Andrew Neil, that well known climate scientist, has stirred up a hornet’s nest by daring to question government policy on climate…based as it is on ever increasing temperatures….but there are obvious doubts about that now due to the long hiatus in rising temperatures:
The Sunday Politics interview with Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey on July 14 provoked widespread reaction in the twittersphere and elsewhere, which was only to be expected given the interview was about the latest developments in global warming and the implications for government policy.
The main purpose of the interview was to establish if the government thought the recent and continuing pause in global temperatures meant it should re-think its policies in response to global warming.
This is a vital policy issue since the strategy of this government and the previous Labour government to decarbonise the economy involves multi-billion pound spending decisions, paid for by consumers and taxpayers, which might not have been taken (at least to the same degree or with the same haste) if global warming was not quite the imminent threat it has been depicted.
Our focus was on a global temperature plateau which could be a challenge to the forecasts of climate models which have determined government policy. The plateau could continue for the foreseeable future or melt away as temperatures resume their upward trajectory.
What was possibly even more interesting was this:
It might also be argued that challenging interviews on matters in which there is an overwhelming consensus in Westminster – but not necessarily among voters who pay for both the licence fee and the government’s energy policies – is a particularly legitimate purpose of public-service broadcasting.
So it is the job of public-service broadcasters to challenge the overwhelming consensus?
You could have fooled me and many others who thought the BBC had decided that the science was ‘settled’ and that no more questions needed to be asked…full ahead with green taxes and hair shirts.
I guess when you take money from organisations that promote man made global warming your journalism might be compromised.
And the fact that BBC journalists have few scientific qualifications between them and yet feel compelled to denounce ‘mere bloggers’ as unqualified to comment on climate change…many of whom are actually far more scientifically qualified that the BBC journalists.
‘It might also be argued that challenging interviews on matters in which there is an overwhelming consensus in Westminster – but not necessarily among voters ….’
And nor, more importantly, amongst scientists. Despite what the alarmists have been telling us ad nauseam there is no ‘overwhelming consensus’ (not that science is about consensus anyway – but let’s not remind Sir Paul Nurse of the motto of the Royal Society over which he presides) – like all the other mantras we’ve been browbeaten with it is an invention of the environmentalist lobby, and one they are getting increasingly desperate to maintain (refer the ‘97% of scientific studies’ which Neill rightly exposed as a fraud).
As for the BBC, they continue to be in denial that there is a huge body of eminently-qualified scientists who do not back the ‘consensus’. These are not ‘mere bloggers’ they are scientists and for the BBC to suggest otherwise is scandalous. But then they are accountable to no-one but their 28gate environmentalist mates and can continue to spout their one-sided discredited AGW nonsense with impunity – nobody but nobody can hold them to account.
The wheels have come off the AGW shamwagon and the real-world evidence is there staring our politicians coldly in the face. This could be the most dangerous political game to be playing come the next election, and I hope it is – it’s costing the country hundreds of billions.
Check out http://www.climatescience.org.nz/
“Many of the criticisms of the Davey interview seem to misunderstand the purpose of a Sunday Politics interview.
This was neatly summed up in a Guardian blog by Dana Nuccitelli”
oooohh! brother (shakes head).
A trail for Newsnight stated that the ice in Alaska was getting thinner. What in July? Well I never!
Coming from the southern hemisphere, I always go on about a little known fact – Antarctic ice is at a record high.
It is a little known fact because the BBC and climate scarers always speak about one particular area of the Arctic circle, where ice coverage is reducing. They pretend it is representative of the rest of Polar climate.
But don’t tale my word for it – please all check the facts.
Andrew Neil conducts a perfectly proper interview with Ed Davey and now, just a few weeks later, he has to write a lengthy article to explain himself to a Guardian blogger and the Twittersphere. Andrew, just tell them to piss off.
It’s very considerate of Andrew to take the time to remind them what journalism is all about.
Of course for the Guardian it’s really churnalism and staying on-message that matters (or should that be ‘staining on massage mattress’?), and as the Beeboids were predominantly recruited from, and are faithful to the Grauniad…
I think he did tell the to “piss-off”, but in a slightly more thoughtful manner.
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/7/22/neil-responds-to-nucc.html
Andrew Neill must feel like he’s part of a slightly modified Monty Python sketch: ‘Nobody expects the Warmish Inquisition!’
Just goes to show that Andrew is the best political interviewer since Brian “not necessarily my opinion” Waldren.
His rebuttal is measured and well thought out. Don’t see why he needed to do it though.
I first dealt with Andrew Neil around 1980 when he was preparing a freelance TV programme on “System X”, being funded by BT (effectively by the Government) to be Britain’s new national computer-controlled phone system. A huge project that had already cost hundreds of millions. Trouble was – although the small local telephone exchanges being designed by Plessey looked OK, the designs for the core large exchanges by GEC would never work. The underlying GEC hardware was wholly inadequate for large throughput, and the software was years late and a total mess – a plate of spaghetti. Neil went straight for the jugular – he had really done his homework, it did not matter to him that this was such a massive prestige project. He was not worried about embarrassing BT or Ministers – as long as the case was strong.
Three years later the GEC efforts were jettisoned – Ericsson of Sweden ended up supplying and running the entire BT core system They still do. This spelt virtually the end of the UK telecoms manufacturing industry, but blind Government faith in the project had protected it until it was too late to change course.
Andrew Neil took a similarly robust view in the mid-1980s of the plans for a British TV satellite – again involving GEC. He quickly recognised that it simply would not fly – it did not have the power to deliver to small customer dishes, and the British satellite firms had never ever won a commercial satellite order, everything was just an endless stream of public funding.
So Neil has never been a respecter of big stupid Government hobby-horses. And politics is not his only metier – he can research and understand science and technology projects. His interview of the lightweight Ed Davey was IMHO just a teeing-up exercise, if Davey dares to go back in the autumn Neil will destroy him. Already Andrew Neil understands the issues better than Davey or any other Government spokesman – and far better than the eco-loons that have run the BBC’s coverage of global warming so far.
Even better than a re-run with Ed Davey would be a set-to with Julia Slingo, boss of the Met Office. But she would not dare face him.
“But she would not dare face him.”
It’s statistically unlikely.
The ‘why he needed to do it’ point is well taken.
Some tuppeny ha’penny columnist from a low circulation staffroom rag like the Guardian (and someone who turns out to be in the pay of ‘Big Green’ in any case!) sticks his thumbs in his lapels and opines, a few Twits take to the moronsphere and Neil fees he needs to defend himself.
The world has gone mad.
I very doubt that Andrew thought he had to defend himself. I would guess that the beeboid climate types forced him into it.
Any sane person seeing that interview would realise that he was not “denying” (I hate that word) climate change but was questioning the pace and the cost, as many of us do.
Neil’s rebuttal is one more step along the road to destroying the global warming scam. It’s generated a lot of coverage.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/22/dana-nuccitellis-vested-interest-oil-and-gas/
I’m not really sure what the purpose of Alan’s post is really. Is he criticising the BBC or Andrew Neil? If the BBC were a sinking ship (if only) then Neil might be one worth saving.
Newsnight last night (Monday) went for global warming in Alaska in a very big way with Stephen Sackur flying all over the state and giving one sentence to an Alaskan official who did not want oil exploration to be stopped.
Well done Brillo. Having dared to mouth some heresies the Left-liberals will have been squeeling within the BBC – or the Guardian which amounts to the same thing – forcing him to make his forceful rebuttal. As we saw in the Climategate emails any dissent is clobbered. If we have to have a BBC let’s have Brillo for DG.
Meanwhile Newsnight went on maneuvers with Shukman in Alaska. He was there in support of the Inuit who want to bring a lawsuit against ‘big oil’. Funny, when I want to go huntin’ shootin’ and fishin’ it’s the Left-liberal BBC types who want to stop me – not climate change.
Shukman/Sackur I’m not sure which? There are so very very many of them. Anyway he looked a complete fool spouting greenisms whilst roaring over the ice on his skidoo/snowmobile
Brillo is the only beeboid worth saving. Kudos to him for actually researching this subject and paying attention to the actual science, not the religion.
It is sickening to see so many so-called scientists getting the science ass backwards.
Classically in science, you observe something which gives you an idea. (CO2 absorbs more radiative energy at certain frequencies) Then there follows a theory. (doubling CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to X degrees warming, depending on the feedbacks (increased heat -> increased water vapour -> accelerating heat increases)), then that theory needs to be tested by experimentation, often alongside a control.
One must device experiments which ought to disprove the theory, to properly test the theory. The theory must be able to be falsified.
If the experimental data cannot falsify the theory, then the theory remains valid.
Real scientists never set out to prove a thoery, only ever to disprove it. So long as they fail to do so, then the theory remains valid. Eventually the theory becomes so well established through repeated testing in all kinds of ways, that it becomes a law.
IF the experimental data does not support the theory, then the theory is wrong. End of story!
Sadly, this is where climate science often fails. The problem is that we do not have any other identical planets which we can experiment with, so we create computer models of them instead. Climate scientists wrongly believe that this is still experimentation of the theory and that they are getting useful data which proves their theory.
Actually they are making models which prove the theory by demonstrating the theory, because that is what they are coded to do, while the actual real world continues as it does according to the laws of physics and chemistry. The scientists admit that there models are incomplete. Another word for incomplete, is wrong.
The computer models do not simulate the climate correctly. They cannot when they do not simulate clouds accurately, because our understanding of clouds is not complete. They do not simulate particulates accurately, because we do not know how much particulate material is thrown into the atmosphere each year with any certainty, or the effect of all the different types of particulates. There are massive holes in the models and consequently they cannot simulate the climate accurately and consequently THEY ARE WRONG.
The only place a human fingerprint is detectable in global temperatures is in the models, which are coded to prove the theory. ALL the models predicted that temperatures would rise faster than they have. Most of them predicted with such certainty that the current officially measured temperatures from HadCrut, NASA GISS et al, would be physically impossible with the concentrations of CO2 that we have now.
the model is only an expression of the theory. It is NOT a test of the theory. It is NOT experimentation.
The only way to test the theory accurately, in this instance, is through observational measurement, to see if it matches what the theory predicts.
The actual measurements show that the temperatures have stopped rising in a way that the models failed to predict. So the models are wrong, so the underlying theory is wrong. it has been falsified. A doubling of CO2 does not lead to a large and accellerating increase in atmospheric heat.
Sadly climate scientists are acting very unscientifically in refusing to believe that the theory is wrong, despite the evidence, because trillions of dollars and the reputation of science is at stake.
These climate scientists admit that there is a pause, they admit that they cannot explain why there is a pause, yet refuse to accept that the models are wrong or the the underlying theory is flawed and still implore us to believe that their science is robust.
Kudos to Brillo for sticking to the robustness of the classical scientific method, and not the ass backwards model based version.
Excellent post – but the central idea in science of testing any theory to destruction does not apply here. Climate science has ceased to be science, it has become politics.
What is so sad is that there are so few people in politics or connected – like Andrew Neil – who have any clue how distorted “climate science” has become, how full of lies and self-serving machinations. That is how we end up with clowns like Ed Davey – and Ed Miliband blazing the trail – and Cameron meekly following, deliberately damaging the UK economy, despoiling our countryside and shoving people into abject fuel poverty.
Cameron’s only interest nowadays seems to be the Mumsnet Vote. I expect the porn-lock went down well with them (if not with their desperate hubbies)
So the priorities – gay marriage, porn-blocking, and and umm err umm – oh yes, a vote on EU membership AFTER the next election. He thinks he thinks we are that dim? For a PR-man he’s not very bright.
You know about the Arrhenius method of calculating the Greenhouse effect, but just try using that to calibrate CO2 warming on Mars and Venus.
I am ashamed not to have noticed that things where far worse in Climate science than you could imagine. But thanks to Astronomy and thermodynamics things are dramatically improving in Climate science, but there has been nothing on the telly about it yet, most scientists are still stuck with using the failed Arrhenius method, but I find that the “Unified Theory of Climate” solves the problem of explaining the temperatures in all parts of the atmospheres of all the planets in the Solar System, including the Earth and the carbon dioxide atmospheres of Venus and Mars, it also produces a calculation for man-made warming, a thousand times weaker than the IPCC assumptions.
Astronomers have also provided the answers for the 20th century global warming, which is proven to have been caused by high energy cosmic ray changes to cloud albedo in the science of Cosmoclimatology. Astronomers have been looking at changes in cloud albedo, even though this is the big tabo amongst Climate scientists who instead like to put man-made dust into computer models. Cloud albedo correlates with the length of the solar cycle which is caused by the speed of the centre of the Sun relative to the centre of mass or barycentre of the Solar System, this in turn is caused by the orbits and masses of the Planets. This is also why it is predicted that the present peak in Global Warming will turn into a Global cooling in the next decade.
Simple but still relatively secret, I doubt any of the government advisers would inform members of parliament about this, and I guess that only the Labour MP Graham Stringer would be intelligent enough to find out these answers to the problems in Climate science.
Great post, Ken, and a very articulate summary of why the AGW theory doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. I also believe the models assume positive feedback, which I don’t think you mentioned.
Only one slight beef with it: ‘Sadly climate scientists are acting very unscientifically in refusing to believe that the theory is wrong….’ should be ‘AGW-supporting climate scientists….’, otherwise you are in danger of echoing the BBC mantra of (all) climate scientists vs bloggers/deniers.
Yes, feedback has been proven to be negative.
And
Yes, There is an alternative to the Arrhenius based “theory is wrong”, it is the thermodynamics based “Unified Theory of Climate is right”
Excellent post, a very well stated case.
Just to gild the lily not only are the models not experimentation but they are more often than not incapable of producing the expected results. They are often 3-400% off in their predictions.
Imagine if they tried to put a man on the moon and were out by 400%!
The big question is why? Even our politicians are not so stupid as to not recognise the case when it is put to them, so why do they persist with this charade? What political advantage is there all the main parties to agree on AGW and press for the same solutions?
I can see why the Greens and their puppet masters on the left want to wreck the economy through such damaging taxes; lets face it you know you are been fed a lie when the solution to a problem is taxation. But why do the Tories fall in line, are the EU pulling their strings or is it the generally accepted case in government circles (of any colour) that fossil fuels are finite, we are burning them at ever increasing rates and soon there will be none left? NB by ‘soon’ I mean in 50-60 years. After all they have tried asking the public to use less fuel, they have tried telling the public to use less fuel. They have tried taxation. And yet consumption continues to rise. So now they are trying fear?
That doesn’t seem to be rational enough to be true even if supplies are as bad as stated, and they won’t be as new finds keep popping up. So what is the problem with our energy consumption? Lack of generation?
Any one care to enlighten me?
The science of Climate is not a science, and is unlikely to be ever a science, as it involves too many ‘sciences’. For a start a real climate scientists would have to be expert in Solar dynamics, planetary mechanics, thermodynamics, electromagnetics and radiation, oceanography- particularly the thermodynamics of heat exchange in the oceans, and the behaviour of living organisms. Thats for a start.
Then the interaction, linear and non-linear, time delayed, feedback, noise, etc etc. This is just a start without even mentioning clouds. Can’t see how it can be done.
Even a committee of experts would be unable to handle it. The only way left is to the take temperature readings and extrapolate. Extrapolation over a time frame of decades, is far worse then simply taking a blind guess.
The real reason is not the science of AGW that concerns the BBC and governments, but the monies and politics of AGW. They have invested too much political and other capital, for them to let it go, especially as the gains are in trillions in tax levies, and the bonanza of patronage that results from a windfall in taxes.
The others reason is that the West will be locked into a command and control economy for the foreseeable future.
He’s a good lad Andrew Neil. It’s not fair to describe him as a Beeboid though. He’s a straight talking proper principled journalist cuckoo in the beeb nest.
They moved him off the daily politics because he held everyone he interviewed to the same high standards, which is not acceptable in bbc land if that interviewee is a leftie. Whereas Jo Coburn can be trusted to come at things from the correct bbc corporate perspective.
They moved This Week as late as possible to try and get it off the air.
Frankly, it’s surprising to me that he’s still allowed on the Sunday Pol. It can’t last. They do cunningly fill half the program with a local news section, which is grade A boring tosh around here (the east), can’t speak for the other regions.
at least al beeb have started to allow comments on agw
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23409404
Shukman on the wobble ? His article does not look like the twist-the-“facts”-obscure the arguments stuff we always got from Richard Black and Roger Harrabin.
we’re coming up to the first anniversary of Blacks departure from the BBC. it would be nice to think this site payed its part in getting rid of him
Whilst we’re all patting Andrew Neil on the back for his stance on global warming, lets not forget his recent interview with Tommy Robinson. One swallow a summer doesn’t make and all that.
Neil does appear willing to question the BBC party line on some matters (perhaps because he’s one of the few journalists on the BBC who isn’t a journalist solely due to BBC patronage, but because he actually created a career for himself in that field first), but he is clearly subject to the party line on others. This makes his usefulness debatable – a less charitable person than me might even suggest that he falls into the useful idiot category for the BBC.
“97 per cent of climate activists in the pay of Big Oil shock!”
By James Delingpole.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100227804/97-per-cent-of-climate-activists-in-the-pay-of-big-oil-shock/?ico=debate^editors_choice