All six parts of the hour-long special aired during prime time Sunday night on Fox News featuring Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick are now online below. Both Phil Jones and Michael Mann ducked requests for interviews. I can perhaps understand Jones’ situation, since he has not been giving other interviews, but in Mann’s case he’s been on a media blitz writing op-eds for the Washington Post and giving interviews to dozens more. His bias, (or perhaps cowardice) is showing. If his work is so “robust”, why not defend himself in this venue?
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Climate and Cosmic Rays
This Cern lecture by Jasper Kirby as mentioned a couple of comments ago can also be found on there server below with better quality and speed.
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073/
If all the people who watched the Fox show could watch the above I think most would agree the Science is far from settled.
“Charles (11:21:45) :
Anyone think the greenpeace activist in segment 4 is worth listening to? I think most people can understand his argument”
Charles, that’s Björn Lomborg, a Dane. Go get his book “The sceptical environmentalist”. He’s collected mountains of data about economic development, resources, energy… and discusses the IPCC’s various scenarios in length. He’s collecting LOADS of flak here in Europe from the Greens but they can’t really shoot a hole into his logic.
I just started the first video (thanks for posting them, Anthony!) and I couldn’t help but notice that as they mentioned poor countries, they showed a kid on crutches (w/o a leg?). Uh… Since when did CO2 cripple people?!
RR (13:31:51) :
CNN ran “Planet in Peril” opposite the Fox News report. Hansen was on there saying they knew precisely what the climate sensitivity was BECAUSE of ice core measurements going back 700,000 years.
This means that approximately 300 people watched it.
image, if allowed:
http://tvbythenumbers.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/2009.12.17-8pm-demo-590×455.png
Pretty balanced reporting. When I watch news channels, it’s either Fox, or CNN. Fox leans right, and CNN leans left, but they both can provide some balance in their reporting (much better than other networks, anyway). A well done special IMO.
A nice succinct explanation of the issues surrounding AGW, very easy for the casual observer to understand. Unfortunately, I think we’ll be waiting a very long time to see something comparable on Australian television.
It’s very refreshing to see at least one mainstream news source finally reporting this. Maybe now the American people will begin to realize what a scam AGW is.
Mann is on a media blitz/surge. he is chasing his tale to gain some traction on credibility.
It won’t protect his tail.
Glenn Beck may be a little “out there”, but he has some excellent researchers and has covered the Climategate issue better than anyone else on tv. Fox leans conservative, especially compared to the other media, but they give liberals a chance to talk too. Lefties like Bob Beckel and Kirsten Powers are staples on primetime Fox News. I think it is the continual friction between ideologies that makes Fox more interesting than the usual liberal echo chamber of CBS, NBC, etc.
Outstanding coverage of the science, and I really like how they minimized the politics so that we can all have a much clearer view of the issue!
But one question nags…
Where was McIntyre and McKitrick?! Oh, yeah… DUH…. they had the first few minutes! As I said, such wonderful coverage of the science!
Sigh… Four out of ten. Very frustrating to watch, for the most part. Do this one over, FOX!
Sorry to pollute the forum with posts, but I have to change my mind. Upon further reflection, maybe if Mann wasn’t being such a MOUSE (and a wireless, infrared one, if you catch my meaning), they would have had more of the science on there, so as to balance both sides, as they did with the many areas that were covered.
So FOX did okay. I was hasty in my last assesment.
It is unfortunate that this subject matter is now fully politicized, and that Fox had to be the outlet. They did a very good and clean job of presenting the issues, and if they reached a bunch more folks than have been following this, that’s a good thing – many more than the other networks, though as some observed above, the battle lines are mostly drawn now.
Bjorn Lomborg was really good, presenting the economic cost/benefit argument, which makes the catastrophist case look juvenile.
What’s really shameful about the entire situation is outside of a couple short pieces on CNN, this is the only expose of the AGW debate/Climategate emails in the press.
The failure to follow and communicate the overt distortions, obfuscations, and likely actionable obstructions within this scientific field lays squarely at the feet of uneducated, inattentive journalists, whose very job it is to do so.
Smokey (10:39:18) :
I don’t watch TV, but I watch the ratings. There is a reason that Fox is rubbing the noses of the alphabets in the playground sand: most people don’t want to be spoon fed their propaganda, no matter how slick it’s done. And they want to see both sides of the issues.
Quite true Smokey. But also remember, Murdoch is an Australian, and if there is one thing Australians don’t like, it’s a lying Pom. And now the Torygraph has spilled the beans on Pachauri, all unholy hell will break loose.
It’s Rupert’s revenge.
Well, it’s MSM penetration, but they didn’t even touch on the interesting issues (natural climate variations) – telling (regarding orientation-bias).
Also: You don’t need to shout into a mic.
This “issue” just keeps getting uglier & uglier. People are catching on that something severely fishy is going on, but given where their focus is going with coverage from this angle, I would expect influential players (the ones who may have somehow managed to be naive) to now be concerned about how to get in on the profiteering.
The importance of understanding natural climate variations didn’t even seem to be on the host’s radar.
My overall impression is that political forces, of whichever orientation, aren’t concerned with removing barriers to truth — no sense of urgency there – none whatsoever. In other words, we can expect ongoing instability due to the nature of the framing being thrust. Clearly, influential players – from whichever political camp – see opportunity in instability.
Instability is just going to compound problems [along with boom-bust bubble-blowers interest, for a corrupt few], so it is not a sensible option for most of us. Perhaps sensible minds will start prevailing whenever the dust settles; at least circumstances are becoming more conducive to their speaking out.
Hey look what the wikipedia (of all places!) has to say about this Mr. Strong who resides in Beijing (of all places!):
—
2005 Oil-for-Food scandal and hiring practice criticisms
In 2005, during investigations into the U.N.’s Oil-for-Food Programme, evidence procured by federal investigators and the U.N.-authorized inquiry of Paul Volcker showed that in 1997, while working for Annan, Strong had endorsed a check for $988,885, made out to “Mr. M. Strong,” issued by a Jordanian bank. It was reported that the check was hand-delivered to Mr. Strong by a South Korean businessman, Tongsun Park, who in 2006 was convicted in New York federal court of conspiring to bribe U.N. officials to rig Oil-for-Food in favor of Saddam Hussein. During the inquiry, Strong stepped down from his U.N. post, stating that he would “sideline himself until the cloud was removed”. Since then Strong has not returned to his native Canada, and now lives in Beijing.[14]
Strong was the UN’s envoy to North Korea until July 2005. According to Associated Press his contract was not renewed “amid questions about his connection to a suspect in the UN oil-for-food scandal”, Tongsun Park, as well as due to criticism that he gave his step-daughter a job at the UN contrary to UN staff regulations against hiring immediate family
—–
I guess you just don’t get up the ladder at the UN if you’re having the smallest honest bone in your body.
Down with the Carbo-Phobes
I watched the FOX show after being alerted to it here. McIntyre is much too circumspect. McKittrick and Lomborg (although the latter is a AGW believer) are much tougher critics. Folks, we are up against people who don’t believe it wrong to lie through their teeth to publicize what they think (or perhaps have a vested interest in believing) is happening.
We’ve got to get tougher and we’ve got to get more plain-spoken. Can someone start putting these often far too complicated issues (witness Dr. Spencer’s recent post) into something that resembles a convincing argument that can be understood – or at least grasped – by the vast majority of people who have a high school diploma or a BA? Lord Monckton is one of the better ones at doing this, but we have to get far better at making the What – So What argument (Willis, here, has done some good stuff that fits in the category).
I’m not at all saying we need to lie or shade things, but let’s quit being dilettantes. For example, are we convinced that those several independent geochemical studies that show Earth’s CO2 content in the atmosphere to have been 10-20 times that of today to be true – with no ill effect on the earth (life burgeoned in that time)? Do we believe that the Earth may have been 8-10 or more degrees (C) colder just a few thousand years ago? Steve M. equivocated on the fact of global warming, particularly as to whether humans are affecting it. The simple answer – and true – is yes it has warmed enormously since the last glaciation, most of which time humans could have had little or no effect. Even if today we do have some effect, it has to be at the margin, and we’re so far inside the envelope that the Earth has exhibited over the last half billion years there can be almost no reasonable fear that we’re heading for an irreversible disaster. And so on and on.
Meanwhile the proponents of the disaster scenario have no compunctions against telling us a disaster on the scale of the end of the Cretaceous is about to be visited on us (from my point of view, due to their proposed solutions).
Anyhow, pardon my rant, but we had better become better at stating our beliefs and making accessible our science, or they will win.
Jim F. (geologist)
As a regular critic of Fox News I will only say this: pretty good. It was sober, it was professional, it was understandable and palatable for a lot of people in the middle. McIntyre is still a little too cautious. McKittrick and Lomborg are very effective. The Fox journalists could have been a hair tougher.
Another step towards falsifying CAGW.
More of that, please.
Like some other commenters, FOX news isn’t exactly a great source for this show. But given the current state of the media, it’s not surprising.
I’m on the fence here since I think warming is probably occurring but I don’t know how bad it will be. Like Steve McIntyre said.
But why can’t any legislative proposals to cut CO2 emissions simply be made condition on more confirming scientific evidence for AGW from a neutral source. Probably there is no such thing as a neutral scientific source but at least if the notion of conditional funding were written into any agreement, it would provide some “exit strategy” in case the world cools, or new evidence is brought to light that shows the whole thing was hopelessly distorted etc.
I’m ignorant of the details of the various agreements but it would be somewhat reassuring if some conditional element were built-into it. Who would want to be pouring trillions of taxpayer money at this “problem’ just as warming stops.
Don Keiller (09:00:31) : or anyone:
What could be an explanation, for laymen, of the stratosphere warming trend, based on a non-AGW theorry? Thanks.
“If his work is so “robust”, why not defend himself in this venue??
Turn over a rock, and watch how quickly all the critters that live under it scurry to get out of the light.
Jim F (17:00:36): “. . .we had better become better at stating our beliefs and making accessible our science, or they will win.”
Exactly right. To repeat: I’ll bet Anthony would be a terrific spokesman, as an expert who is also media-savvy.
Re the Fox broadcast: Needed more conclusive, challenging science: “Has there really been any global warming since 1900? The surface stations say, ‘Maybe not!'” “Is CO2 really a problem? Some scientists say, ‘Not at all!”
Call me, Fox; I’ll write it for you.
No accident it was Brett Baer who hosted. Fox News Channel is to some degree tabloid news, and their personality-driven shows are all opinion. But to my mind Brett Baer’s Special Report (6-7 PM Eastern) is the most solid (and objective) evening news broadcast on the air. Tune in and see if you don’t agree.
/Mr Lynn
Why are the mods allowing OT posts through? I’m talking about the ones where the poster says “This is OT, but…” There’s a thread for that…
I just wish Fox News could find a reporter (or a producer) who knew the difference between “climatic” and “climactic”! It was a pretty serious show, but I kept giggling about the climaxes. . .