Reposted from the Gelbspan Files by Russell Cook
If I sound like a broken record endlessly repeating the faults of prominent accusers relying on those worthless “reposition global warming theory” ‘leaked memos’ to indict skeptic climate scientists of corruptly colluding with fossil fuel industry people in alleged disinformation campaigns, it’s because the Al Gore side of this issue continually relies on them as the cornerstone ‘smoking gun evidence’ supporting that accusation. For example: in Gore’s 2006 movie; in the latest global warming lawsuits; in the latest online ‘news’ articles; in recent college student ‘journalism’ reporting efforts that are reported about at left-wing organizations; in recent ‘journalism’ podcasts highly resembling this current BBC podcast that rely on the same source person; in recent tweets by people directly associated with those accusers (tweets / prominent accusers, plural); on and on and on. Don’t get me started on how far back this enslavement is seen to those worthless memos.
The latest regurgitation of the story is the podcast in my title above, where the BBC makes the blunder of trying to tie mega-famous conservative U.S. radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh into the story. Episode 6 is available online right now for listening while being scheduled for on-air radio broadcast this coming Monday, August 3, 2020. I submitted a formal complaint with the BBC to pull the podcast from its schedule because of four major factual errors within the presentation, namely two unfounded claims made about two sets of ‘leaked industry memos’, an unfounded insinuation about the reach of an infomercial read by Rush Limbaugh, and the egregious insertion of an ethnicity word into a quote from one of those never-used memos that is not actually in the memos.
In particular, the collective “How They Made Us Doubt Everything” series of podcasts places so much stock in the unsolicited, never used (let me emphasize again alternatively, from the never implemented memo set) proposal submitted for use in the old, hardly seen “Information Council for the Environment” pilot project public relations campaign, that they quoted its supposedly sinister target audience goal three separate times.
One possible target audience includes older, lesser educated males from larger households.
That line is spoken in the same ominous voice not only in their initial two minute introductory broadcast, heard at the 1:10 point here but also in their Episode 2 at the 4:09 point, and in Episode 6 at the 11:51 point.
Hold this thought for a few moments: that line is part of the rejected proposal’s strategy / targeting memo phrases that Ross Gelbspan made famous in his 1997 “The Heat is On” book which he somehow magically ‘obtained’ a year earlier in conjunction with the Ozone Action environmentalist group; the same strategy memo phrase that Al Gore said Gelbspan ‘discovered’ and the same targeting memo phrases that Gore quoted in his 1992 “Earth in the Balance” book years before Gelbspan ever mentioned them.
Those points factor into this BBC Radio4 podcast, but only within the last 5 minutes of this 14 minute podcast. The first three minutes of it are wasted in an unrelated tangent about Lawrence Livermore atmospheric scientist Ben Santer, then after the 5:59 point, it attempts to portray the 1998 American Petroleum Institute “victory will be achieved” memo as some sort of smoking gun evidence proving the fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns exist — that’s also false, but is a whole other story.
Discussion of the situation surrounding the title piece memos doesn’t begin until the 9:05 point, and begins poorly with a silly voice doing a bad imitation of radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh reading portions of an infomercial ad that actually was part of the genuine short-lived ICE campaign. Right after that at the 9:59 point, we hear directly from Kert Davies, introduced earlier at the 4:42 point as being “from the Climate Investigations Center” — yes, that Kert Davies, former worker at Ozone Action, the place that magically obtained the “reposition global warming” memos without ever saying who their source was. Regarding Limbaugh, Davies and podcast host Peter Pomerantsev offer the following:
Davies: So, Rush Limbaugh was the most widely listened-to conservative talk show host at that time on radio stations across the country. We have the language that Rush Limbaugh read on the air.
Pomerantsev: And, who was behind it? This is written by a group calling themselves the Information Council on the Environment. Again it sounds like it’s going to be run by an environmental lobby group, but it’s run by the group that represents the electrical companies in America.
The smallest error highlighted in red there is the actual name of ICE, it’s “for” not “on” as seen in “Greenpeace USA née Ozone Action”’s own scan copy (page 13 here) of the Limbaugh infomercial, and in other genuine papers from the ICE campaign. The bigger error is Pomerantsev’s incorrect claim about a rep for electric utilities running the ICE campaign, the actual operator was the not-for-profit Western Fuels Association cooperative which oversees transfers of coal to power plants (I covered this recent odd switch from blaming WFA to blaming electric utilities in my April 11, 2020 blog post). The question there is whether accusers now realize their nearly 20 year accusation about WFA having those memos is false.
The real problem regarding what they say about Rush Limbaugh is their apparent insinuation that Limbaugh read the ICE infomercial ad to his nationwide audience, influencing his 5-10 million radio show listeners at that time. He did not read it to his national audience.
As seen within “Greenpeace USA née Ozone Action”‘s other ICE memos scans, the Limbaugh ad was only scheduled to play in the Fargo, North Dakota area, which only had a total population of a bit over 74,400 at the time. How many were listening to the radio at all that day, and how many less actually caught the 60-second infomercial, if it actually played at all?
No effort was made by Kert Davies to correct the perception of a vastly wider audience hearing that solitary ad. As a worker at Greenpeace during the time when the old Ozone Action docs scans were uploaded into Greenpeace archives, he should have known about that page. Pomerantsev, by the way, doesn’t mention in this episode that Davies worked at Greenpeace, but to his credit he did at least sort of mention that in passing within Episode 1 (at the 10:40 point) that Davies “used to lobby for Greenpeace,” an arguably a less than transparent statement. Davies worked directly for Greenpeace within its ExxonSecrets division. At least in Episode 5, Pomerantsev finally states directly at the 5:16 point that Davies worked for Greenpeace … he just doesn’t say in what capacity. For contrast, compare that to how ‘reporter’ Amy Westervelt didn’t use the name Greenpeace in any part of her descriptions of Davies in her collection of 2018 Drilled podcasts. To their discredit, both podcasts portray Davies as an objective collector / analyst of industry documents, when his history of smearing skeptic climate scientists via unsupportable accusations about funding corruption suggests he truly is not.
Not missing a beat in this BBC podcast, Davies immediately followed the bit about Limbaugh with ye olde never-used “reposition global warming” memos, at the 10:27 point:
Davies: The key line from that one is that they want to reframe the science from fact to theory.
Especially ominous voice: Informed Citizens for the Environment – Strategies: Reposition global warming as theory (not fact) ……
…… Test Market Proposal – Objectives: 1) Demonstrate that a consumer-based media awareness program can positively change the opinions of a selected population regarding the validity of global warming. 2) Begin to develop a message and strategy for shaping public opinion on a national scale.
Pomerantsev: A good marketing strategy would never talk about “the public,” this is how you know you’re dealing with professionals, they’ll do a segmentation, they’ll go kind of, well —
Davies [interrupting]: This is the shocking part about this one, they talk about targeting “lower educated white males” and they have, like, specific demographics that they’re gonna target, it’s that mercenary.
No, it is not. I emphasize again, that strategy / targeting proposal was unsolicited, rejected, and never used, which includes alternative suggested names such as “Informed Citizens.” One increment now exponentially worse for Kert Davies’ personal credibility, the word white never appears anywhere in the “Greenpeace USA née Ozone Action” scans regarding people’s skin color.
Why would Davies feel any kind of compulsion to inject an element of ethnicity into this narrative?
What follows immediately after that also undercuts Davies’ insertion about skin color:
Davies: Uh, let me find the exact quote. Uh, here it says —
Especially ominous voice: One possible target audience includes … older, lesser educated males from larger households, who are not typically information seekers … Members of this group are … predisposed to favor the ICE agenda. … They are good targets for radio advertisements. Another possible target segment is younger, lower-income women ……
…… A campaign strategy reaching out to these target groups can help to change attitudes.
Davies: So they are targeting those two audiences, seeing if they can bend the needle from what they’ve already secured as the baseline data that people are very concerned about this.
Pomerantsev: For me, this document is one of the most revealing things I’ve seen while making the series. It shows how, in 1991, pollsters had already clocked that what they called low educated, older white males could be swayed on climate change.
No mention of “white” from the unnamed ominous voice’s quotes, but presenter Pomerantsev nevertheless repeats Kert Davies’ egregiously inexplicable insertion of an ethnic description — “white” — into a total falsehood about a strategy that – I repeat once again – was never solicited in the first place, rejected outright, and thus by default, never used.
At the time when this particular discussion was recorded – weeks or maybe months ago – presenter Pomerantsev and show creator/producer Phoebe Keane should have immediately stopped the recording and asked why Davies inserted a significant charged word into his quote of the alleged ‘leaked memo’ that wasn’t in there. Then they should have asked how and when he got the “reposition global warming” memo set in the first place, and then they should have undertook basic journalistic due diligence to find out why those memos are said in recent years to be the product of electric utilities action when the prior two decades of stories about them mostly blame the Western Fuels Association. All of those basic curiosity questions might have led them to wonder why Al Gore labeled Ross Gelbspan as a Pulitzer winner when he clearly is not and what Gelbspan’s connection was to the old Ozone Action group, and how it works out that Kert Davies’ former boss there and at Greenpeace is the same guy seen with him attempting to trash the reputation of Exxon, and then finally wonder what’s up with all the cash that’s being dumped into that guy’s non-public business in 6-figure amounts each year lately, and how much of that is being funneled into Davies’ Climate Investigations Center ….. and for what purpose.
Around $5 million total, according to the tally ending with the last available IRS form, where potentially we could add another $4 million if the trend stayed the same for the last two years. I’ve tagged that overall problem in my blog post category “What $5 mill might buy.”
With all due respect to presenter Pomerantsev and show creator/producer Phoebe Keane, their scorn is aimed 180° in the wrong direction. They might need to ask if $5 million or more buys podcasts like theirs, where all of their other surrounding podcast segments on the tobacco industry tactics are little more then a disingenuous apples and oranges setup to support the notion that two sets of worthless leaked memos from the fossil fuel industry are no different than the tobacco industry’s collective efforts to bury the very real harm of cigarette smoking. Does $5 million or more buy years’ worth of a distraction tactic designed to hide the fact that enviro-activists can’t actually apparently debunk science-based climate assessments from skeptic climate scientists — e.g. one of the targets of this BBC podcast?
It’s not a theory, only a hypothesis.
Multiple hypotheses??
Climate cooling… warming… change, undeniable, unfalsifiable within the peculiarly, unnaturally narrow frame of reference they have specified. Yeah, they have hedged their bet. That said, now there is activism not for climate change, but for carbon free… or maybe it was neutral emissions, the new judgment, the new label, the new stigma.
Old British saying
Is that true?
Or did you hear it on the BBC?
A failed pseudo science hypothesis.
I’ve never seen it phrased as a falsifiable hypothesis (for many obvious reasons, including climate “science” being the lowest rung of the ladder where people can still convince their Mom’s knitting circle that they’re a scientist). So let’s just go with 19th Century conjecture that never panned out.
Correct. It can only be a “hypothesis” if it is testable. The CAGW notion is, at best, a “conjecture” that gives rise to various testable hypotheses, and since all of those hypotheses have been falsified, the conjecture never rises to the status of a theory.
This is explored extensively in Do You “Believe” in Climate Change? downloadable from:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2riore5jju31blt/Do%20You%20Believe%20in%20Climate%20Change%3F.docx.zip?dl=0
Plus a goodly amount of snark…
I’m fine with “Goebbel Warming Theory”. The Climate Liars might not like it so much though.
“Goebbel”–SUPERB!!!
I like Gorebull Warbling.
It’s not even a relevant hypothesis as it can be trivially falsified.
Nah, it is just bollocks.
What confounds me is the continuous deceptive language that’s used to frame this discussion. Warming is measurable and rarely contested. The supposed catastrophic warming caused by humans is generously given the status of a theory, when in truth it’s a rather weak hypothesis based on modeling.
and as such, not being supported by statistically significant empirical data of any kind it never rises above being a claim or assertion.
Imagine for a moment that all that money spent on an assertion. Imagine if that were spent instead on on a real problem, to achieve something beneficial to mankind as a whole, cancer research for example.
A more wicked and diabolical misappropriation of public funds there never was.
So ‘they’ are always talking about how they have to communicate their message more convincingly. ‘They’ resort to multiple cases of outright fraud. For one instance, their poster boy Dr. Michael Mann has, because of adverse inference, admitted that he does belong in state pen.
‘They’ purport to have found one (only) dodgy memo. How is this not a double standard that’s miles wide and miles deep?
Double Standard . Single use NBA jersey ‘s, BLM, made by Muslin Chinese SLAVES. Wear Nike’s ?
Holy cow!! link
Jordan Peterson points out the role of the Gulag Archipelago in discrediting communism. link The Gulag Archipelago was a system of Soviet forced labor camps. The resemblance of what’s going on in China to that is deeply disturbing. (The Chinese government denies the charges.)
Peterson says that what happened in the Soviet Union and Communist China was the worst thing that happened in the twentieth century. The fact that our children are not taught that could be the fault of the many communist sympathizers in our education system. Imagine professors so stupid/vile/ignorant that they can openly describe themselves as Marxist. That is tolerated because … free speech … freedom of thought. On the other hand, what would happen to a professor who, even as a joke, were to wear a MAGA cap?
Defund the universities.
A high school teacher in Florida was fired because of social media comments favorable towards Trump. According the the union dominated school board; If students found out about the teacher’s political positions, they might feel uncomfortable speaking out in class and this would hinder their education. As the teacher pointed out, the many teachers who made comments insulting towards Trump were completely ignored by the school board.
Scott Adams calls teacher unions an extinction risk for America. link
Specifically what disinformation is the result of the alleged campaign by oil companies initiated by this memo? If they carried out a disinformation campaign, wouldn’t there be something they said that could could be identified as false? Apparently they weren’t very good at it.
E x a c t l y. Take the time to rummage through the nearly 30 year history of accusing skeptic climate scientists of colluding with oil/coal industry people to spread disinformation, and you’ll see the accusers never say what the specific science falsehood is and how they prove specific money paid to the skeptics bought it. All you’ll ever see is the generic “funded by fossil fuel interests” notion, and at best, the most damaging “evidence” they have to offer regarding any corrupt activity is the set of memos – the rejected, never used, tossed-in-the-trash-can (I do have that corroborated) – I describe in my guest post here.
I wouldn’t even call it a theory. More like a hypothesis totally incapable of withstanding honest scientific scrutiny.
It’s like the myth, that Jerry Nadler once skipped lunch.
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft deletes contribution by Dieter Nuhr after criticism – an own goal?
Dieter Nuhr is a German satirist and “comedian”, teacher in a earlier life, often skeptic about alarmism in climate questions etc.
I believe if the BBC by repeat the ‘older white males’ insertion after being advised as inaccurate they are quite possibly in breach of UK race law and should be investigated by the relevant authorities.
I note that I filed my own complaint with the BBC in my second paragraph of my guest post here, albeit I only spoke of the errant “white” reference as something that was never in the actual worthless memo Kert Davies was perporting to quote. I didn’t know about the race law angle, and suggest that you or others might file your own complaint about that potentially big problem.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/make-a-complaint/
Sadly you will find few takers from the senior members of the Constabulary in England in particular with their sociology and psychology degrees taught to them by people so far to the left they are indistinguishable from the fantasy far right that they fulminate about daily.
The obscenity of racially and religiously motivated systematic sexual, physical and mental abuse of indigenous under age girls in England by people mostly from one country tied together 100% by one ideology and how it has been swept under the carpet by said senior police is a stain on the good name of the British Police as a whole. 1400 ignored cases in one town, Rotherham Lancs alone and not one senior police person was censured, fired or faced charges for criminal negligence. Contrast that total lack of activity with the obsessive zeal they have shown when it comes to pursuing the slightest suggestion of an inappropriate word rightly or wrongly interpreted from the mouths or keyboards one of the indigenous populous. There is a problem right across the board in all aspects of the marxist based assault on our society. The BBC? I actually feel sorry for those journalists who now regurgitate and embrace the half truths, lies and marxist methods they were taught as if they are their own, things they were taught obtaining the humanities degree daddy paid handsomely for.
Alas, that sort of collective problem is how agenda-pushers get away with the stunts they pull. Even if forced to admit Kert Davies made a blunder by inserting an unneeded word into a set of never-used ‘leaked memos,’ the next response would likely be no different than the defense offered by U.S. reporter Dan Rather and his true believer supporters when caught with forged documents he tried to use against President Bush: “Well, there probably is real evidence out there somewhere to prove the allegation.” Preconceived conclusions are created on all varieties of controversial topics – science / political / social – by the far-left, and then subsequently defended to the death rather than ever admit the original conclusions were faulty.
Once again they accuse others of what they are doing. They re-positioned their hypothesis, not even a theory, as the null hypothesis. They even present it as more than a hypothesis or a theory, but as facts, because that has the greater impact on the general public. Nothing more than political propaganda masquerading as science.
Industrial espionage of public health and disinformation campaigns are not new. If you are interested in who ‘they’ are, then follow the money. Who has most to lose and who has most to gain.
Reducing fossil fuel use will make everyone breathe easier, literally. The losses and gain in terms of money and, as a result, the need for a dumb misinformation campaigns is entirely on the fossil fuel industry and its mouthpieces.
If these alleged instances of industrial espionage are as common as your fevered imagination makes them out to be, you should have no trouble actually naming 5 to 10. Even 1 would be a good start.
Reducing fossil fuel use will not make anyone breath easier. What it will do is make everyone vastly poorer. Except for the shills who are running this scam.
Once again, you assume that the existence of this alleged mis-information campaign has been proven, when in fact it has been dis-proven, over and over again.
Indeed. The environmentalist organizations, the subsidy farmers in the renewables industry, the rent seekers in the bureaucracies, and the grant seekers in the universities have been at for decades.
Limbaugh’s audience is a weekly 15.5 million, and up. He is not the most popular conservative radio commentator, he is THE most popular radio commentator.
To be precise: reposition the greenhouse gas effect as an untested, non-validated thought experiment. I cannot call it a scientific hypothesis because those proposing it never proposed any serious empirically validated tests. Global warming was a real thing in 2 decades from the early 1980s to early 2000s. It was not caused by humans. It was caused by global changes in low-lying cloud levels which increased the average planetary albedo by as much as 10% at some times.
Please do not dispute global warming – unless you know their data is exaggerated, or cherry-picked. Dispute the reputed cause of it – the greenhouse gas effect, GHGE, calculations they make on the basis on their untested thought experiment. Note there are several ways these greenhouse gas calculations can be done. In other words: there is more than one way the effect can be modelled. Many GHGE models show no significant man-made climate change. IPCC authors all seem to use the same model. Why is that – given the model is untested and non-validated?
I don’t think many here would dispute that the planet has been warming since the LIA
Pretty much everyone here except the trolls would agree with you
Anybody know how many people potentially listen to that R4 podcast?
I know their political programs like “Today” are losing hundreds of thousands of listeners.
I switched on the radio in the car today and Radio 4 was playing something that sounds like what this article describes. They lost me as a listener in less than 1 minute. Such was my reaction that I’m glad the car wasn’t actually moving at the time.
I appreciate all the work that went into this post, but for those of us not up to speed on this particular controversy, it’s nearly impossible to follow. Some sort of introductory explanation of what’s going on would make a world of difference instead of plunging immediately into “reposition global warming theory,” leaked memos, corrupt collusion, disinformation campaign, smoking gun and Al Gore all in the first sentence.
Understood. However, keep in mind this guest post is a direct verbatim reproduction of what appears originally at my GelbspanFiles.com, where I write with the understanding that a small-but-growing loyal core audience of readers has been following my material closely enough that they don’t need an introductory explanation. If you think about it, a WUWT blog post written by Anthony that’s reproduced anywhere else might baffle some readers who don’t know what WUWT is all about. Rest assured, when I do write stand-alone guest posts at American Thinker and elsewhere, I do use the kind of basic setup that you suggest.
These people really believe they are superior and entitled to dictate how the rest of us think. The idea that they should persuade us to their viewpoint via logical argument and empirical evidence is completely foreign to them. When we dismiss their unsupported arguments from authority, they call us names and belittle us as uneducated, selfish, and stupid. Then they are shocked when Brexit passes and Trump is elected.
How these elitists, supposed science experts, could know so little about human nature is mind-boggling.
The fact is, this is typical BBC bias on so-called man made global warming-albeit from a slightly different angle.Said it before-COMPLAIN.The process is a 3 stage one before you get their final “rebuttal” and is a bit of a pain but they hate it when they are swamped .Then you get to complain to OFCOM – another pain as OFCOM is stuffed with BBC “lovers.” Still, they hate it! OFCOM generally has to investigate .Somebody with megabucks,please sue this corrupt organisation!!
Complaints at the BBC are a farce. The BBC can do no wrong in the BBC’s eyes. You have to keep trying.
Manmade global warming is a fact. Even Dr. Roy Spencer says it is. Although he says it could be a minority of the total global warming since 1950 that he says did indeed happen. What’s not definite is the degree to which manmade global warming exists, whether some of the consequences (especially increase of various forms of extreme weather) claimed to come from it exist or will exist at all, and to what extent whatever actual consequences of it will happen. (Effects that are less disputed are sea level rise, slightly more intense tropical cyclones and heavy rain events getting more intense.)
(Notably, some of the post-2003 increase of recorded amounts of heavy rain is from a 2003 change of US airport weather station rain gauge technology away from one that reads low in intense heavy rain to one that does not. Increase of intensity of heavy rain events, which is pretty certainly actually occurring due to warming of bodies of water and increase of precipitable water vapor in the atmosphere, is overstated.)
Is that you claiming AGW is a fact because “[e]ven Dr. Roy Spencer” says it is?
Your logical fallacy is: Appeal to Authority
https://tinyurl.com/okpubjf
So is global cooling. The global cooling from 40’s through the 70’s was observed. The global warming during the early 20th century was also observed. Observations are a better term than facts because it is an unloaded term. The term facts comes with an implied cause and effect relationship that may have not been, or can not be, established.
Donald Klipstein, “Manmade global warming is a fact.”
No it’s not. Climate models are unable to resolve such a small perturbation as caused by CO2 emissions.
“ Even Dr. Roy Spencer says it is.”
Roy Spencer doesn’t know how to evaluate the physical reliability of climate models.
No one knows whether CO2 emissions affect tropospheric sensible heat. It’s all just alarmist blah. Those folks don’t know what they’re talking about.
Sorry, no disrespect to Dr Spencer but it is empirical data which speaks, not people. There is no statistically significant empirical data set(s) which even show that it can be measured so it remains only an assertion and no models do not measure anything neither do their produce real data. Just because the mantra has had billions spent on it and because of it does not change the fact that the emperor has no clothes. Calling something which does carry a weight of empirical a fact is playing fast and loose because the modern interpretation of the word fact is that it is something which is an absolute certainty and there is not one in the whole of science. What we can do however is say “based on what empirical data is to hand to date”…. but nothing in science is cast in stone and long established ideas and theories can and do rightly fall like ninepins when new data comes to light. Claims not open to the challenge of critical thinking, of the scientific method, of empiricism, of falsifiability, of reproducibility are not based in science but rather in dogma and religion…..and then we get onto the money!
“Man made warming is a fact.” Of course! silly me! Forgot to put in “alarmism” or ” exaggeration. ” I’ll try and do better next time. However, I’d hoped that the point of BBC bias would have been the one taken
Sorry, but manmade global warming is not a fact. In theory, there could be some small amount of warming we’ve caused, but if it does exist, it is too small to discern, and is certainly too small to matter. The bigger point though is that our CO2 has been a boon to us and to mother earth, as it has been responsible for a marked greening of the planet. Any slight additional warming we have caused is just icing on the cake, since the modern warming has also been a boon. The warming likely won’t last either, as we could be in for a decades-long cooling stretch.
Water vapor (WV) in the atmosphere varies between about 0.4% and 4%, whereas, CO2 is ‘well-mixed’ with a value of about 0.04%. The IR absorption bands in water vapor are more numerous and wider than in CO2. Therefore, in deserts, such as the polar latitudes, one should expect the influence of CO2 is about 10% of the total ‘Greenhouse Gas’ effect, while it is only about 1% in humid regions of Earth. Thus, we are seeing a larger increase in temperatures, at least in the Arctic, than anywhere else on Earth, albeit in a temperature range more commonly associated with the body parts of a brass monkey.
One has to calculate the combined effect of ALL IR absorbing gases. Because the absorption bands get saturated (causing the doubling dependency), the proper way to characterize the impact of CO2 is to relate temperature changes to a doubling of ALL the gases and not just CO2. Basically, the impact of CO2 alone is negligible except in hot and cold deserts. Describing CO2 as a control knob is a case of the tail wagging the dog.
Thank you for noticing the fact free “fact”. Freeman Dyson and William Happer both view it as at best, trivial and most likely unmeasurable. I spent my recent working life identifying warming cycles within the Triassic sediments on the Norwegian Continental shelf because of the effect on sedimentation. What is more disturbing to me is that there is actually a real problem with CO2 for which the geological evidence is quite clear yet this is never even mentioned by the usual suspects in the MSM. That problem is that there is not enough in the atmosphere not too much. CO2 exists in three mediums not the two that the MSM concentrate on. It is bound up in carbonaceous rock, in solution in water and in gaseous form in the air. The lack of credible reference to geological history struck me as odd when I first started listening to the claims and assertions being made in respect of the magical properties given over to the 3% which industrial man contributes to the annual CO2 flux in the atmosphere. Those properties become even more magical when the electromagnetic spectrum of CO2 is compared to that of the 100 times more present Water Vapour in the atmosphere. Since the late Jurassic, around 160 my ago marine organisms evolved which sequestrate CO2 and combine this with calcium to form hard protective calcium carbonate shells (CaCO3). That they have been successful at this is attested to by the huge quantities of organic limestones around the world. These limestones are made from the tests or skeletons of those marine organisms and represent CO2 removed from the Carbon Cycle. Since 160 million years ago the atmospheric level of CO2 has been decreasing in a linear fashion. I pay attention to 160 million year old trends because they mean something very significant. During the deepest part of part one of the current ice age, atmospheric CO2 levels descended to around 180ppm, around 20ppm above the death of plants and by inference the death of life as we know it. In the Cambrian, atmospheric CO2 levels were around 7000ppm, when the the vegetables and leaves we like to eat in our salads evolved the level was around 2500-2800ppm. This is why any commercial grower pumps CO2 into the greenhouses, because the plants grow larger, quicker and use less water. Who would not agree with that. When atmospheric CO2 and temperature data is compared across geological time, no correlation at all can be made. As for the pathetic but welcome temporary arrest of the descending curve of atmospheric CO2 caused by you driving your SUV this will not last. If that 160 million year decline is plotted into the future then it will naturally intersect the 160ppm death line in a bit over 1 million years from now, or if the crazies have their way, even sooner as the second “fun” part of the returning Ice Age bites.
Meanwhile, a music teacher wrote a lovely song, to help students (and adults) get through being stuck at home during the pandemic, so sit back and listen to the soothing sounds of her ukelele, and dulcet tone of her voice. You’ll be glad you did.
Bravo Bruce!
Extract from BBC Charter:
INCORPORATION AND OBJECTS
5. The BBC’s Mission
The Mission of the BBC is to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain.
6. The Public Purposes of the BBC are as follows.
(1) To provide impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them: the BBC should provide duly accurate and impartial news, current affairs and factual programming to build people’s understanding of all parts of the United Kingdom and of the wider world. Its content should be provided to the highest editorial standards. It should offer a range and depth of analysis and content not widely available from other United Kingdom news providers, using the highest calibre presenters and journalists, and championing freedom of expression, so that all audiences can engage fully with major local, regional, national, United Kingdom and global issues and participate in the democratic process, at all levels, as active and informed citizens.
For many the BBC no longer represents them and it does not follow it’s charter, although it thinks it does, but you can go to prison if you don’t have a TV license.
+10
“How They Made Us Doubt Everything”
Since when did the Left doubt CAGW?
Been Santer is barely into an interview before he is talking about crying.
He is not alone. There have been numerous climate activists talking about crying and related responses to their emotions,even a paper IIRC.
Is it not dangerous to have blubber babies involved with studies that can affect others in the world?
The best scientists I have met and worked with have not been weepy eyed. Strong, resolute, leadership types, typically. People you are inclined to trust.
Still thinking of the evolution of a human sub-species that has genetic properties unable to face bad news. They show lachrymatory propensity at times of stress. Contrast them with stories of female Amazons and voluntary mastectomies for better archery.
Geoff S
Alarmists have constantly been repositioning global warming theory from day one right up to the present. The most recent example is where the Guardian repositioned global warming into global heating, and climate change into climate….chaos, crisis, collapse, emergency or breakdown, depending the level of hysteria they require.
R4 are also doing something similar with the series itself, where they’re again repositioning catastrophic AGW as a fact, which it is not. No wonder millions are ditching the BBC.
Thank you for a very interesting post. I agree with Navy Bob, above, that it needs more context and attention to structure, but if the poster has already covered this in a previous post, it does get wearing having to repeat oneself. I think we ‘climate skeptics’ (if the collective is allowed) are all aware of this; does it just require yet another complaint to the deaf and stupid ears of the BBC? Another conversation with an ignorant and convinced 97 percenter? Or (and perhaps this is right) tenacious and scrupulous retelling of the events, as the poster has shown. We have to be in the game as long as they are. With physics on our side.
Thanks understanding the situation overall. Again, this was not intended to be a stand-alone guest post at WUWT, but is instead a continuation of a narrow political facet of the global warming issue at my GelbspanFiles blog. There, I’ve already explained what the false accusation is, how the accusers are enslaved to so-called ‘leaked industry memos’ that are actually not what they portray them to be, and who the core clique of accusers are.
I’d say the reason why this core clique continues to push their ‘skeptic scientist liars-for-hire’ accusation just like what is heard in this BBC podcast is because literally nobody of any major prominence has called them out on all the fatal faults that are so easily found in the accusation and with the people surrounding it. I posit that if somebody does, the dozen or so “ExxonKnew” global warming lawsuits would collapse, and the legacies of the key top figures in the accusation – Al Gore, Naomi Oreskes, Ross Gelbspan, and the little mob comprising what I term “Greenpeace USA née Ozone Action” – could all go down in flames in the most spectacular way.
Really? Someone had best set the beebs down and explain that they don’t swing a big enough d*ck to win a pissing contest with Mr Limbow.
I agree that the eco-nuts are trying to destroy our energy systems.
However, I think that articles like you’ve given are worthless drivel. If the left has libeled anyone, then sue the bastards. Otherwise, stop diverting attention away from our arguments showing that their theories are bunkum.
Who cares if somebody worked for Greenpeace. Who cares if Gore is a liar and know nothing who will misrepresent the facts whenever he can. Refute what they say that actually relates to CAGW, sue them when they libel somebody, or just say nothing.
Stop rehashing stuff that makes zero difference to anyone but a few nit pickers on our side. Please stick with anti-CAGW arguments which really make a difference.
Bob Shapiro. That’s a bit cynical but I see where you’re coming from.You’re too harsh about the article and”then sue the bastards” sounds great but -from where I sit in the UK- it seems that litigation in USA takes forever -Canada also.Russell is right to pursue the BBC. They are the main purveyors of AGW nonsense (and that’s saying something!) because of their total groupthink on the subject and the fact that they have such world-wide covreage.It’s NOT a waste of time to complain and call them out.They hate it and Dominic Cummings ,who is Boris Johnson’s right hand ” attack dog ” has them in his sights.The BBC is VERY unpopular just now. Good luck with it all Russell!
@Wolf: Thanks for your support and understanding. I’ve encountered various forms of critics like commenter Bob Shapiro above over the years, and if there is one persistent hallmark of these otherwise well-intended but basically impolite critics, it is that they strangely don’t comprehend that their “stick with anti-CAGW arguments which really make a difference” won’t make ANY kind of difference at all when those arguments plow into the solid brick wall of the gatekeepers in the mainstream media. Those gatekeepers know of the AGW issue only basically by 3 talking points that have been hammered into their heads for the last nearly 30 years: #1 “the science is settled”; #2 “skeptic scientists are paid oil money to lie”; #3 “we reporters, politicians, and the public can ignore those skeptics because of points 1 & 2.” Commenter Bob Shapiro, or his local / Federal senators and representatives can argue anti-CAGW points with a reporter all day long, but if the reporter all but calls them shills for Exxon and Bob and his elected reps don’t know jack on how to shoot down that accusation and turn the tables against the reporter to demand he/she show the planet where the evidence exists to prove any AGW skeptic is engaged in a pay-for-performance arrangement with Big Coal & Oil, then we all can pretty much guess what the final heavily edited news piece will look like. Joe/Josephine Average Citizen who is not a climate scientist or who has not studied the issue in depth can’t offer anti-CAGW arguments with any effectiveness, but he or she doesn’t have to be either a climatologist or a rocket scientist to ask Al Gore, Naomi Oreskes, or Ross Gelbspan or Greta Thunberg what their evidence is to prove AGW skeptics are on the payroll of the fossil fuel industry. The main AGW promulgators will flee from those kinds of tough questions every time because the science isn’t actually the weakest part of their issue, the baseless corruption accusation against skeptics is. Wipe out the central point of the above 3 talking points, and the other two collapse by default, exposing how this issue is about more than science, it is about how a complicit mainstream media enabled far-left zealots to advance an agenda without pushback from “reporters.”
I note that the ‘global warming’ crowd often cites the supposed temperature increase starting in 1979. An earlier post in this thread also mentioned 1979 (or was it ‘Late ’70’s- Early ’80’s?) as a starting point.
I’m old enough to remember the ‘Global Cooling’ scare/scam during the 1970’s, and if I recall correctly there was a slight ‘temperature decrease’ during the 1970’s that appears to have reversed around 1979-1980.
So, if there is a slight ‘undulation’ in temperature where there was a low point around 1979-1980, of course the ‘Global Warming’ crowd would use that as their starting point.
Of course, we must also not neglect the constant ‘adjustment’ or ‘revision’ of the longer-term temperature records, which seem to always ‘adjust’ the older temperatures cooler and cooler, so as to make more recent temperature readings warmer in comparison.
As far as the bureaucrats paying any attention to serious scientists who step off The Plantation, it is unlikely that they will listen, as temperature and climate are just a camouflage and a tool to what they want….. more and more TAX MONEY and more and more CONTROL.
As far as any discussion -not just of climate, but discussion of just about anything- in the media, particularly the American media (as that is what I am most familiar with) the Left has pushed the ‘climate’ of discussion to such a state of bullying that it reminds me of the ‘social climate’ in the last sections of the book ‘Lord of the Flies’.
I thank Anthony for all the work keeping this site going.
In discussions with other people, if the topic of climate comes up (which it rarely does, apparently it’s not too high on the list at least with the people I bump into) I mention WUWT as a good place to go for a lively discussion between people who are seeking the TRUTH, not pushing a political position.