Bishop Hill BBC coverage of sceptics
Nov 3, 2014 BBC Climate: Sceptics Ben Pile has a must-read post about the BBC's coverage of climate sceptics, and in particular Roger Harrabin's latest pieces claiming that sceptics have been moving towards mainstream views and Iain Stewart's Climate Wars, which reached similar conclusions:
The only ‘surprising’ thing revealed — as the punchline — by the second of three episodes of Climate Wars is that Stewart was ignorant of the debate he was reporting on. He had begun his film with a preconceived idea about the climate debate, as one divided into two camps — sceptics and deniers — disagreeing about a single proposition: “climate change is happening”. And then, when he encountered the more nuanced reality, he imagined that it was sceptics who had changed their position. It was Stewart’s desire to frame the debate that led to his misreporting.
Reader Comments (41)
Given that the observations are now markedly different from the models, the BBC and its alarmist friends have only a few options to keep the CAGW flame burning.
- pretend that the skeptics have change their tune and are now agreeing with mainstream climate "science". Of course this is a complete lie and the opposite is nearer the mark.
- pretend that the current emission restrictions have contributed to the "pause". Of course this is absolute nonsense.
- kick it into the long grass - the heat is hidding in the deep ocean and sooner or later it will bubble up and we will fry. However this will now take 20-50 years in the future and not the 5 or 10 years to save the planet that the alarmists originally said.
Whatever the alarmists say I am sure the BBC and the green puppets like Harrabin, will support them.
The key sentence:
Exactly. They are effectively reporting on themselves as the story, even as it becomes obvious that their ship is holed below the water-line. They went to sea in sieve. In a sieve they went to sea.
I guess this method of news creation is not really new anywhere in the MSM. Real journalism often takes time, effort, and money. (I don't think Ben Pile gets paid for his Climate-Resistance blog writings, but he certainly deserves to be.)
Michael Hart + 1
Ben Pile + 1
There was a time it was worth taking on the BBC because they basically dictated what the public were to believe.
But now the public "dictate" what the public believe through the internet and the BBC are more or less a backwater of old fashioned views which no one really cares about much any longer.
It's now far less "the BBC must agree with us" and now its more "why on earth am I paying for this lot of scientifically illiterate people who lie about us sceptics and show they are nothing but bigots".
It all reminds me of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals #12.“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Attack people, not institutions. There is also the notion that Harrabin et al endeavor to keep up the pretense that they have the "consensus" on their side seldom defining the consensus. I see this as a variant and application of Rule #1.
Bernie1815.
Very interesting. Never heard of this. But very apposite. That said, I suspect Harrabin and his BBC chums, used to having everything their own way for years, their pronouncements never doubted, are having a seriously hard time adjusting to even a minor challenge to their omniscience. His and their attempts to reclaim the moral high ground will involve some remarkable gymnastics. Truth, never their strong suit given that, knowing themselves to be always right, it can only be what they deem it to be, will, again, continue to suffer in the pursuit of their superior wisdom.
But chinks in the armour nonetheless.
"Harrabin tells me via email that there wasn’t enough time in a three-minute slot to cover the nuances of the debate".
Praise the Lord! Three minutes is only enough time for one or two lies.
Must say I'm quite impressed with the BBC/Green Blob. I never expected this strategy. For sheer brass nerve I suppose the 'Look, we all think the same – but it's the skeptics who have changed their minds' is, at least original.
But it does have disadvantages (other than being a completely deliberate lie) of course. One of which is that it opens the door to skeptics calling them on it and, when pressed, having to admit that they have lied and misled the public yet again.
The Blob still hasn't twigged:
1. It's not 1990 anymore. Everything they say doesn't disappear down a memory hole. We're going to print their false predictions of DOOM out and sellotape them to their backs for decades to come.
2. They could of adopted the tactic of slowly distancing themselves from the lunatics and, at first softening, then accepting skeptics arguments as the weather stubbornly refuses to warm. This would have left them, in five years time, genuinely able to say, "Well, there isn't actually that much between us after all". Instead they are nailing their colours to the mast of a sinking ship. In short: doubling down.
3. As someone said above, the public have stopped listening. And worst of all each generation is ripe for disillusion of the cherished moral pronouncements of it's parents. The generation that have grown up in the 90-2000s have been bombarded by a Jesuitical Green propaganda machine through their entire lives. Wait till that facade gets a crack in it.
"We've won! the sceptics have all joined the consensus!" declares a victorious Comical H'arr-a-bin-Ali
Other notable things our Rog might well have said include:
"There are no American tanks in Baghdad. We besieged them and killed them all"
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman" and
"Tractor production is UP, comrades!"
Isn't this a result of the terribly civilised dinner party where such ideas were said to have been discussed ?
The stuff on the BBC website certainly will.
This reminds me of a very old joke, used by Neil Kinnock, but attributable to an early 20th century politician.
When I was 15 I was really ashamed of my father. His views were so stupid that I was embarrassed to introduce him to my friends. But when I got to the age of 25, I was amazed at how much his intellegence had improved in the previous ten years.
esmiff
Not often I agree with you, but on this occasion you've got it right. Suckered into it I think.
I fear the warmists even when they come bearing food.
Stuck-Record : "I never expected this strategy. For sheer brass nerve I suppose the 'Look, we all think the same – but it's the skeptics who have changed their minds' is, at least original."
Before the internet this is how it ever was.
1. Academics would deny the evidence.
2. Sceptics would say they are probably wrong
3. Eventually the evidence would show the academics were wrong
4. The academics would then change their views.
5. ... claim that everyone else had come to accept theirs.
6. Then the academics would write the history placing them as the very cleaver people who saw the light long before everyone else and how it would all have been much better if everyone else had listened to the academics a lot earlier.
But now it's a lot simpler.
1. Academics deny the evidence.
2. Sceptics say they are probably wrong
3. The evidence shows they are wrong
4. We write it up on the internet so that everyone can read about their incompetence.
Compare and contrast, if you will, the intellect and erudition of Pile vs Harrabin over the years. One is a giant compared to the other. This sort of stark contrast is quite common in the Climate Sagas of the past few decades. So many ill-informed, too easily led, too easily scared, and generally unimpressive people have come to the fore to do their bit for 'the cause'. The straw-men they tilt at, the self-aggrandisement they pursue, and the impertinence at best or abuse at worst which they deploy against those who dare disagree has not been very edifying. I see so little of merit in their camp, or indeed in their 'cause', a cause which seems to involve the crippling of people's spirits and prospects. All based around the very poorly supported conjecture that rising CO2 levels are dominating climate and must lead to disaster. Ben Pile has done great work over the years in looking under the 'cloaks of green' and exposing the shallow thinking, ignorance, and often sinister disregard of much that is precious in our political and scientific traditions and aspirations that can be found there. Harrabin, on the other hand, works for the BBC.
@MikeHaseler
yeah ... kind of. I know a few in academia who are simply keeping their heads down - and the evidence suggests that if they have families to feed - it's probably the correct call in terms of self preservation.
The poisonous antics of a large proportion of the warmists have been simply inexcusable.
I have noted a certain amount of CYA-ing for some time from Harrabin - his ardour for the cause is I suspect undiminished but some of those inconvenient truths are now undeniable and must be reconciled and integrated into "the authoritative position" (i.e not "the consensus"). That is what Mr. Harrabin believes his post at the BBC allows him to do = set the agenda . A Damascene conversion seems unlikely and who'd want that sort of a sly shill in the camp anyway?
What a weasel.
Agouts: To be clear, I do not think that Harrabin and folks at the BBC are part of some group with a grand plan. What I do think though, is that if you set out with a largely political agenda and make every effort to be effective then you end up operating along the lines that Alinsky set out. It does get more complex, however, when you are essentially the establishment.
John Shade:
Very funny ending John. Ben has earned the appreciation.
tomo, like the Nazis, it is no excuse for academia to try to excuse what has happened as a minority.
Everyone in academia has created the scam. Some by lies, some by active encouragement of those who lied and some by passively trying to keep their heads down and ignore what was going on.
There are of course a very few like Salby, Spencer, etc., who have spoken up and they are not mere academics but what is known as "scientists".
Ben Pile nails it, as usual.
Out here in the colonies, we have recently had a barrage of CAGW propaganda just as you have, especially via the ABC. It's weird, because it feels as though the clock has been turned back to 2007 at ABC HQ. But the audience, the caravan, has moved on. The punters care about their jobs, their power bills and petrol prices etc, not a bunch of privileged pundits and pointy-heads droning on about the end of the world. And the pointy-heads and pundits don't get it, because they are on cushy salaries where those things don't matter much, if at all.
Their desperation, manifested by telling and showing more and more blatant lies (e.g. the fake photos of black smoke coming out of cooling towers reappeared only yesterday on the ABC) is unmistakeable. And then we have the heart-rending stories of scientists sliding into depression and despair because nobody believes them, which have so far had no impact except to generate hoots of laughter, or contempt from people who have real problems, around here.
We are winning, folks, inch by inch!
While the rearguard action is annoying, it is exactly that - a retreat.
CO2 may be a greenhouse gas but with little if any effect.
MikeHaseler
I'm not saying it's a minority .... It hasn't got as nasty as "between the wars" Germany - although there has certainly been a concerted attempt on the part of the warmists / Watermelons to foment a "mass movement" that they still busy themselves with - Glastonbury Festival isn't a Nuremburg rally... There are lessons from that period in Germany though - which should not be ignored.
The political element to the CAGW predominates the discourse on the subject and a little looking seems to indicate to what's left of my mind that the warmists and eco activists have cornered not only substantial private funding (Rockerfellers , Grantham , Pew) but also public funding in both regional and supra national government that must be well in excess (several times at a minimum) of the funding for any individual political party. This is a gross distortion of our democratic political system and must be at least part of the reason why so many of the unprincipled dimwits from all parties have signed up to nose into the trough.
They then cheerily misdirect at "Big Oil" - right-oh..... The BBC's in-house "mainstream progressive" luvvy culture dovetails in neatly to the game being played.
I think many of the Alarmist types truly never knew what the skeptic position is, because they never troubled to look. They didn't care. It wasn't necessary. Skeptics were simply the enemy.
But as the skeptics' position has gradually strengthened, some of the braver Alarmists have peeked over the parapet and found, to their surprise, that the skeptics' position is not the Big Oil-fuelled crackpottery they might have assumed.
And so, they puff themselves up with the notion that the skeptics have "moved closer to the consensus". In fact, the skeptics have been there all the time. It's just that the Alarmists never deigned to look.
Ian Steward seems to have an unusual way with facts and logic
He presented 'Making Scotland's Landscape' a few years ago, in the program about climate and scotland he showed how archealogical and scientific evidence indicated temperatures 5000 years ago temperatures were 2C higher than today and had fallen and risen several times in between.
Then went on to warn about dangers of CO2 and current "warming"
http://jeremyshiers.com/blog/2oc-warmer-5000-years-ago-orkneys/
When I was starting my PhD, I remember we had this training course about lab basics. Things like how to look after your equipment since a lot of it was specialist. We also had lessons on experimental techniques. What I remember most was there were all these top physics students freshly graduated with that sense of "knowing". The kind that comes from having passed exams on taught science. The world at our feet as we embarked on this journey of scientific discovery. Basically newbie day dreams.
So there we all were and the guy who taught the experimentation part, using kit, was our lab technician Bill. Not a doctor or post grad but Bill. I think he had a degree by then but I believe he started without one. Learned on the job a bit like John Bell actually. So he wasn't considered in the same way as a lecturer if you know what I mean. Bill was often a bit gruff with undergrads during labs but he was nicer to PhD students.
Bill's first rule of running an experiment and finding a novel result was "Is it plugged in?"
Not anything to do with implications of theory or the potential for glory, just "is it plugged in?"
In other words, is your experiment set up properly so that blip on the screen is a real result. Have you done the proper checks that you can justify your result.
This pearl of wisdom came from a guy who would see student and professional academic alike make this same mistake. And we see it all day long with climate science, using data that doesn't have the accuracy and resolution to justify their statements. But that's okay as long as you don't stand up and say "look global warming".
So I like Ben's article but I don't believe in this sceptic and scientist Brit Pop classification. I like to think it's divided into those who appreciate how science is actually done and the humility and respect for the data and method. And those who fool themselves into thinking their results or pronouncements are science. Those who don't seem to ask "Is it plugged in?" And especially if it comes from someone non-scientific.
Rick Bradford:
Entirely agree. Skeptics were dismissed as either crackpots or in the pay of Big Oil. Either way, they could safely be ignored.
This all made me think of the story of a guy who was sitting in his car in a queue at the traffic lights when another car ran into the back of him. The offending motorist then proceeded to swear blind that his car had been stationary and that it was the first bloke who was at fault by reversing into him.
The catastrophic man-made CO2 global warming message will not cease until the enormous money stream (recently fully revealed) funding it is turned off. People will continue to push it for as long as they are paid to do so. It is the way of the world.
I seriously doubt if it could be stopped if every climate scientist in the world started saying we should not panic and need not restrict CO2 emissions. If the IPCC came out and said it they would be disbanded the next day.
It is all going to take a lot longer than any of us might hope.
Did anybody see Billy McKibben interviewed by the 'pierced one' on Monday's 'Newsnight'?
Bill, has that Messianic faraway look in his eyes, I've seen it in Tony Bliar's vacant stare and also in Tom Cruise and his co-religionistas up at the church of scientology - eerily weird, very disconcerting and mad as a very deranged hatter on an acid trip.
Paraphrasing, "Big oil, big oil, big oil" blah, blah, blah....................and I thought - years of penmanship, all that scribbling, those hundreds of thousands of phrases, all those books and literary effort.
Is that your best shot Bill?
Nov 3, 2014 at 5:41 PM CharmingQuark
"..the heat is hidding in the deep ocean and sooner or later it will bubble up and we will fry. "
This also is absolute nonsense given that heat does not climb thermal gradients of its own volition.
His explanation was that the hand that puts an X on a ballot paper is connected to a different part of the brain from the one that signs the cheque for the rates (as they were in those days). Your mind tells you different things, sometimes quite contradictory things, at different times depending on the "data input" you're getting.
In this case you may be certain that, if challenged, Stewart would say that he had been wrong originally but that he was right now.
(Never the other way round, of course!)
I agree with Jack Savage that this isn't necessarily a good sign. Whether consciously or not, Roger Harrabin has managed to spin Nic Lewis's research into a story that emasculates the sceptic argument. I think it is probably a conscious editorial decision (the BBC believes it has a mission to spread the green/sustainability agenda – just look at its children's programmes) rather than simply a result of Harrabin's ignorance, although I do also think that most converts have not bothered to try and understand the skeptic viewpoint adequately.
The difficulty is that the BBC and the other MSM still have the biggest sway, whatever is happening on the internet, because the skeptics are so dispersed. It's no good just saying, "We're right and the truth will eventually see the light." News doesn't work that way. It's about money and power, and at the moment the warmists have it all. Skeptics need to make a concerted, coordinated effort to set a different news agenda – conferences, debates, meetings etc with a serious PR push.
At the moment, the warmists can get away with anything they like because there is so little to challenge them. They can think: "Who cares what Bishop Hill readers believe? They are just an obscure niche on the internet with no influence. Far more people read the BBC and other MSM."
It's never been about the truth for warmists like Bill Mckibben & Harrabin cos the truth isn't strong enough for their cause.
So them misrepresenting skeptics as "having come over" is nothing new. Bill Mckibben & Harrabin misrepresent almost everything as they work by pushing false narratives. They mispresent the state of the climate, they misrepresent the state of climate science "there's this 97%" etc, And uptill now they have misrepresented skeptical voice "a minority", "funded by big oil" etc etc. Today's news is just another false narrative Harrabin has dreamt up.
@Charlie Furniss
And fake narratives can have enormous mileage look at the huge industry of psychics & clairvoyants despite the conclusive debunking by James Randi etc.
- Tes skeptics are dispersed so the volume and voice is not clear, but the public are turning off Green media like the BBC ..and you'd see from elections how big the anti-greendogma vote is
Mickey, I liked your story about "Bill" the lab technician very much.
When I was starting out as a budding policy analyst, I had a "Bill" as well, although he was my boss at the time, and close to retirement. He got some sort of degree when he was half-way up the ladder, but had no intellectual pretensions whatsoever. What he had was an instinctive and also methodical shrewdness, plus a finely tuned BS meter. His judgement was superb, he never hurried or panicked, and I learned a huge amount from him.
Sadly, people like your and my "Bill" are unlikely to be around these days.
@Nov 3, 2014 at 10:19 PM | Registered CommenterMikeHaseler
You forgot the latest twist in the age of climate obsession:
The believers deny the physical evidence, demand more money and seek to silence the skeptics.
Your Grace
Many years ago I studied Environmental Sciences at Lancaster University:Gordon Manley was the professor.I gave little thought to global warming assuming it was based on sound science. I then watched Ian Stewart's programme where it became clear he was only pretending to give a balanced view and some issues seemed to be glossed over.
It kindled my interest in the subject and I found there was an alternative view to be read, on the internet.When I realised that AGW was based on assumptions that cloud and water vapour feedbacks were positive but that there was no empirical evidence to support this I came to have doubts.Having read Roy Spencer point out that cloud changes could be (in effect) a forcing and not necessarily a feedback, I realised that science was not yet in a position to predict future climate.I joined the ranks of the sceptics.
I also noted Professor Stewart in his geology programme mention that it had been much warmer earlier in the Holocene.
I find it ironic that it was the BBC that converted me to scepticism!
Roger
Other notable things AngusPangus might have said:
"Everyone knows there are WMD's in Iraq. It's not about oil."
"I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."
"Deficits don't matter."
Never mind, foks - the Met Office has got its £97m computer coming which will be able to be THIRTEEN TIMES more accurate about what might, or might not, happen in 100 years time - because they will be able to produce a SIX-day forecast with it, rather than a FOUR-day forecast, as they do at present...
Aren't computers wonderful..?
Nov 4, 2014 at 12:48 PM | Unregistered Commentersherlock1
Are they really trying to push SIX! day forecasts as a benefit? I'd really like to see these be accurate, not counting the 10 day blocking high pressures where they guess it doesn't break down and the weather stays the same basically.
And for reference by current 4-5 day forecast for the weekend is the normal cloud/rain/bit of sun kind of mix with a reasonable breeze from the direct south. See how that does - beyond 1-2 days I tend to see pretty big changes in weather at least, in these kinds of forecasts.
If I recall correctly this tactic of pretending that skeptics are coming over to the alarmist side has been tried before.
Don't forget how the climate obsessed revisit their arguments as they fail rather than question their assumptions.
Hades will chill signficantly before the alarmism hypesters will acknowledge that skeptics have been right.