The BBC has been a major supporter of the AGW and greenie positions for so long that it was difficult to get any serious debate. Just recently it appears to have had a rethink and is now taking a much more open position. At first I thought it was just me but then Longrider I was alerted to this vicious anti BBC article by Sunny Hundal, a well known AGW proponent and greenie:

After watching last night’s Newsnight, I can only come to one conclusion: the BBC has become this country’s most pernicious climate-change-denying media outlet in the UK.

There is simple reasoning behind this grand statement. While the assorted commentators who regularly spout ill-informed propaganda across the media are usually taken with a pinch of salt, the BBC is broadly trusted as an impartial and trustworthy reporter of news. It sets the agenda. Which makes the rubbish it has been producing lately on climate change even more dangerous.

Let me start by saying I believe that man-made activity is the prime driver behind global warming. I don’t have time for tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy nuts who think it is one big plot by scientists across the world. I do believe CC deniers are no different to 9/11 Truthers. But that point is moot while we focus on the country’s biggest culprit.

So just because he believes it it seems that our BBC tax cannot be used to explore any other position, only he and his like minded travellers can decide what your BBC taxes are spent on. But what has prompted this outburst, one which appears to be akin to a woman scorned?

He points to a Newsnight programme on which well known skeptic Professor Roger Pelke  Jr was invited to offer opinions on some of the scandals inflicting the IPCC. Skeptic have been invited in the past but that was so that they could be sat in the corner and be poked fun at, a bit like the chimps at the tea party that zoos used to run. But this time it was different, he was there to be listened to respectfully. There was nobody else in the studio to shout him down. Kirsty Wark was almost deferential.

But that isn’t all. Well known warmist supporter and BBC correspondent Roger Harrabin has just approached another skeptic blog to ask for help:

Dear Mr Watts,

I am trying to talk to UK scientists in current academic posts who are sceptical about AGW.

I’m struggling to find anyone – but there may of course be a number of reasons for this. Please could you post my request on your website – and ask people to email roger.harrabin@bbc.co.uk

There’s a real bit of irony here. The BBC’s evironment correspondent doesn’t know any sketpic scientists? Could it be because if any raise there heads above the parapet they are immediately shot down as “denailist” (See Hundal’s Guardian piece referenced above as an example) a process that the BBC has been ambivalent towards if not actively complicit. It should be noted that the phrase denialist is used in the same way that Nick Griffin is referred to as a Holocaust denier.

But there is more, in his blog Roger tells us:

Sometimes I pity those scientists, politicians and climate sceptics who try to make their case on the airwaves. And I am more convinced than ever about the need for a new language of climate change, based not on scientific certainty but on uncertainty, risk and values.

Only sometimes, but it is a start.

There is something else that infuriates the likes of Hundal, the BBC now seems to have caught on to the way the AGW has been hijacked by hard line greenies who are more interested in controlling our lives than saving us from AGW. This is something that skeptics have been pointing out for a while because some of the things that greenies  do are actually worse for AGW ie opposing nuclear power stations. But even worse for Hunda,l they are exposed to some ridicule in this programme by Ethical Man, who is an AGW beleiver:

I’m used to my reports and blogs causing a stir but the Analysis programme I made this week for Radio 4 seems to have been even more incendiary than most.

It asks an admittedly deliberately provocative question – whether the green movement is bad for the environment.

But the actual programme is, I thought, more balanced and nuanced. It discusses whether some of the ideological baggage of the green movement can be a problem when campaigning on the climate issue.

Yet it led one contributor to the programme to describe me as dangerous. I’ve been called all sorts of things in my life, but that’s a new one on me.

In the first few minutes Ethical Man interviews a PR woman who specialises in sustainability. She tells a story of how she was presenting to 200 hard core greenies. She tells them she has a a magic wand that when she waves it the laws of physics will be suspended and AGW will go away. Temperatures will not increase above 2deg no matter how much CO2 we pump into the atmosphere.

She then asks how many of her audience want her to wave it – 2 put their hand up. Ethical Man asks if she was surprised, she says angry, very angry.

Does this mean that the BBC has become AGW skeptic? No. What it means is that we might now start getting some open debate about a very complicated subject and that the BBC is less likely to uncritically trott out alarmist PR relaeses.

On Today this morning there was an article about saving Salmon on the River Frome. It was an interesting piece that discussed what they were doing to understand why the number of Salmon in the river had fallen by 70% in the past few years.

All was going well until at the end when the breathless reporter told us that the culprit was AGW.

I suppose that was to be expected but this really was pushing the limits even for the beeb. Even if you buy the AGW story the facts are the global warming has “paused” for some reason. It may start again in the future but that’s not for discussion here, the fact is that the climate has returned to 1998 levels and is still cooling.

I am happy to accept that the decrease may have been caused by man through general pollution, building near the river of any other of our sins but I will be hard pushed to accept the knee jerk CO2 forcing AGW explanation.