Booker on BBC's Science Under Attack

“He who controls the past, controls the future” — George Orwell in 1984
What the warmist scientists are doing is no different than what Winston did (airbrushing out unpersons from news photos, etc.) in Orwell’s 1984. It was a fraud in his book and it is a fraud now.
But of course it furthered the cause of the party which made it justifiable.

Makes on wonder!!!! What about all those that aren’t properly trained in the correct field to study or comment on the climate science. It appears that It is only if your are in disagreement with the “consensus”.
Bill Derryberry

Cassandra King says:
January 29, 2011 at 9:42 pm
One can only hope. Goes double for the CBC, as well.

Again we see ill-educated politicians, many ignorant fools, professing “special knowledge” that is neither backed by facts or logic. An attempt to subject populations to a system of regulation that will stifle all scientific research and leave industry to Asia and other countries that realize this is nothing but nonsense.

Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
January 29, 2011 at 12:56 pm
frank verismo says:
January 28, 2011 at 10:48 pm
@RockyRoad:
This is what happens when a cult replaces science. The faster the MET and BBC are discredited the better.
Funny you should mention those two in the same sentence. Further to my previous post:
Head of the BBC’s pension fund: Peter Dunscombe
Head of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change: (wait for it . . . . ) Peter Dunscombe!
Does anyone else detect a pattern here?
====================================================
Yes, I do. It’s called manipulating the market.

I believe that there is a mixture of incorrect reasoning when attacking Nurse for his lack of credentials in climate science. Firstly, is it right to exclude someone simply because he has no formal training in the climate field? If so, this is a slippery slope for any skeptic as well who does not have formal qualifications in that field, including Booker. That is a two edged sword.
It is also raising the science of climate change as is practised by the CRU and the team, into a higher realm than it deserves. In fact, from what I have learned, in general, the so called climate science teaching at many universities right round the world is short on the science skills such as required by mathematicians or astrophysicists, but long on activism and politics.
One does not need a degree in anything to work out that there is something shonky going on with the thermometer placements conveniently being reduced in colder areas.
One also does not need a degree to read emails written in English language in particular the Harry Read Me file, which is full of comments telling everyone he has to make a lot of the figures up.
In fact, one does not need anything other than commensense, to be able to work out that if the theory is that the temperature will rise with increased C02, and it hasn’t, then the theory is wrong.
So why is Nurse backing the wrong science (as will eventually be shown)?
The answer is something for the psychology folk to ponder on in the future when the scam is finished, on their grants!

I’ve read in a couple of places now about data from 4 years being adjusted down and data from 2010 being adjusted up, but I haven’t seen actual figures.
Does anybody know where one can see these figures? I’d like to know how much was adjusted down/up.

But it was good to see Phil Jones back from his stint as curator of the Turin shroud…
Wasn’t it?
Pity about the purple shirt tho’.

I would like to remind Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, about the institution’s motto:

“The Royal Society’s motto ‘Nullius in verba’ roughly translates as ‘take nobody’s word for it‘. It is an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment.”

AGW’s forecasts are failing and yet we are told to abandon scepticism.

@Jennifer Hubbard, the article is in the print version of the Telegraph see here:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/01/back-to-nursery.html
for a picture of the page.

Horizon was once one of the great general science TV programmes of the UK. Now it is trash.
This latest eposide is truly disgraceful. Nurse harps on about the public not accepting the global warming catastrophe theory, and asks why that should be. But I cannot see how this programme is supposed to improve anything.
Horizon probably still keeps a reasonably highbrow audience, and I don’t think neutral observers would have been much impressed by the cringeworthy scenes of Jones explaining how he decided it was better not to show all of his data, or playing the victim card because he felt harassed by FOI requests.
Horizon was very quick to portray Jones as the victim of the FOI requests, without any background to how things got to where they did. There was no attempt to approach the people who were asking for information, or what had led them to go down the FOI route. That made this part very one-sided indeed.
Horizon tried a real stitch-up on James Delingpole – although I think it will have backfired.
At his blog, James explains how Nurse visited him for 3 hours to discuss climategate. Nurse tried to throw a curveball with a question on who to believe when you have cancer. James pointed out that it’s a bad analogy and insisted they stick to climategate. And out of 3 hours discussion together, what did Horizon choose to show? You guessed it – James appearing to refuse to answer the question.
The programme also shows James Delingpole admitting that he’s not a climate expert and doesn’t read the primary research literature. Also a clar attempt to discredit Delingpole.
This is a classic example of demanding higher standards from your opponents: there is no doubt that many public supporters of global warming catastrophe theory do not read the primary research literature, but will appear in the media to make their point. Did Nurse suggest that they should butt-out of the discussion because they are not experts? Nope – missed that one completely. It’s only dissenting non-experts who are to be questioned on their qualifications.
In fact most people feel entitled to have an opinion on many things. They may have their own insights on a topic, their own interests, and do their own examination of the issues, without feeling it necessary to go to the primary research literature. I’m sure Nurse is in exactly the same poisition on many issues.
On the point of reading the literature, Nurse failed to deal with the issue that the global warming catastrophe theory is so poorly defined that it cannot be explained. That’s a major part of the issue. The Horizon programme acknowledged the uncertainty in clouds. But you can go over to Judith Currie to see endless debate about fundamental points such as the role of feedback in sensitivity, questions like whether the “zero feedback sensitivity” has any physical meaning or is it just an abstract construct.
In early December, poster “Nullius in Verba” wrote this at Currie’s blog:
“A great deal of confusion is caused in this debate by the fact that there are two distinct explanations for the greenhouse effect: one based on that developed by Fourier, Tyndall, etc. which works for purely radiative atmospheres (i.e. no convection), and the radiative-convective explanation developed by Manabe and Wetherald …. Climate scientists do know how the basic greenhouse physics works, and they model it using the Manabe and Wetherald approach. But almost universally, when they try to explain it, they all use the purely radiative approach, which is incorrect, misleading, contrary to observation, and results in a variety of inconsistencies when people try to plug real atmospheric physics into a bad model. It is actually internally consistent, and it would happen like that if convection could somehow be prevented, but it isn’t how the real atmosphere works.”
Climatologists don’t have a consistent explanation to support the catastrophe theory. Now THAT would have been a good point for Nurse to have addressed if he hadn’t been so occupied in trying to discredit dissent.
Then there was the irony of Nurse’s starry-eyed visit to the RS archives, seeing some of the works of his science heroes. But many of these people were dissenters of their day – many of them never received recognition in their own lifetime. So what the hell did Nurse think he was doing when he attacked modern-day dissent and defended his assumed consensus.
Well done Christopher Booker – we need you to speak out on these things.
And to the the folks of WUWT – please show your support to James Delingpole. In one respect, James has arrived through this programme (that’s why I think the smear tactic has backfired). But James will be the UK whipping boy for the climate extremists and that’s not going to be easy.

Nobel Prize winner so what.
Some of them went on to be active nazis and if Al Gore can get it. Well?
The thing that I find base is that Nurse is the President of a learned institution and should he should therefore be above the fray, also I would have thought that they would have rules on professional conduct?

I wrote to the BBC about this. Only the second time I have been compelled to do so (the only other time was after that terrible experiment with the CO2 in a bottle).
Most of the points I raised have been covered by Booker and others on this thread but one of the false arguments has not been covered and it really got me annoyed because it sounded so reasonable.
Nurse asked Delingpole how he would react if a consultant told him that he had cancer and that the consultant and his colleagues agreed that a particular treatment was best for him. Would he not go along with that consensus. It was a difficult for Delingpole to argue against this as the question was put and of course the viewer was left to make the parallel with “consesus” in climate science.
However the question should have been put in this way. What if a consultant funded by a the world’s biggest drug company said that you had cancer and that the drug made by the same company was best for you. Consultants working for the suppliers, distributors and shareholders of that company all agreed with him. When pressed he would have to accept that there were other consultants who disagreed but they were not to be believed because they had not published in the journal owned by the same drug company.
I think I might ask for a second opinion!

vigilantfish says:
January 29, 2011 at 10:22 pm
Is this comment actually being published in the paper (as opposed to one of the Telegraph’s blogs)?
Yes, it’s in today’s printed Sunday Telegraph. Booker’s column appears every week in the printed version. He has done fantastic work, shining a pitiless light on both the wretched state of climate science and the equally wretched European Union.
Chris

Jordan says:
January 30, 2011 at 2:33 am
“Horizon was once one of the great general science TV programmes of the UK. Now it is trash.
This latest eposide is truly disgraceful.”
I agree. It showed two sceptics, Fred Singer and James Delingpole, and they both came over as very weak. Doubtless they recorded several hours of conversation with nurse, but they showed two brief pieces that were almost certainly selected to show them in the worst possible light.
Nurse’s analogy about the doctors was bad, but if I had been Delingpole I would be kicking myself. I would have said something like: “Yes, I would probably accept the doctor’s concensus because I have no reason to believe they have been cooking the books”. Simple. But instead Delingpole seemed stuck and tried to change the subject. So naturally that’s what they showed.
Thinking about it, I think this Horizon program is actually worse than Climate Wars, as it does seem to contain an outrageous lie (about human versus natural emissions). In Climate Wars the presenter actually showed evidence that supports the sceptical case, in particular UHI at Las Vegas.
Chris

This is typical of BBC science. They get an expert who does not know the subject under discussion, in this case an expert geneticist who has to discuss climatology, and browbeat the viewer. I do not know why I pay the licence fee for this rubbish.
Well done Mr Booker.

Nurse really should be ashamed of himself for getting involved in such a base BBC program, taking into account his position within the RS. I would only hope the decent members rise up and ask for his resignation.
A once famous and respected institution joining in with other institutions that have been taken over by politics and money!

This will defenitely not be maentioned by BBC or “The Office”!
Its a killer!!
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JPO4410.1?journalCode=phoc
The warming of the Atlantic until 98 is wiped out!! Its cooling faster than it was warming.

The problem with Mr Jones cs is mainly a psychological one . Once you start to manipulate the truth , science is included herein , and you are organising your mind in such a way that the manipulations are becoming settled , is this settled science ? ,
in your own mind , you are going to loose the ability to seperate facts from fiction .
To put it bluntly : You are going to believe in your own lies . And if then you wish to sacrifice human life for your ideas , you are doing what many did before you , acting like a criminal . Instead we should love each other , but does a global warming alarmist show real warmth ?

Piltdown Climate Man is once again paraded about as the new King Tut of Science.
The cheap gold leaf and costume jewelery of the Mask is coming apart, it’s painfully obvious and it really looks bad.
Didn’t anyone tell them that streaking is now relegated to nostalgia commercials?

addendum to
P Wilson says:
January 30, 2011 at 4:54 am
of course, he’s an expert in genetics (obviously a man of science in his field) . An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less in these days of specialist knowledge.

I wonder if Nurse would dare to put his consensus analogy to Prince Charles?

As a British Commonwealth citizen who has ‘right to remain’ status in the UK thanks to my Yorkshire-born Grandfather who emigrated to avoid starvation in the 19th century with many from his community to our former colony of New Zealand, I am hesitant to criticise the venerable institutions of the UK, but my reading of history tells me the Royal Society has ‘form’ and has usually opted for questionable ‘concensus’ formed by a few wealthy and aristocratic ‘scientific’ dilletantes rather than examining new discoveries with the proper rigor and scepticism that science demands. The Society and its leardership has frequently not behaved according to it’s own elegant motto and has often been to a willing tool of the establishment of any era, so history repeats itself.
But the BBC, which I was bought up to believe to be a model of fairness, elegantly phrased truth and honesty, is fair game for my criticisms of it, as I am forced to pay a considerable sum each year to support it. Every day, without exception, the great and egregious fraud of Man-made global warming (or whatever guise du joir it is presented in) is rolled out in the most reasonable tones, without even the feeblest attempt to achieve the oft-quoted ‘fairness’ and ‘balance’ the BBC trumpets.
The Met Office too is significant beneficiary of the Revenue and appears to see its obligations to the public as being of no moment or importance whatsoever; the fact that some of its more public employees have been lying to the public and attempting to obscure that organisation’s incredibly poor performance should be the subject of a fraud action brought by some representative of the usoverburdened taxpayers.
I once had faith in Royal Commissions and Parliamentary Enquiries, but to find that all of the enquiries into ‘Climategate’ have not examined the science and produced only one honest, intelligent and forthright politician whose dissenting opinion was written out of the Parliamentary report by craven colleagues, the admirable Graham Stringer, is disappointing to say the least.

“Nurse asked Delingpole how he would react if a consultant told him that he had cancer and that the consultant and his colleagues agreed that a particular treatment was best for him. Would he not go along with that consensus. It was a difficult for Delingpole to argue against this as the question was put and of course the viewer was left to make the parallel with “consesus” in climate science.”
Chris Wright had a good answer (and it has the advantage of brevity): “Yes, I would probably accept the doctor’s concensus because I have no reason to believe they have been cooking the books.”
But there’s also this. There’s actually a track record in treating cancer. Thousands and thousands of cases have been treated over the years with various approaches and protocols so the general parameters of the outcome are known. From diagnosis all the way to death or long-term survival we have examples of “what happens you do this” versus “what happens when you do that”, i.e. complete case histories. Even then, though, no individual case is predictable. A certain cancer might have a 40% five year survival rate, but when you get diagnosed you have no idea (and no one else does either) if you’ll be in that 40% or not.
Now compare that with climate science. We don’t have a single complete case history. We have one patient with a tentative diagnosis. We don’t know what happens when you do this versus what happens when you do that for this patient. We don’t have thousands of examples over the years. We can’t run multiple experiments with real world conditions and see what happens. In this case, consensus isn’t about data, it’s about opinion. They have a purported consensus of opinion about unknowable events in the future, versus a consensus of data about specific outcomes in the past (i.e. in the cancer case). Comparing those two examples is disingenuous and wrong and it highlights the weakness of their case.
As Yogi Berra said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Their god-awful certainty is not a sign of the strength of their case, rather it’s a sign of their overweening hubris.

Mr Booker claims that “The Climategate emails scandal confirmed that scientists at the heart of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had distorted key data.”
Which data were distorted? Independent reviews have cleared the CRU of any such conduct.
Out of the hundreds of hacked emails, the closest they could come to a smoking gun was reference to a “trick” published in Nature to “hide the decline.” If you are wanting to hide some sort of subterfuge, the last thing you do is publish details of it in Nature.
Anyone who took the trouble to read the Nature paper is aware that the “trick” was described fully as part of a discussion of the use of proxy measurements to infer temperatures in the past and in places where no direct temperature records are available. The reference was to a problem which has arisen since the 1960’s where tree ring data, one of the proxy measurements used, ceased to mach direct temperature measurements and other proxy measurements. This has been much dicussed in the brader literature. It was nothing to do with any manipulation of directly measured temperatures. Various possible causes for anomaly have been openly discussed and debated in the literature.
The nature paper had a discussion of how this discrepancy may be explained, and actually showed graphs with and without tree ring data showing that reconstructions of the past were little affected by inclusion or exclusion of tree ring data.
Again, the “trick” was fully discussed in the paper.
And anyone who read the hacked emails in context knows that the remarks were part of a debate between authors as to whether or not they should include tree ring data among other proxies for recent decades when they were aware it was unreliable. Some favoured using the “trick” to attempt to account for the decline in tree ring growth which was not matched by direct temperature measurements showing temperature increases. Other authors favoured leaving the tree ring data out altogether as it was unreliable.
Again, the “trick” was fully described and anyone who read and understood the Nature paper knew what it was about, so how can it be said the authors were trying to hoodwink anyone? There was no hiding declines in measured temperatures because there was no such decline. It was all about the reliability of tree rings as a proxy measurement.
Climate skeptics like Booker are still engaging in wilful ignorance or dliberate dishonesty by claiming that key data was distorted.

Jimbo says !:34 am
You are absolutely correct about consensus in the case of stomach ulcers. My dad had a severe case and all the consensus treatment was to drink milk and eat soda crackers. I showed my dad the information about the helicobacter and he asked his doctor about it and all he got from the doctor was a brush-off about the info. So, my dad suffered many years with this problem which was fairly easily cured. He did get the right treatment later. Scientists today seem to avoid going against the consenus like they always have for fear of ridicule and loss of face and compensation.

Chris Wright,
“Nurse’s analogy about the doctors was bad, but if I had been Delingpole I would be kicking myself. I would have said something like: “Yes, I would probably accept the doctor’s concensus because I have no reason to believe they have been cooking the books”. Simple.”
Yes, but the BBC would just have edited that, so the reply would come out as: ‘Yes, I would probably accept the doctor’s consensus.’
The analogy, of course, is a false one. Medicine goes through field trials, and people either get better or they don’t. Each type of cancer has a huge pool of statistical data for morbidity and recovery. For the climate science body of knowledge to be comparable to medicine, you would have to have 100,000 Earth’s each with various combinations of greenhouse gases, and their climates monitored for thousands of years.
A much better medical analogy to climate science, if one were needed, would be as follows. A research group notices that some people who live near mobile phone masts occasionally get a temperature. There is a hypothesis that the low-frequency radio waves have a specific effect on certain centres of the brain. Yet it is difficult to separate the effects of the radio waves from normal random incidents of temperatures. Often people recover, but some people go on to get pneumonia and die. Despite the fact that people have been getting temperatures since the beginning of recorded history, this time there is a consensus that the current outbreak is mostly due to the radio masts. Furthermore, models show that as the number of radio masts increases, there will be a tipping point where nearly everyone will suffer catastrophic fevers and most will not recover. For some reason this is pushed by governments, media, green activists and the UN. Huge funding is made available, and the Royal Society and other august bodies are all agreed that radio masts are a threat to human health and must be removed before it is too late. Although this is the consensus, there are some scientists who say that the correlation between radio waves and fevers are too uncertain, and there is nothing special about the distribution of fevers compared to the past. Who do you believe?

Anthony Hanwell
Brilliant, Lord M would be proud.
Do inform us of his reply should he have the balls to.

EFS_Junior says:
January 30, 2011 at 2:34 am
[snip- stop using the D word to label individuals – keep it up and you’ll be banned – Anthony]
Thank you for doing that Anthony. Debate needs a higher grade of civility. I don’t see any problem with wanting that on your blog. So good on ya mate!
p.s. congratulations again to you and your son! 🙂

Philip Shehan says:
January 30, 2011 at 6:12 am
Climategate……the hundreds of hacked emails
Every once in a while I see someone say those emails were hacked. But the truth is no one knows, yet, how they got out into the public. You say they were hacked, so, would you tell me where you found that is how it happened?

“Only for 2010 was the data revised upwards, by the largest adjustment of all, allowing the Met Office to claim that 2010 was the hottest year of the decade……”
Yes, yes but the Met Office put it’s foot in it once again Part of their claim was: “With a mean temperature of 14.50 °C, 2010 becomes the second warmest year on record, after 1998.”
That means, if I am not mistaking; – There has been no warming, manmade or otherwise, since 1998. –
Skeptics have known this all along but this is the first time The UK Met Office has officially admitted it and I do very much doubt they realize the meaning of their little admittance.
They also said; – “The record is maintained by the Met Office and the Climatic Research Unit at UEA.” Which means The Uni. of East Anglia and therefore also The IPCC knows
OHD

Quite the worst aspect of the Horizon programme was that there was scarcely a mention of the geological record of climate change on timescales ranging from decadal to millennial to orbital variability.

Couple of thoughts:
Firstly, Delingpole was thrown to the wolves – he is a wordsmith, and should have known better against someone skilled in public presentations.
The BBC was up top its old tricks the other day when our (thankfully..!) one-and-only Green Party MP – Caroline Lucas, was given free reign on BBC Breakfast to expound her views on ‘wartime-style’ rationing – mentioning ‘climate change’ of course several times. Not a word from the news anchors.
Finally – what has happened to Chris Booker..?? His latest mugshots alongside his name in his blogs seem to have aged him about twenty years since the previous version – with a full head of dark hair – has battling the climate ‘warmists’ taken its toll..??

Jordan says:
January 30, 2011 at 8:09 am
“Is the BBC so hopelessly out of touch? Did the BBC fail to notice the Lisbon meeting this week and ended up shaming itself with the Horizon programme? Or was this a deliberate attempt by the BBC to undermine the Lisbon Workshop?
Enquiring minds would like to know.”
The only person that I can find, who says anything about the Lisbon Conference is Judith Curry. I can’t find anything significant that is going to change anything coming from this conference. If only one person is saying something about this conference, it doesn’t seem that it is going to have any effect at all.
Regarding the BBC Horizon program, I can’t really judge anything, because no one in the US gets to see it. From what I have read, Climate Science isn’t the only scientific controversy that it deals with.

Now that the BBC, the Royal Society, and Sir Paul have prostituted themselves all over the international airwaves, I hope that we have reached the bottom of the barrel. Let’s review. The BBC planned the broadcast, invited the guests that Sir Paul interviewed, and edited the tape for broadcast. They strove for a Gotcha moment against Delingpole but produced only his remark that Sir Paul’s ridiculous analogy was a ridiculous analogy. They had Sir Paul second an interviewee who claimed that humans contribute 7/8 of all CO2 going into the atmosphere. The Royal Society is dragged along because Sir Paul is the head of it. What will their next act be? I can imagine the Royal Society and all the staff of the BBC doing the “Camelot” number from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Short of that, they can rest on their laurels for quite some time.

vigilantfish says: January 29, 2011 at 10:22 pm
Is this comment actually being published in the paper (as opposed to one of the Telegraph’s blogs)? I certainly hope so.
———————————————————————
Yes is was (29th January 2011) – Earth section, with a lively discussion – 930 responses mostly scathing of BBC and Paul Nurse. BTW I notice that Nurse has commented on this blog – telling Anthony not to cherry-pick!
Ho Ho – a bit rich doncha think?
Douglas

Yes Collin Maessen the problem with your video is that it is now OFFICIAL that there has been NO GLOBAL WARMING for the past 12 years. So you cannot blame cold weather, ice and snow on global warming now, can you?
OHD

Collin Maessen says:
January 30, 2011 at 10:49 am
However more snowfall is consistent with global warming as warm air can hold more moisture. And when it hits cold air it then dumps that moisture as snow.
Another we have have it all ways post.
The record cold Dec in the UK was cold and the snow actually resulted in a drier than average Dec according to the MET, several water companies are warning of water shortages in the summer if this level of dry winter continues.
Please describe the conditions that would disprove the AGW theory or does everything point to AGW.

Smokey says:
January 30, 2011 at 8:58 am
“Nurse is either ignorant of the facts, or he lied outright. Unless someone can point out a third possibility?”
Actually it was the NASA scientist who lied.
I watched part of the program but missed the significance of those statements about the carbon cycle. Fortunately, I recorded it and I’ve taken another look.
I’m utterly astounded. Here we have a NASA scientist lying on an almost biblical scale. I think serious complaints should be lodged with NASA and the BBC. I’ve made a transcript:
Scientist: “We know how much fossil fuel we take out of the ground.We know how much we sell. We know how much we burn, and that is a huge amount of carbon dioxide, about 7 gigatons per year right now.
Natural causes can only produce through volcanoes popping off and things like that and coming out of the ocean, only about 1 gigaton per year, so there’s just no question that human activities is producing a massively large proportion of carbon dioxide”.
Nurse: “So 7 times more?”
Scientist: “That’s right”.
Nurse: ” I mean why do some say that isn’t the case?”
Scientist: “I, I dont know….”
So, the scientist is clearly stating that mankind emits 7 times more CO2 than nature. A quick check on Wickipedia gives these figures:
Mankind 5.5 Gt
Oceans 90 Gt
Soils 60 Gt
Vegetation 60.
So, on these figures nature emits nearly 40 times more than mankind. The scientist was exaggerating the proportion of human emissions by a factor of 280.
It is supremely ironic that Nurse says: ” I mean why do some say that isn’t the case?”
Apart from anything else, Nurse was clearly ignorant of the Carbon Cycle. He’s not a climate scientist, but what excuse does the NASA scientist have?
I would suggest to WUWT that you make an official complaint to NASA. I think a complaint to the BBC would also be in order.
Chris

I agree, the program devalued both its own credentials and that of the Royal Society.
Its not Science that’s under attack, it never was. It’s Grand Theory and Epistemology in general that Science is being prostituted to shore up.

Collin Maessen says:
January 30, 2011 at 11:41 am
A single weather event. You mean like the entire northern hemisphere being covered with snow is a single weather event. You typed does when you wanted to say doesn’t. Your Fruedian slip is showing.

Evanjones, you know I have a great deal of respect for you. Co2 follows temperature change. Water vapor is being ignored completely as the predominate “greenhouse” (a misleading term) gas. Co2’s effect, if any, is completely overwhelmed by factors like water vapor. There is much talk of troposphere warming, stratosphere cooling, but no one is looking at what effects the amount (or form taken) of water vapor is in these zones and what effect this may be having. The funding and focus has only been on Co2 !! My prediction is that Co2 will eventually be found to do nothing. It is a follower of variation and not a cause of it. Water and it’s various forms and effects, in varying concentrations are what needs to be understood, especially how it operates in the upper and midrange (even surface level) of the atmosphere. I look forward to your perspective on this.

I watched the programme, and was waiting in vain for something I didn’t know to appear. It appears lots of statements containing scientific errors were broadcast by the Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, a great man.
Perhaps there was something obscuring his view of his standpoint on AGW, if he could see past his ego, he would see his feet are made of clay!
However, I did keep in mind that history is littered with the wreckage of scientific consensus, and it is quite historically usual for a president of the Royal Society to talk absolute rubbish.

Collin Maessen says:
January 30, 2011 at 10:49 am
“Also Booker who wrote the column is again someone who also says that second hand smoking and asbestos don’t cause cancer.”
You obviously suffer from poor reading and comprehension skills. Christopher Booker has never said that asbestos is not a cause of cancer. He does however differentiate between blue asbestos which he identifies as a carcinogen, and white asbestos which is not.
His asbestos crusade is against the psuedo scientists and government bodies that apply the rightly strict laws on the handling and use of redundant, highly dangerous, blue asbestos, to the innocuous white asbestos, causing thousands of pounds of unnecessary cleanup expenses to those unfortunate enough to discover white asbestos on their property.
If this story of official stupidity appears familiar and chimes with the official stance on global warming, perhaps you should reanalyse your AGW credo in case your impediment has again led you astray.

Folks, you may be wondering why you seem to be getting more attention from obsessive envronmentalists parroting their religion. There is a campaign; see below:
http://www.campaigncc.org/node/384
Sceptic alerts
Are you fed up with sceptics and pseudo-scientists dominating blogs and news articles with their denialist propaganda? Well, fight back! We are trying to create an online army of online volunteers to try and tip the balance back in the favour of scientific fact, not scientific fiction.
To sign up, enter your e-mail address in the box below:
You will receive one e-mail alert per day containing links to various climate change news articles. We need you to politely explain in the comments section why global warming is actually happening and why it’s not a big conspiracy. You can contribute to as little or as many articles as you like, just dive in.

homo sapiens says: January 30, 2011 at 2:21 pm
Booker says “WHITE asbestos is not a particularly hazardous chemical”. It isn’t.
Booker says “The dangers of secondhand smoking have been ridiculously overhyped”.

Totally correct…. they got away with the Ozone Hole pseudo-science nonsense… thus emboldened they stepped up the noise level for the current cycle of CAGW propaganda and pseudo-science…. just another brick in the wall.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Py5aPLG348&w=480&h=390]

Kitefreak says: January 30, 2011 at 7:40 am
I don’t even watch television anymore, for these reasons.

Best plan… the newspapers went first… then the television.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfUB4Wv5ooI&w=480&h=390]

Chris Wright says:
January 30, 2011 at 11:37 am
Smokey says:
January 30, 2011 at 8:58 am
“Nurse is either ignorant of the facts, or he lied outright. Unless someone can point out a third possibility?”
Actually it was the NASA scientist who lied.
I watched part of the program but missed the significance of those statements about the carbon cycle. Fortunately, I recorded it and I’ve taken another look.
I’m utterly astounded. Here we have a NASA scientist lying on an almost biblical scale. I think serious complaints should be lodged with NASA and the BBC. I’ve made a transcript:
Scientist: “We know how much fossil fuel we take out of the ground.We know how much we sell. We know how much we burn, and that is a huge amount of carbon dioxide, about 7 gigatons per year right now.
Natural causes can only produce through volcanoes popping off and things like that and coming out of the ocean, only about 1 gigaton per year, so there’s just no question that human activities is producing a massively large proportion of carbon dioxide”.
The problem is that the scientist interviewed was a little confused. At first, he was referring to volcanoes popping off, which do produce about 1GTon per year. The rest of his phrase was awkward and inaccurate, “and things like that and coming out of the ocean” seems to me an unfortunate slip of the tongue. It opens up the interpretation that oceans emit only 1 GT of CO2 per year which is certainly incorrect. I would have edited this out of the program.
Who was this scientist? Was the scientist answering a specific question posed by Paul Nurse, or was he making a statement in response to an open ended invitation to comment? If it was a specific question, can you tell us what it was?
It is true that human emissions are smaller than the total of natural emissions, but larger than volcanic emissions. If I were editing the video, I would not have included that statement because it was ambiguous and prone to misinterpretation.

Readers should have something like this site handy when reading Collin Maessen. It might even be a fun drinking game. See how many logical fallacies you can spot. For example:
“However more snowfall is consistent with global warming as warm air can hold more moisture.”
Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc (conclusion based on consistency) and Affirming the Consequent (If P, then Q. Q. Therefore P.)
“Also Booker who wrote the column is again someone who also says that second hand smoking and asbestos don’t cause cancer.”
Ad hominem.
“One of this would be that the arctic wouldn’t be experiencing the current melting. And if it wasn’t anthropogenic we wouldn’t be seeing the changes in the infrared absorption patterns in the atmosphere we are currently seeing.”
Denying the antecedent (If P, then Q. Not P. Therefore not Q.).

Amino Acids in Meteorites: Not sure I see the importance of whether or not the emails were hacked but my understanding is that the evidence points to a source in Russia.
With regard to the claim that the Nature paper spliced two sets of data, I think you are confusing the Nature paper with a cover illustration for a World Meteorological Organisation report. The following quotes are from
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climategate-hide-the-decline.html
“Regarding the “hide the decline” email, Jones has explained that when he used the word “trick”, he simply meant “a mathematical approach brought to bear to solve a problem”. The [Muir Russel] inquiry made the following criticism of the resulting graph (its emphasis):
[T]he figure supplied for the WMO Report was misleading. We do not find that it is misleading to curtail reconstructions at some point per se, or to splice data, but we believe that both of these procedures should have been made plain — ideally in the figure but certainly clearly described in either the caption or the text. [1.3.2]
But this was one isolated instance that occurred more than a decade ago. The Review did not find anything wrong with the overall picture painted about divergence (or uncertainties generally) in the literature and in IPCC reports. The Review notes that the WMO report in question “does not have the status or importance of the IPCC reports”, and concludes that divergence “is not hidden” and “the subject is openly and extensively discussed in the literature, including CRU papers.” [1.3.2]…
In summary, while the inquiry did criticize an individual graph, it found no evidence of CRU intentionally manipulating tree ring data or downplaying the associated uncertainties to mislead the public.”
With regard to discusion of the trick in the nature paper, this is in the form of highly specialised mathematical analysis, but a plain English sttement of conclusions is given as:
“But certain sub-components of the proxy dataset (for example, the
dendroclimatic indicators) appear to be especially important in
resolving the large-scale temperature patterns, with notable
decreases in the scores reported for the proxy data set if all
dendroclimatic indicators are withheld from the multiproxy network.
On the other hand, the long-term trend in N[orthern]H[emisphere] is relatively
robust to the inclusion of dendroclimatic indicators in the network,
suggesting that potential tree growth trend biases are not influential
in the multiproxy climate reconstructions.”

eadler,
The point is that a NASA glaciologist, speaking outside his expertise, committed a howler that anyone with a basic understanding of the science of climate change recognises as a howler. Nurse, in trying to defend ‘Science’ stepped outside his area of expertise and swallowed the howler, even discussing its meaning, without recognising it. That it didn’t end up on the cutting room floor demonstrates that neither he nor the production team had the slightest idea they had committed a howler, and it trying to demonstrate why we should all accept the word of the Gods of Science, demonstrated the exact opposite: that we should adhere to the motto ‘Nullius in Verba’, even if the President of the Royal Society apparently does not.
As Gen Y would put it: Epic Fail! Or, as those of us who follow the real, round ball football would put it, an own goal.

Defending the indefensible is an ethical minefield, BBC and CBC are going extinct. They are suiciding and it is fun to watch, any tax dollar spent on such organisations really demonstrates the contempt govt has for the working stiff. The overwhelming support for AWG and the IPCC, by our govts will help effect large cuts in govt as well, as the watchdogs of govt are stupid or crooks. Try to find out who in your govt signed off on the IPCC reports before their acceptance by govt.Or ask your govt to produce the science upon which policy is based in AWG matters, all I get is hand waving toward the IPCC. Bring on the Congressional hearing in the USA, then watch the CYA festival begin in the hall of govt.

@ Aynsley Kellow Jan 30 1:33 PM
“Incidentally, I’m rather amused by the attribution of the howler on the carbon cycle to Booker. Geoff Chambers and I pointed this out in an exchange at 2100hrs GMT on Climate Resistance, cross-posted at Bishop Hill, fully 22 hours before Booker posted his piece to appear next day in the Sunday Telegraph….”
I mentioned it on the Grauniad initially at 7:32 PM on Jan 26th, then at 3:37 PM on 27th Jan.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/jan/24/james-delingpole-tv-interview?showallcomments=true#comment-fold
A very active thread went quiet very quickly after the second comment.

Philip Shehan says:
January 30, 2011 at 6:09 pm
“Regarding the “hide the decline” email, Jones has explained that when he used the word “trick”, he simply meant “a mathematical approach brought to bear to solve a problem”.
Hooey. The decline was hidden so as not to reveal that the proxy record, upon which dire conclusions were based, was very questionable. Problem solved, indeed.

Galvanize,
I’ll pay that one as an earlier spot. I don’t look at the Grauniad, and it choked my browser now when I went to look. The important point is that the howler was so obvious, yet missed. It was like shooting fish in a barrel, yet Sir Paul swooped on the through ball and and slotted it past the keeper – if I can mangle a metaphor or two.
I do agree Delingpole merits support. The zombies from CACC have been given their orders and are on the march. (Actually, I quite like the metaphor I used in my book of white blood cells, despatched to deal with any infectious ideas).

@ eadler
January 30, 2011 at 4:24 pm
It is possible that he was referring to volcanic emissions only with that figure of 1 Gt. In fact, after Nurse questiond it, he said “I” twice, almost as if he realised his error. But he decided to go ahead and confirm the grossly misleading statement he had just made. If not an outright lie, it’s very close.
He is Dr Bob Bindschadler, described as ‘Senior Research Earth Scientist NASA’.
A good point about the original question, as it does put it in context. I went back to the recording and added that to the transcript. Here’s the full version:
Nurse: “The scientific concensus is of course that the changes we are seeing are caused by emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But, given the complexity of the climate system, how can we be sure that humans are to blame for this?”
Bindschadler: “We know how much fossil fuel we take out of the ground.We know how much we sell. We know how much we burn, and that is a huge amount of carbon dioxide, about 7 gigatons per year right now.
Natural causes can only produce through volcanoes popping off and things like that and coming out of the ocean, only about 1 gigaton per year, so there’s just no question that human activities is producing a massively large proportion of carbon dioxide”.
Nurse: “So 7 times more?”
Bindschadler: “That’s right”.
Nurse: ” I mean why do some say that isn’t the case?”
Bindschadler: “I, I dont know….”
The original question makes the context very clear. Bindschadler’s ‘proof’ depends on a comparison between human and natural emissions. The last item he mentioned was the oceans, so one would reasonably assume that he was either referring to all items mentioned or just to the oceans. He also says “…. so there’s just no question that human activities is producing a massively large proportion of carbon dioxide”.
Yes, it might have been an honest mistake – but who would decide to show that clip, as the whole point of the program was to defend climate scientists? At the very best, this scientist comes over as incompetent. Possibly Nurse and the BBC team didn’t realise there had been a blunder. But Bindschadler must have known. The very fact that he said “I” twice when questioned might suggest that he understood what he had said. If he had a shred of honesty he would have made sure that the blunder was corrected, otherwise it would be a gift to the sceptics – which it certainly is!
If I were a cynic – which thankfully I’m not – I might think this ‘blunder’ had been carefully designed. It would work in most cases, as the vast proportion of the audience would take it as gospel – as Nurse obviously did. Of course, if challenged he could always claim that his figure referred only to volcanoes. And they probably assume that nobody listens to sceptics, anyway.
Of course, Bindschadler played another trick on the gullible Nurse. He showed animations of the weather system, comparing real data with a climate model. Nurse was suitably impressed, obviously forgetting his advice given elsewhere that scientists should question everything. If you look carefully, they don’t match perfectly. Also, I suspect that these weather systems tend to occur in similar locations in a given season. If he had changed one of the animations to one taken at another time period, I suspect they would still look pretty similar.
But there’s something else. The period shown is probably for a few days. In other words, what he was showing was weather. It wasn’t climate. In no way could this demonstrate the ability of computer models to predict climate. But that didn’t seem to occur to Nurse. And, of course, with our Met Office experience, we know that the models are incapable of predicting the weather just a few weeks ahead.
I think this appalling Horizon program does demonstrate quite well why science, and climate science in particular, has fallen in the estimates of the general public. But not in the way Nurse expected. These two clips are a perfect example of why many climate scientists are not to be trusted.
Sadly, I don’t think Nurse is part of the solution. I think he’s part of the problem.
Chris
Actually it was the NASA scientist who lied.
I watched part of the program but missed the significance of those statements about the carbon cycle. Fortunately, I recorded it and I’ve taken another look.
I’m utterly astounded. Here we have a NASA scientist lying on an almost biblical scale. I think serious complaints should be lodged with NASA and the BBC. I’ve made a transcript:
Scientist: “We know how much fossil fuel we take out of the ground.We know how much we sell. We know how much we burn, and that is a huge amount of carbon dioxide, about 7 gigatons per year right now.
Natural causes can only produce through volcanoes popping off and things like that and coming out of the ocean, only about 1 gigaton per year, so there’s just no question that human activities is producing a massively large proportion of carbon dioxide”.
The problem is that the scientist interviewed was a little confused. At first, he was referring to volcanoes popping off, which do produce about 1GTon per year. The rest of his phrase was awkward and inaccurate, “and things like that and coming out of the ocean” seems to me an unfortunate slip of the tongue. It opens up the interpretation that oceans emit only 1 GT of CO2 per year which is certainly incorrect. I would have edited this out of the program.
Who was this scientist? Was the scientist answering a specific question posed by Paul Nurse, or was he making a statement in response to an open ended invitation to comment? If it was a specific question, can you tell us what it was?
It is true that human emissions are smaller than the total of natural emissions, but larger than volcanic emissions. If I were editing the video, I would not have included that statement because it was ambiguous and prone to misinterpretation.

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/01/fun-and-games.html

The BBC, we are told, has fought off a High Court challenge from Monckton, who has been trying to prevent the broadcast of the “Meet The Climate Sceptics” documentary tonight.

And now Greg Craven gets a completely uncritical presentation of his little “risk chart”. Never mind the caricatures of petrolheads and gun enthusiasts, the free pass to Trenberth, the five seconds of Lintzen. Oh, and now we’re suggesting energy rationing and the justification of setting aside democracy from Hillman. Deary me.
Next, a rerun of the 10:10 video and Abraham’s attempt to deconstruct Monckton. Abraham puts across his denials of some of Monckton’s points (no rebuttals there), while Monckton is shown in response to be suggesting that “we” will follow him where he goes on holiday to see if he’s got a secret stash of cash (no mention of the rebuttal paper by Monckton).
So, in summary, the whole show was picking out cranks, ignoring the scientific and statistical arguments against AGW or wilfully failing to understand them. It finished with the presenter saying Monckton had made him a sceptic – sceptical of Monckton’s arguments – and picking him up on semantics, rather than arguing the science itself.
“Until someone can come up with a silver bullet, I’m willing to accept a curtailing of my freedom, says the presenter”. “Queensland had the worst floods in its entire history” (well, for a few decades, anyway…)
Far from taking a more even-handed approach to the climate debate, the BBC is now going full-tilt at pushing CAGW and restrictions on personal liberty for all they are worth. Disgusting.

Chris Wright says:
January 31, 2011 at 4:48 am
“@ eadler
January 30, 2011 at 4:24 pm
It is possible that he was referring to volcanic emissions only with that figure of 1 Gt. In fact, after Nurse questiond it, he said “I” twice, almost as if he realised his error. But he decided to go ahead and confirm the grossly misleading statement he had just made. If not an outright lie, it’s very close.
He is Dr Bob Bindschadler, described as ‘Senior Research Earth Scientist NASA’.
A good point about the original question, as it does put it in context. I went back to the recording and added that to the transcript. Here’s the full version:
……
Thanks for your post. This was an appalling example of incompetence on the part of the BBC. Paul Nurse appeared skeptical, but did not do his homework . They should be ashamed.

@eadler,
I just emailed this to horizon@bbc.co.uk
Dear Sir/Madam,
I’m sorry to inform you that last week’s program, ‘Science Under
Attack’, contained an appalling lie committed by a NASA scientist, Dr
Bob Bindschadler.
Human CO2 emissions, although large, are dwarfed by natural emissions
(known as the carbon cycle). According to IPCC data, natural emissions
are roughly 30 times larger than human emissions. Wikipedia has a useful
diagram that shows a similar ratio. This is not a sceptical claim. It’s
simple, concensus science based on observations. Here’s the Wikipedia
entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle
In the program Bindschadler very clearly says that human emissions are
7 times larger than natural ones. I’ve included the transcript below.
Nurse says: “So 7 times larger?” and he says “That’s right”.
Ironically, Nurse then says ”I mean why do some say that isn’t
the case?”
The answer is simple. It is a lie.
Bindschadler says “I” twice, almost as if hesitating, almost as if he
realised the blunder he was making. But he doesn’t make the honest
choice. The figure he mentioned might have referred to volcanic
emissions, which might be about right, but the context makes it very,
very clear that he was comparing overall human emissions with natural
emissions. That, after all, was the whole point of his ‘proof’.
Including oceans, his figure is 1 Gt. In fact it is 90 Gt, according
to Wikipedia. Overall, Bindschadler exaggerated the relative amount of
human emissions by around 300.
Your team must have known this was a lie, assuming they had any
knowledge at all of climate science (clearly Nurse didn’t). If so then
they wilfully took place in propagating this lie.
I suggest that you lodge a complaint with NASA, and possibly with
Bindschadler, because they have brought the BBC, and, sadly, Horizon
into disrepute. I would also be grateful if you could explain how this
disgraceful lapse occurred, and what you intend to do to put the record
straight. I am also considering lodging a complaint with Ofcom.
Do you wonder why many people do not trust climate scientists?
Regards,
Chris Wright
Transcript included….
************ end of email ************
I probably won’t get a reply, but who knows…..
Chris