Bishop Hill Tom Chivers on 28gate
Nov 14, 2012 BBC Tom Chivers makes a sturdy(ish) defence of the BBC's choice of attendees at the seminar. Well, not that sturdy actually, but full marks are due for effort.
He gets a load of stuff about Climategate wrong, but as he uses Wikipedia as his source that's not really surprising. What I thought was interesting was his take on what debate there should be on climate:
There are people, notably Richard Lindzen, who think people have overestimated the sensitivity of the climate to carbon emissions, and think we can survive many times higher concentration than is currently suggested. There are advocates of carbon taxes and cap-and-trade. These are important arguments, that need to be had in public, loudly and passionately. These are the sort of balanced debates I would like to see in the media, between intelligent, informed people.
But this is the problem, Tom, don't you see? Sceptics are not allowed to talk about climate sensitivity on the BBC because the science is all "settled". The seminar attendees told the corporation so. The amount of science that is settled is piffling - temperatures went up a bit at the end of the last century, CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that's pretty much it. Everything else is up in the air. Which is why the BBC policy is so iniquitous.
The suggestion, implicit in Tom's defence of the seminar, is that the seminar was actually a balanced group for guiding the BBC's editorial policy. This is, of course, completely absurd. If he really can't see that then I think he has a serious credibility problem. But he does raise one interesting question. Who should have been at the seminar?
Reader Comments (69)
Of course, if the seminar had done what Helen Boaden and others said it did, and given BBC editors access to the best scientific knowledge, then instead of all the activists and NGO bods and paid industry lobbyists, there would have been a range of scientists including Judy Curry and Chris Landsea to provide balance. But that was never the intent, as is well documented, and everything the BBC has said about it since, whether to the Information Commissioner or to the Bridcut report, is an outright lie.
Sceptics are not allowed to talk about climate sensitivity on the BBC because the science is all "settled"."
Well, perhaps if the 'sceptics' didn't think that Monckton was their expert on "climate sensitivity" you'd have more luck. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/14/wuwt-tv-lineup-and-schedule/
Your problem is that all of your champions prefer to talk nonsense about the science, or spend their 15 minutes rattling on about conspiracy theories. If you want to be taken seriously, be serious. Don't keep hanging out with the loonies, stop using strawmen caricatures, stop accusing everyone of corruption, and actually engage on matters of substance. It's really not that hard.
Roddy Campbell 12.54: 'The only thing that is 'settled' is that CO2 causes warming.'
On the contrary, there is no unambiguous experimental proof of any warming from CO2 and the correct IR physics plus a bit of basic statistical thermodynamics shows why. Nasif Nahle's Mylar balloon experiment proves it experimentally!
I actually like Tom Chivers. I enjoy his blog too (mostly). I don't really blame him for having a blind spot here, as it seems to be an affliction with many in the media (and Climate Science, come to think of it).
Any news about other reactions?
doubt if any MSM will acknowledge Andrew Dlugolecki as CRU, and still listed on CRU's website, yet his attendance and Norwich Union/Aviva's long history with UEA/CRU is crucial, especially given the MSM's continuing beat-up about CAGW causing more extreme weather events, without providing the evidence to back up the claim:
Cyclone Yasi in Nth Queensland, Australia, Feb 2011, has been cited as the reason for Insurance Premiums going through the roof (moreso than Yasi itself did). whilst there may be more to some of these premiums than just Yasi, relatives up North have confirmed to me horror stories of increased premiums which, for some people, may mean having to sell their homes or investment properties which were to provide for their retirements:
31 Oct: Herald Sun: AAP: Qld insurers accused of price gouging
INSURANCE companies in north Queensland have been accused of "outrageous" price gouging, with premiums going through the roof...
In one case the premium for a two bedroom home in Mackay leapt from $2642 to $13,616.
In another the premium rose from $1992 to $8133 in a single year for another Mackay home that did not flood in the 2008 "one-in-200-year" rain event...
The Insurance Council of Australia said an independent Australian Government Actuary (AGA) report released on October 19 found no evidence of price gouging.
The ICA said the report found the north Queensland market remained competitive, and current market conditions were more likely to attract new insurers to the region than at any time during the past few years...
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/qld-insurers-accused-of-price-gouging/story-e6frf7kf-1226507751376
whilst attempting to research how ICA/AGA came to the conclusion there is no "price gouging" involved, i came across the following in the US, which might explain the way premium increases in Australia are getting by the regulators:
June 2012: Yale Forum on Climate Change: Limited Coverage: Climate Change and the Insurance Industry
MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel now sits on the boards of two insurers, Bunker Hill and Homesite…
It may come as a surprise to many, but some Americans may already be beginning to pay for climate change through insurance, as the top-level reinsurance costs filter down to premiums...
(John Seo, who founded a pioneering hedge fund, Fermat Capital Management) “Whether or not a state allows an insurer to acknowledge climate change in their insurance premiums, climate change can still impact insurance premiums indirectly via the cost of reinsurance. Insurers are allowed to integrate the cost of reinsurance in their rate filings. If reinsurers price-in climate change, that is reflected in the premiums they charge insurance companies. Such elevated reinsurance premiums, if they are persistent, are subsequently integrated into insurance premiums…
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2012/06/limited-coverage-climate-change-and-the-insurance-industry/
(READ ALL) Nov 2010: Sarasota Herald Tribune: Florida insurers rely on dubious storm model
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20101114/ARTICLE/11141026/2055/NEWS?p=all&tc=pgall&tc=ar
Yasi was a monster — but not an unusual one
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/02/yasi-is-a-monster-but-not-an-unusual-one/
I struggle to be charitable about Chivers' piece. His scene-setting opening paragraph spectacularly misrepresents the significance of the story; then he proceeds with the most absurd straw-man arguments imaginable. A sneering prat, as an earlier post described him, seems about right to me.
"Round or flat? What do YOU think, Professor of Astronomy? And you, Urine-Stained Alcoholic?"
Tom Chiver's equation of skeptics to "Urine-Stained Alcoholic(s)" and flat earthers in the caption beneath the photo of the earth from space which fronts his DT article is interesting.
Is he training at the Lewandowsky School of Cognitive Scientism?
If the purpose of the seminar was to coordinate the exclusion of "deniers" and maximise/coordinate the perpetuation of the global warming meme in every branch of BBC programming, then I think they got the attendee list exactly right.
We have NGO's advising .gov, using funds that .gov are paying to those very same NGO's? Maybe it's just me, but that seems a tad circular.
Why are most of these NGO's classified as charities? What happened to George Osborne's clampdown on 'charities' not paying taxes?
It strikes me that someone read Yevgeny Zamyatin's 'WE' and seen it as a potential road-map rather than fiction.
One wonders why 'WE' "became the first work banned by the Soviet censorship board" as per Wikip'.
I have no vested interest in 'WE', but it is quite an interesting read, (vs 1984).
Downunder, as I am sure many of your readers and contributors are aware, we suffer similar slings and arrows as you poms do, e.g. our ABC and the Fairfax broadsheets - the Age and the Silly Morning Herald. In correspondence with an editor at the latter I suggested that their problem (in reporting what I called the back story on climate change science) was that the vast majority of journos in all media, bottom to top, were arts and humanities graduates. She didn't get it. Perhaps there is a similar problem in the UK. Cheers from cool Sydney.
I read Tom's article, and em quite appalled at how blinkered his outlook is. His tone is rude and condecending, if not insulting to anybody capable of introspective thought.
The one thing I realy can't understand; is why people take ownership of someone elses opinion, and then defend that opinion doggedly and insults anyone who has another view.
Tom's glib comparison of the scandal to dodo extention, Mad Clive who yells at piogeons, and to leprechauns; is a self pointing parody of stupidity.
Tom says that the Climatic Research Unit was exorerated. How many of thos reports did you read Tom? Not just hear the verdict of, how many did you read?
I have seen people call skeptics Holocaust deniers but never before have I seen skeptics called urine-stained alcoholics.
I posted the list below of a selection of sceptical scientists to Tom Chivers, a list he appears to claim does not exist, his article gave the impression that there are too few sceptical qualified scientists for the BBC to give a genuine balance to their reporting on CAGW. I urged him to make a partial retraction and have yet to have a reply. The list below is not a full one but proves there are many sceptical scientists who are being denied the opportunity to share their undoubted expertise with the public. The false notion that the sceptical side consists of unqualified non scientists is a central part of the BBC fraud.
Khabibullo Abdusamatov, mathematician and astronomer at Pulkovo Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Sallie Baliunas, astronomer, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Ian Clark, hydrogeologist, professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa
Chris de Freitas, associate professor, School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science, University of Auckland
David Douglass, solid-state physicist, professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester
Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology, Western Washington University
William M. Gray, professor emeritus and head of the Tropical Meteorology Project, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University
William Happer, physicist specializing in optics and spectroscopy, Princeton University
William Kininmonth, meteorologist, former Australian delegate to World Meteorological Organization Commission for Climatology
David Legates, associate professor of geography and director of the Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware
Tad Murty, oceanographer; adjunct professor, Departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa
Tim Patterson, paleoclimatologist and professor of geology at Carleton University in Canada.
Ian Plimer, professor emeritus of Mining Geology, the University of Adelaide.
Nicola Scafetta, research scientist in the physics department at Duke University
Tom Segalstad, head of the Geology Museum at the University of Oslo
Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia
Willie Soon, astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Roy Spencer, principal research scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville
Henrik Svensmark, Danish National Space Center
Jan Veizer, environmental geochemist, professor emeritus from University of Ottawa
Syun-Ichi Akasofu, retired professor of geophysics and founding director of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks
Claude Allègre, politician; geochemist, Institute of Geophysics (Paris)
Robert C. Balling, Jr., a professor of geography at Arizona State University
John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, contributor to several IPCC
Petr Chylek, space and remote sensing sciences researcher, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Judith Curry, Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology
David Deming, geology professor at the University of Oklahoma
Antonino Zichichi, emeritus professor of nuclear physics at the University of Bologna and president of the World Federation of Scientists
Craig D. Idso, faculty researcher, Office of Climatology, Arizona State University and founder of the
Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
Sherwood Idso, former research physicist, USDA Water Conservation Laboratory, and adjunct professor, Arizona State University
Patrick Michaels, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and retired research professor of environmental science
You can also find several lists of sceptical scientists (almost 400) on my blog belgotopia, under title "changements climatiques, quel consensus ?)
http://belgotopia.blogs.lalibre.be/climat/
Climate scientists confuse themselves when they repeatedly talk about ''trends'' in temperature when they discuss the cyclic nature of climate. There is always a trend either side of a curve but these never continue without change.
I agree with others above (DaveS, betapug, Greg) it is a really disgusting piece. It is good to see the idiot getting completely clobbered in the comments.
jo moreau, that is a useful list. Any chance of an English version? Is there one file with the whole list? And can you add me?
The importance of Nahle's empirical result cannot be overstated, in a well devised schoolboy reproducible way it falsifies (a) Greenhouse gas (b) GW -> AGW, and (c) the FORCING drivel.
This, together with the data fudging blows the entire scientific basis out of the water.
The recently reported presence of oil in deep tight gas fields also falsifies the 'fossil fuel' meme and thus falsifies renewability and the entire Malthusian, Cub of Rome, Giaia nonsense. That deep it isn't fossil anything!
Read the gnashing of teeth eg on 'The Oil Drum' and LOL.
MFG, omb
We are in a magical time where "progressives" on any given topic can be shown documentary evidence that what they claim is wrong, and they will simply ignore the evidence. Chivers is demonstrating this. He claims to want a balanced discussion. His words to that effect do not have the meaning given them in the dictionary. What he really means is he wants a discussion to further affirm his pre-exisiting beliefs and he will not listen to evidence that he is being misled or manipulated. The magic part of Chivers' thinking is that his world view does not rely on use of rational thought, but instead is sustained by his willing faith-based decisions.