Friday
Feb102012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Dellers on the GWPF report
Feb 10, 2012 Royal Society James Delingpole has a blog post up on my GWPF report.
I've written about this several times before but because I was once the victim of a nasty stitch-up by the Royal Society's current president Sir Paul Nurse there's always a danger of it looking like sour grapes.
That's why I'm so heartened by the magisterially damning report on the Royal Society produced by Andrew Montford for the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
We all have different roles to play in the great climate wars and Montford's, unlike mine, is to write with cool restraint. But though he doesn't title his report quite as provocatively as "The Royal Society is a joke" – that, essentially, his conclusion.
Ouch.
Reader Comments (74)
I'm a big fan of James - I believe it was one of his earlier articles in the Telegraph that caught my attention. And he’s right: it is a battle and whether you prefer the entertaining style of James, the diligence of our host or the technical style of Steve, we are spoilt for choice.
Having been a process engineer working on a refinery power station for a major oil in a previous life, I knew that these windmills were not fit for purpose and through the blogs of the aforementioned gentlemen, realised what a global, political scam this whole game is.
So I give my thanks to those that are leading the way and are slowly awakening a slumbering populace.
For it is war.
As Shub said Barry, you arent going to convince a Moonbat of anything (other than you being a 'denier'. The only tactic available is to bypass them and make them irrelevant.
Regards
Mailman
I'm not a big fan of Mao ;-) but I always liked the principle "Let a thousand flowers blossom". As a plan it works well in science, but also in public debates...
I don't get the criticism of Dellers. As Richard Drake correctly observed, "It's a team game." Dellers has a different audience and has played a major role in delivering the message to that more populist audience. Some critics may have a point IF this was actually just a debate about science but it is not. It is a political project wrapped in 'science' which must be addressed at all levels, to all audiences..
I am a huge fan of Dellers writing and in-your-face style, because it is so wickedly sarcastic and biting as well as effective. I would guess that sometimes Bish wishes he could just say what Dellers does, including in this instance. But he doesn't, and can't, because he is talking to a different audience.
On the other hand, from the AGW Team we have supposed 'scientists' like Hansen saying things that are at least as 'outrageous' as anything Dellers says, except they are not funny nor intelligent. That Team doesn't know how to be a team.
Oh well. This latest version of the Royal Society has done for that institution what Charles has done for the other royal society, and repairing that damage is going to require some major changes. In the meantime, long, long, long live the Queen!
Re the Berlin Wall fall:
Emboldened, a small group of local Sopron activists decided to celebrate the new spirit. Their modest aim: put up some tents, hire a brass band and let the beer and good vibes flow. One of the organizers came up with an especially inspired idea -- to briefly open a gate through the barbed-wire frontier to Austria, allowing people to casually stroll back and forth across the border for the first time in four decades. They called it the Pan-European Picnic.
Here in full. Not much time but that is probably better than most.
I am with Edward Getty on this one. Dellingpole used the word 'magisterial' to describe Dr Montford's work and one can only agree that this measured and carefully crafted opus eviscerates the RS as it deserves. JD, by contrast, was 'shooting from the hip' in his usual style but even as I was reading his posting this morning I was wishing that I could see the two versions side by side: the one was a complete compliment to the other. We need them both and all the other truly honest writers who have appeared in the above comments.
Only slightly OT: now that Nullias in Verba has been duly birthed can we expect the Kindle version of the HSI in the near future? I am beginning to experience withdrawal symptoms!
Paradoxically the strongest aspect of this "community" is that in a.strict sense we are not a team. I don't have allegiance to the Bish or James or anybody else, and so I suppose neither do they or anybody else. What makes the community is the outrage (not rage...outrage) at seeing science and policy being distorted for futile motives. It's a simple idea that quickly applies to every aspect of the climate discourse. It's simple enough to warrant its expression via sarcasm, irony, serious tones, cartoons. And best of it all, it doesn't involve hate, rather understanding of the tragedy of the dimwitted watermelons who love the world to death.
The Climate Haters on the other hand are based on a rage that is nourished by impotence, a form of self-harming addiction that makes sure there's always somebody to hate, and is hell-bent in making sure nothing gets done, unless it's a redistribution of money and power from the poor to.the scheming rich. They have to live in a constant siege mentality because the siege has become their reason for being, and the "deniers" their windmills. So they spend their lives namely to protect the planet, in practice always redefining a "consensus" that is chock-full of details, constantly redrawn with the single purpose of defining a Magic Circle where the Great and the Good live in the safety of their superstition.
Mailman.. Monbiot is I agree, perhaps a challenge to far.. (not sure what I was thinking there!) but you are correct, appeal to the majority of scientists to sort their own stables out, etc.
Barry - how often have you come out of your exchanges with the impression your uninformed opponent simply didn't know what he/she was talking about? Monbiot like Mooney and Cook has no clue about the sausage making of science. Chivers like Shermer is "hopelessly outgunned" (as somebody said on Twitter) in matters of climate change. Plait is reduced to parroting a cartoonist's site, Sir Paul and Lord Rees are absolutely unaware of any detail whatsoever. Dear Kev has divorced from physics, Mann recycles old stories (as stupidly recognized by Gleick), Gleick utters the most absolutely ignorant statements this side of Velikovsky. Jones doesn't know how to use Excel, Schmidt would be unable to win a debate about rain in the middle of the Sahara if he were on the "pro" side. Revkin despite the years and the wisdom is still defenceless against being led by his nose by Mann et al.
I don't even think it would be possible to organize a trial against these types even if we were so stupid to plan for it. Any judge would quickly dismiss the proceedings for manifest "diminished responsibility" of all those defendants.
I cannot add much to the well-written contributions by Richard Verney, John Shade, Jiminy Cricket, Peter Whale, Edward Getty etc on James Delingpole's epic contribution to reaching a mass audience. However editorially or politically inconvenient a breaking story of climate chicanery is, he manages to not only cut to the quick, but with blistering punch. Perhaps why the BBC and the Royal Society consider him so dangerous.
I thank the Lord (and any other deity that might be listening) for Dellers and Monckton, not only for their contributions, but also for their b*lls in standing up in public and taking the flak that comes with sticking the truth to the holier-than-thou do-gooders. They reach a large audience that really matters : the tax paying voter who doesn't really give a toss about the scientific details, but just doesn't want to be ripped off by green scams, and forced to have a carbon rationing card.
This CAGW nonsense isn't going away until politicians realise its a vote-loser, and there's a long way to go yet. Even if all "scientists" came out tomorrow and suggested things might have been a bit overdone, model projections shouldn't really be used for energy and economic policy, and they'll do better in the future, it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference. Apart from the fact it ain't gonna happen, I mean can you imagine the "Chief of Climate Impacts" or whatever he is at the Met Office reporting that actually their studies indicate that the impacts from climate change will be pretty much the same as what they've been for the last thousand years, there's no need to worry any more than normal, and the best plan is to spend the money instead on energy security and transport and general infrastructure ? Eventually when politicians aren't interested in the results anymore, such job positions will slowly disappear, and we can get back to normal. Nothing personal Mr Betts, I assure you. I hope I live to see the day when the Minister for Climate Change goes the same way as the Minister for Drought.
Of course, congrats to the host for the recent report, and increasing publicity. As said by others, its great to see you working together now and then, and I thank you all.
(Having said all that, I thought the offending comment was reasonably polite, but perhaps rather unnecessary).
I'm with Shub, Skiphil and Richard Drake (and others) on this!
Apart from the fact that variety is still the spice of life, I find that those who attempt to tell others how they should be writing on their blogs (or books) are somewhat presumptuous - and am left with the impression that they are perhaps more interested in drawing attention to themselves than in any actual discussion of the matter at hand.
But speaking of other eminiently read-worthy views on Andrew's incisive report ... Donna has now weighed in:
The Royal Society's Joyride
aaack ... s/b "...other eminently..."
James Delingpole is an agent-provocateur in the same mould as George Monbiot. Neither of them can be trusted on climate change issue because they are more concerned with advancing their respective political interests than assessing the CAGW claims on its merits.
Monbiot is completely ignorant of or indifferent to the corrupting influence of Big Insurance, Big Nuke and Big Capital, which see and use the CAGW gravy train an opportunity to get richer.
As for Delingpole, he is squeezing every dollar out of the 'commie conspiracy' meme, but you wouldn't know by reading him that Chariman Mao's communists want nothing to do with climate change, which is nothing less than a Western ploy to keep poor countries poorer.
Feb 10, 2012 at 4:32 PM | Roger Longstaff
Are you looking for a telling off too? :)
Put it this way in the real world... I know of nobody who has a clue who WUWT, Bishop Hill, Monbiots or Delinpole is..
I like James, I like his writing.. I really do.. he is funny, angry, articulate all those things.. but
An explanation for the whole of CAGW is a green bubble of group think..
Yet most sceptics do not seem to realise that they are an essential part of that bubble.
How to reach a wider audience... (And that includes most scientists, most politicians, and even most if the media, all who have the tiniest trivial bit of knowledge. Ie not interested) Who are not part of that bubble (which includes me in spades.. with nobs, bells and whistles on)
Or an audience that can actually do something. Ie climate scientists, from within, not 'climate change scientists'
In my Poles Apart series (part 7 - Conclusions here) I compare their reporting to sports journalism on team-owned channels
Dellers should have known he would be lined up by Nurse, and been better prepared. He could, for example, have answered Nurse's 'cancer and consensus' analogy by pointing out that a couple of centuries ago the consensus in the medical profession was that cupping and withdrawing blood was the effective treatment for a wide range of ailments; and that the state of knowledge in climate science today is similar to that of medicine in the seventeenth century.
What a great thread. Three things I want to respond to, having reflected on it:
James eloquently expressed the cost of the stand he takes. That's not ego but honesty.
Pjb rightly says it's about changing the viewpoint of the ordinary voter. Just because we can't reach all isn't a reason not to reach any - and certainly not to criticise someone who's reaching more than most.
And then there's Maurizio. Wow. I went away earlier thinking about how being a "team" was so different from the The Other Team, the Hockey Team. I came back to read a brilliant description of the paradox. We're all different and fiercely independent and yet that's where the real community is to be found. But I won't say more - someone's already done far better.
just a thought. James is read by the 'right wing' in this country. The people in government. If they get the least incling that the game is up...they will start to shift their ground. They are politicians and therefore 'populists'. They will say/do anything to be reelected, within a political range of course. Who would have thought, 10 years ago, that a conservative leader would go to the arctic for a photoshoot!
It doesn't matter how many clever people out there write learned articles. Its votes wot matter.
Also, if it was pointed out that the PMs rent seeking pa' in law was paid £x,000 NOT to produce electricity ...and that became well known especially in a cold snap ... well I dread to think what would happen....
DaveB
Delingpole could indeed have done what you suggest — if he'd thought of it in time. And it would have ended up "on the cutting-room floor" (to use a film expression). And Nurse would no doubt have continued with similar examples until he found one that Delingpole couldn't give a quick answer to.
The BBC are not in the business of making fair and objective programmes about climate change and they have editorial control which is why I take the view that Delingpole is prone to let his ego get the better of his common sense and if he didn't learn his lesson from being royally screwed by Porritt and Dimbleby (J) on Any Questions, then he should have done.
I enjoy reading his stuff, whether it is climate change or any other of his subjects. But it is the wider circulation that he gets by links from sites like this that may be useful. All his own Telegraph blog itself is good for is keeping his trolls out of other people's hair and the DT groupies (the same ones that can be seen chasing after inter alia Damian Thompson and Booker) from boring the pants off everyone else.
And I'm not sure, confused, that he is read by the "right wing", if by that you mean the people who make what is left of the decisions we are still allowed to make in the UK. Part of the problem is Whitehall's obsession with gold-plating everything that comes out of the EU bureaucracy and that includes energy policy (for example). The only benefit the bureaucrats had by having Huhne as energy minister was that he was on their side to start with. His replacement will be told quite clearly what the EU says; how his civil servants interpret what the EU says, and "sign here, Minister".
Remember that only three MPs voted against the Climate Change Bill; it will take more than a polemicist like Delingpole to make serious dent in that figure!
I wrote this on Delingpole's blog yesterday. it still holds; http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100136432/the-royal-society-is-a-joke/
'I made a mistake when earlier on I asked when it was that May, Rees and Nurse ceased to be scientists. It's because I too used to be a believer when it was thought CO2 rose with T at the end of ice ages: to any physicist or engineer that implied positive feedback of the kind warned of by Carl Sagan.
However, in 1997, improved resolution ice cores showed CO2 rose after T. After CG1, I realised this changed things dramatically: not only had CO2 climate sensitivity to be determined from post-industrial warming, hence the hockey-stick fraud and systemic downward alteration of past temperatures, amplification of palaeo-tsi increase had another cause.
This was confirmed when I learnt that in 2007, it was shown that warming at the end of the last ice age started 2 ky before major CO2 increase. The end of ice ages is nothing to do with CO2. The regular Arctic melt cycle has the same cause and produced much modern warming. The proof is the present cooling of the N. Atlantic hence CO2-AGW << natural cooling.
So, CO2 climate sensitivity is very low. May, Rees and Nurse became believers on the basis of the available data but may not have kept up with recent developments. However, those who pronounce from authority must ensure they are absolutely correct. The jury's out...
As for trolls spouting IPCC cant, only those who have scientific training should be criticised. The rest are drones.'
Mike Jackson: Will 101 tory rebels do for a start ? We still have a few years before the next election as well.
Let the games begin...
I interviewed James Delinpole and explained how the set up happened...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/03/has-the-bbc-has-broken-faith-with-the-general-public/