Tuesday
May182010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill More from Heartland
May 18, 2010 BBC Climate: other Another Roger Harrabin report from the Heartland Conference, this time looking at the question of whether sceptics are all right-wingers.
Audio stream here. MP3 below.
Reader Comments (15)
The right has the most fundamental objection to the whole AGW scam; the transnationalism.
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There was a time when I think Harrabin's report wouldn't have included acknowledgement of Tom Harris' viewpoint, much less ended with it. Perhaps you were right, Bish; perhaps Harrabin is introducing balance to his journalism. Hmm.. something to ponder, certainly.
I have made a recent complaint to the BBC about Black and Harrabin and their bias with regards to AGW. I would like to think that it has done some good, but as one of oppressed minions I seriously doubt it. I'm yet to receive an answer from Aunte Beeb........holding breath.....7 days and counting.
What did you say:
I had a long reply from the BBC eventually, which actually gave me more things to complain about....
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for your reply.
However, I am afraid you reply clearly demonstrates the BBC's partiality..
'so called 'Climategate e-mails scandal'
and:
> "The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific
> experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer
> justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus. But
> these dissenters (or even sceptics) will still be heard, as they should,
> because it is not the BBC's role to close down this debate. Acceptance of
> a basic scientific consensus only sharpens the need for hawk-eyed scrutiny
> of the arguments surrounding both causation and solution."
This was a few years ago now.
Who are these scientific experts...
(the sceptical scientists, there are many, appear not to have been invited
to the meeting!)
The bbc has refused to say... even after FOI requests.
If the BBC can make the descision based on their advice,
it is only appropriate for the public to know who these
people were, rumpour is they were lobby groups ie the likes of wwf, greenpeace etc.
If you only invited those who are now implicated in the 'scandal '
If you only listen to one side, you will only hear of one message..
In light of recent events, IPCC, climategate, copenhagen failure,etc
And an acrimonous political 'climate' where :
Gordon Brown, says 'Flat earther', 'anti science',
Ed Milliband, says 'climate sabatouers'
Perhaps it is time for the BBC to reconvene this meeting,
and invite those scientists that are sceptical, not just self selecting
group of lobbyists or climate scientists' but those from other fields, astro physicists,
statisticians, geologists, etc..
(which in fact all people in climate science are a mere subset of, as it is
a cross discipline problem of great complexity)
To verify if it is still a valid position.
Steve Mcintyre, Ian Plimer, Lindzen, Spencer, etc might be good candidates.
Lord Lawson might be a respectably mediator from the sceptics side, or even
Lord Monckton. For every activist/journalist like George Monbiot, you might
invite someone like Christopher Booker.
I do believe the BBC have gotten far to close to the issue to be considered
impartial.
Richard Black (and the BBC) is clearly considered to be onside, by those
implicated in the 'scandal'
As a climategate email demonstrates.
The BBC's Paul Hudson, writes a fairly obscure article on the BBC website.
Whatever happened to Global Warming:
And those involved, at the centre of IPCC/CRU. immediate response is to get
in contact with Richard Black.
Who does a good job, and is clearly considered to be on 'message'
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Michael Mann <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Stephen H Schneider <shs@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:00:44 -0400
Cc: Myles Allen , peter stott
<peter.stott@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, "Philip D. Jones" <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,
Benjamin Santer <santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,
Thomas R Karl <Thomas.R.Karl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Gavin Schmidt
<gschmidt@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, James Hansen <jhansen@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, trenbert
<trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Michael Oppenheimer <omichael@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
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?
mike
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Michael Mann, P Jones, James Hansens, etc in this email are KEY individuals
in promoting an AGW poltical agenda and are at the centre of the
controversy.
Please note that this email is from, Michael Mann, whose 'hockey stick'
graph, used by the IPCC, Al Gore's 'Inconevenient Truth to promote the AGW
cause to many millions of people, has been completely discredited
scientifically as worthless.
The data sets, these people control, has been demonstrated to be interlinked
and not independent of data as claimed.
The detail of your reply, has been shown to be incorrect,
when I have further time, I will send a point by point reply.
The BBC are too close to see they are part of it.
Regards
Barry Woods
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I never recieved any response to this:
if anyone is interested (or bishop hill is, just drop me a note for my initial complaint, and the full bbc reply..
B
I see Roger Harrabin threatened to punch James Delingpole at the Heartland Conference.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100040219/only-morons-cheats-and-liars-still-believe-in-man-made-global-warming/
So this is how BBC's Environment Analyst and co-director of the Cambridge Media & Environment Programme behaves in public.
Roger appears to have a problm with an un scientifically qualified journalist speaking about AGW (the politics of:)
The irony of course
BBC science and environment journalists/editors
Roger Harribin - English graduate.
Richard Black - won't say
James has it right, it was never about 'science' all about 'political science'
Like SimonH I thought this report was pretty good. Harrabin chose a good spokesman for enlightened scepticism in Bob Carter, a senior geologist and articulate media performer. And the difficulty for scientists who didn't want to be seen to join right-wingers by expressing their doubts about the role of CO2 is also I'm sure a real one - and a helpful thing for many of his BBC listeners to ponder.
Harrabin made one error of scientific fact though, at a crucial moment. He rightly pointed to the fact that basic radiative physics teaches that without feedbacks a doubling of CO2 leads to an increase of globally averaged temperature anomaly (Lindzen's key term - a detail Roger did not spell out) of about 1degC. This sceptics accept. But Harrabin mistook a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere for a doubling of mankind's emissions. It's the former that causes a 1degC rise in GATA. The relationship between global emissions and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere isn't quite so easy to predict as it sounds.
The absolutely key point that Harrabin didn't spell out is that there is clear laboratory evidence for the radiative properties of CO2 giving credence to the 1degC rise for a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere but there is no such anambiguous physical evidence for the positive feedbacks that turn this into 'dangerous' global warming in the various general circulation models. This is the point Lindzen hammers away at.
It was also very interesting how Lindzen admitted sceptics had overplayed the climate being a chaotic system. It may be so in detail. But the record over billions of years shows mean temperature staying within a narrow range of about 20degK in around 280. Is there some kind of 'thermostat'? So, Lindzen explained, the talk about chaos has been counterproductive, allowing alarmists to take our words and say that there's a finite, non-trivial probability of disastrous warming. But that's not what the overall record shows.
Still an extremely healthy dose of "right wing", "right wing funded", "selling his book", blah blah blah.
For the average listneer this piece comes across as "look at the funny people", rather than any material coverage of content.
Harriban seems to cover AGW events with a very different emphasis. For
Just read Delingpole.
Wow, did Harriban really travel to the US on Television License payers' money in order to threaten to punch someone in the face?
Do the BBC even care about that sort of behaviour?
I think if he travels to the US on taxpayer's money to report on the conference, the least he should do is prepare an unbiased report ...
Here's a 'non-alarmist' article today from Richard Black:
@kim May 18, 2010: "The right has the most fundamental objection to the whole AGW scam; the transnationalism."
Wow, some of us think it actually has to do with bad science.
As to this: "the question of whether sceptics are all right-wingers" - I am probably 85% Liberal/Progressive. I disagree on mostly scientific issues, such as CAGW and other alarmism things like swine flu pandemic Chicken-Little stuff that closely parallels CAGW. Socially I am pretty much Liberal/Progressive. BTW - my views on CAGW and swine flu alarmism are NOT welcome one bit on Liberal/Progressive blogs. I am an opponent of alarmism on pretty much all fronts; applied rational thought usually solves and/or resolves the issues that alarmists raise. Going for the knee-jerk reaction is pretty irrational, IMHO. So, on social issues I spend my time on their blogs, while scientifically I spend my time on Anthony Watts' page or ClimateAudit. I think I make enemies in both places, and few friends. I literally think for myself and look fairly unkindly on appeals to knee-jerk reactions and simplified views of the world. If 37 years in engineering taught me one thing it is that one goes into most problems thinking simplistically and ends up with much more complex answers than one would have thought necessary; such is the real world.
Simon Heffer in the Telegraph 18 May comments thus on 'right wing' innuendo (sensu Harrabin):
'What does the phrase "Right wing" mean, whether as a noun or an adjective? I ask because I read it bandied about carelessly not as a descriptive term, but as an insult, and its use in this fashion is starting to have sinister connotations. For the avoidance of doubt, let me stress that the sinistrality does not refer to those to whom the term is applied, but to those who apply it.
What Solzhenitsyn called "the censorship of fashion" is in full cry in our politics. Anything the centre-Left consensus chooses to label "Right wing" is by its definition unpleasant, wrong, or in some cases much worse. This casual but graphic abuse of those with a more conservative (or classically liberal) approach to policy than the adherents of the consensus began in America. It has landed here. Read the editorials in The New Yorker most weeks and you will find those who disagree with the vision of President Obama treated as if they were educationally subnormal....'
To be fair to the BBC (never easy) it’s Costing the Earth programme on Thursday (20th May) (here) was illuminating. It was about something of which I had vaguely heard but no more. It seems that most “green” technologies, and especially electric cars, low energy light bulbs and windmills, depend entirely on rare earth metals (REMs) – (they’re rare because their oxides are rarely found in sufficient concentrations to allow for commercial mining and purification). Yet there are serious suggestions (link) that they might not be available to the West from as early as 2012. Apparently China has a monopoly of REMs and will need all it has (a dwindling resource anyway) to cope with its own increasing demand. (Also see this, this and this.) Moreover, supplies of lithium, also essential for “green” technology, may be under threat.
Could Peak REM/Lithium be a more serious problem even than the dreaded Peak Oil?
It gets worse. We’re told that the mining of REMs can itself cause severe environmental damage – so perhaps that electric car is not so environmentally friendly after all: as is pointed out in the article mentioned above (second link),
So, thanks to the BBC, I have learned that, as wind-turbines and electric cars depend on scarce and depleting commodities that are controlled by a single supplier and the production of which causes great harm to the environment, they are hardly renewable, sustainable - or green
"..recover these “green” rare metals..."
that would be 'unobtanium' then......!
I still really enjoyed Avatar as a film/light entertainment though...
I thought I'd hate it's message...
But, I'm actually very green, just NOT AGW