A weapons-grade fruitcake
Feb 13, 2015
Bishop Hill in Greens, Media

A couple of days ago, there was one of those science communication thingies where a bunch of greens and their fellow travellers in the media get together to chew the fat on how better to keep the climate gravy train on the rails. The panel was chaired by Jon Snow and featured Tom Clarke, the Channel Four science chap, Zoe Williams from the Guardian, someone from Greenpeace and Tom Chivers, now of Buzzfeed. As far as anyone could tell the audience was made up entirely of fellow travellers, including Bob Ward.

I can't say it was terribly interesting, and it was marred by technical glitches, but there was one very amusing weapons-grade-fruitcake moment when Williams explained that inequality made people more vulnerable to climate change disasters. The insistence of several speakers that the science of global warming is settled was similarly daft, particularly in view of Gavin Schmidt's comments on the matter.

The phrase “the science is settled” is associated almost 100% with contrarian comments on climate and is usually a paraphrase of what ‘some scientists’ are supposed to have said. The reality is that it depends very much on what you are talking about and I have never heard any scientist say this in any general context – at a recent meeting I was at, someone claimed that this had been said by the participants and he was roundly shouted down by the assembled experts.

I watch the echo chamber events so you don't have to.

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