Thursday
Jan132011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Why is everyone ignoring me?
Jan 13, 2011 Climate: Ward Bob Ward is in the Guardian, wondering why the newspapers have turned lukewarm on climate change. Commenters seem well able to help him out with some answers.
(H/T Dreadnought)
Reader Comments (70)
Dave Bob
"rampling is more fun than kipling"
I don't know - I've never kippled...
(And perhaps the Bish should open a thread for retired jokes)
I see that 9 of the first 12 comments have been moderated out of existence - is that a record, too?
Well I am not only premoderated from CiF but they refuse to publish. This is my final to them on Bob Ward's article -
Will it get printed? Who knows.
geoffchambers wrote at Jan 13, 10:32 PM:
Is there really much point? geoffthechaste and his ilk already seem to be doing a pretty good job over at Comment Is Free, flying the flag. But I do wish they wouldn't keep on posting EXACTLY the same thing, time after time, viz: "This comment has been removed by a moderator. Replies may also be deleted." It's getting really boring.
And after all, who cares what the Guardian, CIF-ers, and Bob Ward think and say? CAGW has had its 15 minutes in the sun, and now the banana skins are coming home to roost. Never mind Climategate, Copenhagen, and Cancun ("Can where?"). It's "Winter-gate" that's going to make the real impact on the public's consciousness (not to mention, er, "Flood-gate", in Queensland, for the same reasons). People are realising that when push comes to shove it's the terrible weather - that which is happening outside their window right now - which is important to them, and not ultimately the climate (a long term trend averaged over many years - as explained here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQlHaGhYoF0).
Little wonder then, that the public are so rapidly losing interest in CAGW - a process which is only likely to accelerate with declining MSM coverage. It's a vicious circle - less public interest will lead to less MSM coverage, which in it's turn will lead to ever less public interest.
No doubt the public will still be concerned in the future about climate change, in a low-key, school-childeny, polar-beary sort of way. But with this winter, all the heat has gone out of CAGW as an issue of public concern.
One wonders when CLOPI (Catastrophic Loss Of Public Interest) is going to have an impact on UK politicians. Heavens knows there's precious few votes to be had from green issues anyway. The Greens, for example, polled 1.5% at the East Oldham by-election yesterday, a third of what the BNP got. A third! How long can it be before green issues become out-and-out vote losers?
Popped over again, page after page of deleted comments but hey Komment Macht Frei *smirk*
This one though did actually make me laugh out loud, I wonder how long it will last :-)
*
Yeltnarg
14 January 2011 4:47PM
i am very dissapointed that my last post has not appearred in this thread because all my othrer ones has and you have published them because i have always have had something sensible to say over many posts in the past becuase i think you are showing up denailers for what they are and this message needs to get out to the world especially when climate change is causing both floods and drowts in australia and especially when well respected scientits like proffeser david karoly say it is so and so my genuine plea is that your paper should keep up the truth against the denailers and that you are doing a wonderful job about keping an open debate and that the people you moderate are nonscientific denailers and that they should not be herd because they are trying to fool the general poplucae and that there views do not stand up because they are denailers and have not the expertise that your staff obviosly have in these matters which is apparent by the even handed and high level of expertise that your journalists have always showm in theese matters and you of course have to be commended for it and i have to say i am the first to commend you for it because your coverage of climate science in commendible and you are to be thourouably to be commended for it.
OK, I've got away with posting this sort of drivel under "Yeltnarg" for about a year. Check it up. Abysmal spelling, punctuation, grammar and syntax. Outrageously stupid and unsubstantiated comments on CAGW. I particularly liked my use of the word “denailers”. But you have posted my nonsense because, as bad as it was, it fell in line with your beliefs. However it looks like you've twigged me, not through any particular brilliance on your part, but because I mentioned it on Bishop Hill's blog.
I will now have to use my children’s notebooks to post my CAGW nonsense. So moderators, please check any comments coming from Australia. They may seem genuine, but if they are slightly silly, they may well be from me. Or they may not. This is why you moderators/censors have such a difficult task ensuring that only the correct comments are exhibited on Comment is Free. And I feel for you beavering away daily in your CiF cell; do I remove it or do I not. These are decisions not to be taken lightly in a democracy.
Regards,
Dr Grantley Burfield BSc (1st class honours) PhD (Theoretical Physics QMC Univ of London)
Grantley = Yeltnatg in reverse (geddit?)
PaulBoyce
Geoffthechaste is no more, having been definitively banned. He did get a final kamikaze gesture in, mentioning the 10:10 “No Pressure” film as proof that climate change causes heavy periods, which was possibly slightly over the top.
I am genuinely puzzled by the conviction of so many here that CAGW is over. Certainly it’s not a vote winner - it never was. It’s role is something quite different, and frankly, I don’t think anyone has got a serious handle on it. Climate Resistance, with their analysis of the political philosophy of environmentalism get closest. The fact is, Miliband, Huhne, the BBC, Guardian -the whole political, scientific and media establishment are wholly committed to this belief system, and can’t back down. Stalin could drop Lysenko; eugenics was wrenched from the hands of its supporters by one of the most horrifying tragedies of history. What, short of an ice age, will make the powers that be change their minds?
@g1lgm3sh and geoffchambers
Don't you know Climate Change is deadly series? Please stop making me laugh.
@Geoff
Poor geoffthechaste.
RIP.
I wonder, though, if it's going to be a case of:
"geoffthechase is dead!
Long live geoffthechaste!"
I guess we'll never know.
Anyway, I don't think CAGW is finished by a long chalk.
But I do think the public are rapidly losing interest in it, and this will inevitably cause support for it by politicians, the BBC, the Grauniad etc, to fade away.
The BBC's coverage of CAGW has noticeably declined recently. I seem to remember they said something before Christmas about CAGW being the kiss of death for the ratings.
Surely there must come a point that whenever politicians invoke climate change - as a reason for increasing electricity charges massively, for example - they're going to be pelted with rotten tomatoes, metaphorically.
That'll stop 'em, sooner or later.
Paul Boyce: You say:
“I don't think CAGW is finished by a long chalk. But I do think the public are rapidly losing interest in it, and this will inevitably cause support for it by politicians, the BBC, the Grauniad etc, to fade away”.
This is where I disagree with almost everyone here. The normal democratic feedback mechanisms are not working. That’s how we got into a situation of all-party support for an unpopular policy, and that’s why I can see no simple way out. Ed Miliband, the man who encouraged activists to demonstrate against government as a way to get unpopular policies through, was chosen as party leader after Copenhagen and Climategate. Huhne may yet replace Clegg as party leader. Any popular opposition can be silenced by an appeal to EU rules. The Guardian would rather fold than abandon “the most important issue of the century”, etc.
I can confirm that the Guardian is removing comments just because they point out problems with the AGW theory. I wrote a short, well reasoned comment, with no more expletives or coarse language than you can find in this post, and it was removed!
Why does the Guardian, which I once regarded as the guardian of the truth, resort to censorship?
David Bailey
The moderator posted a warning (13 January 2011 7:53PM) that the topic was press treatment of AGW and not the science.
Having been banned five times now, I find it odd how often I find myself defending the moderators. They are definitely independent of journalists. The weakness of the system is that a determined opponent can report abuse and get your post removed on a technicality. Moderators usually only delete in response to readers’ demands, but one report is enough. I know, since I tested the system by getting ten comments removed at one go. I even reported my own comment for abuse once - a rare case of on-line reported self abuse.
Geoff Chambers
What a fascinating reply, because it reminds me of the trick used by the UAE (and Tony Blair with the 4 Iraq inquiries) - define the terms of reference tight enough, and you can avoid dealing with the truth!
If part of the reason why people are getting bored with climate science, is that they realise that they are being told only half of the story - that unbiased reporting of such a complex subject couldn't possibly be so one sided - it doesn't seem irrelevant to say so!
@geoffchambers
"This is where I disagree with almost everyone here. The normal democratic feedback mechanisms are not working. "
Yes, much of this comes from the EU which is impervious to democracy, and has high hopes for all things Green. There's also total unanimity amongst the major parties in the UK and it's easy to identity a number of reasons why they find it convenient to go along with it.
There's also a long history of taxes which once established are hard to get rid of, even if they are economically destructive and even when the original purpose has been long forgotten. So when the Beeb is no longer slipping a mention of CAGW into every other programme, we'll still have the distortions of the economy and the educational system which are there and everyone is used to.
I thought by now, measures to tackle Climate Change would have turned into measures to assure energy independence, allowing much of the machinery already put in place to remain.
Maybe the popular will, which I'd say is not yet clear on the subject (disinterest and contempt, but not yet anger) will crystallise if the nonsense leads to power cuts and it will then show itself as social unrest?
@geoffchambers
"That’s how we got into a situation of all-party support for an unpopular policy, and that’s why I can see no simple way out."
I think a few years back it was popular, but that was when people were more inclined to take the scare stories at face value, the economy was booming on borrowed money and the question of paying for it was some way off and assumed to be done by someone else.
The public can change its mind very fast. The political establishment, once it's committed, finds it much harder, especially when a whole apparatus has been constructed, with jobs, which then has to be dissolved.
There's also the influence of interest groups which seems to be taken more seriously than vague discontent among largely faithful voters.
geoffchambers
The post was also about the global temperature of 2010. I posted the following comment yesterday, which stood for some time and got some recommendations, on the temperature in 2010. That to me was a valid comment. It has now been removed by a moderator. It was a short comment, and said as best I recall, 'The lower atmospheric and sea surface temperatures (since March) appear to be freefall at present. Why isnt everyone cheering?' (UAH monthly stats refer).
the stupid public (me) & MSM can only take so much guff from you & you kind Bob, before reality sets in, then even we, the stupid public, start to ask questions.
get it now Bob.
I had a look at the numbers just now. A moment ago, there were a total of 350 comments, of which 124 appeared as "This comment has been removed by a moderator. Replies may also be deleted", which means that just over one third of all the comments have been moderated into oblivion (not counting any comments that have been deleted without trace.) I'm not sure if this is a record, but it is rather impressive.
Not sure what the numbers are now, but CiF has completely obliterated two dozen more comments (along with their commenters) and airbrushed approximately the same number since the last update.
I have been through some of the Guardian CiF posts and I think I can see what they are doing. They seem to be applying a very tight off-topic rule.
The way it works is that a piece is written on, say, the threat to the Polar Bears' environment due to global warming. Comments will be accepted which support that assertion. If someone suggests that the Polar Bears' environment is NOT being damaged, or that Polar Bears are NOT under threat, then this is obviously not on-topic - since the topic IS the damage to the Polar Bears' environment. To remain on-topic it is necessary to comply with the underlying assumptions of the article.
Simples......
DodgyGeezer
You’re right about the off-topic rule. I reported 13 posts as off-topic this morning, and 7 have been removed. If yours is an “innocent” reply to an off-topic post, they’ll sometimes wipe any trace of your comment, to save you the embarrassment of being seen as an abuser.
Guardian Environment is an avowed propaganda exercise. Most of the regular team (Vidal, Hickman, Monbiot) avoid climate change now, since they regularly get slaughtered. Even Carrington is showing signs of shell shock. The “big names” who used to be invited (Kofi Annan, Gavin Schmidt, Ian McEwan, Lord Rees, the editors of the BMJ and Lancet) won’t come back to be ridiculed, so the Guardian is relying on professionals like Ward, weirdoes like Higgins, and their poor unsuspecting journoes from relate fields like Religion and Poverty who come in to take a ritual flagellation from time to time.
I won’t say we’re winning, but I’d like to think we’re provoking some uncomfortable editorial conferences, and a quiet rotation under the tombstone of my great-great uncle CPScott
"The moderator posted a warning (13 January 2011 7:53PM) that the topic was press treatment of AGW and not the science...."
They seem to be interpreting this as only allowing people to post complaints about the rest of the MSM 'not getting it'. If your post suggests that the reason for reduced coverage is that AGW is no longer accepted as true, it will be removed because you are talking about AGW.
Such a policy will ruin any discourse, since the beauty of a discussion is the way in which a thread will evolve, bringing in new aspects of a subject. If you have to stay within such narrow confines, you will end up with pantomime threads:
Oh, no it isn't!
Oh, yes it is!
.....
Incidentally, there are at least four battle-grounds for AGW:
- the science
- the establishment
- the media
- the politicians
Of these, the science is looking to be won. Papers are now coming out which criticise every aspect of the original scholium. The media looks well on the way to following suit. I suspect the politicians will fold before the establishment does...