David Bellamy: victim! but of who?

David Bellamy

Botanist and environmentalist David Bellamy was a relatively successful broadcaster until 1994 when his broadcasting career tanked.  More recently he has been a climate change / global warming Denier who got some attention when some sloppy writing on his part led to a major new Denier myth.

Now we learn that Bellamy is the new Denier martyr because he was the victim of a vicious witch hunt by Enviro-Nazis Global Warming storm troopers. In the Daily Express where we are told “BBC SHUNNED ME FOR DENYING CLIMATE CHANGE.” In a nutshell, Bellamy was a “skeptic” so the BBC tossed him out.

Interesting. Just one or two problems with this story.

For one thing Bellamy’s career tanked in 1994, a dozen years before Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” Long before 99% of the media had even heard of climate change, much less had any sort of official or unofficial policy or attitude about it.

Are we being asked to believe that the BBC was so forward thinking as to be suppressing climate skepticism in 1994, while at the same time not actually producing any programing advocating climate science, or giving it any particular attention in the news cycle? Was it some sort of passive aggressive Draconian indifference then? Is that the suggestion?

Daily Express "SHUNNED: Naturalist David Bellamy"

Right.

Soldiering on.

In the article Bellamy alleges that his fall from grace with the BBC was due to denouncing wind farms on an episode of Blue Peter and having a written an article declaring climate change to be “poppycock.”

Trouble is, he says that was 1996, two years after his BBC career was effectively over.

Another puzzling thing is that at different times Bellamy gives different reasons for BBC’s apparent dissatisfaction. The Blue Peter program is somewhat consistent, but his stance on climate is not.

In a Jun 7 2008 interview with the Liverpool Daily Post it was “my stance on having an anti-EU referendum was unpopular with TV bosses,” no mention of it at all in a Times interview a year ago, and in a 2002 Guardian interview it was because he stood against John Major for the anti-European Referendum party:

“In some ways it was probably the most stupid thing I ever did because I’m sure that if I have been banned from television, that’s why. I used to be on Blue Peter and all those things, regularly, and it all, pffffft, stopped.”

But even then the script didn’t match. As the interviewer observes, his stand against Major was in 1997 and Bellamy’s BBC career was over in 1994.

Gee, some inconsistencies in a Denier narrative – how unusual.

One other problem with the story is that Bellamy clearly wasn’t a Denier/Skeptic in 1994 (or 1996, or 1997). In 1989 he wrote a forward to the book The Greenhouse Effect in which he says ” … there is no doubt. Earth’s temperature is showing an upward swing, the so-called greenhouse effect …” After that I can find no mention of Bellamy and climate for over a decade.

It isn’t until 2004 that “Bellamy the Denier” actually appears on stage in a Daily Mail piece. In fact this would appear to be the “poppycock” article that he now thinks he wrote in 1996, 2 years after the BBC started shunning him.  Aside, like all the Denier dreck the article is full of unsubstantiated and wildly inaccurate nonsense.

The response to his article suggests this stance is new for Bellamy.

UPDATE Mar 13/09 In this 2004 article Bellamy William Connolley states that “…seems in some danger of turning into a septic.” (emphasis added).

“…turning into …”, not ‘has been for a decade’.

Then it is only in 2005 that various environmental organizations

distance themselves from him because of his “new” stance on climate. A Telegraph interview that same year refers to his recent conversion to Denierism, and Denier sites from 2007 report him as “recently converted to skepticism.”

To sum up: in 1996/1997 David Bellamy ran against John Major and had anti-EU sympathies which caused a BBC that did not give a damn about climate change to dismiss him in 1994 for opinions on climate that he would not hold until some time in 2003/2004 and for an article that he would not write until 2004. That Damn BBC, always so far ahead of the curve!

Which is about as coherent and fact filled as Denierism ever gets.

In all likelihood this is the sad and undignified denouement to what was the honourable and enviable career of a committed environmentalist. It is just too bad that the jackals and vultures of the media and the Denialosphere have used it for their own venal purposes and could not instead have let this tragic farce play out in private.

UPDATE:  2 Apr 2009 David Bellamy is at it again, and has been thoroughly  vivesected by George Monbiot with “Bellamy the Bearded Bungler doesn’t disappoint.”

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Denier “Challenge” aka Deathwatch Update: Day 33 … still no evidence.

¹As I discuss here I do not use the term “Denier” to refer to all climate change doubters. Those who thoughtfully and intelligently address the facts I call ’skeptics’.

Those who irrationally deny the existence of the science and instead propagate the lies and distortions such as those discussed above and linked to the right under “Debunking Denier Nonsense” are “Deniers”.

The choice of the correct term is based on their actions, not their conclusions.

IMAGE CREDITS:

David Bellamy from Wikimedia Commons

Lydgate First School by Roger B.

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