While the BBC get all excited about cool new British cloning, and fresh monkey business, they apparently haven’t noticed a whacking blow to their greatest environmental news fetish- news that the Antarctic is putting on weight. (via A Tangled Web)
Oddly no-one ever seems to learn that when it comes to a lot of the investigations we perform in science today our knowledge is in its infancy. At least one guy the BBC interviewed seemed to get it:
‘”A large, striking monkey in a country of considerable wildlife research over the last century has been hidden right under our noses,”‘
Makes you wonder what else has been hidden from them that’s right under their noses. Especially those scientific minds that bring us the Beeb in all its glory.
Update (Sat)– In response to Natalie’s interest, expressed in the comments, here are a few links gleaned from a commenter at the aforementioned ATW- post here– that highlight the fact that the BBC really have bought into a political agenda with their relentless enviro-spin. All over the web I’ve found people quoting the BBC as a source for global warming warnings- including in the post I’ve just linked from ATW. I hope these three links– posted in order of technicality, with the most technical first- illustrate that the Beeb has sidelined debate in favour of left-tinged crusading politics, as usual. From the second of the three sources linked, this quote impressed me a lot, and it was good to read-
‘the predication of government, and United Nations’, policy for energy growth on the unsustainable myth of ‘global warming’ is a serious threat to us all, but especially to the 1.6 billion people in the less-developed world who have no access to any modern form of energy. The twin curses of water poverty and energy poverty remain the real scandals. By contrast, the political imposition on the rest of the world of our Northern, self-indulgent ecochondria about ‘global warming’ could prove to be a neo-colonialism too far.’
In re: The new species of African monkey…
“The animal is believed to be a critically endangered species, with no more than perhaps a thousand individuals remaining. ”
How do they know that this is an endangered animal? If only two or three primatologists have ever seen it, how can they know for sure that it isn’t a NEW species?
The key point here is that there is dissension about global warming. Scientific opinion is divided.
But this is NOT what the BBC portrays. On this issue as on so many others, the BBC tries to preach just one side of the argument. Preaching THEIR in-house opinion, not properly presenting the balance of argument.
Bias, pure and simple.
When I was young dentists had passion for discovering the minutest caries. They were paid per filling of course. Now they’re not, their passion is dulled.
I remain sceptical of scientists and the medical establishment. But if I had to come down on one side on global warming I think I would say man made global warming is happening and happening fast.
“The key point here is that there is dissension about global warming. Scientific opinion is divided.”
Oh, look, another American right wing talking point, fresh from the box.
Of course there’s *some* dissention. The question is who from and how strong and credible it is. Willfully ignoring the evidence of consensus, and trumping dodgy research on the extent of dissention does not break that consensus of opinion.
There’s dissention on evolution, too, and yet scientific consensus overwhelmingly supports evolution as a scientific theory.
The tactics used by proponents of dissention=divided opinion remain the same: obfuscation and spin.
And all in a comment accusing the BBC of spin. Irony is alive and well, and living in B-BBC’s comment boards.
JiL
Anon demonstrates that it is pointless talking with some people.
P_L – I’d agree heartily. This site’s comment boards have been overrun by parrots for right wing US blogs. Same talking points, same mendacity, same obfuscation.
I’ll still read Natalie, who actually makes sense and is capable of presenting original stuff instead of babble, but majority of you are intractable in your views, regardless of the evidence.
You’ve presented bullshit “evidence” that *consensus* isn’t there from a study that has been discredited and rejected by peer review, and yet it seems you still believe and JiL does.
It is indeed pointless talking to some people, but not for the reasons you think.
Look, there is no debate to be had here. Of course global warming is the biggest threat to our civilisation in the next 100 years.
Dermot and Natasha tell me this at least twice a week.
If someone as decent and informed as David Bellamy remains sceptical, It is cler there is real dissension. Tht dissension does not rest on a single study – there are a lot of strands to the argument.
And the BBC are not presenting those strands.
This is different order of argument as questions about the validity of evolutionary theory. The dissenters are not what we would regard as “cranks”. In fact it is the shrieking Greenpeace moonbats that come across as “cranks” – except at the Guardian and the BBC, which are stuffed to the gills with cranks anyway.
“If someone as decent and informed as David Bellamy remains sceptical, It is cler there is real dissension”
Good point. How did David Bellamy come to claim that glaciers were actually growing, rather than shrinking?
Perhaps a wacky commie green activist like George Monbiot might have the answer:
http://society.guardian.co.uk/environment/story/0,14124,1480411,00.html
“last week I telephoned the World Glacier Monitoring Service and read out Bellamy’s letter. I don’t think the response would have been published in Nature, but it had the scientific virtue of clarity: “This is complete bullshit.” A few hours later, they sent me an email: “Despite his scientific reputation, he makes all the mistakes that are possible.” He had cited data that was simply false, he had failed to provide references, he had completely misunderstood the scientific context and neglected current scientific literature. The latest studies show unequivocally that most of the world’s glaciers are retreating.”
Bellamy got the information from Robert W Felix (an architect), who got it from Lyndon Larouche’s 21st Century Science and Technology, who got them from Professor Fred Singer (a climate change denier). Singer claims they came from Singer “A paper published in Science in 1989”, of which no trace can be found. To cap matters off, Bellamy made a typo, which changed 55% to 555.
Spin, mendacity and obfuscation, in other words. Why is Bellamy sceptical? Because of information laundering, which turns outright bullshit into something with an air of respectability.
Interestingly, junkscience.com, the US National Centre for Public Policy Research and the Washington Post have also been fooled by this crap.
Anon
1. Monbiot demonstrated a long time ago that he is clearly insane. It’s a fact he is obviously trying to reinforce:
“We are killing people by the most innocent means: turning on the lights, taking a bath, driving to work, going on holiday”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1490700,00.html
2. A small number of antarctic glaciers are melting, whilst the ice sheet is expanding:
“The fact that a report that glaciers are melting over one extremely small portion of Antarctica that is showing warming, while the rest of the continent is cooling, grabs not only newspaper headlines but finds its way without a regional perspective into a prestigious publication like Science is troubling…The general cooling of Antarctica is highly scientifically significant because climate models run under increasing levels of greenhouse gases predict that the Antarctic continent as a whole, not just the Peninsula, should be rapidly warming. This is clearly a model failure and no amount of going on and on about the impact of warming in the Peninsula, is going to change that fact.”
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2005/04/22/the-tip-of-the-iceberg-yet-another-predictable-distortion/#more-104
Don’t bother responding, I’m outta here. I would ask of the frisson of excitement it is you get from posting amongst a bunch of right wing, American(?) wackoes but I don’t give a shit.
David F: “But if I had to come down on one side on global warming I think I would say man made global warming is happening and happening fast.”
And you’d be about half right. There is consensus that there may be some global warming happening.
The is NO consensus about what is causing it.
In fact, consensus is changing to a solar event. Why? Because there is also global warming happening on Mars, Jupiter, and Titan, and much more dramatic global warming than there is on Earth.
The giant storms on the surface of Jupiter are breaking up because of the warming. Glaciers are melting at a much faster rate on Mars and Titan than on Earth. It appears that Earth’s atmosphere is protecting us from the most extreme effects.
Further, there’s a new study that suggests that the warming is causing the rise in the CO2 levels, not the other way around.
So the jury is still out. There are PLENTY of conflicing ideas out there among real scientists. The idea of a “CO2 is causing warming” consensus is just an urban legend.
Your Mr. Monbiot isn’t insane at all, he’s just using enviromental scare tactics to further his totalitarian politics.
Perhaps the greatest influence on the climate debate is the career interests of climatologists.
Back in the sixties it was an accepted fact that we were living in an interglacial period and as ice ages historically were separated by 10,000 year warm periods, we were a couple of thousand years overdue for another one. It was during the seventies that the first hypotheses of global warming were aired but these ideas were ridiculed by the establishment who had built careers on the previous model. Fast-forward to today and it is the dissenters who are now the ‘experts’, most of the ‘Ice is coming!’ guys having retired or died.
It is a regrettable fact that paradigm shifts in science happen about once a generation. Too many reputations and careers depend on lifetimes’ investment in research and publication. It is a very brave scientist who after reaching the head of his field and the plaudits of academia is going to say “Er, actually I got this whole thing wrong about thirty years ago. Sorry about that”
And I’m sorry that I forgot to mention that there are some scientific constants.
The oil is always going to run out in 25 years.
Population growth will become critical in 25 years.
Fusion power will become an economic reality in… wait for it…25 years.
The Climate Change née Global Warming storm will peter out into a sputter once the hurricane of the opportunistic nuclear power lobby comes crashing onto the scene (the vanguard has already blown the doors wide open). The so-called greens will then be very busy trying to deal with the results of the law of unintended consequences; having built man-made climate change into such an apparently irrefutable doom scenario, it’ll be tough for them to argue against the only really effective power solution that doesn’t throw nasty, evil carbon dioxide into the air.
Useful idiots like this Anonymous character will have saddled us with the reactivation of a dreadfully dangerous industry that was well on its way to crawling away and dying.
As for the veneration of so-called “scientific consensus”, and of currently august bodies like the Royal Society, I expect we’ll be seeing more from the “greens” like this:
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/19941116152430.html
.
PJF… indeed, although I’m rather put upon by your defeatist attitude concerning nukes. The Three Mile Island incident proved that the safety systems built by Western powers worked. Chernobyl was shoddily built in the first place, an accident waiting to happen.
Storage of nuclear fuels is a must, and not just because they’re dangerous, but because they’re a future treasure trove. A power source with a nuclear half-life of thousands of years is an answer waiting for someone smart enough to ask the right questions.
The cup is half full 🙂
mamapajamas, thinking clearly is never defeatism. Just because greenies don’t like something doesn’t mean anyone else should feel obliged to like it. I expect most greenies wouldn’t appreciate being rogered up the jacksie with a broken Chihuahua skull, but that doesn’t mean I’m taking my mallet on a search for lap dogs.
Unlike the evidence for man-made climate change, which is circumstantial at best; the results of mankind’s interaction with nuclear fission are indisputable and self-evident – a catalogue of disasters and missed-by-the-skin-of-our-teeth even greater disasters. Your assertion that Three Mile Island proved that safety provisions worked is, frankly, perverse. While I’ve happily and fearlessly frolicked in winter seas warmed by the heat exchangers of a normally functioning nuclear power plant, that doesn’t mean I can’t recognise the dangers when things get abnormal.
The British Isles simply cannot afford to lose the real estate a Chernobyl type blunder will consume. Is it unlikely to happen here? Well, the fraudulent, incompetent and negligent staff of Sellafield has just recently managed to tip 83 cubic metres of highly radioactive fluid onto the floor, resulting in an indefinite shutdown of reprocessing. This after several “it can never happen again” safety reviews. Humans always fuck up – it’s inevitable.
Add in the proliferation issues of an enlarged industry (let alone the ones present today – Iran), and it becomes clear that support for nuclear power requires acts of faith and denial greater than those on the part of leftoids / greenoids over global warming. Rightoids can be stupid too.
We should retain a rump industry for research and maintaining our defence capability, and ditch the rest as madness.
.
P_L
http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/mbb/mbb8/sum0203.html
Worldwide, glaciers_are_melting.
There might be some growth in parts of Antartica, but worldwide, glaciers_are_melting. Even in Antarctica, glaciers are melting, as your link acknowledged, and has been acknowledged by the US’ National Snow and Ice Data Center, NASA among others.
I don’t get any frisson of excitement from arguing here, especially not when you simply move on and obfuscate, as again here, or get tetchy and demand that I *don’t* reply.
As B-BBC has noted, what is written on this site is picked up elsewhere. And a large part of what is posted in comments is simply cack, and worth showing for what it is.
Believe what you will. You’re probably right and all those scientists are making it up to protect their jobs.
Anonymous:
“You’re probably right and all those scientists are making it up to protect their jobs.”
On another section of this site someone has coined the phrase “institutional leftism” to characterise the subtle bias of the BBC which, whilst often refutable on a case-by-case basis, permeates the news and current affairs coverage so that the big picture becomes distorted by the accumulated drip-feed of individually minor, but collectively significant, impartialities.
A similar thing might be said in the context of environmental science. Graduates who wish to conduct scientific research are motivated by many things no doubt, but the motivation to begin research in the area of environmental science is often politically driven – by a desire to “save the planet” if you like. In other words, many environmental scientists do, as a basic prerequite for embarking on their careers, believe that the planet needs saving. Individuals may change their minds of course, and thereafter challenge the “consensus” but the “consensus” only exists as a result of this “institutional environmentalism”.
Unfortunately, it’s not that easy to dismiss scientific consensus as “institutional environmentalism”.
For example, one doesn’t consider scientists working in R&D for medicines as suffering from “institutional benevolence”.
In science, as elsewhere, many people are looking to improve their profile, carve their niche. Within that context, scientific consensus is especially notable. There are considerable benefits, financial and otherwise, to show that man is not driving global warming, but scientists can’t ‘find’ that evidence because it either doesn’t exist, or isn’t robust enough to support those conclusions.
Anonymous several people have laid out the evidence that man is *not* driving the current warming phase, you just refuse to listen.
I have pointed out how ‘global warming’ furthers a particular political agenda, hence the determined clinging to a questionable hypothesis.
I am not a climatologist but I did major in history and so I know the climate has warmed and cooled several times in recorded history long before industrialization could have driven such changes.
“Anonymous several people have laid out the evidence that man is *not* driving the current warming phase, you just refuse to listen.”
Don’t make me laugh, really. Actually, they haven’t. Only Pete made a stab at it. I’ve read the “contradictory evidence”, I can even see the appeal of it. But the evidence, such as it exists, does not contradict the evidence that man-made causes are driving global warming. Yes, climate is complex. Yes, temperatures fluctuate. Yes, other factors can also cause warming.
But, and this is why the spin doesn’t work – investigations into global warming have_taken_this_into_account – and acknowledge it. Climatologists acknowledge margins of error and complexity and still form a consensus on global warming.
You can get all haughty, but you might as well complain that the scientific community doesn’t listen to you, because my arguments are their’s, in essence.
Anonymous:
“Unfortunately, it’s not that easy to dismiss scientific consensus as “institutional environmentalism”.
For example, one doesn’t consider scientists working in R&D for medicines as suffering from “institutional benevolence”.”
No I certainly wouldn’t consider medical research scientists in that way, any more than I would consider atomic physicists to be suffering from “institutional warmongering”
I am making the point that environmental science is atypical in this respect – it is a niche subject which preselects its proponents on the basis of their already-held political views which, perforce at the beginning of their careers, are held in relative ignorance of empirical scientific evidence.
What about Mamapajama’s information about global warming on Mars and Jupiter – is mankind driving that too?
Sounds like this is a case of ‘I’ve made up my mind, don’t confuse me with facts!’
I’m old enough to remember the ‘new ice age’ enviro-panic. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Roxanna,
You must undestand that one of the major aims of the so-called ‘Enviromentalist’ movement is to drastically reduce the standard of living in the developed world and maintain the undeveloped world’s quaint and picturesque poverty. Global Warming is admirably suited to further both these aims hence the fanatical and reality defying support for Kyoto et-al.
Is this for real?????
I hope you are being sarcastic or ironic, but the general tone of some of these posts leda me to suspect otherwise.
‘Quaint and picturesque poverty’.
I barely know how to respond to this, other than to throw the floor open and BEG you to defend it.
Hilary, excuse me, but do you have any idea how offensively condescending and arrogant your posts come off to those reading them and trying to respond?
I could almost swear from your tone alone that you are a member in good standing of the BBC Sneerocracy.
I do apologise if I sound condescending. I admit I was genuinely flabbergasted by that particular comment about ‘picturesque poverty’ and perhaps responded too emotively. I sincerely mean to express a real response/reaction and am not attempting to ‘wind up’ or irritate, although I realise it might be what actually happens.
However, I would be very unsurprised if a large number of people responded with some surprise at such a comment – regardig poverty in Africa, it is an undeniably controversial perspective. Again, not one I discount out of hand, I am interested in hearing it expanded on, but I suggest that an expression of horror at this view would be a very common one, rightly or wrongly.
As a matter of fact Hilary I am quite serious. The enviromental movement’s crusades and causes are *invariably* aimed at imposing greater austerity, reducing mobility and negating property rights in all forms. This fact leads me to conclude that ecological concerns are being used to drive a political/cultural agenda with which I most emphatically disagree.
As for the ‘picturesque poverty’ remark a classic example of this is a fellow named Sydney Possuelo who is campaigning to insure the permanent isolation of Amazonian indian tribes and protecting them from the ‘contaminating’ influence of western culture.
Note Mr. Possuelo is not enforcing the wishes of said Indians but his own. They have no choice in the matter, they are to be forced to remain in their pristinely primitive state – for the delectation of the eco-tourist crowd – whether they like it or not.
I think I may have misunderstood you Hilary – or you misunderstood me. I was indeed being ironic when I referred to ‘quaint and picturesque poverty’ but unfortunately enviromentalistas are *not* being ironic when they fight to maintain ‘traditional’ ways of life complete with high mortality, brutal work loads and limited opportunities for the sake of colorful vacation pictures.
Hilary
Yep, I know it may seem as if some are piling in on you but, far from being gratuitous, I think your contribution is most welcome. However, if you’re going to set yourself up, you’re going to set yourself up.
You mentioned elsewhere that you’re a Guardianista. In that case it may come as a shock to you that we on the other side have long rumbled the left.
We know that e.g. development aid is not actually development aid but both a job guarantee scheme for NGOs and a scam by which lefties may feel good about themselves.
Yes, we have you rumbled, we know that the point of ‘doing good’ is not to actually ‘do good’ but to feel good about one’s supposed moral superiority.
Thanks Pete, I have indeed ‘set myself up’ (perhaps unknowingly’ but I’ll roll ith it. As I have mentioned I am quite open to having all my views challenegd by good arguments and indeed shot to pieces if thats what it comes to. It seems my views are as offensive to some here as many of the views expressed here are to me. Fine. Lets argue about those views, not about whether or not each others children are likely to become ‘intellectual and moral retards’ (as has been suggested to me)or other such irrelevancies.
You may be interested to know that despite being an occasional, although not exclusive reader of the Guardian I do not hoover up and ingest every word I read. Indeed I find some of the obtuse anti-American rhetoric offensive and cringe-worthy too.
I do not consider my views are held because they give me a sense of moral superiority. Rather I feel it is a tragedy for the millions suffering and dying, a cause about which SOME groups may exercise moral superiority and adopt strategies to feel good about themselves, where others are genuinely concerned and saddenned and are moved to act as a sense of duty or indeed personal moral choice. No doubt there is some truth in both assertions, I am quite sure it is impossible for either one of us to make sweeping generalisations that will stand up to any scrutiny.Once again I reiterate that I am interested in discussing our divergent views.
Hilary
I commented on public health and education. It wasn’t personal at all. It was simply a frank and honest comment. I was replying to your statement:
To argue that each person should be entirely free to spend his/her money as they see fit, (eg to choose not to use publicly funded schools and pay privately) and yet to argue at the same time that each person has the opportunity to succeed on merit assumes a level playing field of opportunity. This is quite blatantly not the case.
Frankly, this is socialist nonsense and the prime reason why state schools are now nothing more than institutions designed specifically to produce unthinking, intellectual and moral retards. You have no obligation to the state, the government or anyone else’s children. Your one obligation is to raise your family in a fit and proper manner. That means doing what is best for them.
If you can afford to go private then you must. If you let ideological purity dictate what you do then so be it. However, I guess you’re in the UK. Why so? If you want to live under a state which does not allow its’ citizens to spend their money as they see fit I’m sure Cuba or North Korea will have you.
This isn’t personal, it’s simply an honest opinion. You are free to be forthright in telling me and others why the government should dictate where our children go to school.
I don’t in fact believe that the state has this right, nor do I think it necessarily should. I have not out of ‘ideological purity’ made this choice for my own child. I was simply asking the question. I, like the vast majority of Brits do not have the choice because I couldn’t afford to send my child into private education. I too consider the corect thing to be to choose the best available for one’s child, be it health, eduaction etc. I do take issue with your assertion that the current system is ‘designed specifically to produce unthinking retards’ however. Sounds slightly like conspiracy theory to me. I do think the education offered by the state is somewhat below the standard we might want oe expect – but to argue that it would be most desirable that all children should have the opportunityof a decent eduaction regradless of their financial background seems to me to in the spirit of fair-play – ‘socialist nonsense?’ – there seems to me to be some common ground between a Libertarian way of thinking – (no subsidy, you get what you work for, on merit) and this Socialist nonsense (lets make a level laying field where everyone gets what they work for, on merit). Perhaps you don’t agree – the in-between phase of course requires redistribution, which I am quite sure doesnt fit with your politics.
The main point of departure for me is this: ‘you have no obligation to other children’. I agree that I have no particular obligation to the state, for WE elect them. I disagree that as individuals we have NO obligation to other members of society. I think there are degrees – I won’t sacrifice my own childs needs directly for the benefit of another, but I will try to give my child the very best I can whiclt continuing to believe that other children deserve this too. I may be naiive in the extreme but it seems these two needn’t be mutually exclusive.
If, in some far off Utopia, state funded eduaction was absolutely first-class, the same standard as the best private school on offer, would a Libertarian still choose the private education on principle?
I support public school education in theory, but I believe it started to die the day it turned into an indoctrination process for “New Socialist Man” rather than a sincere attempt to educate children.
The sh*t that the “progressives” have done to public school education — and of course, to their tiny victims — in my own home state has been jaw-droppingly evil.
From Melanie Phillips’ “All Must Have Prizes”, I’ve read that public school education has been similarly corrupted in the UK by the “progressives.”
Can we have public financed education without it being corrupted by those ideologues who seek to remake our children into “New Socialist Man”?
Interesting question — not sure what the answer is.
this Socialist nonsense (lets make a level laying field where everyone gets what they work for, on merit
PS Hilary, that is not in any way the goal of the “Socialist nonsense.” Their goal is to ensure equal outcomes for all, come hell or high water. Merit has nothing to do with it.
Hilary’s a troll.
Hilary, sorry to mimic you, but you must stop writing in florid Becky Sharpe prose lest you lose your valued readers, although most assuredly this would not be the thought uppermost in your mind whilst contemplating whether your very sincere research into the basement – or should one say “the cellar”? given that we are writing to primarily an audience of British people and one is unaware how much American they may understand? – of what might be termed the political motivations, if such they were, of the BBC?
One is shocked, shocked! to read that there are people here who do not subscribe to the leftwing view of Africa! That some people think Africa ought to be left alone to trade (free trade) with Europe without lefty help! Hilary, in lieu of a free trade cabbage from Africa (a vast continent, not a country) go boil your head.