Bishop Hill Preparing the ground
Mar 22, 2011 BBC Climate: other Thanks to readers who have been pointing to Bob Watson's interview on the Today programme this morning, in which he spoke about the difficulty of convincing a sceptical public of the horrors of climate change in the wake of Climategate.
Audio here, starting at 51:20.
This was a boilerplate interview, reiterating a series of standard AGW talking points. To me, what was interesting about was not the content but the timing - there was no obvious newsworthiness, with Climategate having slipped off the news schedules now.
I think the reason for Watson being given airtime now is that at some point in the near future we are going to get the BBC's review of science coverage published. For some time now the BBC has been sending out signals that the report will recommend hobbling anyone who might criticise the increasingly thin case for CAGW - what Brian Cox called the "Orwellian" solution. This is quite an important departure, and it is therefore likely that Watson's appearance is the first step in a softening-up exercise.
Expect more of the same.
Reader Comments (75)
Yes and I think the only thing that really needs hobbling is the BBC's tv tax!
Regards
Mailman
Uncannily the same language used in Austrakia recently.
Check out "our" ABC's Media watch hysterical rant against skeptic radio programs on Monday night.
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3169309.htm
Today the word "Denier" was thrown around in Parliament
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/politial-heat-rises-over-climate-denial-with-pm-accused-of-drawing-parallels-with-holocaust/story-e6frg6xf-1226026163930
You would almost think it is coordinated
i heard this and thought - hang on: what's the news value of this?
Some of the exchanges were terrifying. Essentially, teh line from Watson was, given that Climategate has damaged credibility, we must do MORE than before to nobble people asking awkward questions.
Huh? How in the name of everything holy is that going to work?
Something new: US taxpayers funding the BBC.
==============
Given that the audience know that AGW is nonsense, perhaps this is just the BBC's latest attempt to provide early morning entertainment?
It's getting interesting. A lot of stuff is up for grabs if/when the concensus is officially broken. The Royal Society, Nature, Science, the BBC, the EU and the UN are all among the non-dedicated-climate bodies which have staked their credibility on the CAGW concensus.
If the concensus breaks, an awful lot of these people will be seriously discredited. In the era of the Blogosphere, it will be hard to maintain the old-boy's-club atmosphere of not holding people accountable. The longer the insanity lasts, the worse it will be. If/when we have power cuts attributable to renewables, there WILL be deaths, far more deaths, for example, than the Japanese Nuclear crisis will ever cause, even if all the fifty die. We need to start thinking about how to call the BBC, Watson, Oxburgh et al to account, preferably with criminal charges and jail terms.
I think the first people in the firing line should be Oxburgh, Bouton and Russell, for obtaining money by deception in the course of their so-called "inquiries".
Honestly, it sounds like it is past time for some civil disobedience in Britain. I realize you guys on the other side of the Atlantic pride yourselves in your composure and stiff-upper-lips, but it's really time to get dirty on this issue. If you allow the BBC to continue to go unchecked on this, you'll eventually find yourself stuck with a form of media similar to what North Korea has.
I would suggest organized mass refusal to pay TV taxes. Force the government to throw everyone in jail for refusing to pay that absurd tax.
Bob Ward's master, Mr Grantham, must have some worries about his money-making schemes that ride on the back of CAGW coming unstitched when the sham of the 'concensus' is finally obvious to all sentient beings. The warmist bleatings about their marvellously-contrived concensus are sounding very shrill and desperate but can only increase in vloume as their numbers shrink to the point where a few lonely lunatics are shreiking in splendid isolation.
I will be thrilled to shortly leave the grasp of the unethical BBC.
I've listened to half of two "Start the Week" programmes on Radio 4 on consecutive Mondays (half because they just made me feel nauseous), and on both occasions we've had someone on to talk about "Climate Change" (yesterday it was about the Inuit). There is no obvious topicality here and two in two weeks talking about the same thing is really a bit too much, even for the BBC. I mean if you're going to show bias, at least make an attempt to disguise it.
The politicisation of science is nearly complete. To oppose AGW is now being made to appear an act of political dissent, like opposing the Welteislehre in the Third Reich. This requires political solutions drawn from the authoritarian handbook. Expect them to come after the sceptical blogs next.
Nicholas Hallam
I almost wish they would, rather than just fulminate, Romm-style (Tobis-style; Eli-style; take your pick). Then there could be a legal test based on the right to freedom of speech. Now that would be interesting.
As for 'preparing the ground', yes, that is my sense too. Lots of witter (as Robinson mentions at 4:38pm) with no apparent topicality.
Very, very ominous.
But, re Dead Dog Bounce, I don't get the feeling that the consensus (sp!) is broken. Far from it. The smell in the air here in the UK is of 'settled science' and Nicholas Hallam is right to suggest that opposing C - AGW is now politically unacceptable. See Ed Miliband's remarks in 2009 about it being as 'socially unacceptable' to oppose windmills as to refuse to wear a car seat belt...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/24/wind-farms-opposition-ed-miliband
Perhaps Jeremy is right (4:29pm). Perhaps we do need to start breaking things and shouting.
No doubt this Nature editorial "The balance of probabilities" last October is all part of the same plan.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7318/full/467883a.html
Why would anyone listen to Marr? No platform for anyone with a superinjunction - by abusing the naivety of Mr Justice Eady, Marr and others have forfeited any moral right they have to be heard. It is shocking that the BBC continues to employ someone who is so clearly opposed to freedom of speech in his own life. On top of all that, he blithely pretends to be unbiased even though his long-suffering wife is part of a Labour/Grauniad dynasty and he is clearly a socialist himself.
Spies. We need deep-cover operatives in the academic hellholes of "Climate Insouciance".
I suggest starting with the techies. They don't get paid much and they get treated like dogs by their "betters".
@BBD @nicholas hallam. They already did. But I think I might soon have some interesting news for you on this score.
George Monbiot is clearly not on message then
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima
I liked this article!
Sarah Montague's voice had a tone of dripping disbelief that anyone could be so thick as to doubt the consensus (or maybe I was just imagining it). I think I agree with others that DDB is too optimistic - when consensus sets down such deep roots, it takes quite a long time to pull them up.
Watson's comments fit in with lots of what one hears from the consensus side, that this is all an issue of communication - how can one persuade the stupid public to believe that which is patently true to experts. There have been some nice posts on Judith Curry's blog (and to a lesser extent on Collide-a-Scape) suggesting that this is just not the right way to think about it, but this seems to have no traction at all for consensus-followers.
As a scientist working in a university, I have a two-fold reason to want things to change: the first is disinterested: I think the science needs looking at carefully again; the second less so: I believe that academic science is something that is useful in the long term to the public who pay for it, but it is not an easy case to make - and I do not wish it to become a whole lot harder due to severe discrediting of all scientsts. Anyway, I would really like to see a much more tolerant attitude to discussing the science of climate change - not explaining it, but assessing it. It would also be good if there was a more open debate about the political debate about what, if anything, needs to be done about climate change (adaptation vs. prevention). But given that all the people in power seem to want zero debate on both of these aspects, its a very discouraging situation. Any expression of the idea that it might be good to have a debate seems to cast one as an intellectual pariah...
Hi James Delingpole, do you mean you're being fired by the Torygraph? Ouch.
The alleged newsworthiness was was that Watson is giving a talk tomorrow.
I like the bit where he complains that often a sceptic or 'denier' is allowed to present the other point of view.
“For some time now the BBC has been sending out signals that the report will recommend hobbling anyone who might criticise the increasingly thin case for CAGW - what Brian Cox called the "Orwellian" solution. This is quite an important departure..”
It is. Watson mentioned Lord Lawson as the kind of “climate denier” who, in his opinion, shouldn’t be allowed on the same programme as himself. He apparently believes he should be allowed to “explain the science” without fear of contradiction, an opinion which the journalist didn’t contradict.
As DD Bounce notes, The Royal Society, Nature, Science, the BBC, the EU and the UN are all in this together, plus the government and opposition, which alone would justify the BBC in refusing to give “the oxygen of publicity” to common sense. Refusing to pay your licence fee won’t cut much ice with the UN or EU. Persuading people one by one is hardly a solution either.
Face facts. We’re in the same situation as an educated pagan in the late Roman Empire waking up and finding the world has officially gone Christian. There’s nothing to be done but keep your head down and hope it all blows over in about 1500 years time.`
I’m learning Chinese.
Is this Bob Watson of "What an arsehole" fame? There is little you can do to stop the BBC, it is an organisation that has been taken over completely by the leftists. They have entrenched views on every topic under the sun and put them to the long suffering people in all sorts of different ways. The Archers, a remarkable soap that has told us in minute detail about farming life since before rationing ended went through 18 months at six days a week without once mentioning the fox hunting ban that was being put to parliament.
Pendulums do swing however.
@BBD
It's the cover-up that gets them. When a conspiracy forms to avoid a little local difficulty in UEA, there's a paper trail. They've already commited the authority of the Royal Society for the benefit of an insignificant piece of PR.
Call me naive, but I would imagine that the concensus is breaking up. Stringer's editorial is a breakthrough. To paraphrase Churchill, the inquiries were not the end, not the beginning of the end, but best viewed as the end of the beginning. And it should be remembered Bob Watson presented evidence to the Science and Tech committee.
People like Stringer are a menace: clear evidence that there isn't acceptance that Climategate was nothing, and apparently with unimpeachable integrity. I view him as the next coming of the great independent backbencher, rather like titans such as Redwood, Field, David Steel and perhaps Jon Cruddas.
The next shoe to drop SHOULD be internal discussion within the Royal Society to censure Rees. After that, all it will take is someone to go grab some tree cores to update the proxies, and there is enormous problems. Someone should put together a proposal to set up 20 teams of grad students for a summer to go round coring trees in various treeline sites. Can't imagine it would cost more than $1million, industrialise the tree-ring industry. Paging Mr. Koch?
I'm not sure about this, maybe adding 2 and 2 and getting 5. But there was a bit on BBC Radio 4 news this morning about the Con-dems "Green Bank" idea to pump money in to "green" schemes which sensible investors will not invest in, being pushed back to 2015. Apparently setting up and funding this bank would break government spending rules at this time. Cue Harrabin with the usual drivel about importance of carbon reduction blah, blah, blah.
Maybe.......just maybe.....this deferment to 2015 is the Conservatives way of managing to avoid costly alternative power projects without actually appearing to avoid them. BBC preparing to bite back with the usual climate doom and gloom using the obligatory scarey report from the CAGW science fraternity ?
Note to self: stop reading conspiracy websites.
I hope you lot have all signed up!
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/43914.html
I suggested to Caroline Spellman at Defra that the new Coalition Government get rid of Watson because of his anti-scientific statements (in particular the one that we don't know what is causing global warming, therefore it must be human emissions of CO2). I don't remember getting a reply.
GeoffChambers: I agree with the notion that we're pagans waking up to find the world's gone Christian, but I suspect it won't last 1500 years, just long enough for it to be a crime to eat meat, or fly without the permission of the Commission for Eco Justice in your local town. But if we're not all fried by the end of this century it's going to be a hard religion to sell.
geronimo. No it was Prof Andrew Watson (of UEA, where-else) who called Marc Morano an "asshole" on Newsnight.
Slightly OT but maybe this is the right thread for this observation. It is very striking how closely the libertarian/authoritarian divide matches the ClimateSceptic/AGW one. On the surface these are unrelated, the one applying to political values the other to scientific facts. Yet so many of the most prominent critics are from the libertarian right; and there is extraordinary overlap with opposition to the European Union - Booker, North, Delingpole, Monckton, even David Bellamy (bless him).
I guess the answer has something to do with different attitudes towards dogma, the role of authority (if that's not too much of a tautology), social engineering and the burden of proof. In any case, it is easy to see how the science can itself become politicised.
Thanks Philip. I have to say that I have some sympathy with Andrew Watson's views on Morano, but he, Watson, didn't come over much better.
This Bob Watson would be the ex IPPC guy then?
Mactheknife
"Green Bank"
I wondered about that, and detected some back-pedalling, too. It sounds like an exothermic potato, getting hotter all the time!
DD Bounce
Wish you were right, but:
- Stringer will be marginalised and ignored
- The 'message' placed in the media is UEA and all who sail in her exonerated by multiple enquiries
- The RS is and remains the RS, despite some well concealed internal ructions
- Rees will not be censured!
- Even if the dentroclimatology proxies are updated and show a strong MWP it will be maintained that temps were 'equivalent' to C20th averages
- AGW will not be falsified by improving the 1ky + paleoclimate reconstructions
- Warming post 1950 will remain attributed to increasing GHGs, principally CO2
- The consensus is stronger than ever; it's just that people don't much bother with it at the moment
- But they still mostly believe what they see on TV and read in the papers
I think it's only a matter of time before the whole "consensus" idea falls apart. Cagwism has a limited shelf-life.
Temperatures aren't going up. Ooops. I think that politicians will start to get very bored of the whole subject unless Mother Nature starts to cooperate with cagwism rather soon.
And, at least in the UK, "winters are warm because of global warming, oh no hang on I meant winters are cold because of global warming" is the kind of idiocy that people recognise very easily. They can only talk that kind of nonsense for so long. Hopefully we'll have a couple of warm winters in the UK next, and cagwism will have to perform yet another absurd act of contortionism.
As for the BBC - I like it. I get all my news from the BBC website. It's incomparable, in my view. And I've just finished watching their excellent coverage of the Six Nations. I've lived abroad and seen what TV can look like in a completely commercial environment. In my experience it's terrifyingly awful. One of the few problems I have with the BBC is their coverage of science (in general). They are consensus junkies - their adherence to cagwism is only the most obvious example of that.
@James Evans - as has been noted before, the BBC's news coverage (not just on CAGW) is akin to a televised version of The Guardian, except I'm forced to pay for it.
Watson and the BBC are playing the 'quantity' card and hiding the 'quality' card. The failure to convince the public of global warming is blamed of the small amount of media time available to communicate the 'science'. Watson even names the obstacle to this communication - in the shape of Nigel Lawson. The implication being that a valuable quantity of airtime is wasted (or is used counterproductively) by being given to such sceptical viewpoints.
The truth of course is that Watson and his accomplices have had a huge quantity of airtime to convince the public - time which has been relatively free of any outside obstacles - and have failed because the content lacks quality. The BBC has abdicated its own role by refusing to put obstacles before Watson et al as a means of testing the quality of the AGW claims being made - as is its public service to do so (a role which has largely been taken up by the blogosphere these days).
The compliance shown in this so-called interview could well be understood as the BBC laying out a 'rational' to the public (no matter how distorted) for the possible removal of all sceptical voices from the broadcaster at the same time as increasing the amount of future airtime it gives over to unchallenged warmist propaganda.
John Craven - of, decades ago, 'John Craven's Newsround' - is intent on continuing to turn young heads now that he is on BBC's (Sunday) Country File. Every week is a challenge not to throw up the Sunday roast as he manages to squeeze in some reference or other to 'climate change'. Last Sunday he managed to the double: climate change AND sea rise (in the Somerset Levels, I think it was!).
It really is becoming quite predictable that this superannuated low level news reader is managing to get across his own personal beliefs on MM global warming - without any balance (guaranteed by the original BBC charter on impartiality) on the program.
I think you're being naive. Although they'd quite like to be thought of, in the wider sense, as "consensus junkies" - in reality they're liberal, metropolitan, statist minority "consensus junkies".
Until a few months ago, the main user feedback facility on their website, "Have your say", used a format whereby they identified the key issues of the day and then user's comments on it could be rated by other users - so that the favourite comment rose to the top of a list.
Sadly for the Beeb, the favourite was nearly always a right-of-centre, pro-business, pro-law enforcement, pro-family, anti-unlimited immigration, anti-tax comment of the sort more usually seen in the Daily Mail or Telegraph.
The Beebs first horrifed response to this outpouring of genuine, grassroots "consensus" was to remove the "recommended" facility and leave all comments in strict chronological order.
More recently they've abolished "Have your say" altogether.
Their idea of "consensus" is "what right thinking people like us believe".
Foxgoose
Amen
The problem of winning over public support for CAGW is a major one, as I think the lack it is felt as something of an embarrassment and a concern, given that the political establishment and the institutions are mostly on-message. A BBC producer said recently that "there's a growing consensus in policy circles that virtually every strategy that's been used to try to motivate people about climate change has been counterproductive." (Jolyon Jenkins in Radio 4's "In Denial - Climate Change on the Couch".)
For a while now, they've been casting around for ways in which the low-carbon message can be "framed", hence the involvement of all the marketing people and environmental psychologists. However, there still appears to be a widening gap between what they'd like - a public amenable to carbon rationing, TEQs, lowered expectations, etc., - and what they now have, which is largely indifference that could (if push comes to shove) turn into resentment and disobedience.
I'm with James Evans rather than geoff chambers. The CAGW scam is dying. Though the zombie will be kept going by multiple and powerful vested interests for as long as possible, sooner rather than later the brute fact of Earth's temperatures refusing to rise despite increasing CO2 levels will destroy the scam's utility as a tool of population control / tax extraction / career advancement, whatever.
David S - Mentioning Marr's superinjunction and long-suffering wife in the same paragraph... careful...
OT perhaps but there was a nice little article in today's Evening Standard, and as it does not seem to be on their website (maybe the ecowarriors censored it) I will laboriously type it out in full:
"This week - as if we didn't already talk about the weather enough - is Climate Week, organised by former student activist turned spin doctor, Kevin Steele. Cynics might say that Climate Week, which is supposed to facilitate 'the transition to a low-carbon society' is really an exercise for the self-righteous to do something a bit wacky and zany and feel good about themselves. So expect to be bored. The event's official website, www.climateweek.com , is hardly a model of clarity on this and other points. Climate change 'champions' appear to include Arnold Schwarzenegger, actor, politico, and renowned lover of gas-guzzling Hummer cars. And then there's Manchester City, the football club noted for paying footballers obscene wages to fund their fleets of baby Bentleys - paid for by the fabulous opulence of the club's Arab owners, who are positively rolling in cash from the dreaded fossil fuel known as oil. Climate Week's 'partners' - God knows what they pay to claim that title - include EDF Energy, a major investor in nuclear energy in France and elsewhere. While nuclear energy is certainly low-carbon, anyone in Japan can tell you that it comes with certain risks attached..."
Apart from the last sentence, which spoils it a bit, I couldn't have put it better myself. Pity it's tucked away on page 41 rather than somewhere more visible, though.
More.
BBC 2 7pm March 24. Wind Farm Wars.
(from Sunday Times)
"The spectre of climate change looms ever near, the need for renewable energy is growing in urgency, and yet there is still anti-wind turbine feeling about as the developer discovers when she tries to set up the structures near Dartmoor National Park. This series traces opposition to the plans as global warming is weighed up against noise and aesthetics."
Yeah. Right.
Does he (Bob Ward) really sound like that and does he have the title professor? Confused I am.
@ David Porter
Bob Watson
Bob Ward
Two heads but same coin.
As you say, yeah, right.
Wind turbines will save the planet.
@simpleseekeaftertruth,
Like I said..confused I am. Thanks for the correction.
David
Well more and more people I speak to are sceptical about even AGW, never mind its wild sibling. I don't think it will fold soon simply because too many people have, not just a vested interest, but a desire to keep their reputation intact. It is possible to see some exit strategies being developed here and there.
The things is that the ones who bent data and peer-review have a lot to lose and will fight on. Those who have no real knowledge of Climate but are part of the scientific establishment will fight on because they are unaware of the problem. I would expect the cracks to widen from within eventually because not all in climate science are scammers. Whoever released the Climategate emails comes in this category - as it certainly doesn't look like a "hacking" job.
There are some signs that politically world-wide the penny has slipped - perhaps not fully dropped yet.
Cancun - No agreement to cut CO2 by this or that % just a statement that we will keep emissions down so that a 2degC increase is not exceeded. Well that might not be too difficult since it ain't happening anyway. . No government is going to admit AGW is less of a worry, what excuse would they have for not repealing the scam tax? (circa £70bn pa in the UK). But I think we might just see more political direction away from Consensus. The current rush to Shale shows a degree of scepticism.
The cracks are starting to appear but it will take a long time to collapse - but when it does it could fall quite quickly.
If you have not seen it this post over at WUWT highlighting the work of Joe D'Aleo is well worth a read - nothing warmists hate more than inconvenient facts -
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/21/ten-major-failures-of-so-called-consensus-climate-science/
You will note his paper in pdf as parts 1 and 2 - with more to come.
Make of this what you will. It represents the top 100 companies the BBC pension fund invest in.
An odd mix which includes those who would kill us all through tobacco and those who would kill us all via carbon dioxide.
It also includes those who would save us all from carbon dioxide.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mypension/sites/helpadvice/pages/top-100-investments.shtml
Mar 22, 2011 at 8:18 PM | Alex Cull
The problem of winning over public support for CAGW is a major one
No. All the major parties are bought in. It is not possible to vote for a climate sceptic government. You can no more vote against ecofascism than you could vote against EU integration over the last 30-odd years.
So the problem is neither large nor trivial - it does not exist.
geoffchambers -
did Watson really refer to Lawson as a "climate denier"?
if so, that's the new mantra, cos here is one of australia's most senior journalists today:
23 March: The Age, Australia: Michelle Grattan: Labor tries to tie Abbott to deniers
TONY Abbott will risk being linked to prominent climate deniers by addressing an anti-carbon tax rally outside Parliament today…
http://www.theage.com.au/national/labor-tries-to-tie-abbott-to-deniers-20110322-1c56l.html
here we have it in Murdoch's Australian, in the URL as well:
23 March: Australian: Political heat on the rise over climate denial: PM accused of drawing parallels with Holocaust
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/politial-heat-rises-over-climate-denial-with-pm-accused-of-drawing-parallels-with-holocaust/story-e6frg6xf-1226026163930
earlier:
11 March: ABC: Clive Hamilton: One newspaper, so much denial
But, as was intended, the damage had been done. "Hamilton wants to suspend democracy" is now lore among internet climate deniers, preserved forever as an internet truth.
The Australian cannot stop the multiplication of the lie on the internet, but it can stop duplicating the lie in its own pages. But it's such a good one they have republished it several times, most recently on Saturday in a piece by John Howard's foremost expatriate cheer-leader, Clive James, who has morphed into a climate denier...
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/45004.html
the day before in the sydney morning herald:
10 March: Sydney Morning Herald: Ellen Sandell: Climate change has become a generational battle
The people they're targeting to be part of their so-called "people's revolt" are overwhelmingly senior citizens. Jacques Laxale, the man behind the national climate denier and anti-pollution price rallies starting tomorrow in Melbourne...
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/climate-change-has-become-a-generational-battle-20110310-1boun.html
did it begin here and in the pdf that follows?
8 March: New York Times: Evan Lehmann: Snubbing Skeptics Threatens to Intensify Climate War, Study Says
While there, he served as a "climate denier insider" who introduced the researcher to a host of attendees for interviews and other observational field work for the paper...
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/03/08/08climatewire-snubbing-skeptics-threatens-to-intensify-cli-27853.html?amp
Feb 2011: pdf: Talking Past Each Other?
Cultural Framing of Skeptical and Convinced Logics in the Climate Change Debate
Andrew J. Hoffman
University of Michigan
Abstract
This paper analyzes the extent to which two institutional logics around climate change –
the climate change “convinced” and climate change “skeptical” logics – are truly
competing or talking past each other in a way that can be described as a logic schism.
Drawing on the concept of framing from social movement theory, it uses qualitative field
observations from the largest climate deniers conference in the U.S. and a dataset of
almost 800 op/eds from major news outlets over a two-year period to examine how
convinced and skeptical arguments of opposing logics employ frames and issue
categories to make arguments about climate change
http://www.eenews.net/assets/2011/03/07/document_cw_01.pdf
last nite on an australian TV channel news update, we had, paraphrasing:
'controversy in the Parliament, as "climate change doubters" are called "climate change deniers"'
it is all so ridiculous, one doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.