Bishop Hill Walport at the GSC
Mar 15, 2014 Bureaucrats Climate: Sceptics Walport Last night found me at Glasgow's Science Centre to listen to Mark Walport talking about climate change.
In common with so many of these kinds of talks this had something of the air of a sermon. Almost everybody in the congregation was already convinced of the case for radical decarbonisation, right from the greenhouse effect, through the models, to the impacts, the economics and the wisdom of covering the country in windfarms. Walport said little that would have raised them from their stupor. The exceptions were when he pointed out to a questioner from gas-fields of Falkirk that natural gas was probably a good idea in current circumstances and when he spoke of the importance of having a conversation about climate change in a liberal society. Many in the liberal intelligentsia are of course deeply opposed to conversations on the subject of climate, or at least to those involving sceptics.
It was only when I stuck up my hand and introduced myself that people seemed to rouse themselves from their slumbers. One audience member asked if they couldn't ask me some questions too, and it looked as though things might liven up, but unfortunately we ran out of time. Walport revealed that he was an occasional reader of BH and said it was good that I had come.
My question was about his description of Matt Ridley as "irrational" given the evidence in Tol's paper and the fact that the IPCC was about to confirm it. I could have pointed out that his own slides noted the positive effects on crop yields. His response - that there were all sorts of judgements involved in economic models - seemed to me to avoid the point and I pressed him, but I could only get something rather vague about his having said that it was Matt's optimism that was irrational. Having reread the transcript, I'm not convinced this is this is the impression people would have taken away.
We had a brief chat afterwards and were joined by Muffy Calder, the Scottish Government's chief scientist, before the bigwigs were whisked away. I think it's better to treat such conversations as confidential, although I think it will be OK if I reveal that Walport thought that I could moderate the discussion threads at BH a bit harder. It's perhaps worthwhile for readers who like to vent their spleen in the comments to note this and to consider whether such remarks are helping or hindering.
I'll return to the specifics of Walport's talk in another post.
Reader Comments (60)
rhoda
I'm with you. The implication at least of Walport's comment to Andrew is that he would rather we were a bit more polite. In fact, allowing for Andrew's phraseology, Walport comes across as finding us all a little distasteful, rather like an unpleasant smell under his patrician nose.
(Sorry, Mark, if that is a misinterpretation of how you feel, but a lot of us here are either Oxfordshire housewives or superannuated journalists or even engineers and we tend to call it as we see it unlike academia which has its own set of rules — just as vicious but more subtle, eh?)
But since Sir Mark tells us that he occasionally drops in here perhaps I could set him a small test.
1. Go and read my two sermons on the 'Diary Date ...' thread yesterday, especially my reference to a previous holder of your office (apologies for not including you in the reference, by the way) and others.
2. Come back here and explain exactly why you, a medical man and an expert in 'complement receptors', are any more entitled to advise the government on climate change than I am, or for that matter any of the much more highly-qualified scientists, engineers, and technicians that post on this site.
3. Try not to say that these people are "not climate scientists" because neither are you.
4. Try not to use words and phrases like "consensus" or "97% of ..." because the former is irrelevant to good science and the latter has been thoroughly debunked at least three times (and anyway it's about as meaningful as '97% of priests believe in God').
5. And this is the killer. Tell us precisely what evidence you have seen that leads you to the conclusion that what is currently happening to the climate is (a) dangerous to the welfare of the British people over the lifetimes of ourselves and our children and grandchildren, (b) outside the range of normal variation, (c) controllable by any government action whatever.
5a. The answer to 5 must not include references to polar bears, sea-level rises, ocean acidification, increased severity or frequency of storms since there is more than enough expertise here and on other sites to provide the real-world data to refute any scaremongering on that front.
I'm sure we all look forward to a reasoned and forthright debate with you, sir.
well, let's come at this from a different angle. When a post is about some new paper which sheds more (or less) light on 'the science' (I hate that term) we ought to comment on that. When a post is about policy in relation to climate, we ought to comment on that. When a post is about egregious behaviour or opinions on the part of the more offensive denizens of the other side, our comments on that can hardly be expected to maintain an inappropriate standard of politeness. If the Bish posts about the SKSs and Lewandowskis of this world, a little disrespect must be allowed for.
Rhoda: I'm happy with that. A 'little disrespect' - in fact more than a little - is without question needed. What is not needed and frequently not helpful, especially to a reader with limited time (I assume it's fair to take Walport as one of those) is a lot of disrespect, stated over and over, often crudely, by so many. What Steve McIntyre has called for years piling on.
What our host seemed to me to be setting out (he can of course correct me) was:
1. his agreement with Walport on this basic point
2. his preference for self-policing in mitigating it, hence the last sentence.
But self-policing is in fact very hard. Why should I be deprived of venting my spleen, just because 101 other BH posters have already had that pleasure? It's an outrage even to talk of such a thing!
To give a more positive example, I thought geronimo wrote with passion and purpose on what he hoped (wrongly!) was the end of a thread he started last weekend. If that kind of thing is venting one's spleen we need more of it. Or, self-moderating more carefully, not more of venting of all kinds but more of that valuable subset geronimo exemplified, whatever one calls it.
If you look at the Danny Alexander post above, there's no way a reasonable person can comment WITHOUT piling on. The header pretty much calls him a liar
I'm taking that to mean helping or hindering to reverse the many injustices of the climate scene. So here's my question. Even if it's right to feel angry about these injustices, and the role Mark Walport plays as chief scientific adviser in perpetuating them, is the following statement automatically true?
Any venting of the spleen, of any kind, on Bishop Hill, is not only justified and in line with precious principles of free speech, but is actively helping to reverse the injustices in the climate field.
Every single one of them. If so my job as a contributor here just got a whole lot easier. I can vent all I like and it all helps. Wonderfully convenient. But is it true? That seemed to be the question implicit in what our host chose to write.
Mar 16, 2014 at 11:43 AM | Registered CommenterRichard Drake
As I posted above the relationship between skeptics becoming more "violent" as the cultist would claim is directly in relation to how nice they are becoming.
Another factor is walport is in ass saving mode. He wants to have his cake and eat it too. Ie he wants to be part of the religious crusade but at the same time should his religion be proven wrong he wants to be able to keep his position of power. It is critical to him keeping his position that when the worm turns, the last thing that these nutters want is a lynch mob with pitch forks and torches camping them the moment they must admit it was all a fraud. They know said ready to go mob is going to have heads rolling.
That is why they must "soften" the debate so they can show that no one is really angry with them, the actions they took were in good faith, they shouldn't lose their jobs or goto jail, etc. Which dove tails into your next comment
" is a lot of disrespect, stated over and over, often crudely, by so many. What Steve McIntyre has called for years piling on. "Mar 16, 2014 at 3:53 PM | Registered CommenterRichard Drake
One of the biggest things that bureaucrats hate is bad press. Once criminal charges were filed against the pedo bear of penn state you saw how quick they were to take down his statue and remove him from existence, this is/was because of the huge angry mob. Bureaucrats are ONLY effected by piling on and by fearing the bureaucratic host is going to be damaged by the actions of others in said host. If criminals charges are brought against say mann for fraud, I can promise you that penn state will drop him so fast he'll cause a cater 5 miles wide.
However if the lynch mob can be brushed under the carpet, mann will never been charged, never be removed and he will keep his job and still be considered an "upstanding scientist".
It is very important that skeptics understand that by toning down the "lynch mob" we are by de-facto saying that they
1. Acted in good faith(which we know a large majority have not)
2. That we don't have a problem with them keeping the jobs and money they have wasted, will continue to waste.
3. That it was all a simple misunderstanding and that science taking it natural course would have fixed the problem.(which is a blatant lie because if not for skeptics we'd long ago have coal plants shut down, massive new oppressive state organs, people starving in the streets, among other things.)
Another thing to remember is that if people are not fired, people are not put in jail, nooses are not tightened and head do not roll that we will have to do this game all over again. Any sane person knows that once this cult is disproved they will move onto some new cult ideology most likely ocean acidification. These same cult members will seamlessly transition into the new cult. They will of course remain "upstanding scientists" and should be "believed" about this new "doom".
One most look beyond the very very short term and into the future. This cult have netted TRILLIONS in profits for its supporters. If we don't have the lynch mob parked outside every one of these places to have at these criminals you're all but saying "Hey do it again". Then what? 100 trillion for the next cultist idea? We can not allow them to brush this under the table like they did with the population bomb, global cooling, etc. We must make a stand and say enough is enough.
Rhoda: Point taken. Use of the term 'denier' is for me a special case. I would take a much stronger line on that: referring to it as hate speech every time it is used, refusing to engage with anyone using it and demanding that its use comes to an end in all parts of the climate debate. What you call 'piling on' is for me far too weak. The less said - and the stronger and clearer it is - the better.
While we're on that subject, these would be my alternative categories:
1. Dissenters - which includes lukewarmers and policy sceptics, even someone who only objects to biofuel subsidies, so Friends of the Earth are also dissenters alongside most posters on Bishop Hill
2. Greenhouse dissenters. A small subset of the first who question either the greenhouse effect or the usefulness and/or validity of the IPCC concept of climate sensitivity. There are some intelligent greenhouse dissenters, in my book, like your good self, but fewer FoE members are in this group!
3. Loopy greenhouse dissenters. A further, very small subset. People like Claes Johnson and Doug Cotton can I believe give more sensible climate dissenters a bad name - but in no way am I prepared to accept that they should be compared to Holocaust deniers.
<I>People like Claes Johnson and Doug Cotton can I believe give more sensible climate dissenters a bad name
How so? It's pretty clear that these two lads differ very little from the average "dissenter" in their abject dismissal of basic physics. The reason they stand out is their obsessive re-typing of the same tired nonsense that appears daily on blogs like this one. I mean, yes they're wingnuts, but still.
You've avoided the point GregH. What I'm going to call the "ruthenol gambit". It's not a compliment.
The slides from Walport's talk are here-
http://www.glasgowsciencecentre.org/special-events/the-planet-in-our-hands-responding-to-climate-change.html
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