Wednesday
May042011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Watch with care
Some readers may be familiar with the name of Dr Gabrielle Walker. It was Dr Walker who co-wrote The Hot Topic with Sir David King - the global warming book with a whole new "hide the decline" graph in.
I notice that Dr Walker has been commissioned to front a BBC TV programme about the science of ice.
One to watch...(carefully).
Also coming up in the BBC's new season are a series about the science of the weather and a show called What's the Point of Satellites?, (to which the answer is probably "to promote global warming").
Reader Comments (13)
The woman has certainly got a mouthful of molars.
It reminds me of my gran and her ill-fitting dentures. They looked like they were fitted for a donkey.
What a depressing prospect, not an original thinker among them. just looking at the titles and you know what you will get. plastic presenters.
What's the point of satellites? Is anyone really asking that question?
(It's to bring the benefits of home shopping channels to those who are beyond the reach of cable.)
LenC - too true - nothing to make one think, no grit in the oyster. dare I be heretical and say that even wonders of the solar system was lame except for the graphics which were great. Not a patch on Cosmos.Is there any among this bunch who can make us think? Of course they are all plastic, pretty, nice teeth, hair. Bronowski and even Sagan himself would not be commissioned by the BBC to do a science documentary these days. even Robert Winston seems to be regarded as too old now. I'm not hankering for the days of Magnus Pike and James Burke but at least these chaps had some intellectual core and not dewy-eyed meaningless pap like most of this lot. Why we need satellites..cue giddy and dizzy presenter saying 'space is big you know....it's really big." Wonders of the Universe, cue..."since the dawn of time...."
Most of us are too grown up for this.
I note that Richard Klein, the boss of BBC 4, finds new presenters by trawling academia hunting for boffins who would look good on camera. Never mind the quality, feel the width.
Phillip Bratby - so the stupidity is exposed - its all what you look like. and yes, I thought Wonders of the Universe was fluff. Had to turn it off. Please BBC, can you calm down the science for a while. It's irritating and not as good as you constantly keep telling us.
gabrielle Walker on ice. In ice would be better.
James Burke! God, I loved 'Connections' when I was a kid.
The BBC are now so scared of not being PC, that they are the least PC (dis)organisation around.
In their attempt to be "inclusive" and "balanced", they have become the most narrow minded bunch of biggots it has ever been my misfortune to see, and I include the BNP.
They might think that its OK to turn a blind eye to those "spinning the big lie" because their climate fascism is justifiable because its "for the good", but that was just the argument of Hitler.
How on earth a group of otherwise sensible people can be so blinded is difficult to explain unless you bring in notions of "group-think" and even active manipulation by extremists in the (dis)organisation.
Compare Connections and Cosmos to "wonders of..." Say no more.
As I understand it, BBC is "Best of British Climatology" - a slogan not too far from "British Built Cars"
(Now faded into oblivion to the relief of both makers and users.)
Bring back Carl Sagan, who used to remind us of our place in the scheme of things.
"Yooman beans," he would say, "all of us, are simply star stuff."
My favourite Saganism, that still makes me snigger, is "Our cousins, the trees..."
The abiding memory I have of Cos-moce is the way it was padded out with shots of Carl Sagan gazing in delighted wonderment at something or other - a cloud, some stars, one of his "cousins" - in exactly the same way that yokels gaze at planes.
The BBC has utterly lost the plot in their drive to present us with pretty faces with understandable regional accents in the hope that we might mistake their GGI universe for the real world.
I am reminded of an old friend from many years ago who taught Entomology at a NZ university. He constructed enormous and wonderfully-ingenious puppet-like models using cardbard, string and paint. The models were animated by a group of students under his direction to demonstrate the general principles of how these creatures moved. He reckoned his most successful 'performance' and one that no student present could ever forget was the time that he absently thrust his lit Briar pipe into the top pocket of his lab coat on his way to the lecture. Halfway through directing the students operating the creature du joir, his lab coat burst suddenly into flames. His students initially assumed this was another more extreme bit of theatre to make his classes memorable but general panic broke out when the realisation dawned that the lab coat was actually on fire; said friend tore the coat off and thrust it into a handy steel waste paper bin to snuff the flames. Friend carried on with his lecture without breaking stride.