The BBC trust’s propaganda campaign about climate change is taking shape. Alison Hastings, chair of the editorial standards committee, it will be recalled, has decreed – on the authority of IPCC diktats – that the views of dissenters will not be covered. Indoctrinated BBC acolyte Jennifer Carpenter is hot on the case. She reports this preposterous paper about species “fleeing faster than previously thought” to the poles and up mountains as if it were gospel truth; it’s part of the creed. This is a highlight from Ms Carpenter’s breathless diatribe:
Animals like the British comma butterfly, for example, has (sic) moved 220km northward from central England to southern Scotland in the last two decades.
She doesn’t report the rather key information that the author, Chris Thomas, a York University so-called “academic”, has been ploughing his alarmist furrow for a decade and that he’s got form as a fantasist. His technique of using Species-Area Relationship (SAR)to measure what is happening to individual animal types was comprehensively rubbished – nay, eviscerated – in this paper published by the Royal Society. Basically, the writer, Owen T.Lewis, points out that the methodology is so flawed and lacking in vital data that it’s got more holes than a colander. More on why Mr Thomas’s work isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on here from the excellent Donna Laframboise. But, of course, Ms Carpenter doesn’t care. She’s pursuing the corporation’s climate change agenda, so stuff the facts. It’s the message that counts. Expect more of the same when Richard Black returns from his holidays.
Perhaps these species are actually fleeing from aliens.
The problem here is the use of ‘meta-analysis’ not hard science.
Not that the BBC reporter would either know or care given the ‘policy’
Meta data and meta analysis? Just another way of describing mumbo jombo made up pseudo science. Just start with a conclusion and make up evidence to support it. Lysenko would be proud.
Excellent. I haver referred Ms. Laframboise’s article, with all its references, to the BBC Complaints department, asking them to justify the omission of the fact that the pqaper has been roundly trashed. I don’t expect a reply, despite asking for one.
Has the paper been roundly trashed? All I’m seeing here is links to criticisms of a 2004 paper – nothing about the actual paper in question.
Also, Robin, if you’re going to attempt to snippily correct other people’s grammar, you should know that [sic] belongs in square brackets.
Hm…That would be [[sic]], then. Tautologous brackets!
Donna Laframboise put it best
‘In reality, this research hasn’t even been read by the larger scientific community yet – never mind withstood its collective scrutiny’
So by pushing another unverified report from a individual whose last work [same subject] Daniel Botkin one of the pre-eminent ecologists of the 20th century said was,
“the worst paper I have ever read in a major scientific journal.”
The BBC stick themselves up for a deserved kicking until they can back up this fluff piece !
Thanks as ever Robin!
Any idea where Ben Goldacre and the “More or Less” team on Radio 4 are with all this?
Has Goldacre a blind spot?…is Harford neutered when it comes to these abuses of science and the methods of objective enquiry?
Let me know-I`m past listening to most others but you, Booker and North on a good day!
Ben Goldacre is a phony. He’s great attacking obvious targets that are safe to mock and ridicule, but when it comes to Climate he shits himself. Too many Guardianistas with their snoughts in the Climate trough, so he wimps out. Cowardly self-serving tosser.
Knew his dad Dr Michael Goldacre, very clever Director of Public Health and Oxford Epidemeologist. Ultra survivor in the same mould. IQ of 200 but without any principle that endangered his comfortable life inside the establishment.
Life father like son.
In Winter there is no Solar input at the North Pole. As the Earths cloud albedo increases in a Hale Magnetic Solar Cycle cooling phase, average temperature at the north pole should rises as the heat input is trapped by an increase in clouds. So Cosmoclimatology, the decadal changes in the Earths cloud albedo and the CERN CLOUD Experiment is the science that you will hear about on the BBC this coming Winter.