Pensioner forces BBC to lift veil on 2006 eco-seminar to top executives
Papers reveal influence of top green campaigners including Greenpeace
Then-head of news Helen Boaden said it impacted a ‘broad range of output’
Yet BBC has spent more than £20,000 in legal fees trying to keep it secret
David Rose
The Daily Mail [UK]
11 January 2014
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, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
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.
Then director of television Jana Bennett opened the seminar by telling the executives to ask themselves: ‘How do you plan and run a city that is going to be submerged?’ And she asked them to consider if climate change laboratories might offer material for a thriller.
A lobby group with close links to green campaigners, the International Broadcasting Trust (IBT), helped to arrange government funding for both the climate seminar and other BBC seminars run by Mr Harrabin – one of which was attended by then Labour Cabinet Minister Hilary Benn.
Applying for money from Mr Benn’s Department for International Development (DFID), the IBT 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 spotted a passing reference to it in an official report…
The article continues at The Daily Mail.
Related: Ship of Fools in the Antarctic
…“The debacle in the Antarctic ice is probably the largest setback for global warming campaigners since the Climategate scandal in 2009,” said the (London) Financial Times.
There’s more sea ice around Antarctica than at any time since the U.S. Snow and Data Center began keeping records in 1978.
“Mawson’s ship was never icebound,” the Australian noted…
From February 2010, BBC: pension fund invested in climate companies
…The £8 billion pension fund is likely to come under close scrutiny over its commitment to promote a low-carbon economy while struggling to reverse an estimated £2 billion 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…
Update: Instapundit, FIRST WINDMILLS, NOW THIS. WHAT HAVE THE GREENS GOT AGAINST BIRDS?
