‘The uncritical reproduction of scientific orthodoxy is a far more egregious error: it denies that error can be observed from without the consensus.’
There was a huge fuss generated by the Hotheads of the pro AGW side of the climate debate over the Andrew Neil interview with Ed Davey, asking him if government climate and energy policy should be changed to take into account the new facts…such as a 16 year ‘pause’ in global warming.
The major bone of contention, or contrived argument against the interview, was that neither participant was a scientist. The reality was that the critics didn’t like the line of questioning and therefore sought to claim Neil, as a mere journalist, cannot possibly be qualified to speak knowledgeably on the subject and Davey, as a politician is similarly challenged.
Hmmm…but isn’t that the job of both the journalist and the politician…to gather information or advice, analyse it and come to some conclusion…and in the case of the politician to make far reaching decisions based upon his understanding of that science.
The ‘Hotheads’ are not so critical of Davey when he makes decisions that go in their favour…then he is wise and knowledgeable.
The ‘Hotheads’ are not so critical of journalists like Harrabin or Black who seem to toe the ‘party line’.
My criticism of the BBC in this case is to ask why is it that a political journalist is asking questions about climate policy that the BBC’s own environmental journalists should be asking…but don’t.
Could it be that Harrabin has spent years, in collusion with Dr Joe Smith, attempting, very successfully, to prevent any such questions and consequent debate being raised.
There is an excellent article on this conflict of interests here (via Bishop Hill)
The emphasis on expertise is either hopelessly naive or it is an attempt to delimit permissible areas of debate for strategic ends. Heaven forefend that politicians should be interrogated, lest it turn out that far-reaching and expensive policies turn out to have been, if not drafted by people who do not have a grasp of their subject, executed by them.
In spite of all the criticism levelled against him, then, Andrew Neil, in just one show, has done more to promote an active understanding of climate science and its controversies than has been done by the Carbon Brief blog, academics at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and elsewhere, Bad Science warriors, and a legion of Tweeters who claim to speak for science have done in their entire existences. Along the way, it is possible that Neil made some inconsequential technical mistakes. But by contrast, the uncritical reproduction of scientific orthodoxy is a far more egregious error: it denies that error can be observed from without the consensus. So much for ‘science’.
Perhaps the BBC might like to rethink its policy of not engaging ‘sceptics’.
In the comments for this article Mike Hulme, from the UEA, so no climate sceptic, said this about the ‘consensus’ (via Bishop Hill)….
Ben Pile is spot on. The “97% consensus” article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. It obscures the complexities of the climate issue and it is a sign of the desperately poor level of public and policy debate in this country that the energy minister should cite it. It offers a similar depiction of the world into categories of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to that adopted in Anderegg et al.’s 2010 equally poor study in PNAS: dividing publishing climate scientists into ‘believers’ and ‘non-believers’. It seems to me that these people are still living (or wishing to live) in the pre-2009 world of climate change discourse. Haven’t they noticed that public understanding of the climate issue has moved on?
Perhaps the BBC should start to pay attention……‘Haven’t they noticed that public understanding of the climate issue has moved on?’
Hulme also said this when trying to answer the question should climate experts over ride politicians when deciding how to tackle climate change:
‘….we risk the tyranny of “the expert” and the mighty power of naturalism will suppress the creative and legitimate tension of agonistic human beings. ‘
It is unfortunate that with the success of Harrabin and the CMEP in closing down debate the BBC has opted for the ‘tyranny of experts’.
“It is unfortunate that with the success of Harrabin and the CMEP in closing down debate the BBC has opted for the ‘tyranny of experts’”
From 28 of what the BBC called “the best scientific experts“, it turned out that only three climate scientists where present and these three where only qualified in measuring the temperature, the seminar was made up of environmental activists without a single causational or attribution climate scientist present, not a single atmospheric physicist or solar scientist was present at that BBC Climate Change seminar.
So it was and still is a “tyranny of ignorance” at the BBC.
Until we have a TV documentary about the basics of carbon dioxide warming in atmospheric physics, using the “Unified Theory of Climate” which 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. An answer that was not possible with the Arrhenius method of calculating the Greenhouse effect, I know I tried and I believed in the Arrhenius method, then we will not progress beyond ignorance of the basics in Climate science.
In my opinion, get the basic facts right, and we do not need a debate about BELIEF or SCEPTICISM about carbon dioxide warming, which is in FACT virtually none existent and irrelevant for the Earth.
i think even the BBC have realised the the public is suffering from green fatigue. maybe most of the UK doesnt have a degree in science, but we are all educated to an acceptable standard of science via our high school education. at school i learned science is about observation.
the dangers of catastrophic climate change we are being told is real, is here and is happening now doesnt match the observations we ourselves can make of the so called science, its only natural, in fact its human nature, to question what we are being told
when i was at university, i found that most people studying the sciences (apart from medicine and veterinary science) were studying them as a 2nd or 3rd choice, their primary choice being medicine or veterinary science, which they werent clever enough to be selected for. says a lot about scientists, not all of them, but most of them
Beebinator, you either went to a small university, or you didn’t talk to many science undergrads. The people I studied with had a genuine passion for their field and had no desire to study medicine. The really bright ones looked down on “mere biologists”, often quoting Ernest Rutherford: “”All science is either physics or stamp collecting”.
i studied law, we tend to look down on everyone
The BBC doesn’t do reality.
No it constructs it
Watch the pea: the Green Gravy train.
While warmists brushed off every question over their nonsense as “funded by big oil” – it is self evident they won’t own up to their hundred-fold funding by”big green”
I keep a sign on my front door that says “no junk mail or pizza delivery leaflets” but invites environmental charity fundraisers to call, for a punch on the nose “for the sake of the grandchildren”
Knowing that I’m a CAGW sceptic, a mate of mine once asked what would make me change my mind and accept as incontrovertible proof that we were indeed all headed for a fiery doom-laden weather catastrophe.
I said I’d want 10 consecutive years of sitting out on Christmas Day in England being able to wear shorts and a t-shirt. I might get a bit worried by that but otherwise it’s just standard climate fluctuations.
In my 50 years I’ve seen snow in June (one time) and remember a few unseasonably warm days past November but other than that I have never experienced anything particularly extreme. Certainly not worth ruining the western world’s economies for. And for how long have they been measuring weather properly? The 1880’s or so?
The BBC promotes the CAGW meme because it considers itself doctrinally bound to serve the underlying common purpose – a common purpose served equally dutifully by trolls in the EU and the UN. CAGW is a perfect vehicle with which to browbeat entire governments into accepting their vision of an agrarian, fossil-fuel free socialist utopia. They can only achieve this by constant repetition of the ‘catastrophic man-made climate change’ meme, by relentlessly citing ‘the 97%’ so-called ‘consensus’ (an appeal to authority if ever there was one) on CAGW.
Useful idiots like Ed Davey are mere foot soldiers to their wider aims. NGOs like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Oxfam lobby governments globally to create policy based on their own false witness, misdirection and unsupported claims about ‘climate change’. Organisations such as the BBC merely step up to propagandise these openly political aims using stealth and subtle innuendo – but ceaselessly, like any good agitprop outfit.
Even The Met Office get their hands dirty with the IPCC, sending ‘experts’ to every ‘Conference of the Parties’ climate summit (courtesy of the taxpayer) to help formulate ‘Policy Guidelines’ for governments – the hugely profitable, politically ambitious CAGW gravy train rides roughshod across all criticism, all dissent. None of these people are elected, but sadly those that are seem hopelessly in thrall to the carefully staged propaganda that has been so ruthlessly embedded into every strata of government and mass media.
Sceptics are openly called ‘deniers’ by the likes of the wretched Davey on national TV – the man is a clueless buffoon thoughtlessly parroting insults in lieu of any substantive knowledge of what he is required to understand. In this area (‘climate change’) he is the shameful face of a cowardly, intellectually and scientifically bankrupted government, supported by an openly partisan left-wing national broadcaster who are themselves fully signed-up to the aims of the CAGW manifesto.
Andrew Neil – just for a moment – briefly reminded us all what ‘journalistic integrity’ at the BBC used to look like.