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Reader Comments (90)
FarleyR: agree Dellers came across well. Don't agree about Nurse tho, not so far. Better than King and Rees. May not be saying much but I think this guy is willing to listen. I hope the right people get to him. Choosing Singer rather than Linzen was a big mistake. Lindzen never says we know it's the sun wot's done it. Big mistake in my book.
I have 2 questions
1 How did Paul Nurse get anywhere near a nobel prize?
2 How the hell did he become president of the Royal Society?
I just started watching "Horizon: Science Under Attack" but had to turn it off after
15 minutes. It was unbearable. There is more scientific gravitas in an Oprah-Winfrey show than in this rubbish.
Paul Nurse stars as the august Nobel Prize winner whose every word must be taken as the unadultered truth. No scientific debate,
no attempt to get over what it is that makes people so skeptical of climate science.
In other words no attempt whatsoever to find out why people don't believe
the bulk of the climate scientists. Just the insinuation the general public is dim
and Paul Nurse and his selected luminaries know something we don't. I suspect I
know more about climate science than he does simply by reading the blogs and
the occasional book or two(The Hockey Stick Illusion being one of them of course).
He is after all a geneticist and the way he simply lapped up the fact from the NASA
dude that we are producing a whopping 7 gigatons of C02 every year, made me want to weep.
He even interviewed Fred Singer(whose shoes he's not fit to lick) in a
diner in New York and then proceeded to tell us afterwards what Mr Singer
had said by way of reported speech, ultimately dismissing his ideas as one-sided and misguided.
We didn't really actually get to see in any depth whatsoever what Mr Singer
objects to about the consensus.
Goebbels would have been very proud of this show….(although I only saw the first
15 minutes I assume it proceeded in much the same vain for the remaining miserable,unedifying
45)
Still watching.
Now he's talking to James Delingpole about “consensus” and has cornered him using the argument that “if a set of doctors give you a consensus view that you had cancer, would you ignore it?” It’s a pity Delingpole didn’t expand on that analogy by saying “But if 99 doctors tell you your child has a brain problem that requires a lobotomy (but they won’t explain how they diagnosed this) and one tells you there may not be a problem but advises you to keep watching and come back again in a few weeks time, which choice would you make?”
Now he’s showning side-by-side images from of satellite and computer models and is commenting on how similar they are (and so implying how good the models are) but what he’s showing seems to weather NOT climate predictions… oh, what a Carry on, Nurse!
Did Nurse declare his link to UEA during the programme?
Well done James for saying it's about political control. And for 'peer to peer review'. And for admitting not enough scientific expertise to study the primary sources. All fair enough. Nurse has just used 'denialist' and is now exploring what he means by denial by talking to a AIDS-denier who has HIV. The two medical analogies are the key things doing damage here.
As Dave Salt says, no evidence for cause presented, just a vague correlation (and no mention of stuff like the rise 1910-40 of course). And never raising the issue of how much per doubling of CO2, of feedbacks.
But I'm still prepared to give Nurse some slack. It's not as bad as we've seen in the past. Perhaps he and Ben Miller (who began this Horizon series) can be brought to a more fruitful place. Two copies of The Hockey Stick Illusion would help.
"We have to earn their trust." I'm going to take him at his word on that. I'm not completely ignorant of the vested interests now amassed behind all this stuff. "Trust no one - only the data ... Keep the politics out of it." He's admitting some past flaws, tacitly, That's the way I hear it.
It would appear that the producer of the BBC's Horizon programme, Emma Jay was involved in the CBBC Serious TV series where groups of eight 12 to 15-year-olds embarked on expeditions to extreme parts of the world, in order to help wildlife or assist in environmental and climate change projects. Emma Jay was one the expedition leaders on Serious Arctic (2005) dealing specifically with climate chnage.
So it could be we are dealing with the usual suspects - environmental activists trying kill the debate.
Just finished watching and at not ONE point in this programme about "science" was there one mention of the Scientific Method (i.e. make an unambiguous prediction that can be verified/falsified by real-world observations… and the lack such for AGW theory). Newton, Faraday, Maxwell and especially Feynman must be spinning in their graves and anyone who’s a member of The Royal Society today should feel totally ashamed that this guy now represents them.
i didnt think delingpole came across so bad. he just refused to accept a bad analogy. i'm sure he could have dealt with it better if he wasn't knackered by then but no big deal.
I stuck it until 9.45pm then turned over. This man is supposed to be a nobel prize winner, and reinstate my faith in science. Blimey, all he has done is give my ego a big boost.
He is either..
1) Dim witted and slow, unable to maintain a logical thought process
2) Extremley naive in a 'oh shall we have a cup of tea, there there there way'
3) Devious and untrustworthy
I guess its 2) and possibly he has been hoodwinked by political editorial by the Beeb?
Either way, he left me feeling I could have a Nobel if I put my mind to it, heh!
the most ridiculous part? i liked his balls for spending 5 minutes introducing 'nasa satellite data' and then not showing us satellite data.
The item that struck me was the comparison, in real time, of NASA climate model with real data. Very convincing until you realise that they were predicting only a few hours ahead not 100years!
Biggest laugh out loud for me was NASA talking about satalites & temp in the same sentance. No mention of GISS being a land based temp series that is at odds with the sat record.
The BBC...all the facts they care not to tell you. You have to admire thier shear front I guess.
Could everybody try to maintain a modicum of decorum on this thread.
Thanks
The missus, who does not follow the AGW story, watched this with me. Her comments were three;
1. "What a patronising man!" (Nurse)
2. "Why didn't they say anything about the money?" (More perceptive than I took her for).
3. "The AIDS & GM stuff: is he saying that you are a nutter?"
Watched Horizon through to the end ................ his finishing comments that scientists need to be open with their data and look on challenge as a good thing was welcome - lets hold each other to that! He also acknowledged that the web is here to stay - absolutely correct .......................and a good thing too.
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Blast-Kills-At-Least-10-at-Moscow-Airport-114481529.html
:(
I have just sent an e-mail to the press office of the Royal Society
Hi, Just watched Horizon on BBC2,
Here is a challenge for Sir Paul Nurse. I will debate with him, on live television the sham science that is Global Warming.
Note: I am not a scientist ( I left school at 15 with no academic qualifications) but I will expose Sir Paul as a charlatan.
If he accepts I will provide real name and address
Very superficial programme. Skated right over the core of the debate and poor Phil Jones got another free pass when explaining how innocent his "trick" to "hide the decline" all was. Some unexplained divergence problem in the 60s which would have been confusing to leave in or something *cough*.
Nurse reminded me of the Roman soldier in Life of Brian who is taken in by the crucifixion candidate who explains there's been a mistake and he should be released: "oh, off you go then".
FFS
PS I may have missed it - but that bloke who is HIV+ and has survived 13 years on yoghurt and no anti-virals - any explanation from Nurse other than having a pop at him for being an HIV/AIDS denier?
A more correct analogy would have been:
Delinghpole asked in return:
Your child has been diagnosed with an attention disorder, and the doctors offers a lobotomy, would you have opted for the lobotomy?
This was the consensus just 40-50 years back. A science beyond its infancy, far surpassed the point where climatology is today. Still they had it horribly wrong.
Was it me, or did I notice a glimpse of the 'hockey stick illusion' graphic on a screen, as he was talking about the blogs in a negative way.
I agree James Delingpole did ok. As expected the programme was annoying and patronising.
Nurse seemed to know very little of Climategate and more importantly the work Steve McIntrye did before hand. Like all these sorts of things from the BBC it had a message to get across and didn't allow facts to get in the way of the filiming (there are too many media studies students doing documentaries these days).
Bleurghh.
Interesting comments from Ben Goldacre's Twitter feed
[Delingpole] is absolutely a dick. but that was weak, and if it was their killer moment, makes the press activity of today a bit ugly tbh
well, sorry, delingpole didnt do brilliantly on a question, and fumbled, but they say they interviewed him for 3 hours. thats the killer mo?
if that was the killer delingpole moment that the bbc have been crowing about all day then i'm actually quite unimpressed
Some gem comments from the programme (not 100% word accurate)
Nasa guy: "Climate will warm by 3/4degC in next 50 yrs"
'Temperature has changed a lot before, but the difference now is its changing "really fast"
Paul Nurse (PN): 'its warming rapidly' [compared to when? where's the evidence for this. Not from tree rings I hope!]
PN: Fred Singer bases his belief that the Sun is driving climate change on data from stalagmites in a cave in the Middle East'
PN: "great body of evidence that WE are warming the planet"
NASA guy: 'Solar activity and temperature data "just don't match up" [what? so CO2 and temperature data do??]
PN with Phil Jones (PJ)
PN accepts that splicing the data to hide the decline is acceptable mainstream science.
PN accepts that flurry of FOI requests to CRU was just a case of 'trying to waste peoples' time'
PN: After 4 independent enquiries, a bit of wrist slapping regarding sharing open data, but "the integrity of Climate Science was not faulted"
PN on AGW sceptic stories in newspapers: "political opinions are filtering through to the headlines"
PN "Climate scientists are reducing uncertainties all the time"
PN "Sceptic / denier bloggers cherry pick data"
PN to his own students: "be the worst enemy of your own idea" [sounds like good advice, but where do we see Climate Scientists applying this?]
PN makes a direct association between AGW sceptics and those who disbelieve a link between HIV and AIDS
PN "there is an overwhelming body of evidence that WE are causing global warming"
PN "Some scpetics decide what to believe and then cherry pick the data to support it"
PN on scientists "we must earn the public's trust...we need to win back confidence...trust no-one, only what the data tell you... keep politics and ideologies out of the way...Scientists have got to be open about everything they do"
[so presumably, they will somehow do this without ever admitting the uncertainties regarding the link between CO2 emissions and temperature, or the certainties of using tree ring proxies for temperature, or the uncertainties linking extreme weather events to global warming, etc, etc]
Delingpole was a minor part. I don't know much about him. He didn't come over too well. Obviously a more confident writer than debater. However, I resent how he was used to suggest AGW scepticsm is led by non-scientist bloggers who don't really understand things. So why did unscientific Al Gore become enough of a pro-AGW figure head to win a Nobel Prize (like Nurse) and an Oscar?
What is particularly disappointing of Nurse is that he did not seem to look into the genuine scientific and statistical arguments of the serious scpetics. We heard very little of his chat with Singer. Little more than his accusation regarding stalagmites (or tites?). As a scientist, he should have been more genuinely interested in getting to the bottom of it. I'm sure Nurse is a great scientist in his own field. But this programme came over very much as an attempt to protect and defend the Establishment. Most leading scientists have to do a bit of politics these days - and that's what he seems to be doing.
Just watched it. My observations:
1 His opening comment about worries expressed in a letter by 200 scientists should have been balanced by more justifiable worries induced by the notorious 10:10 video blowing up schoolchildren who were "denialists". Remember that 10:10 was funded by the government and Huhne is still minded to fund them. It is a bit late to complain about the politicising of science.
2 He gave the impression to the casual viewer that the enquiries into the CRU had established the validity of the science. But anyone who has taken the trouble to read them knows that they did not examine the science - Lord Oxburgh plainly says so in his report.
3 He talks about the need for experiments but, as I understand climate science, climate scientists do not depend on experiments as Prof Nurse understands them but on computer models based on assumptions and predictions.
4 It was a pity he did not quiz the NASA man about the integrity of the land based temperature record. The significant changes in the number and location of temperature stations over time was ignored by him as it was by the Muir Russell enquiry - though they did extract an admission from CRU of the way the numbers changed before and after c1990. I believe the Prof Jones has also admitted that he cannot replicate his results or complete a parallel run of pre and post 1990 stations to validate the changes made or to measure the effect of these changes. These changes materially influence the post 1990 temperature record as EM Smith has clearly demonstrated..
5 The characterisation of people who raise such issues as "denialists" does Prof Nurse no credit.
I detected some inconsistency in Sir Paul’s remarks about sceptics’ cherry picking data. What was hiding the decline other than an attempt to cherry pick data? I think that if he had spent a bit of time reading Climate Audit, he may not have made this programme, and he certainly would have had a better grasp of the independence of the independent enquiries.
I needed extra beta blockers and two squirts of GTN after the first 10 minutes. No evidence of CO2/ causation let alone historical correlation,no mention of computer models as the only 'evidence' of CO2 causation assuming 'positive' feedback. No mention that many of the satellites are unreliable and that the continued 'warming' depend on Hansen's land temps.
Constant use of the term 'denier' (I am proud to be one of the few) and equating that with HIV-Aids, GM crops and even smoking/lung cancer 'deniers'.
So much more.
This boy needs to do some reading (not research) and not depend on authority and consensus.
Science and theories needs to be challenged and ultimately the data (evidence) decides. Prof. Nurse, along with Brian Cox, is going to be very embarrassed over the next 10 - 20 years.
Sadly, a powerful programme supporting the BBC's pension fund.
I am too polite to ask for a full disclosure of Prof. Nurse's investments and I certainly do not doubt his integrity. He is just spectacularly naive.
James Delingpole handled the red-herring question about cancer by asking to return to AGW. I don't suppose he thought it would be included in the programme. Both he and I are wondering why.
Sweet merciful Zeuss, we're lucky to have the BBC.
What a thoroughly excellent piece of television. My first thoughts for you [still waiting for you on this one Andrew - someone suggested ostriches recently, which I quite liked].
- Poor Phil Jones looks like he's absolutely been through the blender. 60 FOIs in one weekend alone? If you think there's not an element of harassment in there, then you're living in a dreamworld. I would suggest that the people here who pour continuous abuse on Phil Jones, remember that he is a human being, presumably with a family, and as much right to happiness as anyone else in the World. He's been subjected to death threats and contemplated suicide, it's taken a clear physical and psychological toll upon him. When you demonise people, you make beasts of yourselves.
- Body language wise, both Singer and Dellingpole seemed evasive and as though they were concealing something. Nurse seemed to have a hard time controlling himself when Singer, with a straight face, decided that some station on the equator somehow provided suficient proof of the sun/dominant thing. Don't blame him. Shameless cherry-picking, and extremely unscientific. As for Dellingpole, when presented with an entirely appropriate analogy, he just changed the subject. That really does speak volumes.
- Flicking back through the comments here, a lot of people have been quite happy to treat speculation as fact, and then condemn people on this basis. As at transpires, Nurse certainly did not say that it was a fatal disease in the analogy. Once again, scepticism, as it is interpreted here, is completely one sided. If mainstream climate science was represented with this degree of inaccuracy, you'd be crowing about the comments for months. Nobody so far has censured any of the past commentors for it.
- Thankfully Andrew Montford has appealed for calm, which speaks well of him. Many of the comments during, and immediately after the programme, are a disgrace.
- I see that many people are getting hot under the collar about the lack of time spent putting forward criticisms of climate science. There's a reason why none of those commentors are television producers of successful programmes. Seriously, you think that it would be good television to suddenly start painstakingly pointing out the flimsy and incongruous anti-science arguments which are made against climate science? This is a programme about attacks on science. It interviewed 3 people who hold these postions, including 2 in the field of climate science. The whole programme only lasted an hour. How much of that hour exactly do you think should be put over to presenting an extreme fringe view, which runs contrary to the spirit of the programme, and would still make for good television? Take a step back every once in the while and use some objectivity.
- Last point. Several comments here saying that Nurse is thick, or they can't see why he won a Nobel prize, in one instance, seemingly even suggesting that he may not have won it at all. Ad hominem attacks may be emotionally satisfying for some attackers in the short term, but just get a ruddy grip on yourselves. Seriously. He disagrees with you so he's an idiot? Do some of you actually think you're right in all things? It's comments like that that keep me here. Without them, I'd have considerably less to kick against. And as for all the leftist BBC/warmist agenda/greenies tax/institutional bias rubbish, just give it up. There's no larger plan, there's no conspiracy, you're not very important and the universe is indifferent to you. Maybe, just maybe, the reason that so many people seem to be working together against you, is just because they're nearly all right, and you're wrong.
Nurse complained about 'deniers' forming an opinion and then 'cherry-picking' evidence to support their prejudice. Oh really?
If you have a theory that all swans are white, based on the consensus of observations and I point out a black one - is that 'cherry-picking' of the evidence? No - it is fundamental to the process of falsification.
Why does a Nobel Laureate not understand this?
StephenB
Err, cherry-picking and the inductive fallacy are different things. You say "Why does a Nobel Laureate not understand this?", but it is you who does not seem to understand that you have selected two different things, and then made a negative comparison between them.
"James Delingpole handled the red-herring question about cancer by asking to return to AGW. I don't suppose he thought it would be included in the programme. Both he and I are wondering why."
Jan 24, 2011 at 11:08 PM | simpleseekeraftertruth
God forbid a journalist giving an interview to a hostile presenter, on record, might think that part of that interview, which shows them in a poor light, make actually make it to the final copy.
The guy dodged the question by changing the subject. Seems to me like you're trying to make excuses for him. And poor ones at that. If he had a good answer, he would have given it.
"Sadly, a powerful programme supporting the BBC's pension fund."
Jan 24, 2011 at 10:47 PM | G.Watkins
This is an extreme and paranoid claim. Amount of evidence put forward to support it? Zero. Sceptic indeed! Claims like this are just gullible gossip.
"Here is a challenge for Sir Paul Nurse. I will debate with him, on live television the sham science that is Global Warming.
Note: I am not a scientist ( I left school at 15 with no academic qualifications) but I will expose Sir Paul as a charlatan."
Jan 24, 2011 at 10:17 PM | Anoneumouse
Are you for real? Do you think the head of the Royal Society, and one of the TV networks, are just going to bend over backwards, so that a pointedly anonymous person on the internet, can take up the time of both?
Do you actually think the world should work like that? I've got several bones to pick with David Cameron. By your reasoning, I my have a chance of thrashing them out live, in person, on primetime BBC1.
Re ZDB
Err, cherry-picking and the inductive fallacy are different things. You say "Why does a Nobel Laureate not understand this?", but it is you who does not seem to understand that you have selected two different things, and then made a negative comparison between them
Sir Paul seemed to do the same. Cut from Singer talking about solar activity to NASA guy talking about gigatonnes of CO2. All a bit of a gish-gallup really.
One bit I did like was the model comparison at roughly 37m in. In typical modern fashion, the camera couldn't hold still so it was hard to really compare the data to the simulation, but to me they looked different. Look at the cloud cover over Australia as an example where the simulation seemed to show more coverage. That could be a neat confidence test though if it could be run for a reasonable period of time. Have the same start conditions, run the simulation and see how quickly the model simulaton diverges from the observed data. Somehow I suspect we won't see that sort of video for a few years though.
The proper response to the cancer analogy is "Would you pick the 'consensus' treatment if you found out that the 'consensus' doctors only get paid if they sell you that treatment?"
Quote from ZBD:
"Poor Phil Jones looks like he's absolutely been through the blender. 60 FOIs in one weekend alone? If you think there's not an element of harassment in there, then you're living in a dreamworld. I would suggest that the people here who pour continuous abuse on Phil Jones, remember that he is a human being, presumably with a family, and as much right to happiness as anyone else in the World. He's been subjected to death threats and contemplated suicide, it's taken a clear physical and psychological toll upon him. When you demonise people, you make beasts of yourselves."
Is this the same Phil Jones that described the death of John Daly as 'Cheering News'. I wonder what the family of John Daly made of that comment.
Did anyone actually see the programme? Yes, it was black and white. A simple battle of intellects, and one side walked off the field.
The anti-AGP lobby need a new spokesman. THis one's finished. Of course, would be to see someone so intellectually discredited keep to the cause can only be to its detriment.
I thought the programme was not as bad as I had feared. Singer was allowed to make his points. James D managed to get in some good points about the unscientific data splicing and the corruption of the peer review process. Even on the medical red herring, after a moment or two, James came up with the right answer that it's a false analogy.
There were several false claims - for example that tree rings had been shown to be a reliable indicator of temperature, just before he said that they weren't!
I wonder if a complimentary copy of HSI to Paul Nurse from the author might be helpful in clearing up some of these misconceptions.
I agree, PaulM, that some decent points got through the net from Singer and Delingpole, and that the latter's handling of the googly was ok. In fact, I thought it was natural, thoughtful, and he came back with a very polite barb to conclude.
But the text being read by Nurse was dreadful. I cannot imagine he wrote it. I cannot imagine he would have agreed to speak it if he had been better informed about the climate debate. At least, I can imagine those things, but I'd rather not, and I hope they are not true.