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.
I believe in global cooling, I don’t believe in man-made global cooling.
How can I make this any clearer to people. It’s the way you say it. It’s a psychological mind trick they use to brainwash people.
Try to use these complete sentences and correct them when they use the words climate change and global warming out of context.
TP (08:43:36) :
“I don’t agree with Watson’s views, and it was wrong to insult Morano, but jeez!! Morano makes me cringe. “….
I would like to agree, however it has taken the “conservatives” too long to develop this effective counterpunch attitude and approach to the elitist, sniping, demeaning and rude approach that “liberals” perfected and have been using since the the early 1900’s.
It is unfortunate that this must be the evolution in social intercourse (and it won’t be exclusively) however, it is necessary for the “conservatives” to use in order to prove to those moderates who are persuaded by such characteristics and to inspire activity in some otherwise uninterested “conservatives”.
As far as impressing the rest of the world – it should always be the hope that the facts of the argument would do mostly do that. It seems that their “polite decorum” has gotten them into deeper troubles more often than a US “unrefined” character has.
I prefer to keep the guns loaded, to actually be used when necessary, and to awaken those who would otherwise be lulled into inattention during otherwise historically impacting events. There is too much at stake here for politeness. I have not problem with impressing the world that we are angry about this grand and still possibly successful attack upon our liberties and our dignity as well as upon science.
“Rude” behavior during more petty confrontations is a totally different matter and may be completely unsupportable. Frankly, the smugness (especially unjustified) of UEA’s A. Watson is offensive enough to me to commend Marc for his restraint.
I would be skeptical of the impartiality of any government involvement in digging into AGW research. The current government of the UK has a great deal invested in the current conclusions of places like CRU and I doubt they are keen on finding out that it is wrong.
They have a lot of political incentive to come to a “move along, nothing to see” conclusion.
Sorry to be pedantic but he said ‘what an arseh*le’ not ‘what an assh*le’
He is English after all. I am not sure that arse in the the American lexicon!
Watching all this unfold is like watching the McCarthy trials, but knowing that McCarthy is a communist!!!
shocking!
What percentage of the previous global warming was man-made? We have global cooling now. Can you give me a percentage range that can be proven scientifically and what percentage was from natural causes. To say I feel the previous global warming is man’s fault is not good enough.
Dave B (09:03:04) :
someone needs to take Morano to one side . . .
Would you like Ben Santer to take him to a dark alley and exercise sound AGW scientific principles on him?
Me: “it’s to do with rights.”
Malaga View (10:31:44) :
“For their own in-house productions for which they hold the copyright?
Doesn’t seem to stop BBC World Service [to name just one]…
Doesn’t seem to stop the BBC trying to sell their own programs globally…”
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Their own in-house productions, as you say, might be sold abroad and the easy availability of of them free on the net would make those sales less valuable and/or impossible.
The BBC may own the copyright to a particular programme but if it was intended only for short-term domestic viewing then the payments for elements WITHIN the programme – music, outside film, photographs etc, which were NOT BBC copyright will have been bought for less because of that limited use. It would cost more to make such a programme internationally available and for little or no benefit normally. It’s only on such relatively rare occasions as this that people from elsewhere are that interested anyway.
The BBC World Service is produced, and rights cleared, specifically for international listening – the clue is in the name.
I repeat, virtually every mainstream TV station worldwide, commercial or otherwise, will have similar restrictions on international viewings and for the same reasons.
There are enough real conspiracies in the world without making up new, imaginary – easily refuted – ones. It just makes trying to expose the real conspiracies more difficult.
There is 250 million tones of water on Earth for every man, woman, and child on the planet. That would be the volume of roughly 90,711 olympic size simming pools each.
Based on the performance of their stars(?), I’d guess the waiting line of brilliant young minds striving to enter the University of East Anglia is about as long as the line waiting to fly on the Concorde.
Richard Lawson,
Lexicon? After all this I believe we need a Climaxicon. ;o)
I believe in climate change, I don’t believe in man-made climate change.
I believe in global warming, I don’t believe in man-made global warming.
I believe in global cooling, I don’t believe in man-made global cooling.
How can I make this any clearer to people. It’s the way you say it. It’s a psychological mind trick they use to brainwash people.
Try to use these complete sentences and correct them when they use the words climate change and global warming out of context.
What percentage of the previous global warming was man-made? We have global cooling now. Can you give me a percentage range that can be proven scientifically and what percentage was from natural causes? To say I feel the previous global warming is man’s fault is not good enough.
There is 250 million tones of water on Earth for every man, woman, and child on the planet. That would be the volume of roughly 90,711 Olympic size swimming pools each.
To think that puny little you has any even temporary influence on this volume of water, I seriously suggest you have your head examined.
Fairly sure he said ‘ass’.
Just shows the decline in literacy amongst today’s academics.
Completely wrong etymology.
2009 December 5 Plato Says permalink
Christopher Booker wades in again
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6738111/Climategate-reveals-the-most-influential-tree-in-the-world.html
“Coming to light in recent days has been one of the most extraordinary scientific detective stories of our time, bizarrely centred on a single tree in Siberia dubbed “the most influential tree in the world”. On this astonishing tale, it is no exaggeration to say, could hang in considerable part the future shape of our civilisation…”
Human perception is a marvelous thing. Morano is described as behaving “churlishly”, but having just watched the thing through a couple of times I’d be willing to wager that if you actually sat down and put a stopwatch on it, between Watson and the moderator, he was talked over or interrupted about 5 times more than Watson was. After Morano’s question regarding statements from a number alarmist spokesmen about the seriousness of the revelations in the leaked materials, Watson’s compelling rejoinder was that he didn’t agree with them, with little elaboration to justify his lack of agreement. This after declaring that he was unfamiliar with the most damning emails which discussed suppressing FOI info and contrary science. His parting retort seems to be a prime example of that well known psychological phenomenon called projection.
Dave Wendt – Morano barely got to complete a sentence, his manner was over-bearing teenager but he hardly got a look in face-time wise.
Prf Watson came over as a total pillock – superior, sneering [that eye rolling was just so obviously saying ‘you are a cretin’], smug and then wow so rude.
I’ve never seen *anyone* do that on Newsnight – complete no no. Watson was very lucky that Jeremy Paxman wasn’t on shift – he’d have dismembered him.
Interesting observation from Bishophill about the stance of the Royal Society compared with the American Physical Society
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/12/5/more-cracks-in-the-facade.html
In the clip provided with the article Morano comes across as brash and disruptive, and it looks like he’s trying to bully Watson. In short it makes Morano look like an arsehole. However, if you watch the full interview a very different picture emerges. The interviewer shows bias in letting Watson ramble on, and repeatedly cuts across Morano. The poor guy is just trying to get a word in edgeways.
The quickest and fastest way to make someone truly angry is to be right. This is especially true when a person has a long-standing belief.
This is more like how they think LOL
[I agree, but your comment doesn’t contribute to the discussion. ~ ctm]
prime minister Gordon Brown has publicly categorised all climate sceptics as “flat earthers”!
Bob Dylan song adopted by Copenhagen climate summit
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8396803.stm
I am a psychologist by education. I study the interchange and admit I do not like Morano’s stuyle. I will at the same time defend his style. He was interrupting too much and a little too raised in the voice. This actually worked to “Push Watsons buttons” and it gets a name calling reaction. Watson is defensive and pushing the buttons will make the Mannipulators erupt.
Watson is both in denial and in a corner. cornered people often lash out and act irrationally. While Watson accuses of character assination, Prof Watson actually can’t address how the e-mails are a confession of bad and pathetic character.
About the only Watson has going for him is Moral and intelllectual superiority./ That is exactly what has crumbled.
Cheaters and crooks have moral inferiority. They will have to rebuild trust and character.