Bishop Hill SJB's last hurrah
Mar 25, 2013 Beddington Climate: other It is Sir John Beddington's last week in the job, and he has chosen to take one last opportunity to speak out on climate change. He is making a raft of media appearances today, having been on the Today Programme on Radio 4 and BBC Breakfast telly already. There will be more on Radio 5 later on. I gather that the TV and Radio 5 will be speaking to Benny Peiser after 8am.
I'll post links and reaction as I get them.
Bishop Hill
Olive Heffernan (formerly?) of Nature Climate Change is shocked (shocked!) that the BBC might mention the views of a climatologist about climate. She presumably feels that a population biologist turned adminstrator has views that are simply unassailable:
John Beddington on BBC Breakfast talking on #climate change. Presenter wheeling out arguments by Richard Lindzen. Oy vey. Hard to believe.
Bishop Hill
Beddington's TV appearance is currently available here at around 7:12.
Bishop Hill
Pallab Ghosh's report is here.
Bishop Hill
Audio of Beddington on Today is here.
Bishop Hill
Benny Peiser's response on FiveLive breakfast is here.
Reader Comments (77)
So both on Breakfast and on Today (Palab Ghosh), there were mentions of the sceptics and the sceptical position. Beddington came over as very evasive and untrustworthy - however did he become Chief Scientific Advisor?
Because he gave the answers the Government needed to support it's position on Mann Made Global Warming (tm).
Mailman
It was a rhetorical question ;<}
We can let the other side have the rhetoric, as it's apparently all they've got.
After listening to Beddington on Radio 5, why do I fee like saying 'Yada, yada ?'
all I could think of as SJB spoke on radio 4 this morning was ...evidence ?evidence ? evidence
Sir John Beddington worried about global warming?
I nearly smashed the radio with my snow shovel
And while Beddington fiddles, the UK freezes!
What a legacy and a mess of our electrical generation system to leave behind for someone else to sort out! But ironically, in his last week of tenure, his beloved windmills may well have kept him out of the proverbial due to the high winds that have been blowing in this freezing weather.
Phillip,
I believe the correct convention on the interweb for a rhetorical question is to place a smiley after the question.
:)
Regards
Mailman
SJB on R4 just now: "The last decade was warmer than it HAS EVER BEEN BEFORE"
Words fail......
After hearing the SJB interview on R4 just now, all I can think is 'journalism?, journalism??, journalism???!'.
Don't worry, NBY, Richard Betts will be along any minute now to condemn the egregious disinformation spouted by the soon-to-be-erstwhile Chief Scientist .....................
.........or maybe not
As Philip says, it is encouraging that Pallab Ghosh mentioned scepticism in his BBC news report. I heard it on the radio at 8.00 and there is a web version here.
Tallbloke reminds us that there was a recent Nature editorial saying it's premature to link extreme events to global warming.
Very unconvincing interview with john Humphrys on RADIO 4. A bright child in year 9 could have take the twerp on. Where is Prof Stott when you need him. However, at least contrary arguments were given, if only as quotes.
Who takes over from SJB? SJP?
Bish - Pallab Ghosh link deadends ?
Angus - it'd be nice if somebody with some credentials the chatterers recognise could point out the SREX report to the beeb: SJB's sound bites are now in the R4 headlines.
The Governments chief rain dancer is set to retire.
In other news Cyprus has reached a deall.............
Headline in the Sunday Mail.
UK's coldest spring since 1963 claims 5,000 lives: Pensioners worst affected - and experts say final toll could be 'horrendous'
2,000 extra deaths registered in just the first two weeks of March
And for February, 3,057 extra deaths registered in England and Wales
Campaigners warn weather could prove deadly for thousands more
Read it here.
It is a well known fact - in Britain [and in Europe], cold kills people.
Many men and women who have finally succumbed to the cold this long winter and the other increased death rates during the previous cold winters stretching back now to 2006 - anyone remember the 'late spring' in 2006?
Does, Beddington and his claque of political liars bear some responsibility for this extreme state of affairs?
Oh indeed by extension they do, I wonder if he has a dreamless sleep every night?
Still, playing the obtusely innocent green Saint will not wash Sir John Beddington - your advocacy perpetrated the lie and pushed ever higher heating bills - as some sort of necessary forfeit in the crusade to combat a chimera [CAGW] - you lied Beddington and God help you - you are still pushing the lie.
So SJB decides to talk on more flooding...
Considering the level of building on flood planes that causes more water to remain in the watercourses of rivers and thus increases the flooding from the same amount of rainfall, it would appear from the below linked literature from the Geographical Association, that there has been quite a consistency of flooding since about 1545.
http://www.geography.org.uk/download/GA_BewdleyFloodHistory.doc
Where's your evidence John?
The Today programme sets the political agenda for the day. That is what it is for. Otherwise the bien pensants wouldn't know what to pense (so to speak!). Still worse, half the politicians wouldn't know what to think either. The key interview (0710) sets up the 0800 bulletin and the 0900 headlines and with a fair wind and a bit of traction provides the meat for The World at One.
It maybe irrelevant to what is happening outside the closed and incestuous world of Westminster/BBC/Guardian but then who gives a stuff about reality?
Correction: about other people's reality. What I've described is reality as far as they are concerned.
Even the fact that opposing views are getting airtime is a step forward. Rejoice.
SJB's last hurrah
SJB's last. Hurrah!
The joys of punctuation!
I have a full transcript of this morning's BBC Breakfast News interview with Sir John Beddington, here:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20130325_jb
Sample quote (my emphasis):
Alex: He displays wonderful logic doesn't he! And people believe him.
As always - thanks Alex. And I'm glad you highlighted that particular passage. As I said on Unthreaded immediately after viewing the Breakfast item, "Woefully unimpressive - especially his weird attempt to sideline "global warming" in favour of "climate change" as if they were totally unconnected".
Thanks for that, Alex.
Interseting, isn't it, how alarmists can claim "the last few years" tells you something about the future when it suits (hot summers, snowless winters, floods, droughts, whatever) and, at the very same time, dismiss the "last few years" as irrelevant when it does not suit (flat or falling temperatures, increasing Antarctic ice, freezing winters, increased snow, cold summers)?
They are no better than astrologers.
Actually, come to think of it, they're far worse than astrologers. They're responsible for people (real, actual people, not future hypothecated "future people") dying right now by artificially creating scarce, expensive energy. They are causing suffering and misery to the poor and the vulnerable, the very people in whose name they claim to be acting.
They truly have blood on their hands.
His prediction of a ticking time bomb of nv CJD momentarily dormant in the population was also a major fail as tests on tissue samples from operations over the years have failed to reveal a single example to back his alarmist pronouncements. The cost to farming was enormous.
His handling at the outset of Foot and Mouth was tardy, ill planned and behind the curve, whilst Bird flu was another major fail costing billions.
He will not be missed.
Not only blunt but fatuous. We all know climate change is happening. Is it ever going to be so dangerous that extremely expensive and regressive controls on CO2 are justified? That's the question we sceptics are asking, Sir John. You've never even begun to answer.
Had to laugh when the term 'Climate Disruption' was batted around. Thought that had long been confined to the bin.
"but the thing that is going to happen is we're going to see much more variability in our weather. I think you only have to look at the last few years to see how that is actually starting to manifest itself, even in the UK"
I think SJB is right and I suggest that we could divide the variable weather into seasons.
Spring, summer, Autumn and Winter.
Just sayin:)
pesadia: We could introduce weather differences between nighttime and daytime as well.
As Mike Jackson at 9:17 writes, this is an example of classic agenda-setting by the BBC with an item which will play and replay through the day. Also, notice the juxtaposition in the 8:00 BBC Radio 4 News of a report on the freezing weather followed immediately by carefully selected quotes on "climate change" from Beddington.
His claim that we are now seeing the effects of [CO2] increase from 25 years ago is/was plain stupid.It appears to have been designed as a face saving gesture for the absence of warming: the creepie greenie weirdos bang on about extreme weather when there is no evidence that CO2 causes it!
Unfortunately I missed the SJB interview. However, if he did actually warn of more bad weather due to AGW, then he is even more unscientific than I thought possible. Surely it is only a matter of months, or perhaps a year since even the 'scientists' at CRU warned against confusing short term weather with climate. And even now it is only the real hard core warmist fanatics that are trying to make the connection.
Beddington's interview with Bill Turnbull this morning did more for the "sceptics" position than anything written or said before. He made statements even contrary to the IPCC official position. What beggared belief was the comment that we have already reached a level of Co2 in the atmosphere that will cause considerable variability of climate in the next 25 years. Logically, if we have already reached this level then variability will be indefinite, otherwise what causes this variability to decline or cease after 25 years, mote Co2!!!! Pathetic.
Ian Neill
Beddington is Professor of Applied Population Biology so a very good ''expert'' on climate.
His claims do not stand up to any sort of scrutiny. He is completely wrong but I suppose had to get this last shot in before falling back into obscurity where he belongs.
Sir John Beddington before He stopped shaving:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZpqFM5n_jY
The 'increased variability' catchphrase was used in the 1970s in association with the ice age scaremongering. The argument went then that reconstructions of conditions at the end of interglacials showed increased variability, but there did not seem to be any sense of 'consensus' over this*.
Is this spin now being used to help sustain the current climate scare about warming in the absence of rising global mean temperatures (that construct being the previous vehicle of choice for conveying alarm)? Who briefs or briefed Beddington about climate? It does not seem credible that he himself has given much thought to the matter - he does not come across to me at least as a deep or critical thinker.
*Here is an extract from 'Climate Change to the Year 2000', a survey of expert opinion published in 1978 by the National Defense University of the USA (Library of Congress 'Catalog Card No. 78-600020'):
With regard to precipitation variability, the report notes there were 'collective uncertainties' about it, and this was
Now thanks in part to the orchestration opportunities cleverly provided by the structure and leadership of the IPCC, we are no longer given the impression of such a range of opinion. Now we have the official view (such as no doubt Sir John was coached to convey) constructed to minimise the exposure of politicians, and the public, to 'uncertainty' or indeed variation of informed opinion. After all, if we want them to take drastic actions, we don't want to confuse them do we? Nowadays it is the establishment versus 'deniers', the knowledgeable and high-minded versus the ignorant and the fossil-fuel-funded.
What happened? Apart from the political drive and skills of the IPCC, aided and abetted by such as the leadership of the Royal Society and government servants such as Beddington, what else might there be to account for the new orthodoxy and the associated 'speaking with authority'? A good chunk of it must be due, I suspect, to the cultivation of GCMs. In part this is part of the orchestration achieved by the IPCC, but in part it may be a more primary driving force in its own right. In the 1970s, GCMs were as I recall treated by some as a bit of a joke since they went all over the place on the slightest of perturbations. I suspect they still would, but that their husbandry has improved to the point at which, despite the remaining wide range of output, they generally share in public the same general direction with regard to temperatures, for example. They go up. Not least because they are run with the addition of a sudden reduction in heat loss at the top of the model atmosphere. Heating up then stands to reason, don't it guv? Model runs that cool could be discarded or stopped in their tracks, much like a unproductive sheep might be culled from the flock to improve overall performance.
Beddington has been part of the phenomenon of undue influence of narrow and channeled climate science on governments based on the presumption of sustained temperature rises due to CO2, modified to suit when the temperatures stop rising, or fall further - it's all due to that gas, and if we control that gas, we'll be better off. Our emissions are a few per cent of natural ones, but never mind, our gas is so powerful it can be a control knob for the global climate. That is the article of faith. The spreading of this as gospel in high places is part of Beddington's contribution. Time will tell just how ashamed he should be of it.
Quote 'increased sea swells'
Where does he get the idea that Global Warming increases Tides.
As with the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union, under Lenin and Stalin, the present generation, to the Greens, is so much raw material to be used in building the radiant future. More suffering will occur to future generations if we are not harsh and demanding of the present one. The movement must achieve decarbonisation in one country. In a green, fluffy, cuddly, inclusive, diversity celebrating way, of course (not).
Who briefs Beddington?
Slingo
SJB's last hurrah
SJB's last. Hurrah!
The joys of punctuation!
Mar 25, 2013 at 9:29 AM | Unregistered Commenterroger
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Indeed. If it is truly the last then we should all be grateful.
This was the first time I have seen him in the flesh and it left me with one impression of him....shifty. Not the sort to buy a used car from I think.
John Shade -
SourceYour post reminded me of an article written in 1975 about the consequences of a cooling climate (as was the trend at the time). A C. C. Wallen, described as chief of the Special Environmental Applications Division, World Meteorological Organization, was interviewed and summarized thus:
John Beddington's experience as a Professor of Applied Population Biology is in fact highly relevant as he has spent a lifetime analysing complex statistical data and it is the cumulative evidence from multiple data sources which points in his opinion (though obviously not yours) to man made climate change being a genuine phenomenon.
His background in monitoring worldwide fish stocks is also pretty relevant given the damaging effect on marine eco-systems caused by the increase in temperature of sea water.
I'm lobbing this damp squib into your complacently one sided conversation purely in the spirit of 'giving opposing views airtime' as all I expect in return is opprobrium and more nonsense from conspiracy theorists convinced that serious scientists are part of a secret worldwide campaign to destabilise energy prices.
Schrodinger's Cat: "Who briefs Beddington?"
Bishop Hill: "Slingo"
Please don't forget that Beddington boasts of having Slingo on speed dial so he can demand “What on earth have you idiots been saying!?” whenever he hears the MO name used in vain. Once you understand this then you know how the circle is complete. ;)
I have e-mailed Jeremy Vine, to set the record striaght, don't hold your breath !.
I would love to see the MSM publish a list of all the extreme weather claims and show the actual data. WUWT and Jo Nova have covered this on many occasions.
The most confusing thing in all this, is Pallab Ghosh's use of the phrase 'so-called'.
OK hyphenating "so called" seems a bit odd but that isn't what confuses me. Why are climate sceptics, 'so-called climate sceptics'? Does he think that the people claiming to be climate sceptics aren't really climate sceptics? Who does he think we really are?
Or should I assume that he really thinks we are all 'big-oil funded climate deniers' but the BBC will no longer permit that to be said?