Wednesday
Mar312010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill BBC World Service
Mar 31, 2010 Climate: HSI Climate: Parliament Climate: other Media I will be on the BBC World Service at 14:05 today. The internet link is here.
I was rather nervous, and I don't think I came over very well, but I managed to get a couple of key messages over:
- they've missed the point of the Nature trick
- they should have interviewed McIntyre.
Update on Mar 31, 2010 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
That was better than I thought. I think they cut out a bit where I burbled, and I didn't sound as angry as I worried I might.
Reader Comments (39)
Other World service listening options here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specialreports/000000_help.shtml
Or click here to listen live. What fun.
Hey, I didn't know you spoke in such a strong South African accent, played so well and knew so much about Duke Ellington, Bishop. Or maybe that's the programme before. As you were.
You came over well, good job.
No nervousness came across at all, I thought you made a very good fist of it.
Horrified at the rather shallow analysis and defence that followed, but all-in-all positive.
You were excellent - authoritative and to the point. You might well have more invitations in the future. The rest of the programme at least showed how much the debate has moved on.
I thought that excellent, well done! And actually I thought the following interview with Roer Harrabin very reasonable too. Most sinificant for me was the fact that Phil Willis referred to the email as 'leaked' not 'stolen' on several occasions.
Mingmong
He also called us "sceptics" rather than "deniers" :-)
Hurrah! We are human after all!
Don't worry - you sounded knowledgeable and confident. Well done. I think they cut you off at the end as you mentioned Lord O...
Well Lord O is rather unmentionable don't you think ;-)
I will be hypercritical if I may. You were absolutely excellent, in that you were asked a number of tough questions in succession and I thought your answers were almost optimal. Apart from the last one. The highly annoying, catch-all "But wouldn't people like you refuse to be satisfied by anything that doesn't say you're 100% right?" Not the precise wording of course. And even now I don't know how one should best answer it. But I feel in my gut that there's a better way. Helpful, huh?
But it's also extremely important what you say about where they cut you off Andrew. They weren't out to get you, in fact in this instance they made you look (sound) as good as they could. A lot of these guys are not ideological, they want the story of the controversy told in the most arresting way possible and that means giving the best possible shot to the sceptic community, which they know is seething in great numbers on the blogosphere :)
I agree with Surfer that this won't be the last time that you are in effect our voice in the UK MSM. Very well done and I'm going to think more about that last question. (And you did better than Lord Lawson by the way. Not bad.)
Harrabin not only called us sceptics, he repeated the crucial point Lovelock has made very forcibly again this week, that we're an essential resource to ensure the science is robust. Puff your chests out in pride, people. The sceptics are coming!
I didn't catch it live.
Is there any chance we can listen to it now?
But, blimey, the BBC. they must have got you mixed up with some other Monckton.
O'Geary
Are you another one of those people who thinks I'm Lord Monckton?
Roger Harribin should look at the recent work by Jeff Id and RomanM if he wants an answer to "will critics ever be satisfied?". They have shown an improved method of handling trend calculations for sparse data sets and it actually increases reported trends. The sceptic interest is in doing things right and this is a more accessible example than some of the PCA critiques by Steve M and others.
If the scientists pushing AGW were competent and self critical they would have identified this (and myriad other weaknesses) in their work and put the time into improving it instead of all repeating ad nauseaum "the robust science is settled, all doubts are the result of Big Oil shills' campaigns, move along nothing to see" etc etc. Likewise for the (majority of) journalists reporting on it.
Thought you were good and on point Bishop!
I think you came over very well Bish or is it Monckton. It must be quite frustrating being cut short in a, get in, get out, next please interview. No doubt there will be more interviews in the future were they should give you a little more air time hopefully.
You are back on : a repeat of the reliability point in the end of programme sum-up!!! (2.49)
Sorry, I meant Montford. Too much red wine last night.
Talking of the BBC: Did you all catch Lovelock on the Today programme? He seemed to recant most of his Guardian recantation and was back to scaremongering about the death of civilisation. By and large he just came over as a slightly dotty old man pining for the rosiness of his youth, the good old (Earth) days.
But you could hear the terror in Naughtie's voice at the start of the interview that the old geezer, sorry, Lord Gaia, was going to scepticise all over the BBC floor.
P.S. It's still up as a podcast on the Today website
I heard it this morning on BBC world service. I was wondering who it was since you were making sense lol Sounded very good!
We truth seekers should be pleased at the small steps towards civility, reasonableness, and even, can we hope?, open-mindedness.
I don't have my copy before me for an exact quote, but in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, the author says that men go mad in crowds, but regain their senses slowly, and one by one.
Even though we make progress, I did notice that sceptics were characterised as "retired (sad) businessmen (bad)" or "retired statisticians" (boring pedants). All terms subliminally chosen to marginalise the value of their contribution. Non-scientifically educated commentators seem unable to grasp that so much of climate science is accessible to anyone with a good quality tertiary education in the physical sciences. In particular the whole hockey stick saga is accessible to tens of thousands of engineers, biologists, economists who routinely deal with time series. As for "retired", that additional experience allows a more reasoned judgement on the non-technical elements of the disputes.
Look O'Geary, I couldn't tell you from Monckton, Montford or Macavity but this
caused me to laugh more than anything I've read this week. The sweet smell of sceptic sick. We all need it. Thanks.
And there's a joke in there about the BBC feeling the need for an antisceptic to mop up afterwards. Too much fun for one day. God bless us, every one.
The Bishop was followed by Roger Harrabin. Here is some info about him.
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2010/03/harrabin-objective-observer.html
You came over very well I thought but Harrabin seemed to sideline sceptics as a minority that won't be satisfied whatever happens.
One thing that is irking me, they keep asserting that Canada refuse to let Jones publish their data. Is it not the case that it is only his 'value added' version of their numbers they won't allow to be passed off as theirs and that they are more than happy to release their clean data?
Keep up the good work.
Cameron
Richard Black is busy spinning on BBC's earthwatch.
MPs' message of climate trust
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/03/the_first_of_the_numerous.html#comments
Unlike the guardian, it is reasonable easy to get past the mods:
Hopefully this comment of mine will make it, if not I will just remind the mods (again) of the climate change bias enquiry (copying trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk and my mp) not had a problem commenting since.
(they may still be a bit sniffy, about quotes form the climategate emails)
"Richard remember you work for the bbc and the taxpayer:
Earthwatch is not part of RealClimate - (michael 'hockey stick' Mann, al gores poster boy)
---- Climategate email--------
(ref, BBB's - Paul Hudson's - Whatever happened to global warming aricle in )Oct 2009)
Michael Mann wrote:
extremely disappointing to see something like this appear on BBC. its particularly odd, since climate is usually Richard Black's beat at BBC (and he does a great job). from what I can tell, this guy was formerly a weather person at the Met Office.
We may do something about this on RealClimate, but meanwhile it might be appropriate for the Met Office to have a say about this, I might ask Richard Black what's up here?"
Has the bbc become advocates of AGW, instead of reporting it...
I have to admit I'm most cross with the bbc.
They are paid for by me (licence fee payer) you know what you are getting with the guardian, but the bbc are duty bound to be impartial.
- I hope this appears -:
Jones planned to avoid FOI requests before he even got them, thats shown in the emails, so the excuse that they frustrated him holds no water at all.
The origin of the FOI's request was the CRU's failure to provide data on published work , sometimes breaking the journals they where published in own rules on this.
CRU HAVE BEEN found in breach of FOI rules , while the reason for not finding them in breach of the rules on other occasions has been because of time limits not their innocence
They where not hacked (stolen) e-mails , Jones admitted long ago that is was a leak (inside job) and no evidence what so ever has been found of any hack , the author must be fully aware of this but is still trying it on. (ie the mp's expenses scandal was initailly spun as a criminal leak/hack)
Given the state of Cru's ftp server and IT practices (shown in the past)
It is very possible, that foia2009.zip. was a compilation of emails, code, docs put together internally, forseeing them complying with the latest foia requests, when this was turned down, a short while before the leak, the whistleblower just posted it on various places.
Or even someone browsing around the ftp server just stumbled across it..
This had happened a number of times in the past at CRU
No russian hackers, big oil conspiracy theories required..
Of course, the no one would be talking about the leak, if the CONTENT was not so damaging..
The MP's expenses scandal is such a parallel..
Imagine, if parliment had gagged the telegraph, and got their data back
UK Politics would be TOTALLY different today.
I've got a copy of FOIa2009.zip, as can anybody in the world with an internet connection.. Not even the BBC can put a lid on this.
You sounded fine, sir, came across well. I have done some TV appearing myself and it makes you feel awful and your voice sounds terrible and unfamiliar but to anyone listening you did well, and need not hesitate if you are asked to take part in anything like that again.
I am reading 'The Hockey Stick Illusion' and I am enjoying it very much. Thank you for all your good work. You and the other fighters are heroes.
Well done, Bish. You made some good points and came over well.
Phil Willis sounds totally out of his depth - he twice mentioned "computer codes" in the plural which is a dead give-away that he doesn't have a clue.
The whole piece was a classic BBC set-up: "some say tomayto and some say tomarto now here is the truth straight from the BBC canteen".
Roger Harrabin was more objective then usual but he did throw in the Jones excuse about the non-disclosure details - which of course were "lost" by Jones, leaving Jones to use non-existent agreements as excuses.
Harrabin then talked about Jones using computer code (singular) to decipher the information - again revealing that he does not understand what computer code is doing. Just that he is a bit closer to the action and has picked up some jargon. He's got a WW2 "Enigma" view of the word "code"and anything related.
Note to Roger: "code" means the same as software - Jones used software to analyse the raw data. The leaked stuff from CRU included some of this software - aka code. Sceptics can see the software (code) and see shoddy work and also see that the software (code) manipulates input (raw) data to produce warming trends in the output data.
Just caught up with the world service broadcast on the player after a long day shovelling the mountains of money from Koch into my bank account (I wish!). Very well done Bishop, specific, to the point, and not distracted by diversionary questions. Treat yourself to a wee dram.
You came across very well, Bishop. Harrabin, of course, had to try to steer things around at the end, to present the enquiry as having an emollient effect and that, once the other two whitewashes have done their job, 'people in the middle' will be reassured.
Maybe it's just me, but some of what RH said suggested the AGW crowd know that the genie is out of the bottle. I think they are on the back foot a bit. What we need is time, so that the spurious modeled outcomes are held up to the light of reality. It just may be that the whistleblower from AUE could have bought enough time. God bless 'em.
Thank you Bishop, I just listened to your BBC moment here in NZ and you came across very well.
My issue is this: regardless of where your personal agendas lie, we need open and transparent processes. I know a lot of folk on this blog work in the professional software industry, where this is a given, even in Microsoft-land. Science, in particular climate science, needs a major culture shift towards this transparency, and sadly I can't see this happening anytime soon.
I find Bishop's replies amazingly focused and informative. Good job !
Even if the tide is turning here in France, I wish our clueless media could have interviewed some convincing skeptics like him.
I think you came across very well. The question I keep asking the BBC is where their former flagship programmes - Horizon, Panorama - are on this ? Why no in depth investigation or scientific analysis ? Instead we get puffy programmes on how to avoid ageing. Important but perhaps not AS important.
Its frustrating.
Yer Grace
I've just listened to the program via the internet link you provided at the beginning of your post.
Points very well made. That was a most succinct commentary on the rococo application to the graphs!
The only comment I would make is that at the next interview you consciously slow down the delivery just a wee tad.
Well done.
I've just listened again. On the last question
Printed out like that it's a pretty stupid question. Of course that's true of every human being. But live interviews have strange rules of their own. And I think on reflection it was just your first sentence in response that was weak: "That is a point that people will make."
Tony Blair, love him or hate him, was extremely good with this kind of thing (Gordon Brown most definitely isn't). He I think would make a joke of it, perhaps saying with a ironic smile (not always so easy on radio):
The point you then made about Lord Oxburgh was very on target but its seriousness would have packed more of a punch with this very relaxed kind of preamble.
The other side is this. You got in more real content in this area in a short space than I think anyone I've heard on live TV or radio for a long while. And you weren't slick and practised - and that really enhanced your cred. (I actually don't agree with the point about speed of delivery on this occasion, though it's probably valid in the future.) It was truly a great debut. I trust the BBC and others will use you in future.
The sound bite of the Bishop at the very end of the show is succinct and effective - nice choice by the bbc editors.