrabin had had ‘a significant impact on the BBC’s output’.
Mr Newbery, who finally won his battle last month, said: ‘It seems clear that this seminar was a means of exposing executives to green propaganda.’ The freshly disclosed documents show that a number of BBC attendees still occupy senior roles at the Corporation.
All four scientists at the meeting were strong advocates of the dangers posed by global warming. One, Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation, argued there were only 100 months left to save the planet through radical emissions cuts.
How the lessons are still paying off
When the ship carrying climate scientists, tourists and a BBC reporter to inspect the ravages of global warming, became trapped in Antarctic ice, the BBC stuck closely to its skewed, climate alarmist agenda, says commentator David Rose.
Radio 4’s Inside Science told listeners that the ice was a freak, unpredictable event – driven by weather, not climate – and even added it had been falsely ‘used by climate deniers’ to advance their case.
It even allowed an interviewee to state – without challenge – that overall, Antarctic sea ice is only one per cent above average.
“In fact, it is at record levels, 15 per cent (3.5 million square miles) above normal, and has been increasing for years – a trend the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits it cannot explain.”
Thanks to Burt Rutan for this link
(Yes, THAT Burt Rutan.)