Monday
Mar072011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Tim Flannery on Andrew Marr
The BBC is back to full frontal global warming propaganda, with Tim Flannery given the promotional treatment on Start the Week this morning. By happy chance, I switched the radio off this morning before the show started.
Someone recently noted that it doesn't matter how often the Flanneries of the world are wrong, or how wrong (and Flannery has banged on endlessly about drought in Australia). They will always get a sympathetic hearing on the BBC.
Reader Comments (44)
Was it Joanne Nova at
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/02/do-you-want-a-carbon-tax-poll-on-today-at-the-age/#more-13233
You did notice this?
"THE Federal Government has extended the life of its Coasts and Climate Change Council, but respected environmental scientist Tim Flannery has stepped down as chairman."
Flannery quits
Tim Flannery was appointed as the first head of recently created position of Climate Change Commissioner, or something like that, in Australia. He's been on many interviews and TV shows such as Q&A on ABC since that time in his new capacity. I'm surprised that only now he makes the headlines on BH. I thought his name was worthy of a headline weeks ago.
In my view, Labor yet again demonstrated its political shrewdness. They always create official positions to which they can appoint the government's chief critics in order to remind them of their 'independence' and shut them up. The world has a lot to learn from Australian political system.
Roger,
The Flannelly stood down because he hase found himself a superior (taxpayer funded) gig:
What is it with facial hair and global warmers?
Andrew Marr did at least mention scepticism and Flannery admitted that it was a necessary part of science. Then Marr spoiled it by failing to pick him up when he mentioned 'illegal activities' around Copenhagen...
Do you guys mind keeping Flannery over there for a decade or two? We've had just about enough of his endless failed predictions and book plugging, thanks very much...
We've had to endure the quasi-Gaia "planet as a super organism" nonsense already, see:
ABC's loathsome propaganda machine | Australian Climate Madness
If he's currently in the UK, can you please hang onto him? We really don't want him back.
I do tend to feel a modicum of concern for Flannery's mental health when I read such as: Tim Flannery - GAIA Worshipper
We do need the help of psychologists and suchlike to make sense of this man. I think he is somewhat melodramatic and upset by what sense he can make of things (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xOVkS11FVs&feature=player_embedded#at=52), but I realise that is mere name-calling and needs further research. Prof Stott puts it in a more sophisticated manner. If I follow him correctly, I would put Flannery into that 'rump of adepts speaking in ...tongues'. It does not follow though that he is a harmless buffoon. Clearly some in the Australian political establishment see some advantage in looking after him.
The quote from Prof Stott is to be found in this post ( http://thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/1305-global-warming-the-death-of-a-grand-narrative.html ), of which the following is an extract, put in italics by me:
'Likewise, climate will continue to change, as it has always done. We must only hope that we have not undermined our ability to adapt to these changes, as and when they arise, and that science has not been too damaged by the Lysenkoistic grand narrative of global warming.
By contrast, I predict that global warming will now suffer a lingering death, as with so many other grand narratives that have gone before it, although there will always be a rump of adepts speaking in its tongues and propounding the faith, especially, I suspect, in the UK and its universities.'
But I found Flannery's interview last year with Andrew Bolt most revealing ( http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/warmist-cant-take-the-heat/story-e6frfhqf-1225878118730) . Here is an extract:
'Flannery: That's a lie, Andrew. I didn't say it would run out of water. I don't have a crystal ball in front of me. I said Brisbane has a water problem.
Bolt: I'll quote your own words (from the New Scientist June 16, 2007): "Water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months." That was, on the timeline you gave, by the beginning of 2009. Their reservoirs are now 97 per cent full.
Flannery: Yeah, sure. There's variability in rainfall. They still need a desal plant.
Bolt: You also warned that Perth would be the 21 century's first ghost metropolis.
Flannery: May ... Right? Because at that stage there had been no flows into that water catchment for a year and the water engineers were terrified.
Bolt: Have you seen the water catchment levels? Here, see, they're tracking above the five-year level ...
Flannery: You want to paint me as an alarmist.
Bolt: You are an alarmist.
Flannery: I'm a very practical person.
Bolt: You said (in The Guardian, August 9, 2008) the Arctic could be ice-free two years ago.
Flannery: No, I didn't ...
Bolt: I'm asking ... whether (you) repent from all these allegations about cities running out of water, cities turning into ghost cities, sea level rises up to an eight-storey-high building. Don't you think that is in part why people have got more sceptical?
Flannery: I don't, actually, because some of those things are possibilities in the future if we continue polluting as we do. And we've already seen impacts in southern Australia on all of those cities. Everyone remembers the water restrictions and so forth ...
Bolt: You warn about sea level rises up to an eight-storey building. How soon will that happen? Thousands of years?
Flannery: Could be thousands of years.
Bolt: Tens of thousands of years?
Flannery: Could be hundreds of years ... The thermo-dynamics of ice sheets are very, very difficult to predict. '
Perhaps he is merely, and genuinely, scared in a childlike way, and has found that sharing his alarm wins him a lot of attention?
Anoneumouse at 1044
They usually wear sandals too ...
Anoneumouse & PFM
Sounds like the Archbishop of Canterbury can be added to the list then..............
Anonemouse says
What is it with facial hair and global warmers?
I have had had facial fuzz for over 30 years and am absolutely definitely certainly not one of that brand of pinko thicko!
Peter Walsh, bearded and proud of it!
Slightly o/t
Noam Chomsky tells Andrew Marr the reason he is never censored by BBC management is because he is too stupid to work out the truth for himself. He contends that the media is a complete sham and that no intelligent human being would ever be employed as a journalist. Marr is deeply confused. He believes in AGW because people on the telly like himself say it's true.
Andrew Marr vs Noam Chomsky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1LU4obkBmw&p=00B66338181AF8B3
PFM says
They usually wear sandals too ...
I don't!
Peter Walsh
I was also fortunate enough to miss Tim Flannely on 'Start the Week' or 'Plug the Books' as it should be more accurately titled.
"In his new book, Here on Earth: A New Beginning, he argues for a ..."
"The Amboseli Elephants: A Long-Term Perspective on a Long-Lived Mammal, edited by Cynthia J Moss, Harvey Croze and Phyllis C Lee, is published by The University of Chicago Press."
"In his book, A Just Defiance, he shows how the..."
There's more of psychology to psyence than science. There's more of propaganda to the Beeb than truth. Where is Guido Fawkes when you really need him? Carbon, sulphur, and saltpeter anyone? Do we have to wait until the 5th of November? It's so cold now, can't we have just a little heat? (SarcOff)
Further o/t, E Smith
Chomsky didn't come off so well in the penetrating interview he got from Ali G - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOIM1_xOSro
I only half heard part of the interview, but didn't the cheeky burger suggest that people became skeptics because they got too depressed at the 'science' of AGW, so went into denial?
Sorry if I mis-heard him, but he didn't sound likely to say anything very interesting. He seemed to be a Lovelock clone.
No wonder our aussie friends don't want the delusional hippy 'thinkalike' back.
Tim Flannery came over as somewhat deranged in "Start the Week".
Heaven knows what he must be like when he is not on his best behaviour.....
And you are saying this person has some kind of government-apponted position of influence in Australia?
Strewth....you poor Strines must be getting it worse than we are.
Mind you..there is always Huhne.
Guess the honours are about even.
After the Restoration of Charles II, three of the Judges that had condemned Charles I fled to the protection of their co-religionists here in New England. Three of the major streets in New Hvan are named after them: Dixwell, Whalley and Goffe. There is even a town in Connecticut named Cromwell. It is with a certain horrified fascination that I'm noting the increasing and approving references to Fawkes and Cromwell with the simultaneous possibility that a Charles III will take the throne
Anoneumouse
What is it with facial hair and global warmers?
Personally, I wear a beard because 1) I can get away with it, 2) I hate to shave, 3) my girl friend and cats all like it, and most important of all, it helps keep my face warm when I go out into the blizzards.
Can't speak about global warmers.
Steady on! ......there are hairy deniers too - Mousey ;-)
Warmers claim whiskers cool their soup. Who knew!
The fact that Flannery is in a prominent position in public life in Australia reveals an important vulnerability in their public life, and one which ought to be studied deeply. The same is true of James Hansen in the USA, who also happens to be a government employee. In the UK, our vulnerability is not so much due to agitated individuals winning undue influence, but from groups of them such as in Futerra, and Common Purpose, who seem to work in large part behind the scenes delivering seminars to those who flatter themselves as being thought-leaders. My hunch is that they are being peddled such a homogeniety of 'thoughts' that that in itself should ring alarm bells. Instead it may provide a risky sense of an absence of doubt. So that phrases like 'settled science', '97% of climatologists agree on CAGW', and the attribution of each and every weather-related calamity (actual and projected) to rising CO2 levels, slip in past the absent or sleepy gatekeepers of their minds.
Nicholas Hallam
Sacha Barron Cohen and Noam Chomsky are both Jewish. Chomsky is the one who isn't an orthodox pro Israeli, racist, homophobe. Ali G is meant to be of Pakistani origins (according to Cohen himself), Borat is an antisemitic Muslim and Brüno is a homosexual. Do orthodox Jews not like homosexuals ? No they don't. Cohen made his wife convert to Judaism before he would marry her.
E Smith
Interesting. However, do not forget that to 'be' Jewish is to be born of a Jewish mother (that is, someone who has, at the very least, converted to Judaism). The religious affiliation of the father is not the determining factor.
Might not the case simply be that SBC would like any children from the union 'be' Jewish?
Yes, he was rabitting on about Gaia and all that stuff - whilst insisting that he is a "Scientist" at least twice. He also referred to the "clear evidence of illegal activity" leading to Climategate. And he didn't seem to be talking about incitement to thwart FOI requests by destroying evidence.
A weapons grade plonker.
I would guess that Prof Flannery was promoting his new book. The Economist has a very interesting review.
http://www.economist.com/node/18276024?story_id=18276024
It is interesting in that The Economist tries to be favourable but inserts some highly critical comments like
"the book feels dilettantish, with a dizzying array of concepts introduced, briefly discussed, then dispensed with before the reader has had time to digest them."
"Mr Flannery admits that the idea is “controversial”. But having shown the reader a glimpse of this fascinating byway, he speeds straight past, impatient to reach the next intellectual stop, while the tentative theory is simply accepted."
The title to the review may also may also give away the Reviewer's true feelings - "Sacred mysteries" to a book from a humanist called "Here on Earth - A Natural History of the Planet"
What do others think?
Also try Amazon for a more balanced 2 Star Review - and the Comments (from people who have not read the book) about the commentator's self-evident political bias.
http://www.amazon.com/Here-Earth-Natural-History-Planet/dp/080211976X
E Smith, if you are going to compare Sacha Baron Cohen unfavourably with Chomsky I think it only fair to remind you that it is the latter whose world view is so corrupted that he can compare the Cambodian genocide to the killing off of Nazi collaborators in the Second World War. His views on Israel are certainly very different from Cohen's but I do not find this necessarily all to his credit as his hatred of Zionism has led him to endorse such virulent anti-semites as Robert Faurisson. Only a man as clever has he is could be so mind-blowingly wrong about so much. If it transpired that he was a climate change "denier" as well as a holocaust denier, I would need to reconsider my position on AGW.
Anoneumouse: the full warmist look as worn by Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann is a goatee beard - to distinguish themselves from the nasty clean-shaven capitalists, but to show iron self-discipline by not growing the full monte - plus a bald pate to give the impression that high-powered cerebral activity has frazzled away the hair.
Alternative theory: both the goatee beards and the climate hysteria are compensation for the misery of early-onset male pattern baldness.
Yes.
According to various ladies of my acquaintance - the short, fat, bald, sweaty goatee look of Gavin 'n Mikey is not an immediate turn-on.
Could modern society be hanging by a thread because of a couple of cases of sexual angst?
There have been precedents.
O/T but interesting parallels.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html?pagewanted=all
I kept thinking all through the article "Now where have I heard something similar to that?"
From the ABC’s Science Show (the first of this year), the very silly Tim Flannery and the late Robyn Williams converse:
See also: “Tim Flannery Not a Corpse Animated by Ants”.IMHO Flannery came across as a complete fruitcake on Marr's programme. The more that eco-idiots get on the airwaves, the more the public will resent the lunacy of Britain's climate change policies.
At one point he says something along the lines (paraphrasing here)
(the expose of the CRU emails was) a very careful and cynically crafted plot that involved illegal activities with the aim of suppering the copenhangen talks
Uh...I must have missed the outcome of the Norfolk constabulary's investigation on this.It's quite amazing that outright lies go completely unchallenged on the BBC. Most objective observers would conjecture( still no evidence yet of course) that this was a whistleblower in which case it most certainly wasn't illegal. But then on the BBC you can claim what the hell you like. Neither Marr nor Flannery will have read the emails of course. Anyone who has can come to only one conclusion.
Quite possibly true. It is still an ordeal. BBD
Nicholas Hallam
Chomsky's support of Faurisson was on the basis of academic freedom and the fact that he didn't think the history was settled (whatever he says now). Sound familiar ?
He certainly wouldn't do it today. He would be crucified. In fact he was when it was revealed more recently by (torture advocate) Alan Dershowitz.
Steady on you Brits, steady on now I say!
First I have worn a beard for so long that I can hardly remember shaving.
Why do some men shave, I wonder?
Perhaps they like gazing at their faces very early in the morning.
(Me I just do not like shaving).
Second, I wear sandels when I go to the beach.
I do that because I don't like sand getting in my socks and shoes.
Third, now about our famed commisar for climate-goodness-knows-what.
He's there because our wise government believe that he's the best man for the job.
'nuff said about the gov and Sir Tim.
But please all, do stop being so skeptical.
Academic boffins predict that there's more than 0.00000001% probability
that Sir Tim will save us all, despite our disgustingly skeptical ways.
(But I'm a bit skeptical about that as well, I'm afraid).
In-cidentally as well as stopping poking fun at our dearly beloved Sir Tim,
You should all get a new clock.
My last post was clocked at 2.05 AM on 7th March,
while the real time here is 1.05 pm on 8th March (good old Eastern Aust. summer saving time).
You pepole are really behind the times (we won't speak about the Yanks now, the're even worse I hear).
But Sir Tim (that's what I call him),
Sir Tim is so prescious that we have lent him to you good people for a short while,
(And we've slammed the door and changed the lock since he's gone),
So enjoy while you can.
He knows stuff like you wouldn't believe.
(Oh, have i got something wrong again - let me check - no that what I meant).
35 years bearded and still sceptical. I wear the beard to keep the cold out.
'Psyence'- gotta love that one.
@ Geoff Cruickshank
"All crows are black birds, but all black birds aren't crows" ........ but if you wear sandals as well, you are bound to rouse suspicion ;-)
Neuromancer
Thanks for the NYT link. Most of it could just as easily have been about AGW, especially this:
..if researchers seek to study something less costly and more controllable, they end up studying experimental situations so oversimplified that their results may have nothing to do with reality. This then leads to a research literature so vast that it's possible to find at least some published research to support virtually any theory. The result is a balkanized community -- ''splintered, very opinionated and in many instances, intransigent''
Re whiskers, I have mine because I could get from my pit to the Bridge in under two minutes. Plus wake up with a hangover and not cut my throat getting presentable.