The Great Global Warming Swindle

[Frihets-fanatikeren1]

Ser det er 500.000 som har sett den paa google mens det bare var 290.000 i forje uke. Klart det hjelper

[Vegard Martinsen]

Her påståes det at filmens poenger er gjendrevet:

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/clima ... 72,00.html

Don't let truth stand in the way of a red-hot debunking of climate change
The science might be bunkum, the research discredited. But all that counts for Channel 4 is generating controversy

George Monbiot
Tuesday March 13, 2007
The Guardian


Were it not for dissent, science, like politics, would have stayed in the dark ages. All the great heroes of the discipline - Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein - took tremendous risks in confronting mainstream opinion. Today's crank has often proved to be tomorrow's visionary.

But the syllogism does not apply. Being a crank does not automatically make you a visionary. There is little prospect, for example, that Dr Mantombazana Tshabalala-Msimang, the South African health minister who has claimed Aids can be treated with garlic, lemon and beetroot, will be hailed as a genius. But the point is often confused. Professor David Bellamy, for example, while making the incorrect claim that wind farms do not have "any measurable effect" on total emissions of carbon dioxide, has compared himself to Galileo.

The problem with The Great Global Warming Swindle, which caused a sensation when it was broadcast on Channel 4 last week, is that to make its case it relies not on future visionaries, but on people whose findings have already been proved wrong. The implications could not be graver. Just as the government launches its climate change bill and Gordon Brown and David Cameron start jostling to establish their green credentials, thousands have been misled into believing there is no problem to address.

The film's main contention is that the current increase in global temperatures is caused not by rising greenhouse gases, but by changes in the activity of the sun. It is built around the discovery in 1991 by the Danish atmospheric physicist Dr Eigil Friis-Christensen that recent temperature variations on Earth are in "strikingly good agreement" with the length of the cycle of sunspots.

Unfortunately, he found nothing of the kind. A paper published in the journal Eos in 2004 reveals that the "agreement" was the result of "incorrect handling of the physical data". The real data for recent years show the opposite: that the length of the sunspot cycle has declined, while temperatures have risen. When this error was exposed, Friis-Christensen and his co-author published a new paper, purporting to produce similar results. But this too turned out to be an artefact of mistakes - in this case in their arithmetic.

So Friis-Christensen and another author developed yet another means of demonstrating that the sun is responsible, claiming to have discovered a remarkable agreement between cosmic radiation influenced by the sun and global cloud cover. This is the mechanism the film proposes for global warming. But, yet again, the method was exposed as faulty. They had been using satellite data which did not in fact measure global cloud cover. A paper in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics shows that, when the right data are used, a correlation is not found.

So the hypothesis changed again. Without acknowledging that his previous paper was wrong, Friis-Christensen's co-author, Henrik Svensmark, declared there was a correlation - not with total cloud cover but with "low cloud cover". This, too, turned out to be incorrect. Then, last year, Svensmark published a paper purporting to show cosmic rays could form tiny particles in the atmosphere. Accompanying the paper was a press release which went way beyond the findings reported in the paper, claiming it showed that both past and current climate events are the result of cosmic rays.

As Dr Gavin Schmidt of Nasa has shown on www.realclimate.org, five missing steps would have to be taken to justify the wild claims in the press release. "We've often criticised press releases that we felt gave misleading impressions of the underlying work," Schmidt says, "but this example is by far the most blatant extrapolation beyond reasonableness that we have seen." None of this seems to have troubled the programme makers, who report the cosmic ray theory as if it trounces all competing explanations.

The film also maintains that manmade global warming is disproved by conflicting temperature data. Professor John Christy speaks about the discrepancy he discovered between temperatures at the Earth's surface and temperatures in the troposphere (or lower atmosphere). But the programme fails to mention that in 2005 his data were proved wrong, by three papers in Science magazine.

Christy himself admitted last year that he was mistaken. He was one of the authors of a paper which states the opposite of what he says in the film. "Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human-induced global warming. Specifically, surface data showed substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected."

Until recently, when found to be wrong, scientists went back to their labs to start again. Now, emboldened by the denial industry, some of them, like the film-makers, shriek "censorship!". This is the best example of manufactured victimhood I have come across. If you demonstrate someone is wrong, you are now deemed to be silencing him.

But there is one scientist in the film whose work has not been debunked: the oceanographer Carl Wunsch. He appears to support the idea that increasing carbon dioxide is not responsible for rising global temperatures. Wunsch says he was "completely misrepresented" by the programme, and "totally misled" by the people who made it.

This is a familiar story to those who have followed the career of the director Martin Durkin. In 1998, the Independent Television Commission found that, when making a similar series, he had "misled" his interviewees about "the content and purpose of the programmes". Their views had been "distorted through selective editing". Channel 4 had to make a prime-time apology.

Cherry-pick your results, choose work which is already discredited, and anything and everything becomes true. The twin towers were brought down by controlled explosions; MMR injections cause autism; homeopathy works; black people are less intelligent than white people; species came about through intelligent design. You can find lines of evidence which appear to support all these contentions, and, in most cases, professors who will speak up in their favour. But this does not mean that any of them are correct. You can sustain a belief in these propositions only by ignoring the overwhelming body of contradictory data. To form a balanced, scientific view, you have to consider all the evidence, on both sides of the question.

But for the film's commissioners, all that counts is the sensation. Channel 4 has always had a problem with science. No one in its science unit appears to understand the difference between a peer-reviewed paper and a clipping from the Daily Mail. It keeps commissioning people whose claims have been discredited - such as Durkin. But its failure to understand the scientific process just makes the job of whipping up a storm that much easier. The less true a programme is, the greater the controversy.

[Vegard Martinsen]

En anonym skribent 4/4 la inn denne kommentaren til artikkelen over på www.document.no:

Påstand: George Monbiot har gått programmet etter i sømmene og tilbakeviser påstandene punkt for punkt.

Nei, Monbiot gjør vitterlig ikke det. Dessverre, får man si. Han har riktignok et gyldig poeng når han skriver at ikke alle som ikke får gjennomslag for sine idéer er en Galileo eller Newton i emning. Men hans påfølgende forsøk på å koble de såkalte klimaskeptikerne (merk at det å være skeptisk er et ideal i vitenskapen) til gærninger som Sør-Afrikas Dr Mantombazana Tshabalala-Msimang eller til "barking mad" 911-konspiratører, faller ikke i god smak hos meg personlig.

Programmet in casu har mange påstander som venstreaktivisten Monbiot med fordel heller kunne brukt tid på, for eksempel:

* Det skjer en skarp økning i konsentrasjonen av CO2 etter andre verdenskrig og opp til vår tid, men den globale temperaturen synker helt frem til 1975. Ja, på 1970-tallet sendte BBC en grøsser av en dokumentar hvor isfjell og snø byttet ut den mer tradisjonelle varulven. "Er den neste istid nær?", spurte dokumentaren til skummel bakgrunnsmusikk.

* Temperaturen på jordkloden synker og stiger hele tiden, og har alltid gjort det. Vår tids økning er relativt sett ikke enestående, og programmet nevner "the Medieval Warm Period", dvs. tiden mellom 800-1300, som var preget av unormalt høye temperaturer. Helvete på jord realiserte seg ikke i løpet av denne tiden; faktisk var perioden preget av velstand og vekst.

* Hvis drivhusmodellen er riktig, burde temperaturen i troposfæren øke raskest, men så er ikke tilfellet.

* CO2-gass utgjør bare 0,038 % av atmosfæren, og til denne svært lave prosenten, bidrar mennesker med under 1 % (!).

* Endringene i temperaturen er primært en funksjon av effekten på solen, og altså ikke under menneskelig kontroll. (Mange sosialister som romantiserer fortiden før kapitalismen og vil back-to-nature, aksepterer slett ikke tanken på at menneskene ikke har den primære skylden.)

* CO2-gass øker ved varmere temperaturer og synker ved lavere temperaturer. Dette skyldes primært havet. Det er slik at vann kan løse et høyere volum gass ved lave temperaturer enn ved høye (det omvendte gjelder som regel for faste stoffer), og i perioder med naturlig høyere temperatur, vil man derfor også se høyere konsentrasjon av CO2 når havene varmes opp.

Selv mangler jeg forutsetningene for å vite hva som er riktig og hva som er galt, men jeg synes jeg kjenner igjen flere av mekanismene for tankekontroll og etableringen av konformisme fra multikulti- og islam-debatten, og reagerer på det.

[Onarki]

Det hele er ganske merkelig. Gavin Schmidt har blitt minnet om (bl.a. av meg) gang på gang på gang på gang at *selv om* det skulle vise seg at CO2 er årsaken til at korrelasjonen mellom sol og klima er svakere de siste 30 årene så eliminerer dette på ingen måte hovedpoenget, nemlig at klimasensitiviteten må være lavere enn klimaforskerne tror. Som Richard Lindzen har påpekt: dersom 0,6 CO2-doblinger har forårsaket 0,3 C oppvarming så gir dette en fattigslig klimasensitivitet på 0,5 C/dobling, eller ca 10 ganger lavere enn katastrofescenariene til Gavin Scmidt. Sagt på en annen måte: selv om kritikken til Schmidt viser seg å være 100% korrekt vil dette fremdeles bety at katastrofescenariene er 70-90% feil.

[Frihets-fanatikeren1]

Jeg vil ogsaa si en annen ting. Hvis polene blir dobbelt saa varm som her maa jo omraadene som er utsatt for orkenspredning bli 4 ganger saa lite varm, eller?

[Vegard Martinsen]

Jeg vil ogsaa si en annen ting. Hvis polene blir dobbelt saa varm ...

Det går nok ikke an å snakke om "dobbelt så varm".

Varme – jeg går ut i fra at det menes temperatur - måles i ulike skalaer, og hvis man sier at 100 grader C er dobbelt så varmt som 50 grader C, så blir disse temperaturene i andre skalaer helt annerledes, f.eks i Fahrenheit: hhv 37,8 og 10 grader, og da er det ingen dobling.

Dessuten er det i klimavariasjoner kun snakk om mindre endringer - noen få grader Celsius over lange tidsperioder.

[Apen]

Det går nok ikke an å snakke om "dobbelt så varm".

Varme – jeg går ut i fra at det menes temperatur - måles i ulike skalaer, og hvis man sier at 100 grader C er dobbelt så varmt som 50 grader C, så blir disse temperaturene i andre skalaer helt annerledes, f.eks i Fahrenheit: hhv 37,8 og 10 grader, og da er det ingen dobling.

Dessuten er det i klimavariasjoner kun snakk om mindre endringer - noen få grader Celsius over lange tidsperioder.

Da må man snakke om absolutt temperatur målt i kelvin(k). 0 grader K er -273,15 grader C omtrent. K er skalert som C, dvs 1 grad representerer like mye varme. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin

Det dobbelte av 50 grader K er 100 grader K. 50 grader K er -223 grader C, og det dobbelte -173 C. Det dobbelte av 50 grader C (323K) er 646K eller (646-273) 373 grader C. 373/50 er 7,46, dvs 7,46 ganger så varmt.

* CO2-gass øker ved varmere temperaturer og synker ved lavere temperaturer. Dette skyldes primært havet. Det er slik at vann kan løse et høyere volum gass ved lave temperaturer enn ved høye (det omvendte gjelder som regel for faste stoffer), og i perioder med naturlig høyere temperatur, vil man derfor også se høyere konsentrasjon av CO2 når havene varmes opp.

CO2 binder seg til vann og blir til karbonsyre, det samme brukes i brus. Når en brusflaske varmes opp, minsker vannets evne til å holde på karbon syra og trykket i flaska øker. Noe som resulterer i at brusskum fosser ut når man åpner den. Altså er CO2 nivået i atmosfæren/flaska styrt av temperaturen i havet/brusen. Kanskje folk vil forstå det bedre med et eksempel som det her.

[Vegard Martinsen]

... Da må man snakke om absolutt temperatur målt i kelvin(k). 0 grader K er -273,15 grader C omtrent. K er skalert som C, dvs 1 grad representerer like mye varme. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin

Det dobbelte av 50 grader K er 100 grader K. 50 grader K er -223 grader C, og det dobbelte -173 C. Det dobbelte av 50 grader C (323K) er 646K eller (646-273) 373 grader C. 373/50 er 7,46, dvs 7,46 ganger så varmt.

Jeg er allikevel i tvil om det er nyttig å snakke om "dobbelt så varmt", Utgangspunktet her var temperaturer på jorden. Hvis det på polene er -30 grader C, så er dette 247 grader K, og det dobbelte av dette er da 494 grader K, som er 221 grader C, en temperatur som neppe er realistisk.

Temperatur er et mål på gjennomsnittlig kinetisk energi til molekylene, og det er sjelden nyttig å snakke om doblinger av denne (i hvert fall hvis det er snakk om temperaturer på jorden utenfor laboratorier).

[Ultima_Thule]

Solar Cycle 24 Remains The Weakest In 170 Years… Svaalgard: “None Of Us Alive Have Ever Seen Such A Weak Cycle”

What implications could a low-activity sun have on earth? Fritz Vahrenholt’s and Frank Bosse’s latest solar report.

The Sun in December 2013: Coming Back To Life

For solar observers there was quite a bit of activity last month, namely sunspots, and not too few of them. Activity even reached 84% of the mean value calculated from cycles 1-23. With an official SSN (sunspot number) of 90.3 the sun reached a second peak in December 2013, see the following chart:

Figure 1: Comparison of solar cycle 24 activity to the mean value of the previously observed cycles and to that of solar cycle 5.

As far as sunspot activity is concerned, the peak was comparable to what we observed 25 months ago (November 2011), but this time most activity occurring in the sun’s southern hemisphere: 82%. In the sun’s first cycle 24 outbreak, most of the activity happened in the northern hemisphere. To compare the activity of the current cycle to that of past solar cycles, we plot the sunspot anomalies from the mean for the number of sunspots up to 61 months into the cycle (blue curve in Figure 1). This yields Figure 2:

Figure 2: Accumulated number of sunspots since the beginning of the cycle, taking modified method of counting before 1945 though the “Waldmeier- Discontinuity” (see Cliver et al. 2013). Cycle 24 so far is the 5th least active cycle in over 250 years.

The low level of activity of the Dalton Minimum at the start of the 19th century is plain to see, as well as the rather relatively subdued activity that followed until about 1950. Then there was a significant increase until cycle 23 which heralded a drop that is now continuing today. Single months with increased activity hardly change the overall trend. As before we are currently seeing the lowest level of solar activity in terms of sunspots in the last 170 years.

So just what are sunspots?

From the sun’s moving plasma, magnetic fields are generated and they are able to strongly impact the energy flow in the sun’s upper convective layer.


Figure 3: The sun’s general structure. At the core the energy is generated by nuclear fusion. This energy is transported outwards by radiation, and then by convection through moving plasma. Source: Wikipedia. Kelvinsong: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

These fields can cause convective energy flux to reduce locally, and so dark spots form on the sun’s surface. When that happens multiple times at nearby regions, different poled magnetic field lines interfere with each other and a short circuit is created. As a result the magnetic fields collapse and the pent up energy can suddenly burst. This is what we call a so-called flare - a solar explosion. When it is powerful enough, solar material gets ejected out into space with such violence that it literally escapes the sun’s gravitational field and flies out into space. This is the so-called coronal mass ejection (CME). It can have adverse consequences should it strike the earth and the material cloud reacts with the earth’s magnetic field and strong fluctuations occur. These in turn induce large currents within conductors at the earth’s surface (geomagnetic storms).

Our networked world is thus more prone to such events than 60 years ago. Power and communication networks and satellite outages can have consequences. However, very often such risks do not occur because several conditions have to be present before a serious outage takes place. A discussion on the impacts of CMEs in cycle 24 was held in December 2013 at the autumn American Geophysical Union conference. It was determined that that the latest geomagnetic storms have been really low in strength compared to what we observed before. They are even faster than they were in previous cycles. That can be traced back to a 40% reduced counter-pressure in the corona (see Figure 3). As a result the CMEs were able to move faster, yet have less impact. You can see the video of the presentation on the subject here.



On the other hand one can conclude: The reduced solar activity since 2006 reduced the density of the corona by a considerable amount. This not only has great impacts at the sun’s surface, but also out within the sun’s sphere of influence, which is also where the earth happens to orbit. So we can continue to wait with suspense what will be discovered next. Should it end up (as many scientists suspect) that solar activity continues to decline until the middle of the century, then there remains lots of potential. As Leif Svaalgard says at the end of the video: “None of us alive have ever seen such a weak cycle.”

Interesting times!

http://notrickszone.com/2014/01/12/solar-cycle-24-remains-the-weakest-in-170-years-none-of-us-alive-today-has-ever-seen-such-a-weak-cycle/ (med hyperlenker)

Watershed! BBC Now Sees Sun Developing Into A Potent 21st Century Climate Factor As A Real Possibility!

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, but surely, the once diehard the-science-is-settled mainstream media are conceding that the climate debate isn’t over after all – and likely not by a long shot. And if you pay attention, you can see them quietly opening that back door for the quick exit.

The cracking started long ago, and now chips and pieces of the global warming science are starting to fall on the floor around us.

Earlier today the BBC featured a short report “Has the Sun gone to sleep?”

This report looks at the implications of a protracted quiet solar period, potentially lasting decades. Global cooling is turning out to be a real possibility, now even at the BBC!

Today we know a huge body of historical observations shows there is a pronounced relationship between cold winters in Europe and low solar activity. Moreover there’s a huge body of persuasive evidence, comprising mainly proxy datasets, that show the phenomenon is not regional, but global. As much as the BBC tries to play that down, the video holds a couple of big surprises.

Mirrors the Maunder Minimum!

The BBC starts by telling its viewers that the current solar maximum “is eerily quiet“. Solar physicist Professor Richard Harrison says the sun hasn’t been this quiet in 100 years and that the current activity mirrors the activity of the 17th century – the Maunder Minimum, the time of the dreadful Little Ice Age. What we have here is the BBC telling viewers to associate low solar activity with potential cold.

At the 3-minute mark, the BBC reporter asks the key question: “Does a decline in solar activity mean plunging temperatures for decades to come?” For an answer the BBC interviews three scientists.

Could impact the climate – “not fully understood”

Scientist Dr Lucie Green actually thinks that low solar activity could affect the climate, but she isn’t sure “to what extent“, and then even points out that varying amounts of solar radiation impact the globe’s upper atmosphere and that this is something scientists “don’t fully understand“. Therefore, don’t rule anything out.

“Fastest solar decline in 10,000 years”!

At the 4:17 mark, Mike Lockwood says we are witnessing the fastest decline in 10,000 years. He then claims that there’s a close to 20% chance that we may be actually entering a Maunder-like minimum. As one of the scientists who is more than 95% sure that man is now causing the climate change, 20% seems to be a very high figure and so we might suspect Lockwood’s true probability figure to be much higher than 20%.

Note how Lockwood does his best to portray solar impacts on climate as being regional phenomena, affecting the Jet Stream and Europe’s climate, but not the global mean climate. Lockwood here is not being completely forthcoming.

Sun now on par with human activity?

At the 5:26 mark the BBC journalist asks the right question, and the answer the BBC provided truly surprised me. Question:

The relationship between solar activity and weather on earth is complicated. But if solar activity continues to fall, could the temperature on earth as a whole get cooler? Could there be implications for global warming?”

The answer, provided by Dr. Lucie Green:

On the one hand you’ve perhaps got the cooling sun, but on the other hand you’ve got human activity that can counter that. And I think it is quite difficult to say actually how these two are going to compete and then what the consequences are for the global climate.”

Wow. The BBC has really opened the door, perhaps looking to upgrade the impact of solar activity to be on par with human activity. That’s huge compared to what the IPCC scientists claim about the impact of solar activity (negligible). You almost get the feeling that even the BBC is starting to have doubts about the supposed coming warming, and are opening up to the possibility of cooling.

http://notrickszone.com/2014/01/18/watershed-bbc-now-sees-sun-developing-into-a-potent-21st-century-climate-factor-as-a-real-possibility/ (med hyperlenker)

BBCs klimatskandal bara växer

Det anrika BBC anses ju vara en pålitlig och balanserad källa för nyheter och analys. Men företagets rykte härvidlag är allvarligt skadad av dess hållning till klimatfrågan.

Det hela började med att en bloggare, Tony Newbery, hörde talas om ett viktigt seminarium som skulle ha hållits 2006. På seminariet skulle cheferna inom BBC ha undervisats om var vetenskapen stod angående klimatet, och om hur BBC skulle framföra nyheter angående den frågan. Det verkade vara ett viktigt seminarium eftersom BBC efter den tiden inte längre gav något utrymme för skeptiker eller till skeptiska dokumentärer. Förändringen innebar ett brott mot tidigare policy som innebar att företaget skulle ge utrymme åt båda sidor i omdebatterade frågor.

Tony Newbery bad (2007) därför om att få reda på vilka som hade deltagit och ”informerat” cheferna på BBC. Till hans förvåning så vägrade man att lämna ut något om detta. Han bad därför om annan information om vem som finansierat seminariet, vem eller vilka som organiserat det etc. Trots att detta är ett public service-företag, finansierat av brittiska licensbetalare, så vägrade man fortfarande. Istället mobiliserade man en mängd advokater som såg till att företaget kunde komma runt den engelska motsvarigheten till offentlighetsprincipen.

Mycket märkligt kan man tycka. Men genom andra bloggares försorg, och internetverktyg som ”Wayback Machine”, så lyckades man få fram vilka som var inbjudna till seminariet. Den vetenskapliga expertisen visade sig bestå av fyra välkända klimathotstroende forskare, flera företrädare för gröna lobbygrupper, vissa politiker, samt BBC-folk. Inga skeptiker var inbjudna. Nyligen fick Tony Newbury rätt i domstol (Information Tribunal) och fick äntligen ut de dokument han bett om.

I bloggvärlden har detta seminarium, och dess konsekvenser för BBCs utbud av dokumentärer och dess vinkling av nyhetsutbudet, varit känt ganska länge (se även Svenolof Karlssons artikel omnämnd här), men nu tycks det ha nått stormedia (utom BBC ). Tidigare så har förloppet beskrivits i detalj av bl.a. Andrew Montford och Christopher Booker (se Newberys länkar ovan). I lördags skrev David Rose en bra artikel i Daily Mail. Strax därefter skrev The Telegraph ännu en. Fler artiklar lär följa.

BBC har alldeles uppenbart brutit mot sin gamla tradition att försöka vara balanserad och objektiv även i kontroversiella frågor. Skeptiker har varit bannlysta i TV-soffor och i debatter. Vi vet inte exakt vad BBC-cheferna fick höra från de gröna lobbyisterna och av sina inte helt opartiska ”experter”, men gissningsvis var det de gamla vanliga flosklerna om att ”science is settled”, och att alla skeptiker är ”vetenskapsförnekare” och betalda av Big Oil etc. Så istället för att ge sina lyssnare och tittare saklig information och diskussion om klimatfrågan blev BBC ett språkrör för både den förra och den nuvarande regeringen i klimat- och energifrågor. Man har svikit sina egna journalistiska principer och tvärtom blivit en propagandamaskin för klimatalarmismen. Sorgligt.

http://www.klimatupplysningen.se/2014/01/14/bbcs-klimatskandal-bara-vaxer/ (med hyperlenker)

Étt eksempel på avsløringene om BBC (via http://stjakobs.dyndns.org/Klimaagnostikere.html):

£8bn BBC eco-bias

STRIKING parallels between the BBC’s coverage of the global warming debate and the activities of its pension fund can be revealed today.

The corporation is under investigation after being inundated with complaints that its editorial coverage of climate change is biased in favour of those who say it is a man-made phenomenon.

The £8billion pension fund is likely to come under close scrutiny over its commitment to promote a low-carbon economy while struggling to reverse an estimated £2billion deficit.

Concerns are growing that BBC journalists and their bosses regard disputed scientific theory that climate change is caused by mankind as “mainstream” while huge sums of employees’ money is invested in companies whose success depends on the theory being widely accepted.

The fund, which has 58,744 members, accounts for about £8 of the £142.50 licence fee and the proportion looks likely to rise while programme budgets may have to be cut to help reduce the deficit.

The BBC is the only media organisation in Britain whose pension fund is a member of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which has more than 50 members across Europe.

Its chairman is Peter Dunscombe, also the BBC’s Head of Pensions Investment.

Prominent among its recent campaigns was a call for a “strong and binding” global agreement on climate change – one that fell on deaf ears after the UN climate summit in Copenhagen failed to reach agreement on emissions targets and a cut in greenhouse gases.

Veteran journalist and former BBC newsreader Peter Sissons is unhappy with the corporation’s coverage.

He said recently: “The corporation’s most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that ‘the science is settled’ when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn’t. It is, in effect, BBC policy, enthusiastically carried out by the BBC’s environment correspondents, that those views should not be heard.

“I was not proud to be working for an organisation with a corporate mind so closed on such an important issue.”

Official BBC editorial policy governing how its correspondents should cover global warming was revealed after a member of the public wrote in: “I have heard reports that the BBC has decided not to broadcast any news or reports which disprove, disagree, or cast doubt on global warming theory. Could you provide some form of justification for this?”

In a reply dated October 26 last year, Stephanie Harris, Head of Accountability at BBC News, said: “BBC News takes the view that our reporting needs to be calibrated to take into account the scientific consensus that global warming is man-made.”

She went on to quote from a BBC-commissioned report published in June 2007, which said: “There may be now a broad scientific consensus that climate change is definitely happening and that it is at least predominantly man-made. The weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to opponents of the consensus.”

Last month the BBC Trust announced an investigation after a string of complaints that the corporation was promoting the theory that climate change was a man-made phenomenon.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/156703/8bn-BBC-eco-bias