The BBC Complaints Director Colin Tregear has enrolled on the green grooming course run as a six-month sabbatical by the Oxford Climate Journalism Network (OCJN). The course is funded by the Green Blob and aims to make the ‘climate crisis’ a central element in the journalism of the attendees. Tregear is said to have responsibility for climate complaints at the BBC. Quite why the British TV taxpayer should fund this activist boondoggle for a man who is supposed to independently consider matters that often involve disputed areas of science is not immediately clear. In the past, attendees have been asked to consider that fruit such as mangoes aren’t as tasty as a year ago due to climate change. A previous speaker is on record as speculating on the need for “fines and imprisonment” for those expressing scepticism about “well supported” science.
Tregear is joined on the jolly by Maeve Campbell who is a TV climate reporter on Channel 4 in the UK. Her inclusion is less surprising since she is an identikit activist fully up to speed on the need for fear mongering to support the Net Zero fantasy. She should fit in well at the OCJN. Recently, she wrote that all over the world “fertile land is gradually becoming dry, barren and unable to support plants animals or people, as climate change causes temperatures to rise”. At the risk of imprisonment, it might be kind for someone to point out to her that the recent small rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide has led to a massive ‘greening’ of the planet, significant de-desertification and record yields of staple crops around the world.
The OCJN is run by the Reuters Institute, which is funded by the Thompson Reuters Foundation. The overall steering committee is chaired by Alan Rusbridger, who in his time as the editor of the Guardian helped turn the newspaper into an hysterical proclaimer of a coming climate apocalypse. Direct funding for the course, which seeks to influence journalists around the globe, has been provided by the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and the Laudes Foundation. The ECF is heavily supported by the Extinction Rebellion funder Sir Christopher Hohn, while Laudes chipped in £1 million in 2024 to support the network’s course activities until 2027.
The Green Blob paymasters are well represented on the OCJN Advisory Board, which is said to be dedicated to “improving the quality and impact of climate change journalism worldwide”. Katy Hartley is the Director of Strategy, Innovation and Narrative and is a member of the Laudes management team. In a previous job, she was part of a “cross-entities team exploring how all the philanthropic entities could respond to climate breakdown”. Other interesting advisers are Leo Hickman, the Editor of Carbon Brief, an activist blog funded by the ECF, and Dr Friederike Otto who runs a Green Blob-funded pseudoscientific weather attribution outfit from Imperial College London. Regular readers will of course recall that Otto was one of the leading instigators in the infamous Alimonti affair, when a group of activists and journalists forced Nature to withdraw a paper that had stated a climate emergency was not supported by the facts – the facts being those provided largely by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Otto claimed the authors “of course” were not writing in good faith. The distinguished science writer Dr Roger Pielke Jr later noted that “shenanigans continue in climate science, with influential scientists teaming with journalists to corrupt peer-review”.
Perish the thought that anything like this will be plotted at the OCJN. But its deliberations and relentless agitprop will hopefully be helpful to Colin Tregear as he faces all those impertinent complaints from the public about the BBC’s biased coverage of climate change. He has good form in shutting down debate. In February 2014, Nigel Lawson, a prominent Conservative minister in the Governments of Margaret Thatcher, told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 that global temperatures had paused over the last decade. Responding to the complainer, Tregear replied: “I hope you will accept my apologies on behalf of the BBC, for the breach of editorial standards you identified”. In fact the pause, although highly inconvenient, was well known at the time and the Met Office even wrote a paper about it titled, The Recent Pause in Global Warming. Within a short period, the BBC moved to close down all sceptical comment on a science that was declared “settled”, a ban that is strictly enforced to this day.
Meanwhile for his ‘mango’ contribution, your correspondent helpfully suggests the following. Use AI to tell you why its taste has declined because of climate change and you will have mainstream media-ready copy within seconds. Try asking it, as I did, for an alternative view that mangoes are now tastier than before and again, before you can say bananas, a plausible article appears. The point of course is that if mainstream media is simply being groomed to write copy within strict pre-set narrative guidelines, what is the point of employing the journalists in the first place? The entire over-staffed climate desk at the BBC could be closed down, and Mr Grok tasked with supplying a never-ending stream of ‘scientists say’ propaganda designed to induce mass climate fear and nudge the general public to accept the controlling Net Zero elitist fantasy.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
Postscript: The BBC Press Office has been in touch to complain this story is inaccurate.
Firstly, the employee that you mention isn’t on a sabbatical. It is a part-time course compromised [sic] of one hour lectures every two or three weeks and is being completed alongside their current role.
The purpose of the course is to help the ECU understand challenges journalists face when reporting on all aspects of climate and enhance its ability to maintain impartial reporting by the BBC in this area.
Secondly, they are a Complaints Advisor (not Director) within the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU).
It should be noted, however, that the OCJN describes its six-month course as “intensive”, which is hard to square with a once a week lecture. In addition, on the course website Tregear is said to be “a complaints director at the BBC specialising in climate change”, so the question of job title is one the BBC Press Office should probably take up with OCJN rather than us.
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Thank you Chris for continuing to expose the institutional nature of the “climate change” narrative. Presumably the billionaires who fund this stuff are heavily invested in “green” energy and the transition thereto. Perhaps that angle could be reported upon.
So a 6 month brain washing course, this is what we are up against.
Correct!, 6 month re-indoctranation course!
Brush up on the intricacies of your agenda, and ,maybe, just maybe, we’ll allow you back into public scrutiny.
(Where’s Robert Robinson or Barry Took when you need them? ….”Furious, from Milton Keynes asks..”)
6 months to learn the second law of thermodynamics? Come to think of it though, they want him to believe the trash called climate science, so some serious indoctrination is necessary. It would be much more useful for this “person from complaints” to learn some basic physics and chemistry, then he could assess the situation a great deal more clearly, and correctly. This is simply more waste in the BBC, to even less purpose than normal.
You’d think he’d be very busy, but if you’ve ever complained to the BBC you might think that the responses are from ChatGPT based on a template, so people “working” for that department probably have plenty of spare time.
I gave up complaining to the BBC many years ago. Try to comment on a programme and you end up getting caught in a loop that takes you right back to where you started.
I complain now and again because I feel it’s important that they know someone is noticing, but I am probably deluded. I did once get into an email correspondence with a BBC person which was very revealing about how they think.
Surely this is in direct contradiction if tgecBBC’s legal Charter of impartiality. Where are our MPs to enforce this? Oh yes, they’re also on ‘the course’!
I guess climate complaints to the BBC need to state indisputable facts, supported by evidence (data, published papers, etc.), which a few people thankfully do, and successfully (to date). Let’s see Colin Tregear hang himself by his own petard.
Nothing makes me more suspicious about an issue than when no debate is allowed, any discussions are shut down and people are threatened unless they agree.
I think the BBC has a problem: their credibility has sunk and now for a large section of the society they are just a scandal-ridden woke propaganda organization. Probably staffed with some very dodgy characters, as I can’t for a second believe that there wouldn’t be more Hew Edwards / Jimmy Saville types. On top of that they visibly despise the general population and think very highly of themselves and their increasingly junk output.
Exactly. Why the stifling of debate? Highly suspicious, but so many don’t see it that way, they just consider any dissenting views to be the good old “conspiracy theorists” at work.
I cannot, for the life of me, fathom how so many people continue to slavishly trust the entities which lie to them all the time and erode their rights and assets. We are a strange species.
It’s a good put down “conspiracy theory ” isn’t it? IMHO this is not a conspiracy theory, it’s a conspiracy, fact.
I still have friends who both watch and believe BBC news. The idea that the “climate crisis” might be fake is beyond their conception, just a conspiracy theory to be discounted. The constant drip feeding of well choreographed climate fear stories from their trusted BBC gives it authenticity, verisimilitude. For many all that propaganda hits its mark.
When I point out that there is a mountain of evidence that the Met Office is fiddling its figures I just get an eye roll. Try to point out all the subsidies, funding incentives, and revolving doors, they just change the subject.
However there is a slow shift in attitudes, but ironically that shift isn’t coming from articles in the DS, it’s coming from high energy costs, and the obvious environmental damage caused by the solar farms.
Now that people realise that they are being hit in the pocket they are finally open to other ideas. One by one they are finding their way to excellent articles like this and the wool is being lifted from their eyes.
What we have now is a race for hearts and minds between the independent journalists trying to shed light and the cencors who want to shut them down. Personally I think that Chris and all the other tireless journalists might just win this one. The blob likes to give the impression that it is omnipotent, but it is not. Once the curtain is pulled back it loses all power. Keep pulling Chris.
15 years ago I canvassed a small random group of people by asking the question: “would you be prepared to pay a bit more each year for your electricity if it was ‘green’?” The answer was usually “Yes”
I then asked how much extra they would pay. The answer was never more than $50 Australian per year (about GBP25). We need to find a way to expose this discrepancy between the cost of Net Zero and what people are prepared to pay.
Well, this is why the audience of the mainstream “news” providers has steadily and massively declined. They are echo chambers.
The anthropogenic climate change/Net Zero nonsense is a massive swindle supported by useful idiots; who absolutely will not even consider any scientific evidence, even of the highest quality, if it opposes their entrenched perspectives.
Thank you Chris. If proper debate on climate “science” and Net Zero were allowed, it would be truly refreshing.
Oh, how I wish the smoke in that photo was coming from one of the turbines…
Just for a second I thought it was a burning turbine blade, oh well, never mind🤭
“Climate Crisis”? You might as well be telling me about sand storms on Mars. I am not interested.
Actually, sand storms on Mars, because of the conflicting weight balance and effect on the planets longitudinal veracity do have an exsosential time and effect by gravity on close interplanetary bodies and may have a collateral effect on the climate patterns of those said planets,earth and the moon encapsulated in a geosychronous orbit included! So think on Hogsbreath!
Sarc
I watched the BBC news last night (I know…..). I find it staggering what they consider news. A long piece about the court case of a depraved American rapper. It was awful.
The phrase “the need for “fines and imprisonment” for those expressing scepticism about “well supported” science” is, quite likely, something the WHO considered whilst drafting its global Pandemic Agreement.
With just a few amendments this document could easily mean the WHO could demand draconian measures (based on “well supported science”) to address perceived risks to humanity of climate or environmental changes.
We need an organization to promote the science that supports the NYET ZERO point of view. Failing this Tom Nelson has a great series of guests and BBC complaints commissars need exposure to these guests and be able to explain what they are saying and why they agree/disagree! How many of you have watched Christopher Monkton’s explanations of why the central plank of the AGR tribe is fatally flawed. Christopher Monckton: “ Fundamental Error in Climate Science” | Tom Nelson Pod #312
Surely the footnote should be at the beginning as it makes clear that the article is totally false.
You should be asking if the BBC is also considering climate sceptic views.