Sunday was speaker orientation and the evening reception/dinner. I met up with Willis Eschencbach, watched and listened to him play the piano in the lobby. I took some photos with my cellphone camera, but they turned out badly. Willis and I had an interesting talk with Gary Sharp about Tuna acting as ARGO buoys.
Apparently the Tuna have a daily habit of feeding near the surface, then diving deep, repeating the process later in the day. Just like the ARGO buoys dive then float to the surface, so do the Tuna.
Somebody (and I don’t recall who) is fitting Tuna with temperature loggers that take a measurement every 20 seconds. Gary says that prelim tunatemp data isn’t showing different than ARGO.
That prompted me to recall a old TV jingle (being in TV for 25 years my head is full of them) that some readers may remember but I added a twist when I recited it at the table with a musical lilt.
Ask any Tuna you happen to see, where’s the global warming? It’s not in the sea!
I thought Willis might need resuscitation he was laughing so hard.
I had an afternoon meeting where I saw some extraordinary data cleaning and homogenization methods applied to surface temperature data to clean up the train wreck that it is now. It was quite impressive and far better than anything I’ve seen from NOAA or NASA. It makes their QC look like, well, Tuna salad. Or maybe a PBJ sandwich.
I met many people, including Donna Laframboise of Toronto who runs “no Frakking Consensus“who seems much younger in person than shown in her photo. I met with E.M. Smith (Chiefio) and Verity Jones (Digging in the Clay) also, and sat with them along with Joe D’aleo at the dinner reception.
Steve McIntyre gave his keynote presentation on the “trick” at dinner, along with Apollo 17 astronaut and Geologist Dr. Harrison Schmitt who talked about his views on current science. Both were well received. It was carried on live video streaming. PJTV is providing live video coverage (streaming and otherwise) at the PJTV CLIMATEGATE 2010 MICROSITE.
Bob Carter gave me his new book to read Climate: the Counter Consensus.
I gave a couple of interviews today. The interview I had in the evening after the keynote dinner with an independent crew working for BBC on some documentary on “The Skeptics” was unscheduled. They caught me in the grand hall asking if it could do an interview. It started out pleasant enough, but soon deteriorated. They had no organization at all and had no idea where to shoot it. They suggested we shoot the interview in my room, because they wanted to have me set in front of my computer. I thought that was more than a bit forward and suggested the foyer, we got there, setup and then after starting decided they didn’t like the setting. They they suggested that we go to the media room (which they apparently just discovered) so they tore down and went there.
After a couple of false starts the questions started coming. I started to wonder where they were going with this, and when they started asking about what I thought about Dr. Phil Jones “wanting to commit suicide” I realized that it wasn’t going to be factual, but more emotionally spun. I told them flat out that question and what went on in Dr. Jones mind/intent wasn’t something I could or would comment on since I have no information beyond the press report.
These two independent filmakers were just kids, early 20’s and were struggling to come up with questions. They kept trying to get me to use the word “fraud” as applied to Dr. Jones. There were about five attempts to do so in questions, asking essentially the same question over and over again in different ways.
They also asked why climate skeptics are so “angry” and why there are so many nasty comments on forums. I pointed out that they should visit some of the entertainment forums where people talk about celebrities like Britney Spears etc if they wanted to see some real vitriols, and that nasty comments are a part of the blogosphere, particularly when anonymous commenting is involved. Alarmists make a lot of nasty comments. Look up dhoghaza and Joe Romm.
The capper came at the end when they asked me to sign a release form. I was shocked, because standard procedure is to have the interviewee look over and sign the release form before the interview.
Reading it was like reading no other release form I’ve ever seen. It had a clause that said “gives us the right to use your content however we see fit” which concerned me because usually an interview for a documentary is limited to that venue. For all I know they may put me on a political comedy show.
Then there was something I’ve never encountered in all my years of television. An oath of “honesty and factual accuracy” was in the release. While I certainly thought I answered honestly and factually, this clause concerned me. When somebody interviews me on a contentious subject like climate, I’m giving my opinion. Opinions are almost always disputed. I was sure mine would be. To have such a clause connected to one’s opinion is just insane because then someone can hold up anything and say “but scientific consensus says..etc…etc…so Mr. Watts lied and violated his contractual oath in the release form”. It’s not a court of law, it’s an interview. Jeez Louise!
The release was obviously written by amateurs, and I refused to sign it. They then admitted that “it’s being revised to ‘simplify it’ and ‘could we send you a revision?’. I said I’d look at it, gave them my card with email address, told them that I thought they had the process backwards and that I was unhappy with being confronted with flawed legal language after giving a good faith interview, and left.
My impression is that whoever hired these two kids for the BBC is in for a peck of trouble down the road. I doubt the documentary on skeptics will be little more than a slam job. We’ll see if they try to use me even though I have NOT signed the release.
That’s an hour of my life I’ll never get back.
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Thanks for the heads-up – we need to his the BBC hard if and when your interview, or any comments by BBC personnel traceable to it, show up.
“I realized that it wasn’t going to be factual, but more emotionally spun.”
Which is the problem with the entire issue. Here is what I believe I have been able to learn in my years on this planet:
People tend to have groups that they admire and wish to identify as being a member of. One way they sort out who is and who is not a member of their desired affinity group and how they signify their own affinity are positions on certain issues and possibly even certain buzzwords used in a certain context. Now this has little to do with actual critical thinking. It isn’t a position arrived at through independent research and analysis. It is more about learning an argument and all of its proper buzzwords by rote.
So one wishes to identify with a certain group of kewl kids and repeats their line on various issues. They identify “the opposition” in the same way.
Enter the news organization. The purpose of the news organization is basically to attract eyeballs to advertisement. It gains them eyeballs if they can create a controversy. The more emotional the controversy the better as it tends to keep viewers coming back for more (re: Greta Van Sustern’s “all Aruba all the time”). They are going to attempt to make a caricature of an argument and present the most extreme viewpoints they can find to create the greatest possible contrast. It has little to do with information, it has more to do with rousing emotion and creating controversy.
Most people don’t have time to dig through an issue and learn enough about it to really come to an informed opinion. They simply look to who they think are the “kewl kids” or the “good guys”, see what their position is on the issue, and adopt it themselves. This causes all sorts of problems when politics becomes involved. Now people adopt a position as a matter of faith in their political beliefs and no argument of logic can overturn a position of faith. It also raises problems with people who DO look at issues and learn about them. One could find themselves concluding that one political side has issue A correct but the other political side has issue B correct. This results in one becoming alienated by people on BOTH sides. This is because it doesn’t matter how many issues you agree with someone on, you are not “with” them if you disagree on even one and adopt the “other side’s” position on it.
What an interesting study people are!
The BBC’s adherence to the parallel universe that is AGW is steadfast; an example may be seen tonight on BBC2 “Springwatch” at 8pm. Chris Packham, the acolyte sans pareil of CCAGW intones breathlessly that “anyone who doubts need only look to nature for proof that mankind’s impact is a very real, complicated and urgent issue.”
Meanwhile, back in the real world of agriculture and commerce, Royal Horticultural Society growers for the Chelsea Flower Show which starts next Monday, have been obliged to move up to 750 varieties back into greenhouses and polytunnels, with one exhibitor observing that this was his 45 show and that this was the most difficult with everything three weeks behind and that nothing had had a chance to grow on.
In the letters section a writer bemoaned the lack of swifts this year which usually arrive in her vicinity around the 6th May.
Yes, we look to nature; and nature, incredulous of the AGW message, fails to feel the balmy winds so typical of R. Gates’s and the BBC’s warming arctic.
The BBC always have young useful idiots running around with cameras. They did it to me many years ago, put me on Panorama and made me look like I was narrating the programme because of the way they edited it when in fact I was just a passer-by who answered some questions and gave an opinion. They didn’t even ask my permission.
Thanks for the diary update Mr Watts, it is always good to get information in live time.
As for the BBC , just be thankful you aren’t an Israeli because they don’t like them much either.
That’s the BBC now! We have a saying here that Lord Reith (founder of the BBC) turns in his grave whenever the BBC do a piece on global warming. I once joked to Fred Singer of SEPP that Lord Reith is spinning so much in his grave now, that someone could attach a coil of wire to him and stick a magnet under his coffin – and we could generate CO2-less electricity out of him – and Fred Singer posted it on his website! I’m afraid the BBC is a shadow of its former self. There are some good bits left, but really not much. Despite the fact that it should be secular, we have to put up with daily ‘godspots’ on the two most popular radio channels. Even someone within the BBC recently quoted that it had been completely taken over by Christian Lesbians – not that there’s anything wrong with lesbians…
Re tuna temp logging: the AWG/PETA crowd will say they only want tunas with the good taste not to hang around with the sceptic crowd. Otherwise they will be Star-Crossed tunas.
The BBC’s one-sided coverage of climate issues is regularly highlighted on the ‘Biased BBC’ blog:
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/
I’m so glad the internet is making “journalists” obsolete in large part. Too many unqualified, unskilled, and politicized people now occupy the field. It may be hard to find the truth with competing blogs and websites, but the standard media have lost any credibility they once held. Any well-reasoned, fact-supported/documented argument is likely to be more correct than the fluff we get in print.
Sounds like the media crew were just freelancers taking a chance on selling something to the BBC on spec. I wouldn’t be surprised if the BBC has actually never heard of them.
A few of us were ambushed by the BBC at the first Heartland conference in New York. They led us to believe they were covering the conference. In fact they were doing a program ridiculing skeptics and their views. Complaints to Ofcom, the agency responsible for dealing with such problems, did a whitewash but that is the pattern of all UK investigations of climate science and media coverage.
When I read these BBC (or would-be BBC) experiences, it may be a good idea to first find out whether the filmmakers are competent and will be satisfied with the decent rules that one assumes, and if there are reasons to think that the answer could be No, just reject them.
Too bad that such people can’t be forced to make another chicken-of-the-sea commercial rather than propagandist soap operas that make them feel as powerful brown or green shirts.
Anybody else have problems with the live streaming? It worked fine last night and this morning, they never streamed Pat Michaels speech like they said, instead they keep rerunning some loop video. Why can’t PJTV just live cast a certain session of the conference all day?
Anthony, I am disappointed with Steve M’s position about not questioning government’s ability to implement policy as if they can never be challenged. If this a standard view in Canada it is no wonder they let government role all over them. This makes me slightly concerned about Steve’s rationality to all this. His stance on not calling fraud, fraud because of academic precedence is unacceptable? Since when are academics above the law? Most of his explanation on his reasoning came off like doublespeak and I was disappointed to hear it. Don’t get me wrong I respect his professionalism but trying to explain why he does not consider it fraud or rather why it should not matter sounds like excuses. This sort of position is killing us and the reason why he received a standing ovation before the speech and not after. No one wants a witch hunt but Mann and those involved deserve whatever criminal charges that can be brought against them. If the policy stakes were not this high, I would understand leniency but this is not some minor academic dispute.
If what is happening below the surface in the equatorial Pacific is any indication of what will happen at the surface, I think that we are about to undergo a dramatic change. Here is the latest NOAA report. Take a look at page 11.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
Tuna Heat Island(THI) ???
Maybe some day they’ll do a documentary on “The Science”.
The BBC probably said – “if you can get some decent interviews with key people we may consider using it”
@Gary Young:
“I’m so glad the internet is making “journalists” obsolete in large part.”
The problem is that there are too many “journalists” and not enough reporters. The difference between a journalist and a reporter, in my opinion, is like that between a painter and a photographer.
People generally have a limited scope of information. We rely on news outlets as sort of the intelligence agency for the masses. Many of us expect the news media to be a mirror where information on events and issues beyond our horizon can be reflected back to us so we might come to our own conclusion. The problem comes in when the information is reported in an “activist” sense and it is skewed one way or another. This skewing can be extremely subtle. It also isn’t new to modern times. Ben Franklin was an absolute scoundrel when it came to “reporting” and would make up events and even craft forged “letters” to the editor (him) in order to influence opinion. Read his autobiography sometime.
The difference is that in the not so distant past, we had many more news outlets to choose from. San Francisco had over a dozen daily newspapers in 1900. It was our family tradition dating back several generations to take at least two newspapers … the Republican paper and the Democrat paper because my Dad said that in order to find out what was really going on, you had to “add the two together and divide by seven”. You don’t have that choice today. Most cities and even many regions are “one paper” towns. And even then, many papers are owned by the same publisher. The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and 15 other newspapers around the country and web sites such as about.com
The company that owns the San Francisco Chronicle (Hearst Corp.) also owns 15 other newspapers, 29 TV stations, 15 magazines, and several cable entertainment channels. So if you read the San Francisco Chronicle and Esquire magazine and watch ESPN you are getting a good part of your world view from the same source. Or the woman who reads the Houston Chronicle, reads Cosmo, and watches A&E … same thing.
What the Internet has done is reduced the cost of producing content for global consumption to something many more people can afford. It has returned us to an era where we have more perspectives to choose from. But it is still up to the consumer to separate the wheat from the chaff. There is a lot of junk out there and some real gems.
Anthony, I think you just received a not-so-gentle reminder–skepticism applies to all things: global warming alarmists who stand to make a profit, car salesmen telling you they’re on your side in the battle against the sales manager, and media news crews claiming they want to present your side of an argument.
I’ve been interviewed dozens of times by local, national, and foreign TV, makers of documentaries, etc, as part of my day job. I agree that the documentary you describe is most likely a producer hoping to sell the show the the BBC. There is a standard “release” form that they all use with small changes, but this one sounds far different. They all have the “in perpetuity” clause, though.
They all get the information wrong to some extent; it’s just life in the real world. I’ve never been the subject of an attack piece, but by far the least accurate – by a wide margin – was an international documentary (sorry, no names). We complained to the writer on that one. He apologized and explained that the editor changed it to make a better story. Wrong, but more interesting.
Tilo Reber says:
May 17, 2010 at 10:14 am
If what is happening below the surface in the equatorial Pacific is any indication of what will happen at the surface, I think that we are about to undergo a dramatic change. Here is the latest NOAA report. Take a look at page 11.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
—————
No, not really Tilo. The only thing “dramatic” is your characterization of a normal cooling phase after an El Nino. Here’s the “dramatic” summary from the same report:
A transition from El Niño to ENSO-neutral is underway.
• Sea surface temperatures are decreasing across much of the Pacific Ocean.
• Based on current observations and dynamical model forecasts, a transition to
ENSO-neutral conditions is expected by June 2010, which will continue into the
Northern Hemisphere summer 2010.
• Although many models predict ENSO-neutral conditions, there is a growing
possibility of La Niña developing during the second half of 2010.
In summary, nothing unusual or out of the ordinary for the end of an El Nino, and the potential beginning of a La Nina, though that’s far from certain.
Overall, ocean heat content globally remains high:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
Either the usual clowns and monkeys of the mainstream media circus, or simply clowns and monkeys attempting to join that circus. Always striving to please the ringmasters.
The BBC has been in the ranks of the alarmists since forever. This is the organisation that sat on the Climategate emails for several weeks before an exasperated whistleblower resorted to releasing them across the net.
I have also seen two BBC programs in which the host performed a highly original twist on Gore’s ‘Massive-Hockey-Stick-Graph-And-Crane’ propaganda stunt. One of these simply substituted a tall ladder in place of the crane. And the other program had its host (David Attenborough) walk across a massive HS graph laid out on the studio floor with an aerial camera looking down from way above as he made strides along the straight line and then up the curve of the HS.
Another BBC program I saw (it may have been the same one as with the ladder stunt) had a Michael Mann interview, in which MM defended his HS (this was after Steve Mac’s debunking) saying that several independent studies had verified the HS and therefore his HS was robust. And the host just nodded and smiled. And I had to run to the bathroom to be physically sick. It was common knowledge by then that random numbers fed into his model produced a HS, but the BBC clearly wasn’t interested in inconvenient truths like that.
So please, my American friends, don’t be in any doubt as to the BBC’s agenda.
Crosspatch said:
One could find themselves concluding that one political side has issue A correct but the other political side has issue B correct. This results in one becoming alienated by people on BOTH sides. This is because it doesn’t matter how many issues you agree with someone on, you are not “with” them if you disagree on even one and adopt the “other side’s” position on it.
Crosspatch, you are right. That’s politics. Divide and rule.
Most of all, of course, on issue C – climate. We divide, and they rule.
I think the proper response is to NEVER sign a “release” form.
If these puppies are so “weakkneed” as to need a “release” form, they deserve NOT to be doing “journalism”.
One word for them, similar to “Chickens of the Sea”…Kowards…