Antarctica warmth ‘unusual, but not unique’
‘The analysis revealed that 15,000-12,000 years ago, the Antarctic Peninsula experienced significant warming, becoming about 1C warmer than today.
The region then cooled markedly around 2,500 years ago, and temperatures remained relatively stable. This co-incided with the late-Holocene development of ice shelves near JRI.
Around 600 years ago, the peninsula started to warm once more – slowly at first, but then, from around 1920, much more rapidly.
Changes in the Earth’s orbit and tilt produce natural fluctuations in climate.’
And look at the BBC’s favourite scientist, Steve jones…
‘Then, quite suddenly, less than 20,000 years ago, an interstadial began to run away with itself and, quite soon, the icy shroud was almost gone.
The collapse came when climate reached a tipping point
A slight increase in the Sun’s output was matched by the disruption of deep ocean currents caused by cold fresh water sinking from the melting floes above. As the glaciers began to dissolve, their waters roared towards the sea.‘
Climate Change advocates insist that the major cause of global warming is man made, probably CO2 they guess…still no proof!
They deride suggestions that the sun or other natural mechanism could produce the changes…and yet here they are admitting…the tilt and orbit of the earth, slight changes in the sun’s output have a major influence on climate.
The sun is around 93 million miles from the earth….a fair old distance…and yet step out into the sunlight from the shade and you instantly feel the difference….the tilt of the earth means that the poles are frozen because of reduced sunlight….and all from a warm body 93 million miles away.
Pretty powerful I’d say….and yet certain ideologues insist it can’t possibly have any effect..and they call themselves scientists.
I call them liars.
It’s all EU-subsidised propaganda to promote carbon offsets as a “good thing”.
Because the number of offsets is finite, the price of goods goes up through shortage as the population rises. It’s called the law of supply and demand.
The law also applies to EU-approved mass immigration, with too many workers competing wages downward.
The BBC is just fronting for the EU big business cartel, using the language of the left to fool the sheep.
It’s far bigger than that. Read Donna Laframboise’s excellent book
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/my-book/
and look up UN Agenda 21. All about eco-fascist world government. Sinister stuff.
Any fool talks to you about the Arctic circle warming, ask them to explain why Antarctica has record ice and is growing annually. They keep that pretty quiet, don’t they??
There are two distinct problems with this argument.
First, any argument that tries to use a regional phenomenon to disprove a global trend is dead in the water. Anthropogenic global warming theory does not predict uniform warming throughout the globe. We need to assess the balance of the evidence.
In the case of this particular region, there is actually very little data about the changes in the ice sheets. The growth in the East Antarctic ice sheet indicated by some evidence is so small, and the evidence itself so uncertain, the sheet may well be shrinking.
But even this weak piece of evidence may no longer be current. Some recent results from NASA’s GRACE experiment, measuring the gravitational pull of the massive Antarctic ice sheets, have indicated that on the whole, ice mass is being lost.
Second, ice-sheet thickening is not inconsistent with warming. Warmer climates tend toward more precipitation. The Antarctic is one of the most extreme deserts on the planet. As it warms, we would expect it to receive more snow. But even a whopping warming of 20 degrees — say, from -50 degrees C to -30 degrees C — would still leave it below freezing, so the snow wouldn’t melt. Thus, an increase in ice mass.
While on the subject of ice sheets: Greenland is also growing ice in the center, for the same reasons described above. But it is melting on the exterior regions, on the whole losing approximately 200 km3 of ice annually, doubled from just a decade ago. This is a huge amount compared to changes in the Antarctic — around three orders of magnitude larger. So in terms of sea-level rise, any potential mitigation due to East Antarctic Ice Sheet growth is wiped out many times over by Greenland’s melting.
“We need to assess the balance of the evidence”
No, we need people who are trustworthy to assess the balance and we don’t have that right now. We have a career-driven “team” who conceal their data, and a series of politically driven whitewashes exonerating the team , it is claimed, though none of these whitewashes ever claimed to look at the science.
Hell will freeze over before any of the alarmists get off the gravy train. I fear the preconditions of your argument, however well founded, are simply not present.
Incidentally, are you Sorros funded Earth Echo? I see a lot of blog-attack suddenly appearing from the well-known Sorros funded Wiki-editors Wm Conolley and Kim Dabblestein Peterson, full-time climate alarm activists. Anything to declare, or are you just a disinterested passer by?
A contrasting point of view has to be a conspiracy eh?
Or is it simple paranoia?
And why do alarmists always attack the person not the argument?
This antagonistic auto defence mechanism will only defeat you.
Now go and get a shave and polish your sandals.
If you don’t think climate change is real then get in a plane and fly to the artic. Take a tour with the newly developed tourism there and see for yourself. Or simply stay in your cosy little place and continue to rant out bile. You will find all the commercial proof needed in a reading of the international fishing reports on fish movements and changes in fish cycles and habitates. No twisting or lies here just a hard nosed reporting of what is happening to fish stocks and how independent commercial businesse are having to adjust. I don’t mind you being ignorant but please help everyone and keep your ignorance to yourself.
“can see says:
If you don’t think climate change is real then get in a plane and fly to the artic”
If you think you can “see” catastrophic global warming, one tenth of one percent a year, go to Specsavers. Warming my arse.
You should cherry pick the Atmosphere six miles up, at the equator, to see if there is any evidence for the AGW Theory. Otherwise you should suspect that you are surrounded by people who are talking balls. The Arctic has far more heat input from the tropics than the Antarctic, so Cosmoclimatology and the Hale magnetic cycle has more answers for the Arctic and the Antarctic regions. The only problem is that the warmists are blocking an attempt to have day by day real time data for the Earths Cloud Albedo, because they think this could demolish the AGW Theory by showing a daily correlation between Cosmic Rays and Cloud Albedo. If the BBC talked to people in Astronomy at Oxford they would get a less biased view of reality than the people at the UEA whose careers depend on this corrupt scam.
Reading the GWPF Report on Steve Jones. I do not think he went into the raw data like a research student would. The man is an idiot, a geneticist who calls scientists with more relevant knowledge in the subject, “Enemies of Science”. The BBC won’t invite scientists without a Guardianista mindset, to have a say on the telly. The AGW Theory is loosing the argument in the academic world because more and more scientists are looking into the theory and finding that the core facts such as the calibration of carbon dioxide warming on the Earths surface do not exist. It is not true that all scientists know all the facts behind the AGW Theory because otherwise they would have discovered that the facts where actually only assumptions. In the future, the BBC will have to face the consequences of actively promoting this corrupt scam, and from the rumours I am getting from Oxford, it will eventually come from the fellows of the Royal Society.
On the BBC national weather forecast (10.30 pm on BBC1) on, I think, Wednesday or Thursday night, the forecaster suddenly broke from his usual task of forecasting the next 24/48 hours of weather by fronting a map of the Arctic and telling us that the ice coverage of the Arctic is unprecedently small this year and will probably disappear in the coming years: to illustrate this news there was a satellite photo of the Arctic with a superimposed red line to show what ice coverage in a “normal” year looks like.
Now all this about the Arctic may or may not be true. Since this is the BBC, I suspect it’s either a downright lie or the “facts” as transmitted on the BBC are deliberately unnuanced by any scientific uncertainties. Whatever, it had nothing to do with UK weather in the succeeding next 48 hours nor was any effort made to connect this phenomenon with our national weather. It was out-and-out panic propaganda.
BTW Steve Jones knows a lot about snails. That’s his speciality after all. Aside from that he is a tendentious, prejudiced creep whose beliefs (concerning AGW and comprehensive education among others) chime well with BBC groupthink. I’m happy to defer to Jones on his knowledge of snails: on anything else he can take his place in the queue of right-on blow-hards.
BBC weather forecasters are not employed by the BBC. They are employees of the Met Office. Steve Jones is qualified to comment on climate matters because he has considerable expertise in interpreting quantitative data. Climate science is a discipline hugely reliant on reams of numerical data which few non-scientists are equipped to approach, let alone interpret. It is striking that the scientific establishment, not just those whose funding depends on it, is overwhelmingly in agreement with the anthropogenic warming hypothesis. And the premise of Alan’s original posting is childish: the fact that natural cycles have resulted in periodic climate alteration, often quite dramatic, is chapter one of climate science. Nobody disputes it. The point of the anthropogenic warming hypothesis is that the data indicates unexpected warming in addition to the background noise of such cyclical changes.
‘It is striking that the scientific establishment, not just those whose funding depends on it, is overwhelmingly in agreement with the anthropogenic warming hypothesis’.
Who says?
There are approximately 5 million research scientists across the globe. Are you saying someone has done a poll of them all, then? If so, who and when?
More and more information is coming out about how that data is faulty. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to use the appeal to authority defense.
‘Climate science is a discipline hugely reliant on reams of numerical data which few non-scientists are equipped to approach, let alone interpret’.
Professor Jones at the CRU admitted during the parliamentary enquiry that he doesn’t employ a qualified statistician, which is why someone like Stve McIntyre makes mincemeat of the CRUs ‘findings’, which is also why Jones wouldn’t release his data and code, despite a FOI request.
Did you not know any of this?
But surely we, somehow, are responsible for the tilt and orbit of the earth, and also the dearth of sunspots whilst we’re at it.
Naughty humans, how very DARE they exist, they are to blame for, for, for EVERYTHING!
Not all humans are responsible for these things. Only Jews, Americans (except registered Democrat voters), Conservatives etc. Islamists, Socialists etc. are blameless…
I share many of the views expressed on this site about the bias of the BBC and the damaging, non democratic changes that they are successfully making to our national culture and politics. However, on climate change I think they are largely right.
But of course the MAJOR point is that they do have , as a state funded organisation , a duty to present balanced argument and debate . We all know that they seldom get anywhere near a balanced output and let their prejudice come through strongly on a wide range of topics and seek to undermine any opposing views. Climate change is just another example of the BBC having its corporate view and setting out to ensure that people in Britain accept the BBC view as the ‘ received wisdom’ and vote accordingly.
I am sure that the BBC would say that they have no such thing as a corporate view on anything but if you only employ people who all think alike then you get a concensus view which amounts to the same thing.
You think that they’re largely right on climate change? Pourquoi?
Doublethinker – do you visit ‘sceptics’ websites?
If not, some here to get you started:
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
http://climatedepot.com/
No frakking consensus wont be updated till mid September, tho it’s worth visiting. My favourite sceptic site is Bishop Hill, however.
And for the other side of the argument you might try:
http://www.realclimate.org/
http://www.accuweather.com/en/climate-change
http://tamino.wordpress.com/
Why don’t you add:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/
to your list, Earth Echo?
Jezzz given the 120+ billion of government funding and big oil money in only the U.S.alone
the best you have is 3 propaganda /attack sites for the team and the data wiggin Tamino !
if your so sure of your leaders case why are they constantly blocking .F.I.O.s hiding data falsifying e-mails to discredit opposition working with media groups to block anyone of the ‘D’ worder type being allowed anywhere near a outlet but you believe so that all good ??
I always check realclimate.org to make sure the warmists have no argument against the Cosmoclimatology Theory, other than misinformation.
I have had a look at your links but they don’t persuade me. I still hold to my view that CO2 release is very likely to be the cause of the present warming.
So tell us why you think this, with some supporting evidence.
There is no proof whatsoever of man-made warming, you just ‘feel’ that it’s right. The models that predicted alarming rises in temperature have been proved wrong. And what about the Climategate e-mails? Kevin Trenberth admitting there had been no warming and calling it a ‘travesty’ that they couldn’t account for it. Michael Mann and his ‘hide the decline’ when proxy data didn’t fit the warming message (I’m still trying to work out where the ambiguity lies in that statement).
There are some scientists out there who genuinely believe in man-made warming, but there are many more who are driven by environmental ideology and gave up on any scientific impartiality years ago. And the majority of sceptical scientists think CO2 is a warming factor, it’s just to what degree it is contributing (and given the lack of warming for the last 15 years despite a continuing increase in CO2 levels it looks like they’re right).
And if you are still under the illusion that the IPCC is made up of ‘the world’s top scientists’, go read Donna’s book. However, I suspect you won’t bother as ‘you’ve had a look at my websites and they don’t persuade me’. My God, you must have a brain the size of a planet to have read, digested and understood all that stuff and all the other links they provide. Alternatively you’re just another warmist not wanting to hear bad news (and let’s face it, you’ve had plenty over the last few years!). In fact, I suspect you’re Roger Harrabin!
Who is Roger Harrabin?
Depending on how you want to slice and dice the data you can show that either the earth is warming quite quickly or that it isn’t warming much at all for the past few years. But the medium/long term trend is clear and it is getting warmer and trend starts with the release of CO2 from increased burning of fossil fuels.
I don’t ‘want’ this to be true, as you seem to think I do, and I will be pleased and relieved if it isn’t, not that I will live long enough to know the outcome anyway, but it seems likely that it is.So it makes sense to try and reduce CO2 release, although I think that the technology to do this effectively on the gigantic scale required doesn’t yet exist.
I imagine that people can think up all sorts of possible causes for the warming other than CO2 release , it doesn’t make them right though!.
‘Depending on how you want to slice and dice the data you can show that either the earth is warming quite quickly or that it isn’t warming much at all for the past few years’.
No, all the datasets, despite continuous ‘adjustments’ upwards by the warmists, show no statistically significant warming – thus Trenberth’s frustration (which I note you choose to ignore).
‘But the medium/long term trend is clear and it is getting warmer and trend starts with the release of CO2 from increased burning of fossil fuels’.
No again, I’m afraid. The earth has gradually been warming since the Little Ice Age, and at a consistently steady rate, though with periodic variations – thus the 1930s was the hottest decade of the 20th century, yet for the 30 years following WW2 there was a cooling, despite rapidly increasing CO2 levels, which led scientists at the time to warn of another ice age (perhaps you are too young to remember this). Then a warming up until the late 90s, and now a flatlining. So please get your facts right.
I suspect you are just another eco-warmist, using the bogus science to advance your ecological agenda. So here’s a question: do you think Michael Mann has got it about right with his ‘hockey stick graph’? Just a yes or no.
This is such a cop-out. Cigarette company executives still assert that the smoking/cancer link is overstated. Does the BBC have a requirement to distance itself from Richard Doll’s findings too?
What has smoking to do with man-made global warming, or are you hopelessly hooked on moral equivalences?
I declare you are Naomi Oreskes
Yawn!
Yes, weird does not really cover it.. I recall that until recently the “climate scientists” derided any mention of the sun and yet it is the only source of energy. It is the energy that drives weather and longer term climate.
As to the earth tilting, I heard that when at school 1944/50.
http://tinyurl.com/d78cs4y
anthony watts – most definitely NOT on the bbc’s speed dial.
I expect Richard Black’ll be on to it, once he’s finished examining the wood-ants with radio transmitters glued to them, for some reason that he was on about the other morning. Never really did find out why, but interestingly that organ of proper English known as the Daily Mail insisted today that they were radio receivers, which begs the question: are these ants being monitored for their choice of radio station?
The Greenhouse Effect is at a minimum at the Poles, and non-existent during the Polar winter. Therefore an increase in cloud cover trapping heat due to Cosmoclimatology would be a more likely answer to any Polar warming due to the onset of a Dalton minimum. Especially as the warmists do not mention any warming six miles above the equator, where any increase in temperature due to a so called Greenhouse warming would be at its greatest. Also changes to the Earths orbital eccentricity over time cause a change to where and when the Suns heat effects the regions of the Earth such as Antarctica. The Earth is closer to the sun in January and irradiance is almost 7 percent stronger than it is in July. But this changes over time. But then this is not the cause of Global warming or cooling, because the Earth receives the same amount of heat over a year-long time-span as before these orbital changes.
In other news,
Maldives not sinking, after all.
http://www.haveeru.com.mv/news/44118
Some Himalayan glaciers not shrinking, after all.
http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/karakoram-rising
Who knew?*
*Not the BBC, clearly.
“Climate Change advocates insist that the major cause of global warming is man made, probably CO2 they guess…still no proof!”
There is no “proof” in science — that is a property of mathematics. In science, what matters is the balance of evidence, and theories that can explain that evidence. Where possible, scientists make predictions and design experiments to confirm, modify, or contradict their theories, and must modify these theories as new information comes in.
In the case of anthropogenic global warming, there is a theory (first conceived over 100 years ago) based on well-established laws of physics. It is consistent with mountains of observation and data, both contemporary and historical. It is supported by sophisticated, refined global climate models that can successfully reproduce the climate’s behavior over the last century.
Given the lack of any extra planet Earths and a few really large time machines, it is simply impossible to do any better than this.
What observations or evidence would you consider “proof” that global warming is caused by rising CO2 levels?
‘It is supported by sophisticated, refined global climate models that can successfully reproduce the climate’s behavior over the last century’.
Lovely satire. Nice one.
“…In the case of anthropogenic global warming, there is a theory…”
No, there is an hypothesis. Not a theory. It’s not even strong enough to call itself a theory.
What observations or evidence would you consider “proof” that global warming is caused by rising CO2 levels?
The other Earth is Venus, it is the same size as the Earth, it has a radiating temperature 1.176 times that of the Earth, and also a quarter of a million times more CO2 in its Atmosphere than the Earth. The only theory that can explain the Climates of the Earth, Venus and Mars is the Unified Theory of Climate by Ned Nikolov & Karl Zeller. So the answer to you question is that the evidence is that the calculations for the CO2 warming are far too small to be observed. The idiots at the BBC who read the Guardian, should instead, talk to Nikolov and Zeller, or people in Oxford or Mensa.
11 likes? – Yawn, coordinated trolling from the £700bn Big Green funded alarmist industry, Earth Echo. What’s your day job, keyboard warrior? NGO? Renewables Industry? UEA? We are all duped by Big Coal or whatever, though I am still waiting for the cheque.
‘What observations or evidence would you consider “proof” that global warming is caused by rising CO2 levels? ‘
Proxy data has proved that there have been periods where the atmosphere has had far greater concentrations of CO2 and yet temperatures have been well below what they are today. Conversely, temperatures in the past have been higher than today with much lower concentrations of CO2.
I think you really need to get yourself up to speed else you’re going to look a little silly when the next ice age starts to kick in.
Nearly forgot – and CO2 levels have continued to rise this century but temperatures have flatlined, totally destroying the rises predicted in the warmists’ climate models .
Do you really need any more proof, or are you just going to continue sticking your fingers in your ears whilst parroting the discredited warmist mantras ad nauseam?
“They deride suggestions that the sun or other natural mechanism could produce the changes…and yet here they are admitting…the tilt and orbit of the earth, slight changes in the sun’s output have a major influence on climate.”
Yes, climate has varied in the past, for many different reasons, some better understood than others. Present-day climate change is well understood, and different. Noting that something happened before without humans does not demonstrate that humans are not causing it today.
For example, we see in ice core records from Antarctica and Greenland that the world cycled in and out of glacial periods over 120Kyr cycles. That climate cycle’s timing is fairly well understood to be caused by changes in the orbit of the earth, though the mechanism behind the response has not been conclusively established. These orbital cycles are regular and predictable and they are definitely not the cause of today’s warming. The other important difference between the glacial-interglacial cycles and today is the rapidity of the current change. The rate of warming is on the order of 10 times faster today than in the ice cores.
Such rapid warming on a global scale is quite rare in the geological record, and while it may not be entirely unprecedented, there is strong evidence that whenever such a change has happened, whatever the cause, it was a catastrophic event for the biosphere.
“…Noting that something happened before without humans does not demonstrate that humans are not causing it today…”
Conversely – and with equal validity – nor does it demonstrate that humans are causing it today. Certainly not on anything like the catastrophic scale so beloved by warmist doomsayers.
And you can quote the IPCC themselves on that. Nowhere, in any of their opaque reportage, do they ever claim, beyond any doubt, that mankind is responsible for anthropogenic catastrophic global warming (CAGW). Because they don’t know. In other words, they have no proof.
“Conversely – and with equal validity – nor does it demonstrate that humans are causing it today.”
Not necessarily “with equal validity”. The flaw in your argument there is that nobody is arguing “Something happened before without humans, therefore humans are causing it today.” On the other hand, some people ARE arguing that “something happened before without humans, therefore humans are not causing it today.” (The author of this post being a case in point).
Probability is the language of science. There is no proof; there are no absolute certainties. Scientists are always aware that new data may overturn old theories and that human knowledge is constantly evolving. Consequently, it is viewed as unjustifiable hubris to ever claim one’s findings as unassailable.
But in general, the older and more established a given theory becomes, the less and less likely it is that any new finding will drastically change things. Even the huge revolution in physics brought on by Einstein’s theory of relativity did not render Newton’s theories of classical mechanics useless. Classical mechanics is still used all the time; it is, quite simply, good enough for most purposes.
Greenhouse effect theory is over 100 years old. The first predictions of anthropogenic global warming came in 1896. Time has only strengthened and refined those groundbreaking conclusions. We now have decades of very detailed and sophisticated climate observations, and super computers crunching numbers in one second it would have taken a million 19th century scientists years with a slide rule to match. Even so, you will never ever get a purely scientific source saying “the future is certain.”
But what certainty there is about the basic issue is close enough to 100 percent that for all practical purposes it should be taken as 100 percent. Don’t wait any longer for scientific certainty; we are there. Every major institute that deals with climate-related science is saying AGW is here and real and dangerous, even though they will not remove the “very likely” and “strongly indicated” qualifiers. The translation of what the science is saying into the language of the public is this: Global warming is definitely happening and it is definitely because of human activities and it will definitely continue as long as CO2 keeps rising in the atmosphere.
The rest of the issue — how high will the temperature go, how fast will it get there, and how bad will this be — is much less certain.
Why should we demand 100 percent certainty before avoiding this danger?
It is a nonsense to say there is now ‘certainty’ in AGW – are you deliberately setting out to confuse the issue? I notice you did not use the abbreviation ‘CAGW’ – is this because you realise, like so many others, that the ‘catastrophe’ in CAGW is simply a fiction – a useful invention by frauds and snake oil salesmen to promote a myth? You have duty to be honest here – AGW is not the same as CAGW and we both know it – so let’s be grown-up and use the right terms without trickery.
To claim that ‘every major institute’ dealing with climate science ‘agrees’ with the doom-laden and often hysterical predictions of imminent global catastrophe is to tell us nothing of the huge amounts of public funding these organisations receive every year from the UN and EU (i.e. taxpayers) to find precisely the kind of answers these bureaucrats require to wave about in public and turn into policy (although Jo Nova has, usefully, calculated that pro-warmist organistations benefit from funding (i.e. from taxpayers) at a ratio of about 3000 to 1 over their sceptical opponents, despite the regularly regurgitated and wholly unfounded myth of ‘big oil’ funding for sceptics.).
Your ‘appeals to authority’ are transparent. Just like the BBC’s insistence that ‘the science is settled’, although to your credit you allow for the fact that science never works by consensus – likewise, consensus can never be considered science.
There are many thousands of professional scientists from many disciplines who not subscribe to the ‘settled science’ of CAGW (and the ‘C’ is very important here – nobody I know takes issue with the actuality of AGW ) but their voices are excised from the debate by greedy, self-congratulatory buffoons determined to scare the public with predictions of utter catastrophe and specious climate chimeras, whilst slyly taking the shilling from the public purse for their own ghastly political ends.
You have just spouted the biggest pile of meaningless, unfounded, unscientific pile of bullshit even the most shameless of shameful warmists would be ashamed of.
Go and read up on the subject, for chrissakes.
‘But what certainty there is about the basic issue is close enough to 100 percent that for all practical purposes it should be taken as 100 percent’.
Point to any statement in any of the scientific chapters of any IPCC report which says this.
And please explain the flatlining of temperatures over the last 15 years whilst CO2 levels have continued to rise.
P.S. Are you Al Gore?
They call that the Hockey stick fraud. We have enough evidence before and after this fraud to show that the Medieval warming period as well as the Roman era, was warmer than today. Red wine was grown in the north of England. Borehole data and seeds in peat as well as sea sediment data support these historical records. The single paper that the IPPC cherry picked for its report was found to be ridled with statistical errors.
Earth Echo
AFAIAC your arguments in respect of AGW are specious and consist of assertions which have been consistently debunked by serious scientists. However, that’s not the point of this website or this comment. The point is that, in respect of AGW, the BBC follows the IPPR guidelines of which, among other proposals (and anti-scientific assertions) recommends that those broadcasting or advocating policies based on the AGW belief “spend less time trying to convince people that climate change is real, by treating the argument as having been won and the facts as so taken for granted that they need not be disputed”.
In other words AGW believers and their enablers in the media are encouraged to adopt and assert the “science is settled” theme and refuse to treat seriously (or even mention, except abusively as in use of the term “denier” to describe AGW sceptics) any contrary argument no matter how well constituted or evidenced-based. Furthermore, the recent internal review of BBC coverage of science by AGW zealot Steve Jones concluded that the paltry airtime given by the BBC to those sceptical of AGW or the extent of AGW should be further reduced or eliminated. This recommendation has, it appears, been accepted and implemented by the BBC.
Accordingly, I suggest that commenters and posters to this site ignore your comments and not enter into any debate with you insofar as such comments do not deal with BBC bias but seek rather to troll AGW factoids and cod-science onto B-BBC comment threads. Your purpose is clearly to disrupt the mission of the site which is to highlight BBC bias in general of which the BBC’s blatant propagandising on behalf of the religion of which you are a keen devotee is a significant part. Moreover, B-BBC’s purpose is not, IMHO, to replicate discussions which take place on a number of other sites (particularly those of Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts and “Bishop Hill”). Open discussion is, predictably, a mark of distinction held by and largely restricted to the “sceptical” sites. The sites you recommend are notorious for their general refusal, much like the BBC, to entertain sceptic comment or allow good faith debate.
Spot on, Umbongo. As I’ve said on this site before, I’m all for rational and even-handed debate about this issue. The trouble is, the BBC is not.
The problem with this idea is that “even-handed”, in practice, would mean debates between scientists and non-scientists. The dissenting voices sometimes cited here are a motley collection of cranks, marginal figures and politicians. If there were more mainstream scientists arguing against the hypothesis there would be a debate to have. But there aren’t, and so there isn’t.
I would not call Steve Jones a non-scientists, if he debated climate with Nikolov and Zeller or scientists at Oxford or in Mensa.
The mainstream non-scientists at the BBC are simply scientists without qualifications relevant to climate science such as Genetics or Geology. These people are out of their depth when it comes to Climate science so they call us “Enemies of science”. No wonder they do not want to be even handed.
Maybe they would want to hack into BBC Bias, and close it down.
1. “The problem with this idea is that “even-handed”, in practice, would mean debates between scientists and non-scientists.”
Well, in some clear cases the argument has been between ‘scientists’ and mathematicians, who have blown away so many of the so-called ‘mathematical models’ used by these so-called ‘scientists’.
2. “The dissenting voices sometimes cited here are a motley collection of cranks, marginal figures and politicians.”
Just as so many of the people advocating CAGW have eventually been discovered to be complete cranks – see the papers blown away regarding Himalayan glaciers and deforestation in Brazil. And not that Al Gore was a policitician now, was he ?
3. “If there were more mainstream scientists arguing against the hypothesis there would be a debate to have. But there aren’t, and so there isn’t. ”
And, of course, the so-called ‘consensus of thousands of climate scientists’ turns out to have been about 40 self-defined ‘climate scientists’ – supported by, how did you put it… ah, yes, …”…a motley collection of cranks, marginal figures and politicians”.
So, rather than “…But there aren’t, and so there isn’t.”, the point is – “There are – and you just don’t accept it.” You simply label anyone who doesn’t agree with you as not being ‘mainstream’. Simples !
Do widen you education.
Oh I see Freeman Dyson and Richard Lindzen (to name 2 scientists sceptical of the AGW scam at, more or less, random) are “cranks, marginal figures [or] politicians”. Your and your fellow warmists’ “arguments” only “succeed” when the other side is not represented at all: hence the BBC policy of not permitting the sceptical argument to be put.
There should be no hypothesis, no matter how loony or “offensive” which should be banned from the airwaves. For instance, I’m all in favour of having people like David Irving on to deny the Holocaust – or deny Hitler’s knowledge of it – as long as Irving is opposed by knowledgeable and capable historians who can make mincemeat of his hypotheses. I would also give airtime to Truthers simply because I am confident that their ridiculous hypotheses could be shown up for the nonsense they are in open debate.
Analogously, were you and your co-religionists confident in the AGW hypothesis there would be no question that sceptics would be permitted to put their views because they and their arguments could be debunked accordingly. Since those sceptical arguments can’t be debunked – the reverse is usually the case when a rare open debate occurs – you and your employer refuse to have the debate at all, let alone an open one.
That would be ‘non-scientists’ like Profs. Svensmark and Lindzen, would it? Or perhaps the increasingly dissenting Prof Curry, perhaps?
Anyway, what we get in the BBC isn’t even the Hockey Team that invented this scare, it’s a sorry parade of self-styled ‘environmentalists’ and BBC ‘analysts’ (mostly arts graduates) passing on received wisdom which they have chosen to believe and propagandise. because it reinforces their worldview.
‘The problem with this idea is that “even-handed”, in practice, would mean debates between scientists and non-scientists’.
You have just destroyed your own argument for, if you look hard enough (and it doesn’t take much), there are scores upon scores of scientific papers casting more than serious doubt on AGW.
But then, I think you know this, because you are a believer in AGW – a religion for those at the extreme reaches of environmentalism who see no way out of fossil-based energy production other than a return to some crude modern day parody of medieval self-sufficiency, overseen by a totalitarian world government founded on ‘green’ principles. You have lost all faith in Mankind’s ability to invent its way out of such dilemmas. You are one of the pessimists, the defeatists, who at the same time are wedded to the socialist ideology of control of the masses. You are everything humanity rejects in its aspiration for freedom and self-advancement.
I suggest that commenters and posters to this site ignore your comments and not enter into any debate with you insofar as such comments do not deal with BBC bias
May I quote you on that next time Alan pings off on one of his anti-Muslim rants?
If this site concentrated on its main aim it might be taken seriously and might not have wasted the best part of a decade and achieved exactly nothing.
So thanks Umbongo and yr 9 followers.
I see nicks anus has floated to the top again funny how they are getting very vocal in their attempts to flame threads of late ? and now we have a new Dez to add to the collection [or maybe it’s the old one new hidey hole ?] !
I suspect it’s the aversion to Islam on this site that really gets Nicked’s goat and that there may be some motive not unconnected with the acquisition of petrodollars involved.
“there may be some motive not unconnected with the acquisition of petrodollars”
Really? Such as?
The recent scandal regarding HSBC and Standard Chartered laundering Iranian funds shows how banks and their employees can have some pretty unsavoury middle eastern connections, the whole dubious world of sharia finance, contracts with Gulf emirs – there is a lot of money to be made – who knows why you never quite seem to state the actual standpoint from which you are trolling this site?
I have. Go back and have a look.
A lot of knocking copy along the lines of ‘there’s no wisdom like the conventional wisdom’ (especially concerning Islam) and you’re all marginal loonies doesn’t quite cut it, somehow.
So Nick, not had an answer from you yet re Allah. Is he, like God, a ‘sky pixie’?
Only a yes or no answer will do. But, to be honest, not expecting any answer at all. Not soon. Not ever, in fact.
Emus is Hebrew for truth – so I guess Nicked Emus is ‘stolen truth’…. now just what is he up to?
“If this site concentrated on its main aim it might be taken seriously ”
Apparently you take it seriously enough to come here and comment.
After nearly a decade what has this site achieved? Apart from providing David Vance with a nice top up to his income from all those BBC appearance fees, the BBC that he spends his time attacking, I can’t see it has done very much.
What evidence is there that this site is taken seriously by anyone? There seems an awful lot of right wing anger on here, all to no end.
But let’s hope that people follow your advice and stick to the matter at hand — a bit more focus, a bit more self-discipline, and a bit less anti-Muslim ranting may mean that in the next decade or two you might achieve something.
Here’s some evidence for you, Nicked:
My ‘biased’ view of the Biased BBC blog
Before you move the goal posts with a “But that was years ago. What has this site done lately?”, let me point out that Guido links here, as does Delingpole, as does Instapundit, as do a number of others. Then you can ask people like Sinead Rocks or Stuart Hughes or Rachel Kennedy if anyone pays attention and if we’ve had any affect.
Once you’ve done that, please do come back and discuss it with us.
Also, admittedly without any acknowledgment, this week, the Commentator almost certainly lifted their story about the Beeb using Matt Whale as an ordinary member of the unemployed public from bBBC.
Much of the emphasis on misbehaviour in Muslim countries here stems from the way the Beeb either ignores it or covers it up. It’s plain you see over-doing the criticism of that blameless ideology as a major failing of this site: bad for business, so to speak.
So two of yr links are from 2007 — half a decade ago, a link on a couple of right wing blogs and someone called Stuart hughes.
And you think that is being effective? Well in which case you have been very effective.
Nicked, please put the goal posts back where you found them. Your challenge was:
“What evidence is there that this site is taken seriously by anyone?”
You didn’t qualify it with a time frame. I knew you’d move the goal posts anyway.
I’m not sure how to quantify the raising of awareness for which this blog is responsible, but it’s definitely there.
‘After nearly a decade what has this site achieved?’
It has achieved so little that it still has Nick’s undivided attention.
It would appear Nick me old china, that this site has your full attention.
Now you may well be part of a beeb dirty tricks dept, along with all the other co-conspirators that appear(dez et al) but it certainly is worth your time attempting to rubbish it.
So where is the motivation, paid by the beeb, part of that dark arts dept at the beeb? oooer mrs….a conspiracy theory?
I just have this feeling in my water ya know!
Traitors to our nation Nick, you and your ilk at the beeb.
Umbongo,
Given that Alan’s post was concerned with the science behind AGW theory and the truthfulness of scientists rather than with the issue of BBC bias and that most of the early (and subsequent) comments have also largely ignored the issue of BBC bias, it was hardly unreasonable for me to have commented in the way I did – however inappropriate you may feel such discussions to be.
Excellent post, Umbongo, and thanks for the link to IPPR website – what a sinister lot they are, and well in line with the UN’s Agenda 21. You’ve got to hand it to these lefties, they know how to oragnise themselves.
But I loved this: ‘IPPR, the Institute for Public Policy Research, is the UK’s leading progressive thinktank. We produce rigorous research and innovative policy ideas for a fair, democratic and sustainable world’. Democratic, eh? The irony, the massive, humongous irony.
Take it as a compliment that this site has now reached sufficient prominence to have attracted the attention of the immensely well-funded ‘big green’ lobby.
It doesn’t happen by accident, does it ‘Earth Echo’? Of is that another truth that is too inconvenient to tell?
It also attracts the comments of BBC employees, whatever their ranking might be (interpret that as you will).
Their monickers are irrelevant. We know who they are.
Still there scottnickdez?
The evil Socialists want the environment to be their next big thing for global domination.
They know their Franfurt School Cultural Marxism is a failure same with Islamification. These will end up killing them in the end.
They want to change their attack and hope the environment will get them their long hoped for global marxist government.
Sounds a bit conspiratorial, but not if you’ve read up on UN Agenda 21.
I’ve read up on agenda 21, cultural marxism, frankfurt school and it all makes sense. Cause a global societal collapse and the people are left alive afterwards herd them into walled mega cities. Easier for the global elite to control.
But not feed …
Yup. I stand my the first comment on this post – the world is run by corrupting big businesses, which the left (including the beeb) merely fronts for. All else is paranoid conspiracy theory.
Read James Delingpoles book – Watermelons. It’s the Big Green you should worry about, though I agree big business will get on board the Green Gravy Train if there’s money to be had.