Ten Billion

The Guardian's science editor, Robin McKie, has been to the theatre. He went to see Ten Billion, a one-man show by computer scientist Stephen Emmott. This is slightly odd. The Guardian is losing tens of millions of pounds every year and yet this is their second review of the show. I wonder why they would be plugging it so much?

The answer, of course, is that it's a show about man's impact on the planet - it is in essence a lecture by a somewhat millenarian academic with no particular expertise in the area.

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Bottoms up

Rajendra Pachauri is in the news today, arguing that citizens should be taking action on global warming into their own hands, bypassing governmental stasis in favour of a bottom-up approach.

Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that the experience of Rio proves that the political will to take action simply isn’t there – and argues that a new form of activism is the only answer.

“I would submit that the time has come that we shouldn’t really wait for governments,” he said.

“Governments will of course have to play their own role – but what we really need to rely on is creating awareness among the people, so that each one of us in our own way should start treating this problem as serious – and meeting the challenge that confronts us today.

Of course, nobody is going to object if environmentalists take steps to address their concerns - perhaps by a cessation of their jet-setting lifestyles or abjuring their advocacy of grossly inefficient technologies. Provided it's voluntary, everyone will be happy. It's only their forcing of their beliefs onto others that is objectionable.

Interestingly, today's Guardian also has an article making a call for a bottom-up approach to global warming. Anyone might think that they were more of a green mouthpiece than a serious newspaper.

UK Conference of Science Journalists

This is a guest post by Doug Keenan.

The 2012 UK Conference of Science Journalists was held on June 25th. The programme is available on the UKCSJ web site. I attended two of the sessions: the first was a session was entitled “What can journalists do to uncover scientific misconduct?”; the second was the plenary at the end. What follows is my perspective on those sessions.

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Misconduct session

Misconduct is what most people call “fraud”. This session had three speakers.

The first speaker was the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Anaesthesia, Steve Yentis. Yentis told about the case of Joachim Boldt, an anesthesiologist who has had over 80 papers retracted. He also told about the case of case of Yoshitaka Fujii, an anesthesiologist who seems to have published 193 bogus papers. A third case was also cited, though I did not get the details. Yentis has been leading the charge to get more integrity in anesthesiology.

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UK science journos talk "false balance"

The UK Conference of Science Journalists are discussing "false balance" in science reporting today, their session on the subject featuring Professor Steve Jones, whose report on the BBC's science coverage and whose shoddy behaviour along the way have been noted here from time to time.

From the tweets so far, it seems that some of Jones' talk has not been taken very seriously:

Ed Yong ‏@edyong209

I may die of laughter. RT @llantwit: #ukcsj Steve Jones: scientists tend to agree on most things...

On the other hand, Felicity Mellor has repeated her suggestion that science reporting needs more dissenting voices, not fewer.

Frank Nuijens ‏@FrankNu

Underuse of balance in BBC reporting, says Felicity Mellor. Little room for critical voices in science reports. #ukcsj

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British science journalists on Climategate

Tomorrow the Association of British Science Writers begin their annual conference in London. Browsing idly to see what they were up to, I chanced upon a podcast of a session of their first conference in 2010, in which they discussed Climategate.

It really is amazing stuff. Here's a brief summary of what was said

Bob Watson

• Seems under the impression that Climategate was about CRUTEM
• Says inquiries reported that there was no perversion of peer review, no perversion of IPCC process, no scientific wrongdoing
• Uses the d-word

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Talkfest podcast

The podcast of the Talkfest meeting I mentioned the other day is now available. It's really extremely interesting.

I particularly recommend the segment by Felicity Mellor (from 11 min). It's striking that her research, which informed the BBC's review of science coverage, shows that the BBC has rarely sought balancing views in its science coverage. The BBC appears to have concluded from this that even less coverage should be sought from dissenters from the climatologicial mainstream.

Science communicator, heal thyself

Last night the Biochemical Society hosted one of its regular TalkFest meetings. Being hundreds of miles away and entirely unaware of the occasion, I was not in attendance, but I picked up some interesting tweets under the #talkfest hashtag last night.

The subject was science communication and whether it is an inherently political activity. There were apparently suggestions that most sci comms people concentrate on cheerleading rather than challenging scientists and that they rarely question motive or funding. There was also a suggestion that science communicators should focus on opening science to the public.

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Wicked Wikipedia

Alex Harvey takes a look at the 2010 banning of several Wikipedia editors and events since that time - William Connolley has apparently been unbanned, while a more sceptical editor, Cla68, has had his ban extended.

In the case of William Connolley, the [Arbitration] Committee is shown to be extremely lenient, compared to treatment of skeptical editors. William's ban was recently repealed despite obvious signs that nothing much had changed. In the case of Cla68, however, who was perceived to be a climate change skeptic, it is shown that he was banned on the basis of entirely fraudulent claims, and has just now had his ban extended by another six months on the basis of a single frank, out of context remark made in an internet forum.

This double standard - even in Wikipedia - has rarely been so stark. In my view, it challenges the image of Wikipedia as a neutral, dispassionate broker of facts. We see that Wikipedia is, in fact, run by activists who drive away the neutral, objective people who would otherwise contribute.

That should set the cat among the pigeons.

Dealing with The Heretic

Mr Richard Bean
Director
Melbourne Theatre Company

Richard Bean's play The Heretic has been causing a few ructions in Australia ahead of its opening in Melbourne. Richard forwards this email, which was sent to him by Andrew Glikson, a scientist at the Australian National University.

Dear Mr Richard Bean

As an Earth and paleo-climate scientist of some 45 years-long experience and more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, I suggest the show “The Heretic”, which I have not seen but about which I have read, can only lead to trivialization and further denial of what the scientific world regards as the greatest threat humanity and nature are facing.

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Peiser on journal and media bias

Benny Peiser's review of the way scientific journals and newspapers cover global warming is a must-read:

The integrity of the science media will depend on whether they will encourage critique and fault-finding analysis by consensus sceptics - or whether they will continue their course towards unbalanced campaign journalism. Given the well-documented reluctance of mainstream science media to accept submissions by critical scientists and the aversion to report on critical papers published elsewhere, I remain unconvinced that science journalism will moderate its blinkered attitudes in the near future.

Fulmination in Oz

Andrew Bolt casts a weary eye over the antics of Professor Clive Hamilton, a hyperactive supporter of the AGW orthodoxy:

Former Greens candidate Professor Clive Hamilton is furious:

Who would have thought the Melbourne Theatre Company would get into bed with Andrew Bolt?

But here’s the thing. Hamilton is a professional moralist - a Professor of Public Ethics, no less. Standing for goodness, he denounces ‘the highly personal attacks”, “vituperation” , “vilification of individuals” .and “angry ridicule” that he detects from sceptics.

Yet in response to the MTC staging a play with the sceptic as a hero, Hamilton lets fly with a truly extraordinary stream of abuse:

...discredited ... rat-bags ... denier .. conspiracy theorists ... fossil-fuel industry hatchet men ... cyber-bullies ... shit-spreaders ...  shock jocks ... bullshit ...  insidious ... grubbier ... distortion ...  cowardly ... artistic wanking ... poison ... slippery falsehoods ... travesty

Please avoid responding in kind to Professor Hamilton and please avoid merely venting.

Murdoch, media and the climate

Sharp-eyed reader Woodentop has noted a fascinating snippet in the evidence submitted to the Levenson inquiry into the relationship between the media and government, currently running into its umpteenth month in London.

The document in question (see link below, an excerpt from a much larger set of documents) is an email from Rupert Murdoch's European public affair boss, Frederic Michel, to the great media mogul himself. It outlines meetings he has had with the advisers of the prime minister, David Cameron, and his deputy, Nick Clegg. It appears that there are a series of proposals for Murdoch's News Corporation to assist the government's public relations efforts - copyright issues and Cameron's "Big Society" programme are mentioned. The quid pro quo appears to be the regulatory clearance of News Corp's bid to buy the shares of Sky TV that it did not already own.

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Channel Four on fracking

Channel Four TV covered the fracking story last night, but rather managed to blot its copybook by including the "flaming faucet" clip from the movie "Gasland".

Since this has long since been shown to be a fraud - there was methane present in the water long before fracking commenced - I queried the station's science editor, Tom Clarke, via Twitter. He didn't object:

Agreed. Included to show heated opposition to fracking in US. Which there is. Should have mentioned it was a campaign film.

To which I responded that they should have mentioned that it was misleading. I actually think this is a sufficiently big mistake that they should issue a correction, but I don't suppose this will be forthcoming.

Questioning the scientists

Keith Kloor has an article at the Yale Climate Forum, looking at media reporting of science and climate change. In it, he quotes science journalist Ed Yong

Freelance science writer Ed Yong echoes this sentiment at his Discover magazine blog: “If we write something, and we put our names to it, the buck stops with us. If there is a mistake, it is our fault.” Yong sets the bar high for science journalists: “If the paper was rubbish, if the peer reviewers missed something, if the scientist lied, if the press release is distorted, it’s still our fault for producing something that is inaccurate or that fails to root out these problems.”

The idea that journalists should not be responsible for what they write is extraordinary, so Yong's comments are welcome. Unfortunately many science and almost all environment journalists do not see this as being part of their job. They see themselves as part of a movement and their job is not to question anything said by "the scientists".

Among all the reviews of Michael Mann's book published in recent weeks, can anyone recall one that challenged anything he said?

Watts' analysis

Anthony Watts has published an analysis of the fake Heartland strategy document, looking at the text and document metadata, both of which seem to confirm that it is not what it purports to be.

Perhaps more interestingly, some of the details of how the document came to light have appeared, and it seems that DeSmog had the documents for only an hour before posting them online. As several people have commented, the contrast with Anthony's conduct when the Climategate emails fell into his lap could not be starker. The WUWT team held onto the UEA disclosures for several days while they tried to authenticate them rather than assuming the worst and rushing to publish.

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