Bishop Hill Oreskes and Dr Karl
May 21, 2011 BBC Climate: WG2 BBC Radio Five Live had a propaganda piece on global warming last week, with Naomi Oreskes and an Australian called "Dr Karl" vigorously agreeing with each other on absolutely everything and knocking down the telephone callers like flies. The interviewer, Rhod Sharp was clearly inclined to question things - he'd even been to see The Heretic - but without anyone to question what Oreskes and Karl were saying you were left with something of a fib-fest.
The interview was spread out over four hours, so I've split it into several posts, which will appear over the next few days. In this first one you can hear Naomi Oreskes trying to link floods in Australia and the UK and Pakistan to global warming and Dr Karl saying that Australia is going to get drier. The apparent contradiction between their positions seems to have been lost on them.
A warning needs to be issued before you listen - breakable objects should probably be removed from the vicinity of your computer first.
(H/T Retephslaw)
Reader Comments (37)
Dr Karl is the ABC broadcaster Karl Kruszelnicki:
http://www.abc.net.au/profiles/content/s2193276.htm?site=science/k2
I must contradict you on the breakable comments quip. I have just very nearly bitten through a knuckle!
I wish that I had thrown a cup at the cat.
Dr David Whitehouse is a regular on Radio 5's "Up All NIght," I wonder what he thinks?
Oreskes:
'the flooding in the USA includes flooding of millions of acres of highly productive farmland' - and why is that farmland "highly productive"?
Seems like all floods are caused by global warming (Pakistan, USA, UK, Australia, etc). So does that mean we didn't have floods before?
"humans as a species are not very good at dealing with change"
Reminds of the parody of a prophet telling parables in the film Life of Brian. Ohhh, you're making it up as you go along!
Flooding in US includes farmland not expected by farmers to be flooded but flooded anyway due to Corps of Engineers' selection of lesser of two evils AND farmland, for example,. on the dedicated Louisiana spillway which can become very wet if "venting" of the Mississippi is necessary as it is right now.
The farmers with land on the spillway know that "venting" may happen. It was an absolute delight to watch an interview with one who said that he was fully aware of the risk of planting in the spillway and knew that these things had to happen from time to time and it was "just life."
No blaming it on "Climate."
Where's the fibs? Oreskes and Dr Karl are simply outlining the theories, of course there's room for skepticism but if your starting point is to say that the theories are fibs then that's not skepticism , that denialism. Here is an interview that supports the theory that AGW is linked to the floods in Pakistan.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/environment/audio-are-the-floods-in-pakistan-and-the-wildfires-in-russia-related/3043/
[BH adds: See next episode]
Kruszelnicki is a well-known media personality in Australia, known for his motor-mouthed enthusiasm for science. But the scientific community there have never taken him that seriously as a proper scientist, as opposed to a (rather big-headed) popularizer.
I first posted this item on: May 19, 2011 at 9:34 AM | Unregistered CommenterRETEPHSLAW
Appreciate a HT please.
Peter
Beg pardon Retephslaw - added now.
Why can't you just ignore them?
I used to listen to Rod Sharpe on Radio 5 when I was in the UK. I always switched off when this guy Dr. Karl was on. I should have known he would be a warmier.
Pretty much everything I've ever seen or heard from Oreskes has been the same fact-free nonsense.
Was it Naomi that wrote "No Lego" about a sad childhood with no toys and no friends ?
Thanks Bishop, much appreciated.
Peter
Dr Karl makes many false statements - see
http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com/2011/05/dr-karl-kruszelnicki-and-flat-earth.html
Dr Karl is a cheesy "popular" scientist, who fronts many an ABC program down here in Australia, including "Sleek Geeks" with Adam Spencer, and (as I think must be required by the ABC charter) is a warming believer. He joins a long list of other ABC science broadcasters who all think the same (Robyn Williams, Bernie Hobbs, and Adam Spencer etc etc). There isn't a single dissenting voice among them on climate.
He presents a tacky pop science show on TripleJ and this is what that site says (verbatim):
"Dr Karl's famous triplej mission is to bring science to the peeps!" Link here.
Unfortunately all "the peeps" get on climate change is hysteria and alarmism, so hope you will forgive me if I would rather stick red hot needles in my eyeballs than listen to him and Oreskes prattle on.
Cheers,
Simon
Australian Climate Madness
(Slightly O/T) We also had James Hansen in NZ this week. He did a radio interview with Radio NZ's Saturday morning with Kim Hill show.
The podcast is available here
(The MP3 is linked under the heading RNZ SAT: James Hansen: climate science Saturday, May 14, 2011 8:15 AM)
The interview was better than average in my view. Kim Hill presented a few sceptical views (aerosols etc) and also challenged Hansen on his carbon tax ideas)
She says
'Humans as a species are not very good at dealing with change'............
Um......looks around for object.........damn, followed the advice.........
My language facility literally fails to adequately respond to this assertion.....
My computer is breakable - I think the warning needs an update.
jones
Re 'humans not good at dealing with change'.
On the face of it, an absurd statement. What I suppose she meant was that the current state of affairs globally is vulnerable to the various projected effects of climate change.
What always strikes me about the mindset here is the absence of optimism. Not in an irrational, hope-for-the-best sense, but in a practical, even pragmatic one.
The collective problem-solving capacity of the species is, as ever, ignored.
We are left with half an argument. This wouldn't be so bad if the other half of the argument had not been banned from public discourse.
'Humans as a species are not very good at dealing with change'............
Aye right. Naked humans get hypothermic if the ambient temperature is not 29C+. So we evolved from the apes during much warmer temperatures, and most of us have since adapted to live in much cooler climates and more extreme and variable climates around the world. Our adaptability as a species is only matched by the stupidity of some of our individuals.
Jimmy - I got your email address from your post at WUWT thanks, and I'm still on for that pint.
For those fashion-loving scientists out there, Dr Karl is also the single biggest consumer of Hawaiian shirts in the Southern Hemisphere.
I once got annoyed with the irritating Dr Karl when in a live radio show he claimed black to be a colour, so I phoned in, on-air. He got very flustered when I asked him how an absence of photons could be interpreted as "colour" and he promptly terminated the conversation.
Jack Hughes asks-”Was it Naomi that wrote ‘No Lego’ about a sad childhood with no toys and no friends?” No “Naomi Klein” is a Canadian Socialist, anti-capitalist, and anti-global campaigner. Oreskes is a science historian at UC-San Diego, but her PhD is in geology.
Naomi Oreskes was also given a full hour to strut her stuff on "Our ABC" (Australia) when she was interviewed by the ABC Radio's Richard Fidler live at the Sydney Writers Festival this week (Thurs 19 May).
Richard Fidler and the audience lapped it all up without any probing questions.
Does Rod still do the graveyard shift on 5 live? Listening to him used to send me to sleep - which is kind-of what I wanted to be doing around the time his show was on!
Rapturists both - Nancy and Dr K. The End of the World is Nigh. Google it, you know it makes sense.
If either were given evidence that things weren't as bad as they thought, they would implode.
They are impervious to any facts that challenge their POVs' that, on the planet, Mankind is but a cancerous growth that imperills the progress of Gaia itself.
They are clearly neurotic. Not an issue in itself. That they have the gonads of the First World's leaders in their grasp is!
Time for action, methinks, but what can be done against the actions of the mad mighty?
Naomi Oreskes told an ABC show 'The Drum" that GlacierGate was just a typo.
http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/view/766564
Peter Pond
I heard that sickmaking interview by Fiedler.
He was pushing (and pushing and pushing) the barrow that all these people who have objections, are sceptical, who blog about the sceptical side of AGW/CC are not qualified becuase they don't have degrees in climatology or geology or any scientific qualifications.
He forgot about Dr David Evans, Bill Carter, Ian Plimer and so many more who express doubt about AGW/CC.
It annoys me so much that it's all so one sided.
What about the qualifications of people like Al Gore and so many others who support "the cause"?
Dr. Karl is also a hypocrit - he drives around in a fuel-gorging Monaro V8:
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/comments/karl_koncerned/
Call me old fashioned, but I thought it was traditional when having two guest speakers to have one representing each side!
"her PhD is in geology"
Then she should be ashamed.
"he drives around in a fuel-gorging Monaro V8"
But it doesn't apply to him. Same with Monbiot et al, flying around the globe to tell (other) people to stop!
Dr Karl is a serial confabulator. This is a man who believes that the first man-made object in orbit was a manhole blown off a US underground nuclear test in the 1950s, and even made a short film about it.
He also has a very high opinion of himself.
I hate to be pedantic but black is a colour. A colour is a "quality" (or what a philosopher would call a quale), i.e. an instance of conscious perception. The quale supervenes on physical properties, or lack thereof, of course. So in this instance Dr Karl was quite correct.
Dr Karl is an extremely careful and thoughtful scientist. When asked as a guest host on a morning program as to wether Global Warming was indeed happening, he did a little research.
His declaration to the best of my memory was that the science was indeed real because there was more peer reviewed papers for than against!
As a scientist he made a better taxi driver.
Only just got round to reading these. Dr. Karl's logic (?) completely escapes me, and Mzzzzz Oreskez seems to be thrashing around for any reason/excuse. Pretty low-brow stuff even for this non-scientist.