Bishop Hill Scientific advisers are lobbyists
Jun 29, 2011 Bureaucrats One of the apocalypsers we follow on a regular basis here at BH is Sir David King, the former government chief scientist. He's in the news again today, pressuring David Cameron into action on climate:
David Cameron must end his silence on climate change and "step up to the plate" to provide international leadership, the former government chief scientific adviser Prof Sir David King says on Wednesday.
Writing in the Guardian, King also reveals that after his declaration that global warming was a greater threat than global terrorism in 2004, then US president, George Bush, asked Tony Blair, then prime minister, for to have him gagged.
We know that David King is a man who has an idiosyncratic approach to factual accuracy, so in the absence of any supporting evidence I think I will take that last part with a pinch of salt. But the wider question that King's 2004 remarks raise is at what point a scientific advisor just becomes a paid lobbyist. Advisors are traditionally imagined as quietly telling people in power what's what - they are the leader's way of tapping into a network of expertise and specialised knowledge. Their work is done discreetly, unseen by the general public. But someone who makes noisy public demands for political action and tries to press political leaders into a particular course of action is not an adviser, but a lobbyist. Now of course, King is now performing his lobbying from a position in a university rather than from within the government machine, but I'm not sure that this makes much of a difference.
This is why I am so interested in Sir John Beddington's peregrinations around the world, in which he speechifies on one scientific hobgoblin or another. This looks much more like publicly funded political activism than scientific advice, and, that being the case, is no more acceptable than the public funding of trade union officials that has been exercising the minds of the Westminster village in recent months.
Reader Comments (29)
I believe King was lobbying on Radio 4's Today programme this morning. About 6.10am.
In 2004 at a time not long after the attack on the Twin Towers, when we were indeed at a heightened state against terrorism the Chief Scientist of Britain unilaterally decided to tell the world that government policy on terrorist threat in Britain (if not the world) should be subordinated to that of "climate change"
I would be surprised in the extreme if the US adminstration had not taken up the UK Government on that point and asked them to set the policy prorities straight. Only 12 months later on July 7 2005, King's bufoonery, postruring and self preening was tragically revealed.
Like many of his alarmist ilk, King come across as an arrogant egotist.
The problem is not lobbying, the problem is postmodern thinking establishing in the hard sciences. Ravetz called it "postnormal science". I will not do that.
Read more:
http://mittelalterlichewarmperiode.blogspot.com
W.v.B.
Talking about apocalyptic lobbyists, Walter Russell Mead has penned two fine essays titled 'Why Al Gore is a Failure.'
Excerpt:
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-al-gore-is-a-failure-part-one-2011-6
Actually, we have the same problem in NZ. Our current incumbent chief scientist, Sir Peter Gluckman, has made a number of speeches involving the D word, yet his knowledge of climate science seems to be minimal (he is a medical researcher)
If a King commands in an echo chamber of closed minds, does it make a noise?
With a readership circa 300k, =< the Westminster village + green lobby + activists +deluded concerned souls +/- syndicated blogs, does the signal escape into the real world at all?
It's all reminiscent of a feedback loop, you look for a signal, but all you get is a painful screaming noise.
In defence of King he is quite right about the threat from "global warming." The measures proposed to combat it would, if most countries took them, cripple the world economy. The lack of money for tackling major problems facing poorer countries would probably lead to more unnecessary deaths than terrorism.
Therefore global warming is a greater threat than terrorism - but not for the reasons King gave.
Roy
@Andycrase - About as much expertise on AGW as (Sir) Paul Nurse then ?
I am always surprised at the sheer silliness that governments encourage among their sycophants, but perhaps the role of Court Jester was never abolished, just transformed into that of 'chief science advisor' to sound more acceptable to post-modern ears in the political village. It also surprises me that governments never seem to comprehend that the understanding of a broad swathe of the sciences requires the sort of intellect that can take in and understand an enormous range of concepts rather than the kind of blinkered intellect that has struggled to master an incredibly narrow specialism and cannot see beyond that.
The American saying that 'when the only tool to hand is a hammer, every problem is a nail' is a little too narrow for this circumstance; I suspect that King does not have the ability to recognise a moderately comprehensive toolkit.
Sadly, as a Kiwi I have to recognise that our home-grown Court Jester is as limited as the woeful Dr King.
King jumped on the CAGW bandwagon as did many other scientists. After all, the apocalyptic paper by GISS in 1988, and the submission by Hansen to Congress, were very persuasive. However, King clearly did not do his job as a scientist by analysing the subject in detail at the time.
This was proved in Moscow in 2004 when he reportedly claimed before Russian climatologists that the Kilimanjaro glacier was melting. They laughed him out of the room after the top guy told him their satellites showed it was colder but dryer because of deforestation, and the glacier was subliming.
What King and most other scientists did not know was at that time, insiders in NASA knew from their own research that the idea of 'back radiation', hence high feedback, was a mathematical mistake from 1922 and the cloud part of 'global dimming' was an artefact of incorrect optical physics by Sagan introduced to the subject by Hansen and Lacis, the top NASA people.
Instead of admitting the wheels had come off the CAGW wagon, NASA 'persuaded' physicist Ferenc Miskolczi, who had discovered the 1922 error, to leave and published a fake 'surface reflection' argument to purport the optical physics was fine. Hence AR4 was known to be wrong when published.
It took the UEA whistle-blower to derail Copenhagen. What we have now are the last desperate attempts at self justification by those who uncritically lashed themselves to the CAGW mast. In reality, the 'missing heat' was solar and fast heating at the end of an ice age which starts 1300 years before any atmosphere temperature rise, is probably through reduction of cloud albedo, not CO2-GW which could be very small, even net zero.
George W Bush was not quite as stupid as I thought!
There's another article by King from the Guardian on the 28th
Needed: a world leader: At home, the PM is doing well on green issues. Now he needs to take the fight into the global arena
The picture of Kofi Annan, Bono and Bob Geldorf is interesting. I think Call me Dave said he was inspired by Live Aid.
Don't give the guy ideas, please Sir David.
@ andyscrase
his knowledge of climate science seems to be minimal
And yet his view is accorded importance because he's pro-Establishment.
One of the oddest things [snip - forbidden language] is that if you're not a climate psyentist and you disagree with them, your view is dismissed as meaningless, because you're judged not competent to disagree with them.
If, however, you do agree with them, then your support is valuable and significant, no matter how unqualified you may be to form an opinion.
GOK why (eg) the American Society of Pediatricians has an opinion on climate change, but it does, and apparently we're all supposed to be impressed by their weighing in with their considered, expert view.
It's as though astrologers were to argue that only an astrologer can say astrology is bunk, and that an astrophysicist who says so hasn't permission to speak because he's not an astrologer.
And just like with climate psyence and for the same reasons, you aren't going to get many astrologers saying astrology's bunk.
golf,
Spoken well. ,... and I know how difficult that must have been to say.
For years, we heard over and over again, how stupid Bush was, and he was stupid. But I have come to the same conclusion - he was not as stupid as I thought.
I would say the same thing about Obama as well - he is not as stupid as the AGW consensus wants him to be - in just caving in to their ardent and shrill demands. He is more courageous too - he's stood up to them. And he hesitated to outright issue the kill orders on Osama bin Laden (although he did not hesitate to step up and attempt to take credit for it). If the portrait painted is true, he stood up to the militant establishment in his administration - Hillary Clinton et al.
Of course "science advisors" are chosen primarily so that they will advise the media and public that whatever the latest government pravda is is true. This it is ultimately a case of government hiring its own lobbyists to lobby for ever more government. Basically the fakecharity game but in a smaller circle.
Neil Craig
This is my point precisely.
How bright you actually need to be get degrees from Yale (Bush I & II) and Harvard Business School (Bush II) I couldn't possibly comment but I don't think 'stupid' quite cuts it, somehow. Regan certainly wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer but he had the sense to realise it. Knowing what you don't know is a great gift which not everybody has and which can get you a long way.
How bright you actually need to be to be President of the USA is another interesting question. Hands-on leaders can be a pain in the backside. They're not chosen to be experts in everything or indeed in anything. They are expected to appoint people to carry out the program they were elected on (as far as possible) and nod wisely and look presidential.
The liberals main problem in the US is that they do not understand how "the people" can be so stupid as not to choose "one of them" to be their leader. It's so much easier and cleaner for all the lobbyists and the NGOs and the others who make a living from being seen to be important in Washington if they are dealing with the "right" people who "know how the system works". If "the people" are stupid then it follows that the man they elect is also stupid. In their book, at least.
Reagan had an IQ of 145.
cf Clinton 145
These IQ scores are the result of the US school assessment system
All I can say, alistair, is that Regan hid it well, which certainly gives him the last laugh on the liberals (and me as well, of course!).
Just re reead the Guardian article and followed the links back to the "Smith School"
Ex banker, Martin Smith set up this group, to educate and lobby. He has the right person to lead it, in the same way the IPCC has the leader it deserves.
Therefore Sir David King challenging Cameron at a time when he may be having a pause for thought, via the Guardian, does seem a bit dumb.
George W Bush was right!. Thanks Shub and Mike Jackson
I am no medic but on a serious note, in Reagan's case, when did his dementia actually start?
Democrats have always tried to portray Republican presidents as stupid. Ford, Reagan, both Bushes - "you're stupid" and "I hate you" are the left's favourite and best arguments.
Meanwhile, the Amercian left have nothing to say about Clinton, a man so scarily smart that he got sucked off in the stationery cupboard by an intern, soiled her dress in the process, denied it all and then got caught lying about it on national television.
Yes, he'd be a really, really smart guy then.
But he did correctly point out that it depends on what "is" is.
King famously made a comment about young men in sports cars, an obviously dated and middle class pun, and AGW. This became the topic on a Radio 5 phone in (9 to 10am) and it was one of the funniest hours of comments I have heard, with plumbers and housewives and the odd out of work layabout laying into King. They were incredulous that he called himself a scientist let alone a chief scientist. It was one the best phone ins I've heard (sitting in traffic on the way into London)
I was always amused by the kicking KIng got from David Strahan (ex-BBC) in "The Last Oil Shock", a really well written book even if you don't agree with the (Peak Oil) conclusions. The same book also does go with the AGW consensus..
Reagan was a lot smarter than generally portrayed, apparently. I, too, laughed at the ‘search for the president’s brain’ sketches, but he was both well-read and in possession of a GSOH, which is probably more than can be said of Dubya...
More here.
Hermes watches conus
They were incredulous that he called himself a scientist let alone a chief scientist. It was one the best phone ins I've heard (sitting in traffic on the way into London)
but he was both well-read and in possession of a GSOH, which is probably more than can be said of Dubya...
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