Skeptic alerts

This is a guest post by Barry Woods.

The number of people contributing to online climate change articles and the various blogs has shot up since the Climategate story broke. One strategy for dealing with sceptics, seen on a 'climate change' lobby group website, might explain why.

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McKie makes fool of himself

With George Monbiot backing out of Climategate reporting in disgust, the reins at the Guardian seem to have been handed over to Robin McKie, the science editor, who weighs in today with an amusing piece entitled "Doubt climate change - just don't deny it".

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It's Big Oil, stupid

John Vidal of the Guardian is getting all excited by a Greenpeace report linking sceptics to...Big Oil. The wicked capitalists in question are Koch Industries, "a little-known, privately owned US oil company" (which just happens to be the largest privately owned business in the world). Now that the truth about their corporate largesse has been revealed by the tireless efforts of Mr Vidal and his colleagues at Greenpeace, we can presumably ignore everything said by...

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Lindzen on TVO

Just watching a really interesting video interview of Richard Lindzen. It's long, but is actually worth the investment of time, which is not something I usually say about videos.

H/T Josh in the comments.

Update on Mar 13, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Just finished watching it - that is probably the most informative show on climate change I've ever seen.

Change of tone at Nature

Nature has returned to the subject of climatology for its latest editorial and I'm pleased to say that they have made a welcome rediscovery of their former considered tone, with not a mention of the word "denier" to be seen.

In fact they are positively critical of the noisier sections of the media, particularly the new media, and their perceived lack of good manners and good science:

Civility, honesty, fact and perspective are irrelevant.

This sentence might have been the cue for some cheap retaliatory shots at Nature, but I shall resist.

Update on Mar 11, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Readers point out that the word "denier" is actually in the first sentence. That will teach me to post things after the 10pm watershed.

Rude bloggers

There's a fascinating analysis of the effect of rude blogging on climate science at the Times. In related news the Guardian decides it's no longer going to call us "deniers". At least not in news stories.

(H/T Anthony Watts)

Environment correspondents

David Henderson's interview on Newsnight Scotland was rather good, I thought. Henderson came over rather well, and in my opinion he's a better frontman for the GWPF than Nigel Lawson, with none of the political baggage with which the former chancellor is encumbered, while also being possessed of oodles of gravitas.

Henderson's opponent was Rob Edwards, the environment editor of the Glasgow Herald.

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David Henderson on Newsnight

Viewers in Scotland should be able to catch David Henderson talking about climate policy in the wake of Climategate on Newsnight tonight. I gather it's only going to be shown on the Scottish edition of the programme, so those of you south of the border will miss out unless it turns up on YouTube.

Tennekes resigns

Henk Tennekes, a prominent sceptic, has resigned from the National Academy of Arts and Sciences of the Netherlands. His resignation statement is a must-read.

The Richard and Roger show

Richard North and Roger Harrabin go head to head on the subject of Climategate on the Gaby Logan show on BBC Radio. Richard isn't very gentle.

Audio starts from about ten minutes.

BBC One World podcast

Reader and sometime guest commenter Andrew K has passed this link on - a BBC podcast featuring interviews with David Holland and the acting head of CRU, Peter Liss.

I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, but it sounds like good stuff. The programme can be obtained here.

Leaning on North

It looks as though Pachauri may be getting nasty over North and Booker's revelations of his conflicting interests in the Telegraph. There is a very mysterious posting up at his blog now.

Spread the word.

Update:

North in the comments to his posting gives some clues to the contents of the lawyer's letter he has received:

An entertaining, four-page missive. The last paragraph reads: "Please do not mistake our client's resolve to take whatever action is necessary to protect their reputations. If we do not hear from you in the timeframe indicated, proceedings will be issued."

Ho hum! The letter is barking mad but it still needs hours of constructing a careful response, the net effect of which will be the same as two Anglo Saxon words.

Update on Jan 3, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Welcome Instapundit readers - please also see the update to this post.

Sonia B-C on Marr

Sonia Boehmer-Christiansen, one of the most doughty fighters against the global warming movement, has written a complaint about Andrew Marr's performance in a programme on global warming broadcast on BBC radio the other day.

There are some fascinating snippets of which I would love to know the details. For example:

• the BBC having a financial interest in the advancement of the global warming agenda
• ditto the Royal Society
• the IPCC is not allowed to assess the "for and against" of global warming since it is signed up to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change which states that global warming is real and dangerous

Read the whole thing.

Smearing at long range

A few days back I mentioned the attempts to connect Steve McIntyre to big oil by pointing out that he had once given a talk at a think tank that had once received a donation from an oil company.

I'm not sure everyone believed me, but there's another hilarious example of the same thing today, with a connection being "revealed" between McIntyre and the Russians. Speaking of James Delingpole's story about the Institute of Economic Analysis, who have accused the Met Office of cooking the temperature books, Unity has this to say.

What Delingpole failed to disclose was the series of connections linking the Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) to a number of Western right-wing economic think tanks and, through those think-tanks, to a number of high profile global warming deniers and, through one of these, directly to Steve McIntyre.

I can't help but be reminded of the old saw about everyone being connected to  everyone else in the world by no more than seven links of association.

(Declaration of interest - I know a guy who works on an oil rig. That's my credibility shot then.)

Schneider doesn't want to acknowledge Climategate

Is calling security a reasonable response to someone asking a question about the Climategate emails? Global warming promoter Stephen Schneider seemed to think this was easier than trying to respond to the questions.