Christopher Booker on BBC and The Royal Society bias, ClimateGate, The Met cold winter forecast and 2010 hottest year ever:
Horizon’s “Science Under Attack” turned out to be yet another laborious bid by the BBC to defend the global warming orthodoxy…… Hours of film of climate-change “deniers” are cherrypicked for soundbites that can be shown, out of context, to make them look ridiculous…… Although Sir Paul presented himself as the champion of objective science, he frequently showed that, for all his expertise in cell biology, he knows little about climate.
The fact that someone is an expert in one particular field – even if he is President of the Royal Society – gives him little more authority to pronounce on issues with which he is unfamiliar than a man holding forth in a pub……. the BBC has been turned, in Peter Sissons’ words, into a mere “propaganda machine”……. Comparing the actual data…… shows that for four years the original figure has been adjusted downwards. Only for 2010 was the data revised upwards, by the largest adjustment of all, allowing the Met Office to claim that 2010 was the hottest year of the decade……
h/t to Amino Acids in Meteorites
Just imagine how desperate they will become if a significant cooling period kicks off for the next ten years. Any rational person familiar with climate recognizes that such an event will happen. Could be starting now in fact.
Such a natural reversal means little, but the claim of warming is the only basis the warmists have. The desperation will be impressive. Maybe they will even claim that the new wind power has made a difference.
John Kehr
“He who controls the past, controls the future” — George Orwell in 1984
What the warmist scientists are doing is no different than what Winston did (airbrushing out unpersons from news photos, etc.) in Orwell’s 1984. It was a fraud in his book and it is a fraud now.
But of course it furthered the cause of the party which made it justifiable.
Ah yes, the BBC. I find Richard Black’s blog to be relentless propaganda. Here’s the latest example:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2011/01/if_the_arctic_is_really.html#comments
Back in the good old pre-Climategate era, it used to be great fun watching the BBC’s almost daily ‘Global Warming Catatstrophe Report’ by David Shukman, but he seems to have melted away much faster than the ice cap did. Now their propaganda is more subltle. They can always seem to find some sign of ‘climate disruption’ to cover, including minor ones on slow news days, which has the cumulative effect of delivering that message to viewers without explicitly stating it. Lots of networks doing that trick these days, and with video cameras everywhere they have coverage of everything. Look! A mudslide in some remote corner of Bolivia! That previously no one except locals would ever have heard about…
Back on topic, if this dustup between the BBC and the MET doesn’t shake something up, the UK truly is hopelessly enslaved by the AGW industry.
Makes on wonder!!!! What about all those that aren’t properly trained in the correct field to study or comment on the climate science. It appears that It is only if your are in disagreement with the “consensus”.
Bill Derryberry
Actually science is under attack, it has been under attack for some time yet the BBC are trying to portray the perpetrators as victims.Paul Nurse has no expertise in climate science and his breathtakingly ignorant prejudice only confirms this, he is interested in defending the CAGW narrative. The Royal Society has a terrible track record over the last couple of hundred years in selecting and defending ridiculous assertions and consensus ignorance, if there has been a dragging anchor holding science back it has been the RS.
The BBCs sole purpose and aim in making this propaganda film was in order to smear unbelievers and sceptics, the BBC has much invested in CAGW both in fiscal and ideological terms, they believe and they are not just believers but leaders of the CAGW narrative.
This programme by the BBC was in fact an admission of failure, it will be seen in the near future for what it is and will I believe undermine and help to destroy the BBC. I see this effort from the BBC coming back to haunt them.
Cassandra King says:
January 29, 2011 at 9:42 pm
One can only hope. Goes double for the CBC, as well.
Is this comment actually being published in the paper (as opposed to one of the Telegraph’s blogs)? I certainly hope so, as it is a crushing rejoinder to the Beeb’s propaganda piece and needs the widest possible readership. Imagine stating that human beings are responsible for putting out 7 times more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than natural processes! Nurse should be removed from his position in the Royal Society for his abuse of science and sheer carelessness with facts. When will the membership of the RS wake up?
Again we see ill-educated politicians, many ignorant fools, professing “special knowledge” that is neither backed by facts or logic. An attempt to subject populations to a system of regulation that will stifle all scientific research and leave industry to Asia and other countries that realize this is nothing but nonsense.
BRAVO BOOKER!
Far from it being “science” which is under attack from all those experts who dispute the orthodoxy on global warming, the truth is the very reverse. It is the dissenters who are trying to speak for genuine science, against those who misuse its prestige to promote a cause which has too often betrayed the very essence of proper scientific method.
The fact that the BBC has been turned, in Peter Sissons’ words, into a mere “propaganda machine” is scandal enough. But a far greater scandal is the way the authority of science has been hijacked to serve a fatally flawed belief system which threatens to inflict irreparable damage on the future of us all.
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
January 29, 2011 at 12:56 pm
frank verismo says:
January 28, 2011 at 10:48 pm
@RockyRoad:
This is what happens when a cult replaces science. The faster the MET and BBC are discredited the better.
Funny you should mention those two in the same sentence. Further to my previous post:
Head of the BBC’s pension fund: Peter Dunscombe
Head of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change: (wait for it . . . . ) Peter Dunscombe!
Does anyone else detect a pattern here?
====================================================
Yes, I do. It’s called manipulating the market.
I do hope someone in England files a complaint about (or to?) the BBC in the same manner as the warmistas did against “the great global warming swindle” a few years back.
Thanks
JK
I believe that there is a mixture of incorrect reasoning when attacking Nurse for his lack of credentials in climate science. Firstly, is it right to exclude someone simply because he has no formal training in the climate field? If so, this is a slippery slope for any skeptic as well who does not have formal qualifications in that field, including Booker. That is a two edged sword.
It is also raising the science of climate change as is practised by the CRU and the team, into a higher realm than it deserves. In fact, from what I have learned, in general, the so called climate science teaching at many universities right round the world is short on the science skills such as required by mathematicians or astrophysicists, but long on activism and politics.
One does not need a degree in anything to work out that there is something shonky going on with the thermometer placements conveniently being reduced in colder areas.
One also does not need a degree to read emails written in English language in particular the Harry Read Me file, which is full of comments telling everyone he has to make a lot of the figures up.
In fact, one does not need anything other than commensense, to be able to work out that if the theory is that the temperature will rise with increased C02, and it hasn’t, then the theory is wrong.
So why is Nurse backing the wrong science (as will eventually be shown)?
The answer is something for the psychology folk to ponder on in the future when the scam is finished, on their grants!
The most interesting bit is discussed by Biship Hill at http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/1/29/booker-wades-in.html#comments.
More data manipulation by the Met Office. Talk about corruption of science. No wonder it is under attack.
I’ve read in a couple of places now about data from 4 years being adjusted down and data from 2010 being adjusted up, but I haven’t seen actual figures.
Does anybody know where one can see these figures? I’d like to know how much was adjusted down/up.
the blind leading the blind very sad
But it was good to see Phil Jones back from his stint as curator of the Turin shroud…
Wasn’t it?
Pity about the purple shirt tho’.
Thank all things beautiful for the “Lisbon Workshop on Reconciliation in the Climate Change Debate”.
All of these pesky facts and fancies will be reconciled there and no argument or disagreement will remain, leaving us free to glory in all ice, snow, flood, drought and famine in the true innocence of our noble savage ancestry.
Science under attack
It is not us, but people like Trenberth trying to reverse the Null Hypothesis that are attacking science.
Nothing could be so fundamental to science as having to prove your assertions rather than putting the onus on other people to disprove them.
It is like having a criminal justice system, when one day, a prosecutor on a difficult high-profile trial, stands up before the jury and says: “I think this case is so important that from now on it should be up to the defendant to prove they are innocent and not up to the state to prove they are guilty”.
N.B. They’d make global warming “denial” a crime – which means if it was up to Trenberth, we’d all be guilty unless we could disprove their ridiculous mumbo jumbo. It’s hot: global warming. It snows: global warming. Wet: global warming. Dry: Global warming. And if there’s no extreme weather: It’s global warming
Instead of asking the cell biologist Sir Paul Nurse to present the show why couldn’t the BBC use Dr. Paul Jones of CRU to do the presenting? ;O)
Apparently Sir Paul posed a question to Delingpole of the Telegraph:
My answer would be that I would opt for any treatment that is effective even if it’s orange juice. Consensus does not come into it. Why? Well in 1982 two Australian scientists, Robin Warren and Barry J. Marshall, showed that most stomach ulcers and gastritis were caused by colonization of a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori and not by stress or spicy food as had been assumed by the consensus. I wonder how Einstein would have progressed today?
I would like to remind Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, about the institution’s motto:
AGW’s forecasts are failing and yet we are told to abandon scepticism.
vigilantfish says:
January 29, 2011 at 10:22 pm
Is this comment actually being published in the paper
Yes, it is in the main paper. Booker has a weekly column in the Sunday Telegraph.
@Jennifer Hubbard, the article is in the print version of the Telegraph see here:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/01/back-to-nursery.html
for a picture of the page.
xyzlatin says:
January 29, 2011 at 11:08 pm
I believe that there is a mixture of incorrect reasoning when attacking Nurse for his lack of credentials in climate science. Firstly, is it right to exclude someone simply because he has no formal training in the climate field? If so, this is a slippery slope for any skeptic as well who does not have formal qualifications in that field, including Booker. That is a two edged sword.
It is a two edged sword if it is _just_ making a non-expert comment. However, this was not ‘just a non-expert comment’ – this was The President of The Royal Society who I am sure at no time stated that he had no expertise in the field. If you are asked to comment -as a scientist- in a field in which you have no expertise, then you state that clearly and ensure that the people you are talking to are aware. Then you act like a scientist and are sceptical about everything you are told and ask for some level of support for assertions.
Had The President of The Royal Society acted like a scientist he would have corrected the totally false statement ” 7 gigatons (billion tons) are emitted each year by human activity while only 1 gigaton comes from natural sources such as the oceans” but it would appear that in this regard at least he was notacting like a scientist. One starts to wonder in how many areas are we trusting those in authority and their reporters when they are not acting with professionalism.
Horizon was once one of the great general science TV programmes of the UK. Now it is trash.
This latest eposide is truly disgraceful. Nurse harps on about the public not accepting the global warming catastrophe theory, and asks why that should be. But I cannot see how this programme is supposed to improve anything.
Horizon probably still keeps a reasonably highbrow audience, and I don’t think neutral observers would have been much impressed by the cringeworthy scenes of Jones explaining how he decided it was better not to show all of his data, or playing the victim card because he felt harassed by FOI requests.
Horizon was very quick to portray Jones as the victim of the FOI requests, without any background to how things got to where they did. There was no attempt to approach the people who were asking for information, or what had led them to go down the FOI route. That made this part very one-sided indeed.
Horizon tried a real stitch-up on James Delingpole – although I think it will have backfired.
At his blog, James explains how Nurse visited him for 3 hours to discuss climategate. Nurse tried to throw a curveball with a question on who to believe when you have cancer. James pointed out that it’s a bad analogy and insisted they stick to climategate. And out of 3 hours discussion together, what did Horizon choose to show? You guessed it – James appearing to refuse to answer the question.
The programme also shows James Delingpole admitting that he’s not a climate expert and doesn’t read the primary research literature. Also a clar attempt to discredit Delingpole.
This is a classic example of demanding higher standards from your opponents: there is no doubt that many public supporters of global warming catastrophe theory do not read the primary research literature, but will appear in the media to make their point. Did Nurse suggest that they should butt-out of the discussion because they are not experts? Nope – missed that one completely. It’s only dissenting non-experts who are to be questioned on their qualifications.
In fact most people feel entitled to have an opinion on many things. They may have their own insights on a topic, their own interests, and do their own examination of the issues, without feeling it necessary to go to the primary research literature. I’m sure Nurse is in exactly the same poisition on many issues.
On the point of reading the literature, Nurse failed to deal with the issue that the global warming catastrophe theory is so poorly defined that it cannot be explained. That’s a major part of the issue. The Horizon programme acknowledged the uncertainty in clouds. But you can go over to Judith Currie to see endless debate about fundamental points such as the role of feedback in sensitivity, questions like whether the “zero feedback sensitivity” has any physical meaning or is it just an abstract construct.
In early December, poster “Nullius in Verba” wrote this at Currie’s blog:
“A great deal of confusion is caused in this debate by the fact that there are two distinct explanations for the greenhouse effect: one based on that developed by Fourier, Tyndall, etc. which works for purely radiative atmospheres (i.e. no convection), and the radiative-convective explanation developed by Manabe and Wetherald …. Climate scientists do know how the basic greenhouse physics works, and they model it using the Manabe and Wetherald approach. But almost universally, when they try to explain it, they all use the purely radiative approach, which is incorrect, misleading, contrary to observation, and results in a variety of inconsistencies when people try to plug real atmospheric physics into a bad model. It is actually internally consistent, and it would happen like that if convection could somehow be prevented, but it isn’t how the real atmosphere works.”
Climatologists don’t have a consistent explanation to support the catastrophe theory. Now THAT would have been a good point for Nurse to have addressed if he hadn’t been so occupied in trying to discredit dissent.
Then there was the irony of Nurse’s starry-eyed visit to the RS archives, seeing some of the works of his science heroes. But many of these people were dissenters of their day – many of them never received recognition in their own lifetime. So what the hell did Nurse think he was doing when he attacked modern-day dissent and defended his assumed consensus.
Well done Christopher Booker – we need you to speak out on these things.
And to the the folks of WUWT – please show your support to James Delingpole. In one respect, James has arrived through this programme (that’s why I think the smear tactic has backfired). But James will be the UK whipping boy for the climate extremists and that’s not going to be easy.
[snip– stop using the D word to label individuals – keep it up and you’ll be banned – Anthony]