Bishop Hill Cicerone and the Today programme
Jul 16, 2012 BBC Among the interesting events that I missed last week was the Today programme appearance of climate scientist and head of the NAS, Ralph Cicerone. Cicerone is of course a familiar figure from the Hockey Stick Illusion, with his rewriting of the investigative task allotted to the NAS by congress being a key part in the job of saving the Hockey Stick for the IPCC.
Cicerone was in London ahead of his elevation to the ranks of the fellows of the Royal Society, and a man of his calibre will certainly be very much at home there.
The interview with Today's John Humphrys was notable for its somewhat adversarial tone (see transcript here). Humphrys is very, very green and despite his reputation as a journalistic rottweiler has tended to come over all poodle-like when faced with someone of who shares his apocalyptic views about the future of the planet. His new interest in challenging people like Cicerone is therefore something of a surprise and I have picked up a certain amount of grumbling at his impertinence from green quarters of the internet. Letters of complaint will no doubt be flowing to the BBC in due course.
What has prompted the change? It has been suggested before that there are some journalists within the corporation who object strongly to attempts to dictate their journalistic output. I wonder if it is possible that with the BBC now having largely excluded sceptic arguments from the airwaves, some of the old hands within the corporation are trying to put the arguments over themselves. If so, it's obviously a second-best solution but is commendable journalism nevertheless.
But it does make the BBC look very foolish.
Reader Comments (36)
"Cicerone was in London ahead of his elevation to the ranks of the fellows of the Royal Society, and a man of his calibre will certainly be very much at home there."
::)
Would be nice to think they are putting their journalism and seeking of the truth above their own fave religion but it will need more then a few scattered attempts at balance to convince me plus I get the feeling the thermosexuals at the beeb may feel their pension isn't being best served by all the heaters very public cock ups and are getting narky with them !
I think Humphrys did quite a good job of putting him on the spot there. (that's from reading, not listening) And at least Cicerone didn't retort with "you're only a journalist and you have to take the word of the scientists (like me)". That often happens, but it would be like a politician facing difficult financial questions saying: "you're only a journalist, what do you know about economics?".
Cicerone seemed pretty reasonable, advocating a spot more energy efficiency. No talk of shutting down wicked coalmines and replacing it all with wind and waves. Or , more paranoically, should we assume this is just a ploy,like not frightening the cattle as they're herded into the abbatoir? I like the way he co-opted Lindzen, "me old mate Dick 'n me disagree on a couple of details but basically he's on my side". Clearly Cicerone knows how to present himself.
Expect more peevish sniping at the Greens from those journos at the BBC who are approaching retirement. I have been told their pension schemes are heavily invested in green matters , and as a consequence, have probably not been doing too well recently.
Just out of interest is there a good reason to think that he is pro AGW rather than just being green? There are a lot of Humphrys age that are now realising that there is a big difference.
I wonder if the people at the bbc should be asking how much of the extra money required for the 'upgrade' of the electricity supply system is needed to connect the renewable resources in Scotland to the rest of the UK grid.
They don't seem to want to ask about details anymore...
As we know windfarms are like chocholate fireguards. They do look nice, and are expensive, but when the heat is on they melt away. They are truly unfit for purpose.
Humphreys is a Grammar School boyo from Wales therefore lefty but bright. His intellect is easily sufficient to see through the green bozos who, only because they are so dumb, accept such stuff as the IPCC 'consensus'.
The fact is these people have seriously messed up the IR and radiation physics and have fudged the models by unsustainable secondary physics to make it appear they have done a proper job.
You can't fool all of the people all of the time.
I found this on Verity Jones' "Digging in The Clay" blog, I don't think it's been posted here before.
Maybe a bit OT - maybe not.
Made me laugh anyway.
Climatologist; I have a system of undetermined complexity and undetermined composition, floating and spinning in space. It has a few internal but steady state and minor energy sources. An external energy source radiates 1365 watts per meter squared at it on a constant basis. What will happen?
Physicist; The system will arrive at a steady state temperature which radiates heat to space that equals the total of the energy inputs. Complexity of the system being unknown, and the body spinning in space versus the radiated energy source, there will be cyclic variations in temperature, but the long term average will not change.
Climatologist; Well what if I change the composition of the system?
Physicist; see above.
Climatologist; Perhaps you don’t understand my question. The system has an unknown quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere that absorbs energy in the same spectrum as the system is radiating. There are also quantities of carbon and oxygen that are combining to create more CO2 which absorbs more energy. Would this not raise the temperature of the system?
Physicist; There would be a temporary fluctuation in temperature caused by changes in how energy flows through the system, but for the long term average… see above.
Climatologist; But the CO2 would cause a small rise in temperature, which even if it was temporary would cause a huge rise in water vapour which would absorb even more of the energy being radiated by the system. This would have to raise the temperature of the
system.
Physicist; There would be a temporary fluctuation in the temperature caused by changes in how energy flows through the system, but for the long term average… see above.
Climatologist; That can’t be true. I’ve been measuring temperature at thousands of points in the system and the average is rising.
Physicist; The temperature rise you observe can be due to one of two factors. It may be due to a cyclic variation that has not completed, or it could be due to the changes you alluded to earlier resulting in a redistribution of energy in the system that affects the measurement points more than the system as a whole. Unless the energy inputs have changed, the long term temperature average would be… see above.
Climatologist; AHA! All that burning of fossil fuel is releasing energy that was stored millions of years ago, you cannot deny that this would increase temperature.
Physicist; Is it more than 0.01% of what the energy source shining on the planet is?
Climatologist; Uhm… no.
Physicist; Rounding error. For the long term temperature of the planet…see above.
Climatologist;Methane! Methane absorbs even more than CO2!
Physicist; see above.
Climatologist; Clouds! Clouds would retain more energy!
Physicist; see above.
Climatologist; Ice! If a fluctuation in temperature melted all the ice less energy would be reflected into space and would instead be absorbed into the system, raising the temperature. Ha!
Physicist; The ice you are pointing at is mostly at the poles where the inclination of the radiant energy source is so sharp that there isn’t much energy to absorb anyway. But what little there is would certainly go into the surface the ice used to cover, raising its temperature. That would reduce the temperature differential between equator and poles which would slow down convection processes that move energy from hot places to cold places. The result would be increased radiance from the planet that would exceed energy input until the planet cooled down enough to start forming ice again. As I said before, the change to the system that you propose could well result in redistribution of energy flows, and in short term temperature fluctuations, but as for the long term average temperature…. see above.
Climatologist; Blasphemer! Unbeliever! The temperature HAS to rise! I have reports! I have measurements! I have computer simulations! I have committees! United Nations committees! Grant money! Billions and billions and billions! I CAN’T be wrong, I will never explain it! Billions! and the carbon trading! Trillions in carbon trading!
Physicist; (gasp!) How much grant money?
Climatologist; Billions… Want some?
Physicist; Uhm…
Climatologist; BILLIONS!
Climatologist; Hi. I used to be a physicist. When I started to understand the danger the world was in though, I decided to do the right thing and become a climatologist. Let me explain the greenhouse effect to you…
Is Cicerone a data denialist?
The remark about "amplification" being the point of disagreement between him and Lindzen is neatly made, quite true, but misleading because it sounds as if the isue was a minor one when it fact the whole of alarmisim turns on it. However if the debate had always been conducted in such terms ... well this blog and others like it would probably not exist!
One might expect him to be a skilful rhetorician.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cicerone
Perhaps the green dream started to fade for Humphreys when he got his hands dirty trying organic farming.
He failed of course.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/7632125/John-Humphrys-gives-up-on-farming-after-amateur-efforts.html
Funny how greeny media softies are all so convinced they could live the simple life - until they try it.
If most of them tried a winter week looking after the sheep on my kid's hill farm, as I do occasionally (when I can't get out of it) - we'd hear a lot less from BBC/Graun back-to-naturists.
I heard the tail end of it and it seemed to me that Humphys was making Cicerone work harder to put his point across than the usual easy ride that the BBC gives to skeptics - basically answer all of these questions so your critics can't answer back. Whether the answers were correct or pursuasive seemed unresolved. The day before they had a 20 minute puff piece on climate change anyway, so the love in continues.
Foxgoose, thanks for that, I hadn't seen it in a while. A basic explanation of the physics that anyone with A-level physics should be able to understand. Nobody without at least an A-level in this subject should be allowed anywhere near policy making on "climate change".
God knows what is going to be written for AR5, as the only "evidence" (from models) has now been buried under the weight of its own absurdity.
Ralph Cicerone: Better than we did, a lot better. So right now, in the temperature records that we're seeing around the world, nearly every spot on the world has warmed significantly in the last 30 years.
I have a problem with this statement. Lubos Motl performed an analysis of the HadCRUT3 dataset that Jonathan Jones and I forced CRU to release.
If memory serves correct this analysis showed that about 1 third of the stations showed a cooling see
http://motls.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/hadcrut3-30-of-stations-recorded.html
So much for the scientific integrity of the latest FRS.
"me old mate Dick 'n me disagree on a couple of details but basically he's on my side"
It bespeaks the parlous scientific state of " climate skepticism" that its foremost advocate has , despite decades of application, considerable eloquence, and seconding by some competant PR men, failed to convince his colleagues that , in me old mate Dick's words, "there's nothing much to worry about."
Getting the Giaever to join him doesn't greatly signify civen the octagenarian solid state laureate's recent remarks at the Nobel symposium in Lindau-
""Water vapor is a much much stronger green[house] gas than the CO2. If you look out of the window you see the sky, you see the clouds, and you don't see the CO2."
The same can be said of the parts per million of impurities that turn silicon from a useless insulator into the material basis of the electronic age.
If the Bishop is disraught "with the BBC now having largely excluded sceptic arguments from the airwaves," where's his dismay at Fox TV's exclusion of of Ciccerone's calibre from its no spin zone ?
There may be no hypothesis so perverse that two nobel laureates cannot be found to endorse it, but wiith thousands of NAS members and RS fellows afoot to play at scientific rottweilers, why is it that all Murdoch viewers get to see is the same six emeriti and the slavering agreement of Marc Morano and Chris Horner?
Jul 16, 2012 at 3:39 PM Russell
You might say it, but it's a feeble analogy. No one suggests that boron as dopant (for example) multiplies the effect of phosphorus (for example) as semiconductor dopant.
By the way, silicon devices only came into widespread use in the 1960's. Vacuum electronic devices were in widespread use prior to WW1.
Russell,
"If the Bishop is disraught 'with the BBC now having largely excluded sceptic arguments from the airwaves,' where's his dismay at Fox TV's exclusion of of Ciccerone's calibre from its no spin zone ?"
You may be slightly confused as to which country we live in, amongst other things.
Russell:
re: "If the Bishop is disraught "with the BBC now having largely excluded sceptic arguments from the airwaves," where's his dismay at Fox TV's exclusion of of Ciccerone's calibre from its no spin zone ?"
Oh, please...... That is a delusional comparison which displays your ignorance (or worse perhaps, bad faith). The BBC is an enormous public entity supported by a compulsory tax upon all TV households in the UK. Many tens of millions of people are compelled (forced by law) to pay for it whether or not they approve of what it does with their money.
FoxNews (which I do not watch btw) is a marginal, private, minor, smallish cable network in the USA watched by perhaps 1 - 2 million people at any given time (their highest rated commentary shows, which are explicitly labelled as opinion not news reporting, get around 2 million viewers, but many of their shows get far fewer). This in a land of over 300 million people, and over 200 million adults. Few Americans have ever seen a FoxNews show at all, and only a tiny percentage watch FN with regularity -- only in the politically motivated onslaughts against FoxNews does this ever seem like such a significant issue to anyone. FN doesn't even enter my consciousness except when silly people are ranting about them. Russell, ask yourself why you get exercised about FoxNews, with all the other far larger issues, voices, megaphones, and media monoliths in the world?? Is it because you are spoon-fed propaganda to attack any dissenting voice? Certainly it is not because the scope and influence of FoxNews are remotely comparable to the BBC.....
Despite the hysteria of critics, FoxNews is a very very small part of the TV media landscape in the USA (the 3 traditional ABC-NBC-CBS networks still get 15 - 20 million viewers combined for their nightly newscasts, despite the changing media world). Of course the web has been a large and growing part of the news world, but there too FoxNews is a tiny presence. Like most Americans I go months at a time without hearing about one single item on FoxNews, unless there is a particularly big fuss made by someone like you. People railing against FoxNews simply cannot bear to have any dissenting views given airtime. If you combined the viewership of PBS-ABC-CBS-NBC-CNN-MSNBC for the "mainstream" presentations on any particular issue, you get close to 20 million viewers (give or take depending upon shows and topic). Contrast that to the measly 1-2 million for FoxNews and ask yourself: why exactly are you and your friends so hysterical about what may appear on FoxNews? Are you really so unable to stomach any dissenting views in the TV media???
Should all media entities be encouraged to provide a variety of views and duelling experts etc.?? Sure, of course, I am a genuine Millian liberal (unlike most of the rabid exclusionary left nowadays, I'm sure you recognize yourself in that description)...... but there is no comparison, none at all, between what should be expected of one dominant tax-supported media entity (BBC) in an environment (UK) hugely dominated by state media, and what should be expected of one small private media entity (FoxNew) in an environment (USA) in which FN typically provides some of the few dissenting voices on TV. (Actually, I have opted not to own a TV for quite a few years, so I suppose that if I were in the UK I would be one of the fortunate few who would not be compelled to pay the BBC tax??)
The fact that you make such a ludicrous comparison in the face of such drastic differences (public/private, large/small, compulsory/optional, dominant/minor) shows yet again that you are either too ignorant or too reckless to contribute to rational discussions.
" I am a genuine Millian liberal (unlike most of the rabid exclusionary left nowadays, I'm sure you recognize yourself in that description)."
Er, actually, I'm the sometime National Review, WSJ, and American Spectator contributor who with the help of the Conservative Central Office organized Harvard's symposium the coevolution of British and American conservatism. As such, I've criticslly compared PBS and the Beeb's climate evangelism for the past quarter century, and the criticized the RS 's low Whiggery on op-ed pages high and low.
The absence of the eight or so usual suspects from network prime time correlates all too well with their failure to pull their weight in the climate science literature, or coherently field their dissent in the scientific societies to which most parties to the real debate belong.
Martin A's vaccum tube nostalgia may explain his lack of awareness of the role deep acceptors play as adjuvents for 'traditional' dopants like boron in 21st century semiconductor praxis.
for 'traditional' dopants
So, they can't get on liberal telly so they are lightweights? And because they are lightweights, they can't get on liberal telly? Does liberal telly make much of an effort to find coherent sceptics? Does liberal telly make any attempt to find an articulate right-wing voice? If you are informed about conservatism in the UK you will know that the BBC cannot find a serious articulate right-winger. They continue to use as a rightwing voice a succession of clowns. Clarkson, David Starkey, occasionally Dellers. Do you think it is because there are no articulate right-wingers, or because the BBC would rather have the clowns?
(I have nowt against the three mentioned, but they all have an element of grand guignol about them).
I heard part of that interview, and I was really amazed to hear John Humphrys tone - it sounded as if he was daring the BBC to make an issue out of his questioning style. Perhaps it was like the first glimmerings of free discussion as the Eastern block collapsed.
Rhoda, no law of nature dictates the existence of an articulate voice, left ot right , on the wrong side of a scientific debate .
While Conservatives are under no obligation to embrace science-driven policy - the environment has always afforded a splendid pretext for societal intervention, neither are they obliged to embrace scientific incoherence, as Dellers and Monckton have.
The only Conservative axiom I can adduce is that the political neutrality of scientific institutions must first exist in order to be respected.
Bish, put a "sticky" up for the beeb's pension fund. There's nothing "Green" until about the mid-30s! There's even fags & oil in the top 5, IIRC!
In answer to Russell, I have no opinion on who Fox news invites to speak, (a) because I have no access to Fox news and (b) because Fox news is a private organisation, which can invite whom it pleases to appear on its shows.
Boron is a deep acceptor level with activation energy of 0.37 eV. So far semiconductor applications of diamond have been based almost exclusively on boron-doped p-type samples (Gildenblat et al. [1991]).
It would appear that for diamond, 'traditional' boron is a deep acceptor.
Russell
I find your "conservative" self-description beyond extremely implausible, but it is not possible to prove or disprove anything much about anonymous web commentators (myself included of course) except judging what is there in their own words. Let's just say that (1) the only people I have ever seen seen get exercised about evil FoxNews are from the angry left (no one else cares), (2) your "question" about Fox News vs. BBC was spurious and diversionary, and (3) there is no good reason a "conservative" of any description would think that imbalance on FoxNews is a threat to civilization considering the vastly greater countervailing imbalances on nearly every other type of TV media outlet.
In any case, what matters is that you totally ignored the specifics of my criticism of the irrelevant comparison you made. You ignored all the substantive points and retreated to unverifiable assertions to claim you are not really operating from the political "left" -- whatever your political leanings may be you did nothing to uphold your original comparison question about BBC vs. FoxNews, which was the whole point of the discussion of your comment.
Herewith a link for Skiphil the Anonymous:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116252563441412312.html
I suspect he hasn't been reading the Conservative Member for Richmond's organ , The Ecologist either.
At risk of adding the Bish to the list of FoxNews lawful prey, I must remind him that all they televise is visible on the Website That Must Not Be Named
Russell
Thank you for the link to your intriguing column in the WSJ. I apologize for both the tone and (some of) the content of my remarks. I can see I was quite mistaken to think you were someone simply trolling to disrupt for no real purpose, and that you have a unique and thoughtful set of views.
I still do not see the value of expecting our host to compare FoxNews with the BBC on this thread, but I do see that you are not someone bashing FoxNews merely because some website told him to do so (that's about the level of discourse on media issues on many US websites). There is a rather strong effort in the USA to nearly "blacklist" FoxNews as beyond respectable attention, which accounts for the animus of my remarks. I don't care to get any of my regular news from any TV source, since I consider all of them shallow and unreliable, but I get tired of the drumbeat on this side of the Atlantic that tries to render one cable news network as "politically dangerous" and beyond the pale.
Best wishes to you.
Rather than amplifying it by mindless recourse to Google, Billy Liar ought to put his mendacity at risk by reading an elementary textbook. I think Gaiever wold join me in commending The Modern Theory of Solids, which after 72 years in print, still does more than Google can to explain electrons ways to man.
Deep accceptors, like transition metals, in indirect gap semiconductors serve more to compensate for lattice efects than populate the conduction band. Like many things that impact science policy, this is neither obvious nor accessible without application.
That goes double for radiative transfer in real atmospheres.
'Russell'
"Herewith a link for Skiphil the Anonymous:"
Herewith a link from 'Russell' the Obvious who entertained us with his presence in two other occasions under his real stage name Russell Seitz:
There was also this:
This is my favourite:
Don't know about the WSJ, but the marks the gentleman's left behind on a blank sheet on this blog hasn't been a stellar one.
His Grace once wondered whether Russell Seitz was a sock-puppet:
He's gone a little soft on the purple and his prose is a little less constipating. He dropped his high entropy surname too, but his entertainment value remains undiminished.
Oh, Russell is a patrician American of some sort who doesn't like Dellers or Monckton. I see.
Of course nobody is obliged to put up an articulate serious voice. It is just good editorial policy to do so. To always pick a clown is an indicator of bias. Similarly it is a characteristic of our opponents to smear the messenger if they do not like the message. We of course would never ever do that and would call out any on our side we caught playing that game. sarc off.
sHx
Thanks for the info on Russell's past antics. While I see I had at least one comment of my own on one of those threads, I don't think I ever returned to it to know what transpired later..... so it seems that my original sense on this thread that he was up to something peculiar and not necessarily constructive to good discussion may have been on target. Maybe he is just very eccentric, I don't feel motivated to try to piece together all of his views expressed here...... I have noticed that he is very free with the insults.
IMNSHO the following by Ralph Cicerone needs to be emphasised: "I don't think [sounding apocalyptic is] useful, I don't think it gets us anywhere, and we don't have that kind of evidence. Obviously, what a self-fulfilling prophecy that would be. It's like someone running down the main street of a small town saying "The bank is going to fail! The bank is going to fail!" And sure enough, everyone goes to the bank and removes their deposits, and guess what? The bank fails. So.."
So according to at least one new FRS, the following people speak without having evidence to back up their statements: Bob Ward, Joe Romm, Bill McKibben, the entire SkS crew, James Hansen, etc etc etc