Bishop Hill Small world
Mar 23, 2010 Climate: other Greens Media I'm grateful to reader, Cumbrian Lad, who has pointed out something rather interesting.
The seminar mentioned in the previous post is being organised by the Science Media Centre, an organisation we have met before, since they also organised the "what shall we do about the sceptics" meeting reported here the other day.
What Cumbrian Lad has noticed is that the board of the Science Media Centre includes some very familiar names. Readers here will remember Philip Campbell, the editor of Nature who had to resign from the Russell panel. Those with sharper memories might also recall Mike Granatt, the PR man who is advising the Russell panel. Our old friend Bob Ward of the Grantham Institute will of course be familiar to everyone.
As Cumbrian Lad so rightly notes, it is an extraordinarily small world.
The board of the science media centre is as follows:
- Kenny Campbell, Editor, Metro
- Dr Philip Campbell, Editor-in-Chief, Nature
- Clive Cookson, Science Editor, Financial Times
- Dr Peter Cotgreave, Director of Public Affairs, Royal Society
- Carolan Davidge, Director of Press & PR, Cancer Research UK
- Mike Granatt CB FIPR, Partner, Luther Pendragon and former Director General of Goverment Information and Communication Service
- Philip Greenish, Chief Executive, Royal Academy of Engineering
- Professor Robin Lovell-Badge FRS, Head of Developmental Genetics, MRC National Institute for Medical Research
- Tom Miller, Director of Communications, Imperial College London and STEMPRA committee member
- Rebecca Morelle, Science and Nature reporter, BBC News Online
- Vivienne Parry, Writer, broadcaster and journalist
- Simon Pearson, Night Editor, The Times
- Dr Simon Singh, Science writer and broadcaster
- Ceri Thomas, Editor, Today, BBC Radio 4
- Bob Ward, Policy and Communications Director, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science
Reader Comments (20)
I wonder who is funding this organisation? ....We should be told !!
I just took a look at their website :
"The Science Media Centre is housed within the Royal Institution but independent from it. Media groups, industry, professional associations and individuals fund the Centre with donations capped at 5% of the running costs to preserve its independence. The team at the Centre is guided by a Science Advisory Panel and a Board."
Looking forward to finding out who pays the bills :)
http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/pages/about/funding.htm
Thanks your wish... nice bunch of people there - everyone from Murdoch to Glaxo SmithKline, purveyors of 60 million doses of swine flu vaccine to HMG. What they don't know about scaremongering isn't worth knowing.
Yer Grace:
In 1956 the American Sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote "The Power Elite", describing how a fairly small group of people in Government, Media, Academia, the Military, Business and Industry make the decisions that affect us all. At the time it was viewed as an attack on the status quo. I suspect that todays Progressives looked at it as a blueprint. Classical Liberals like yourself would be well advised to revisit the work and map out the incestuous, interlocking linkages - the issue is not liberal vs conservative or left vs. right.... hegemony makes for strange bed-fellows.
tragically, there is no political opposition to creating a CO2 Bubble:
22 March: UK Times: Carl Mortished: What happened to Tories and the free market?
David Cameron’s energy plans show his firm preference for a planned economy
Consider this. The Tories will take command of energy markets through the Department of Energy and Climate Change in conjunction with the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and the National Security Council. Ofgem, the energy regulator, will become “a delivery agency for government policy”...
He would rig the carbon market with a minimum carbon price to ensure that CO2 is really expensive. He would boost investment in nuclear and renewables and damn coal for eternity. Finally, he would set up a green investment bank issuing green government bonds for public investment in clean energy.
The question is how all this sits with Tory thinking about the economy, as it has nothing to do with market forces. It is about manipulation, central planning and ministerial control...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7070312.ece
one u already posted:
22 March: FT: Fiona Harvey: UEA emails - scientific panel announced
But already his appointment has been attacked by climate sceptics, as he has strong business interests in biofuels, is chairman of the wind company Falck Renewables, and a board member of Climate Change Capital, a major investor in carbon credits...
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/03/22/uea-emails-scientific-panel-announced/
23 March: Bloomberg: U.K. Conservatives Study ‘Green Bonds’ to Fund Bank (Update1)
By Alex Morales and Thomas Penny
The Conservative Party’s advisory panel includes Bob Wigley, a former Merrill Lynch & Co. banker, James Cameron, vice chairman of Climate Change Capital, Alliance Trust Plc Chief Executive Officer Katherine Garrett-Cox, Logica Plc chief Financial Officer Seamus Keating, and Nick Mabey, chief executive of E3G, which advises companies on sustainable development...
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ad0UfWR9onmk
23 March: GreenwisebusinessUK: BVCA throws its weight behind green bank
The call comes via the BVCA’s Energy, Environment and Technology Board (EETB), which is made up of leaders from venture capital and private equity firms ..
Firms that sit on the EETB include Amadeus Capital, Blackstone, Climate Change Capital, The Carlyle Group, Environmental Technologies Fund, Good Energies, Hudson Clean Energy, Hgcapital, Impax Capital, Riverstone Holdings, Scottish Equity Partners, Virgin Green Fund and Wheb Ventures.
http://www.greenwisebusiness.co.uk/news/bvca-throws-its-weight-behind-green-bank-1238.aspx
21 March: UK Tele: Next Parliament 'last chance' to stop climate change
The next Parliament will be the last chance for politicians to stop runaway climate change, business, charity and environmental leaders warned on Monday
The other experts backing the call for action are Professor Lord Robert May, member of the Government's Climate Change Committee, and James Cameron, executive director of Climate Change Capital, who said the transformation to a low-carbon economy was a huge opportunity for skills and jobs.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7493983/Next-Parliament-last-chance-to-stop-climate-change.html
Even though the elite keep grouping and re-grouping, I've noticed an increasing reluctance to talk about the facts. In IT and engineering, companies publish 'white papers' where in two to three sheets of A4 they gather together the pertinent facts about why their product is better than the competition, etc.
Strikes me in this case that there are a number of potentially sceptical MSM outlets such as the Daily Mail, Express and potentially the Telegraph, which maybe would benefit if they had the salient facts of the last couple of months put together in such a package. As we're on your site Bish, maybe a two pager on the Hockey Stick debacle would be a great way to start. Then follow it up with a second on the lack of statistically significant warming since '95. Each would be backed up with a graph or two and the relevant references, in a similar form to a Wiki but in a downloadable .pdf. This way the poor behaviour and lack of scientific rigour could be encapsulated in one place in an easy to access format instead of having to pull together disparate sources and sites.
This would make it doubly hard for the facts to be avoided.
What do folks think?
SDCS
I had a quick scan through SMC past press releases as far as I can see the first climate change related press release was in 2006. I wonder what or who triggered the interest as there doesn’t seem to be anything in the previous few years.
Sir DigbyCS
Your proposal would seem to be an excellent idea.
I'm sure that between us we could coble together and hone a draft text, and I've also no doubt that His Holiness could put together an even more authoritative version.
Whether or not the MSM would use as intended on the other hand I remain doubtful. What do others think?
A renaming is in order: Scaremongering Media Centre. There is a huge amount of expertise in this area thanks to the success of computer modellers behind Limits to Growth, Mad Cow Epidemiology, Global Warming, and no doubt many others. The AGW team are the outright winners, having combined dubious models with a powerful PR machine called the IPCC, carefully designed to put distance between real scientists and policy makers.
Basic approach:
(a) hire computer modellers to produce some scary stuff, let us call it X
(b) get your media folks working on the PR, and friendly web sites
(c) get enough funding (phone number for the UN required) to subsidise associated 'research' by what will be called 'thousands of scientists', but make sure their work is summarised for policy-makers by the core team (see (e)). Any placements into relevant organisations management teams is a bonus (see how the AGW team took over the UK Met Office for an inspiring example)
(d) get some NGOs on board by explaining that their cause is doomed unless your X is dealt with first, and hint at the riches to be obtained by public donations once the show is on the road
(e) a core team of ultra-activists with good political nous to orchestrate it all. Working through supra-national bodies such as the UN and the EU seems best, as these get relatively little scrutiny by the media, and yet pay such handsome salaries and perks that real politicians are drawn to them.
Sir DigbyCS, try the following site. Lots of good, informative, and well-prepared documentation.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/
I've discussed something along the lines of what Sir Digby has discussed with one of the Sundays. The Hockey Stick is a very difficult story to tell in a couple of thousand words though.
There you go:
http://climatequotes.com/2010/03/23/what-you-must-believe-to-be-afraid-of-climate-change/
BH - I think there will soon be enough new material about the cover-up by UEA to add a few new chapters to your book. Maybe it's time to start lining up a 2nd edition.
re: "what shall we do about the sceptics"
Will demand that the length of sceptics' noses must be measured?
Will they campaign for opening eco-gulags to re-train the heretics?
Will they order that all sceptics should be given psychological and psychiatric treatment on the NHS?
This is getting pretty silly that despite their own claims over the compelling evidence of global warming these people feel that have to do something about sceptics.
We should report this lot to the police. They are more a danger to themselves than to the public.
1975 ‘Endangered Atmosphere’ Conference: Where the Global Warming Hoax Was Born
has some interesting history on the elites involvement.... (pdf warning only 6 pages)
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_20-29/2007-23/pdf/50-55_723.pdf
Predictably depressing government response to this petition:
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to suspend the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia from preparation of any Government Climate Statistics until the various allegations have been fully investigated by an independent body.”
Government response:
"The Government believes that all these allegations should be investigated transparently.
An independent review is currently examining the scientific conduct of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and is due to report its findings later in the spring. More information on the review can be found at: http://www.cce-review.org/. The University of East Anglia also recently announced that there will be a separate review to examine the CRU’s key scientific publications. The findings of both these reviews will be made public.
The House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology is also investigating the matter. On 1 March the Select Committee heard evidence from a wide range of contributors, including Professor Jones, who has temporarily stepped down from his post as Director of CRU.
CRU’s analysis of temperature records is not funded by, prepared for, or published by the Government. The resulting outputs are not Government statistics.
Our confidence that the Earth is warming is taken from multiple sources of evidence and not only the HadCRUT temperature record, which CRU scientists contribute to. The same warming trend is seen in two independent analyses carried out in the United States, by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Goddard Institute of Space Studies at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). These analyses draw on the same pool of temperature data as HadCRUT, but use different methodologies to produce analyses of temperature change through time. Further evidence of this warming is found in data from instruments on satellites, and in trends of declining arctic sea ice and rising sea levels.
Science is giving us an increasingly clear picture of the risks we face from climate change. With more research, we can better understand those risks, and how to manage them. That is why the Government funds a number of institutions, including the University of East Anglia, to carry out research into climate change science."
http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page22924
Going back to event itself, in a week's time, it strikes me that ahead even of the factsheets Sir Digby is advocating (which strike me as a very good idea - and there probably are some good starting points from SPPI and others) there are two basic questions that all media people should be asking and should therefore be central to the discussion. Remembering that perceptions are all in this area:
1. Is climate science more uncertain than it was before the recent revelations starting with Climategate on 17 Nov 09? If not, what on earth would make it more uncertain? How can one explain that the UK public clearly think it's more uncertain, based on the BBC Populus poll and others? Surely they have grounds to think this? (OK, four questions but you get the idea.)
2. At what point would the uncertainty be so great that mandatory CO2 emission reduction would be an irrational and irresponsible policy choice? (Please be very specific in your answer.)
The crucial question is of course the second. All the many efforts to declare that 'the vast body of science supporting AGW' is unaffected by Climategate and its sequels are really trying to argue (without ever being explicit or detailed) that climate science is still certain enough to justify massive reductions in CO2 emissions, through biofuels, extensions of cap and trade and all the international paraphernalia that's deemed to be required to 'police' these things. Everything we were going to do anyway is still justified.
But is it?
That's the most important question the media should now be asking. Quentin Letts (who it's worth noting was political journalist of the year in the latest British Press Awards) said it very well at the end of his report on the select committee hearing of 1st March:
Do we have enough certainty to do that? I know many readers here think not. But that is the crucial area of research for the MSM (and all media) now. And I can't help liking the timing:
1 Mar - the Select Comittee hearing exposes the malfeasance and (thus) the uncertainty
31 Mar - the media get together to discuss the situation.
The next day being April Fools. It all depends who the fools are - and that's what the media can now help us to decide.
Not precisely on topic, but related. Here is another organisation of the 'great and good' setting out to milk the general purpose 'climate change alarmism' for all it is worth. But not very successfully it would seem - funds are not growing quite as much as they had hoped: http://pajamasmedia.com/claudiarosett/another-casualty-of-climategate/.
'Since retiring from the United Nations, Kofi Annan — among his other activities — has been serving as president of a Geneva-based foundation, the Global Humanitarian Forum, headquartered in a delightful villa smack near the front gates of the UN’s palatial Geneva office complex — and especially fond of promoting “climate justice.” The foundation fields a board crammed with UN retreads from Kofi Annan’s days as UN Secretary-General...'
Via: http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/
Keep It Simple!!! and repeat it and repeat it.
Oh, and repeat it.
Consider the 'settled science' or the 'scientific consensus' we keep hearing about. It reduces to the trivial -
e.g.
The globe is warming
The warming is caused by rising CO2
The additional CO2 is very likely to be primarily due to human endeavours.
That's it.
This is then dressed up with a bit of lippy and a lick of paint, to something like this:
In order to believe in AGW/CC and resulting dangers, you have to believe that
1. CO2 drives climate change
2. Strong positive feedbacks from 1. exist.
3. The temperature record we have is reliable.
4. Life on earth is fragile and not very adaptable.
There are the targets for context,rebuttal, ridicule, etc