Bishop Hill Sense about Science lecture
May 10, 2011 Economics Times Higher Ed has a report about last night's Sense About Science lecture by Cambridge historian Richard Evans. From the sounds of it, this was pretty interesting, with Prof Evans noting that calls for the public to trust scientists are "inadequate" given the propensity of scientists to get things wrong - he cites the BSE and miasmatism as examples. That said, Prof Evans, like so many others finds it difficult to cope with dissenting voices, and you sense that underneath he longs for consensus and certainty and a nice-neat top-down world. But I wonder if there is some significance in the fact that climate change sceptics were no mentioned alongside the anti-vaccinators (is that a word?,) who he gives as examples of the fringe groups who have taken advantage of the public distrust of scientist.
If someone can lay their hands on the video, do please post a link.
Reader Comments (14)
Breaking news on BBC Today
0719: It has emerged that the coalition cabinet is reportedly spit over the government’s policy on climate change. Environment correspondent Roger Harrabin reports.
This marks quite a dramatic shift, because so far the UK politicians have all been on one “consensus” (publicly) and one cannot forget that the Tories were elected by a leader who said they were going to be the “greenest government ever”.
People may like to check out the lilnk below to the British Medical Journal which is running a campaign for complete disclosure of all data pertaining to drug trials etc. A current article explains how incomplete disclosure distorts the science and serves vested interests. Sounds familiar?
http://press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/may/themeissue.pdf
@Scottish Sceptic
The Cabinet split is probably the reason fro Spelman's daft as a brush remarks about the effect of 'climate change' on WiFi yesterday
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/8502620/Climate-change-could-disrupt-wi-fi-and-hit-power-supply.html
Judging on the reaction at the Torygraph she's not taking the public with her on that one. Perhaps she fancies 'spending more time with her family', and this was a way to acheive it.
Note also that there is no indication that the Transport Minister, Philip Hammond, has joined her in her ramblings, even though transport infrastructure was one of her main targets. Hammond is my MP and in my few direct dealings with him, he has seemed to be a calm practical and thoughtful guy...not easily swayed by emotional arguments about polie bears weeping for mother gaia.. If only spelman were the same!
Scottish Sceptic,
this is a massive story. It's not just any old cabinet split. The the Treaury, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and the Department of Transport have all come out agin' the Committee on Climate Change's carbon budget. It seems it is FINALLY dawning on the governement that the last government created a medusa in the CoCC that will calcify anything it turns its beady stare to. Note as well that it's not just down to the Evil Tories. Vince Cable, Business Secretary and leading light Limp Dumb is personally criticising CoCC.
Once the CoCC stood proud and erect, but it now looks flaccid and spent. Weak, limp, lifeless, you might say. Probably not even Cheryl Cole could stroke it back to life......
See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13343055
@anguspangus
Thanks for the link.
Great story. Cable opposes Huhne. Osborne vs Hague. Hammond with Cable and Osborne. Good election for the Tories, disastrous for the LibDems
If Huhne gets overridden. even by the width of a speeding ticket, that's the end of his career. If I were Mr Cameron wanting to shore up Clegg's position, I'd back Cable, Osborne and Hammond.
Perhaps a good compromise would be to kick it into touch for a 'period of review and reflection'...and let that period be indefinite........then ensure that Huhne is defenestrated PDQ. Mr Clegg willl no doubt be willing to help.......
AP,
ah yes, the good, honest Mr. Huhne could soon be departing in a fast car. But driven by whom? Or Huhne? We just don't know. One thing's for sure. Mr Huhne has no point. Or points - he's pointless. But should he be? That's the question.
Whatever, without Treasury support, the CoCC is now pointless too. It can set any pie in the sky target it likes: 80% reduction by 2050, 20 or 30% reduction by 2020. With the Treasury focussed, rightly, on more pressing matters, nothing is going to happen in the short term. And of course, as the years roll by and tipping points and last chances to save the world come and go, it becomes more and more obvious that disastrous man made climate change is a non-problem.
If you want a real laugh, read the first few pages of the "report" that Caroline Spellbound embarassed herself with yesterday here:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/publications/files/climate-resilient-infrastructure-full.pdf
It is, literally, unbelievable. Apparently, due to climate change, we must prepare for more water (flooding) and less water (droughts). When building windmills, we must plan for windier conditions and less windy conditions. We must prepare for progressively warmer winters, and also freezing winters, like the one we just had. But we musn't confuse "weather" (like the freezing winter we just had) with "climate" (average weather over 30 years). Ooh, except April 2011 was REALLY hot, so that proves globall warming, And so does the freezing winter. But we'll see fewer freezing winters because it'll probably be 5 degrees warmer in winter by 2080. And it'll be drier in the summer, except when it's not.
It's a complete load of bollocks and no the wonder the Treasury, which has got to choose between competing spending priorities, the Department for Business, Skills and Innovation, which is charged with maintining the competiveness of the UK economy, and the Department of Transport which, having fallen for the line that our children won't know what snow is (copyright, The Independent 2001) has been caught with its pants down two years running, have issued a collective "meh".
Oh, and if ZedDeadHead should happen along, let me just add this. The defra report is ostensibly about planning for infrastructure resilience to climate change. But infrastructure requires resilience, not to climate (average weather over 30 years) but to extreme weather events (e.g. the occassional Fish-esque "Calm down dear there's no hurricane" event). In short, even if the frequency of extreme events changes over a long period of time (which it is almost bound to do, in an unknown direction) it SHOULDN'T MATTER because infrastructure should have been planned, designed and constructed to withstand extreme weather events. The defra report was a stupid waste of money; a vapid piece of old-school man made global warming scare-mongering.
@anguspangus
I just read the defra document you link to
http://www.defra.gov.uk/publications/files/climate-resilient-infrastructure-full.pdf
and urge everybody else to do so.
Words (almost) fail me to describe the content.
For an A level project, it might get high marks for obvious commitment to the subject and ability to use some nice bits of MS Word. But it would score very poorly on intellectual content and rigour.
For a Cabinet level discussion it is vapid and turgid and contains few actual proposals beyond showing some pretty pictures. It is a shockingly inadequate piece of work, and little better in content and scope than a reasonably up-to-date reader of this blog could put together in a week or so. It is pathetic.
I sincerely hope that the saner minds in government will see this document and realise just how poorly staffed DEFRA must be. They have a track record of complete failure on everything they touch...Foot and Mouth, compensation payments and now this dross about climate change.
It was noticeable yesterday that no other cabinet minister turned out to applaud Spelman's speech. Now we can see why.
AP & Latimer - I just looked at the DEFRA document and agree with your assessment.
"For example, London and the South East are vulnerable to water
scarcity and large urban areas are more vulnerable to extremely hot summer days and nights
due to the urban heat island effect." (http://www.defra.gov.uk/publications/files/climate-resilient-infrastructure-full.pdf page 11).
Guess they didn't consult Phil Jones for that section then.
AngusPangus wrote:
Speaking of pie in the sky targets such as 80% ... by 2050 ... Yesterday CBC [Canada's equivalent of the BBC in the "all warming all the time" boosterism dept.] carried an AP story with the following headline:
80% renewable energy possible by 2050: UN panel
Article begins:
And it is accompanied by an absolutely luverly black and white pic of ... wait for it ... wind turbines. Captioned as follows:
Mention of the IPCC urging expenditures of "trillions" kinda caught my eye; so I decided to investigate the process by which this might have come about. Those who are interested can read all about it in:
IPCC plays snakes and ladders while going full tilt for windmills
Bish writes:
Richard Evans was a key witness in the 2000 libel trial of David Irving vs Penguin Books & Deborah Lipstadt. His research and testimony formed the basis of an eminently readable book, Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial.
As an aside, Irving's mode of "doing history" includes such techniques as 'add a word here, change a word there' in order to support his "argument". To my mind this is not too dissimilar to the hockey team' s "add some data here, take some away there" technique when they're "doing science"! But I digress ...
In answer to your question, Bish ... in light of the above, I'm inclined to think that Evans's familiarity with the *real* deniers might lead him to conclude that the readiness of those who don't care for the views of skeptics to engage in such ad hominem in order to denigrate and disparage their views would not sit well with Evans. While I don't know him, personally, I do believe that he is probably a realist in many, many ways.
What a crock...
"strengthened power cables to avoid excess wire expansion in hotter summers"
No scientists or practical people would have let this rubbish slip through.
Bish wrote:
Sorry, I don't have a link to the video, but from the Sense about Science page on this lecture:
I skimmed the transcript, btw, and from his intro para:
Science could certainly benefit from an injection of "common sense", don't you think?! Notwithstanding my earlier response to your question re significance (if any) of exclusion of climate change skeptics in his list of "fringe groups", considering the subject - and audience (Royal Society of Medicine) - perhaps it is not surprising (or significant!)
I don't know, I think that scientists are in the respective area to try to prove something. Science is something that it was develop by humans. It works because it is the most similar to the reality. There is an article about it on pharmacy escrow