Viewers won’t remember but one thing about this interview: that a UEA scientist called a skeptic an “assh*le” on live television. It reveals just how rattled they are there at UEA/CRU.
NOTE: Updated to the full length version which was put online about 5 hours after this story was first posted – better video quality in addition to the full context of the interview – readers may wish to watch a second time. Thanks to WUWT commenter “adamskirving” – Anthony
Professor Andrew Watson (whose emails are in the Climategate emails) also adds a nice touch when he rolls his eyes, see if you can spot it.
Marc Morano explains:
A professor who is accusing global warming skeptics of engaging in “tabloid-style character assassination” of scientists, called an American climate skeptic “an assh*le” on the December 4, 2009 live broadcast of BBC’s Newsnight program.
“What an assh*le!” declared Professor Watson at the end of the contentious debate with Climate Depot’s executive editor Marc Morano. A clearly agitated Watson had earlier shouted to Morano “will you shut up.”
Video of BBC “Asshole” clip is here. (short) and here (full length – best quality)
Full one-on-one BBC debate segment between Prof. Watson and Climate Depot’s Morano is here in two parts.
The remark was broadcast live on BBC and prompted an on-air apology to viewers from the BBC later in the program for the offensive language.
Watson (Email: a.watson@uea.ac.uk) is a professor at the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, which was the source of the disclosed files. Watson’s emails appear in the hacked Climategate files.
During the live debate, Morano challenged Professor Watson for being in “denial” over the importance of Climategate and noted that “you have to feel sorry for Professor Watson.”
“[Watson’s] colleague, [Professor] Mike Hulme at the University of East Anglia is saying this is authoritarian science, he is suggesting the [UN] IPCC should be disbanded based on what Climategate reveals,” Morano said.
“[UK environmentalist] George Monbiot is saying many of his friend in the environmental and the climate fear promoting business — as Professor Watson is part of — are in denial. You have to feel sorry for Professor Watson in many ways here,” Morano explained.
A clearly agitated Watson called Morano his “psychic colleague” and blurted out “Will you shut up just a second!?”
Morano summed up his views on what ClimateGate reveals during the debate. “It exposes the manufactured consensus. Your fellow colleagues are saying this,” Morano said to Watson.
Morano also noted that President “Obama is probably attending [the UN Conference] because they are circling the wagons because of the magnitude of this scandal.” (See: ‘Welcome to the delayers’: Obama’s ‘half-hearted climate efforts’ welcomed by skeptics – Nov.17, 2009)
“You have UN scientists turning on UN scientists. This is the upper echelon of the UN and it has been exposed as the best science that politics and activism can manufacture. Prof. Watson’s whole argument is ‘trust me, take my word for it,’” Morano added.
Professor Phil Jones, Watson’s colleague, has temporally stepped down pending an investigation into the Climategate scandal, which many observers say exposes data manipulation, suppression of peer-review process, blacklisting, data destruction, willful violation of Freedom of Information Act requests. [Editor’s Note: Climate Depot’s Morano, who BBC described as “one of America’s leading climate change skeptics,” is also cited in the released Climategate files. On July 23, 2009, AP reporter Seth Borenstein asked the Climategate scientist about a “a paper in JGR (Journal of Geophysical Research) today that Marc Morano is hyping wildly.” Penn State Professor Michael Mann (who is now under investigation) apparently wrote back to Borenstein: “The aptly named Marc ‘Morano’ has fallen for it!”]
Professor Andrew Watson of the University of East Anglia, the University at the center of the Climategate controversy, has come to the defense of his colleagues this week and is claiming that the whole email and data release is much ado about nothing.
But other scientists disagree. One of Watson’s colleagues at the University of East Anglia, Professor Mike Hulme, declared Climategate reveals climate science had become ‘too partisan, too centralized.” Hulme, a climate scientist who was listed as “the 10th most cited author in the world in the field of climate change, does not mince words on the magnitude of the scandal.
Hulme has even suggested that the UN IPCC has run its course. ”
“It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures,” Hulme wrote on November 27, 2009.
“It is also possible that the institutional innovation that has been the [UN] I.P.C.C. has run its course. “The I.P.C.C. itself, through its structural tendency to politicize climate change science, has perhaps helped to foster a more authoritarian and exclusive form of knowledge production,” Hulme explained.
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Chris S (08:52:30) :
Don’t you just hate an academic who thinks he’s so superior to everyone else.
Yes. And both sides need to beware of that ilk.
Speak softly and carry a big stick.Don’t be a gobby yob it’s a big turn off.
Perhaps someone with legal knowledge could tell us…
Of course the avoiding FOI disclosure and the tax evasion look like criminal matters but wouldn’t the falsifying and misrepresentation of the data and other evidence be fraud? After all, much/most of the funding for climate research, including CRU is predicated on AGW being a threat. If the evidence of this “threat” is being knowing exaggerated/falsified then isn’t that fraud? If CRU or GISS or anyone else with political clout had come out and said that “the evidence points towards there being no threat” then much of the funding from hard-pressed governments would disappear overnight and corporate or individual donations would be spent elsewhere.
If governments, or other establishment donors, aren’t prepared to act, could an individual taxpayer or donor sue?
Just a thought.
Just watched the News on BBC1…talk about circling the wagons!
They are STILL pushing the line that the Climategate e-mails don’t alter the veracity of the science. Can you believe it?
Character assassination! They are just getting a very mild dose of their own RC and CRUT medicine – and they don’t like it.
tim heyes (08:59:13) :
@nofate
Of course he’s cancelling
He must be here in America because it snowed in the Deep South—Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and his home State of Tennessee. Michigan has record snow with more record snow in the forecast.
(Oh ya, I just remembered, that’s just weather–Al Gore is bringing us lots of ‘weather’) 🙂
Hello All,
Unfortunately, the MSM likes the verbal-jousting format that we saw on this so-called debate. I would appreciate a moderator who does not allow a Watson-type from fillibustering while not answering the question (Watson was not over-the-top, just annoying).
Morano accepted the rules and played the game–rules that he did not create.
Watson tried to play the all powerful professor who was lecturing to his class of illiterates.
Morano did not allow the fillibuster and the good professor got his feelings hurt!
Remember people, this was not a Harvard Debating Society event.
markm
Yertizz (09:21:41) :
Just watched the News on BBC1…talk about circling the wagons!
They are STILL pushing the line that the Climategate e-mails don’t alter the veracity of the science. Can you believe it?
We need to quickly get used to that because all they’ve got right now— and also they distract people by trying to get them to focus on a claim that the emails were ‘stolen’.
But we don’t know yet that they were stolen. And it is very likely they weren’t.
Malaga View
“…no wonder the BBC website tries to block internet viewers from outside of Lilliput ”
The mainstream TV network sites of most countries block viewers from outside their country – including the US TV Networks – it’s to do with rights.
oh brother.
“Arnold Schwarzenegger unveils dramatic climate change map which shows flooded San Francisco of the future ”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1232884/Arnold-Schwarzenegger-unveils-dramatic-climate-change-map-shows-flooded-San-Francisco-future.html
these warm-mongers have really bad timing! LOL
A piece on Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s comment that all sceptics are ‘Flat-earthers’ at the Telegragh website:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/
You know a politician is in deep trouble when he resorts to name-calling. This man is totally without credibility…and has been for 12 years!
Watson is clearly a lying a-hole, but, Morano was being a jerk too. I really like many people on this blog much more than Morano. Folks here have something more like a discussion.
Watson was correct that Morano really shouldn’t have been talking over him. It’s completely unecessary when you have such a winning hand. I also hate the American right wing talk-radio style of debate that Morano was using. I’m extremely concerned that this scandal will benefit unworthy right-wingers who happen to be right on one issue and wrong on so many more.
To be fair, the American did behave like an a*hole.
Marc Morano spent most of the ‘debate’ shouting. I think the prof got sick of debating with someone who sounded like a yob.
Wot Annabelle (08:10:05) said
Just saw this on Climate Audit comment
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11732
Pre “Adjusted” CRU Data & IPCC AGW Models Prove AGW Theory Is WRONG!
Must be a cultural thing. I’m an American and I didn’t find Morano particularly annoying (I only watched the short clip above, though). Watson, on the other hand, I had an overwhelming desire to slap stupid. For his manner alone.
I did have to chuckle earlier when I heard someone on Radio 4 call UEA “University of Easy Access” — and I think he was a warmist. Too funny.
photon without a Higgs (09:31:27) :
Agree entirely.
The warmist game now is about distraction.
They can squeal all they like about “stole” or leaked emails and keep harping on about how criminal it is, but i didnt hear the very same people make a sound when MP’s expenses were leaked!
Hypocrisy on a grand scale from them.
Ignore them and keep hammering the salient points.
I remember the story of one journalist (an old-timer) who was waiting to go onto a TV current affairs show. The researcher who he was with, assumed that the journalist would attack his, little-known, fellow interviewee who was apparently being set up as his “opponent”.
“It should be quite a battle”, said the researcher. “Really? I’ve got no idea what she’s going to say,” replied the journalist, “I might agree with her”. The researcher looked horrified.
Time I think for another RESIGNATION. Time to RESIGN Mr Watson. Do it now – before you are forced to resign.
Going on air and calling someone an a*hole is not the way you do damage control after your CRU department has been found guilty or fraud.
Dave B: Yes, Ross McKitrick came over very well on CH4 the other night, in the very brief periods we were allowed to hear from him. Jon Snow was very rude to him, interrupting him and giving far more time to the other (warmist) speaker.
photon without a Higgs….my question: “Can you believe it?” was rhetorical.
Believe me, if anyone knows how the BBC presents an absolutely biased line on climate change, I do. I have been trying for over 3 years to get straight answers from Director General Mark Thompson and BBC Trust Chairman Sir Michael Lyons.
Thus far all I have received is sophistyr and obfuscation, because they are in total denial about this subject.
I just watched the latest BBC report on climategate and once again there was an un-challenged member of the MET office telling us that there is unequivocal evidence of climate change. Temperatures are rising, sea level is rising, moisture levels are rising and glaciers are retreating!
Isn’t this a case of misdirection?
The atmosphere probably did warm up during the Twentieth Century (though maybe not by as much as is claimed, and the warming has stopped), sea level is rising (which has been the case since the last Ice Age), moisture levels have risen and glaciers are retreating (which is probably part of a longer term process), but that is not the point. Isn’t the issue, whether or not these changes are unprecedented or within the bounds of natural variability?
Isn’t that why the AGW movement has adopted as their champion this monstrous diagram known as the Hockey Stick?
And isn’t it the dubious methodology which has been employed to firstly create this diagram and then to defend it at all cost, that has been exposed in the climategate scandal?
This is what should be debated by the BBC, and if it sounds as though I’m angry it’s because I am..
…but at least I don’t go round calling people a…holes and threatening to beat the c..p out of them!!!!
Talking abour AH’s.
http://www.accuweather.com/news-weather-features.asp?#extremes
Sorry about my garbled post earlier – I should have had some coffee first . Yes , Morano came on a little too strong . However , after having seen countless interviews with warmists who employ the same tactic of shouting over dissenting opinions , this was a case of just desserts . I’m sure that most skeptics have felt completely frustrated in trying to get their points across to the true believers , regardless of how well those points were made .