{"id":293433,"date":"2024-01-02T08:54:39","date_gmt":"2024-01-02T07:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=293433"},"modified":"2024-01-02T08:54:42","modified_gmt":"2024-01-02T07:54:42","slug":"speaker-on-bbc-verify-correspondents-six-month-sabbatical-course-has-called-for-jailing-climate-contrarians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=293433","title":{"rendered":"Speaker on BBC Verify Correspondent\u2019s Six Month Sabbatical Course Has Called for Jailing Climate Contrarians"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BY\u00a0CHRIS MORRISON<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further and better particulars have emerged about the green billionaire-funded course<\/a> 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 \u2018disinformation\u2019 specialist employed by BBC Verify. To \u201chit closer to home\u201d, course participants are told to pick a fruit such as a mango and discuss why it wasn\u2019t as tasty as the year before due to the impact of climate change. Noted climate hysteric Saffron O\u2019Neill has been a past speaker and she is on record as speculating on the need for \u201cfines and imprisonment<\/a>\u201d for expressing scepticism about \u201cwell supported\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Daily Sceptic<\/em> disclosed<\/a>, 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 \u2018settled\u2019 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a recently published essay<\/a>, 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 \u201cmove beyond their siloed past\u201d into a strategic position within newsrooms \u201ccombining expertise with collaboration\u201d. The \u201cpick your mango\u201d strategy is designed to make climate change \u201cless abstract\u201d and delegates are told to pick a \u201cbeloved fruit or activity that everyone in your country or region seems to care about, and seems to capture attention when impacted by climate change\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLess abstract\u201d is one way of summing up this pseudoscientific hogwash. \u2018Infantile\u2019 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\u2019s presentation, attendees are reported to have shown a \u201cmassive jump in self-confidence\u201d when attributing individual weather to the long-term climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The distinguished science writer Roger Pielke Jnr. is scathing about weather attribution calling it a new \u201ccottage industry\u201d, 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 \u2013 \u201cno matter how tenuous or trivial<\/a>\u201d. At the BBC, weather attribution has always been very popular. Writing in a WWA guide for journalists<\/a>, the former BBC Today<\/em> editor Sarah Sands says attribution studies have given us \u201csignificant insight into the horseman of the climate apocalypse\u201d. Former OCJN attendee, Ben Rich, the BBC\u2019s lead weather presenter, has used the \u201cscience\u201d of climate attribution \u201cto help explain to audiences when and how scientists can link extreme weather to climate change\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of this ludicrous propaganda can be questioned since the science is deemed to be \u2018settled\u2019. Geography lecturer Dr. Saffron O\u2019Neill 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<\/em><\/a> that such images \u201ccan hold the same power\u201d as photos of the tanks in Tiananmen Square and smoke billowing from the Twin Towers. After a session with O\u2019Neill, audience members said that \u201cnews outlets and photo agencies can and should think ahead of time about how they photograph the risks of hot weather\u201d. And of course if anyone disagrees with O\u2019Neill and her version of the \u201cwell supported\u201d science, it is time for fines and prison. The last suggestion was published in Carbon Brief<\/em>, the activist blog financed by the European Climate Fund. As it happens, Carbon Brief<\/em> is represented on the OCJN Advisory Board through its editor Leo Hickman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/em> into running a notably silly story<\/a> about much of London disappearing beneath the waves within 80 years. Covering Climate Now<\/em> (CC Now<\/em>) is an off-shoot of the Columbia Journalism Review<\/em> and is backed by the Guardian<\/em>. It claims to feed over 500 media operations with pre-written climate stories<\/a>. Both these operations rely on heavy financial support from a small cluster of green billionaire funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The links between these operations spreads far and wide. One of the partners of CC Now<\/em> is Reuters, the news agency connected to the OCJN through its Reuters Institute. Not everyone is happy with Reuters\u2019 connections to operations such as CC Now<\/em> 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<\/a>. If we are going to give up our civilisation, at the very least we ought to have an open debate. \u201cJournalists need to stand up and be counted. The trouble is this requires bravery and energy, and an urge to question conventional wisdom,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, he might have added, avoiding the naughty step of Dr. Saffron O\u2019Neill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris Morrison is the <\/em>Daily Sceptic\u2019s Environment Editor.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Further and better particulars have emerged about the\u00a0green billionaire-funded course\u00a0run 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 \u2018disinformation\u2019 specialist employed by BBC Verify. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":293434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Further and better particulars have emerged about the\u00a0green billionaire-funded course\u00a0run by the Oxford Climate Journalism Network (OCJN), which has to date attracted over 400 participants from around the world. 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The course is funded by the Green Blob and aims to make the \u2018climate crisis\u2019 a central element in the journalism of the attendees. 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