Posted by Josh
For UK viewers, last night’s BBC 4 programme ‘Climate change by numbers’ started well (I am a big fan of Hannah Fry). But sadly it descended into the usual climate change innuendo and alarm.
The first number was fine – 0.85˚C is not scary and not catastrophic.
The second number, 95%, was, as ever, vague and hand wavy. So the 50% of the warming since 1950s we’ve caused amounts to… maybe 0.3˚C? So not that much after all. And the pause continues. And Arrhenius was wrong about the ice ages. And there’s lots of uncertainty. How is Chelsea doing?
Worse was that by the third number (1 trillion) the programme had left the planet and decided that the 0.3˚C warming had magically turned into 1˚C warming and we simply Must Do Something about it. Or else.
Nice try BBC, great start by Hannah, but it needed a medic by the end. At this rate I’m not sure the patient will make it all the way to Paris.
The number 63 comes from here.
95% : This refers to the statement in SPM: “It is extremely likely that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in GMST from 1951 to 2010. The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.” However this is controversial as there is no actual description of the statistical analysis which led to this conclusion in chapter 10 of AR5. This is perhaps the most opaque chapter in the report. On what basis were the authors able to increase their confidence in the models from 90% to 95% from AR4 in view of the fact there has been no warming since AR4 ? Surely the confidence should if anything be less than in AR4. The political pressure on scientists to forever increase their “certainty” about man-made global warming is intense. They clearly succumbed to that pressure. Chapter 10 studiously avoided any discussion of the pause. Attempts now to explain the pause as due to natural variability – see for example Michael Mann’s recent ariticle on realclimate – dig a bigger hole for them. See my take on this in IPPC Scientist’s dilemma
1 Trillion tons: This refers to the maximum amount of carbon we can burn to avoid exceeding 2C of warming. It is based on the AR5 iconic graph – Figure 10 in the Summary for Policy Makers. Myles Allen appeared on the BBC with 10 lumps of coal on a table to explain how we had already burned 5 of them leaving just 5 left to burn if we want to avoid a catastrophe. It is a simple powerful message understandable by policy makers – but is it actually correct ?
Everyone knows that CO2 forcing goes as the logarithm of concentration DS = 5.3 ln(C/C0) so how can the temperature depend linearly on CO2 content. The answer of course is that can’t DT = λ DS. In this case Figure 10 should look as follows – following the blue curve.
http://clivebest.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Comparison.png
So how come Myles Allen and co. managed to get a linear dependence? The answer is that they make a huge assumption that the carbon cycle will saturate in the future. Currently half of our CO2 emissions are absorbed by the natural world. There is an assumption in so-called Earth-System models that this will stop in the near future until practically all our emissions remain in the atmosphere. There is as yet no evidence whatsoever that this is hapenning. If saturation doesn’t occur then we have over 2 trillion tons to go before reaching a 2C limit.
Friends:
I write to inform of – and to publicly present – a complaint about the program which I have provided to the BBC. It is as follows.
Richard
Dear Sirs:
I write to complain that the BBC acted in breach of its Charter by broadcasting the programme titled ‘Climate Change by Numbers’ on BBC4 at 2100 to 22:15 hours on Monday 2 March 2015.
The programme titled ‘Climate Change by Numbers” was blatantly biased and factually inaccurate political propaganda. This constitutes a breach of the BBC’s Charter because the Agreement accompanying the BBC Charter specifies the BBC should do all it can “to ensure that controversial subjects are treated with due accuracy and impartiality”. The Accuracy, Impartiality and Politics, Public Policy and Polls sections of the Editorial Guidelines incorporate the BBC Trust’s code as required under Paragraph 44 (5) of the Agreement, giving guidance as to the rules to be observed in connection with Paragraphs 44(1) to 44(4) of the Agreement.
There were far too many falsehoods in the programme for a complete rebuttal of them all. I provide three examples of assertions that were biased and factually inaccurate political propaganda in the programme.
Example 1.
THE PROGRAMME MADE UNTRUE ASSERTIONS CONCERNING THE NATURE, ACCURACY AND USEFULNESS OF ATTRIBUTION STUDIES
Attribution studies for climate are used e.g. by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to indicate causes of global climate change. The program reported the analysis method and claimed the method gives accurate and reliable indication of an anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) effect on global climate. However, any independent assessment would have stated that the used example of the method provided a wrong result which demonstrates little trust should be placed in results of the method. This is important political information because political action is encouraged by confident assertion of an anthropogenic effect on global climate change.
In reality the method provides indications with low confidence because the method relies on the factors considered, and those factors may or may not be the most significant. The programme actually demonstrated this but attempted to conceal it.
The programme demonstrated the attribution method by applying it to analyse the performances of Premiership football clubs as indicated by the points the clubs each won in each year. This analysis showed the “wage bill” of each club was the single most important factor affecting the points won by a club, and it was said that,
“If a club increased its wage bill by 10% then it can be said there is 95% confidence that this would increase its points by one”.
The finding is wrong.
The main factor affecting the points won by a football club is the standard of its players, and the reason that “wage bill” seems to indicate the points is because the best players tend to be paid most. Increasing the wage bill (e.g. by giving all employees a wage rise, or by employing additional players to ‘sit on the bench’, etc.) would have no effect on the points.
The BBC pretended that the finding is correct and demonstrates the usefulness of the method.
But the standard of players was not a variable included in the analysis and, therefore, the analysis could not indicate the correct ‘attribution’. Climate attribution studies also don’t include every factor – both known and unknown – which affects climate. But the BBC did not say that.
For example, the recent climate changes could be attributed to changes in cloud cover: clouds reflect sun light back to space so it does not reach the Earth’s surface.
Good records of cloud cover are very short because cloud cover is measured by satellites that were not launched until the mid-1980s. But it appears that cloudiness decreased markedly between the mid-1980s and late-1990s
(ref. Pinker, R. T., B. Zhang, and E. G. Dutton (2005), Do satellites detect trends in surface solar radiation?, Science, 308(5723), 850– 854.)
Over that period, the Earth’s reflectivity decreased to the extent that if there were a constant solar irradiance then the reduced cloudiness provided an extra surface warming of 5 to 10 Watts/sq metre. This is a lot of warming. It is between two and four times the entire warming estimated to have been caused by the build-up of human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. (The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that since the industrial revolution, the build-up of human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has had a warming effect of only 2.4 W/sq metre).
An unbiased TV programme would have explained that the attribution study method provides indications with low confidence – as the used example demonstrated by providing a wrong result – because the method relies on the factors considered, and those factors may or may not be the most significant.
The programme used its untrue assertions concerning attribution studies as political propaganda by claiming an unjustifiable confidence in assertion of an anthropogenic cause for global climate change.
Example 2.
THE PROGRAMME MADE THE UNTRUE ASSERTION THAT THE CLIMATE MODELS PREDICTED THE ‘PAUSE’
Political responses to climate change rely on the confidence which can be agreed for projections of climate provided by climate models. If the models provide accurate projections then plans for indicated changes to climate can be made with confidence. But if the models provide incorrect projections then any plans would be mistaken when based on the projections.
Clearly, false claims of confidence in climate model projections would be political assertions which are refuted by scientific information. And the programme made very false claims about climate model performance.
Global Average Temperature Anomaly (GAT) is projected by the climate models. Clearly, there can be no trust in the models’ projections of changes to future GAT if they failed to predict present changes to GAT observed in the real world.
The programme claimed the models had correctly predicted the present lack of discernible change to trend in GAT (known as the ‘Pause’). The claim is a blatant falsehood because the climate models had wrongly predicted that such a ‘Pause’ would not happen.
GAT has not risen (or fallen) at a rate discernibly different from zero at 95% confidence for several years according to all its different compilations. The data compiled by Dr Ross McKitrick (of RSS) provides these values he has computed for the length of the period to present when global warming was not discernibly different from zero at 95% for each data set.
SATELLITE INDICATIONS
UAH: No discernible warming since July 1996: i.e. for 16 years.
RSS: No discernible warming since December 1992: i.e. for 26 years.
SURFACE INDICATIONS
HadCRUT4.3: No discernible warming since May 1997: i.e. for 19 years
Hadsst3: No discernible warming since May 1995: i.e. for 21 years
GISS: No discernible warming since June 2000: i.e. for more than 14 years.
Clearly, there has been no discernible global warming at 95% confidence for at least the most recent 14 years with only the GISS determination indicating less than 16 years and RSS indicating for the most recent 26 years.
This lack of discernible global warming at 95% confidence is often called the “Pause”. This title is misleading in that it suggests the present cessation of discernible change to linear trend of GAT is an interruption to global warming although this cannot be known: the lack of discernible change to global temperature trend at 95% confidence will end with global warming or global cooling and nobody can know which until it happens.
Importantly, the BBC TV programme claimed the ‘Pause’ was predicted by climate models but in reality it was not. In fact the models projected that the ‘Pause’ would not happen.
In 2008 the US Government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported
“Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”
Ref. NOAA, ‘The State of the Climate’, 2008
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/climate-assessment-2008-lo-rez.pdf
(Declaration of possible personal interest by RSC: NOAA nominated me as an Expert Reviewer of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report and I accepted the nomination so conducted peer review of that Report).
However, in 2012 when warming had ceased for seemingly 15 years, Phil Jones of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) insisted that “15 or 16 years is not a significant period: pauses of such length had always been expected”. This was a flagrant falsehood because in 2009 (when the ‘pause’ was already becoming apparent and being discussed by scientists) he had written an email (leaked as part of ‘Climategate’) in which he said of model projections,
“Bottom line: the ‘no upward trend’ has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.”
Clearly, as recently as 2008 both NOAA in the US and the CRU in the UK agreed that “observed absence of warming” for 15 or more years would “create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate” indicated by climate models. And this was a decade into the ‘pause’ which has now existed for probably more than 18 years.
The BBC’s claim that the climate models predicted the existing ‘Pause’ is a falsehood and it is political propaganda.
Example 3.
THE PROGRAMME FALSELY CLAIMED THE ‘HOT SPOT’ PREDICTED BY CLIMATE MODELS EXISTS
As explained above, false claims of confidence in climate model projections would be political assertions which are refuted by scientific information. And the programme made very false claims about climate model performance.
The anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) global warming (AGW) hypothesis as exemplified by climate models predicts that in the tropics the atmospheric temperature at ~10 km altitude will rise by between 2X and 3X the rate of temperature rise at the surface. So, a region of elevated temperature (i.e. the Hot Spot) will occur at altitude in the tropics.
This Hot Spot is induced by warming from greenhouse gases and not by warming from any other source. This is shown by Figure 9.1 and the associated text of the Scientific Report of the Fourth Assessment of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Scientific Report and its associated text which can be seen and read here
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-2-2.html
Clearly, the indication is that the Hot Spot is only visible in the Figure as 9.1 (c) showing effect of “well-mixed greenhouse gases” and Figure 9.1. (f) “the sum of all forcings”.
But no such enhanced warming at altitude has been observed by radiosondes mounted on weather balloons since 1958 or by microwave sounding units mounted on satellites since 1979.
Hence, the absence of the Hot Spot indicates
(a) The AGW hypothesis emulated by the climate models is wrong
OR
(b) There has been no discernible global warming from “well-mixed greenhouse gases” since 1958
OR
(c) There has been no discernible global warming from any cause since 1958.
This absence of the ‘Hot Spot’ demonstrates that the climate models fail to emulate the effect of “well-mixed greenhouse gases” on global climate. This confirms the earlier findings by me
(ref. Courtney RS An assessment of validation experiments conducted on computer models of global climate using the general circulation model of the UK’s Hadley Centre Energy & Environment, Volume 10, Number 5, pp. 491-502, September 1999)
And Kiehl
(ref. Kiehl JT,Twentieth century climate model response and climate sensitivity. GRL vol.. 34, L22710, doi:10.1029/2007GL031383, 2007).
But the programme did not report this failure of the climate models to emulate the effect of “well-mixed greenhouse gases” on global climate. Instead, the programme made the blatantly false assertion the ‘Hot Spot’ exists. This falsehood was clearly intended as political propaganda intended to promote false confidence in indications of AGW as emulated by climate models.
Richard S Courtney
What an excellent piece, Richard. I applaude its clarity & detail. Well done!
Hear Hear over ‘ere.
Congratulations – a clear and well informed response. I have kept a copy as a crib sheet
Friends
A week has passed since I made my complaint to the BBC and I have had no response of any kind from the BBC. Therefore, this morning I have forwarded (by recorded postal delivery) my complaint to the BBC Trust, and asked the Trust to address the subject of my complaint.
Richard
Friends
This afternoon I obtained the following message by email from the BBC Trust.
Richard
******************************
Dear Mr Courtney,
Thank you for your letter of 11 March 2015 which we received on 16 March.
I am writing to advise you that I have been in touch with Audience Services to let them know you are awaiting a response to your complaint regarding the above programme. They have advised that they will send you a response to your concerns as soon as possible and the complaints manager has asked me to pass on his apologies for the delay.
I should explain that the BBC complaints process requires that complaints must be dealt with in the first instance by the BBC’s management; the Trust’s role in this process is only at the final stage, hearing complaints on appeal.
Further information can be found here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/contact_us/making_a_complaint.html
Best wishes
Ruby
Ruby Seehra
Editorial Standards Team Assistant
& PA to Fran O’Brien
IOW, GFY, peasant!
But thanks for the effort.
I decided not to watch this program. As it’s from the BBC I assumed it would be totally biased propaganda.
Sounds like I was right….
There is another BBC Climate Change program This Evening “Climate Change: A Horizon Guide”. Expect more blatant propaganda in favor of the validity of AGW climate models as presented by Dr Helen Czerski. The following is taken from the publicity for the program on the “Radio Times ” website. “..and although the sceptics get their moment in the spotlight, there’s no doubt about the conclusion” Enjoy!
This programme is nothing more than a confidence trick.
Two of the presenters, Spiegelhalter and Fenton, are academic heavy weights, brought on board to give the programme respectability, yet two of the three of the academic consultants listed on the credits at the end (who presumably decide on the content and helped write the scripts) are clearly climate-political operators: Dr Doug MacNeall and Dr Tamsin Edwards.
Have a look at Fenton’s and Spiegelhalter’s google scholar profiles (a useful way of seeing who publishes and who gets the highest citation counts):
http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=0APV5ScAAAAJ&hl=en
http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=oz7MFu0AAAAJ&hl=en
They are clearly real scientists.
These profiles heavily contrast with the academic light weights the BBC has used as consultants:
Doug MacNeall, now with the UK Met Office, was awarded his PhD as recently as 2008, he has no google scholar profile but on his blog https://dougmcneall.wordpress.com/work/ he has listed 10 papers, the majority of which are magazine type articles without much heavy science or mathematics or statistics. All of these were published in the last three years! (so not many citations then).
Tamsin Edwards: Her google scholar profile is here: http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=Ve-kU9QAAAAJ&hl=en and is, well, what you would maybe expect from a recent postdoc. The vast majority of the papers have long lists of joint authors, also common in medical publications. How much hard graft did she do on these? Her blog is here: http://allmodelsarewrong.com/ Oh and she doesn’t have a full time academic post, from what I can tell she is funded on a grant as a research assistant.
Doug and Tamsin don’t appear to work together on climate science but do seem to have lots of time to tweet, write blogs and communicate. One of their recent joint papers is this one: http://www.blc.arizona.edu/courses/schaffer/182h/Climate/Pause%20for%20Thought.pdf, which describes a PR strategy to engage with the sceptic community (see the lessons learnt section at the end).
So, it looks like the BBC have given carte blanche to a couple of wet behind the ears academics with no track record, helped them to communicate their agenda and chosen to front it up with some real heavyweights, who themselves do not have a track record in climate research either (which might be fine if we are looking for independent scrutiny but that isn’t what we got).
I have left one other academic consultant to the programme, Prof. Leonard Smith to last. Unlike MacNeall and Edwards he is indeed a heavyweight in academic terms, but I am intrigued as to whether Prof. Smith supports the view of the program, especially given that he has published papers like this one:
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/54818/1/Frigg_Smith_Stainforth_The-myopia-of-imperfect-climate-models_2013.pdf
This paper contains results that appear to directly contradict much of the BBC programme (i.e. it reads like it is, well, sceptical). So, he either wasn’t doing his job, was ignored or was merely there as window dressing too.
Maybe someone should contact the BBC to find out what role academic consultants like Doug, Tamsin and Edwards played in this programme and why they didn’t find more serious and senior sources of expertise and why, in Edwards’s case, they ignored his research work.
(I strongly suspect the BBC will ignore rumblings unless there is actually a direct complaint).
JockTheDog
JockTheDog
You say
Then do it. I did.
Richard
Have done.
There’s another one on tonight
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b054fg05
Climate Change, A Horizon Guide
“Today, the topic of climate change is a major part of daily life, yet 40 years ago it was virtually unheard of. Since then, Horizon and the BBC have followed scientists as they have tried to unpick how the climate works and whether it is changing. Dr Helen Czerski delves into this unique archive to chart the transformation of a little-known theory into one of the greatest scientific undertakings in history. It has been a constantly surprising journey of discovery that has revolutionised our understanding of climate, and seen scientists face unprecedented controversy and criticism.”
21:00hrs GMT
Don’t know if this is available outside the UK
http://www.streamtv.co.uk/cbeebies-bbc4.html
the programme did however give hope to aston villa supporters,who now know the answer to their premier league position is to increase spending by 1000% and they will surely win it next year 😉
also any credence the casual climate debate observer may have given to the kriging method of interpolation in relation to temperature values around the globe was just wiped out instantly ,so by and large i think the programme had a positive effect for tne sceptic position.
This ‘programme’ was closely followed by another ‘Horizion’ offering last night (5th March), trawling back to the 1970’s and beyond with all the re-cycled trash being wheeled out and presented by some so called scientist with that rather annoying pastoral speak, as ‘real’ evidence tha global warming was happening!
What was particularly pathetic was the sight of poor old David Attenborough in 2006, being made to stand on a the floor on a superimposed panel and be lectured by some so called scientist by the name of Cox telling him how terrible was the rising temparture and CO2 levels and the having tp make a declaration in fornt of the camera ‘that he really now believes!’
Alleua! Alleua! Alleua!
It concluded with this presenter wistfully looking out over the Thames towards Canary Wharf (Is there another sublinimal meaning here?) and sighing how she hoped that all these terrible things were going to be sorted out!
This is the BBC reply to my complaint – I hope my complaint was in order (I am not a scientist, and do not enjoy mathematics)
YOUR COMPLAINT:
Complaint Summary: The program was one sided and very misleading
Full Complaint: The smug presentation of this program (which followed an alarmist view of Arctic melting) included many basic factual errors that gave a wrong impression about the record of climate science and models being able to predict the future climate. EG the “pause” or “Hiatus” was not predicted by the models or in the IPCC reports which used the models. The pause has been reluctantly acknowledged by climate scientists afterwards with hindsight. Likening the climate models to models used for FI racing is disingenuous. The F1 racers only have to predict one of two scenarios, is it faster to continue or make a pit stop? It seems most of the F1 teams got it wrong, so the fact one team using models made a correct decision in one race is hardly evidence that models are reliable. The earth’s climate is a million times more complex and has many of the variables than a F1 car and many of those climate variables (clouds) are not understood. The program projection of how much warming has been caused by human emissions was erroneous. IPCC information show that recorded warming since 1850 has been approximate 0.80C. The IPCC only attributes 50% of total warming in recent years to CO2. (The IPCC also considers the human induced warming to have started from 1950 onwards, so using these official IPCC figures we know AGW was less than 0.4C over the past 164 years….The program tried to make out that the IPCC attributed 1c to human activity and then projected from these inflated figures.
From: bbc_complaints_website@bbc.co.uk [mailto:bbc_complaints_website@bbc.co.uk]
Sent: 05 March 2015 14:01
To: Julian Williams
Subject: BBC Complaints – Case number CAS-3178702-BZ9WWJ
Dear Mr Williams
Reference CAS-3178702-BZ9WWJ
Thank you for contacting us regarding BBC 4’s ‘Climate Change by Numbers’.
We understand you felt this programme was one sided and very misleading.
We appreciate that climate change is an immensely complex subject and this programme aimed to understand what was happening to the earth’s climate by looking at three key numbers; 0.85 degrees, 95% and 1 trillion tons.
We also understand that the models are an approximation and that the real world can change in ways that cannot be explained by the theory. The estimate of how much warming has been caused by human activity is an estimate however the IPCC has concluded that there is a greater than 95% probability that humans have caused more than half the recent warming and this was what we reported in our programme.
We looked quite closely at this figure of 95% to see how it was arrived at we said there is a way to use maths to work out which factors are the most crucial, called an attribution study, and it’s what the IPCC did to arrive at their 95% figure.
We value your feedback about this issue. All complaints are sent to senior management and programme makers every morning and we included your points in this overnight report. These reports are among the most widely read sources of feedback in the BBC and ensure your complaint is seen by the right people quickly. This helps inform their decisions about current and future reporting.
Thanks again for taking the time to contact us.
Kind regards
David Glenday
BBC Complaints
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints
I received a similar response
Dear Mr Maguire
Reference CAS-3178843-7C1JZX
Thank you for contacting us regarding BBC 4’s ‘Climate Change by Numbers’.
We understand you feel this programme was biased and ignored the real facts of climate change.
There is broad scientific agreement on the issue of climate change and we reflect this accordingly; however, we do aim to ensure that we also offer time to the dissenting voices.
We appreciate that climate change is an immensely complex subject and this programme aimed to understand what was happening to the earth’s climate by looking at three key numbers; 0.85 degrees, 95% and 1 trillion tons.
The ‘pause’ in global warming may be accounted for in some models but even if real it is no argument that there is no overall rise in temperature as most climate experts say they would expect occasional pauses within a warming trend.
We understand you didn’t like the graphs which were used in the programme as the horizontal lines were wobbly and you found it difficult to understand the scale. The purpose of these graphs of light was to indicate general trends relating to climate change in a visually dramatic and attractive way however we have noted you feel they did not represent good science.
The programme didn’t aim to convince people of climate change or what its cause might be but rather to help people to understand the subject and in particular the mathematics that underpins our understanding. Our programme showed how complex and difficult it is to model our climate and didn’t aim to suggest it was simple.
We value your feedback about this issue. All complaints are sent to senior management and programme makers every morning and we included your points in this overnight report. These reports are among the most widely read sources of feedback in the BBC and ensure your complaint is seen by the right people quickly. This helps inform their decisions about current and future programmes.
Thanks again for taking the time to contact us.
Kind regards
David Glenday
BBC Complaints
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints
Julian Williams and Richard
Many thanks for copying to here the replies from the BBC to your complaints.
I have yet to obtain a reply and the apparent delay may be because my complaint was that the BBC had acted in breach of its Charter.
If I obtain a reply then I will post it to here and if I don’t get a reply after a week then I will copy my complaint to the BBC Trust.
Richard
The replies are interesting, but they seem to miss the point. The program was inaccurate
Julian Williams
You say
Yes, but the BBC has no interest in being “accurate” so the BBC always gives a fob-off to a complaint of inaccuracy.
The next step is to complain to the BBC Trust that a complaint was not answered properly and such a complaint to the Trust is hard to justify.
However, the Trust has a legal duty to investigate a claim that the BBC has breached its Charter. This is why my complaint is about the Breach of the BBC Charter which the programme provided. And it is also the probable reason why I have yet to obtain a reply to my complaint: the BBC is awaiting me submitting my complaint to the BBC Trust which I will do if the BBC has not replied after a week.
Richard
James Gleick, New York TImes, May 12 1985:
“Beginning in a decade or two, scientists expect the warming of the atmosphere to melt the polar icecaps, raising the level of the seas, flooding coastal areas, eroding the shores and sending salt water far into fresh-water estuaries. Storm patterns will change, drying out some areas, swamping others and generally throwing agriculture into turmoil. Federal climate experts have suggested that within a century the greenhouse effect could turn New York City into something with the climate of Daytona Beach, Fla.”
http://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/12/weekinreview/ideas-trends-continued-a-dire-long-range-forecast.html
Okay Gleick, it’s been not one, not two, but now… THREE DECADES since you wrote that nonsense and there’s virtually no evidence of any of your predictions of catastrophe or “turmoil”.
Out of interest, 30+ years later how did this work out?
“Ozone Science: The Facts Behind the Phase-out” http://www.epa.gov/ozone/science/sc_fact.html
From the data being published we still appear to have a hole not much different to the 70’s or am I looking at the wrong NOAA data?
Oops; NASA
Rather than tackling the Big Lies presented in the programme – as the BBC just responds with much handwaving appeals to authority – would it not be better to tackle those which cannot hide behind authority?
Such as,
– the reference to Arrhenius’ original hypothesis (halving atmospheric CO2 would result in a drop of 4C) – surely Arrhenius himself later changed this sensitivity to a much smaller number (2C?). Why did they not state this?
– the suggestion by the programme makers that doubling CO2 (rather than halving it) would result in an increase of 4C, conveniently ignoring the logarithmic component in the equation used to calculate this. If the reduction results in an x degree drop, then the increase cannot result in an x degree increase, if the equation holds true. This is basic mathematics, never mind whether the equation models the effect of CO2 correctly.
Given that the talking heads were presented as mathematicians and statistical experts, either they are not very expert, or they were intentionally misleading.
– the programme acknowledged that there had been a pause, but stated that it had only started in 2003 (? I think that they said this – must check my recording….)
– ice loss in the Arctic?
These are much harder to counter, I think.
tonybr
You suggest
It seems you have no experience of providing a complaint to the BBC.
I suggest that you try your suggestion and use the inevitable lack of success as a learning exercise.
Richard
Richard
On the contrary, I have plenty of experience of complaining to the BBC and getting patronising, brush-off responses from them.
My point was not to criticise your (excellent) complaint. I wish I could have put it so well myself.
The problem that I see is that by complaining of bias, it just gives the BBC the opportunity to do lots of handwaving and appeals to authority, without forcing a response to specific inaccuracies in the programme.
The statements made by the programme about Arrhenius are clearly erroneous (I have been wanting to use that for a long time….) as he did reduce his climate sensitivity number to significantly less than 4C. This is a matter of fact, not opinion, but the BBC chose to ignore (intentionally no doubt) this inconvenience, which significantly undermines one of the fundamental arguments used.
Secondly, the statistician who ignores or glosses over the logarithmic component of the equation is either a very poor statistician, or is setting out to mislead.
Thirdly, any statistician who uses the argument that a halving of CO2 will result in a drop of 4C (even if you accept that inflated number) and – using the same equation – a doubling will result in an increase of 4C is even more wilfully misleading. No-one who understands the logarithmic function would make that claim. It is simply incorrect, and can only mislead.
I will make these points in a complaint.
Regards
Tony B (another one)
tonybr
I did not think your post was a comment on my complaint to the BBC and I don’t know why you suggest I did.
I am pleased that you intend to make your complaint to the BBC and I agree the points you say you intend to make.
Richard
My complaint to the BBC:
———————
Dear Sirs
I write to complain that the BBC acted in breach of its Charter by broadcasting the programme titled ‘Climate Change by Numbers’ on BBC4 at 2100 to 22:15 hours on Monday 2 March 2015.
The programme was blatantly biased and factually inaccurate. This constitutes a breach of the BBC’s Charter because the Agreement accompanying the BBC Charter specifies the BBC should do all it can “to ensure that controversial subjects are treated with due accuracy and impartiality”.
The credits shown at the end of the programme list Prof. Leonard Smith as an academic advisor to the programme. Prof. Smith published this paper in 2013:
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/54818/1/Frigg_Smith_Stainforth_The-myopia-of-imperfect-climate-models_2013.pdf
This paper’s abstract says “Given the acknowledged systematic errors in all current climate models, treating model outputs as decision relevant probabilistic forecasts can be seriously misleading. This casts doubt on our ability, today, to make trustworthy, high-resolution predictions out to the end of this century.” (2013)
This directly contradicts the statements made in the “95% confidence” segment of the programme, which are therefore inaccurate.
Why would the BBC present a view that directly contradicts the published scientific results of one of the academic consultants they themselves appointed on the programme?
Yours,
JockTheDog
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JockTheDog
JockTheDog
Excellent! I especially liked the concluding question.
Richard
I believe this supports the position taken by a WUWT contributor’s letter to the BBC. Has an answer been received?
“At a “secret seminar”, many of its (The BBC) most senior executives met with a roomful of invited outsiders to agree on a new policy that was in flagrant breach of its Charter. They agreed that, when it came to climate change, the BBC’s coverage should now be quite deliberately one-sided, in direct contravention of its statutory obligation that “controversial subjects” must be “treated with due accuracy and impartiality”. Anything that contradicted the party line, from climate science to wind farms, could be ignored.
The BBC Trust later reported that the seminar had taken this momentous decision on the advice of “the best scientific experts” present.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11456612/BBCs-climate-change-stance-in-brazen-defiance-of-the-law.html
Here is the BBC’s response to my complaint. So no surprises here then. “Cut and paste”
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Dear Mr Dog,
May thanks for getting in touch.
I was sorry to learn you felt that BBC Four’s ‘Climate Change by Numbers’ was biased in favour of the concept of climate change.
The object of this programme was to provide a new perspective on the subject, but please be assured that bias has no part to play in our output. It can be difficult to achieve perfect balance in any one programme, but over time we try to provide every side to every story- and we’re committed to impartial and balanced coverage of climate change.
Generally however, we accept that there is broad scientific agreement on the issue and reflect this accordingly. Across our programmes the number of scientists and academics who support the mainstream view far outweighs those who disagree with it. We do however on occasion, offer space to dissenting voices where appropriate as part of the BBC’s overall commitment to impartiality. The BBC Trust, which oversees our work on behalf of licence fee payers, has explicitly urged programme makers not to exclude critical opinion from policy debates involving scientists.
I’m sorry you feel this programme went too far in one direction and we of course value your feedback. I’ve already made sure your comments have gone to the right people here at the BBC, including senior managers.
Thank you again for letting us have your concerns.
Yours sincerely,
Paul Carson
BBC Complaints
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints
OK – I have a response to my complaint. Needless to say it does not directly address my questions.
This was my complaint:
The BBC is bound by its Charter to be impartial and to avoid misleading or biased statements.
I wish to complain about the BBC’s repeated, and increasing bias on the subject of global warming/climate change, which was further evidenced by the recent programme “Climate Change By Numbers”.
The programme based much of its fundamentally alarmist message on the work of Arrhenius and his predictions regarding the impact of increasing atmospheric CO2.
The programme cited Arrhenius’ calculation (originally made in 1897) that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels would result in an increase in global temperatures of 4 degrees C.
Less than 10 years after making this prediction Arrhenius changed his estimate to 1.6 degrees C. This change happened in 1906 – more than a hundred years ago.
So why does the BBC choose to quote Arrhenius’ original, withdrawn, figure rather than his corrected figure? Could it be that this suits your alarmist message?
The programme placed much weight on climate models, yet failed to note that none of the main IPCC-cited climate models predicted the “pause”. Why would you not mention this? Is it because it would undermine the alarmist message presented by the models, and put doubt against their validity?
The programme went on to describe the “tropospheric hotspot at tropical latitudes” predicted by the models as a fingerprint of anthropogenic climate change. The programme strongly implied that this hotspot exists, yet failed to state that no physical evidence has ever been found to confirm its existence. The hotspot exists ONLY in the models, not in reality. Why would you wish to create the impression that it does exist, unless it is to further your alarmist message?
This was the BBC’s response:
*************************************************************************************
May thanks for getting in touch.
I was sorry to learn you felt that BBC Four’s ‘Climate Change by Numbers’ was not as accurate as you would have liked.
The object of this programme was to provide a new perspective on the subject but we’re committed to impartial and balanced coverage of climate change.
Generally however, we accept that there is broad scientific agreement on the issue and reflect this accordingly. Across our programmes the number of scientists and academics who support the mainstream view far outweighs those who disagree with it. We do however on occasion, offer space to dissenting voices where appropriate as part of the BBC’s overall commitment to impartiality. The BBC Trust, which oversees our work on behalf of licence fee payers, has explicitly urged programme makers not to exclude critical opinion from policy debates involving scientists.
I’m sorry you feel this programme went too far in one direction and we of course value your feedback. I’ve already made sure your comments have gone to the right people here at the BBC, including senior managers.
Thank you again for letting us have your concerns.
Kind regards
Gerard Magennis
***********************************************************************************
Apart from not answering my questions (which I will not let go – another communication is on its way) I note the words:
“We do however on occasion, offer space to dissenting voices where appropriate as part of the BBC’s overall commitment to impartiality. The BBC Trust, which oversees our work on behalf of licence fee payers, has explicitly urged programme makers not to exclude critical opinion from policy debates involving scientists.”
I would like to know when, in the last 10 years the BBC has allowed “dissenting voices” on the subject of climate change, apart from the attempted stitch up job on Monckton in “Climate Wars”.
So – I think it is time to approach the BBC commissioning editors with a counter opinion/fact based programme proposal, one which does allow the dissenting voices to be heard.
Crowd-funding, anyone?
Anything in the UK along the lines of Judicial Watch? Maybe it is time to take the BBC Trust into to the court system?