Like most UK sceptics I’ve written my fair share of complaints regarding BBC bias. But one person really does take the biscuit for their response. Richard Black wrote an article about Chinese pollution causing warming. I wrote to complain that he was clearly biased because he surely must be aware that if a small amount of pollution from China had halted warming, he must also we aware that the wholesale cleaning of the air due to clean air acts in the the 1970s must have led to much larger warming.
This is his reply:
Dear Mr Haseler, Thanks for your email. I am required to furnish you with a reply, but it will not be a detailed one because as you consider me to be an idiot, clearly reading any reply I made would be a waste of your time. I am sure you have something better to do with it. Best regards, Richard Black
And the very minute I had finished writing my complaint to the BBC trust, in came an email from the Global Warming Policy Foundation along the same lines:
Looking at the aerosol data, obtained by satellites, it is apparent that the global aerosol burden declined between 1960 – 1980. There is no trend in global aerosol depth between 2000 – 2006, a period that includes the Kaufmann analysis claiming the Chinese effect. In 2007 Nasa stated that the aerosol effect had reduced, and even said that the “thinning” of the atmosphere had given a push to global warming. (for more see GWPF)
The problem with people like Richard Black … well as he said: he acts like an idiot, he writes like an idiot and so it really is incredibly difficult not to believe he is an idiot!
Come on Richard. If you ever read this, please just prove you aren’t as stupid as you make out and tell us how Chinese pollution in the 21st century can halt global warming, when the worldwide reduction in pollutants from virtually all industrialised nation has never been credited with causing the apparent warming we saw from 1970-2000 by your like.
Which reminds me of a joke: “why do you find so many global warmists at the top of hills … because they don’t know that there is a path downwards.”
ScottishSceptic 
More than I have usually got. I did not realise there was an official duty to reply – presumably, like the BBC’s official legal duty to show balance, it is normally ignored.
I think he is entitled to a reply – Dear Richard, re your assumption that I thought you were a total idiot. I wouldn’t have actually gone that far without knowing you. Thanks for elimianting any doubt.
To give Mr Black his due, his reply was a lot funnier than the normal: “the BBC isn’t biased go away” replies that I usually get. And, because it was funny, I wasn’t going to take it further. But then I tried to comment on an article of his and it never got displayed. So, whilst I think we should encourage “robust” discussion (especially if it is funny) I think he has gone well over the edge into the fanatical “shut the opposition up by any means possible … especially when it mentions real evidence”.
The first thing I did when I read the Kaufmann study was to go to the EPA website (I’m a Yank) and aquire SO2 data from 1998 to 2008 to learn that the USA saw a 60%+ decline in SO2 particles in the air above the USA.
http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/sulfur.html
Next I went to NCDC/NOAA for USA temperature trend from 1988 to 2008. If the study was accurate I should expect an increase in temperature with a 60%+ reduction in SO2, but instead I learned that USA temperature had fallen to a -.79C degree/decade trend. Here’s the data.
http://screencast.com/t/dfpD2YPInHO
So unless one has packing peanuts for brains, one should have been very skeptical of the Kaufmann study and done further examination on the veracity of the study.
Click to access acp-11-1101-2011.pdf
On page 7 of this paper (published Feb this year) the world SO2 levels were at their most recent low point in 2000. It had fallen from a peak in about 1987. The graph stops in 2005 at a level still lower than 1987. If China’s CO2 could stop warming when CO2 is so much higher surely higher levels of SO2 should have stopped warming altogether.
If it’s not SO2 aerosols, what are they talking about?
It should have read “If China’s SO2 could stop warming”
As a follow up, the report estimates SO2 above Central Eastern China showing SO2 peaking in 2007 and then falling till 2009.
Let’s face it,we are all doomed.. we won’t have any money left to bury ourselves,after we have paid all the green taxes on a agw myth that does not exist..back to the stone age, driven by the green agenda….
I stumbled across this site after googling the search term “Richard Black is an Idiot” after reading about his latest twitter post on the Maldives, it astounds me that the BBC a company with an annual revenue of 4 billion pounds a year cannot afford to hire qualified scientists to report on climate related topics, instead we are stuck with Mr Black who seems to have a degree in Zoology, although his biggest asset seems to be a first class degree in cutting and pasting any press release from his friends who believe in man made global warming / climate change.
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2012/01/richard-black-97-1-metre-sea-level-rise.html#comments
the thread here is not easy to pick up but one simple fact indicates that there is a fire under the smoke: In December ’11, China was selling new cars at the rate of 93 per working minute.
False under-alarm. I just re-checked the stats. 1.2 million per month is seen as under-performing. That equates to 2500 sales per minute (in an 8 hour working day)
‘scuse the cut ‘n insert: “Sales of passenger vehicles fell 0.11% year-to-year in May at 1.04 million units—the first decline in more than two years. In the January-May period, passenger vehicle sales totaled 6.03 million.