There comes a time in every successful criminal’s ‘career’ when, after evading Plod with ease for a long time, they become complacent, arrogant, cocky….careless…of course not being caught means they stay in the shadows…they get no recogniton, fame or infamy. For some this ‘fame’ is undoubtedly a draw, a factor in the game….so much so that they start to tease the police, tempting them to catch them…almost wishing to be caught.
Richard Black has reached this stage in his career….having given years of diligent service in the cause of promoting AGW to a sceptical world he gets ever more obvious and determined to push the pro-warming agenda seemingly regardless of any requirements for truth. This of course is not a crime…no hang on….it might well be….the BBC is by law required to be accurate, fair, impartial and balanced in its reporting.
This is his latest tour de force…it’s a clever piece…obvious in its bias only if you know what Black’s intentions are and the background to his comments.
It is in essence merely a vehicle to support pro-global warming scientists whilst discrediting sceptics.
The scientists..Muller and Hansen have been roundly discredited before…Muller’s BEST research even failed to get the backing of a scientist who worked on the project saying ‘that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis.’…..whereas Black claims… ‘ it proves ‘sceptics’ were wrong about denying AGW’……. and the BBC later blatantly lied about Muller when he claimed he had once been a sceptic but had ‘seen the light’ and was now a fully converted believer in man made global warming….Muller was always a pro-warmer.
Black wants to talk about the role of formal scientific processes in climate science.
Muller released his ‘research’ without peer review…and so it is untested…..apparently this is the method used in String Theory science…..let’s have a look at what a scientist has to say about the inner workings of String Theory research:
‘In 2008 Physicist Lee Smolin’s book ‘The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science and What Comes Next’ was published.
What he had to say about the way science worked and how ideas and theories were produced and then supported regardless of reality was a stinging rebuke to those people who jump on a bandwagon and base their career and funding on the ‘truth’ of that idea….if the idea is discredited so are they, and the funding dries up…..
Here is what he says about String Theory and its proponents….
‘….with a cry of joy, most of these scientists seized on string theory as the answer. But their enthusiasm was such that they came to think not that it might be the answer, but that it must be. They formed themselves into a cult. Dissenters and apostates were not just scorned, they were denied posts in universities. Einstein the thinker could not now get a job in any leading physics department. For any young physicist, it was easiest simply to suppress one‘s doubts and go with the stringies.‘
Does that remind you of any scientific environment now? Any Consensus?
Black is supposedly using Muller and Hansen’s ‘research’ as examples of how such research is transmitted to the public and how it is perceived….the reality is that Black is purely trying to push their ideas forward yet again as ‘real science’ that is trustworthy and done by ‘real scientists’….unlike the sceptics who of course are totally unqualified….or mad…or maybe even Nazis.
Here are a couple of lines from Black which are somewhat out of place in a BBC news report…..just too ‘personal’……
‘Rarely if ever have I seen a published scientific paper that states the rationale for its existence so baldly in terms of public perception.’
‘The original BEST study particularly got up the nose of meteorologist turned sceptic blogger Anthony Watts.’
Note the ‘meteorologist turned sceptic blogger’ dismissive tone.
Black goes on to tell us some scientific journals have a ‘politicised slant’ on issues….but what does he choose? A ‘sceptical’ journal and…..a ‘loony’ creationist journal…an obvious attempt to damn by association:
‘Peer review is far from perfect – especially in a politicised arena such as climate science where some journals exist with a specific, directed slant on the issue.
Energy and Environment, for example, proclaims itself “a forum for more sceptical analyses of ‘climate change'”.
Creationists have attempted to clothe themselves in scientific garb down the years by establishing publications designed to look and feel like scientific journals…..The Journal of Creation.’
Black saves the best slur, or is that BEST, till last…..
‘You can create a parallel world where it isn’t, if you really try.’
Ahhh…that’s it then…the sceptics live in a little world of their own, one they’ve made up?
The only person living in a world of their own is Black….a world that hasn’t ‘warmed’ for over a decade….as proven by ‘BEST’ itself…..
‘Like the scientists exposed then by leaked emails from East Anglia University’s Climatic Research Unit, her colleagues from the BEST project seem to be trying to ‘hide the decline’ in rates of global warming.
A report to be published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation includes a graph of world average temperatures over the past ten years, drawn from the BEST project’s data and revealed on its website.
This graph shows that the trend of the last decade is absolutely flat, with no increase at all – though the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on rising relentlessly.
‘This is nowhere near what the climate models were predicting,’ Prof Curry said. ‘Whatever it is that’s going on here, it doesn’t look like it’s being dominated by CO2.’
It is astonishing really that Black is still employed by the BBC. He is so far from the requirements of a BBC journalist that somebody somewhere in the bowels of the BBC must have noticed he isn’t up to scratch.
Black clearly has not the slightest problem or qualm about twisting the truth nor any conscience in trying to smear and blacken climate change sceptic’s characters and scientific qualifications.
He is engaged in propaganda against sceptics and for that reason he should be out on his backside looking for a job at the Guardian….or UFO’s Weekly.
‘
Er, nobody’s making government policy or demanding wealth redistribution or trying to curb people’s behavior based on String Theory.
Lee Smolin is an idiotic crackpot. He even pushed the whole “surfer dude” Garret Lisi’s theory which was so wrong it was a joke. I would not use him to argue against global warming. He actually is wrong.
Just read Lubos Motl’s blog if you want to know more.
David, This is especially for you, from Guido.
“BBC’s Eddie Mair to guest…
“Hold your nose for a minute would you, if you were trying to sell Mitt Romney to the American people what should he say…”
..stands back and waits for response ..
I heard that. It was during a discussion on last night’s PM with two pollsters – one Democrat and one Republican. Mr Mair was speaking to the Democrat, and inviting her to try standing in the shoes of a Republican pollster. I really don’t think there’s any bias to be read into it.
All I did to become a sceptic was to ask for a formula for the calibration of CO2 warming at the Earths surface. Also try asking for a formula for the feedback.
All you need to understand the Climates of all the planets of the Solar System is to use the Unified Theory of Climate by Ned Nikolov & Karl Zeller. And then to understand how the Grey body temperature of the Earth changes, use the work of Ed Fix, and then the work of David Archibald and then on to the work of Henrik Svensmark. Using the Unified Theory of Climate, you get a calculation that gives a result for the 20th Century Man-made warming of less than 0.002 Kelvin.
Have just been involved in a debate after an article in Mensa, mocking the BBC called Enemies of Astronomy.
How can you know this when we do not yet even know the results of the CLOUD experiment. We do not know all of the feedbacks and their relative signs and amplitudes. These are just more theories that need to be tested.
The official CERN and therefore IPCC accepted position is that cosmic rays have had a one percent effect on cloud cover which has contributed a warming of 0.002 Kelvin in the last fifty years, this seems to be caused by a politically induced mental block that only allows these scientists to see the effects of low energy Cosmic Rays when the fact is that only the higher energy Cosmic Rays unaffected by the Earths magnetic field are relevant. CERN Director-General Rolf-Dieter Heuer told Kirkby not to interpret the cloud-chamber results, the official position is that the aim was not to prove that clouds are sensitive to cosmic rays, but only to see whether or not they could be. But the CLOUD experiment only confirms that the explanation of how cosmic rays cause cloud formation has been complete and proven since Henrik Svensmarks cloud chamber results in 2006. I and other members of Mensa have seen the results, including those not published. There are no feedbacks or the feedbacks are negative, that is why you will not find a formula for feedbacks. Using the Unified Theory of Climate. As the increase in pressure reduces the speed of transfer of heat, the increase in heat maintains the equilibrium with the input of heat from the Sun, as more heat is transferred but at a slower rate, maintaining the equilibrium.
“There are no feedbacks or the feedbacks are negative, that is why you will not find a formula for feedbacks.”
What bollocks.
Of course there are feedbacks.
Negative: Temperatures rise, more water vapour, more clouds, more sun reflected, temperature rises.
Positive: Temperatures rise, polar ice melts, less ice to reflect sun, temperature rises.
The question is what is the sign of the net feedback once all of the positive and negative feedbacks have been aggregated. Maybe it is zero. Right now we do not know. CLOUD is only looking at one of many feedbacks.
You can have a view. But experiments are needed to validate it. Even Mensa people understand that.
Typo: End of negative feedback is “temperature falls.”!
Faintly crucial, that disastrous “typo” of yours, wasn’t it? How much else did you get wildly wrong?
Right, so so you never made a typo.
I made no claims other than to state that we do not have the answer yet on global warming.
The catastrophic warming forecast by the alarmist climate models is heavily predicated on positive feedback. They have been so for the best part of 20 years and – guess what – the rapid rises in temperature have not materialised. The failure of the positive feedback assumption should be explained in here somewhere:
http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2010/01/catastrophe-denied-the-science-of-the-skeptics-position.html
All Leftists “project” and so if Black is saying his opponents are creating “a parallel world” constructed out of what they want to be true, he is talking about himself. Whenever the Left talk about anything what they want to be true will always trump reality. This is why so many Leftist theorists dispute the concept of truth. This would not matter were it not for the fact that Leftists are very keen to tell other people how they should live their lives.
Black propaganda
It has its lighter moments – his attempt to explain away the increase in glacier size in the Karakorum was particularly entertaining !
As with all things bbc though, it is important to write to your MP on a regular basis, highlighting particularly egregous examples of left wing bbc bias and demanding an end to the licence fee support for socialism. It may be a pain, but its the only the system will change.
I complained to my MP about the BBc not long ago. The reply was basicaly-You can’t expect me to get involved. This was a Conservative M.P. by the way.
I wouldn’t vote for the Tories any more.
I am putting this in here because the open thread is way down the page and no doubt a new open thread will start minutes after posting this.
Had to laugh at the BBC trying hard (and succeeding) in not mentioning the ‘L’ word when reporting on the GCSE results row and the news that Ofqual knew about the boundary change problems 3 years ago. Michael Gove has to go on the defensive even though it’s nothing to do with him and the beeboid talking mentions that the problems were known before Michael Gove became minister but decides not to inform the viewer who was Minister or which party was in power at the time.
Naturally on BBC breakfast news it is being spun as the Government fault (current of course) and they’ve immediately got a union mouth on (from ASCL) to talk of blame etc, but still no mention of the word Labour and there;s no attempt to link blame to the previous Government. I don’t know if they have attempted balance by seeking out a Government mouthpiece, but I won’t be surprised if they don’t.
It’s that era when time simply didn’t exist in BBC eyes – they just don’t see any history from 1997-2010 and certainly don’t want to remind viewers of anything bad that happened during that time. BBC balance in action yet again.
I’d also add that in the news report they make sure ‘Gove’, ‘Government’ and ‘Conservatives’ are mentioned when talking about the problems so as to link the problem to them (and not Labour). Drip-drip-drip bias and propaganda from Labour, as usual.
As I “didn’t get the grades I expected” in 1977 should I be throwing my toys out of the pram.
Llew says:
August 31, 2012 at 7:22 am
…they’ve immediately got a union mouth on (from ASCL) to talk of blame etc…
—————————————————————
One of the many tragedies from the bliar/ mad gordon macruin years is that the only time you ever hear a scots, welsh, or northern english voice on the radio/ telly (outside sports programmes) is when it is defending some overpaid, featherbedded, spanish practiced/ overmanned, under/non/anti producing element of the State.
‘This is his latest tour de force…’
Not on twitter? How daring of him.
I used to check his efforts, but now only rarely.
There are a few noble souls still engaging in the comments, but mainly interactivity has become pretty much an echo chamber for his ‘club’ groupies.
Even so, it is unsurprising to find the duration it exists before near inevitable early closing.
The comments are illiuminating as always…I especially like the clown that trotted out the little lie about the data always having been available. Even if that were the case, the issue has always been that “The Team” has never let on which data within the supposedly already released data they have based their research on.
Secondly, the clown at 207 provided a link to Real Climate…apart from the obvious issues RC has with the truth, which once again trotted out the little lie about the data having been released. Just a pity comments were closed so that I couldnt post a link to Climate Audit that speaks directly to the lies RC has no issues with spreading;
http://climateaudit.org/2012/05/16/schmidts-conspiracy-theory/#more-16091
Mailman
Hansen is a the Alarmer’s Alarmist and becoming a bit of an embarrassment even for the AGW religious establishment. He has made more incredible claims over the past 20 years than Billy Liar made in his lifetime, including that by now Manhattan would be under water.
String theory isn’t totall debunked – the problem is that there seems to be no way to test it.
The real giveaway if this line:
“meteorologist turned sceptic blogger”
And there you have it: the True Scotsman in a lab coat. He was a scientist, back when he drank the kool aid, but now he’s started being sceptical about stuff, looking at the evidence and testing hypothesis, well, clearly he can’t be a real scientist anymore.
To US eyes, considering our spelling, there’s a negative double meaning to “sceptic”.
Mr Black is The Corporation’s useful idiot, its CAGW Lord Haw-Haw, always readily enthusiastic to promote the approved Party Line, always steadfast in his complete certainty that only he holds the keys to the kingdom, the path to The Truth.
Facts don’t really matter to Mr Black. When the entire edifice of CAGW is built on nothing more than an unproven hypothesis (not even good enough to qualify as a theory) why should he worry about facts? Like so many in his hopelessly doctrinaire/political mindset, he’s seen for himself that facts are never allowed to get in the way of a Nice Little Earner; the CAGW gravy train is now so perilously over-full everyone knows it could derail at any moment, but like all good fat little piggies at the trough, nobody is prepared to climb back off and forsake all that lovely taxpayer funding.
The BBC must have its own misguided political reasons for nailing its colours to CAGW – and all the possible (likely) fallout such an ill-advised decision will surely bring. We know now, beyond any doubt, that BBC is no longer even pretending to be ‘impartial’ (hah!) in the CAGW ‘debate’ (clue: there is no debate) – it has long been a matter of public record that the BBC has a policy stance to exclude sceptical debate of CAGW, having long since worked out, presumably on the back of a fag packet, that the ‘scientific consensus’ is settled.
That’s the beauty of monolithic, unaccountable organisations like the BBC. You simply adopt a policy position and by virtue of your total control of the levers of broadcasting you can promote it without fear of interference. If the BBC says it is so (and keeps saying it is so – and, golly, they do) then it will be so. Stalin would have been proud. Orwell, not so much.
Mr Black may well come to rue the day he decided to trade in his journalistic integrity and become a blatant CAGW evangelist. That day might still be some way off – CAGW holds the msm in its thrall, after all – but all empires eventually crumble to shadows and dust. Patience is all that is required from sceptics like me. And good manners and diligence.
Mother Nature – and those pesky facts – will do all the rest.
I have a feeling that whatever turns the climate takes the eco-loons and socialist politicians will find a way to blame it on mankind. You only need to look at the way Labour are successfully beginning to pin the economic car crash on the Tories.
Re ‘The BBC must have its own misguided political reasons for nailing its colours to CAGW – and all the possible (likely) fallout such an ill-advised decision will surely bring’. They are very simple, it underpins the world totalitarian eco-socialist state they crave – imagine the power of the BBC World Service in such a scenario! There are a number of good books on the subject, but Delingpole’s ‘Watermelons’ is a good start.
He’s goin’!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19422041
Beat me to it!
So he’s off to take a highly-paid position in some Warmist think tank or publicity machine, is he?
‘I’m leaving the BBC to work, initially, on ocean conservation issues.’
Initially? Beats ‘pursuing other interests’ one supposes.
What then? Labour MP & fast track to Shad Cab for ‘We Do Sciencey Stuff, We Do’ in the wake of Ben Bradshaw? Or Head of Google’s SEO rigging division joining Peter Barron. The career paths of ex-beeboids, like our new generation of MPs (of all hues) does seem to follow a predictable path after all.
It’ll be interesting to discover what form his twitter populating will take in future (and who goes with, as the lack of a BBC pulpit can throw an uncomfortably stark light more on what is being said than where, and even groupies know where’s best to congregate to gain the kind of exposure only a £4Bpa brand can offer), as his final words as a BBC employee have not made his soon to be ex-bosses’ lives much easier on maintaining the genetic impartiality facade at all. Sorry Helen; he’s stuffed that turkey for you good and proper.
No mention of a replacement, from ‘within’ or elsewhere.
Darn cuts?
Black is leaving the BBC:
Judging by the blatant partisan swipes he’s taking on twitter it seems he might be a bit demob happy – he’s not even pretending to be impartial. Here’s his touchy response to Romney’s mockery of Obama:
And here he is on Ryan:
He’ll still be fighting the good fight:
No longer paid for by the rest of us I hope. Good riddance.
What a silly bunt. The mocking was of the claim that He could heal the planet, and especially of fools like Black who think He could. And he, too, seems to have drunk Ezra Klein’s Kool-Aid. Is there a single Beeboid who deals with reality and not Democrat talking points?
Your comment prompted my memory of history lessons at school and ties in nicely with the globalwarming climate change nutters. King Canute was persuaded that he could turn back the tide so they stuck his throne on the sand at low water and guess what?The arrogance of an opinionated minority of gobby pseudo scientific tree huggers aided by a political bandwagon who state that we can cause and heal the world leaves my flabber gasted. Canute wasn’t too pleased either when he got his viking age nikes wet
Has Richard Black got a new job as a village idiot?
No, he’s held that position on a voluntary basis for years…