Friday
Mar122010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Questions for David Shukman
The Royal Geographical Society blog is asking if anyone has any questions for the BBC's Environment Correspondent, David Shukman who they will be interviewing next week. Details here.
I'm sure everyone will be polite...please.
Reader Comments (23)
I think I will ask if he has read the Hockey Stick Illusion.
;-)
No, ask if he understood its implications.
Another quiz round starting here next week-
http://www.walker-institute.ac.uk/quiz_a_climate_scientist/
Not sure the blog will accept Josh's 'where did you last see your data?' cartoon. If people go gently with them, they may make it more than a 1-week blog.
i would ask what did bbc's weatherman, paul hudson, receive from the 'climategate' team or from the whistleblower/leaker on october 12 2009. please reveal.
did u see this bish?
10 March: Vancouver Sun: Reuters: U.K. academy to review UN climate change science
Britain’s science academy said on Wednesday it would take part in a review of U.N. climate science intended to restore trust after a 2007 report was found to have exaggerated evidence for global warming.
“I can confirm that we are one of the parties (on the review panel),” Bill Hartnett, a spokesman for The Royal Society, said..
(LOL: Pic Caption: Polar bear photographed in drifting and unconsolidated sea ice in Kane Basin, off Cape Clay, in northern Greenland. Photograph by: Nick Cobbing, AFP/Getty Images)
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/academy+review+climate+
The link appears to have been posted 20 Jan 2010 for a meeting on 25 Jan, despite several, but not all, appended comment posts have todays date.
I would ask if he understands why PC1 (PC4) and Yamal chronologies effect the Bayesian methodology of the IPCC AR4 for attribution of recent global warming of the latter part of the twentieth century with respect to confirmation of climate sensitivity estimates from the paleoclimatic and modern period computer models.
Climate alarmists frequently allude to vasts sums of industry money funding the skeptics movement, but does he not see that billions of dollars are poured into the alarmists coffers by western governments and that the alarmist scientists want to keep this gravy train going?
I would ask this. Why do you ask?
Remind us - (direct us if need be) - of what he thinks about AGW, climategate etc.
I think a good question would be to quote Lord Kelvin who said in 1900:
"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.",
Only to have Einstein come up with relativity in 1905 (binning Newton's equations of motion at the same time). The question would then be:-
Can science ever be settled as the BBC and many others claim climate science is?
Sandy Sinclair
I suggested he ask if, given the BBC staff pension fund's exposure to green investments, it can be trusted to report on environmental issues, if he thinks the fund should rid itsself of these investments (if they'd been diligenty managed, they'd have been sold the moment the emails were sprung) - and if not, why not?
I would ask him if he believes in the existence of the Medieval Warming Period and if so, what caused it ? If he does not, I would ask him on what evidence he bases this.
Show him some ink-blots and ask him what he sees..
A friend who was at Eton with David and had lunch with him recently assured me that he's more open about the sceptical point of view than most people would expect. He was asking where the UK academic experts are on the subjects they discussed. Whatever your academic credentials I would really emphasize the politeness the good Bishop advocates.
"assured me that he's more open about the sceptical point of view than most people would expect"
Very possible, in which case perhaps the question should be about internal BBC pressure to promote AGW and silence sceptics? Assuming he's allowed to say, of course...
It's not just BBC internal pressure, it's the lack of credentialed scientists in the UK that will help to explain the problems to guys like Shukman. We have to play a long game and assume neither the worst nor the best. And courtesy always helps.
Richard
Roger Harrabin has also been asking who the sceptical scientists in the UK are. I don't think one can take this as evidence of even-handedness on the issue though - not after the last ten years of propaganda.
I agree, it doesn't speak of even-handedness but I think it does speak of a new openness. Even that may be driven by a desire to save one's job, not anything higher. I was thinking such sceptical thoughts myself (about motivation, about whether Shukman will in fact have the guts) as I heard about this friendly meeting the other day. But people are I think shuffling, if not off the fence then towards its edge. But staring down into no-man's land (not the enemy camp) and that's a genuine problem for them.
I also picked up that the Beeb wants to do a whole programme on Yamal. That's just rumour right now but may be of interest around here. And the dearth of people to talk to about that, who are recognised as scientists of real standing in the UK, was I'm sure not just an excuse. It's a fact. One that we are going to change. But that may take a little time.
Careerwise, it is not such a dangerous thing for a reporter to do a foray into the sceptic camp, meet a few "deniers" and befriend them. If things swing back to pre-climategate then they say, those guys were nutters and out of impartiality I had to give them a say. If the AGW bandwagon has truly be derailed then he can claim to be one of the first to see the light.
For a scientist who speaks out against AGW, the downside is more risky. If things go back to pre-climategate then the scientist's career prospects have been blown. Only senior scientists with tenure and who do not need the research funding and who have balls and are old enough to remember when science was honest will speak out. Sadly there are not many in the UK. Freeman Dyson who is a "God" to most theoretical physicists is sadly the only eminent once-British scientist to do so. Maybe he is helped by being in America at the IAS in Princeton.
Several reasons behind the "shortage" of sceptical academic-based scientists:
1) The stranglehold of political correctness on all academic institutions.
2) Visible and real downside with very little upside.
3) Reluctance to criticise people working in other fields - even when you know its rubbish.
There are few (if any) "climate scientists" who would come forward and confess that they have spent over a decade and found nothing of value. And why would you enter the field if you were a sceptic? Like an atheist joining the theology department.
Real scientists go into real fields. For physics its astronomy, quantum mechanics, new materials. Not drawing and colouring.
The subject has been overrun by activists - and people who found real science too hard.
"I’ll try to put them to him when I meet him on the 25th January. "
Bit late to comment?
I wanted to ask where I could get a well paid job as a professional skeptic mouthpiece for big oil and the automobile industry, like I keep hearing about, because all the professional mouthpiece jobs I see advertised are for AGW cheerleaders.
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