Bishop Hill Graun podcast dull
Nov 15, 2010 Climate: WG2 Media The Guardian's science podcast this week looks at the book Climate Wars by Gwynne Dyer, which looks as though it's Mark Lynas's Six Degrees all over again - the subtitle is The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats, so I think you probably know the story already. Judging from the number of reviews on Amazon (four), so does everybody else.
The podcast is rather dull in terms of its scientific content, although there's plenty to enjoy, but for all the wrong reasons. Alok Jha, the presenter and Tim Radford, who runs the Guardian Science book club, nod sagely at every single one of Dyer's predictions of doom (and he packs a great many of them in). Not a question is asked, not a hypothesis probed. With such an array of extreme predictions made, you would have thought that it would have been enlightening to challenge one or two of them - or perhaps enlightenment is not the objective. This is what groupthink looks like.
Do have a listen, and feel free to fact-check some of Dyer's more outlandish claims.
Reader Comments (13)
"Climate Wars" is available from the Guardian Bookshop, but so are the books by Robert Carter, Christopher Booker and Roger Pielke Jnr. Some mistake, surely?
http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9781851687428
According to the Amazon link, the book was published on April Fools' Day.
Somebody did know what they were doing.
That bloke Dyer was on Sky News the other day discussing climate change with another author who's written a warmist book designed to engage the average football fan in the debate ("Climate Change for Football Fans" or something).
Dyer was up and running within minutes, talking about imminent tipping points etc etc blah blah. The other author at one stage rather shamefacedly admitted he knew nothing about the science and just believed everything he'd been told. Unbelievable.
Last time I looked, Hockey Stick Illusion was available from Guardian Bookshop at £2 off.
Do comment on the podcast when you’ve listened to it. Or even before.
Dear Bish,
The book author says that the Chinese are 'frightened quietly'. :)
O/T, but....
A remarkable article on Phil Jones and CRU has appeared in Nature. David Adam.
Phil Jones is backing off from his earlier offer to address the 1990 paper situation saying the offer was made "under the effects of medication".
Makes your head spin - these climate dudes? I wonder what Doug Keenan will have to say/think.
The Hottest Year
"Graun podcast dull"
Bears and woods..? :-)
Do any of these prophesies of doom have a specific timescale? Surely there comes a time when a prediction is falsified by spectacularly failing to happen. It would not be a surprise to me if this hadn't happened already. We had a series of hot summers and mild winters during the nineties which made the AGW hypothesis pretty easy to believe but since then the weather seems to have pretty much returned to normal. Here in the UK it is November and we are starting to get frosty mornings, last week was wet and windy, pretty much how November has been for most of the fifty odd years that I have been alive. Last winter was colder than average and the spring and early summer was cold. I'm sure I can recall being promised a Mediteranian climate and that most of the world's ski resorts were screwed.
Religions are always forecasting the End of the World incorrectly, but does it stop them? I wish... :-(
Gwynne Dyer was worth reading many years ago when he stuck to his specialties, military affairs and history. A couple of years ago I emailed Mr. Dyer in response to one of his alarmist columns in the local rag. I didn't try to convert him but merely suggested that he at least consult some skeptical scientists (and I listed a few) rather than taking the pronouncements of his hero, James Hansen, as gospel. Dyer emailed back that he had looked up the skeptical scientists on Desmog blog and found them to have no creditability. I see now that he had no interest in balance as doubt would take the edge off his zeal, the zeal necessary to write such a jeremiad as this book. It just struck me. What do you get when you cross James (Jim) Hansen with Phil Jones? You get Jim Jones, infamous dispenser of Kool-Aid.Gwynne Dyer has drank deeply of the draught.
Actually, it was more a situation where Dwyer liked to pass himself off as a military and historical authority with the help of the CBC. I didn't find him much of an authority on anything since he never actually provided any new insight on military history in this country or any other. But he sure could gas on like he actually knew something. He did like to slant things in a way that was acceptable to the Canadian liberal elites back under Trudeau - ensuring government granting agencies were on side, I imagine.
I was struck by the similarities between Gwynne Dyer's lubriciously gloomy prognostications and those of Peter Gwynne, back in 1975. This stuff keeps coming around, doesn't it (even the names.)
http://www.climategate.com/the-cooling-world-newsweek-1975
Anyway, downloaded the podcast for future reference - it's the sort of thing that should be placed in a time capsule and unearthed in 2030, just to remind the author what he said, if we unaccountably fail to go to hell in a handbasket between now and then.
Not that being aligned 180 degrees to reality has hurt the careers of people like Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren, though. I think Gwynne Dyer is another prophet who will continue to profit...
Woodentop - not at all unbelievable. I don't understand the science of bacteria but I still wash my hands after doing a crap. Ditto smoking. Ditto gravity but I don't put lead in my shoes. Try reading the book because if you've got a sense of humour you'll enjoy it. James