Monday
May042015
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Off the agenda
May 4, 2015 Climate: Parliament Media Channel Four's Jon Snow wonders why climate change is off the political agenda.
Having seen his video, I think I know why.
May 4, 2015 Climate: Parliament Media
Reader Comments (32)
This is the man who stood in his wellies during the floods on the Somerset levels desperately badgering every interviewee to admit that this was "all the fault of global warming".
Forget shouting at the telly. Technology will soon evolve to the point where broadcasters such as Snow will be given a 'viewer response feed' directly into an earpiece ... in this case, all bellowing "TWAT" in unison.
Ha! John Snow.: welcome to the new Little Ice Age, as proved by the growth on Ben Nevis and Ben McDhui of the precursors of the glaciers which, buy 2020, will be spreading across much of Scotland......:o)
[Also 17 years of cooling German winters, 150 year record lows in the NE USA, etc., etc......)
Why isn't this campaign about climate change.
1) The public aren't interested.
2) Nobody has any idea ho to deal with CO2.
3) They've all agreed that disagreeing on climate change is a lose, lose situation.
4) They don't understand climate change and would crumble under any kind of interview on it.
5) The public aren't interested.
Now I know that 1) and 5) are the same point but I thought it was such an important one that it was worth repeating.
I'm curious to know where and when NASA, given as the source, has said "97% of climate scientists say climate change caused by us" since:
1. even the Cook et al paper does not say so; and
2. that paper has been completely and utterly discredited.
I'm sure 99%+ of climate scientists agree we contribute to climate change but how much and what to do about it are what matters and where the debate is.
Of course certain warmists would say that everyone is in denial and are so worried about CO2 that they completely eradicate it from their minds for months at a time.
Eradicate what?
Hayekian
Yes, I noticed the "NASA" claim. Complete..ahem..error.
Snow has never been the brightest button on the baZer, has he?
Jon Snow is not objective when it comes to CAGW. He often badgers people being interviewed to make comments about AGW - remember Ross McKittrick being asked about Climategate and then Jon Snow tried to corner him on the plight of the Amazon!
He is a diehard alarmist who believes the Arctic is disappearing and the polar bears are dying out! I think it is fair to say he is not a deep thinker nor too critical in his thinking!
It has been off the mainstream political agenda since Copenhagen was nobbled by Climategate.
esmiff, Copenhagen was dead in the water before Climategate.
Would I be right in thinking that one of the reasons why politics in the UK is in such a dire state is because people like Snow (and Shukman and Humphrys and others) have forgotten that their function is to keep the public abreast of the news and that to do their job properly they need to be sceptical, if not cynical, about everything?
And I mean everything. We on the sceptical side of the climate debate shouldn't get an easy ride either but their job is not to believe anything they're told without digging.
'Today' comes pretty close to priding itself on the fact that as often as not it sets the day's political agenda. Not their job.
Snow (as JerryM pointed out) was desperate to get someone to say the Somerset floods were all down to global warming and I don't remember much in the way of mainstream reports when it was discovered that much of the damage was due to selfish and criminal activity.
In a sense who is right or wrong is less important than that the media (TV especially) provide us with the means to make up out own minds and don't close down the debate before it has even started. Channel Four is, if anything, even worse than the BBC sometimes.
The "'97%" number is always a good marker for people who have not quite reached the point of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. Time to call it a day, Mr Snow.
The major political parties a combination of Clegg, Miliband and Camoron are agreed, have decided in their infinite wisdom that the whole supposition is nailed on, yer know man made CO² is causing runaway warming and eventually will fry the planet - or summat and that the corporate sphere can continue to milk the domestic consumer by hoodwinking the nation into believing man made warming is 'real'.
Clegg, Miliband and Cameron know and have been advised, that, the public are not very inclined, actually think it's bo88ocks the man made warming thingy and the UK public certainly do not agree with the GHG fairies living in the minds of the green blob. Therefore and in consensus of 100%, they [Clegg et al] thought that, though and because the green agenda will be unaffected by whosoever is elected out of the three of them [no arrogance there then?] - the green lunacy will march forwards in Britain whatever the outcome of the May 7th general election. Plus that - talking about it [birdmincers and PV arrays and outrageous costs] is not good politics and plays right into the lap of the only political party to tell the truth about the nonsense of man made climate change = UKIP.
Got it? Just another consensus political stitch-up = man made warming.
Another reason to rise up and lamposts and suspended from.................seeps into a nightmare ravaged mind - perchance to dream.
I recall John Snow standing in his waders on the banks of the flooded Thames trying to get Paul Daniels to say the flooding was due to man-made climate change. Paul Daniels would have nothing to do with it, saying when you lived in the Thames flood plain, you expected to get floods. Dumb John Snow.
TinyCO2
Nail, coffin, final ?
The Americans were never going to agree to limit CO2. They NEVER will. Same with India, China. The countries that actually matter.
Politicians have realised the toxicity of Green Gas.
There seems to be a lot of whinging about the lack of discussion about climate during this election. But not one of these whingers seem to understand is that the consequence of consensus is that it obviates debate.
"WHAT DO WE WANT?"
"DEBATE ABOUT THE THING WE ALREADY AGREED ON".
It's an oxymoron, the logic of which shouldn't escape people who offer analysis of current affairs.
I have a blog post about some other, similarly daft whingers. http://www.climate-resistance.org/2015/04/greens-whinge-about-consensus.html
The sheer panic currently surrounding the likes of C4, BBC, the Guardian and True Believers everywhere exposes the myth of 'settled science'. They can see the public simply isn't taking climate change seriously, and after little warming for the thick end of 20 years it's hardly surprising.
First rule of politics , get elected
Second rule of politics , stay elected
If climate 'doom ' is not part of the election its becasue the politicians have decide its inclusion would not follow the rules .
Snow may be fanatical about CAGW himself , but like most in the 'media village ' that typifies the chattering classes of NW1 they fail to see how others do not share their own world view .
And its these others that make up most of the voters , no matter how hard Snow and friends would wish it otherwise .
Channel Four's Jon Snow wonders why climate change is off the political agenda ?
to keep Fuel Poverty off the Election Agenda too.
Marginally off-topic, but on BBC Breakfast this morning there was a piece about a Norwegian research party who were reporting that the Arctic ice was 'thinning' (well, we are approaching the Northern Hemisphere's summer)....
What was significant, I thought, was that Bill Turnbull 'skated' (sorry) through it with what almost amounted to disinterest - as opposed to the 'concerned' tones which BBC anchors usually reserve for such alarmist stories...
jamspid at 12.51: well said!
O/T but Roger Harrabin's started a week-long series of BBC News reports from a Norwegian research vessel monitoring the Arctic summer ice melt. (Nothing to do with scaremongering ahead of the Paris COP of course). I'm not holding my breath waiting for reports on the record Antarctic sea ice levels. Could the BBC's scaremongering alarmist agenda be anymore transparent?
One does not have to be accurate (or even truthful) to be a climate alarmist, just being precise is enough.
One of the problems with political journalism in that most interviewers restrict themselves to questioning the present interviewee merely with the arguments of their mainstream political opponents.
If a political opponent - or occasionally someone like the head of the CBI or TUC - isn't saying anything relevant then a question doesn't get asked.
Unfortunately, there are some issues where all the main parties have different reasons they don't want a subject raised, so it isn't and the intelligent viewer is left frustrated and/or giving up on mainstream journalism altogether.
Maybe the politicians have a vague inkling that CAGW is falling to bits in front of their faces, and don't want the concomitant eggs on said faces.
As a resident of the UK for a time, Jon Snow was one of the many broadcasting 'personalities' who seriously unimpressed me with his displays of ignorance, petulance and massive ego while I was forced to pay the BBC resident tax. As a long-ago agricultural worker, I was an enthusiast for BBC's 'Coutryfile', but rapidly learnt to play 'spot the Alarmist' every time the programme was aired.
We in NZ have no broadcasting licence fee - having about 40% ads on air seems a small price to pay! Most of us become very adept at manipulating the 'mute' button.
There is a reason why Mr Snow's video talks about 97%. The figure is now part of official US govt policy:
See: http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
I did tell you about those NASA pages 5 months ago !
60 posts into a discussion with people calling themselves “proper Science Skeptics” as I tried to pin them down to a definition of “denier” they finally pointed me one of those NASA pages. I was astounded it stated lots of ludicrous things as “fact” and centering it’s science around the 97% claim and a list of statements from scientific associations. Astounding as of course that is NOT SCIENTIFIC INFO rather it is the fallacy of “argument from authority”
I realised that whole set of NASA pages was clearly PR stuff not science
Note the AAAS website uses the same techniques
“Climate scientists agree: climate change is happening here and now. Based on well-established evidence, about 97% of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening. This agreement is documented not just by a single study …” yet they don’t actually cite any.
National Center for Science Education NSCE is the same they tweeted “New Year’s resolution: bookmark NASA’s resources on global climate change: http://climate.nasa.gov/ ”
The thing now is that NASA page and it's reliance on the false 97% is the central evidence for the ClimateDenial101x course, as Brandon Shollenberger points out.
- A proper climate course would go through the claims and evidence point by point that would be proper science, not propaganda.
" The only thing you need to know about climate change is there is nothing we can do about it"- P.J.O'Rourke.