Further and better particulars have emerged about the green billionaire-funded course run by the Oxford Climate Journalism Network (OCJN), which has to date attracted over 400 participants from around the world. It recently signed up Marco Silva, the climate ‘disinformation’ specialist employed by BBC Verify. To “hit closer to home”, course participants are told to pick a fruit such as a mango and discuss why it wasn’t as tasty as the year before due to the impact of climate change. Noted climate hysteric Saffron O’Neill has been a past speaker and she is on record as speculating on the need for “fines and imprisonment” for expressing scepticism about “well supported” science. There is something very disturbing about a climate activist from a State-reliant broadcaster attending a course funded by narrative-driven billionaires with a speaker who has suggested that sceptical climate scientists and writers be locked up in prison.
As the Daily Sceptic disclosed, the OCJN six-month course is run by the Reuters Institute, which is funded by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Direct funding for the course, which started last year, has been provided by the Laudes Foundation and the European Climate Fund, the latter heavily supported by Extinction Rebellion funder Sir Christopher Hohn. Immersion in the correct political narrative surrounding climate collapse, the so-called ‘settled’ science, and the need for extreme Net Zero measures, whatever the cost, is the order of the day. It would appear that the aim of the OCJN is to insert constant fearmongering messages into media stories, as global elites press ahead with a collectivist Net Zero political agenda.
In a recently published essay, two OCJN organisers give chapter and verse as to how this is being directed on the course. It is designed to allow climate journalists to “move beyond their siloed past” into a strategic position within newsrooms “combining expertise with collaboration”. The “pick your mango” strategy is designed to make climate change “less abstract” and delegates are told to pick a “beloved fruit or activity that everyone in your country or region seems to care about, and seems to capture attention when impacted by climate change”.
“Less abstract” is one way of summing up this pseudoscientific hogwash. ‘Infantile’ might be better. None of it is based on a scintilla of scientific proof. Much the same can be said for a presentation by Dr. Friederike Otto who uses computer models to claim her green billionaire-funded World Weather Attribution (WWA) team can attribute individual bad weather events to human-caused climate change. Following Otto’s presentation, attendees are reported to have shown a “massive jump in self-confidence” when attributing individual weather to the long-term climate change.
The distinguished science writer Roger Pielke Jnr. is scathing about weather attribution calling it a new “cottage industry”, adding that the need to feed the climate beast leads to a knock-on effect of creating incentives for researchers to produce studies with links to climate – “no matter how tenuous or trivial”. At the BBC, weather attribution has always been very popular. Writing in a WWA guide for journalists, the former BBC Today editor Sarah Sands says attribution studies have given us “significant insight into the horseman of the climate apocalypse”. Former OCJN attendee, Ben Rich, the BBC’s lead weather presenter, has used the “science” of climate attribution “to help explain to audiences when and how scientists can link extreme weather to climate change”.
None of this ludicrous propaganda can be questioned since the science is deemed to be ‘settled’. Geography lecturer Dr. Saffron O’Neill has taken climate hysteria to a new level with a demand that journalists should not use photos of people enjoying themselves on beaches during summer heat waves. She recently told the Guardian that such images “can hold the same power” as photos of the tanks in Tiananmen Square and smoke billowing from the Twin Towers. After a session with O’Neill, audience members said that “news outlets and photo agencies can and should think ahead of time about how they photograph the risks of hot weather”. And of course if anyone disagrees with O’Neill and her version of the “well supported” science, it is time for fines and prison. The last suggestion was published in Carbon Brief, the activist blog financed by the European Climate Fund. As it happens, Carbon Brief is represented on the OCJN Advisory Board through its editor Leo Hickman.
The OCJN is far from the only billionaire foundation-funded operation trying to spread climate alarm and hysteria throughout the general population. Climate Central targets local media with ready-to-publish stories about significant landmarks disappearing beneath rising sea levels. It recently gulled the Mirror into running a notably silly story about much of London disappearing beneath the waves within 80 years. Covering Climate Now (CC Now) is an off-shoot of the Columbia Journalism Review and is backed by the Guardian. It claims to feed over 500 media operations with pre-written climate stories. Both these operations rely on heavy financial support from a small cluster of green billionaire funds.
The links between these operations spreads far and wide. One of the partners of CC Now is Reuters, the news agency connected to the OCJN through its Reuters Institute. Not everyone is happy with Reuters’ connections to operations such as CC Now that make no secret of a desire to promote a hard-line Net Zero narrative and suppress opposition to it. Neil Winton worked for 32 years at the agency covering science in his time. Politicians and lobbyists are in the process of dismantling our way of life, he notes. If we are going to give up our civilisation, at the very least we ought to have an open debate. “Journalists need to stand up and be counted. The trouble is this requires bravery and energy, and an urge to question conventional wisdom,” he said.
And, he might have added, avoiding the naughty step of Dr. Saffron O’Neill.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Things you won’t hear on this effing course:
1) we live in an ice age due to the position of Antarctica
2) earth has cooled around 9 degrees centigrade in 50m years
3) co2 absorbs infra red logarithmically on a narrow spectrum so the minute impact on temp diminishes as co2 rises.
4) co2 lags temp over the 800k years of the Vostok ice cores disproving the feedback loop theories inherent in the models, this lagging is consistent with Henry’s law
5) co2 is a mere 0.04% of atmospheric gas having been c.20 times higher during the Cambrian when multi cellular life evolved, below 0.02% plants die
6) the equations, navier stokes, that predict the flow of gases are insoluble in 3d all model use a finite element method for a non linear problem
7) surface temperature data is clearly biased by where thermometers are positioned.
8) the milankovitch cycle, continental drift and sun cycles are the significant drivers/variables of climate
9) climate science is not a science since it largely cannot be falsified
Climate science can be falsified. Computer models of temperature increases from the 3rd IPCC report in 2001 have been tested against reality for 20 years and the models predicted at least twice as much warming as actually occurred. Similarly the predictions of solar scientists that we’re entering a Solar Grand Minimum and global average temperatures will decrease by 0.5-1 degree in the next 2 or 3 decades are a ‘proper’ scientific prediction as they may, or may not, be proven false in time.
It’s weather attribution ‘studies’ that aren’t science since they compare the current atmosphere with a hypothetical one with preindustrial levels of CO2 and can’t be falsified since, obviously the hypothetical atmosphere doesn’t exist outside of computer models so there’s no valid control to test claims about extreme weather against.
True but the believers will not accept it has been falsified therefore it ceases to be science. We can show again and again in any number of ways this is bs but it won’t be “generally” accepted, IE get the MSM mega phone treatment. It’s not a scientific debate otherwise we’d not even still be talking about it.
Not one of the apocalyptic prophecies made at Earth Day 1970 have come to pass. How to explain the persistence of the luxury beliefs? I blame the wives of the climate crazed billionaires (although one was Steve Jobs’s wife so a billionaire in her own right).
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/18-spectacularly-wrong-predictions-were-made-around-the-time-of-the-first-earth-day-in-1970-expect-more-this-year/
The Earth Day predictions of 1970.
Excellent article.
Computer models do not make “predictions”. They make “projections”. ——-The models projected much more warming than actually occurred because many of the parameters put into the models are either not fully understood, or unknown altogether. eg ECS (Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity). This determines how sensitive the earths atmosphere is to CO2. If the number is low than there will not be much in the way of warming. But all of the models assume the number to be high, so it is not surprising they all projected more warming. ——-Public policy like Net Zero is based on the output from models that are all WRONG. This is “official science” not “science”
Monckton and a group of eminent (real) scientists have shown that ECS is low. They show a fundamental error in Hansen’s (et al) calculation of feedback. Hansen applied the calculation to the relatively small atmospheric portion only and neglected (through ignorance of fundamental feedback physics one assumes) the sun.
Van Wijngaarden and Happer show that doubling CO2 will have 1% effect (of 1% (UK) of 3-5% (anthropogenic)!).
https://co2coalition.org/publications/van-wijngaarden-and-happer-radiative-transfer-paper-for-five-greenhouse-gases-explained/
Excellent paper but falls on deaf ears.
Very good explanation. The interaction terms in the model between co2 and water vapour, all evidence free assumptions, are the entire basis of the complete AGW scam. WV is earth’s actual green house gas but even Rockefeller etc who dreamt up the entire scam didn’t have the balls to demonise water, plant food was an easier target as ppl are so wilfully ignorant.
I am not sure if you mean the general public are “willfully ignorant”. Perhaps they just expect their media to be investigative journalists and look into issues for them, since they are too busy with work and family life to investigate everything for themselves. Sadly on the issue of climate change most media have simply become cheer leading climate activists and investigative journalism has bitten the dust.
Climate science can be falsified. Computer models of temperature increases from the 3rd IPCC report in 2001 have been tested against reality for 20 years and the models predicted at least twice as much warming as actually occurred.
These models aren’t supposed to communicate anything about the weather in the past, only about the future. Because of this, they can’t be falsified: By the time the erstwhile future has become the past and past modelling output can thus be compared against actual weather, there’s a new future whose properties aren’t yet known and it’s claimed that it will essentially become what current output of the current models happens to be. That’s the claim which would need to be disproven but without time-travel, this is impossible.
So when abuse is hurled at the “science deniers” what the hurlers of the abuse really mean is “model deniers”. Because models full of assumptions speculations, guesses, and unknown parameters are NOT science.—— There are no experts or scientists or modellers who know what the climate will be doing in 50 or 100 years time.
Good points all, but, while it might be impossible to explain Navier Stokes and your point 6 in general to a layman, any chance you could have a crack at it? (because that bit went right over my head!)
Am I right in thinking that ‘Care in the Community’ and the current eco-splurge started roughly the same time..?
No idea imagine having a 6 month sabbatical for this bs. Very happy I don’t pay a TV licence.
Anyone calling for fines and imprisonment of those with a different opinion needs to give his or her head a wobble.
What era are we living in? I can see these types being in the front row of the Inquisition, or calling for astronomers to be executed. A fine example of the depths of human stupidity and depravity, should be ashamed of themselves.
Rona Fascism.
Medical Nazism.
Climate Fascism.
‘Green’ Fascism.
A trend…..
I’m beginning to think there is a link to religion, the need in humans to “believe”, and its exploitation by profit takers. None of these topics have much in the way of measurable, repeatable, accurate or non – controversial data supporting them, nor do their proponents permit any doubt, therefore “belief” is needed. Unfortunately this belief is not accompanied by any reflection or analysis and feeds the worst aspects of human behaviour.
There is a distinct religious appeal with environmentalism, especially climate change. The language used is all religious. eg we face an “apocalypse”, non believers are all “heretics”, a climate “armageddon” will engulf us. We are all apparently “sinners” for apparently destroying the paradise that once existed, when in reality the world was a cruel and dangerous place where life was brutal and short.
Ppl who believe in nothing can believe in anything. It’s far safer to believe a grey old man with a beard created everything than this bs. Plus the literature of the bible and word of mouth stories describe human nature better than anything written in the last 1500 years. Jesus also clearly existed and his philosophy is spot on whether he is the son of God or not.
A fad.
Interesting debate on this subject on GB News last night with Andrew Doyle. He thinks we are splitting along Liberal v Authoritarian lines which have nothing to do with left or right politics.The people who think of themselves as most ‘enlightened’ are the ones calling to cancel and silence those who disagree with them.
‘Twas ever thus…you see the underlying behaviours in the playground. Civilised society developed to rein in the worst human behaviour traits. We’ve thrown out those lessons, so a reign of terror is beginning.
The other day I listened to an Unherd podcast with Lionel Shriver. Very interesting. Apparently, publication houses are experiencing a woke crisis and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get anything published unless it passes the woke test. White male authors have also been exiled by the sound of it (no surprise there of course). Anyway, the interesting – and very refreshing admission – was that Lionel (female of course) said she thought the woke crisis in publishing was because there were more women in positions of authority/influence. She said, correctly, that women are more risk adverse and more naturally want to please, and that’s inadvertently created a culture of censorship. I believe she is correct, and that that observation can be seen across society as a whole – the increase in wokery and censorship has aligned perfectly with the increasing numbers of women in positions of power and influence. Men are equally to blame for allowing this culture to grow unimpeded – probably in a weak-minded attempt to get laid.
The following extract is from New Scientists 26 Sept 2015. This is even more frightening because this article entertains the idea (last paragraph) of physically altering people’s brains through drugs and stimulation and New Scientist seemed happy to publish this. But of course imprisonment and physically altering someone’s mind would go together.
When right is wrong
“In June, a new voice backed up what many scientists have been saying for a while – that climate change is caused by human activity and we have a moral responsibility to tackle it. In a historic edict, Pope Francis warned that failing to act would have “grave consequences”, the thrust of which would fall on the world’s poorest people. His words came as a stark reminder that global climate change is among the most pressing moral dilemmas of the 21st century.”…
…”Take BankTrack, a global network of NGOs that exposes banks involved with projects that threaten the environment and human rights. BankTrack has looked at banks lending to the coal industry, a major source of global carbon dioxide emissions and compiled a list of the top “climate killers”.
It’s manifesto is simple: “By naming and shaming these banks, we hope to set the stage for a race to the top, where banks compete with each other to clean up their portfolios and stop financing investments which are pushing our climate over the brink.
However, harnessing the power of rational reflection, collective identity and shame may not be the only options for the would be moral revolutionaries. In their book Unfit for the future, philosophers Ingmar Persson of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and Julian Savulescu of the University of Oxford argue that our moral brains are so compromised that the only way we can avoid catastrophe is to enhance them through biomedical means..
In the past few years, researchers have shown it might actually be possible to alter moral thinking with drugs and brain stimulation.”
Thanks for sharing and as you say a frightening look at the future.
I am pinning my hopes on the young to revolt, as the future is dominated by the old at the expense of the young and their future.
I am old and can say this.
But it is always the youth that are used in revolutions because they can be more easily indoctrinated.
…and although there are those that are old and foolish such as Master Gates and Schwab etc. on balance it is the old that have the experience and true knowledge, which is why revolutions and cults eliminate the old and experienced and drive a wedge between converts and their families.
A minor correction to terms for accuracy (because their carbon footprint is about 10 times that of the average DSer): green fraud billionaires.
A happy new year to everyone.
I have noticed that mangoes are much tastier, sweeter and less fibrous than they used to be. Does this confirm me as a warming sceptic or simply the beneficiary of plant breeding science?
You are deluded by climate disinformation as journalists will tell you that any fule kno they are getting less tasty. Attribution studies have proven the link between your false opinions and climate change.
Stephan (N=0) Lewandowsky agrees. “Recurrent fury: Conspiratorial Discourse in the Blogosphere Triggered by Research on the Role of Conspiracist Ideation in Climate Denial”. I believe he has developed a model which predicts whether a person is a “climate denialist” based on whether they also believe that the Moon landings were faked or (presumably) that There Was No Pandemic or voted for Trump or retweeted pro-Palestinian comment. This saves money on research because one no longer needs to take a sample (N=1000) of the population and ask them questions on the particular issue and instead uses their previous comments and the model. It would also enable activists to target people in a position of power to conform to the Climate Agenda, even if they have not expressed an opinion on the Anthropogenic Global Warming Model, simply by studying their opinions on the changing taste of mangoes.
There is, of course, an element of truth in this, in that the lies surrounding every issue are so pervasive that there’s a tendency either to believe everything the MSM say, or reject it all. That is exacerbated by the fact that most of the lies can be traced to the same sources with the same global motives.
It’s a shame because it complicates the simple observation I made years ago that, in America, you could predict someone’s opinion on every other issue by getting any one of their opinions on who to vote for, abortion, gun law, the Bible, or evolution.
Not sure about mangoes, but last year I got some inside intel on strawberry cultivation from a local farmer who has produced tons of them for decades. Had the biggest and tastiest crop ever on the same root stock I’ve used for years, despite it being a generally crap year for growers. Can’t understand it at all…
‘Pick your mango’ is perfect, a luxury air miles rich fruit as a symbol of a luxury belief.
“I think the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium. The carrot has mystery. Flowers are essentially tarts. Prostitutes for the bees. There is a certain je ne sais quoi – oh, so very special – about a firm, young carrot.”
Lots of fun to be had if one had six months to spare and a death wish.
The problem is that the death wish is aimed at the sane and sensible.
If these insane people want to make me hungry and cold, and want me dead, then I think that entitles me to return the favour.
No tyranny is worse than the one that terrorises you for your own good. Can anyone imagine jailing people because they have different views on black holes, relativity, or evolution? —-OfCourse not.——–In science, if that is what something is supposed to be about you question everything. By wanting to jail someone for questioning, challenging or having a view different to current orthodoxy what you are really doing is revealing quite clearly that you are not indulging in science. How absurd is it to police what can and cannot be said in science? Those with impulses alien to democracy aways love to criminalise opinions. To silence debate and legitimate concerns is for totalitarians who will then use their power to stop any questioning, not just of the so called science, which is mostly modelling, but also of social impacts of policies like Net Zero, the transition to renewables, electric cars, the abandoning of fossil fuels etc etc. ——–You cannot have a democracy without dissent and without different opinions. Shutting down opinions means freedom no longer exists, and there can be nothing more absurd than “climate crime”. It is to be hoped that cases brought attempting to jail people for opinion are laughed out of court, and they would actually be quite funny if they were not so pathetic.
Long before climatology, evolutionary science, I contend, was the very first source of cancel culture – which is why a few people are now pinning the blame for wokeness on the belligerent logical positivism of Gnus like Richard Dawkins. It had a lot to do, as ever, with government funding and ideology making non-conformity disadvantageous to careers.
Way back in the 1930s, the Neodarwinians were quietly kicking the structuralists and the macro-mutationists out of the journals and academies to make sure only their new population genetics was visible in the journals, in the universities and in the high schools. More recently the “evolutionary establishment” engineered the dismissal from jobs and demonising of perfectly well credentialled Intelligent Design proponents. A cautious estimate is that 30% of those working in the biological fields no longer fully trust the ruling paradigm, but are afraid to say so – sound familiar?
I have a geneticist friend who held a senior position at the NIH and who isn’t a creationist, but simply saw the merits of one of the newer non-Darwinian evolutionary theories. But he was afraid to write about it until he retired because he seriously feared that Jerry Coyne would get him sacked. he’s not paranoid, either.
Sadly, although that discipline is as gross an example of bigotry as climatology, even the hard sciences can suffer from the survival of the loudest and most self-seeking. For a while, rejecting string theory would almost guarantee unemployment in the relevant field… not so much now string theory is in tatters. Nobel Prize winners in hard sciences have been known to kill research that threatened their prestige or their income for decades. As for medical research – well, that’s in the hands of corporations whose probity we all know and admire so well.
The root problem is that not only the public, but most scientists, buy into their own mythology that science is above human weakness, tells the truth and is always open to correction. That isn’t even a religious view (listen to Catholics questioning Pope Francis or Anglicans Justin Welby) – it’s cultic.
Science will only be reformed when it’s accepted as just another human mode of enquiry, that needs safeguarding from human weakness like everything else we do. You’ll know that this is what John Ioannidis and many others have been saying for years now.
Very interesting, thanks.
I assume autocorrect turned Dawkins into a gnu?
Gnu – a term the New Atheists coined for themselves in America, M’Lud. It is a pun on the word “new” and is, I believe, the kind of humour that smart people like them appreciate.
My musical take on it is here.
I’d assumed ‘guru’ had been mangled
“Ah yes science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture from such a trifling investment of fact” —-Mark Twain. ——-I wonder what Mr. Twain would make of todays post normal science that has been adopted to support public policy making. He would have a field day.
He’d have been cancelled for Huckleberry Finn before he got the chance…
He wouldn’t have wrote that today. There would be too many other topics for him to ridicule. ——–He could take his pick from Race Gender, Equality Diversity and Climate, where there is a whole raft of material to make fun of.
There was a pre-written climate story headline high up on the BBC website yesterday:- “Bangladesh sees dramatic rise in lightning deaths linked to climate change”. Of course there was a typical BBC human interest storyline about someone getting ready for their wedding who lost relatives, not last year but in August 2021! Apparently 300 deaths pa from lightning there compared to 20 in the USA. Perhaps if they taught them not to take shelter under tin roofs (which is what happened to this family) they might see less deaths!!
Climate change my a****
Yes but almost everything that happens today is seen through the prism of climate change. Even things entirely unrelated to climate, like eg warfare. —Climate change is the main item in the Liberal progressive toolbox. It is a powerful tool that lets them claim that they need control over every single human activity otherwise there will be dangerous temperature rises and extreme weather. CO2 is the bureaucrats dream gas that lets them puts policies in place they formerly could only dream of. ——-Climate Change = Eco Socialism.
When the Brexit arguments were drawing to a close before the referendum, I recall a week of newspaper headlines from the remain camp. Someone clearly thought a series of ever more ludicrous and outrageous claims would scare people into voting remain. It culminated in the claim that Brexit would cause World War 3. I remember thinking, that’s it, I don’t believe any of their nonsense at all, and I think it opened a lot of other people’s eyes too.
I very much hope, as the ecoloons go crazier, that the same thing happens.
Oh good, they are building large new prisons?
Then, after they’ve locked up all the ‘climate contrairians’ they can use them to lock up some real criminals! What a radical idea
According to Charles III, apocalypse has already occurred seven years ago. As people largely failed to notice, any reporting about the world must become much more hysterical. People may be sunbathing or visiting beach resorts during the deadly heatwaves of August which aren’t materially different from the mere summers of the past, but this unforunate divergence of ugly reality from beautiful theory must not be reported.
That’s nothing, according to Roger Hallam, founder of Extinction Rebellion,
“Dominic Lawson [and by implication all other ‘climate sceptics’] will be Hanged for Climate Crimes”.
If you watch the video you will discover that Hallam personally thinks that Mr Lawson and similar thought criminals should ‘only’ be interned for life, but he would be powerless to stop a future eco-regime taking its righteous legalistic murderous revenge.
Note also the opening on-screen caption to this one man kangaroo court video, ‘Roger Hallam, The Stone of Free Speech, Hampstead Heath, London” which shows he at least has a sense of humour!
Dominic Lawson will be Hanged for Climate Crimes | Hampstead Heath | London 2021 | Roger Hallam – YouTube
Also loving the death’s head voodoo dolly sitting on the bench beside this staunch proponent of free speech and democracy in general…
PS, I should have explained that Dominic Lawson is a former Telegraph Editor and Times columnist who indeed shares his father Nigel’s well-founded scepticism about the ‘Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change’ scam being so vehemently and threateningly promoted by Roger Hallam et al.
Dominic Lawson’s credibility was shot to pieces during the Scamdemic.
So would you hang him for climate denial, or flog him for Covid?
Flog him while he’s hanging!
I don’t trust the man. End of.
If they all died tomorrow, would we miss them?
Equally concerning is the ongoing Marianna Spring situation.
A key member of the ‘BBC Verify Team’ telling us about truth and honesty she was accused of lying on a CV by the New European Newspaper. This is still online and as far as I know has not been repudiated.
There is a what do they know FOi request about it refused by the BBC.
Ms Spring was in full flow on a recent Newscast about her bravery challenging Internet sceptics, though she’s also blocked loads on X/Twitter including me.
It is unsurprising but disgraceful that she is still at the BBC. Presumably the whole hypocrisy and stupidity of BBC Verify would be exposed otherwise.
Spring has apparently written a book listed as out shortly. I wonder if her free and fearless colleagues will be questioning her as she presumably promotes it.
Organisations such as the OCJN should be declared terrorist organisations and be banned and have all available funding confiscated. Perhaps O’Neil could be imprisoned.