Friday
Jan102014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Daily Politics returns to climate
Jan 10, 2014 BBC Climate: Sceptics Climate: WG2 Greens Green Party leader Natalie Bennett was up against Matt Ridley on the Daily Politics today, discussing - inevitably - the floods.
Reader Comments (53)
Nathalie Benett - Another 97% fan.
Natalie Bennett was absolutely dreadful. Matt Ridley was fine.
This interview should be YouTubed as widely as possible, so that all can see how feeble are the ideas of Natalie Bennett and her party.
I would very much like to see this 97% Challenged. Yes 97% of scientist acknowledge that the planet has warmed since the Little Iceage who could deny it ! That is no the same as saying that most of the increase is due to human emissions of CO2. I think that most scientist that have studied the subject now acknowledge that natural cycles. Solar, Oceanic etc. are by far the biggest factor.
Hat Tip to Andrrew Niel he certainly has doe his homework but I wish he would challenge the 97% and explain the context and origin of that claim. If anyone has his ear perhaps they could inform him.
I must say that Matt Ridley is a very impressive and articulate advocate of a rational approach on climate change. His restraint and courtesy are equally impressive. And hats off to Andrew Neill. How he survives in the BBC is a mystery!
Why are so many alarmists Australian? I always had them down as a relatively sensible and practical race.
Didn't Neill skewer Davey when he tried to use the 97%?
If someone told me "Don't get on that plane, their is a 97% chance it will crash." I would consider them to be off their trolley. Thanks for that analogy Natalie.
Crikey that Bennett woman is grim.
Andrew Neil is obviously on the sceptical side - he's in tune with the details this debate (eg Gore's 2008 'ice-free' arctic) to an extent that is missing from so many media types, yet he doesn't give Ridley an easy ride either. Very professional.
mitcheltj: Very well said about Ridley. The way he was smiling at the end, as Andrew Neil listed the failed predictions of Al Gore and co, was the best thing he communicated for me. Relaxed, on top of his brief, agreeing where he could with his opponent. Class act.
What a great show. Bennett was in big trouble. All the "facts" she tried to tell were debunked by Neil. The greens must be scared that this kinds of interviews and media cover will increase. The tide has really changed.
BTW, it's also fun to see this kind of columns in the mainstream news:
http://gulfnews.com/opinions/columnists/so-much-for-global-warming-1.1276080
Andrew Neil has seen a lot of politics. He knows that when when somebody claims "97%", you're heading up into Saddam Hussein country.
I'm 97% certain that back in July 2013, Andrew Neil (Sunday Politics) invited Ed Davey to come back in the Autumn to discuss ocean levels and the melting ice caps. As far as I know, this didn't happen. Quel surprise.
Apologies if I'm mistaken.
I agree it was really good. If the BBC did more like this and less of the likes of the nonsense on the Today programme, I might even start thinking that the licence fee wasn't daylight robbery.
Jan 10, 2014 at 2:32 PM | Ross Lea
The 97% is challenged here (section 3).
Has she still got a valid VISA
UKBA
Vieras-
"Bennett was in big trouble. All the "facts" she tried to tell were debunked by Neil."
Indeed. Agreed.
I noticed that Bennett also grasped the "wisdom of crowds" nettle as 'proof' that global warming is happening, dangerous, and something needs to be done. Now. Immediately.
I thought this garbage argument was buried back in 1852, with the publication of Charles MacKay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds."
Bennett's other erroneous claims are too numerous to list.
This epic performance now slingshots Bennett to the top of my list for 2014 Climateer of the Year.
Around 12.30 "They got wrong on the details".
Enough said.
Robin Guenier
Thanks Robin, The 97% has been well debunked by blogs like BH and people like you and very well done ! It is rarely done in TV programmes especially the BBC.
John Page.
I think I recall that interview which is why I am surprised he let Bennett get away with it.
It was obvious that Natalie Bennet could hardly wait for Matt Ridley to finish speaking
before she retorted. Whereas, Matt Ridley paused and then calmly responded,
I am reminded that It is not possible to reason someone out of a position that
they did not reason themselves into.
This is a classic such case, in my opinion.
I think most credit should be given to the BBC presenter, Andrew Neil. He seems to have a lot more intelligence and information than the average BBC bear and he doesn’t allow the churned out ‘green crap’ go without questioning.
John Page:
Ross Lea:
pesadia:
The long one-on-one interview with Davey, the minister most responsible, on Bastille Day - see my own rave reviews at the time - was a very different thing from this, a five cornered chat where everyone had to have their say. For me Neil got it right in both cases. Ridley was the main man to make such arguments but that's where pesadia's point comes in: Ridley said far more with less. He may never persuade Bennett of anything but there is one of her and millions of viewers and it's the latter group that will have been given maximum cause to think again by the comparison between the two men and the shrill green - in fact by the three men and one woman there who weren't paid-up greens, who all put the boot in to the CAGW policy agenda, in one way or another.
That's the way I saw it anyway. More please, Auntie :)
Good to see sensible questions put to a someone who says that "we must act NOW!"
Natalie Bennet by using the 97% air crash bollox lost every shred of credibility she ever had.
Note this means that in two consecutive days we've had cause to praise the Met Office, then the BBC. Did somebody put something in the water? Or rather have the floods in some fashion washed away some of the more entrenched green defences? Mystical but mysterious.
While on the subject of daily politics, the remarkable story of the day must be UKIP's storming double win in the local council by elections in Haverhill. Ukip polled 54% of the vote in the borough council by election, unseating the previously Conservative held seat, 64% in the town council by election. More than all the rest combined. If this sort of thing continues this year, it will rock the old order to the foundations.
http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/politics/update_conflicting_theories_from_haverhill_councillors_about_ukip_s_success_in_the_town_1_3198571
It's a shame the viscount wasn't so rational or skeptical while in charge of his daddy's bank.
Heide: Ridley will never, quite rightly, completely live down his involvement on the board of Northern Rock for thirteen years. But it makes me wonder if this isn't by now working in his (and our) favour. The good grace and patience he showed today seems to come from genuine humility. If you're going to play a role in a disaster at least let that be the fruit of it within your character. (I don't always get the same feeling from others in the same predicament, from Fred Goodwin to Paul Ehrlich.)
Richard:
At one level, you may be right about the overall impact on the viewers of Bennett's miserable performance. On the other hand, there was IMHO a missed opportunity for more of a coup de grace by expanding on the line that so much of the argument is essentially non-scientific - with Al Gore's movie being put centre stage.
"So your answer to the IPCC is a train ride to Cambridge?"
Nicely put!
bernie: Every live TV situation is a host of missed opportunities. But it's also incredibly easy to get bogged down in some detailed area, sound like a nutter as you rush to get everything in, only to be told that sorry, we've run out of time just as you were about to get to your piece de resistance. It isn't like a blog where one has loads of time to think and unlimited 'space' in which to deliver one's thoughts at the end of it. I would have answered differently to Ridley but I know a sterling media performance when I see one - and I don't assume it's easy. Andrew knows (and has done very well in the past year.)
John: Exactly. Andrew Neil is a master. Short and to the point.
Environmentalism is an indulgence afforded by the comfortable middle classes of rich countries, and they don't come any more middle class rich than Australia in the Noughties.
Environmentalism is an indulgence afforded by the comfortable middle classes of rich countries, and they don't come any more middle class rich than Australia in the Noughties.
They repeat themselves as well. :)
Got to love Andrew Neil: a journalist who does his homework. All too rare.
Robin Guenier: thanks for all your work on that. Excellent.
And as for Australia, well. It was once a magnificent place but it has become one of the most over-regulated nanny states in the world. New Zealand, on the other hand:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10858183
Gixxerboy: I was thinking this very thing about NZ on taking in a very different news story earlier: New Zealand plane beach take-off fails. As I watched the fun being had by all I was thinking health and safety would never have let that happen here. And then the freedom message that I remember from my travels in North and South Islands in 70s came back so powerfully. So it is quite remarkable for me to read that report from the Herald from just yesterday. Thanks.
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
So frustrating: (!)
1. The 97%. Surely, it would only take a short sentence to dubunk this essentially fraudulent claim. "Actually, the 97% was 27 out of 12,000 scientists poled!" (Numbers out of my head and for illustrative purposes only.)
2. Skeptic acceptance of anything that comes out of the IPCC. The IPCC was established in the flush of enthusiasm for the new 'moral' -ism, the one we now call warmism, belief in CAGW or whatever - that was needed to fill the gap left by the fall of socialism and communism. The doctrine was promoted by crafty scientists who recognised an exploitable opportunity and sold as a truth that would readily be confirmed by scientific study. The IPCC was established to report expected progress in a way that governments could ingest. Of course, caution prevailed - the chickens would emerge and there was no need to count them before they were hatched - and the IPCC's overt objective was worded to have it report (all) climate science. However, its actual purpose was to establish that humankind was significantly damaging the climate and it has no choice but to adopt the view that contrary opinions are not science. From an uncommitted viewpoint, institutionally, it is biased. (It probably could be made neutral as a result of the wording of its overt objective, but this would require changes in policy by governments that have not yet occurred.)
There were ample opportunities for the bias to be exposed, but none were taken.
Richard Drake. Yes, opportunities are inevitably missed but these are ones that has been missed far too often. The Bishop missed them in front of his select committee, and Lilley did it again more recently.
I have not seen more than a fraction of all the discussions of global warming that have taken place, but in no part of that part that I have seen has the 97% canard been challenged. The Australian L man is being allowed to enjoy his lie. But to me the 97% (i) is an impressively large figure that would rightly impress the public if it were true and should be debunked because it is not, and (ii) is such a powerful illustration of the distortions that the CAGW crowd routinely use that it should be exposed at every opportunity - as a example and a caution.
Likewise, quoting an IPCC report or declaration in respect of something that skeptics approve of seems fair enough but does give the impression that skeptics accept the reliability of the IPCC as a fit and proper authority on matters climatic. That this is not the case should be broadcast widely, as public realisation will harm the warmist cause far more than it will the skeptics'.
Our representatives need to be far more belligerent.
Wisdom of crowds ?
"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a history of popular folly by Charles Mackay
Jan 10, 2014 at 9:17 PM | Heide de Klein
Nice try, presumably you have nothing to say about the actual programme being discussed.
John Deben @lorddeben 8 h
Spoke to WWF staff at their remarkable new HQ in Woking. We must conserve consensus on climate change and resist scoring party points
Look at this tweet from dirty deben. Unbelievable. He doesn't see this as utterly wrong.
Steve Jones
I'll endorse that comment.
I really am getting pig sick of listening to the illiterati demonstrating their total lack of understanding of how commerce works.
In fact I thought that Heide had a bit more sense than that. Evidently I was mistaken.
Note this means that in two consecutive days we've had cause to praise the Met Office, then the BBC. Did somebody put something in the water? Or rather have the floods in some fashion washed away some of the more entrenched green defences? Mystical but mysterious.
Jan 10, 2014 at 8:35 PM | Registered CommenterRichard Drake
Steady on Richard. It was one young lady who had become a little confused following her long xmas break and a wisened old hack who hates everyone. /sarc /sarc/ :))
Mike Jackson: Did you not notice what happened on Deben and 'the deniers' after you implied John Gummer had forced his daughter to eat a beefburger during the BSE crisis without having the guts to do so himself? Wouldn't it be a help if you put the record straight on that before getting 'pig sick' about something else?
Stephen Richards: I agree there's been some rowing back since (to keep the flood analogy going) but I'm genuinely hopeful.
Ecclesiastical Uncle: As it happens I have a new idea on how to tackle the 97% that I've not seen anyone do in any debate, that came to me yesterday after writing what I did here. I will try to put that up on a Discussion thread this weekend. I'll give a link from here. Thanks for the constructive criticism.
What a dreadful woman Bennett is, why she got the first word AND the last word I cannot comprehend. Dr. Ridley is too polite a person to really talk her down.
@John Marshall. It worked well. Better not to get into a shouting match. Just the occasional well-informed rational observation was quite enough.The more Bennett speaks the more obvious how rubbishy her ideas are.
The 97% (didn't it use to be 95%? What happened?) is neither here nor there.
97% of humans have not and will not ever alter their essentially human behaviour nor will they start desiring to pay more for energy or do without its comforts and conveniences. Even the determinedly "fossil fuel free" activistists use the internet.
97% of "scientists" (i.e engineers etc) that people actually meet in real life do not express any opinion on global warming or policy unless really pressed, and then it will be sceptical at best, so there is the usual indifference among the public whenever they are bombarded from above with stats that don't match everyday experience.
Except for the tiny group of luvvie types who never normally deal with working "scientists" apart from media pets like Brian Cox.
Robin Guenier's analysis of the sources and lack of credibility of the 97% figure is well done and worth a read.
http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/WrittenEvidence.svc/EvidenceHtml/4191
However, it is very much easier make the 97% claim than it is to credibly rebut it in a fifteen second sound bite. By constant repetition media folks have apparently succeeded in making the claim sound credible.
Jan 11, 2014 at 8:33 PM | Political Junkie
Perhaps the answer is to ask those quoting the 97% figure to provide a quick run-down on how it was calculated. They will either know and be forced to make themselves look a fool or have to confess they don't know and be made to look a fool.
Why are so many alarmists Australian? I always had them down as a relatively sensible and practical race.
They are, which is what their intelligentsia is rebelling against. In order to rise above, they need to subscribe to every silly fad going along.
The story of Australian art and literature is one replete with luvvies falling for scam after scam. Ern Malley is a hoot. The idea that only one race can truly produce a type of picture, based on racial ideas that wouldn't stand a second's scrutiny if it came from the Right, lends itself to the ongoing fraud that is "aboriginal" art.
Jan 10, 2014 at 2:51 PM | jamesp:
At any given time there are between 30% and 51% socialist voting lunatics in Australia ... at this point the numbers are vastly reduced and some have left the country, hence the seeming current increase in Australian fringe-dwellers in the UK.