New Scientist on glaciers

Ten years after publishing some outrageous claims about disappearing glaciers, New Scientist comes clean:

This sudden burst of inquiry from Britain's premier science magazine is certainly welcome. We've had twenty-odd years of, at best dumb acquiescence and at worst dumber cheerleading. What have the New Scientists been thinking of these last two decades?

We are entitled to an explanation too.

Environment correspondents

This is a guest post by Andrew K.

This is as much as anything an appeal for information: to do a little crowdsourcing.

 

I have been aware for a while that the post of Environment Correspondent isn't necessarily held by either scientists or economists, and can be a favoured career destination for activists.

 

I have produced a small list which can be downloaded here.  It is by no means comprehensive.  In particular the tabloids are poorly covered, as they tend not to be forthcoming with byelines.  What I am looking for is people to fill in the gaps and add to our knowledge, either by posting in comments or if preferred by e-mail to my gracious host for forwarding.  What I particularly need is

1. Any missing names, and the publications or media sources they are attached to.
2. Educational backgrounds, in particular degrees held
3. Career backgorounds: e.g. former fashion correspondent.
4. Any history of activism in the area of Climate Change, either convinced or sceptical.

It would be helpful of sources and/or references could be provided.

 

I hope in due course to produce a comprehensive listing which should help to inform the debate

Times withdraws green adverts

New Scientist reports that The Times has withdrawn adverts claiming that climate change had caused the opening of the North-east passage. They also cancelled a second advert that claimed that the world's oceans would be denuded of fish by 2048.

The mainstream media may well be the first climate change casualties.

Update on Jan 6, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Andrew Orlowski in the comments points out that it was him that broke this story. The link to his original piece is here.

In which I go beyond the pale

The Yale Climate Forum has a post up about Climategate - standard "move along now nothing to see here" fare. Perhaps attracted by the Yale name, I decided to make a small contribution to the debate there, picking up on some remarks by the piece's author Zeke Hausfather. Here's what he said about "hiding the decline":

This may be somewhat dubious in that it gives the impression that proxy reconstructions match the observed temperature record better than they otherwise would.

My comment was that "somewhat dubious" is a remarkable way to describe what Jones did. I pointed out that if he had done this as part of a share issue he would be looking at a long jail term. This is factually correct, and was posted pretty much in the terms I've given here.

Unfortunately though, The Yale Climate Forum viewed the posting of a true statement in mild terms as being completely beyond the pale and they decided to delete my comment.

I complain regularly that the climate debate often lapses into those on the other side of the argument claiming that words have different meanings to normal when they use them. The word "Forum" is clearly used in a profoundly different sense at Yale.

Yours truly in the Telegraph

I have a letter in the Telegraph today. Nothing new for regular readers here, but welcome nevertheless.

(H/T Jonathan in the comments)

The Report

Provided the producers decided I didn't waffle too much, I should appear in The Report, tonight at 8pm, UK time. Link here. It should be available on the iPlayer for a while thereafter.

Lots of people think I will have been set up ("They always set up the sceptics!").

Let's see....

Update on Dec 10, 2009 by Bishop Hill

Overall I was pretty pleased with that.  I think the programme gave a fair crack of the whip to both sides and I think the conclusions were pretty much correct for where we stand now.

A few minor gripes:

• having said that the Hockey Stick isn't central to the AGW debate, it would have been nice if they hadn't cut off the bit where I explained why it matters
• the evidence that the IPCC process was biased against sceptics was not mentioned
• some mention of the code and maybe the Harry readme would have broadened the perspective.

But for my first experience of mainstream media, I'm quite happy (apart from the fact they didn't mention the book!!).

Another journalist threatened

In the comments to an earlier thread, this:

I am a journalist and have been "warned", in a manner similar to the one posted, by a social economics professor.

The "offence" was a summary of Lord Monckton's opinion that AGW is diverting resources, causing food price hikes and adds to human misery.

The threat was that the mere reporting of information would be taken as a direct adoption of Monckton's views and the writer and the magazine would be seen as oil industry shills. The prof threatened by phone but refused the invite to write his own two page response in the form of an article, not just in the letters page.

My temper is very elastic, but not infinite. Having recycled (certifiably) my last car in March 2000 and being a 100 per cent bike commuter ever since, I got pissed at being called an oil industry shill.

The lesson- you will be surprised how quickly these people slink back into the darkness when told unequivocally to bugger off. They are also very vulnerable to humor, probably because they are humorless themselves.

I've made a minor change in the punctuation to the first sentence to clarify the meaning.

Old habits die hard

Another climatologist threatening dire consequences, this time for a journalist - Andrew Revkin of the New York Times. Revkin's crime? Mentioning the views of two other academics whose views the Hockey Team see as not sufficiently orthodox.

Pielke Jnr (who is one of the heretics in question) explains.

I wonder how many other journalists have been threatened like this? Answers in the comments please.

Climate of fear

I've had some correspondence over the last few days with a well-known writer. We've been discussing people who might want to review my book, but it has not been an easy task.  I thought his comments on this problem were illuminating and I'm reproducing them here (with permission). As you will see, as well as not being able to name my correspondent, I have had to redact a name from the quote as well to protect the identity of the person named. Here's what my contact said when asked for suggestions for reviewers:

Asked for names of potential writers, I feel like an early Lutheran asked to identify his fellow readers of English bibles and knowing that Sir Thomas Gore, sorry More, is reading my letters and tightening his thumbscrews in Chelsea. In other words, like you, I know lots of people who are on side privately but daren't say so publicly. The other day I bumped into ************** at an event and said something about his global warming views (sceptical) and he froze and said `I don't do that stuff now - people would not touch me if I did'.

What can one say to that? I now live in a country where people are afraid to state their opinions on a scientific question. They will have their livelihoods taken away from them if they do.

I sometimes have to pinch myself to ensure that this really is happening and I'm not just living in a bad dream.

Channel Four's application of Muphry's Law

Channel Four just did a classic foot in the mouth moment. Sniggering at `ignorant American' Glenn Beck for garbling the location of the CRU ("East Angerleer"), they became yet another in the long list of failures to falsify Muphry's law: just moments after their moment of mirth at Mr Beck's expense, they managed to interview someone called "Benny Peisner" from Liverpool John Moores University. 

Thought for the day

Much rejoicing over Monbiot's apology for having meekly accepted everything the scientists had been telling him for the last twenty years. He goes as far as saying that Phil Jones should retire.

But given that Monbiot has, by his own admission, failed in his primary duty as a journalist, can his own position be very secure?

Breaking the BBC's radio monopoly

Iain Dale's internet talk radio debut seems to have been a roaring success, although I didn't listen myself - the household tranny is, well, a tranny and doesn't pick up the internet.

Iain knows his way around a the meedja of course, so we'd expect nothing else from him.

I've been searching for a half-decent talk radio station for years - there's little available here beyond BBC Radios 4 and 5, which are great if you are a superannuated trotskyite revolutionary, but a fat lot of use if your thinking on economics or politics is informed by anything more liberal than Mao Tse Tung or Arthur Scargill.

It would be liberating - literally - to have a regular source of radio comment that didn't fly the red flag as it went.

Maybe Iain Dale can be just that.

Prototype page for the New York Times website

A whole new approach to newspaper website design at the NYT. (via here).

Jon Snow doesn't get blogs

Jon Snow is a turned over the years from being the enfant terrible of television news into something of a dinosaur, espousing rigidly 1960s left-wing views from his hotseat on the evening news. He's been there for so long it must be second nature to him now. Unfortunately the old dog is having to learn some new tricks, and the powers that be at C4 have set him to blogging.

Oh dear.

A week back our Jon took time out from his globetrotting trip to a literary festival in Columbia (no friend of the planet our Jon - do what you're told, not what I do) and wrote an article about tax havens. As they tend to do, the commenters went off on a path of their own devising and started a heated discussion on how much money you needed to open an offshore account.

Then today, Jon has a post up as follows:

Many of you who complained about my blog did what so many do: suggest I said things that hadn’t. That’s the beauty of blogging: the blog is there for all to see, and I did not say you need £100k to get started in the Isle of Man.

Jon, they were just talking amongst themselves. It's not about you, this blogging thing, it's about us.

The perils of citizen journalism

I just chanced upon a new website called Human Times which aims to be a citizen journalist news agency. The idea is that anyone can sign up and post stories. It's an interesting idea, but unfortunately I think they a few quality control issues to address before they're ready for the big time though. Take this story for example.....

A shocking new dossier financed and compiled by the British National Party has revealed that every day in the UK, over 1000 Billy Goats are drugged and sodomised against their will by ‘Un-cleansed individuals’. The dossier, named ‘We don’t want you...to do that’, claims that a recent influx of Polish migrants and increased Catholicism is to blame for the barbaric act becoming rife, and is a past time in these circles. However the dossier also raises the possibility of other minorities joining in, perhaps creating some sort of underground ‘super immigrant animal raping group’, much like the Irish.

Typically the Billy Goat is lured in and fed with a calpol laced cinnamon bun, before having its front legs clubbed repeatedly... After the make up and cocktail dress are applied, the ‘fun’ begins in a large and patient group. This awful practice can be traced back to many areas of Eastern Europe, particularly those countries now members of the European Union. A popular late night Romanian TV show translated as ‘Fun in the barn’ uses the practice as part of a game its game show, were contestants must catch and penetrate greased up farm animals in exchange for prizes such as swimming goggles.

Eastern Europe has suffered some disastrous side effects from the practice, with as much as 60% of the areas population now related to an animal in some way. In the early 80’s, the Bulgarian town of Varna was the birth place of the Worlds first human/sheep inter-breed. A stunned farmer helped deliver the hairy, two legged mongrel using a leather lasso, before raising it as his own offspring. Since then it has been a common occurrence, with many farmers making money by charging entrance fees to their barns and watch either a conception or a birth... How long before this story is mirrored in our wonderful country?

Vick roster, BNP member and founder of www.poles-are-getting-on-my-goat.com, is leading a campaign to stop our country becoming populated by zoo mongrels and be known as ‘Brilliant Britain, rather than ‘Bestiality Britain’. She said “Years ago, immigrants used to come to our country and offer an invaluable service like delivering milk or strangling badgers. Nowadays if you go to any building site across the country, all you will find is lazy men swooning the local wildlife by whispering sweet polish nothings into their ears. No wonder the country is in recession. But due to our government being a bunch of cat stroking tree huggers there is nothing we can do, as wave after wave washes up pointy panted polish perverts onto our shores.”

Reaction to the dossier has been mixed, ranging from ‘it distracts them from incest’ to ‘cull them like kangaroo’. However some people are refusing to acknowledge the looming disaster, with even the government claiming the report to be exaggerated. Perhaps it’s too late, and our hippy liberal leaders have already been got at by the fiends. But the BNP say they will watch and wait, for the time when the anarchic beasts roam and famine spreads death. Her Majesty will call them for God and country, and there will be plenty of cheap Polish meat for us all.