You may recall that Finnish TV interviewed Steve McIntyre last month. They did a superb job with that. Now they have a new 3 part YouTube series out on Climategate, with English subtitles. It is well worth the watching.
A part that particularly struck me was: “They reveal an aggressive atmosphere, where the scientists consider dissenting colleagues as their enemies…”
Maybe just maybe, one of our other TV networks besides Fox will have the journalistic integrity to do a similar report. One can only hope one will, except for 60 Minutes, a program now in decay.
Part1
Parts 2 and 3 are below
Part 2
Part 3
ECM (21:20:36) :
60 Minutes has been “in decay” for at least two decades.
So what is its half-life, and has its significance become indistinguishable from background noise?
I think all 3 parts are an excellent combination of tons of facts and context.
An outstanding representation of “hide the decline”, the divergence problem with the logical conclusion, that all tree ring studies are dubious.
On top of that, russian and scandinavian data , easily falsifying CRU “added value” temperature records and even suggesting, that current temperatures are not higher than 1930s temperatures (though this data is only the tip of an iceberg) .
Greg (19:53:03) :
3×2:
“journalistic integrity” – means toeing the line of the controlling party and using that party’s press releases as news.
———————————————-
“The ruling class has the schools and press under its thumb.
This enables it to sway the emotions of the masses.”
~~Einstein
@ur momisugly Alvin (21:54:05) :
I was notified it was on and started watching about the middle of the Greenwashing riff. To be fair Hansen did mention about some people at East Anglia behaving badly, that also counts. Saying the science was still sound, and basically stating without saying that his own work was beyond reproach, that was expected. After all, he was there to sell his book.
I don’t think you need conspiracy theories or secret controlling entities.
Just a generation of lazy, bong smoking, tree huggers who happened to land jobs in the endless phloem that is all things green.
You get up in the morning, scan your in-box and your usual sources on the net for an interesting press release or two. Re-jig and inflate such that a google search wouldn’t immediately expose the source, mail it to your editor and in the finest traditions of investigative journalism go back to bed. What’s not to like?
Twenty foot sea rise by 2020 – you got it. Owls extinct by 2025 – no problem. An endless stream of eco-drivel that nobody will remember by 20:25 that evening let alone the year 2025.
Of course like all products that contain little in the way of added value, the good times can’t last forever and you wake up one morning to find that you have been replaced by software re-writes press releases to a standard template automatically. Oh hum back to writing prospective afternoon cable TV shows.
There is a huge industry built around creating and peddling arm waving eco-drivel. They are in too deep. Apart from the embarrassment of “apocalypse cancelled” and a lot of angry people realising that most of what they have been told is complete fantasy, would you really want to kill the goose that lays those golden eggs?
“journalistic integrity” I suggest it is an oxymoron most of the time. Another slant is
“Reporter’s are faced with the daily choice of painstakingly researching stories or writing whatever people tell them. Both approaches pay the same” Scott Adams.
Beside isn’t the MSM about entertainment in order to sell product. I have noted quite a number of commentators saying investigative journalism is dead. There is a system of PR firms who produce canned releases for the MSM to use. Personally I think they have lost it and now starting to wonder why people are going elsewhere. I look at less and less news TV and have stopped reading newspapers. This does not only apply to “Climate Change” my advice is look very closely what the MSM is saying about the economy.
I just love Lord Monckton! Here is another set of videos I recently found from over at ClimateGate.com. This is a 5 series video set from an CTS Television interview in Canada on the Michael Coren Show…filmed in Toronto. (scroll down to comment #3 to get all 5 embedded videos in a row):
http://www.climategate.com/lord-monckton-al-gore-debate-me
Good one. Let this be in other languages too
http://naija-konnect.com/hots-on-the-web/
Solar wind
speed: 271.8 km/sec
density: 1.0 protons/cm3
http://spaceweather.com/
I’m just looking at a news item on the girl guides on Channel 10 here in Australia – the introductory spiel talks about them fighting global warming.
I agree with 3×2, this thing runs deep and the green warmistas have got into every area with this religion. We have nightly lectures on TV about how the Great Barrier Reef is going to die unless we combat warming, although the reef is over 60 million years old according to some, and thus must have gone through extremes of temperature and it is still there.
Even though I am not anybody important, I have started writing (snail mail – emails are too easily ignored) to all parliamentarians asking for a Royal Commission into the Australian temperature stations, with a list of reference science websites and YouTube videos, in the hope that some word I say will resonate with someone.
Trends and crazes are strange things, no one seems to know where they start, but they can sweep the world.
It’s not enough to depend on others such as journalists, to direct our future. Each individual has the power to influence by contacting their representative, and talking to their friends and neighbours. I am also sending emails to my friends with resources for them to look at, and asking them to contact their representatives, whichever party they belong to.
Here we go, the TV news reports that a group of Australian Girl Guides attended the Copenhagen conference.
I admit I am a little surprised that posters here are so unclear as to how the MSM, public sector and academia have swallowed the AGW koolaid.
It doesn’t require conspiracy or material incentive. Just look at the educational background of those involved, the way that education has changed over the past 50 years, and the way the MSM has changed over 50 years.
Reporters are no longer anonymous fact-finders who gain their roles through cadetship and work their way up to expressing opinions in op-ed pages after 30 years of hard grind through minefields of cynicism.
Now they come from university Communications and Literature courses that drip feed them half-understood leftist philosophy and ideology, and within days of starting work they have a by-line and a photo in press. They come from an academic background that values political engagement above fact, and a cultural background that elevates subjective impression over validated science. Sit through any Comms or Cultural Theory course and you will see what I mean. I have a degree in Philosophy (among others) and the complete misrepresentation of most philosophic positions in these courses is mindboggling.
Rigour is only valued to the extent it is sophistry that supports the moral vanity of the accepted position. Engaging with maths, logic or hard science is avoided.
The general decline of hard disciplines and high expectations is clear to anyone working in an academic environment (at least in Oz). With it comes a plethora of soft options with ideology so ingrained it becomes conventional wisdom for entire generations of students.
There is also a high representation among public sector policy and project workers of people from similarly soft academic backgrounds. And they tend to be predisposed to wholeheartedly swallow conventional wisdom (so long as it is “morally pure”).
While we can lament the shoddy analysis and overwhelming credulity of the media, and the growing religious cult of the environment, it is really just a result of low educational standards and the elevation of “political engagement” as a measure of whether or not you are a moral person.
As soon as the New Left started its march through the institutions – universities, teachers’ education, public sector, media – a farce of AGW standards was completely predictable.
jamesafalk (23:55:03) :
Now they come from university Communications and Literature courses that drip feed them half-understood leftist philosophy and ideology, and within days of starting work they have a by-line and a photo in press. They come from an academic background that values political engagement above fact, and a cultural background that elevates subjective impression over validated science.
Like I said …. Just a generation of lazy, bong smoking, tree huggers who happened to land jobs in the endless phloem that is all things green.
:^)
It seemed to me, watching this show, that the Finnish scientists were less than happy about how all their hard work got trashed by Mann and others, including the IPCC.
I guess it just goes to show you that, if you step on people on your way up, you can’t expect them to hand you pillows when you fall.
I laughed when I heard “Hide the Decline” used as theme music in the show. There must be a teleconnection between Finland and Minnesota.
Such a clear and compelling indictment of those involved in Climategate. I’ll be on the look out leading up to spring, for comments from politicians and senior bureaucrats who may have advance notice of the outcome of the investigations – trying to position themselves on the right side of the findings.
I also agree with the appeal to broaden the scope of the IPCC to include space research. Maybe then it could fulfill it’s function of being the International Panel on Climate Change, rather than the International Panel on Carbon Control.
I am not a statistician, but looking at the rural temperature graphs gave what looked like a good correlation between North American temperatures and Russian/Finnish temperatures. 1930’s hotter than now.
The questions that arose for me was;
1. Are there enough rural Russian and Finnish weather stations to give an accurate, statistically sound temperature analysis? Without the Urban centres.
2. Is the weather station data available?
Cant we donate to a fund and bring a class action against these fraudsters?
Itd be payback for all the good scientists out there who have had to endure such a horrendous treatment at the hands of their so called “professional” colleagues.
@3×2
@jamesafalk
I very much agree, as I suffered the consequences of such an “education”, and I’m still trying to clean up the mess.
Another biggie is the difference between intellectual development and ethical development. Intellectually people can wax lyrical about saving the planet. But having the fortitude to do what’s necessary is another thing entirely. So greenies resort to blaming everyone else for not having the moral fortitude to do what’s necessary. This is not unlike Mugabe blaming the UK for its “imperialism” when Mugabe himself is a whole sackful worse than any imperialist system. But he sure can stand up and give a speech about it.
Best words I heard on the matter were, “saving the world begins with washing up the dinner plates with excellence”. If you don’t have the moral character to clean and tidy your own home with selfless care and hard work, then don’t even think about any grand (ego-gratifying) project.
I’m not exactly certain where to post this, but p gosselin posted this yesterday at C.A. before it was taken down for being OT. It is a “must-read” for anyone following this mess for the past few years and should be a must read for the team as well.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat
Stefan (06:09:16) :
@3×2
@jamesafalk
“…Best words I heard on the matter were, “saving the world begins with washing up the dinner plates with excellence”. ”
You have spoken a great truth.
The downfall of many high-minded Hippy communes in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s was due to big fights about who left the dirty coffee cup in the sink.
I was very depressed about the failure of communes back then, and wrote a long and boring poem that had a good couplet in it:
“A young poet always wishes
That his muses did the dishes.”
@James Baldwin Chamberlain
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat
As a layman I like that article very much. It presents impressions I already had or imagined about what goes on in science when it is progressing, and what might be lacking when it is stuck.
AGW defenders claim, “he’s not in the field”. As the article says, “They knew more about E. coli than anyone else, but that was what they knew”
AGW defenders say, “the science is settled!”. As the article says, “Belief, in other words, is a kind of blindness.”
AGW scientists say, “let’s hide the decline!”. As the article says, “People have to pick and choose what’s interesting and what’s not, but they often choose badly.”
The article recommends encouraging diversity, seeking out the ignorant, explaining things in simple terms, and being aware of the bias.
And not just diversity of blogs, but it was obvious long ago that the IPCC and climatology was “settled” on “the” science of one field. What did space researchers have to say? What about statisticians? What about geologists?
The AGW defenders always say, “so and so is not in the field”, sure, but your climatologist used statistics, didn’t he? Why doesn’t a statistician get to have a say on the field of statistics when it is used in climatology?? It is kinda embarrassing how obvious were their ploys to control things.
As the point is made in the film, the IPCC should open up to other fields, and then perhaps they can have one of those multi-disciplinary meetings which the article says is so illuminating. My wife works in the medical field and even she is always off at some multi-diciplinary meeting as part of the normal day job.
Joel Black said “I understand that both the Nature Publishing Group and Scientific American now belong to a private German publishing conglomerate, Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, . . . and their editorial boards have been vociferous in their defense of Jones, et al and CRU.”
When did the sale occur? I noticed an abrupt change after Nature published these important discoveries in 1970s and a news report on “The Demise of Established Dogmas on the Formation of the Solar System” in 1983:
“Mass fractionation and isotope anomalies in neon and xenon,” Nature 227 (1970) 1113-1116.
“Extinct radioactive nuclides and production of xenon isotopes in natural gas”, Nature 235 (1972) 150-152.
“Xenon in carbonaceous chondrites”, Nature 240 (1972) 99-101.
“Isotopes of tellurium, xenon and krypton in the Allende meteorite retain record of nucleosynthesis”, Nature 277 (1979) 615-620.
“Terrestial-type xenon in meteoritic troilite”, Nature 299 (1982) 807-810.
“The demise of established dogmas on the formation of the Solar System”, Nature 303 (1983) 286.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Perhaps I missed it somewhere (I don’t understand Suomi, I’m afraid) but on what date was this broadcast, and by what network in Finland?
I want to cite the damned thing. English-language ranscripts anywhere?
Thanks.
Tucci,
There is an english-language transcript in one of the comments on the same post at Climate Audit.
Mapou (19:50:00) :
3×2 (19:18:11) :
My take is as follows, this is a multi-dimensional problem, so it needs it’s threads to be teased apart.
Thread 1: The commercial news media (like any business) is intended to be a revenue generating machine for its owners. Media outlets that don’t earn money soon lose staff, or get sold off, or shut down. So the operators are very interested in making a profit. They have a single product to sell, which is advertising space. The value of that space is driven by the number of viewers who see it. – i.e. ratings. The goal of commercial news media is to attract and hold viewers. Scary stories sell, and the AGW meme has been an excellent scary story that has given for a relatively long time.
Thread 2: The commercial news media is dependent upon the appearance of “credibility” to attract and retain viewers. Having invested so much of their credibility in to the AGW story, it is almost impossible for them to now back off to the sceptic position without appearing to be gullible fools. – (Unless they do a “Huge Scandal” story, which would require overwhelming and easily presented evidence to allow them to sell the shift as doing investigative journalism to retain credibility).
Thread 3: The typical journalism student is an Arts/Humanities graduate and has been steeped in “Progressive Ideology” and is thus philosophically predisposed to believe the AGW meme (global crisis) as it supports movement towards global governance. These journalism students end up in the MSM.
Thread 4: Government news media is politicised to the progressive side of politics and will ignore anything that puts the current government in a bad light.
To sum up, the reasons why the MSM is unable to deal with climategate and AGW in an open, honest and inquiring way is because of the acquisition of profit, maintenance of credibility, & philosophical/political bias.
This however is only a strategy of the MSM to survive, and all strategies have weaknesses. The weakness of this strategy is that the internet provides another, uncontrolled (unmanaged), outlet of news. And that news is devastating the credibility of the MSM, which will shed viewers, and hurt profits. The MSM will shrink in popularity and influence due to it’s ineffective and inept handling of the AGW meme.
I will predict that those entities within the MSM that do the “Expose of the AGW Scandal” will be the ones to ultimately survive and prosper.
The AGW meme was killed at Copenhagen by China and India, and it will now only continue on momentum due to the financial and political vested interests, and the self validation of the die-hard true believers. In the end, the economic imperative of competition and survival will kill it off, as the AGW meme is essentially destructive and hence unsustainable in the long term.