Bishop Hill Redwood writes
Jul 7, 2012 BBC Climate: other Senior Conservative MP John Redwood has written an open letter to the new director general of the BBC, discussing its institutional bias. Coverage of global warming is mentioned.
The same problem [of institutional bias against certain views of the world] dogs the Corporation’s treatment of climate change theory. The BBC takes the view that the “science is settled”. Any intelligent person should know that by definition the science is never settled. Newtonian physics was a gerat breakthrough, which settled the view of the heavens. In the twentieth century its was challenged and improved. Many intelligent people have many different reaons for disagreeing with pure climate change theory and more importantly with the policy conclusions that flow from it in the debate. The BBC does all too little to give these dissenting voices decent airtime,to explore their disagreements and to allow viewers and listeners to make up their own minds. If the conventional theory is as all conquering as the BBC says, it should be able to handle grown up examination of its alleged shortcomings from its critics. Tackling fuel poverty and promoting more industry in the UK, two popular causes even with the BBC, are difficult to combine with carbon puritanism.
Reader Comments (68)
Robin: http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/hafemeister.cfm
In Eq 17 the authors show the IPCC assumption, lower atmosphere DOWN emissivity = 1, generates excess energy. The way they solve it, reduced emissivity, is a fudge because you must also reduce the earth's emissivity and the problem has no solution. The error is 50 times claimed AGW. I'll leave it to you to decide whether this is acceptable for a so-called 'settled science'.
Jul 8, 2012 at 4:57 PM Robin Guenier
Robin, Many thanks. I've added it to my collection of Met Office quotes.
Did Sligo think what she said actually meant anything?
If she did, it was a disgrace that the Chief Scientist of the Met Office thought that such nonsense actually meant something.
If she did not, it was a disgrace that the Chief Scientist of the Met Office spoke such nonsense, knowing it to be nonsense.
Isn't BBC pension fond invested in the Green energy sector?
http://thegwpf.org/uk-news/5499-bbc-pension-fund-big-climate-investors-concerned-about-misinvestment.html
The group – which includes Aviva Investors, the BBC Pension Trust, BNP Paribas, Co-operative Asset Management, HSBC Investments, and Scottish Widows Investment Partnership – argued that a combination of the economic downturn, energy efficiency improvements, and the increased supply of carbon offset credits had created an oversupply in the carbon market that meant it was no longer providing a sufficient incentive for firms to switch to cleaner sources of energy.
The group is calling on ministers to take "immediate action" to set aside an unspecified number of EU allowances (EUAs) to help restrict the oversupply currently characterising the market.
So if the critics win the debate the BBC will loose all their pensions?
The BBC has invested their pension fond in air.
And in order to get their future pension their journalist have to make this air look hot?
They have to make this air appear hot or they will loose their pension?
Isn't this inside trading? How can they write and support something they have bet their money on?
Bryan
"the Met team seem to be predicting the past."
They can't even do that, sometimes. This was their forecast for my locality last Friday, snapshot around midday, when it had begun to rain. It stayed like this for some time, although a quick glance at the rain radar confirmed a soggy afternoon. Those who had planned an outdoor function on the basis of the MO forecast were sadly disappointed...
Did she mean "codes", in which case this really doesn't make sense, or did she mean "code", as in software? Nitpicky I know, but this continual, bizarre use of the word "codes" instead of "code" triggers skeptic overload in me, as it's not something anyone with even a passing familiarity with software would say.
As someone who writes reusable software components for a living, I'd be interested in a bit more detail as well. What modules are reused? How? And what does the reuse tell us about whether it's fit for purpose?
throg:
It may help to consider some of the other relevant comments she made - see the link I provided yesterday. For example:
That immediately preceded the quote I mentioned. And, when Graham Stringer MP commented that they don't always get them [daily forecasts] right, she said:
Any clearer?
So, the Met Office computer predicts codes not hots.
When did global warming vanish?
Slightly. All these quotes sound like someone who doesn't spend much time writing software, so reading
doesn't really fill me with confidence.
I thought the Met Office had a huge IT budget? Are they not employing professional software engineers?
throg:
So she recognises the "the nature of the chaotic system we are trying to forecast" and that their computer code "undoubtedly" contains errors. Hmm - what does that say about the value of their climate change projections? Especially in the light of their hopelessly inaccurate three month precipitation forecast.
'I thought the Met Office had a huge IT budget? Are they not employing professional software engineers?'
At times like this, you have to be fair. I have no doubt that the Met. Office has very good software engineers. They do what is wanted from them. The problem is the science is wrong but the first who admits it will be sacrificed.
In reality, it goes all the way to the top. Houghton made two serious mistakes. The meteorologists compounded it because they are taught incorrect physics, and this includes Lindzen.
Paradoxically, on another blog, I have been discussing events with a fellow metallurgical engineer. it appears that because our discipline has its own independent GHG research and we are heat transfer experts, we all know that the IPCC models are fundamentally wrong because they introduce a perpetual motion machine.
Not a software problem; basic thermodynamics plus heat transfer.
You don't need a huge IT budget and professional software engineers if the model is to be UNFCCC conform.
In fact that you make human made CO2 the only most important driver to global warming/climate change/climate disruption etc etc makes model very simple.
The trick is to make this simple model look/appear complex and advanced?
"Did she mean "codes", in which case this really doesn't make sense, or did she mean "code", as in software? Nitpicky I know, but this continual, bizarre use of the word "codes" instead of "code" triggers skeptic overload in me, as it's not something anyone with even a passing familiarity with software would say."
Maybee she means code of UNEP/UNFCCC conduct?
Jul 9, 2012 at 1:05 PM throg
"code" (noun) is Metspeak for "large computer program written in Fortran".
Well, that brings me to the other part of the quote that intrigued me.
I'm sure that sounds like a lot of code to some people, but that doesn't sound like a very big app to me. The project I've just rolled off of had several million lines of code and wasn't that complicated compared to some things I've worked on.
So is the estimate wrong, or are these not the software beasts we're led to believe they are?
"So is the estimate wrong, or are these not the software beasts we're led to believe they are?"
... or perhaps the earlier suggestion that the Met Office does NOT employ professional software engineers, and the codes (sic) are produced by scientist-programmers, is the real situation.
I'm right this moment working on what I would consider a fairly small agent program, and it has 4,203,096 lines of code (today). "Hundreds of thousands of lines long" is peanuts these days.
Thanks Marion and Spartacusisfree. I got a reply right back, but it only said "thanks!" SIF:
SIF, I am definitely intrigued. Please tell me more, email via website.
I've been doing research myself recently. I've come to conclude that almost all the IPCC ghg science is bunk. From your end you appear to have shown the radiative stuff to be BS (bad science). And from my end, I'm very sure I've understood what does cause the heat. Over the last ten years it's been stringently tested and measured, and simple clean theory has been developed that fits the experimental data like a glove. To me it is an earth-shaker for Science - it implies a lot of rewriting in thermodynamics, climate science, and astrophysics. Gravity. It is so simple. I plan to do replication of the experiments - only because the universities, who should be doing this work, are stuck in their BS.