Congratulations to BBC Environment Correspondent Matt McGrath who has just won a €100K prize from the BBVA Foundation for ‘his extraordinary capacity to communicate complex environmental issues and science’…
…Or, as Ben Pile more cynically suggests, as a reward for lazily and uncritically regurgitating press releases favourable to the interests of the Green Blob.
For “his extraordinary capacity to communicate complex environmental issues and science” — i.e. to get quotes from scientists and omit any shred of nuance from complex debates — McGrath received a €100K gift from the green blob. https://t.co/9RFy4kpnAs
— Ben Pile (@clim8resistance) November 15, 2019
I can understand Pile’s cynicism. The idea that any environment correspondent in the employ of the BBC should deserve any kind of award for their journalism is laughable. It has been many years since the BBC showed any interest in covering climate change and the environment fairly or accurately.
(For chapter and verse on this read Christopher Booker’s thorough and damning 2011 report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation ‘The BBC and Climate Change: a Triple Betrayal.’)
McGrath, like the rest of the BBC’s environment staff, is less a reporter than he is a propagandist for the cause of climate alarmism.
For example, McGrath recently wrote an article for the BBC website headlined ‘Climate change: Warming signal links global floods and fires.’
Befitting his role as the BBC’s Scaremonger General, McGrath found various friendly scientists to confirm his predetermined thesis that climate change is partly responsible for the recent flooding in Venice and South Yorkshire and for the wildfires in Australia.
But when Paul Homewood examined these claims — in the way that any capable environmental reporter should have done — he found them all completely unfounded.
That is, with regard to the South Yorkshire floods, he found no evidence that rainfall in England is increasing. Nor did he find any evidence that rising sea levels connected to man made warming have any plausible connection with the Venice floods. Nor yet, did he find evidence that droughts caused by ‘climate change’ were the cause of the wildfires in Australia.
McGrath’s article and the experts he cited, in other words, were talking the purest drivel.
Yet for this kind of drivel, regurgitated day in day out, McGrath has now picked up a cool €100,000. (That’s $90,000; or £85,000)
Why would any organisation give a very ordinary BBC hack a cash prize of this magnitude?
Well, here’s a clue. It’s an article in which BBVA, the company behind the award, promotes ‘green and sustainable bonds’.
BBVA seems to be big on green investments https://t.co/gv7SuksOTo
— Bishop Hill (@aDissentient) November 15, 2019
It begins:
The first six months of 2019 have confirmed the undeniable importance of green bonds as a tool for financing the United Nations sustainable development goals and the commitments adopted in the Paris Agreement. These bonds have undoubtedly taken root among institutional investors and issuers alike.
The market in 2019 has witnessed record growth in volume, having exceeded $125 billion, and BBVA forecasts that volumes will reach $220 billion by the close of the year. The number of such deals has also grown, fueled by first-time (inaugural) issuers across different sectors and countries.
$125 billion! And that’s just the size of the market now. No wonder BBVA can afford to pay out €100,000 like it’s just spare change to whichever friendly journalists promote the ‘climate emergency’ scare which makes the green bond market viable.
One of the reasons for the BBC’s power, influence and market share is that historically it has been associated with authoritative and objective reporting. Some observers, then, might think it odd to find a BBC specialist reporter being given a bung — sorry ‘prize’ — by a vested interest industry when, theoretically, his scrupulously neutral reportage ought to be affecting its fortunes neither one way nor the other.
Ben Pile, I think, is quite right to raise an eyebrow:
If it were the case that a bank with fossil fuel interests had paid a BBC journalist for his work that expressed scepticism about climate science and policy, we would expect to hear endless protests about the corruption.
But climate change changes everything at the @BBCNews.
— Ben Pile (@clim8resistance) November 15, 2019
We often hear from alarmists about all the Big Oil money that ‘climate deniers’ receive to sow doubt about ‘the science’ of climate change.
In truth, most of the money is on the alarmists’ side of the argument.
The Climate Industrial Complex is a Potemkin industry worth in excess of $1.5 trillion per annum. Not one cent of that vast sum of money would be spent if it weren’t for the propaganda machine helping to promote the scare.
This why journalists like Matt McGrath are so very valuable to the Green Blob. If I were him I’d get onto those cheapskates at BBVA and ask, given the sums they’re making out of this scam, why they couldn’t have paid him something closer to a million…
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