UPDATE: 1:50PM – The PBS News Hour Ombudsman has posted his essay, you can read it here.
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For the record, just now, I’ve called PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler to give him an opportunity to ask me questions before he publishes his article. I got voice mail, so we’ll see if he’s interested in hearing anything about my side before condemning me. I predict he will not return my call, but if he does I’ll report it here. UPDATE 11:50AM: Mr. Getler HAS returned my call and we had a pleasant conversation.
Via Tom Nelson:
PBS Ombud: NewsHour Climate Change Report Worth Criticizing | Blog | Media Matters for America
A PBS NewsHour global warming report that allowed a climate change contrarian to “counterbalance” mainstream scientific opinion is worth criticizing, according to PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler, who said he received hundreds of emails and calls about the program.
Getler said he is penning a column on the issue that is likely to be posted late today or Monday, and hinted it will be critical.
“There’s just a lot of…hundreds of emails about it,” Getler said when asked why he is writing about the issue. “Commentary about it all over and it’s interesting.”
Getler declined to offer specific views on the NewsHour report, which aired last Monday. But when asked if he has found elements to criticize, he said: “Oh yeah, of course there’s material to be critical about.”
When Media Matters first called this morning, Getler said he had been contacted by many viewers since Monday about the issue: “It’s what everyone’s calling about, the global warming thing.”
Former CNN science reporter Miles Obrien:
PBS NewsHour Science Reporter Miles O’Brien: Climate Denier Segment A ‘Horrible, Horrible Thing’ | ThinkProgress
The general public has spoken out as well, with over 15,000 [aren’t there a lot more than 15,000 people in the general public?] people signing a Forecast the Facts petition to PBS ombudsman Michael Getler demanding an investigation of how this violation of PBS journalistic standards made it to broadcast.
And here’s some thinly veiled hate:
Warmist Doug Craig: You know what Anthony Watts is like? A dark figure with no wood who tears your home down every night
Imagine you are building a house and at night while you are sleeping someone destroys all your work. Each day you return to build your home and each night, dark figures tear it down. Anthony Watts and others like him have nothing to build. They have no scientific “wood.” They create nothing while they destroy everything.
…Like the cancer victim who refuses treatment because they deny they are sick, Watts is that voice of denial that prevents us from decisive action on behalf of our children and their future. The lie lives. The saboteurs are free and in control of this false debate.
For the record, this is what they are upset about:
Here’s the story/transcript from Spencer Michels, along with video that follows. I have not seen the piece that will be airing nationally yet, and I don’t know how much of me they use, but this just appeared on the PBS website.
One note: when they talk about “heat sync” they really meant to say heat sink. – Anthony
Conversation with global warming skeptic Anthony Watts – Climate Change Skeptic Says Global Warming Crowd Oversells Its Message
From PBS:
It was about 105 degrees in Chico, Calif., about three hours north of Sacramento, when we arrived at the offices of one of the nation’s most read climate skeptics. Actually, Anthony Watts calls himself a pragmatic skeptic when it comes to global warming. Watts is a former television meteorologist, who has been studying climate change for years. He doesn’t claim to be a scientist; he attended Purdue. He’s the author of a blog, Watts Up with That?, which he calls the world’s most viewed site on global warming. For a story I was working on for the PBS NewsHour, Watts was recommended by the Heartland Institute, a conservative, Chicago-based non-profit that is one of the leading groups that doubt that climate change — if it exists — is attributable to human activities.
Watts doesn’t come across as a true believer or a fanatic. For one thing, he has built a business that caters to television stations and individuals who want accurate weather information and need displays to show their viewers. He has developed an array of high tech devices to disseminate weather data and put it on screens. He has several TV stations around the country as clients.
But Watts’ reputation doesn’t come from his business — IntelliWeather — but rather from his outspoken views on climate change. He says he’s been gathering data for years, and he’s analyzed it along with some academics. He used to think somewhat along the same lines as Richard Muller, the University of California physicist who recently declared he was no longer a skeptic on climate change. Muller had analyzed two centuries worth of temperature data and decided his former skepticism was misplaced: yes, the earth has been warming, and the reason is that humans are producing carbon dioxide that is hastening the warming the planet.
Watts doesn’t buy Muller’s analysis, since, he believes, it is based on faulty data. The big problem, as Watts sees it, is that the stations where temperatures are gathered are too close to urban developments where heat is soaked up and distorts the readings. So it looks like the earth is warming though it may not be, he says.
Read a transcript below.
SPENCER MICHELS: So let’s start out with the basic idea that there’s this debate in this country over global warming. There’s some people who call it a complete hoax and there are some people who completely embrace it and so forth. Where do you stand in that spectrum?
ANTHONY WATTS: Well, I at one time was very much embracing the whole concept that we had a real problem, we had to do something about it. Back in 1988 James Hanson actually was the impetus for that for me in his presentation before Congress. But as I learned more and more about the issue, I discovered that maybe it’s not as bad as it’s made out to be. Some of it is hype, but there’s also some data that has not been explored and there’s been some investigations that need to be done that haven’t been done. And so now I’m in the camp of we have some global warming. No doubt about it, but it may not be as bad as we originally thought because there are other contributing factors.
SPENCER MICHELS: What’s the thing that bothers you the most about people who say there’s lots of global warming?
ANTHONY WATTS: They want to change policy. They want to apply taxes and these kinds of things may not be the actual solution for making a change to our society.
SPENCER MICHELS: What are you saying? That they’re biased essentially or motivated by something else? What?
ANTHONY WATTS: [T]here’s a term that was used to describe this. It’s called noble cause corruption. And actually I was a victim of that at one time, where you’re so fervent you’re in your belief that you have to do something. You’re saving the planet, you’re making a difference, you’re making things better that you’re so focused on this goal of fixing it or changing it that you kind of forget to look along the path to make sure that you haven’t missed some things.
I started looking into the idea that weather stations have been slowly encroached upon by urbanization and sighting issues over the last century. Meaning that our urbanization affected the temperature. And this was something that was very clear if you looked at the temperature records. But what wasn’t clear is how it affected the trend of temperatures. And so that’s been something that I’ve been investigating. Anyone who’s ever stood next to a building in the summertime at night, a brick building that’s been out in the summer sun, you stand next to it at night you can feel the heat radiating off of it. That’s a heat sync effect. And over the last 100 years our country, in fact the world, has changed. We’ve gone from having mostly a rural agrarian society to one that is more urban and city based and as a result the infrastructure has increased. We’ve got more freeways, you know more airports, we’ve got more buildings. Got more streets, all these things. Those are all heat syncs. During the day, solar insulation hits these objects and these surfaces and it stores heat in these objects. At night it releases that heat. Now if you are measuring temperature in a city that went from having uh maybe 10% of um, non-permeable surface to you know maybe 90% over 100 years, that’s a heat sync effect and that should show up in the record. The problem is, is that it’s been such a slow subtle change over the last 100 years. It’s not easy to detect and that’s been the challenge and that’s what I’ve been working on.
SPENCER MICHELS: Well in a way you’re saying that the records aren’t accurate, the data isn’t accurate.
ANTHONY WATTS: I’m saying that the data might be biased by these influences to a percentage. Yes, we have some global warming, it’s clear the temperature has gone up in the last 100 years. But what percentage of that is from carbon dioxide? And what percentage of that is from changes in the local and measurement environment?
SPENCER MICHELS: I want to go back to what we were talking about a little bit earlier, the idea that there is, there are people who are sort of invested in promoting the fact that there is global warming. There’s money involved and grants. Is that what you were saying? Maybe explain that.
ANTHONY WATTS: Well global warming had become essentially a business in its own right. There are NGOs, there are organizations, there are whole divisions of universities that have set up to study this, this factor, and so there’s lots of money involved and then so I think that there’s a tendency to want to keep that going and not really look at what might be different.
SPENCER MICHELS: Now Dr. Muller at the University of California Berkeley had similar concerns. Went back and looked at the data, took much more data than anybody else had, and concluded, well maybe there was some problems, but basically the conclusions were right. There is global warming and it comes from carbon dioxide which is meant, made by man. Do you buy that?
ANTHONY WATTS: Unfortunately he has not succeeded in terms of how science views, you know, a successful inquiry. His papers have not passed peer review. They had some problems. Some of the problems I identified, others have identified problems as well, for example, he goes much further back, back to about 1750 in terms of temperature. Well from my own studies, I know that temperature really wasn’t validated and homogenized where everything’s measured the same way until the weather bureau came into being about in 1890. Prior to that thermometers were hung in and exposed to the atmosphere all kinds of different ways. Some were hung under the shade of trees, some were on the north side of houses, some were out in the open in the sun, and so the temperature fluctuations that we got from those readings prior to 1890 was quite broad and I don’t believe that provided representative signal because the exposure’s all wrong. And Dr. Muller did not take any of that into account.
SPENCER MICHELS: His conclusion though is that basically global warming exists and that the scientists, no matter what the problems were, were pretty much right on.
ANTHONY WATTS: I agree with him that global warming exists. However, the ability to attribute the percentage of global warming to CO2 versus other man-made influences is still an open question.
SPENCER MICHELS: I want to ask you a little bit about attitudes towards this among the public. We talked to a public opinion specialist at Stanford who says there’s been 80 percent belief in global warming and man-made global warming consistently over at least the last 15 years in this country. Do you buy his theory?
ANTHONY WATTS: Well I look at a number of opinion polls. You’ll find a lot of them on my blog and that we’ve covered. And depending on how you ask the question we’ll sometimes give you a different answer. My view is, is that the view of global warming peaked about at the time that Al Gore came out with his movie, An Inconvenient Truth. But ever since then other factors have kicked in. Climate Gate for example. And it has become less of an issue, in fact you hardly see politicians talking about it anymore, or pushing it as an issue. What’s been happening now it’s just become a regulation issue. It’s gotten away from the political arena and into the bureaucratic regulation arena. And so people I believe based on the polls I’ve seen, aren’t quite as believing as they used to be. And I think the trend is downward.
SPENCER MICHELS: What do you think is the upshot of your attitude toward this? Should the Congress, should the American public say, you know nothing’s been proven yet. We should wait. Or should we go ahead with trying to solve what many people consider a really scary problem?
ANTHONY WATTS: Hmm…You mentioned a really scary problem and I think that’s part of the issues. Some people don’t respond well to scare tactics and there have been some scare tactics used by some of the proponents on the other side of the issue. And that’s where the overselling of it comes in. But this is a slow problem and it requires a slow solution I believe. For example, our infrastructure for electricity and so forth and highways didn’t happen in 5 years or 10 years. It happened over a century. We can’t just rip all that up or change it in the space off five, 10 or 15 years because it’ll be catastrophic to our economy. We need a slow change solution, one that is a solution that changes over time at about the same rate as climate change. More efficient technologies, new technologies, the use of more nuclear for example. There’s a nuclear type of a reactor that’s more safe called a, a liquid thorium reactor that China is jumping on right now. And we should be looking into things like that.
SPENCER MICHELS: Has this issue, I know you think it’s been oversold and scare tactics have been used. Do you think it’s become too politicized?
ANTHONY WATTS: Oh, it’s definitely become too politicized. In fact, some of the scientists who are the leaders in the issue have become for lack of a better word, political tools on the issue.
SPENCER MICHELS: One final question, do you consider yourself a skeptic when it comes to global warming?
ANTHONY WATTS: I would call myself a pragmatic skeptic. Yes, we need to make some changes on our energy technology but more efficient technology’s a good thing. For example, I have solar power on my own, you know, I have done energy reductions in my office and in my home to make things more efficient. So I think those are good things. Those are good messages that we should be embracing. But at the same time I think that some of the issues have been oversold, may have been oversold, because they allow for more regulation to take place. And so the people that like more regulation use global warming as a tool, as a means to an end. And so as a result, we might be getting more regulation and more taxes that really aren’t rooted in science, but more in politics.
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This article appears online here
Or the maid opens the door and the house of cards collapses.
I wonder if said Ombudsman will have the curiosity to read this thread, and the temerity to reply and address the concerns of the many thoughtful commenters, e.g. those of Brian S from Africa (September 21, 2012 at 6:00 pm). I won’t hold my breath.
/Mr Lynn
Thank You Anthony!
You have spoken for many of us who have no voice that will be heard. PBS seems to be a very politically left organization. Not much science in the anti realists arguments. Just the 99.9% of all scientists think that AGW is real.
David Ball says:
September 21, 2012 at 3:51 pm
I am correcting my post. We are not going away. We are getting stronger. Without “oil money”, without sucking from the academic grant trough, without the MSM behind us, and yet there are more skeptics now than I would ever have believed possible 10 years ago. I’m NOT going away. Refute our evidence if you can.
Suck on that CAGW!!
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I know I was “there” 10+ years ago. Now, thanks to blogs such as this, we can “see” each other. Real “Freedom of the Press”.
(Side note: Anthony, don’t forget to take care of your family. We’re with you even if we don’t see your name pop up every 5 seconds.)
In 2006 If I recall) I was interviewed by some BBC putz passing through Houston on his return from a Mexico City climate conference of some sort.
I made the point then, while out on the town enjoying some good Mexican food and wine at BBC expense, that AGW was really a social movement. He parsed the interview so as to distort my points and make me a shallow foil for his BBC climate orthodoxy. His dishonesty accidentally made my point, but I do not appreciate my words being put through a cynical Cuisinart.
You were, in a way treated better in the sense that at least your words were left intact.
The reaction of the AGW faithful is unpleasant but does underline my point from over five years ago:
AGW is a social dysfunction. It is not getting less rancid with time.
You were great, Anthony. Do not be disappointed or surprised that the shallow reactionary bigots of AGW cannot even stand that you are allowed to speak in public or for yourself. They are the direct descendants of the cowards who in earlier ages ran witch trials or burned people for wanting to publish the Bible or challenge the Vatican.
Gunga Din says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
September 21, 2012 at 8:08 pm
David Ball says:
September 21, 2012 at 3:51 pm
I am correcting my post. We are not going away. We are getting stronger. Without “oil money”, without sucking from the academic grant trough, without the MSM behind us, and yet there are more skeptics now than I would ever have believed possible 10 years ago. I’m NOT going away. Refute our evidence if you can.
Suck on that CAGW!!
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I know I was “there” 10+ years ago. Now, thanks to blogs such as this, we can “see” each other. Real “Freedom of the Press”.
(Side note: Anthony, don’t forget to take care of your family. We’re with you even if we don’t see your name pop up every 5 seconds.)
(Mods, sorry if this pops up twice. MS IE just did an update and I was asked for my “details” again. I thought I had a typo in the first “detail” stuff so I redid it.)
Oh, well, Anthony, consider it a backhanded compliment. If your appearance in a brief segment, where you remained calm and truthful, caused such wailing and gnashing of teeth, you are one heck of an effective TV performer.
As for the Ombudsman’s mealy mouthed, long-winded, pompous and grovelling apology to a few activists who orchestrated an email campaign – it says a lot more about him than it does about you.
Here’s what I want PBS to do; try to survive in the Free Market. Then, they can say or promote whatever they wish……
Hey u.k.(us)! A couple suggestions:
1. Read the viewers comments included in Getler’s report.
2. Reactionary is not a new word. Though my use of it in desciribing those on the left may be new to you! Per Wikipedia “A reactionary is an individual that holds political viewpoints which cause them to seek to return to a previous state (the status quo ante) in a society.” Do you get it now?
3. Laugh once in a while, you’ll live longer.
The huffing and puffing was largely on Muller’s part, imo, but I did note a rather lupine glint in Anthony’s eye. ; – )
I find it interesting that scientists who believe in CAGW and claim to be skeptics do not accept that the temperature trend data may be fatally flawed.
They also blindly accept the official trends even though adjacent cities show disparate trends, one shows warming while its neighbor is not. Entire regions can show opposite trends, as the US Southeast has not warmed in 100 years. Physics is not arbitrary like that.
It is also a matter of belief, not science, to ascribe all the recent warming to CO2 but admit that a natural cycle brought on the little ice age, and a natural cycle ended the little ice age.
This entire debate is becoming hilarious.
I’m watching the freeze tonight in the northern US Midwest with great interest.
My conclusion:
The PBS reactions can be safely ignored. The show had an overall positive effect as can be determined by the violence of the reactions it generated.
The message for me is to press home the contribution of man made CO2 in the present world CO2 level. Once successfully demonstrated that man (in particular with power generation) is making a very small contribution to the overall rise, then the serious debate will necessarily change to a sounder footing.
When Evil Man is removed from “climate change” then the realities of natural climate change can be studied with some balance and even wisdom.
Remember “wisdom”? That is the old fashioned way of spelling “wi$dom”.
This is the second time an event with Muller has resulted in a back stabbing. The puppeteers at PBS own the strings and are pulling them to backfill the story they want to put out. Why do I think David Suzuki burned up all his minutes since that airing?
And why in hell to they think they’re going to easily find scientists willing to risk their grant requests to show up and counter a topic that is a cash cow for researches? Well obviously they’re sure they won’t but by using a non-academic they retained the “non-peer reviewed” option owned exclusively by the Pal Reviewers. Its not like climate science requires a lot of training – even Michael Mann can do it, and he will and has used upside-down data to make a point. And we know Trenberth is confused by the climate and it is a travesty he’s still paid to work in the field.
Here’s a comment made to me by a poster on face book when he discovered I was a climate skeptic – it demonstrates that it’s all about society and politics and has nothing to do with science.
“, the only ones who strike me as being hysterical are the deniers. Everyone else seems to me to be heeding eminently sensible warnings about the dangers of overpopulation, over-industrialisation and over-exploitation of natural resources. Protecting access to that “Huge Money” is the real mission of climate change deniers. As long as we continue to turn a blind eye to runaway industrialisation, wholesale destruction of natural habitats and unchecked poulation growth, we will continue careening towards destruction. This is not a “Chicken Little” scenario – this is a broad consensus of the most reputable and experienced scientists in their field, warning us that we are in grave danger. And the bottom line is common sense – if someone says the sky is falling, isn’t it the wiser course to at least look up and check?”
fhsiv says:
September 21, 2012 at 8:40 pm
2. Reactionary is not a new word. Though my use of it in desciribing those on the left may be new to you!
3. Laugh once in a while, you’ll live longer.
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I haven’t stopped laughing.
I sure got your attention, or was it a reaction ?
Well if PBS look at the reasonableness of what you actually said and then still side with the warmist ‘rent a rant’ crowd it just shows that you can buy bias by stirring up a load of nutters.
They don’t like free speech or scientific debate. “The science is settled”.
Okay, if PBS are upset about Anthony not being a sanctified scientist, give some air time to Steve McIntyre, John Christy, Timothy F Ball, Fred Singer, etc
Gunga Din says:
September 21, 2012 at 8:08 pm
It was even more lonely 25 years ago, but back then, the most concerned were still reasonable. I have watched the first glowing embers of self-ritgheous greenhood become a conflagration seen on Prairie Public Television, no less.
Anthony, upon subsequent viewings, you could not have come across better. Everything about you, your office and surroundings, clothing, demeanour, was the EXACT opposite of how you are portrayed by the usual suspects. They were right to say that it wasn’t balance cause you crushed em. In every way.
That reminds me of a story. To save time I’ll just give the title as everyone knows it. “The Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf'”.
It is a shame that the lessons of history only work for people study history.
janama says:
September 21, 2012 at 9:17 pm
Interesting in that he thinks we don’t look at the data. Weather and climate was what I was interested in before all this political siht came along. Probably many others here as well.
Reading the comment , it almost seems formulaic, stock.
PBS’s Ombudsman is a windsock with a necktie.
My Merriam Webster defines an ombudsmen as “one that investigates complaints, reports findings, and helps to achieve equitable settlements. I don’t know what role Getler normally plays in PBS, but if he did not reach out to Anthony to begin with, his primary aim must be to assuage the hurt feelings of the liberal (no, they are not 97%), global warmists (and probably liberal funders) who watch to see that their message is getting out. Like NPR, that message is the monotonous drumbeat of the Catastrophic Global Warming Alarmists, and letting Anthony Watts slip into the program was a show of unacceptable bad taste for those purists, who prefer their alarmism analloyed with worrisome skepticism about the facts.
Getler has/d no intention of acknowledging, let alone reconciling dissenting views in this conflict, but salving the people who pay his salary. Mr. Getler knows he is just a spinmeister for the liberals. Or, if I may be allowed a bit of spin myself, an overinflated bellows to the overheated global warmers whose hot air already roars through the halls of the News Hour programmers.
My email to the Ombudsman after reading his latest article.
Your publishing of so many of the negative emails regarding Anthony Watts, most of which were filled with inaccuracies, amounts to nothing more than a thinly veiled Ad hominem attack. It’s unfortunate for the global warming believers that one well spoken critic of their science could damage their extreme position when only given a few minutes of air time. That alone should make you question their conclusions. Also, the fervor with which they attack Mr. Watts should also give a clue to the weakness of their argument. If they were so certain and had such great science backing them, they would welcome someone like Mr. Watts so they could prove him wrong. Instead, their only desire is to quiet him and anyone else who speaks up against their position.
Jason Joice MD
Well I read all the Ombudsman had to say and the comments below. The attackers of the presence of Anthony repeated the same words so much it looks like a coordinated move. Notably absent was scientific refutation regarding station siting. Notable was the silly and patently false ‘97% of scientists’ being repeated. Notice that it is creeping to 98%? Soon it will be 99.88%.
It is obvious that CAGW is predicted on continued public ignorance and there are a significant number of posts that try to turn the discussion away from any serious education of the public as to why Anthony may be wrong on the subject of station siting.
All tolled, no tipping point was reached at PBS. The Ombudsman’s wimpy and cringing response shows the threat of losing money and being laughed at (or much worse) by paying viewers is real. It is hard to be brave when your income is on the line – it takes actual moral courage to resist insult and donations.
PBS should interview Lindzen on temperature series. I saw his chart on Bostonian temperatures – brilliant!
Bingo! That really highlights the big problem IMHO. That 104th Congress, with Newt as speaker, and Dole as majority leader had a sizable majority in the House and a workable one in the Senate and couldn’t even defund taxpayer dollars going to the PBS dog and pony show. They also couldn’t defund NEA / NEH from supporting hateful artists like Serrano and Maplethorpe, the former producing ‘Piss Christ’, which ironically contrasts with the current pained apologies from President DingleBarry and Sir Hillary over a anti-Islam movie that WAS NOT FUNDED by taxpayer dollars. Their hypocrisy is unbounded. BTW, Piss Christ is going back on display in NYC.
This shows what we are up against trying to stop funding of large agencies which are just flushing taxpayer dollars down the toilet on AGW propaganda and all the many ‘green’ projects across the federal budget. I am sorry, but this is not going to be handled in a polite scientific discussion because it has nothing to do at all with science or anything else remotely legitimate.
It has only to do with Socialist doctrine, the dismantling of the traditional free society, through never-ending vampire sucking of every penny from the serfs in the private sector into the royal public coffers to be redistributed among the approved feudal aristocracy. They even cooked up an AGW religion to act as nobility to grant the royals the aura of scientific legitimacy. Some things will never change, and one of those things is how humans will re-organize themselves given a chance, and unrestrained by traditional morals and ethics into a fiefdom. This is all that can happen when Socialism is allowed to run amok, because people refuse to call them what they are. Natural born criminals.
There are probably still a few that doubt the breadth and scale of this problem, and if that is so, just consider the way they treat a nice guy like Anthony and then ponder what they would do to the rest of us given the full chance.
As far as Pravda, at this point I would trade all of our corrupt media from PBS to MSNBC for them. In a heartbeat. There is no doubt that the western pillars of journalism from the NYT, to PBS to the Guardian are far, far worse. They are the domestic enemies of the ‘civilized’ western societies.