Friday
May172013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Today does climate sensitivity
May 17, 2013 BBC Climate: sensitivity BBC Radio's flagship Today programme covers climate sensitivity and features, among others, yours truly. I haven't heard it yet, but this is a holding post until I can find the audio.
Update on May 17, 2013 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
The audio is here.
Reader Comments (65)
The Bismarck was also a flagship. After loss of steering due to being torpedoed, it became locked in a 12° turn to port (which I understand to be left). Its fate was sealed.
Great comments. It's the website photo that kills me. Looks like Scotland in May!
Mike - good comment. I tend to think of it this way:
If I remember correctly, we were told that the warming was due to CO2 because the increase was too large and too rapid to be caused by anything else. ( I never did think that was a very scientific argument because there is clearly lots about our climate that they do not understand at all.) They factored CO2 into their models as the super driver of global warming.
Then comes along 17 years of negated warming. Clearly there is some factor that is just as powerful as the all powerful CO2. Or else, perhaps they just got it wrong in placing all the blame on CO2 in the first place.
Of course, what we are talking about here is climate sensitivity, and the negative feedbacks or other forcings that might be at play are not really discussed. The warmists are dodging the issue and pretending and hoping that the warming will resume.
I don't think that they have a clue about what stopped the CO2 warming and they can't bring themselves to accept that the huge warming power of CO2 existed only in their flawed computer models. I believe the earth is now cooling and may do for many years. It will be interesting to see how they integrate this into their warming obsession. Soon they will claim that their models predicted cooling, no doubt through retrospective future hindcasting predictions....
May 17, 2013 at 7:24 PM | Unregistered CommenterSchrodinger's Cat
The warmists utter failure to follow the scientific method and preference for seeking out even the most dubious data to try and prop up their position says all you need to know about them. The avoidance of the scientific method is their major crime because that route leads to superstition.
Houghton, Hoskins, and Harrabin are all enjoying their 'climate in a crisis' far too much to let reason and observation get in the way of their pursuit of spiritual, material, and professional fulfilment. The Bish was a lone voice against them, and a good one, and it may be a modest hint of progress that he was given such a slot at all.
Joe,
I too noticed the "update" date on the Met Office 2008 global warming pause piece. I might FOI them to find out what the changes were. :-)
Richard Drake,
What is this Barack Obama tweet in support of John Cook?! If someone already gave detail on it, sorry I somehow missed it so would very much welcome any information you have, thanks.
A transcript of the Today programme item is now here:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20130517_r4
I felt it was still far from balanced - the overall aim was to explain away the observed fact that warming has stopped (note they say "stalled").
Oceans, it's still warmer than the long-term average (so what?), extremes of weather = new climate scare. They all got a good outing.
Then "experiment with our climate" Yawn. Urbanisation is a much bigger climate experiment than CO2.
And finally there should be a version of Godwin's Law, that the first person to mention "our children and grandchidren" gets booed from the stage.
Alex - thanks for the transcript. It clearly exposes what a load of unthinking drivel Harrabin's pieces are.
If any BBC people read here - do yourselves a service and watch the CNBC piece with William Happer to see an informed journalist at work.
Oh, and for Roger H; "incidentally", Anthony Watts uses renewable energy for his home and his car:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/about-wuwt/about2/
Kendra - Anthony Watts provided this at the Blackboard May 17th, 2013 at 2:00 pm :
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/on-the-consensus/#comment-113284
He commented here at BH too but I can't link direct to the comment. It is on the "Cook's unreported finding" thread at May 17, 2013 at 10:16 PM
Andrew did good, but Harrabin did bad.
Failed to mention (conveniently) that Brian Hoskins is Director of the Grantham Institute (an AGW think-tank - whereas the BBC ALWAYS tells you that X is a 'right-wing' think tank.).
Drowned out the voice of reason with a 'summing up' that wiped it out in the minds of average listeners.
Claimed sceptics never mention ocean acidification - spherical objects!.
Carried on the myth of 2-4 C rise likely. (reminiscent of the repeated 3 millions jobs lost if we were to leave the EU myth).
Ended with the implication that there was still serious alarm.
I was deeply unimpressed. The BBC juggernaut continues to roll.
Kendra: Do read the whole tweet stream but be aware @BarackObama ain't Barack Obama. New levels of lying.
Steve Jones
You ask if any other BBC staff are as unqualified in their subject areas as Harrabin.
How about Newsnight's Economics Correspondent Paul Mason - a Trot who trained as a music teacher ?
In the Kingdom of the Blind, the one-eyed man is King.
Harrabin's weaselly piece was only 80% biased rather than 100%. Big deal.
Not banned and Richard,
Well, of course, I found BH's next post a minute later but couldn't make another comment. Seems I have to open a whole new page with the post before I can do that. Thanks for the link to entire Twitter feed!