Josh 72

More cartoons by Josh here.

Der Spiegel on Lisbon

Gosselin reports the essence of a Der Spielgel article about the Lisbon conference, which is well worth a look.

Benny Peiser has posted a translation of the article here.

Fox and Ward talk Nurse

I'll keep posting links to interesting reactions on the Paul Nurse programme. I'm certainly still finding them interesting. This one is by the Science Media Centre's Fiona Fox, with the first comment coming from her colleague Bob Ward.

This will end in tears

A group of green activists is proposing to take more direct action against those of us who disagree with them.

Our initiative, Confront the Climate Cranks, will do just that: confront the cranks on camera and accompanied by some of the children they have put in danger. We will video all of our confrontations and then quickly make them available to the public—by posting them on YouTube and sharing them with mainstream and alternative media and the social networks of our partner organizations. (In the run-up to these confrontations, we will invite the participation of the members or readers of The Nation, Grist, Kids vs Global Warming and the other partnering organizations, polling them on which cranks to target, what questions to ask and so on. Thus we hope to build momentum before arriving in Washington, as well as generate continuing attention and activism after the confrontations.)

A sceptic documentary

Climate Realists is reporting a move to make a documentary about global warming from a sceptic viewpoint. Martin Durkin, director of The Great Global Warming Swindle has expressed an interest. Good, provided the case is not overstated, which is always a risk on these occasions.

I can't see any station in the UK showing it though. Sceptic views are not generally permitted on terrestrial television, and then only filtered through an environmentalist of some sort. This is what is referred to in the trade as "balance".

Greenland

As readers know, London's West End will soon be showing two different plays about climate change and these were the subject of last night's Night Waves programme on BBC Radio 3. As far as I can tell, Greenland is a propaganda piece, while The Heretic at least takes dissenters as its theme (although I daresay the heretic in question will have a change of heart at the end). I don't suppose it will be a surprise then to learn that the BBC decided to look at Greenland.

The audio is here, from about 19:15. It's quite interesting, with presenter Anne McElvoy suggesting that the play is rather unchallenging and doesn't give the dissenting voice a hearing. The response is, of course, that the science is in and...you know the rest.

There's a review of Greenland here.

Disappointing multi-author climate change play...with an interesting drama about the Copenhagen climate change summit struggling to get out from an unsatisfactory mish-mash of interwoven playlets and sketches. Marred by some baffling directorial decisions.

Update on Feb 2, 2011 by Bishop Hill

Another review here. The comments below are good too. Here's some excerpts.

Patronising, preach-y, outdated (things have changed since 2009), over-long etc. 

The worst show I have ever had the misfortune to attend. I walked out after half an hour.

This was pretentious, outdated crap of the highest order, which does a disservice to public understanding of climate change.

Earth scientists on facts and propaganda

Great quote snaffled from Pielke Snr's site, an excerpt from EOS, the house magazine of the American Geophysical Union.

Perkowitz [the Moderator of the AGU session and author of the book Hollywood Science] related that the 2004 science fiction film about global warming, The Day After Tomorrow, which has grossed nearly $550 million, got many facts correct but sped up the tempo so changes occurred in weeks rather than decades. He said some scientists and others “were deeply offended that the movie took that degree of liberty. Yet the movie made people more aware of the importance of at least knowing about global warming and thinking that it might be an issue."

In a quick survey of the Fall [AGU] Meeting audience, Perkowitz estimated that about half were offended by the liberties the movie took and half indicated that it is okay to stretch the truth in a movie to raise public awareness about an issue.

I am a number

A propos of the post about the use of the word "denier", I was pondering the problems we have with referring to the different attitudes to global warming in the debate. Names like sceptic, warmist, denier are all bickered over endlessly.

Perhaps each of us should adopt a number, being the amount of warming we expect to see over the period 2000-2100. It would be more precise and less prone to use in a derogatory fashion.

It's an idea anyway.

What number are you?

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Harrabin posting at WUWT

Roger Harrabin is currently at WUWT in a guest post discussing the Met Office affair.

More trouble at t' Met

Autonomous Mind, who is doing sterling work, has got his hands on some Met Office board minutes. They probably wish he hadn't.

Quote of the day

Werner Krauss on reconciliation in the climate wars

It is hard to imagine how justice will ever be done to those hurt and overrun by those who are in charge of the IPCC process.

(Quote edited to correct English slightly)

Anthony meets the men from the Beeb

Anthony Watts has an interesting piece describing his own encounter with the team that made last night's Meet the Sceptics programme.

I was interviewed (captured really, they flagged me down in the conference hall foyer with no notice) by this production group at the Heartland conference last year in Chicago, giving well over an hour’s worth of an interview in which they asked the same question several times in different ways, hoping to get the answer they wanted. This is an old news interviewing trick to get that golden sound bite. I knew what they were doing, and kept giving the answers my way.

 Doug Keenan in the comments to the last thread on the Monckton programme says he was interviewed too, but they never used the footage.

Know your friend

In the climate debate it can be hard to tell the two apart. Over recent days, I've been having some very interesting conversations with Matt Flaherty -- someone who is largely convinced of mainstream climate science. I've been suitably impressed by his open-mindedness. I don't think, however, that  I've persuaded him of anything more than that there is a case to answer, but a space for debate has been opened.

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