Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. this is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may be moderated.
“If the graph is flawed, it won’t make the current state of climate science go away. Just as issues about thickening sea ice, medieval warm periods and re-ordering of America’s hottest years doesn’t bring the whole thing crashing down either.”
I don’t believe this thing will ever go away, just as long as there is some ****sucker that wants to make a quick buck off our guilt.
One of the greatest sins of the environmental lobby is that they oppose modern industrial development and free market capitalism in Third World countries. What would almost certainly bring about jobs, money, food and improved standards of living is frowned upon to satisfy the Green guilt complex.
David Gregory (BBC):
Dr R: People who want to accuse others of dumbing down.
————————————————
Miles off-topic (and moderator feel free to delete) but isn’t it ironic how the trite/cliched/hackneyed phrase ‘dumbing down’ does exactly that to the English language.
ANDY: Well said. Politics and the losers that have simply jumped on the bandwagon of the environment from other leftie causes like Palestine, the femenists, the CND lot and the unwashed anti globalisation rabble have destroyed the message from the likes of the WWF.
Never let the loony left and politicians join your train, they will simply trah it for their own ends.
John Reith | 13.12.07 – 3:39 pm
Because Hiroshima was during World War II, in which many British people fought and which is part of our recent history. The BBC, being British, tends to reflect that.
I can’t let that one go, John Reith. The BBC is British? It turns its nose up at the English football team and backs its opponents, calls for info on coalition troop movements in Iraq, wont spend more than ten seconds covering returning British troops, led the baying pack attacking the police over the de Menezes killing, allows the gruesome slaughter of a goat to be shown to little children on Blue Peter, turns its back on white British victims of Asian immigrant murderers, misses no opportunity to trash Britain’s chief ally, America, and cheerfully promotes a faked documentary deliberately showing the Queen in a bad light.
Apart from the accents of its broadcasters, the BBC is about as British as a bunch of Taleban sitting in a cave preparing suicide belts.
“Most such attacks feature white victims and BME (Black and ethnic minority) perps.
If the BBC were to report only the most serious, it would run to hundreds every week.”
To coin a phrase,”That’s the story stupid”.The BBC seems unable or unwilling to join the dots,”social cohesion”?
It is evident that there is a serious breakdown between the races in many areas of Britain,the BBC would seem blissfully unaware of this.
I don’t know if Andrew will permit this post since it is peripheral to BBC Bias, but does reflect on the propensity for BBC Science correspondents and others to misrepresent the science on climate change.
David Gregory is correct to say that this is about politics and not science and the politics comes from both the pro and anti AGW forces. This is merely one of the inconsistencies of BBC science output.
There are actually three identifiable groups of ‘scientists’ engaged in the debate. There are those that are ‘disbelievers’ who will not admit that anthropogenic carbon dioxide can be having any influence on the climate. There are also those who are ‘believers’ who refuse to believe that anything other than anthropogenic carbon dioxide can be having any significant effect. Finally there are a group of rather more objective scientists, including myself, who are struggling to understand the complexities of the system without either set of ingrained prejudices.
The Hockey Stick graph was the iconic image of the IPCC TAR and was of key importance because it purported to show that global temperature had been stable for thousands of years but had then risen dramatically in line with carbon dioxide measurements. Although accepted without question by the IPCC, the reconstruction began to be questioned, primarily because it eliminated the well established Mediaeval Warm period when global temperatures had been higher than the current ones when carbon dioxide levels were very low. The US Senate failed to get a rational explanation to their questions from the climate scientists responsible for this reconstruction and two separate investigations were instituted one by the Natioanl Academy of Sciences and one by Wegmans committee. Both enquires were set up by politicians but entirely staffed by scientists expert in statistics.
The outcome of both enquiries was the same although the language in which it was expressed was somewhat different. This was that the statistical techniques used to produce the reconstructions were wrong and that the curve itself was without merit. In other words the only reconstruction that demonstrated a direct link between carbon dioxide and global temperature was wrong. Not politically wrong but scientifically in error. The statistics used for it were simply incorrectly applied.
Despite the devastating criticism of these two enquiries, the original flawed papers have not been withdrawn and the HS curve is still trotted out as ‘proof’ that the science is over.
This does not mean that the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warmimg is wrong, but it severly undermines the current evidence that says that the science is proven.
By the way, the comments from David Gregory that he found the Wegman Report comments about the ‘interconnectedness’ of the climate scientists to be strange, is misleading. The nature of much of the climate science in this area make it appear that there are many independant scientific studies supporting specific conclusions when in fact many of these studies, when examined in detail are interconnected using the same data sets with overlapping authorships and where there appears to be a somewhat cosy relationship in the peer review procedures.
I think a previous poster pointed out that this major controversy in climate science has never been discussed on the BBC, although David Gregory is reasonably well informed on the subject. Perhaps he would like to tell us why the BBC has not covered the story.
Bryan | 13.12.07 – 11:00 pm:
Superb summary of all that is truly wrong with the world’s most influential and inappropriately trusted newscaster.
ARTHUR DENT: Good points, good post.
“We are also fighting against misinformation. I heard this on the BBC World Service 1pm today.
Quote:
“The difference between the Constitution and this Treaty is like the difference between a human and a mouse. Their genes are 95% the same but it is the 5% that makes all the difference.”
And the BBC runs educational services? Greg”
Posted on Eureferendum.
Andy: I don’t pretend I know everything because I have a PhD. I pretend to know everything because I’m on TV. 😉
And I agree about you point about the third world. It’s complex and airfreighting flowers in from Africa is much better for the environment than growing them here. I’m trying to set up a story with David Austin to just this effect.
joe bonanno: I agree. (see also Godwin’s Law)
Bryan: So what could be more British than the Proms, the Archers, the Great British Village Show, Cranford and the wonderful Midlands Today calender for 2008 of great Midlands walks (download here http://www.bbc.co.uk/midlandstoday/content/articles/2007/12/13/midlands_walks_calendar_feature.shtml)
I’m sorry I won’t take accusations of the Corporation being anti-British from a website where many posters are foreigners.
😉
Arthur Dent: I’m glad you are an objective scientist. I’d consider myself one too. Otherwise what would be the point? But you do seem to be under a misapprehension about this (blinking!) graph. It isn’t the result of just one person’s research and it hasn’t been debunked. It may have been subjected to some very strong challenges (which is good) and I don’t have much time for “posterboy” science that ends up on t-shirts… but the graph (slightly refined) is still there.
As is so much more.
Not to say down the line it might all change, but as I’ve said before you can say that about any area in science.
If the graph is flawed, it won’t make the current state of climate science go away. Just as issues about thickening sea ice, medieval warm periods and re-ordering of America’s hottest years doesn’t bring the whole thing crashing down either.
David Gregory (BBC) | 13.12.07 – 9:00 pm | #
David
If your faith is so strong that no amount of contrary evidence will dent it, all I can say is – Halleluja brother you got religion!
Would you like to comment on this article and, particularly, the qualifications of the 100 signatories – all experts, including several IPCC signatories – who don’t share your certainty.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=164002
Since when has science been about consensus? The only certain thing one can say about science is,looking back,”They believed what”?
It should also be made clear that this particular “science” is,in reality a computer model of a hypothetical future climate.Science can’t even get tomorrows weather right.
Perhaps some our scientists should brush up on “climate change”.
A lengthy report on Bali
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7141660.stm
but no room for this
Over 100 Prominent Scientists Warn UN: Attempting To Control Climate Is ‘Futile’
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued increasingly alarming conclusions about the climatic influences of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2), a non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis. While we understand the evidence that has led them to view CO2 emissions as harmful, the IPCC’s conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/963
JRSPIHG: You see the thing I’m interested in reporting is science. That’s it. A letter in the a newspaper is a letter in a newspaper. Interesting bunch of signatories though, interesting newspaper if we’re honest.
Peter (UK): Damn, I should put “they can’t even predict the weather tomorrow” in my FAQ. You’re better than that.
Will: Look… here’s the thing. If you all want to be part of some amazing group feedback session where you keep posting the same stories, ideas and links and each folds back on the other, again and again… than that’s fine. But it’s not science.
It’s Melanie Phillip’s blog.
R.I.P BRITAIN
Will: The idea that we can control climate change is based on the simplistic view that ALL climate change is man made.
Could we stop the last ice age? Of course not.
What the climate change nutters don’t get is that even if we stopped ALL our CO2 output (we’d even have to stop breathing of course) the planet still pumps out billions of tons of CO2. Climate change has many causes, stopping one potential source is simply diverting attention away from the fact that we can’t control the planet or what the planet does.
Humans have survived because we can adapt and that is what we need to be doing now. Yet our crappy politicians are intent on building millions of more houses on flood land where they won’t get insurance. Not only that, shouldn’t all houses now be designed to be flood resistant as other Countries insist? Would that not be a better thing to do than spending billions of pounds on pointless Carbon footprint crap?
Martin: You build the ark, I’ll get the animals 😉
Greggers old chap,I am aware that a physics Phd is a very narrow field,it isn’t all of science,it isn’t even a fraction of science.
Now if you really want to be a science correspondent why not look into the quality of the equipment used to measure temperature? You could even ramp up some expenses visiting the sites where such equipment is situated.
Then perhaps you could do some geology or even some paleontology.
Oh yes,do the world a favour,let them know that polar bears have been known to swim over a hundred miles or more.
Peter (UK) Seriously, I must do that FAQ. Are you talking about Urban Heat Islands? Honestly, Google is your friend.
No Greggers ,go and inspect monitoring sites in some of the less salubrious parts of the world.How many are there,what is the quality,what is the standard of those taking measurements.
You are a science correspondent,do some science.
David Gregory:
“So what could be more British than the Proms, the Archers, the Great British Village Show, Cranford and the wonderful Midlands Today calender for 2008 of great Midlands walks”
Oh god David, I despair. These may be some cosy home counties middle class ideals of Britishness, but to most of us living in modern times they mean absolutely bugger all.
You do come off sounding a bit Joyce Grenfall at times but these examples really take the biscuit.
Maybe you won’t take accusations of the Corporation being anti-British from a website where many posters are foreigners, but you don’t have to. Go and stand in any suburban street in Birmingham and ask anyone one Britishness represents.
If ONE person says the Archers, I’ll happily take a gun to my head.
And theirs for that matter.
“The Archers” – anything to do with Robin Hood?
On the day that the EU Treaty is signed, four out of five Question Time panellists are Europhiles
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2007/12/on-the-day-that.html
Another of those 9/11 question time specials?
A nice balanced panel on Al-Beeb’s Question Time last night. Piers Moron (left wing), Hazel Blears (left wing), Charles Kennedy (left wing), Chris Patten (left wing)and Kirstie Allsop (on Cameron’s panel for housing, but views otherwise unknown).
Champagne
As soon as I clocked Piers ‘Morgan’ Moron on QT my heart sank and I switched off. This clip of him falling off his Segway is more entertaining:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=479271&in_page_id=1770
He criticised Bush for falling off the same. Chortle! So there is such a thing as karma…
Peter (UK): I’m struggling to understand your point. Do you have an image of me turning up in some dusty African location to find a temperature station next to an air-conditioning unit? (Not that that hasn’t happened in the US of course!)
You know it doesn’t quite work like that don’t you?
Reg: Don’t do that! 😉
John Reith
“They certainly did not find the BBC was biased against Israel. In fact, they made recommendations to secure a fairer hearing for the Palestinians.
John Reith | 13.12.07 – 4:50 pm | #
Please tell me I’m not in a Kafka nightmare.
I had a look at that report by the Independent Panel, chaired by Sir Quentin Thomas, online.
It started with a detailed explanation that the BBC had reporters here there and everywhere, so the methodology was scrupulously even-handed.
This is thorough, I thought. Silly me.
Then, as Alan Partridge would say, came the bombshell.
” 2.3 There is another point about the nature of the conflict: namely that the two sides are not on equal terms. Indeed it is arguable that the most obvious and important feature of the present situation is its asymmetry. This is not a question of the respective merits of the two sides. It is simply a matter of fact that Israel is a functioning state with established democratic institutions, an advanced economy and a highly effective diplomatic, defence and intelligence capability.
None of this is true of the Palestinian side. (This point is not invalidated by the fact that the Palestinians recently conducted elections widely accepted to have been free and fair.) ”
The asymmetrical nature of the conflict? I suppose they were relying on
“d) the resource of an experienced and senior correspondent in the Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen;”
for the history of the conflict.
The venerable arbitrators seemingly work from the premise that Israel is strong and powerful while the Palestinians are tiny, weak but valiant. To them mighty Israel is pitted against the Palestinians who stand alone and helpless. This prism ignores Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, etc. etc. and sees the role of the surrounding Arab countries as irrelevant, with Islam having nothing whatsoever to do with the Palestinians and their antipathy to the Jews.
As for those democratic elections, why, they had the free choice of which party to elect, didn’t they? Yes, fortunately for Gazans they could choose either Fatah or Hamas. Nice.
Our conclusion after this investigation your honour, is that the BBC is completely impartial in their reporting of the conflict between the Zionist apartheid Israeli oppressors versus the plaintiff, the poor innocent Palestinian children and babies armed only with stones and a catapult. Yes, completely impartial.
I’m glad you are an objective scientist. I’d consider myself one too. Otherwise what would be the point? But you do seem to be under a misapprehension about this (blinking!) graph. It isn’t the result of just one person’s research and it hasn’t been debunked. It may have been subjected to some very strong challenges (which is good) and I don’t have much time for “posterboy” science that ends up on t-shirts… but the graph (slightly refined) is still there.
Dr Gregory I do not expect you to be an expert in climate science, but I would expect you to be at least familiar with the current controversy not a simple mouthpiece for propaganda.
This graph is not the work of one person – I agree, the Mann Reconstruction was the work of a team of people, however despite claims to the contrary there has been no independent verification of the work. That is what Wegman’s criticism about ‘friends’ was about.
It has not been ‘debunked’ merely challenged. The term debunked should not be in a scientists vocabulary, such a perjorative term is typical of those at the extremes of the discussion. But I agree it hasn’t been debunked it has been shown to be incorrect. On Page 4 of Wegman et.al. 2006 they conclude
“Overall, our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.” They further go on to say in relation to the major criticisms by others of the HS curve that ” “In general, we find the criticisms by MM03, MM05a and MM05b to be valid and their arguments to be compelling. We were able to reproduce their results and offer both theoretical explanations(Appendix A) and simulations to verify that their observations were correct.”
The graph is still out there Indeed it is, largely because organisations like the BBC have failed to report the issue honestly
It looks to me as if you have never read either of the actual reports but merely accepted the views of its critics at face value.
Here is the Today programme’s Listen again page:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/
We have the usual Beeboid features such as:
“0714 Is the average American coming to terms with the challenge of climate change?”
But you will notice that something is missing from the list. Astonishing really, that Gordon Brown’s bizarre and humiliating behaviour yesterday with regard to the Lisbon signing ceremony is not discussed at length. Whatever your views on Europe, Brown’s behaviour was far short of that expected of a Prime Minister of this country. So why was our Dear Leader given a free pass by the Today team?
Indeed there was a passing reference to Brown’s behaviour during the newspaper headline review at around 7.35am. Humphreys and Naughtie were unsure what to say – there must be some explanation for our Dear Leader’s behaviour was coursing through their Beeboid neurones as they tried to make sense of it.
So what do they do? They go from the sublime to the ridiculous by going into this:
“7.40 A spoof short film featuring the President’s dogs is making its festive return in America.”
Much sniggering and sneering goes on here, and the bonus for the Beeboids is that Tony Blair is in the film! Ha! There you have it. Naughtie even crows about how they have linked to the film on the Today website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/
and scroll down.
But I wasn’t sniggering and sneering. Whilst Naughtie was wetting his pants about George Bush’s dogs and American National Parks, I was instead pondering about how our so-called radio station of “intelligent speech” felt unable to provide proper coverage of our Prime Minister’s insulting and bizarre behaviour on the world stage.
BBC clueless in Musa Qala, Afghanistan. Compare and contrast the BBC report with the ABC report. Note also that the BBC reporter is reporting from Kabul while the ABC reporter is in Musa Qala.
We pay the BBC billions of pounds to have a clueless reporter report on one of the most important and major operations in Afghanistan in years.
BBC report is here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7135850.stm
ABC report is here:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/12/exclusive-eyewi.html
My take is here:
http://ussneverdock.blogspot.com/2007/12/afghanistan-bbc-clueless-about-musa.html
Heresy!
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=164002
Call themselves scientists? Check their bank accounts for secret payments from Mobil or Dick Cheney!
However, I’m sure that the Inquisition, with fanatical inquisitors such as Archbishop Harrabin will ensure that this type of dangerous thinking is suppressed.
Principally by not mentioning it….
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7143613.stm
David Gregory
“You see the thing I’m interested in reporting is science. That’s it. A letter in the a newspaper is a letter in a newspaper. Interesting bunch of signatories though, interesting newspaper if we’re honest”.
Somewhat disingenuous David, you know or should know that the letter was sent to the head of the UN and every head of state, and was then reported in many places but not the BBC.
They are also not just interesting signatories but arguably some of the worlds top scientists on climate and many have contributed to IPCC reports.
For example you give plenty of air time to Al Gore and he talks about 20 feet(6 metre)sea level rise, in his film. The IPCC talk about 43cm rise by 2100 and Professor Axel Morner, possibly the worlds top expert in sea level said recently that the IPCC had cherry picked certain tide gauges to even get to that.
But you only report the science (fiction).
Pigs on the runway ready to roll!
The third story in on the 8 am R4 news this morning was about a report on rampant steroid use in baseball in America. Not sure why, given that the reporter pointed out that baseball is of no interest to the rest of the world. The only reason that comes to mind is that it presented an opportunity for the Beeb to sneer cynically at an American institution. Or maybe it was just a quiet news day.
This was preceded by an adverisement for an upcoming Beeb investigation on how the security services in this country are alienating muslims by trying to recruit them, and followed by some inevitable bush-trashing re climate change. Al compeltely objective of course.
will, sorry I missed your earlier of same story! Or should that be non-story in BBC coverage?
I hope the BBC is aware of the increasing, official pro-European Union propaganda which will be coming the UK, and that the BBC will counteract it:
” EU Launches Propaganda Radio ”
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2769
If the graph is flawed, it won’t make the current state of climate science go away. Just as issues about thickening sea ice, medieval warm periods and re-ordering of America’s hottest years doesn’t bring the whole thing crashing down either.
David Gregory (BBC) | 13.12.07 – 9:00 pm | #
David, I think you’re being a bit disingenuous here. I don’t think there is much dispute that we are in a warming period, but what many dispute is the assertion that the warming period is the most intense in history, and that it is down to human activity.
We were told that the Hockey Stick graph proved that we were suffering from unprecedented global warming, but the Hockey Stick graph was proven to be flawed – in short it rewrote history to make its point.
We were told that 7 out of the 10 warmest years have occurred since the 1990s as proof that we are suffering from unprecedented global warming. This has also been shown to be false, at least in some areas.
We were told that ice melting at unprecendented rates was proof that we are suffering from unprecedented global warming, yet the Antarctic ice is increasing in many parts.
We were told that tropical storms and hurricanes would be far more prevalent as years go on, to the point were Al Gore used Katrina as proof that we are suffering from unprecedented global warming. 2007 was the quietest hurricane season for nearly 2 decades.
Yet still they trot out these “facts” as if they were still, well, fact!! Surely you can understand why we feel that something doesn’t add up here. The Earth has been warming, that is a fact, but when so many reasons we are given that we are suffering from unprecedented global warming seem to fall flat on their face, surely we are right to be sceptical?
One final point. Listening to News at 10 last night, America was blamed for holding up the latest climate talks. This is probably fair. However, when it comes to walking the walk rather than talking the talk, America has been leading the way, reducing its carbon emissions in 2006. The EU countries, hysterical about America’s obstruction here, have failed to do this, many quite spectacularly. Surely this deserved a mention in the interests of balance?
Climate talks ‘heading to deal’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7143810.stm
“The US is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, and most parties recognise that climate change talks without it would be meaningless.”
I thought it was established the the US was not the “world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses” any more?
Brown and Lisbon is now seventh story on Politics page!!
Well done Pravada!
An appeal to the mods.
Someone calling themself ‘John Reith’ and another ‘John Reith spins in his grave’ considering the nature of this blog and its relationship to the BBc I fully understand.
There have been several Jonathans posting on this site from time to time, they take the effort to make it clear by their name that they are different.
However the recent ‘pounce and a tale of one chip’ in addition to the long standing excellent poster ‘pounce’ is most disturbing when other posters actually start replying to this person calling them pounce.
Unless it is a name very specifically related to the BBC can we not have names that are clearly just a ‘clever’ (not so really) take on existing posters names. It is confusing, unfunny and makes everything less clear not more.
David Gregory
How do you do the “blush” smiley?
“Peter (UK): I’m struggling to understand your point.”
An degree in English might have been more use to you.
“Do you have an image of me turning up in some dusty African location to find a temperature station next to an air-conditioning unit? (Not that that hasn’t happened in the US of course!)”
Yes, why not,worked wonders for Attenborough.
Of course it works like that,there is an enormous amount of sloppy or doctrinaire work done in the name of science.As you admit above,mistakes are made.These are computer models we are talking about,garbage in garbage out.
The third story in on the 8 am R4 news this morning was about a report on rampant steroid use in baseball in America.
On the World Service last night, this was no1, presumably the world’s top news event.
The 2nd story was New Jersey abolishing the death penalty.
The EU events didn’t warrant a mention. The WS news is so US-centric, but US-hating that it could be put out by Al Franken.
from another NEWT GINGRICH speech:-
….” it is vital to place the Patraeus Report in its correct context. It is a campaign report about a specific campaign. Iraq is a campaign in a larger war just as Afghanistan is a campaign in a larger war…
“Yet, that absence of context and framework is exactly where the American political and news media system are now operating.”
Would Newt Gingrich’s criticisms have validity if applied to the British media, including the BBC?
” What If? An Alternative History of the War since 9/11 ” ( by Newt Gingrich ).
http://www.americansolutions.com/blog/Read.aspx?guid=a7194460-7659-435c-af7e-4c060b60ab34
PeterUK
Thats my experience with PhDs and a lot of so-called scientists – they prefer navel gazing and big big theories over getting their hands dirty on real data.
The difference between engineers and scientists? The engineers get the rocket to the moon, while scientists go “ooh look at that” with the moon samples!
Rejoice,Gordon Brown has signed the Treaty,since this effectively abolishes Britain there is no longer a need for a British Broadcasting Corporation.
Be clean and green,reduce your carbon foot print,recycle your television.
Is there a chance we might have come to the end of the bbc fakery?
http://www.mirror.co.uk/showbiz/2007/12/14/lotto-balls-up-89520-20248556/
This is well beyond a joke.
For the BBC, and trying to assist it in getting the WAR ‘in context’, (see 12:47 pm Comment above):
“Failed London, Glasgow Attacks Linked to Al Qaeda in Iraq”
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/11835
“An degree in English might have been more use to you.”
irony 🙂
At last the BBC break their silence:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7144240.stm
“No 10 dismisses EU treaty ‘fuss'”
In a million years, do you think this is how the BBC would treat the issue if we were talking about a Conservative Prime Minister?