- Bishop Hill blog

There is more fallout from the Horizon programme, some of which is more in the realm of tittle tattle than science and some of which isn't.

The tittle-tattle first. The famous pop-sci author, Simon Singh is trying to pressure James Delingpole into doing another interview, in which Singh gets to bring along a climate scientist to support him. This strikes me as a tad ungentlemanly of Mr Singh. What would be interesting is if Singh and Dellers both got to bring their chosen expert along - given that the Horizon programme majored on Climategate, we could have Phil Jones and Steve McIntyre to discuss the trick to hide the decline, for example.

Delingpole meanwhile has fired back at Singh in a typically robust posting. I was particularly taken aback by his observation that Singh's has claimed that he (Dellers) had "the arrogance to think he knows more of science than a Nobel Laureate", which is not something that Delingpole has said to my knowledge.

On the subject of the Trick, a blogger called Flay wrote an interesting piece about sceptics yesterday, and we had an good discussion about the Trick. Climatologist Andy Russell appeared briefly and attempted to defend what is, to my mind, the indefensible. Flay also wrote a post about the Hockey Stick, which unfortunately I had to fisk for him, but he took it in good part, and I must say I have come away with quite a favourable impression of him. Just wish he wouldn't use the d-word.

Meanwhile, in the comments to the last post on the Horizon programme, Aynsley Kellow, who is a professor in the School of Government at the University of Tasmania, has said that the Horizon show included a howler on the relative levels of anthropogenic and natural carbon emissions. If he's right, it could be a tad embarrassing, both for Sir Paul and for the man who actually made the claim, Bob Bindschadler of NASA. I've emailed Dr Bindschadler to see if he will comment.