New E-mails Link BBC Executives to Climategate Scientists
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

According to the U.K.'s Daily Mail, "Like the first 'Climategate' leaks two years ago, [the leaked materials] were placed last week on a Russian server by an anonymous source."

As recently reported by The New American, these new revelations only add to the proof that global-warming alarmists vilify and ignore scientists with contrary beliefs, and have embarked on a propaganda campaign:

A few scientists’ e-mails expressed skepticism and concern about the shadowy process, too. At least one expert complained that his protests were being ignored. Another said governments should be used to help drum up public fears. And one exchange shows scientists encouraging the use of the term "climate change" instead of "global warming" due to "public relations" problems.

According to analysts, the embarrassing new leaks will have widespread repercussions and could mark the end of climate alarmism altogether. Critics of man-made climate-change theories touted by the UN are already calling the emerging scandal "Climategate 2."

Climategate’s second episode comprises a damning discovery that shows staff at the University of East Anglia (UEA) vetting BBC scripts, consulting on how the broadcaster should adjust its program output, and using the media outlet’s contact lists to block global-warming skeptics from the airwaves. Indeed, UEA climate scientists have reportedly developed a decade-long relationship with the government-funded BBC, which disproportionately guides the stream of broadcast news in the United Kingdom.

The Mail is administering an ongoing review of the Climategate 2 emails, which has prompted Dr. Benny Peiser of the U.K.'s Global Warming Policy Foundation to note that BBC is "in cahoots with Climategate scientists." The UAE, which harbors Britain’s leading environmental research center — including the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research — spent a reported £15,000 on seminars for BBC staff in a bid to exile global-warming skeptics from British airwaves, while weaving, as the Mail put it, "an incestuous web of interlocking relationships between BBC journalists and the university's scientists."

BBC insiders claim that the intimate affair between the partisan media outlet and the university’s two research units has unabashedly skewed the network’s coverage. "Following their lead has meant the whole thrust and tone of BBC reporting has been that the science is settled, and that there is no need for debate," one journalist affirmed. "If you disagree, you’re branded a loony."

In 2007, BBC released a formal editorial policy document stating that "the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus" — the "consensus" being that environmental calamity looms on the horizon, as man-made carbon emissions continue their destructive course on the Earth. The editorial document was produced after "a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts," which, of course, involved scientists from the UEA.

However, even some of the university’s scientists have expressed doubt about aspects of supposed "global warming," the Mail reported:

For example, Professor Phil Jones, the head of the CRU, admitted there was no evidence that the snows of Kilimanjaro were melting because of climate change, and he and his colleagues agreed there were serious problems with the famous "hockey stick" graph — the depiction of global temperatures that suggests they were broadly level for 1,000 years until they started to rise with industrialisation.

But although there is now more scientific debate than ever about influences on climate other than CO2, prompted by the fact that the world has not warmed for 15 years, a report from the BBC Trust this year compared climate change sceptics to the conspiracy theorists who blame America for 9/11, and said Britain’s main sceptic think-tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, should be given no air time.

Roger Harrabin, BBC’s environmental analyst who reports for a slew of programs on radio and TV, hovers at the center of the BBC Climategate scandal, as he and Professor Joe Smith of the Open University united to organize and administer environmental seminars for BBC staff. Named the Cambridge Media Environmental Programme (CMEP), from 2002 to 2005 Harrabin and Smith’s climate change group collected £15,000 from the Tyndall Centre. UEA Professor of Climate Change Mike Hulme, who established the Tyndall Centre in 2000 and was its director until 2007, said Saturday that he had planned to fund CMEP from the outset, as an "integral part of our outreach and communication strategy."

The Climategate 2 e-mails indicate that Professor Hulme expected a kickback from BBC, including an environmental slant on BBC coverage to bar global-warming skeptics from news broadcasts. On February 25, 2002, environmental skeptic and London University professor Philip Stott debated the topic of climate change with John Houghton of the Met Office on the network’s flagship Today program, which prompted a furious e-mail from Professor Hulme. "Did anyone hear Stott vs Houghton on Today, Radio 4, this morning?" Hulme queried colleagues. "Woeful stuff really. This is one reason why Tyndall is sponsoring the Cambridge Media Environment Programme, to starve this type of reporting at source."

A similar account regarding BBC and climate scientists stonewalling skeptics came in December 2004, when BBC’s then-environmental correspondent Alex Kirby wrote to Professor Jones claiming he had successfully deterred one skeptic from BBC, alleging that the skeptic’s case was a "pure stream of consciousness rubbish." However, he failed to block a group of scientists from being featured, who pointed to flaws in the hockey-stick climate change graph.

"I can well understand your unhappiness at our running the other piece," Kirby wrote. "But we are constantly being savaged by the loonies for not giving them any coverage at all … and being the objective impartial (ho ho) BBC that we are, there is an expectation in some quarters that we will every now and then let them say something." Professor Jones criticized the action, saying, "I thought you exercised some caution with crackpots," to which Kirby responded, "Oh Phil, what can I say … I hope you’ll still talk to me despite this."

The Daily Mail’s exposé is a calamity for many in the U.S. mainstream media, who either grudgingly report the corrupt nature of global-warming politics — similar to the media’s wary coverage of the original Climategate fiasco — or refuse to report it at all. Tom Blumer from NewsBusters proposed a hypothetical scenario that is antithetical to the media’s portrayal of the latest global-warming calumny:

Imagine if it were discovered that free-market think tanks were caught vetting scripts of Fox News programs, intervening to prevent free-market skeptics from receiving air time, and consulted with the network about how it should alter its programing in a free-market direction. The howls of outrage would be loud, long and unrelenting from other news networks, the wire services, and leading U.S. newspapers.