Blimey. 409 comments. Looks like it’s time for a roundup, below, and a new “open thread” post coming up in a minute.
- An article in the New York Sun by Daniel Johnson says
The BBC now has a huge audience in America as well as in the rest of the world for its endless reiteration of the implied thesis that the Jewish state is the root of all evil — not only of war in the East but of terrorism in the West too — and that the ” Israel lobby” rules in Washington. Gloating over the supposed triumph of Realpolitik since the midterm elections, the BBC can hardly contain its Schadenfreude at the departure not merely of Donald Rumsfeld but also of John Bolton.
(Hat tip: Alan)
Oliver writes:
“Hi BBBC – I thought this report interesting especially the line:
“The barrier goes up, and you drive in through a gap in the 30-foot high concrete wall that Israel says it has built to keep out suicide bombers.”
Love that ‘says it has’…
Yours
Oliver
- Neil Craig of A Place to Stand wrote to the BBC, copying us in. An extract:
Dear BBCThis morning David Attenborough was interviewed on the Andrew Marr programme on the subject of putative global warming & made the somewhat improbable statement that “in 20 years much of Norfolk will be under water”. Since sea level has been rising at about 0.6 mm a year since the last ice age & does not appear to have significantly changed recently this would require much of Norfolk to be less than half an inch above sea level now which I do not believe is the case. Indeed historically Norfolk has, for geological reasons, been rising faster than the sea. Even the alarmist BBC have heretofore claimed only 30 cm* a century which amounts to 2 inches in 20 years.
I was therefore somewhat surprised when the interviewer never even questioned the remark & finished the interview calling Mr Attenborough, whose basic claim to fame is as a BBC spokesman an “icon”, which clearly put a BBC seal of approval on it.
If it really is the case that the BBC are officially promising us that Norfolk will largely be underwater by 2026 I will have to accept that as the sort of ridiculous propaganda which represents the very highest standards to which the BBC aspire.
*Taken from the BBC article. A typo in Mr Craig’s email meant that the link url had been typed over the next few characters. Read the rest of his post here.
- On a similar subject, another correspondent writes:
Hi,
- First, we know how these signed “petitions” by THOUSANDS of scientists go as reported by the BBC et al. Did deep and you’ll find a overwhelming list of left wing partisan advocates and non-“scientists”. This BBC article is no different. You get your usual suspects in this article. The BBC just carries the water whenever they put out a PR.
US scientists reject interference
The statement, which includes the backing of 52 Nobel Laureates, demands a restoration of scientific integrity in government policy…..[and the Bush bashing begins]
One of the main article sources, the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security is a San Francisco area left wing “green” advocacy group represented by the BBC as a “Non Partisan” organization. Well, as usual, the reporter simply didn’t look at the board of directors or it’s advisory board. Look for yourself
The other source The Union of Concerned Scientists, again, is a green advocacy organization. Check it out. http://www.ucsusa.org.
I don’t see this blog as having any particular collective opinion on whether and whither climate change. But we are getting quite a few emails saying, as these do, that the BBC is very much of one opinion when presenting the issue.
UPDATE: Ian Hart, the communications director of the Pacific Institute, comments
First, the Pacific Institute is a think tank or a research institute, not a “‘green’ advocacy group.” While we may advocate certain policies, it is not our primary goal or tool. If you look at our staff you will not find lawyers or lobbyists, but mostly scientists.
Second, the Pacific Institute is a non partisan organization and Jonathan Amos was correct in noting that in his article. When we work with governments, we’ve worked with Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians. We’ve also worked in numerous countries where those parties mean nothing. So we are indeed non partisan.
Looking at its website, it is true that the Pacific Institute is non-partisan in the sense that it is not connected to any political party. The Advisory Board contains both Nancy Ramsey, the Legislative Director for Senator John Kerry (D) and the Hon. Claudine Schneider, a former Republican Representative for Rhode Island.
Nonetheless, the Pacific institute is not apolitical. Sample quotes: “Social justice has long been the missing element from the debate over environmental pollution and economic development.” “Globalization and privatisation of the world’s resources are leading to controversy, dispute and even violence.” It favours mildly statist solutions.
I am more sympathetic to Ian Hart’s defence of his own organisation than I am to the BBC’s description of it. The phrase “non-partisan” will be taken to mean “non-political” by most readers of the website, and I rather think the BBC knows this and exploits it – in many cases, not just this one. In particular I think that the BBC gently exploits the fact that in the US, because of campaign finance restrictions and the fact that political donations from individuals are made public there, the fact that an organisation can be non-partisan and yet have a political agenda is widely understood, whereas over here the two terms “non political” and “non partisan” are practically interchangeable. A think tank as right wing as the Pacific Institute is left wing would almost always be described as “right wing” on the BBC.
I think the beebers are instinctively drawn to the climate-change hysteria because it fits in so neatly with heir world-view and also is a modern-day religion.
It combines anti-capitalism, guilt and self-loathing, statism, faux concern for the 3rd world, and bad science. Add in a good dash of anti-americanism.
The “science” bit goes a bit like this:
There is no doubt that there is climate change.
But they deduce straight away that this is something new and bad. The climate change we are seeing now is unlike previous changes that have seen the planet hotter and cooler than today.
Then they make another jump and assume that climate change is man-made.
Yet another jump coming up: because its man-made then it can be halted or even reversed by human intervention.
And the final jump: some vague leftist guardian-style course of action – maybe a committee or two and some more taxes of course and the UN – possibly Bill Clinton could do something and probably George Clooney and Bono. Yes – that’s it – that’s what we all need to do. How dare you suggest any other course of action !
This last jump is the scariest of the lot – if you buy all the previous stuff, then the proposals on the table right now are gonna make diddly-squat difference. They boil down to some unambitious targets to not accelerate CO2 production quite as fast as some other number. And ALL the targets have already been missed anyway.
Christ – if you really really believe this stuff we should all stop in our tracks and start cautiously moving backwards.
Jack – your post seems to imply that the BBC are the only people who think climate change is happening and it is a bad thing.
Perhaps you have forgotten about the vast majority of (peer reviewed) scientific reports on the subject that support the thesis.
Anti capitalist? There was some fella called Stern who did a report recently on climate change. I seem to recall he supported the general thesis of global warming and the dangers it presented – and I don’t think this Stern fella is some raving commie.
But then again none of that would suit your arguments would it eh?
Now I”m sure there are some reds out there who think climate change is a useful way to resurrect socialism on a global scale and guilt the west into handing over cash to the third world with no checks and balances.
Fine. If that’s the case go after that and attack it. That’s politics after all.
But where the Right falls down (and I’d point the finger at recent blogs by Melanie Phillips for example) is it attacks the science. Either because they don’t like the Green Agenda or have friends who run oil companies.
I’ll be interested to see what sort of take on Climate change B-BBC develops.
It’s interesting that peer reviewed credible science is dismissed while the ramblings of JBH are taken at face value…
I’ve thought hard about the question of global warming for some time and have yet to come to a firm opinion on it. I finally wrote this disclaimer, so that I could discuss the subject without much handwaving in every post. It gives a more nuanced picture than you usually get from the BBC, if I do say so myself.
One of the most interesting arguments on the subject comes from Bjorn Lomborg. He believes that it is real, that it is man caused — and that we should spend our money on solving other problems, where the cost benefit ratio is much better. (According to Lomborg, one of the best bets would be providing clean water to those parts of the world that do not have it.)
He comes to this conclusion using, by the way, data from the UN and similar sources.
(By the way, North America, unlike some other continents I could mention, is a net sink for carbon dioxide, taking in more CO2 than it produces.)
I live in the middle of nowhere in Scotland but I’ve also lived in some of the large cities in England. If you wanted to really kick start people into saving the environment, show them what clean air and water is really like. If you go with the whole “the world is going to end” line (the BBC line) then people just won’t care, show them the local benefits. Helping yourself isn’t very left wing though.
(By the way, North America, unlike some other continents I could mention, is a net sink for carbon dioxide, taking in more CO2 than it produces.)
Can you source that? It’s a nice little fact if it’s true.
One thing that gets me is how superior Canadians act, yet CO2 emissions per capita in Canada are practically the same as the US, they have nothing to boast about. But that’s not fair really, the US, Canada and Australia are all really sparsely populated and the only reason Europe releases less overall is because it’s so densely populated. I bet if you took into account population, population per km² and the size of the economy, the US would come out pretty well and be seen to be running pretty efficiently.
Saying that though, I think the US outputs way more waste (plastic bags, cans, etc) per capita than any other country. I wonder if that’s just a result of having a bigger economy.
Lurker:
Stern is not a scientist, he is a Keynesian economist who based his calculations on doomsday predictions provided to him.
As for “peer reviewed” papers, Mann et al’s 1998 paper which produced the so-called “hockey stick” graph on which all this nonsense is based passed peer review without a hitch, and then was utterly demolished by McIntyre et al 2003, 2005 after Mann was forced to produce his full methodology, which turned out to be flawed to the extent that his model produced a “hockey stick” when fed with random data, and his proxy data inputs, which turned out to have been censored by him.
If the peer reviewers are “friendly”, they can be remarkably uncritical.
Try this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2006/11/05/warm-refs.pdf
Further: it’s all good and well looking at “consensus” when papers like Mann 1998 are waved through the peer review process and published without anyone really ever checking the work, and simultaneously papers like McIntyre 2003, 2005 are actively suppressed by the major journals, despite being impeccably flawless.
We have witnessed the death of the scientific method and its subordination to politics and public funding, and this has resulted in a manufactured consensus to promote the idea that there is a problem.
And what is the first rule of research funding?
No problem = no funding.
Jack Hughes:
And the final jump:
Actually the final jump is that WE, by our actions can do something about CO2 emissions. The ‘we’ in this case is either Britain (~579 metric tons) or some other place, usually but not necessarily, the United States (~5,912 metric tons).
I say some other place because last month I was in New Zealand where the very friendly and apparently knowledgeable tourist guide on the Fox Glacier was apparently convinced that New Zealand (~38 metric tons) could make a difference!
Where BBC bias comes in (bringing this subject back to topic) is the failure to blame or even mentions countries emitting even more CO2 than Britain. For example, China (~4,707 metric tons), The Arab League including Iran (~1,245 metric tons) or Russia (~1,685 metric tons). I didn’t do the sums for the former USSR but I hope I have made my point.
My source for these figures BTW is The Energy Information Administration of the US Government (eia).
Nep
I don’t think you understand how science works.
The article that Oliver highlights is truly dreadful – it shows how time and time again a leftist BBC world view trumps facts. The reader is left with the view that Arab Christians in Bethlehem are the victims of Israeli policy. There is little reference to persecution by muslims. How does this square with this report by the hardly pro-Israeli Tim Butcher in the Telegraph?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=EZTCGHTNKEKF3QFIQMFSFF4AVCBQ0IV0?xml=/opinion/2006/12/20/do2004.xml
Or this one highlighted by Mel P on her blog:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=423126&in_page_id=1770
Anon doesn’t understand how credibility works. Firstly, what’s Anon’s background and why does he claim to understand how science works. I would also say that science, when demonstrably flawed, should be attacked. Anon’s ad hominem attack on JBH is a pointer to Anon’s background.
Anon, what makes you draw that conclusion? I know exactly how science is supposed to work, and how it is not working over this issue. I would not deserve the MEng after my name if I did not understand it.
In any case, basing supposedly “scientific conclusions” on a piece of work which has been resoundingly proved wrong is not science. It’s politics.
By the way, start any of the IPCC’s pet climate models at around 1900 and run it up to the present-day, and it gives a wrong answer. Not a wrong answer by a little, but by a lot, and an overestimation at that. Do the same with all half dozen of them, and they cannot even agree to within 5°C. (The correct answer is around 0.6°C increase). and yet I am supposed to believe that these same models will provide an accurate prediction of the future?
Another thing I understand his logic. The contention is that “climate change since the Industrial Revolution is mostly due to human emissions of carbon dioxide”. If one is to hold this view, one must conclude simultaneously that not only for instance the warming period from around 1970 two the present-day is caused in such a manner, but also the cooling period from around 1940-1970 ( the global cooling scare era) was also caused mostly by human emissions of carbon dioxide, since carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere increased steadily through both periods. This is illogical. The only logical conclusion that can be drawn is that carbon dioxide, whether of human or natural origin, is not the primary driving force, or else how do you explain cooling during a period of increasing carbon dioxide?
Most people don’t look at the problem this critically though, and prefer to just accept what the BBC and others spoon feed them.
Nice to see my TV tax is helping racist Americans.
What concerns me deeply about the whole global warming issue is the suppression of any dissenting voice – and the BBC, along with other MSM, are playing a large part in this, both by omission and by commission. When was the last time the BBC referred to this group, for example? http://www.oism.org/pproject/
We have a Foreign Minister who was reported by the Telegraph a couple of weeks ago as saying that ‘climate change sceptics’ were on the same level as supporters of Islamic terrorism, and should not be allowed access to the media.
I am an academic by training, and to me this attitude is just plain wrong. If the science supporting the man-made global warming theory is so conclusive, why aren’t the theory’s proponents prepared to engage in a public debate? Why isn’t the BBC encouraging open discussion of the issues involved? Surely if their case is so strong, they can’t lose. Instead, however, any dissenters are usually smeared as ‘puppets of the oil industry’.
(Incidentally, I’m about half-way through Lomborg’s ‘Skeptical Environmentalist’ – very interesting. I’m not sure I agree with all his opinions, but he is at least capable of rational debate!)
Saw Lomborg lecture not long ago. He makes an awful lot of sense. If the Beeboids have their way we’re in danger of being the generation that chose not to cure HIV or provide clean water in the Third World because we preferred to build wasteful, weak propitiatory windmills because it made us feel good about ourselves.
Incidentally, why are climate change sceptics always subject to having their motives questioned? Why is it never pointed out on the Beeb that “climate change scientists” rely for their continued funding on maintaining belief that climate change exists and is caused by man and his actions?
I go along with Lomborg on this one.
I am not a climate scientist, so I hesitate to make too much of the science. However, Lomborg displays very well the fact that the numbers are regularly manipulated to give the worst possible result.
When it comes to the politics of the issue, we are all capable of making judgments. Climate change is being used to attack capitalism and freedom of choice. The cures being proposed are mostly worse than the disease. The scare stories in the media, are obviously just that, and the the stories of global warming being responsible for a particular bad skiing season / Hurricane / Warm spring day etc, bear all the hallmarks of Journalists whose understanding of science could fit on a postage stamp.
If it really is the problem we are being told it is, there are capitalist solutions that cost much less than the stone age revival that George Monbiot and fellow travelers wish for. The fact that the BBC (and others) tend to ignore these is more evidence of their mind set.
Here, via the Eureferendum blog, is another solid critique of the man-made climate change nutters.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/17/nbook17.xml
Euref suggests that it might be time to buy portable generator. They suggest that this should be known as “buying a Blair”.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/#116608412075203450
You’ll have to scroll to find the report.
When Branson did that thing with Clinton and offered all the profits from his travel industries to go to developing alternative fuels, Channel 4 News said something along the lines of “has Branson had a charitable spell or is it all just to secure the future of his planes and trains?”
Why should it matter why he’s doing it as long as it gets the results they want? Maybe it’s not the results that matter, but the methods? Branson’s methods are a bit too capitalist perhaps?
Naughtie’s “interview” of environment minister Miliband on this morning’s “Today” (triggered by the EU proposal to impose a green carbon-related tax on airlines) reeks of “consensus science”. The points Naughtie made and the questions he posed were essentially “why isn’t the government doing more about climate change?” not, for instance, “what exactly are the mechanics of this policy and will it achieve what it aims to achieve?”. Of course, the second question requires a journalistic (even sceptical) approach with, perhaps, some genuine background knowledge and acceptance that there is a respectable alternative view. By acting as a journalist rather than a commentator, Naughtie might even have embarrassed Miliband by exposing his (Miliband’s) ignorance of the way the world works outside Whitehall/Westminster/Brussels. Naughtie should take lessons from Humphreys in making ministers (in the latest case the Foreign Secretary) look like total pillocks (even if Humphreys represents a discredited broadcasting organisation using “evidence” from a discredited thinktank).
A few days ago on the six o’clock News, there was a marvellous example of chartmanship with regard to temperature history. They talked about records being kept for 300 years (no mention that 300 years ago was just at the end of the Little ice age), and then proceeded to show a graph of just 100 years of temperature history, with a conveniently placed “normal” temperature line representing the average temperature from about 1900 to about 1975. The presenter stated “the temperature usually stays around this level, but recent increases… etc”.
That was a total misrepresentation of the long-term trend, which quite clearly shows that there is no such thing as “normal” temperature. All that the graph showed was that from about 1900 to about 1975, the temperature was within a few tiny fractions of a degree of the arbitrary line they drew. There was certainly no mention of the mediaeval warm period or the Little ice age, and they were clearly trying to give the impression that the 1900 to 1975 trend was entirely representative of the long-term trend, which it is not.
There was not even a snide “/some/ scientists say that current temperatures are nothing unusual for the current interglacial period, which has contained periods both warmer and cooler than today “. Nothing.
I really have to wonder about people who have to lie and misrepresent to make their point, and then call the rest of us evil for not believing them.
Anonymous | 20.12.06 – 1:10 pm | #
Was me. My cookie seems to have expired.
It hardly takes Sherlock Holmes to spot the uncanny congruency between the “green” agenda and that of post-Soviet socialism.
Only yesterday, R4 treated its listeners to Moonbat himself, making some facile comparison between “carbon trading” (itself an absurd idea) and the selling of papal indulgences.
Clearly, what irks Moonbat and his BBC sponsors is not so much the unproven notion of manmade global warming, as the “sin” of western consumption that “causes” it.
Even a cursory study of post-WW11 social history shows that this “green” movement was predictable as long ago as the early-1950s – the logical outcome of western liberal guilt, residual neo-puritanism, terror of scientific advance and the socialist instinct to enforce uniform poverty ‘for your own good’.
That this nonsense pervades all levels of the BBC isn’t to be wondered at and can only be denied by those so steeped in it themselves that they have lost all objectivity. The set of unquestioned (and unquestionable) beliefs and assumptions held by the middle classes that own the BBC are as inevitable and as uniform as would have been the belief in saints and demons in the 13th Century. The poor dears can’t help themselves. They are held captive by the age in which they live and cannot think beyond its confines.
The only remedy is to remove from them the stranglehold they have over the dissemination of information. In other words, either the closure of the BBC, or some radical curtailment of its privileges.
A Lurker:-
Perhaps you have forgotten about the vast majority of (peer reviewed) scientific reports on the subject that support the thesis.
Simple question for you.
Is the science unequivocal that there is global warming and that it is caused and mitigable by human action?
When I say ‘unequivocal’, I mean in the sense that 2 plus 2 unequivocally make 4.
Yes or no answer, please.
FTP:
I bet if you took into account population, population per km² and the size of the economy, the US would come out pretty well and be seen to be running pretty efficiently.
Emissions correlate better to share of world GDP than to anything else. The USA is 25% of the world’s economy and produces 25% of its emissions (or whatever the number is). Africa is 3% of the world’s economy and produces 2% of its emissions (or whatever the number is).
Environmentalism is liberal anti-Americanism.
Science is never “unequivocal” – the basis of science is that it is disprovable not that it is verifiable. 2 + 2 does equal 4 (mod 10) but 2 + 2 equals 11 (mod 3). But this is convention not science.
Science works (according to Popper) by conjecture and refutation: if you have a theory which relies on the predictive accuracy of a computer model and that model produces the same result with random inputs then, simply speaking, the theory is wrong. It might be partially wrong (eg Newton’s Laws) or wholly wrong (eg Monbiot’s Theory That We’re All Doomed), but it’s wrong. Science does not take votes and, furthermore, scientific “proof” is always contingent and never unequivocal. For instance, I guess most people believe in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. However, to the extent that a control experiment is difficult to mount, the theory cannot be refuted and is thus not scientifically “proven”. There is plenty of evidence to indicate that Darwin is correct but that does not make the theory scientifically beyond doubt.
Nep: You understand how science works. You explain to Camp_Commandant why he doesn’t.
Yes yes yes. I am just trying to see if Michael Crichton is right about environmental “science”: that what one believes is a political or quasi-religious choice because the actual evidence is ambiguous.
Any global warming advocates ready to concede that their belief in it is driven by politics, rather than facts?
As the communications director for the Pacific Institute, I have to correct innacuracies in the assessment of our organization.
First, the Pacific Institute is a think tank or a research institute, not a “‘green’ advocacy group.” While we may advocate certain policies, it is not our primary goal or tool. If you look at our staff you will not find lawyers or lobbyists, but mostly scientists.
Second, the Pacific Institute is a non partisan organization and Jonathan Amos was correct in noting that in his article. When we work with governments, we’ve worked with Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians. We’ve also worked in numerous countries where those parties mean nothing. So we are indeed non partisan.
I would appreciate you removing these innacuracies from your post.
Sorry. That should have read “the Pacific Institute is a research institute (or think-tank if you will)”
[The comment referred to here has now been edited to remove the typo pointed out in this comment.]
Edited By Siteowner
B-BBC readers wondering about the vercity of Ian Hart’s claims might like to read the opening paragraphs of the Pacific Institute’s own report:
Click to access pac_inst_anniversary_report.pdf
Heaven only knows what he would define as a “green” group if he sincerely believes they don’t qualify!
Sources for the net North American CO2 sink: In my disclaimer, I linked to an Iain Murray article and said that I thought he got the numbers from a 1998 article in Science.
Here’s a description of the article. You can probably find more by doing the obvious searches.
Re the original post and the following extract –
“This morning David Attenborough was interviewed on the Andrew Marr programme on the subject of putative global warming & made the somewhat improbable statement that “in 20 years much of Norfolk will be under water”.”
Kent is I believe not too far from Norfolk and some 1963 years ago the Roman invaders made landfall at Richborough, a place now 5+ kilometers from the coast. Indeed at that time the site of Canterbury was also on an inlet from the then coastline. This of course being during the previous +1 natural global warming cycle.
See here to find out how things have changed –
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/ConMediaFile.14421
I have a lot of time for Mr. Attenborough who has over the years done many excellent things. However this does not make him infallible and on this matter he is clearly talking out of his bottom.
If I ,on me tod, can find out this stuff in 5 minutes why is it beyond the BBC horde.
Research, honesty, facts – ho ho ho, they’re talking the piss, once again.
The land has been rising, becuase the thick ice that altered the shape of the earths crust downwards has disapeered and the crust has “rebounded”.
Since my previous question appears to be too difficult for anon and A Lurker to answer, here it is again in a dumbed-down form, al-BBC-stylee.
Are there any instances of sceptical challenge to the scientific understanding of why aircraft are able to fly? Is that another example of consensus science, where the facts are ambiguous and “science” has groupthinked its way to a collective view – or is there really no doubt about why aircraft are able to fly?
If that one’s too difficult, I’ll accept something else. What happens when water boils? What are the energy changes involved when a ball falls off a skyscraper? Why do bulbs light up when you pass a current through them? What were the physics behind the atom bombs in 1945?
I’d just like an additional example, besides climate change, of something where what is passed off as fact is passed off as such as a result of a vote, rather than on the basis of the facts.
Take as many screens as you need.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597
Written by RS Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.
On one point in there:
“More recently, a study in the journal Science by the social scientist Nancy Oreskes claimed that a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years 1993 to 2003 under the key words “global climate change” produced 928 articles, all of whose abstracts supported what she referred to as the consensus view. A British social scientist, Benny Peiser, checked her procedure and found that only 913 of the 928 articles had abstracts at all, and that only 13 of the remaining 913 explicitly endorsed the so-called consensus view. Several actually opposed it.”
Peiser has backtracked in a fairly major way from that claim:
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1777013.htm
“Only [a] few abstracts explicitly reject or doubt the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) consensus which is why I have publicly withdrawn this point of my critique.
— Email from Benny Peiser to Media Watch
And when we pressed him to provide the names of the articles, he eventually conceded – there was only one.
(Ad Hoc Committee on Global Climate Issues: Annual report, by Gerhard LC and Hanson BM, AAPG Bulletin 84 (4): 466-471 Apr 2000)
Peiser says he withdrew his criticism in March this year. [..]
I do not think anyone is questioning that we are in a period of global warming. Neither do I doubt that the overwhelming majority of climatologists is agreed that the current warming period is mostly due to human impact.
— Email from Benny Peiser to Media Watch, 12th October, 2006”
We *are* in a period of global warming but the latter part of that statement is questionable to say the least.
There is considerable historical evidence that warming and cooling phases are *natural* cyclical phenomena.
As I stated before, if humans are the prime mover for current warming, then humans must also have been the prime mover for the cooling period from 1940 to 1970. Since this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, the only valid conclusion is that humans are not the prime mover, and natural factors are significantly more important.
AntiCitizenOne:
The land has been rising, becuase the thick ice that altered the shape of the earths crust downwards has disapeered and the crust has “rebounded”.
The North is Rising but the South East is falling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound
I was delighted to see on newsnight this evening that “ethical man” has been forced to admit that home windmills dont work and that buying “green” electricity is a con because buying such electricity doesn’t lead to a reduction in the generation of non-green electricity.
Are these the first faltering steps towards the realisation that the leftie, greenie beeboids are misguided and naive? That they are now only green in the sense of being gullible?
Will they next be conceding that george monbiot is in fact a moonbat and shouldn’t be allowed on tv to spout his crap?
I saying Norfolk would be under water in 20 years Attenborough was indeed clearly talking out of his bottom. That the BBC treated it seriously (& have not responded to my piece) shows that they are acting entirley on a propagandist agenda.
There is a case that world temperature grew 0.6 degrees last century, though even that is debatable since weather stations which used to be outside towns are now ofen built up. It is possible we will see further warming, though we haven’t since 1999. It is possible part of it, if it happns, will be caused by man, though there has been solar driven heating both here & on the other planets. It is conceivable that this will be above about 2 degrees which would mean that it might be more damaging than beneficial, though there is absolutely no sign of it. It is conceivable that we could not reverse the process, if it became catastrophic, by creating stratospheric dust, but the engineering solutions seem rigorous (& far far cheaper than Kyoto).
The warming story, particularly when proponents are opposed to engineering solutions & nuclear power, is clearly driven by Luddite politics rather than science, as is the BBC.
http://thumbsnap.com/v/P8A3nOfO.jpg
The Pacific Institute states on their About page:
The Pacific Institute is dedicated to protecting our natural world, encouraging sustainable development, and improving global security.
I have heard “sustainable development” used countless times. It almost always is used as a euphemism for growth limitations and statist control.
The Union of Concerned Scientists published a report this year called: Climate Change in the U.S. Northeast
The executive summary describes this study:
This study draws on recent advances in climate modeling to assess how global warming may further affect the Northeast’s climate. Using projections from three state-of-the-art global climate models, we compare the types and magnitude of climate changes that will result from higher emissions of heat-trapping gases versus lower emissions.
Although the first sentence uses the word “may” the rest of the quote rather clearly shows that this group believes that climate models actually show what will result rather than what might happen if all the model assumptions are correct. If one model is bad at prediction, then just combine several models and magically you will improve their predictive abilities.
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Lots of people have an interest in denying global warming even though the facts as laid out by the scientists in the IPCC report etc
The reasons for denying global warming are the profts from the industries that are creating it ie oil, steel, concrete, automobiles etc.
Why admit to a problem you’re causing if you can make money out of it?
Why not deny global warming is a problem so you can keep on making money?
Why not bash anyone who says something that doesn’t fit your interests?
These hysterics denying global warming believe scientists when it comes to the engineering of the car the use and the plane they fly in but not when it comes to global warming.
Strange…..
Own up! You’re pocketing the cash, aren’t you, work for the oil companies, automobile companies, GOP party and you bash the bbc because it tells the rruth about global warming and to accept the truth would harm your profits and threatens your little life style and give you a bad conscience.
Lacking all moral fibre or heart, you probably identify with your job in the oil company and your wad of cash and cannot imagine existing without them.
Why not just calm down and read the facts and use the little two grey cells still flickering in the brain to work out what the truth is?