Bishop Hill Media links
Nov 29, 2010 BBC Climate: other A few media bits for you:
Roger Harrabin was on the radio today, looking at what happened at Copenhagen. I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet.
Every day next week, Professor David Livingstone of Queen's University Belfast presents programme called "The Empire of Climate". The BBC blurb is as follows:
Eminent geographer Professor David Livingstone wants us to see that climate is more than just the weather outside our window - it's an empire that has shaped our lives throughout history.
In the Western world, we live very cushioned lives, so that climate rarely impacts on us in a disastrous fashion. When it does - like the floods that hit parts of the UK in 2007 - we're left shocked and surprised by the ferocity of what climate can do. David explores the way human beings are shaped by weather patterns; "climate has always been a moral issue - not just a description of the weather" he says.
We are used to talking about climate change - or how WE influence the climate. In today's programme David takes us back to a time in history when people were used to thinking about climate in terms of how it influenced us.
Prof Livingstone's own webpage describes it as "a social history of environmental determinism from Herodotus to Global Warming", which is probably not quite as sexy as the BBC's take on it. (By the way, does Global Warming now need Capital Letters? It makes it look like something out of Winnie the Pooh).
Hold on...
Reader Comments (14)
Harrabin discussed the politics, not the underlying science. Climategate was not mentioned.
The BBC now known as Climatical Ali and their friends at the Met office need to be privatized and dumped into the real world.
As Latimer says, Harrabin's piece was about the politics of mass delusion about global warming. Amazing what happens when you put thousands of politicians and their advisors/bureaucrats in one location for a couple of weeks. I guess it only cost a few hundred million though.
Hving read Livinstone's biography, I suspect the series will be as hard to interpret as Mike Hulme's wierd meanderings. It will no doubt be a given that "climate change" is a fact, as Livingstone clearly has no background in climatology.
The example given, of flooding in 2007, seems ill-chosen. Wasn't the flooding a problem mainly because houses had been built on a flood plain?
Harrabin was on more than once this morning. His first appearance (just after 6am) he was talking about "runaway global warming", saying that the likelihood of keeping warming under 2 degC was now in doubt unless something serious can be stitched together at Cancun, failing which we would have "runaway global warming". So he's still trotting out that nonsense and doesn't seem to have learned anything.
Who needs Bob Ward when you've got Harrabin and the rest of the BBC doing all the propoganda for you? Where is Bob anyway?
Chris Huhne carrying on about "science shows it's all getting worse" and "we have little time left" [if there is no agreement at Cancun] on the Today programme this morning {7.50 or so]. This was followed immediately by the weather forecast.... the weather man could see how ridiculous the comparison would be and felt obliged to say "well, of course we'll still get cold snaps even though we have a global warming scenario." [minus 17C seems bit more than a cold snap to me]
Surely the rain that caused the flooding in 2007 was weather, not climate.
It was midsummer flooding. Just prior to those rains the BBC wheeled out some arrogant 'expert' talking about the risk of water shortages. He said summer rain is useless for recharging the aquifers, because the summer vegetation sucks it all up so that it never percolates down through the soil. I remember thinking he was tempting fate at the time.
I thought the universities were strapped for cash and anxious about the very future of education.
Then I read about Prof Livingstone and his career of nonsense.
By the way, does Global Warming now need Capital Letters? It makes it look like something out of Winnie the Pooh.
There's Global Warming which is like Piltdown Man or the Hitler Diaries, and there was global warming of which I have fond and fading memories.
Your Grace
But Global Warming IS like something out of Winnie the Pooh. Try Chapter 3, the one about the Woozle. Pooh and Piglet misinterpret an observation then proceed to construct an elaborate hypothesis while, at the same time, reinforcing each other’s fears. Only Christopher Robin, who is observing the situation from a different perspective, sees the truth of the matter.
The difference is that Pooh is ready to admit his error.
"I have been Foolish and Deluded," said he, "and I am a Bear of No Brain at All."
"By the way, does Global Warming now need Capital Letters?"
It seems to have been promoted to "theory" instead of a mere hypothesis.