Press Gazette does "debate"

The Press Gazette, a sort of trade mag for the more disreputable members of the journalistic profession, has held a debate on science coverage in the media, particularly on the BBC, inviting familar names like Bob Ward, Fiona Fox and Steve Jones to take part plus other less well known but equally stern climate policemen.

The Gazette's editor, Dominic Ponsford, was effusive in his praise for their performance in what he called this "debate". There's something slightly Orwellian about it all isn't there?

Ponsford's report on events is here.

Update on Mar 26, 2014 by Bishop Hill

Alice Bell has a more nuanced take on the situation:

The 2011 BBC Trust report on science coverage is often wheeled out at this point, used to argue that too often fringe views are presented against scientific expertise. I worked on that report and it does happen. But by far the biggest worry is that they don’t ask enough questions of the various experts – whoever they are – that they put on air.

Or to put it another way, as George Monbiot wrote after the Australian climate sceptic and geology professor Ian Plimer appeared on the Today programme in 2009: “Let Plimer speak, but let his interviewers do some sodding research first.”

The Monbiot piece, from 2008 is quite amusing. One of the things that Monbiot thinks Plimer should have been pulled up on was this:

We've had a warming, up until the late 90s, now we're in a cooling phase."

To which the great George responded that 11 of the 13 previous years were the warmest on record, providing a helpful link to a Met Office press release, which indeed supports his claim finding explanations for the lack of apparent warming in El Ninos and the linke. It also includes this:

Anyone who thinks global warming has stopped has their head in the sand.

How things move on.

Getting away with 'Müller' in the climate debate

This is a guest post by Alex Hadcock.

As an undergraduate studying classics at Oxford, close to exam time one of my tutors, semi-jokingly, provided us with the following tip for what to do when flummoxed by an exam question: "if you can't think of anything to write, invent an early-20th century German scholar called 'Müller', assign to him the most extreme point of view you can think of, and argue tooth and nail against it". In the context of classics, this could involve assigning 'Müller' with the opinion that Clytemnestra was, in fact, a devoted and loving wife. Or that killing his daughter was the easiest decision Agamemnon ever made. Thankfully, I never had to use this tactic, though it was always comforting to have it in the armoury.

Click to read more ...

Diary date: correct messages edition

The Environmental Physics group of Institute of Physics has organised a meeting to look at how scientists and journalists can work together to convey "the correct messages". It's on 27 March in London.

The degree to which humans are influencing the physical mechanisms that are causing the Earth’s climate system to warm, remains a controversial subject that has caused passionate and heated debates in the news media.

As the public gather most of their information on these issues from newspapers, TV, radio and the internet, the way that evidence is communicated by scientists to journalists is a crucial factor in the public understanding of climate science.

Through group discussions and a number of keynote talks, the aim of this event is to bring together environmental scientists, journalists and science communicators to discuss the ways in which communications in climate science can be improved, and what each of the stakeholders can do to present their work more effectively.

The event will also cover how scientists work with public engagement officers and journalists to ensure that they are conveying the correct messages.

Details here.

Public views of sceptics

Updated on Mar 7, 2014 by Bishop Hill

Ed Hawkins tweets that most of the public don't see sceptics as lukewarmers. He's right of course. Nigel Lawson, for example, is regularly condemned as a "denier" by the chattering classes. Take these examples:

Robin McKie, the Guardian's science editor (in a letter to Owen Paterson): you arrive at your new post with the strong endorsement of Britain's chief climate change denier, Nigel Lawson, the former chancellor...

David Conn of the Guardian: Nigel Lawson, a very much ex-politician, now a well known climate change denier, getting a platform on the BBC: why?

Click to read more ...

Comedy debate

I always like it when upholders of the scientific consensus hold a debate, because they never fail to give us the opportunity to have a good old laugh at them. Take this major event later this month when the Press Gazette is going to look at whether sceptics should be heard or not:

Chaired by Fiona Fox of the Science Media Centre it will ask whether it is time for journalists to rewrite the ethical rulebook and simply acknowledge a few scientific truths.

Among the panelists are broadcaster and geneticist Professor Steve Jones who published a report for the BBC Trust in 2011 in which he argued that the corporation gave too much weight to fringe scientific viewpoints on subjects such as climate change, GM crops and MMR.

Click to read more ...

Irony fail

This made me laugh. CNN's Reliable Sources programme interviewed string-theorist Michio Kaku and a senior media editor from the Huffington post about climate change. The opened with with presenter Brian Stelter asking about how certain the science of global warming is:

STELZER: Dr. Kaku, you're the expert here.  Tell us before we go any further how definitive is the evidence?  Is there any room for debate?

KAKU:  Climate change is the 800-pound gorilla in the living room that the media dances around.  But in the scientific community it's a settled question:  95 percent of scientists believe this is happening with 100 percent confidence temperatures are rising.

After which they moved on to media treatment of the subject, with Stelter wondering if it wasn't "irresponsible" to allow sceptics on air, and noting the particularly heinous case of a discussion about global warming featuring a politician "with no particular expertise in this subject".

Tee hee.

Is Seumas Milne ever right about anything?

There is lots of fun to be had with Seumas Milne's bile-filled rant in the Guardian today. This appears to be part of the campaign of vilification that those nice people at Greenpeace launched against Owen Paterson as soon as he was admitted to hospital for emergency eye surgery and unable to respond.

Count the misconception, mispresentation and misinformation in this sentence for example:

The basic physics may be unanswerable, 97% of climate scientists agree that carbon emissions are dangerously heating up the planet, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warn it's 95% likely that most of the temperature rise since 1950 is due to greenhouse gases and deforestation, the risk of a global temperature rise tipping above 1.5–2C be catastrophic for humanity.

Milne even cites Slingo's attribution of the floods to climate change two days after the Met Office distanced themselves from her.

He has the most astonishing hit rate. How does he do it?

Exploring the fascist borderline

The Patterns in Physics affair has been exercising many in the climate blogosphere in recent days. I missed the initial furore as I was somewhat under the weather. My impression is that those involved in the journal left themselves open to criticism. It was inevitable that their every move would be scrutinised and a squeaky-clean approach should have been adopted. In some ways though, the affair just increases my general dissatisfaction with the peer review process as a whole. The papers that have appeared in the journal will stand or fall on their own merits rather than the identities or sympathies of the peer reviewers involved.

But I've voiced thoughts like this before.

Click to read more ...

Science journalists in the raw

This video of from the Battle of Ideas features a group of journalists discussing how science journalism functions. It's intermittently rather interesting, with discussion of issues like scientists' tendency to authoritarianism, campaigning against those who allow dissemination of dissenting ideas, the indequacies of evidence-based policy and much more.

Flooding flak

Inside the Environment Agency has collated a fascinating collection of stories in the local media about the floods. You get the impression that outside the insular world of London liberal media folk the story is about the performance of the agency rather than Owen Paterson's belief or otherwise in climate change.

Click to read more ...

Bean holds forth

I chanced upon this interview of Richard Bean, the author of The Heretic. It covers the whole of his body of work but includes discussion of global warming, the influence of the Guardian, the substitution of abuse for argument and also mention of the author of a sceptical book.

listen to ‘Richard Bean in discussion with Melanie Phillips’ on Audioboo

Guardian: is totalitarianism the way forward?

Guardian Eco is, yet again, trying to set out its stall as the new home for totalitarianism in the international media, in an article questioning whether things would be a whole lot better if we didn't have freedom of the press any longer:

Should Australian newspapers, like Fairfax, publish opinion pieces that deny or seek to cast doubt on man-made global warming?

As the Guardian Media Group's financial black hole grows, its journalists will steadily be replaced by NGO activists. We should therefore expect more of this kind of thing in future.

The bureaucracy's media defenders

The news this morning is that the Environment Agency is going to cut 1500 jobs in a bid to cut costs. In response. the mainstream media are beating their breasts and wailing about impending disaster. But there are flood warnings in force! Storm warnings! It's as if the whole metropolitan media elite are leaping to the defence of the public sector workers.

This news does, however, give me an opportunity to link to Inside the Environment Agency, a blog set up by agency insiders to expose the corruption, inefficiency and graft that goes on inside the agency. It's an amazing read and I thoroughly recommend it.

Click to read more ...

The Reddit ban

Grist, a website for environmentalists, reports that the science forum of Reddit has "banned climate deniers", as the article so delicately puts it. The headline writers wonder if other media outlets shouldn't follow suit. Having read the article though, there is rather less to this than meets the eye, and it doesn't actually seem that there is a blanket ban at all:

The answer was found in the form of proactive moderation. About a year ago, we moderators became increasingly stringent with deniers. When a potentially controversial submission was posted, a warning would be issued stating the rules for comments (most importantly that your comment isn’t a conspiracy theory) and advising that further violations of the rules could result in the commenter being banned from the forum.

Click to read more ...

Fade to grey

This is interesting: the Daily Telegraph has created a new post of Energy and Climate Change Editor and has decided to fill it with the current energy and utilities correspondent Emily Gosden.

Interestingly, Ms Gosden appears to have no discernable eco-credentials.

Does this mean that that the green advertisers no longer hold sway at the Telegraph?