Saturday
Jan222011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill More BBC propaganda?
Jan 22, 2011 BBC Climate: Sceptics Sure looks like it. It's been, what, months since the BBC last gave global warming enthusiasts free rein to spout their views, so why not? I mean, what is the BBC for if not for acting as the voice of the vested interest?
The latest addition to the BBC's impressive back-catalogue of one-sidedness is an hour of the new president of the Royal Society, Sir Paul Nurse, looking at "attacks" on climate scientists. I don't know why they didn't just redub Climate Wars with Sir Paul's voice. It looks to be pretty much the same programme. They're probably planning the next one already.
Details here.
BTW, I wonder if they interviewed McIntyre?
Reader Comments (45)
You don't get to be president of the RS without learning the hymns by heart. Clearly he has zero climate science expertise, but that doesn't matter when you're part of the consensus. I wonder who writes the script for the programme?
Al Beebee Ceerah lost the plot a long, long time ago your Grace. Even the very slow are now scratching their heads at the guff they put out. The output is so dumbed down and politically slanted that you have to be clinically dead not to discern what they are up to.
The only problem is that the average IQ seems to be sinking, too. On the plus side, this makes me look like a genius, and is very good for business. On the downside, well, you can imagine.
There was a time when governments/rulers considered controlling the church was important to keeping the serfs under control. They have realised that this no longer works on the general public and that science is the key to fear and thus control. The answer to the commentators question is that people mistrust the politics behind the science (as opposed to the sceince itself).
They (the thinking population) are concerned that they are being manipulated through manipulation of scientific techniques.
I'll watch the programme but from the the statement regrading the New York person and aids, it would seem that he may be implying that if you don't believe then your are as ignorant/stupid as this person.
Steve
Well, we all know what this is going to go, so let's have some fun. I reckon when they get to the section about global warming, it will start with a voice-over from Nurse whilst showing a short film. The film will be structured thus: Steam coming from the top of some power station cooling towers, followed by ice from a glacier calving into the sea, then a scene of a Polar Bear swimming and finishing off with a scene of people wading through the floods in Pakistan and/or Australia. A landscape showing the Asian brown haze may or may not be thrown in for good measure. What do you all think the short film will include?
LC - I think you have a career waiting in television! Just think of that BBC pension.
Gixxerboy - Well I'm 56 now, so that probably means I can take the job and then immediately retire on a nice fat one. Wonder if I could claim ex's for the taxi from Southampton to Manchester for the interview..............
Gixxerboy,
The problem with dumbing stuff down means it only appeals to dumb people, not decision makers.
Either it's a mass indoctrination program or is says a lot about the perceived intelligence of decision makers.
Interesting article here today about bias in the BBC
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1349506/Left-wing-bias-Its-written-BBCs-DNA-says-Peter-Sissons.html
Global warming not actually mentioned - but one can see how the mindset develops.
matthu:
Thanks for the link to an excellent aticle. Peter Sissons has gone up a few more notches. There are very few currently at the beeb prepared to stick their head above the parapet (Andrew Neil, Jeremy Paxman; but they may be a bit bullet-proof). I look forward to the Nurse Horizon programme with dismay.
From the details I have seen the only sceptic appears to be Dellers!!
Interesting that Sir Paul Nurse's alma mater is UEA.
The BBC acting like an AGW activist? Never.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/the-msm-and-climate-alarmism/
Pointman
Yeah, I read that Peter Sissons article. Confirmation of everything we already knew really: say something positive about Margaret Thatcher and your career is dead; if you read the Daily Mail you have to wrap it in the Guardian, which is basically where the BBC gets its stance on news stories etc.
Matthu - beat me to it, it's from his book and should be a good read by this excert.
How about a 'Sissons for D-G' campaign?!
Excellent article. It ought to be compulsory reading in every office in Whitehall. I hope someone sent Dave a copy.
I spent a lot of time and effort when we moved to France trying to make sure I could get BBCTV because the one thing I missed was the 24-hour news.
I now wonder why I bothered. Even 'Hard Talk' seems to have lost its appeal.
Anything the BBC does on the science front is aimed at nine-year-olds. Correction: their view of what nine-year-olds probably like and can handle since the chances are they've never seen a nine-year-old. They abandoned anything that required serious thought or more than the attention span of a gnat years ago.
One improvement they could make would be to get rid of the Dimbleby brothers. I will never forget the Any Questions where Jonathan set up Delingpole and then sat back and gave Porritt the best part of four minutes (yes, I counted it) to tear him to shreds uninterrupted. The worst piece of biased and bigoted chairmanship I have seen in any organisation.
I hold out little hope for any change anytime soon, I'm afraid.
I'm in it. I've a strong suspicion I've been completely shafted. I'll let you know when I've seen it, but my initial response after I did the interview was this: the BBC approached me to see whether I'd be interviewed by the new president of the Royal Society Sir Paul Nurse on "Why we no longer trust scientists." I said "I don't think it's true we no longer trust scientists. Just 'climate' 'scientists'. And I'd love to tell you why." I'd hoped, I suppose, that Nurse was going to be more open-minded than his dismal Royal Society predecessors. But it was pretty clear from the off that he knew exactly what he thought already. He is another true believer in the Warmist creed. Why? Well scientists: they've got integrity that's why. Nurse KNOWS this because he's a scientist, see. They just wouldn't make stuff up. Ergo people who think otherwise are just ignorant muck rakers.
This was an interesting article from 2009 with Peter Sissons
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1199006/PETER-SISSONS-I-drove-Television-Centre-final-time-month--I-dont-pang-regret.html
The description of the interview with Caroline Lucas is revealing:
The leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, went into the Westminster studio to be interviewed by me on the BBC News channel. She clearly expected what I call a 'free hit'; to be allowed to voice her views without being challenged on them.
I pointed out to her that the climate didn't seem to be playing ball at the moment. We were having a particularly cold winter, even though carbon emissions were increasing. Indeed, there had been no warming for ten years, contradicting all the alarming computer predictions.
Well, she was outraged. I don't have the actual transcript, but Miss Lucas told me angrily that it was disgraceful that the BBC - the BBC! - should be giving any kind of publicity to those sort of views.
I believe I am one of a tiny number of BBC interviewers who have so much as raised the possibility that there is another side to the debate on climate change.
The Corporation's most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that 'the science is settled', when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn't.
Jan 22, 2011 at 10:33 AM | Lord Beaverbrook
Caroline Lucas popped into Westminster Hall last November and delivered this pearl of wisdom:
Quote " .....................When it came to bailing out banks, we found billions in a few days. If the planet were a bank, it would have been sorted out a long time ago."Unquote
UK Parliament
Westminster Hall debates, 18 November 2010, 3:00 pm
Hansard 18 Nov 2010 : Column 330WH see http://tinyurl.com/5syscrb
Brilliant.
Don't worry JD. One or the other sentences you must have spoke, will be strategically edited and it'll look as though Nurse knows more than you, or better, he's stumped you in a sudden flash, as he makes you realize the unethical nature of your actions.
I’m annoyed by the programme already. The message is ‘why are idiots anti science and what can we do to brain wash them?’ They then illustrate their point by linking rare instances of doubt in solid science to the masses of doubts people have about AGW. Grrrr.
My question to Nursey would be ‘why are supposedly good scientists linking their own credibility to shoddy, biased, ill thought out, loosely connected theories?’ I then begin to wonder if most scientists are impressed by climate science because their own work is equally slap dash. I never doubted science as a whole before, this programme might just push me over the edge.
Hmm, this doesn't look at all promising from the blurb.
Looks like they are going to start with a false prior assumption (the public no longer trusts scientists)
Then go on to talk about very different issues which seem only loosely connected to the original assumption. The view that HIV does not cause AIDS is not a broadstream public view in Europe, it is the conserve of a very small minority. It is more common in Africa, where it is largely driven by religion, superstition and politics. Whilst there is widespread public mistrust of GM food in Europe - sufficient that the EUrocrats have banned it - this is largely driven by irrational environmentalist propaganda and an EU legislature that fears upsetting the greens.
And of course, climate change, where we have environmentalist propaganda directly infiltrating the scientific record through advocate scientists. (Something that could have easily happened in GM foods, but the biotech industry managed to stay true to reason, even if the politicians didn't).
These are largely unrelated issues, and the mistrust in climate change comes at least in part from within the scientific community itself. I wonder what the odds are that Sir Nurse will miss that little nuance.
Wouldn't it be good if someone (e.g. Mr Delingpole) could publish a list of the reasons why AGW skeptics have problems with the "science" (lack of real-world evidence to validate the theory, large uncertainties of model derived predictions, use of post-normal reasoning, etc.) so that the ordinary man-in-the-street could use it as a score-card with which to judge the broadcast in real-time?
I watched the two snippets the Bish liked to, above.
Sadly, my blood pressure rose alarmingly.
It is the same tosh we hear day in day out: science must be evidence based and not politicised, but scientists must go out and talk to the media so that others with their ideological view can't have their say.
It is the same argument that science lives by debate - but others (i.e. non-scientists) are too stupid to understand and must accept what the scientific priesthood tells them.
Will Steve McIntyre be asked? Certainly not - because there are the pure 'climate scientists' and all the other scientists, who also cannot possibly understand ...
I am at a loss for words how someone like Sir Paul, bubbling over with genuine enthusiasm for natural history, can so uncritically swallow the rubbish climate 'scientists' present as 'science'.
Someone should ask him if he'd have let his undergrads get away with crud like that produced by e.g. the Team - and why we should spend billions we don't have on something which doesn't exist.
Will he mention the very large number of scare stories that have emanated from the "scientists", all of which failed to materialize? Then again there is this question of "concensus". The concensus was once that the sun revolved around the earth, and at the time there was some excuse for that, but unbelievers were still persecuted. I doubt that either will be mentioned.
The BBC via Richard Black are saying climate scientists are being targeted by fraudsters:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12219472
Yep, the gullible being targeted. Alternatively you could view it as possibly a taste of their own medicene. Do we feel sorry for them? ... Nah! Everybody on the planet gets similar spam. Why is it news at all?
I think Spence has called it likely as not. But Delingpole has come across very well on telly recently (especially that piece on libertarianism prior to Armistace Day, which was brilliant JD) so I live in hope.
But enough of the Beeb. Did anyone see the new Channel 4 comedy/news programme, 10 O'Clock Live, on Thursday night? It's well worth a look, despite the audience seeming to be screaming teenagers willing to throw their underwear onto the stage at anything Carr or Mitchell said.
Despite this, it's obviously an attempt to tackle some serious subjects as well as score some cheap laughs. And for the first programme they chose to interview Bjorn Lomborg on global warming - as well as David Willets on university funding.
There are many interesting generational issues at play in the AGW scene - like the fact that most of those who go public against the overall scam, science and policy, are oldies, like William Happer most recently, and they find themselves up against the establishments oldies like King, Rees and Nurse.
But there are a number of signs that the younger generation are changing their tune. Lomborg came across extremely well I thought in this 'alternative' setting. He didn't dispute the need to deal with too much CO2 in the atmosphere but made the very valid point that we'd been talking about reducing emissions for 20 years and done nothing. And the equally valid point that it would cost a fraction to do some geo-engineering.
Because I see CAGW as a religion I don't care too much which dogmas are questioned - it's the fact that any are questioned in such a forum that speaks to me that the religion is falling apart.
Try it for yourself at http://www.channel4.com/programmes/10-oclock-live/4od#3156825
Got this link from over at WUWT
http://www.savethebritishfilmindustry.com/2011/01/as-20-year-tv-news-anchorman-peter-sissons-confirms-marxist-bbc-bias-against-britain-why-does-the-bbc-subsidise-the-guardian-to-the-tune-of-100-a-year-per-genuine-guardian-purchaser/
Well, that might explain why Countryfile, whilst doing a spot about coal-fired power stations and carbon capture, got Moonbat to explain why no planning permission should be granted for a power station, until carbon capture is a reality.
Let's take bets on the BBC 'Wow' factor in this one. How many shots will we see of the presenter being led to some object or other (eg dusty old book) and responding with varying levels blissful amazement - either verbally or physically expressed? (syrupy mood music optional).
This is now standard-issue BBC dumbed-down audience indoctrination - and its intent is to preempt and rob the viewer of any ability to make up his or her own mind about the value of what's being shown. One thing's for sure - the BBC won't be showing us any of its opposite response... the presenter being led to objects such as the Climategate emails and responding with despairing disappointment.
As the bishop indicates - this stuff is run off by the yard these days at the BBC.
It's interesting, too, to see how this programme is introduced by TV reviewers. The Telegraph's TV gude for the week ahead incudes the following, from reviewer Sam Richards (whoever he/she is):
"The big issue for science at the moment is climate change. The overwhelming majority of scientists working in the field insist that global carbon emissions have caused the Earth's average temperature to rise by around 0.75 degrees over the last 50 years. Yet nearly 50% of Americans and more than a third of Britons believe that such climate change claims are exaggerated. Nurse's mission here is to find out why."
"Back in the UK he visits Professor Phil Jones, the UEA scientist accused - but subsequently cleared - of fudging data in the 'climategate scandal:"
Whether the above reflect the views of the reviewer or of the programme remains to be seen, but quoting numbers points to the latter, and it suggests to me that Nurse's mind is already closed on this issue. I'm not sure that would be any great surprise, unfortunately.
Bishop - in light of the levels of hysteria we can expect from this BBC programme, can I suggest a better title for your article?...
Screens - the Nurse!
Josh:
How can you resist?
Nurse
Thermometer
Temperature Chart
Scientists/Doctors
Citizen patient
Medicine
@Jerry - Jan 22, 2011 at 9:27 AM
The problem with dumbing stuff down means it only appeals to dumb people, not decision makers.
The real problem occurs when the "decision makers" are genuinely "dumb people" - as now it would appear.
I wonder if they will cover this Weather Story as well?
Thought for the day to the BBC and the Royal Society:
When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities.
- David Hume (18th C philosopher)
@ Richard Drake and James Delingpole - you may be interested in this thread, in which I am a late entrant. It is on a site of which I am very fond, yet which regularly displays its bien pensant mindset...
Good media news. There was a seismic shift in Ireland this week. Christopher Monckton appeared on the 'Late Late Show', the most watched TV programme in Ireland and a national institution. He made his case clearly and succinctly. The token warmist to oppose him was Deridre de Burca, a failed green party candidate in the last European parliamet election whose campaign was a source of derision. She bleated Joe Rommesque clap trap and caled Monckton a climate denier. The audience was very much on Monckton's side. I heard people who would have had no interest in this issue discussing it in the pub last night and the simple message that 'Climate Change is bullshit' is gathering traction.
For years I have been making complaints about bias on RTE's programme and getting the usual debate is over response. So this is a big change.
Also this week Fianna Fail members in the Irish upper house of parliament, Seanad Eireann, postponed the climate change bill which the green party was championing effectively killing it given the overall political turmoil.
We have a new Irish sceptical blog, turn180.ie. Look in if interested in Irish CC issues.
DougieJ: Thanks very much for the reference. I may or may not dive in but I will read with interest.
I did finally dive in - and found it quite therapeutic to imagine I was talking to the unaligned, even if nobody sees it! I'm sure that satire will play a major role in sorting out the CAGW boondoggle, which is what made it seem worth it.
Yes, I saw it Richard. I do occasionally raise the topic of CAGW on there. It's such a sacred cow that I just can't resist it. Fair to say it's not a popular view. Oh well.
There is another superb open letter from Rupert Wyndham to Paul Nurse at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=7077
We will no doubt be reporting back after the programme this evening.
How dare they imply that climate sceptics are stupid. Anyway I'm not missing Glee for this.
Philip
Thanks for the Climate Realist post reproducing the RW open letter. In that letter, he refers to another from Lord Rees in his final flourish- I'm intrigued, (assuming it was from Rees's venerable self, rather than the celebrated one-time press officer).
Paul Nurse in the recent Horizon broadcast on Science noted how so many people who disagree with "Scientific conclusions" will come to their own conclusion first and will then seek to find whatever reasons may give those predeterminations support.. And of course the reasons for “conclusions coming first” are political – the product of vested interests.
His advice was to trust only evidence, but often reasoning is not only better than evidence but all that is possible in the absence of evidence. If humans had only ever worked on the basis of evidence, especially scientific evidence they would not have got far - nor would they have had much to go on, as there are very few certainties even in science - which can always be wrong, which, proves nothing and at best only fails to disprove it.. And since the absence of any evidence in support of whatever (FOR it) is not the equivalent of evidence AGAINST it, then in that more common situation of "no evidence" reasoning is all you can rely on.
Evidence is itself subjectively only what you can see and hopefully reproduce. But reasoning is what you can work out - especially in conditions where experimentation and reproductivity are not possible. Sense (as with GM crops) will often tell you what science cannot and will ignore on the fallacious (and unscientific) basis of "no evidence".- no evidence of danger thus means safety
In the broadcast Paul Nurse could not understand how it was that so many could be persuaded to accept views and opinions without good reason and contrary to the (scientific) evidence. But the answer is simple enough, persuasion has nothing to do with understanding. Equally on such things as different views on climate change, which he examined at length, he mentioned about every other reason for folk's denial, rather than the political issues, of vested interests, folk who, in terms of those interests, see such a denial as making "sense". Whether something “makes sense” has two quite different interpretations – it will make sense if it is in our interests.
It was interesting to see how science was so separated from politics, well really how political matters were being examined and “explained” without going outsid the realms of science. But PN failed to answer his own dilemmas by failing to recognise their social character, the extensive nature of mental manipulation and that politics and interests have more to do with opinions and their promulgation than does science. So the issues could not be answered in terms of science.
He seemed to be arguing about and around the issues while yet ignoring the main sustaining and directing political issues coming from privately owned property and those commercial interests it sponsors.
And you can sensibly come to that conclusion also by experience and reasoning, and not science.
Len Burch
In response to Len Burch:The problem with reasoning is that it depends on the biases of the person doing the reasoning. Ancient Greek science was very much reasoning based: Aristotle reasoned his mechanics and celestial movements which led him to conclude that heavy bodies fall faster than light bodies, that teh earth had to be motionless at the centre of the universe and that the sun, planets and stars revolved around it. Evidence that contradicted this reasoning was ignored. About the only modern scientific theory that can be said was largely down to reasoning was Special Relativity (it can largely be derived from the two basic postulates that Einstein put forward) but even then required Newton's laws of motion as the basis and explained what modifications they needed as velocities increase. General Relativity could be argued to be reason based too, but there was evidence that Newton's laws of gravitation was inadequate to explain evidence that accumulated in the latter part of the 19th Century as the precision of observations increased enormously. Indeed, the motivation for special relativity was observational evidence (especially the Michelson/Morley experiment).
Reason also required an understanding of the "big picture" which Einstein had. Climate sceptics would instead reason that it must be the Sun or some other natural variation. However, to those that know (because of both evidence and the theoretical basis in quantum mechanics) that CO2 is a greenhouse gas which prevents infra red radiation escaping into space, that we are adding enormous amounts into the atmosphere each year (where else do the emissions from power stations, car exhausts etc go and we have measured the increase) then it is quite simple to reason that our actions must be causing more heat to be retained than would otherwise be the case. This extra heat must affect the climate. We can then argue about how much affect it has and the local and global impact, but not that it has no or negligible effect. The temperature measurements merely support that the expected effect is being observed. Climategate is entirely a red herring in that case. Indeed, if we were not seeing climate change due to the increased CO2 then our reasoning would say that our understanding of the known laws of physics must be wrong (or inadequate). The sceptics appear to agree that the laws of physics are correct, but then don't accept what they tell us must happen when we add 30Gtons a year extra CO2 to the atmosphere.
Now, the sceptics argue the science is being politicised. Why would that be when the political motivations of the sceptics is clear for all to see.
Nurse and Delingpole were talking at cross purposes on the term "consensus". Delingpole clearly attaches a Thatcherite meaning to the word (without principle, compromise, achieved by horse trading etc) and is a pejorative. Nurse was using the meaning of well established, best accepted etc. Quantum mechanics is the best accepted theory for explaining the microscopic world; General Relativity is the best accepted theory for explaining the workings of the large scale universe. These are scientific consensuses because the evidence and theories are so well accepted and no viable alternative (yet) exists. But one or both must be wrong (or inadequate) as the two theories cannot be reconciled.
MMCC is the best accepted explanation for what we are observing right now in global changes in climate: the evidence and theoretical framework based on accepted physical principles. You can cherry pick apparent problems but then the climate is extremely complex with lots of interrelated factors affecting both global and local manifestations of the effect. Sceptics do appear to be doing this cherry picking rather than looking at the big picture. When coupled with the obvious political motivations of most sceptics (who tend to be free market libertarians) then their case is weak: they seem to assume because their interpretation of science is politically motivated than everyone else's is. Believe me, scientists as a group have no more wish to be government controlled than anyone else. There are no Nobel prizes on offer to those who accept the scientific consensus and if fame, riches and glory were the motivation then scientists have the motivation to contradict the consensus if the evidence can be found to do so. Funding typically does not flow to subjects where the consensus is well established but to areas where new science can be found. Science funding just doesn't work in the way sceptics think it does. Moreover, if a climate scientist wanted to make money then why aren't they asking ExxonMobil, BP, Shell etc to fund their contrary research?