Hat tip to Millie Tant in the comments for drawing our attention to Jenni Murray’s interview with mezzo-soprano Christine Rice on Thursday’s Woman’s Hour. At one point Dame Jenni asked Rice about her pre-singing career researching “global warming”, and I don’t think the response was quite what was expected. The singer recounted her disillusionment with the field of climate change studies, which she described as “the buzz subject… with a lot of money”:
I was amazed really by the inadequacy of what we had, because we’re talking about climate change which is over tens of thousands of years as opposed to the twenty years of data that we had. So in a way we were putting out a lot of ideas and not really having concrete scientific research to support it, and I suppose at that point I did lose a little bit of my spark, thinking well I could propose an idea and I could probably draft a thesis that would support it and yet I wouldn’t really convince myself necessarily.
At this point Murray changed the subject.
It would be fascinating to know how many other people have turned their backs on a career in science because they didn’t want to play the climate change game. The wilful lack of curiosity displayed by Murray suggests it’s not the sort of investigation that would interest the BBC though.
Brilliant.
And I hear that teachers avoid teaching AGW like the plague – ‘cos they don’t believe in it.
Yeah, but it’s raining in July, surely this means that the science is settled!
I need to fill my car up later. As I watch the price of the sale spiral upwards, I like to wallow in guilt and ask the nearest black man on the forecourt to beat me repeatedly with a stick whilst I shout “REMIND ME OF THE SLAVE TRADE, REMIND ME OF THE SLAVE TRADE!”
I find it’s the only way that I can rid myself of this all-consuming sense of shame, if only for a minute or two.
No Proms invites for this fine lady then?
Singings more fun as Jenni says…imagine that will be enough to be the BBCs science correspondent once the EU have deemed Womans Hour to be sexist…one long Sheilas Wheels advert without the sublety or glamour…with of course no wheels either…a bandwagon on bricks!
Yes, she’s singing at the Proms tomorrow.
From the Radio 4 Programme information:
Mezzo-soprano Christine Rice has performed on opera stages and concert platforms around the world. But, this Sunday she faces a new challenge. She’s singing in Havergal Brian’s record breaking Symphony No. 1, ‘the Gothic’, which is being performed in the opening weekend of the BBC Proms. It’s also known as the ‘Symphony of a 1000’ reflecting the vast numbers required to perform in it and has earned a place in the Guinness book of Records under ‘Longest Symphony’.
Christine Rice joins Jenni to talk about preparations for the performance and how she combines being a mother to four young children with her busy career as a singer.
Christine Rice is performing in Havergal Brian’s Symphony No. 1 in D minor, ‘The Gothic’ on Sunday 17th July at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms.
More info about Christine Rice:
It says she is the daughter of a Chemistry don and is a Balliol graduate in Physics where she was doing her DPhil.
http://www.christinerice.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=93&Itemid=44
From interview with the Telegraph in 2007:
Rice’s musical career began in earnest after she got fed up with her DPhil research into reflected light from clouds.
“The project had some bearing on global warming, and for about six months, I thought I was on the verge of solving the world’s problems. But I felt very isolated, so I thought I’d take a year out and do something just for fun. I’d had a few casual singing lessons at Oxford and had really enjoyed performing in musicals there, so I thought I’d give it a bit more of a whirl.”
“I was totally amazed to be offered a place at the Royal Northern College of Music, which I loved so much that I stayed for four years and dropped the research altogether. My physics has turned very rusty now: Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything is pretty much my scientific level.”
That proves it: the Beeboid producer read that, and just assumed that Rice was a Warmist. It simply didn’t occur to anyone there that she wouldn’t be. So the question didn’t go over how they’d planned.
It didn’t seem to me that Jenni Murray was ‘swiftly trying to move things along’.
One thing that did strike me was, having not heard the old bird for quite some while, I’D never noticed her speak before with a north country accent. Hoping to avoid getting mugged by the homies ‘oop noff?
But she showed no further interest.
Apparently she’s from Barnsley. I hadn’t known that until it was mentioned on here last week.
Jenni won`t be alone in cultivating-or rediscovering-a northern accent, so they can be understood when they query their online shopping provisions when they dare not pop out to Aldis or Lidl.
Salford is not yet ready for the Waitrose Suchi Experience, but I`m told there is an eager anticipation of “employment opportunities” when the Beeboids feel the need to seek out the obligatory Columbian talcum powder nearby!
Spread the love-and the good vibes-from Ealing to Little Hulton!
I don’t think this constitutes bias but it may be worth sending the link to Richard Black to remind him that there are (at least) two sides to the person-made* global warming debat.
*This is a Woman’s Hour thread and therefore we should be ‘gender-sensitive’.
Of course, ‘person-made global warming debat’ should read ‘person-made global warming bun-fight’.
But unlike the producer who missed Ms Rice’s skepticism about global warming, the Independent simply edited the subject out…
“As the daughter of a chemistry lecturer, Rice thought a career in science would be the way forward, but she nurtured a passion for theatre and music. “All my siblings did science A-levels and I just wanted to be like them,” she recalls. “At that time, the late Eighties, unemployment was still high and the careers advice was to do sciences so that there’d be more likelihood of a job at the end of it.” She went to Balliol College, Oxford, for a degree in physics, and subsequently began a DPhil. But in the end, she decided, “It wasn’t really for me.”
Give that person a job in the Beeb!
Competent, principled and creative-able to spot brainwashing and indoctrinating bullshit?
Exactly characteristics that the BBC does NOT want in any of its brain dead ciphers!
My favourite bit was the bit where she said that “research” on global warming meant contacting a passing satellite-then hanging round for six months for the satellite to (in effect) confirm whatever it was that it had been programmed to confirm for you!
We now know why “climate change” is such a sought-after gig in science-none of that “investigative pioneering stuff needed!
Just the patience to stand around the water cooler until you gatehr convenient truths for the anti-nuclear/turbine twizzlers. Trebles all round!