Dunce’s Cap For BBC’s Matt McGrath!
By Paul Homewood
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34969276
Vacuous statement of the day from the BBC:-
Many other leaders stressed the need for just such a binding agreement – even President Vladimir Putin.
After he explained how Russia had managed to grow their economy and cut emissions (who knew?), he called for a binding target of 2C in the growth of global temperatures.
Who knew? Well, Matt, anybody who knows how to check the data from CDIAC for a start (which I would have expected to be a pretty basic requirement for the BBC’s Environmental Correspondent).
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/CO2_Emission/timeseries/national
And I am afraid you have fallen for Putin’s three-card trick there!
Now look very carefully, Matt, and you will see that emissions fell very sharply in Russia in the early 1990’s, which even you probably know was when the old and obsolete Soviet heavy industry was shutting down.
And if you look carefully enough, you will also notice that emissions have been rising since the late 1990’s.
Putin’s pledge, to cut emissions by 25% from 1990 levels, has in effect already happened. Indeed, taking into account all GHG and LULUCF (which Russia insists on including in their Plan), latest figures for 2012 show emissions at 50% of 1990 levels.
Russia’s Plan therefore allows them to substantially increase emissions up to 2030.
No wonder Putin wants a binding agreement!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The green MSM love to point fingers at the slackers (including at New Zealand with its predominant hydroelectric generators), but don’t dare question the achievability of pledges, because that would spoil the narrative.
The BBC must be held to account for why it has replaced journalism with green advocacy.
Matt McGrath seems to think “Environment correspondent” means “Greenpeace spokesman”. Admittedly, these days it does.
Have you actually emailed Matt MGrath on this, or are you relying on him reading the blog?
QV
Do you think it would really matter? This US citizen has written the BBC and various other publications in the US and UK about their use of pictures of harmless steam being emitted from water cooling towers to lead their stories on pollution or climate change or CO2. All but once of those dozen or so times I went to the effort to inform them of their mistake the response was crickets chirping with no change. And to this day they continue the practice.
Here is one of the latest examples from a recent POLITCO article talking about this very conference: http://www.politico.eu/article/paris-climate-deal-is-meaningless-cop21-emissions-china-obama/
Just left a comment, but the more the merrier!
Sorry, I didn’t know the article allowed comments.
I have been trying to contact him by email but he doesn’t respond.
The cowards at the BBC mostly hide their email addresses these days.
QV
Post a complaint at the BBC and last time I did you can ask for a response from the the author. You usually get green waffle but it does mean they have to read what you say. I think BBC correspondents are like Lean at the Telegraph and never read comments.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/complain-online/
There was Shukman’s liar piece on News at Ten last night about the supposed heating of the Tibetan plateau. There was no mention on the extensive geothermal activity of the region or how China has been changing water catchment areas to feed massive dams, no it was all the fault of CLIMATE CHANGE.
Also, by others being tied to difficult future binding agreements, they will be disadvantaged in competition compared with Russia and buy their gas too.
The USA will use similar reasoning (based on their move to large scale fracking) and continue exporting their carbon to the gullible rest of the world. They are also setting up to be major LNG exporters to the world.
The EU are the mugs-in-the-middle of all this madness. But at least the Big Brother Corporation is on our side.
The BBC’s Matthew Price is sunning himself on Pacific Island beaches at the license fee payers expense. While he’s there, he and his fellow activists are scaring the islanders with their irresponsible irrational doom-mongering, and reporting back to the Today programme with misleading claims about cyclones.
McGrath also featured in a short BBC video on ‘ocean acidification’, where he wheeled out a professor to scare viewers witless. Only at the end did they mention that current sea water is – wait for it, ‘more alkaline than….TAP water’!
So after all their acidic propaganda there is literally nothing to be concerned at. Unreal climate propaganda.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34966672
I had the misfortune of catching him answering a 60 second Q&A briefing about ‘Climate Change’ on the World Service the other night.
It ended something along the lines of: Q “But not all scientists agree that human CO2 emissions are a serious problem?” A (adopt smuggest tone imaginable) “That’s quite true – however a mere 97% of scientists do agree!”
Such lazy, lazy journalism.
Paul -if you do email Matt, you might want so give point out the flaws in that argument, too!
Putin wants to sell more gas to countries committed to replacing old coal power plants, which as the US has found out is an effective way of cutting CO2 output.
The BBC (radio 4) this morning actually reviewed some newspaper articles that were critical of the “proven science”, that was a first for me.
Will Germany abandon its coal burning policy like it did its nuclear power?
Where will all the gas come from that the EU will need soon? Russia and USA – who will be the winners at COP 21….. Russia and USA (business is business)!
There was also mention (deep breath) of a Daily Express journalist pointing out that CO2 probably wasn’t the cause of Global Warming!! On the BBC!
Great comments Paul. I was astonished when I read Putin’s comments, because he has called CAGW a hoax in the past. I think he’s happy for the West to commit economic suicide and he’ll encourage them to his utmost.
On todays World At One the BBC managed to claim that the spread of tree disease was facilitated by climate change……they must have a department that sets out to find ways to link all items with negative connotations to climate change.
Yes, the way to cut emissions is to have an economic and financial downturn. Then as soon as recovery comes along your economy will resume growth and emissions will recover as the economy recovers.
Indeed, we could use emissions as an index of welfare, except that decarbonization is taking place by switching from coal to oil to gas. This is because oil and gas have more hydrogen than coal and burning hydrogen produces water vapour, not CO2.
We need to factor in Russia’s switch from coal to natural gas. Perhaps Putin’s plan is to beat Germany’s Greens at their own game without wrecking the Russian economy with wind and solar.
As Germany’s economy starves for energy, builds more coal power stations and switches to coal. Russia will switch to gas.