Via Bishop Hill
Clive James has had a dig at Brian Cox and the BBC’s climate change coverage:
Clive James: I’m not sure I trust this science rock star
But hey, the smiling Professor (the smile sometimes switches itself on for no reason at all, like a refrigerator door loose on its hinges) might be right, and certainly seems so when backed up by so much institutional power, including the power of the BBC. He might care to remember, though, that two of his predecessors in the Top Beeb Boffin role – Nigel Calder and David Bellamy – have never been allowed back on the air since they failed to join the chorus about the dangers of global warming. For now, however, he is in tune with the times: safe, as it were, for as long as disaster threatens.
One of the BBC’s other new blue eyed boys, Jim Al Khalili is upset:
Jim Al-Khalili @jimalkhalili 5h Shame his clever prose wasted on drivel “@SLSingh: Sad to see Clive James buying into climate contrarians’ propgnda
‘Contrarians’? ‘Propaganda’? Impartiality in his DNA then….er…What’s this DNA thingy then Jimbo?….I’d ask you what ‘Impartiality’ was…but you obviously don’t know.
The Spanish Inquisition is alive and well, and the sun revolves around the earth.
Good to see a BBC science presenter so open to inquiry and questioning of the ‘science’, a curious mind.
Strange how resident BBC ‘scientists’ are such incurious and unquestioning individuals.
James also said of Cox’s travesty of a science programme:
‘Professor Cox visited the Royal Society and Bletchley Park in his quest for examples of the scientific method. Finally he dropped in on the Royal Institution, where he and the editor of Nature puzzled together, but not very hard, over how there has come to be an “overwhelming scientific consensus” favouring the concept of dangerous man-made global warming.
Neither of them asked what kind of scientific consensus it was if, say, Freeman Dyson of the Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies declined to join it.’
Or hundreds of other scientists qualified to opine on the subject, who don’t seem to exist in the BBC’s parallel universe.
We can draw our own inclusions as to what kind of message the BBC is giving to those of our youngsters who aspire to a career in science. What’s for sure, it isn’t anything to do with the scientific method as most people know it.
Meanwhile the blissfully ignorant state broadcaster, home of the world’s greatest investigative journalists, carries on unaware of the mounting controversy over what looks like fiddled data in the IPCC fifth assessment report.
The BBC – shamelessly pedalling propaganda in the name of science.
Hurray! Finishing a post with a pompous slogan in bold! Containing a spelling mistake!
An obsessive myopic Orthographist.
Nah, just an attention-seeking troll. See his other pseudonyms ‘Maurice’ and ‘The Men in White Coats’. Same idiot using the same exact phrasing, same exact idiosyncrasies and same exact irrelevant nonsense.
….just an attention-seeking troll.
….what the f*** are you then?
lowering the case, and tone.
awesome.
got two likes beyond the selfie, too.
extra awesome.
Trolls ought not be fed.
Starting a post about nothing to do with anything of actual relevance to topic or BBC bias, again, irony free! Using rubbish grammar! Boo!
That was certainly no tragic waste of a sunny Sunday afternoon on your part.
I actually appreciated ‘worse than that’ Jim’s spelling more as he had room for accuracy, but didn’t use it.
Hooray! Skirting the issue as usual and resorting to weak, irrelevant straw man arguments! Containing no substance!
You’re right, CTC: it should have read
The BBC – shamelessly piddling propaganda in the name of science.
That better?
Hope your raw nerve gets better soon, by the way.
That depends upon how you read it – it may have said “The BBC shamelessly pedalling. Propaganda in the name of science”. A mere full stop fixes it in one way…
An “overwhelming political consensus” converted by the IPCC committee into a “overwhelming scientific consensus” in the same way as was Jewish science in Nazi Germany.
I’d like to pick up on just one sentence from johnnythefish’s post above, regarding Clive James’ review…. ‘Professor Cox visited the Royal Society and Bletchley Park in his quest for examples of the scientific method.’
And they then go on to discuss the case of CAGW……?
At no point has there been any contact point between the theory of CAGW and the scientific method. Otherwise ALL data regarding this hysterical hypothesis would have to be placed in the public domain so that other scientists can evaluate it, and determine whether it is capable of being rendered a false hypothesis. Since so many of these so-called ‘climate scientists’ have systematically rejected the publication of their data, the algorithms they have used, and the methodologies they have employed in creating their hypotheses on this matter, there can be no question but that they have completely failed to follow the scientific method, and no amount of obfuscation regarding ‘consensus’can disguise this failure to act objectively.
At no point has there been any contact point between the theory of CAGW..
Theory? At best CAGW can be termed a hypothesis. In reality a fraud.
The only thing I can think why Western governments have created this fraud, is that they need to raise money to balance the books, after decades long tax and waste policies.
The CAGW hypothesis has been tested. The only way possible to test it, is by comparrison of the models of the hypothesis, with real empirically measured data.
The predictions of the models have utterly failed to match reality. Therefore the hypothesis (as expressed by models) has already been falsified.
the wilful and blatant fraud in the IPCC’s AR5 is in the way they moved the scale, to falsely place the real measured temperature inside the range of predictions of the models.
the truth is, that the current average global temperature as reported by NASA GISS, UAH, HADCRUT etc… is below the predicted temperature and so far out, that all but 2 of the GCMs (General circulation models) claim that current temperatures are physically impossible.
If that is not falsification, I do not know what is!
They have already told us – the science is settled, apart from the bits like there being no warming for the last fifteen years.
95% of the people they asked (whose jobs depend on AGW) agreed that they didn’t want to find a new career.
climate change – science fiction
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/featured/prime-time/867432237001/climate-change-report-science-fiction/2700762412001
noggin,
Not quite, climate changes, it is what it does. The science fiction is that puny man can control it in any way, let alone controlling the “average global temperature to +/-2 Degrees Celsius. They do not even know what the average temperature should be or even what it is!
I suppose it is correct to say that only 5 percent of Climate scientists are causational or attributional Climate scientists, and the other 95 percent are only to do with measuring the temperature in the environment, or sitting in an office thinking up PR rubbish. And those Climate scientists are the morons whose jobs are at stake.
Find the source of the research funding, and you’ve got the scientific consensus. Most of the dosh seems to be doled out by government-controlled research councils, or by the EU.
Religious and political committees are necessary for the protection of dogma, the more people on the committee, the more powerful is the consensus.
(1) Vatican committee decides that Galileo’s science is bullshit.
(2) Nazi committee decides that Einstein’s science is bullshit.
(3) IPCC committee decides that Svensmark’s science is bullshit.
This was a letter that Brian Cox’s great hero Sir PATRICK MOORE CBE. FRS. Sent to Mensa members in 2008.
I don’t think that we have anything to do with
global warming – the source is the Sun; you have only to
look back at the past records. For instance, the ‘Little
Ice Age” coincided with the Maunder Minimum …
Global warming will probably go on for another
couple of decades, and then will be a cooling. Well – I
may be wrong. Time will tell’
Happy New Year
Sincerely
Patrick Moore
MENSA SPACESIGNL WINTER 2008
I suspect that Cox is under great repression, but Jim Al Khalili is a genuine useful idiot.
95% of the people (whose jobs depend on AGW) agreed that they didn’t want to find a new career, and further, their confidence had increased that the warming that wasn’t happening was due in some unspecified amount to human influence.
Where is a BBC comedian when you need one? Oh. They don’t want to be seen the wrong side of their lefty mates. Stage Left: quick joke about Sarah Palin.
The comedy on BBC now is watching how the warmist crowd discretely try wipe to egg off their faces while pretending it isn’t there.
Reporting is ‘these are the facts’.
Analysis is ‘let’s weigh ’em all up’.
Propaganda is ‘let’s only share at the facts we want’.
Propgnda is ‘Shame his clever prose wasted on drivel “@SLSingh: Sad to see Clive James buying into climate contrarians’ propgnda’
Looking at the comments in response, a few have tried to raise actual germane points in debate.
But the author and his groupies appear to feel all that is necessary is a sorry shake of a head or a dismissive wave.
In actual science, I know which should prevail. Oh, and…
Censorship is the BBC only running with Mr. AK’s views and none other.
Currently, the Wrong Mens are in control of the edit.
The result is tragi-comic.
If still deadly.
Surprised the BBC even commissioned a program with ‘mans’ in the title. ‘Persons’ would have been more PC, unless they’d been ‘womans’ obviously in which it would have been fine.
I find Brian Cox likeable, and I’m prepared to accept that man is contributing to climate change. However, it is a scientific debate that is not settled. The BBC does a disservice when it denigrates AGW critics and doesn’t consider the arguments. For instance, so far as I know no-one has been able to explain the Ice Ages – why they came, and why they went. The recent pronouncement that a pause in global warming is ‘proof’ that global warming is happening stretches credibility. The BBC should take notes, not take sides.
How about the “science” of heat sinking to the bottom of the oceans? These ” climate scientists” have inverted the science of physics by saying heat SINKS! It’s being absorbed by the earth’s oceans so contributing to this cooling period over the past 17 years. So all my science teachers, especially my physics teacher, at school taught me total bullshit. How could I have been so blind?
Read about Thermal Inertia, the laws of nature certainly do not change, Ice core data shows that for the deep Oceans, otherwise we would not know that the thermal inertia for the deep Oceans is about 800 years.
No any hidden heat either did not exist in the first case or has been reflected, the present 17 year peak in warming will be all the heat that you need take into account as regards the Thermal Inertia is concerned.
The proof that carbon dioxide causes warming will always be hidden from sight unless you take account of using the carbon dioxide atmosphere of Venus to prove that any warming must be so small as to be undetectable.
Buy the book “The Chilling Stars” by Henrik Svensmark.
Also there has been further developments in this field since the book was published, see below.
Ice ages are also caused by changes in the Earths planetary axis and orbit, producing Ice ages that peak every 100,000 years, the last one peaked 20,000 years ago, but no one knows why it is 100,000 years. As the speed of the centre of the Sun relative to the barycentre of the Solar System determines the length of the solar cycle, calculating changes in these movements over time may well produce a future solution to the 100,000 year ice age problem, as the inclination of the Earth’s orbit has a 100,000 year cycle relative to the plane passing through the barycentre.
You could try doing the calculations, I don’t dare muck about with computer programs any more.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2444637/Mehdi-Hasan-journalist-attacked-Daily-Mail-Question-Time-asked-write-paper.html
is it a coincidence that ever since Richard Black left the bBC to work as Director of Communications for the Global Ocean Commission, global warming is now in the oceans?
All someone should do is to ask any of the Warmists some basic questions, irrespective of the truth/falsity of their thesis:
(1) Just what IS the optimal climate?
(2) Based on what criteria?
(3) Has it ever existed? When? Now? How recently, if not at present?
(4) How can it be attained, if this is not it?
(5) Once attained, how can it be maintained, and how do you know?
(6) Is there any possibility of tipping the balance too far the other way, and if so, how could that be prevented ?
(7) On a balance-of-harms basis, why should a false-negative be considered worse than a false-positive, and hence more to be avoided?
Riddle me all these, Batman, and THEN, maybe I’ll consider your hypothesis.
Funny how no one has asked the question as to what would have happened had all the scientists decided that there was no global warming and that they had been wrong all the time.
All those research grants lost, all the government funding, the loss of careers without hope of resurrecting them, all the colleagues derision, and all those difficult questions such as why we’ve spent so much on alternative power.
The fact is the vested interest in keeping the band wagon rolling is enormous. There is no way that any scientist in his right mind would tell the truth given the consequences.
Then he is not a scientist, note he includes she!!!!!