If there is one faith the BBC does follow, it is that of AGW. Biased BBC contributor Alan comments… “BBC getting very excited:
‘CO2 ‘drove end to last ice age’
A new, detailed record of past climate change provides compelling evidence that the last ice age was ended by a rise in temperature driven by an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. The finding is based on a very broad range of data, including even the shells of ancient tiny ocean animals.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17611404
However the Nature article the BBC quote also trumpets the headline:
‘Global warming preceded by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations during the last deglaciation’
but look at this in the small print:
‘The role and relative importance of CO2 in producing these climate changes remains unclear, however, in part because the ice-core deuterium record reflects local rather than global temperature.’
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7392/full/nature10915.html
But what drove the temperature change and release of CO2? Hidden way down the BBC report we find out it was the change in Earth orbit and the increase in power of the Suns rays. So global warming was in fact driven by the sun.
CO2 may have added to it….and we know that global warming preceded CO2 release by up to 800 years as even Phil Jones from the CRU admits….but the initiator was solar power.
Looks like BBC and Nature still pulling wool over our eyes.
Those bloody dinosaurs!! Their huge filthy industry, driving everywhere in their gas-guzzling 4x4s, flying all over the world. No wonder they became extinct.
“Dr Shakun’s team has now constructed a narrative to explain both what was happening on Antarctica and what was happening globally:
1) This starts with a subtle change in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun known as a Milankovitch “wobble”, which increases the amount of light reaching northern latitudes and triggers the collapse of the hemisphere’s great ice sheets
2) This in turn produces vast amounts of fresh water that enter the North Atlantic to upset ocean circulation
3) Heat at the equator that would normally be distributed northwards then backs up, raising temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere
4) This initiates further changes to atmospheric and ocean circulation, resulting in the Southern Ocean releasing CO2 from its waters
5) The rise in CO2 sets in train a global rise in temperature that pulls the whole Earth out of its glaciated state”
All perfectly reasonable, up until point 5), which is pure supposition. This is the classic “All dogs have four legs; my cat has four legs; my cat is a dog” argument much loved by AGW scaremongers. On the one hand the researchers say “Rising CO2 at the end of the ice age had a huge effect on global climate”, yet, as DV points out, at the beginning of the Nature article they say “The role and relative importance of CO2 in producing these climate changes remains unclear”. It’s going to take a lot more than this sort of woolly thinking to convince me that we are all going to fry.
The ‘small print’ you quote is actually the second sentence in the original abstract. And the quote in context refersto the level of knowledge about this period prior to this study (so when the ice core studies showed a correlation rather than a lag). This study argues for and provides evidence to show there was a lag.
I am sure it will spark a lot of debate and it is of course open to refutation, as is all good science. But I fear your brief counter hypothesis is unlikely to form part of this process.
Point taken, but the problem I have with the BBC article is that it is written from only one side of the argument. An impartial science correspondent would question the 5 point narrative (above). For example, points 1) and 3) seem to indicate that the reason for the rise in temperature was due primarily to the Milankovitch “wobble”, and the researchers themselves state that they are unclear about the role and importance of CO2, so where is the evidence that CO2 is the primary cause, rather than a by-product of the change? The BBC article reads like what it is – a propaganda piece. I’m all for rational debate on this issue, the problem is that the BBC is not.
Point taken here too. ‘compelling’ is ott.
I consider myself properly sceptical on agw. Both sides leap on quite heavily nuanced and caveated science to ‘prove’ or bolster their view. This happens on all sides and has poisoned a proper consideration of the evidence. What I really don’t like are conspiracy theories which see scientists being part of a grand conspiracy.
We all need to keep an open mind about the evidence.
Is the BBC guilty of being partisan? Mildly, imv, but then the evidence as it stands leans significantly towards the idea that we are having an impact on the climate and that this has the potential to have a serious impact on the way we live.
I agree 100% with your first paragraph. There is far too much vitriol dished out whenever climate change is debated, and I belong to the “open mind” school. I just wish the BBC did too.
Your second paragraph, however, is where our views diverge. Even if the evidence does lean towards the AGW stance in this debate (and I don’t beleive that it does), there’s no excuse for the BBC not to give other viewpoints an airing. There’s a huge problem with relying on “consensus” in science. New research can change the consensus almost overnight (e.g the two Australian researchers who discovered that stomach ulcers were not caused by stress, but by a bacterium). That’s why “the science” is never “settled” – but try telling that to the BBC. I don’t see how shutting down the debate by not allowing opposing views can possibly be described as being “mildly” partisan.
Yes quite rught about ‘consensus science.’ Just look where the concensus on eugenics led.
The CRU emails revealed that suspicion of a conspiracy among scientists is more than a conspiracy theory.
And even Al Gore, the first recipient of the Nobel Prize for Not Being George Bush, has admitted that CO2 isn’t the main cause of global warming.
Exactly. Somebody please explain the ambiguity in ‘hide the decline’.
Or in calls to delete emails and data, or in Michael Mann’s admission that he can’t reproduce his own results.
Dandy,
Is that because scientists are all pure and unwordly devotees and pursuers of truth at all and any price, that they couldn’t possibly have any other position, motive or investment in a course of action? And do these purist selfless scientists exist in one of their very own special clean laboratories (I was going to say clean environments but the latter might give rise to ambiguity in this context) untainted by any contact with or involvement in any other social, political or financial systems that might affect their purist pursuits?
Great title btw. Mr Vance is a very talented sub.
I am amazed that the Beeboids still seem to think we believe a word they say. On a subject such as AGW, their institutional bias is clear and unmistakable, and I automatically discount it. Did the editors of Pravda think the proles really believed their propaganda, or were they as deluded as the Beeboids I wonder?
Their policy is simple.
All “science” that seems to demonstrate or can be twisted to show that unless we “decarbonise” we are all going to die is breathlessly publicised. Anything else is ignored.
Courtesy of Richard “Impartiality” Black.
What Milankovitch “wobble”?
Using the word “wobble”, the inference is that this is random and unpredictable. It is though a predictable cycle, happening since dot, with minor variations, which themselves are predictable.
But there is no scope for control and tax, if the source of climate change is the Milankovitch cycle.
Hmmm….Stirred but not Shakun by this new ‘evidence’.
Firstly this is a rehash of a previous attempt by Shakum to say exactly the same thing in 2009:
Click to access Shakun_Carlson_QSR_2010.pdf
Second read this for just how much science Shakun relies on when push comes to shove:
‘A significant increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, rather than changes to the Earth’s orbit, was likely the main cause of global warming that ended the last ice age, a new study has found.
“The end of an ice age — you have a sense in your bones for what that means,” said Jeremy Shakun.’
“It really leaves you thinking that CO2 was the big driver for global warming at the end of the last ice age,” Shakun said.’
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/04/05/environment-climate-co2-ice-age-end.html?cmp=rss
‘A sense in your bones….it really leaves you thinking…’
Is it voodoo magic or science that we’re looking at?
There is not one single piece of proof anywhere that allows any scientist to state that CO2 is the driver of AGW.
However there is proof that the sun drives climate change…and this research by Shakun clearly states that this is so….and then attempts to dismiss that and claim the resultant CO2 rise is the main cause.
If you were stabbed by a knife and bled to death …would the cause be the knife or just the bleeding?
If You hadn’t been stabbed you wouldn’t bleed….if the sun didn’t heat up the planet there wouldn’t be a rise in CO2…..and just because there is a rise in CO2 there is no correlation between that and further temperature rises…..as is well known….the earth’s temperature rose well before CO2 was released.
Pick the bones outof that.
Goodness. Paddy power has just stopped taking bets on the next winner of the Nobel Prize.
Possibly the greatest reason for the objection to the BBC’s Warmist agenda is that a main driving force behind Warmism is a kind of totalitarianism. Richard Black’s recent blogpost and his recent activity noticed by Jo Nova, is just the latest proof of their desire to control people’s lives and overrule national sovereignty.
A few years back when people here would debate David Gregory on this issue, we kept telling him that under the surface of the Green sensibility was always a neo-Marxist desire to force everyone to reduce consumption, commerce, and lifestyle down to some Walden Pond-like utopia. He would dismiss that by saying there’s obviously something going on and that was no reason to avoid taking precautions.
Time and time again we discover that in fact the desire to control is the driving factor behind the message. This facet is never examined by the BBC. And no wonder.
The Medieval Warm Period peaked 800 years ago. So people on this site may now understand why Mensa members got a bit angry with the BBC.
This is an extract from the complaint to the BBC by the Space special interest group of Mensa.
I have with the help of two other members reviewed the “Background and Considerations Note”. We have found seven errors and points to be considered.
My original complaint about “Hot Planet” was “Ice Core data shows that CO2 levels rise about 800 years after Global temperatures rise, and therefore this fact makes the whole Documentary misleading and biased“.
1/ The BBC seems to agree with me that astronomical events cause the warming and that CO2 levels increase about 800 years later (Mudelsee, 2001). But this correlation was not shown VISUALLY in the program. I suggest this was because it would have been seen by the Viewer and the Trust to contradict the context of the programme making it appear to be biased and misleading. We would prefer that Trust members saw the evidence visually rather than have a Kafkaesque argument with Professor Cox about the accuracy of our verbal interpretation of the facts. The BBC Trust must understand that there are alternative sources of information such as the Internet, Books and some Semi-knowledgeable Press Journalists who better inform the public about these scientific details than the BBC. This giving the impression that since the BBC was forced by politicians to sack staff for telling the truth about weapons of mass destruction, the BBC is also being manipulated by politicians to lie about Climate Change by only giving time to science and scientists who say what they want to hear.
2/ Professor Cox says “There is strong evidence for CO2 induced warming in the ice-core record”. If this strong evidence is an assumption, and the strong evidence that this is not the case is scientific proof, then he is still in our opinion committing scientific fraud. He does not mention Water Vapour which makes up 90 percent of the Greenhouse Effect. As the Water vapour induced Greenhouse Effect changes instantaneously with temperature and with 93 percent of the correlated CO2 level changes following 800 years later, we are not aware of any statistical evidence from ice core data for CO2 changing the Greenhouse Effect temperature separate from Water vapour and other greenhouse gases as Professor Cox suggests. We would welcome this information as it would add to our findings from Spectroscopy, Atmospheric chambers and the Atmosphere of Mars in calibrating CO2 forcing. As there is no mention of this scientific data by the IPCC, it suggests it confirms our findings from the above, that CO2 forcing is almost an irrelevance. We do not dispute that CO2 has a significant effect on the Greenhouse Effect, but although temperature has a significant effect on changing levels of CO2, there is no evidence that changes in CO2 levels have any significant effect on changing temperature, “Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide” (Robinson, Robinson & Soon, 2007) in fact there is proof from Spectroscopy, Atmospheric Chambers and the Atmosphere of Mars showing that the reason for this is the saturated absorption of Solar Radiation by CO2, the correlation between CO2 and temperature as shown would not be possible if this were not so.
Facts? Science? Impartiality? Nope, not relevant to our agenda.
Ah , global warming!
Down here, there`s a hosepipe ban apparently.
I`d hate to imagine how many endangered species will suffer as the Olympic family choose to fill the blasted swimming pools and diving arenas for the coming jamborees of guns and drugs out East London way.
100 metres paddle this year at best surely…and plenty broken necks as they dive off the board into a couple of inches of sludge.
Gaia deserves no compromise with the aquifers…let`s see Harrabin and the BBC push this wonderful water-saving scheme of mine!
Yes it’s a damn shame as the car needs a good wash. Well I say ‘needs’; ‘needed’ would be closer to the mark as the heavy rain last night did most of the job.
Anyway, thanks to TPTB, as once again at the first mention of a hose pipe ban the heavens open … 🙂
We can’t really give credence to what the BBC has to say about AGW, and it’s a travesty we can’t…
One aspect of the AGW lobby (in which BBC-‘greenie’ is a propaganda player), which is rarely made explicit, is the funding of it all.
“Follow the money. The morality of green funding.”
by Jonathan Bracey-Gibbon.
(4 page article.)
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/1069/follow_the_money_the_morality_of_green_funding/page/1#article_content_top