Bishop Hill Black redux
Nov 2, 2011 BBC Climate: MWP I have no idea what happened to the last post on Richard Black - it seems to be gone. I'm waiting for a response from Squarespace support, but in the meantime, from the Google cache, here is the original text.
Richard Black has an article up about BEST. It also mentions "hide the decline".
The original "hide the decline" claim is one of the most easily de-bunked in the entire pantheon of easily-debunkable "sceptic" claims.
Phil Jones wrote the email in 1999, immediately following what still ranks as one of the hottest years on record, and well before the idea of a "slowdown" or "hiatus" or even "decline" in warming gained currency.
So it can't have had anything to do with hiding a global temperature decline.
If it were a scientific idea, the notion that it did would be consigned to the garbage bin of history alongside perpetual motion machines, the steady-state theory of the cosmos and the idea of HIV/Aids as a gay-only disease.
It's that wrong.
I'm struggling to put an innocent gloss on Black's misrepresentation of what the allegation was. I can remember Sarah Palin making this claim a couple of days after the story broke, but did anyone make such an allegation to any of the inquiries? Perhaps readers could see how many people made the allegation as framed by Black and how many got it right - i.e that it was about hiding the divergence between instrumental temperatures and some proxy records.
The misrepresentation seems very blatant to me.
Bishop Hill
I'd also posted an update - something along these lines.
Richard Black responded:
Re 'hide the decline'... yes, the Jones email concerned reconciling the tree ring record. But that's not how it was interpreted - at least by some - which is my point. Read Fred Pearce The Climate Files.
Pearce cites Sarah Palin and Senator Inhofe. What Black seems to have done therefore is to find the least informed commenters he can lay his hands on and then say "one of the most easily de-bunked in the entire pantheon of easily-debunkable "sceptic" claims"
One can draw one's conclusions about his journalistic standards accordingly.
Bishop Hill
Steve McIntyre has now added his thoughts in the comments:
Black's article is especially misleading because David Rose, the author of the recent Mail article on Muller (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html ) had a very precise and accurate understanding of "hide the decline", which he published in a Dec 2009 Mail article here
( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1235395/SPECIAL-INVESTIGATION-Climate-change-emails-row-deepens--Russians-admit-DID-send-them.html ).Rose's original article on Hide the Decline showed that IPCC had deleted the adverse portion of the Briffa reconstruction. The Climategate emails showed that this had been done intentionally so as not to "dilute the message" or "give fodder" to skeptics.
Reader Comments (57)
Don't really have the energy to go through it all again :)
Suffice to say that the explanation given by Black that he meant he was debunking some sort of 'blog narrative' which had misunderstood the decline to mean instrumental temps going down was not really for us, it was just to stop the AGW wolves attacking him for bringing shame on them. Is this the best explanation for the gaffe they could come up with?
If he really WAS debunking this mythical narrative, the correct debunk is to say that the narrative is wrong because 'the decline' doesn't refer to instrumental temperatures, not because of datestamps of some climategate emails.
He knows, we know, they know.
"The original" is the key here. Black has taken the post-modern step of redefining what "hide the decline" meant originally. This is what we are supposed to expect from the BBC science reporters, a misdirection away from the original truth and transportation into a new post modern land of meaning.
Richard Black has journalistic standards? Can you adduce any evidence for this? I am seriously concerned about making unsupportable claims here.
Post disapeared huh.............."if you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you could ever imagine..."
Scarey stuff.
or even scary...
There are three possibilities.
(1) Black is a moron.
(2) Black is completely dishonest.
(3) both (1) & (2).
So that's a (3), then.
Martin yep 3 is the magic number ! lol
The best part is he is getting a right metaphorical kicking over this BS on his own blog , not that he will admit his wrong aand his little more than the 'Teams' BBC bag-man his non interest in reporting reality anyway .
Amazing how climate scientists and their associated “journalists” can have such a wonderful penchant for re-writing history along with absolute conviction about the future but they all remain totally uncertain about the present?
maybe Bob Ward can help him out here?
Interesting incident! As a curiosity, I had a shot at recreating my own comment on the original thread. Here it is as a hostage to fortune:
The poor intellectual performance of those promoting acute alarm over rising CO2 levels is a regular source of dismay to me, as is the sheer effectiveness of their approach in political terms. The BBC is a victim turned perpetrator of their nonsense, and Richard Black is one of its key footsoldiers in realising its corporate will.
But to be more cheerful, there are signs that we are moving past Peak-Madness by governments in response to the nonsense. If so, we can but hope for a steep, and very visible decline of it all over the next few years.
Just wondering what this sort of stuff does for your career then I realised he was a civil servant.
On the original thread someone recomended making a copy of the Black post and comments from the BBC site before it was "disappeared", so off I went and dutifully saved it - a few minutes later the BH post and comments vanish, then my internet connection went down - Wow.
Oh, got to go there's a knock at the door....
Not sure that this raises a question about Black's journalistic standards. Raises the usual question of how expert in the role the hack has been assigned to, the hack is required to be. His article today makes him look a real lightweight. I wish I could earn a salary like his for so little time and effort put into a task.
Black's article is especially misleading because David Rose, the author of the recent Mail article on Muller (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html ) had a very precise and accurate understanding of "hide the decline", which he published in a Dec 2009 Mail article here
( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1235395/SPECIAL-INVESTIGATION-Climate-change-emails-row-deepens--Russians-admit-DID-send-them.html ).
Rose's original article on Hide the Decline showed that IPCC had deleted the adverse portion of the Briffa reconstruction. The Climategate emails showed that this had been done intentionally so as not to "dilute the message" or "give fodder" to skeptics.
Black? He's rubbish. Always has been - a churnalist.
Sorry, I am just a poor Joe public ignoramus about this. My understanding of this issue is that when temperature records are constructed from evidence that pre-dates reliable instrumental records, it is very important that during the period in which your evidence, whatever it may be, overlaps the instrumental records, that there is a reasonable correlation between the two. It is upon this correlation that your claim for the accuracy of your pre-instrumental evidence relies. In this case, the instrumental and non-instrumental data correlated for a while and then diverged. This divergence cast serious doubts upon the veracity of the pre-instrumental data and this is what the 'hide the decline' issue was about. Is this argument easy to debunk? Or would it be more accurate to say that this argument is being ignored and the easy to debunk arguments are being publicised so that they can be easily debunked. I smell straw men.
"Black? He's rubbish. Always has been - a churnalist." Mmnn, the author is RB which is how Richard Black signs his emails.
No question Black is being deliberately deceptive, by obfuscating what Jones was referring to in his 'hide the decline' comment.
The rest of will probably reassure the believers, although a knowledgeable sceptic could pick multiple holes in it.
Toward the end, Muller sticks the boot into Gore.
"Politicians have been doing this kind of stuff for a long time - look at what Al Gore did with all his disinformation."
Which gave me a smile.
Possibly because I've just finished reading Matt Ridley's excellent lecture, but a wave of heretical exuberance has prompted me to post the link to the most excellent "hide the decline" video,that I had forgotten about until just now.
In case anyone fancied reminding themselves about how thoroughly naughty this pastiche was, allow yourselves a quick chuckle during the great reads that the Bishop has treated us to today...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftVDI8522p0&feature=related
Although an amusing video, which severely irritated Dr Mann, it actually does everyone a disservice by muddying the waters in the same way that dear old Richard Black has tried to do. The video suggests it was a decline in temperature that was being hidden when the issue was much more serious.
Richard Black, and everyone else, needs to catch up, get with the program. The consensus defenders' long-running efforts to deny the flat-lining of the temperature in the last decade -- as most recently and egregiously done by Richard Muller and BEST -- is known as "Hide the Decline, Part 2". In other words, the phrase was so apt it became a franchise, a series, like "Nightmare on Elm Street" or "Transformers". Actually, "Hide the Decline, Part 2" was when they kept saying things like "the temperature this decade is higher than last decade's, which was higher than the previous decade's, etc.", and "2010 was the hottest year on record"; Muller's effort to deceive with BEST is technically "Hide the Decline, Part 3" (in technicolor and 3-D as it were), so you know the alarmist fans love it. For the scientists involved in it, "Hide the Decline" is a franchise imposed upon them by the necessity to put up a bold front in public -- for as long as they can.
Read the article at the Beeb then segued over here to watch the lightning. I knew there'd be plenty. That whopper was blatant.
Personally the flatline has never been an issue to me. A gentle warming - so what if it's a tenth of a degree per decade. It is the "C" in CAGW. In places mostly too cold most of the time, at least some warming has to be good. It is the denial of this that is the real "denialism".
RB gets a nice trip to Durban to the next IPCC party. Nice work. Why fight it?
I hadn't seen this post by Richard Black, but seriously, if he wrote what you say he wrote, then this is simply beyond the pale. The man deliberately went out to distort the truth. He can no longer be trusted to report truth, and as for the BBC's reputation for objective reporting, well, Richard Black has clearly failed and is no longer fit for purpose in his current job. He should resign, or if failing an honourable course of action, Black should be forced out of his current job. Richard Black is a disgrace of a journalist.
Slightly OT but what happened to the police investigation into Climategate? It's nearly 2 yrs now.
I emailed a week or so ago to ask for an update. No reply.
Actually, I love it when someone like Black does something as blatantly silly as this. It becomes extremely easy, then, to make someone who accepts Black's version feel foolish. Thank you, Richard Black, for your poor journalistic skills, or your deliberate obfuscation, whichever applies, for giving us such wonderful ammunition. :)
DJM
The BBC has a reputation for objective reporting and reporting the truth? Hmmmm I must have missed that.
Has anybody ever seen Richard Black and Michael Mann in the same place?
Richard's certainly on the ball isn't he.
Apparently Grant Foster is an enigmatic climate blogger who runs the Open Mind site and keeps his identity deeply under wraps.
This is just an extreme case of what Black does in almost every one of his blog posts. Greenpeace should be paying his salary.
Has anybody else noticed how much Richard Black is beginning to look like Michael Mann? (Oh yes, David S has) Is there something we should be told?
The thing about Black's article which epitomises its propagandism for me is the intentionally provocative graphic-- worthy of a student pamphlet. Which is, I suppose, exactly what he is. An unreconstructed student activist masquerading as a journalist. The sad thing is that he is given voice (and a handsome salary, no doubt) by the UK's national broadcaster.
Its about visibility. He's applied for the BBC post recently announced as head of 'science reporting' or what ever. He can say look, I'm defending the faith...
I wonder if Black's piece ended with "will this do?"
Why wouldn't the BBC take action against such dishonest journalism? No, I don't think that is OTT.
Richard Black has to be the BBC's best candidate for their Peter O'Hanrahanrahan award ;)
.....AND Gavin Schmidt............
We've had some big storms lately, here and there, anybody noticed any of those pod type thingies landing near them.....
.......and Halloween, come to think of it.
I feel a movie script coming on ..........
The attack of the whiskered pumpkin men
I think there might be something in RB's comment. Hey Bishop...could you double check the provenance of that one?
Vargs@6.55am
You're spot on with the student analogy. My wife used to work for the BBC, before she saw the light. The Beeb is just a continuation of student life for most people there (including the on site subsidised bar!)
The irony of it is that she left 20 years ago, because she wanted to make use of her science degree and saw no scope for that at the BBC. Given the lack of a science qualification requirement for their new Science Editor it seems that nothing has changed.....
My complaint to the BBC:
In his article Richard Black writes:
"The original "hide the decline" claim is one of the most easily de-bunked in the entire pantheon of easily-debunkable "sceptic" claims.
Phil Jones wrote the email in 1999, immediately following what still ranks as one of the hottest years on record, and well before the idea of a "slowdown" or "hiatus" or even "decline" in warming gained currency.
So it can't have had anything to do with hiding a global temperature decline.
If it were a scientific idea, the notion that it did would be consigned to the garbage bin of history alongside perpetual motion machines, the steady-state theory of the cosmos and the idea of HIV/Aids as a gay-only disease.
It's that wrong."
This either demonstrates that Richard himself didn't understand what "hide the decline" was all about, which is the divergence of proxy records from the modern temperature record, thus throwing extreme doubt on the validity of the proxies over the historical time period or that he has deliberately set out to mislead the less informed amongst his readers.
If the former, then surely the BBC could have got someone who did understand the issues to write the piece, if the latter then...
I would expect the BBC to correct this error (be it deliberate or otherwise) and issue a fully corrected article with equal prominence to the original.
Best Regards
Dr Stephen W**********
Stonyground
I reckon the final sentence is key.I made much the same point in a blog post way back in April comparing the situation to a horse racing betting system which I once knew of. If I can quote my final paragraph:
In reality there are three 'hides'
1. Hide the decline - Mann, Jones, Briffa et al
'Hide the decline' refers to the deletion of troublesome divergent proxy data post 1960 - Mike's Nature trick. This was a deliberate attempt to mislead by not reporting all the data.
2. Hide the hiatus - Muller, BEST, et al.
'Hide the hiatus' refers to the 10 year smoothing method of the land instrumental record employed by BEST and the statement by Muller who concluded that this showed there was no downturn in global temps over the past decade. This was an attempt to mislead by using a statistical method.
3. Hide the conflation - Black and the BBC
'Hide the conflation' was an attempt by Richard Black to conflate (1) and (2) in order to construct a strawman that could be then knocked over, which was then followed up by an excuse that sceptics believed that (1) refers to (2).
This is the current state of AGW science and how it is reported.
RB has updated his article today with an apology over his misuse of the phrase Hide the decline. Fair play to him for that.
Has Black really apologised?
Black 1.
Black 2.
Black 3.
If Black has said from the off that he was attempting to debunk what Inhofe and Palin had reportedly said on the 'hide the decline' then that clearly could have been done very simply, but would it have been worthy of a whole article?
No, by drawing in a reference from Fred Pearce, Black was offering up an excuse to deflect criticism of his own attempt to construct a strawman agruement by deliberately conflating the original Climategate 'hide the decline' with BEST's use of a 10 year moving average to 'hide the hiatus'.
Black has apologised for the excuse offered, but he has not aplogised for deliberately trying to mislead people on the real meaning of 'hide the decline'.
MarkJ RB has updated his article today with an apology over his misuse of the phrase Hide the decline. Fair play to him for that.
Maybe - but how many of the warmist faithful will read it now? More than one per cent of those who absorbed and will in future trot out his message that 'The original "hide the decline" claim is one of the most easily de-bunked in the entire pantheon of easily-debunkable "sceptic" claims'?
Martin A - Maybe you expect too much. I still think RB has a bit of a closed mind, and perhaps hadn't even bothered to understand the context of 'hide the decline' given he reads particular blogs (tamino etc) to help him put a handle on GW topics. I still think he is a bit of a bimbo on science and not capable of deliberate obfuscation.
Black's apology is standard BBC fair I'm afraid. By placing it at the food if a long article means that they can leave the article S it is, making no corrections, in the knowledge that the vast majority of readers will never actually get to the update/correction/apology. Thus, to you average reader it appears to them that blacks interpretation of hide the decline is right, even though we know it isn't.
This shouldn't surprise anyone as the BBC dies this time DVD time again throughout its website DVD the best (or very worst) examples of this are demonstrated daily in its Middke East section, where context is only delivered AFTER the BBC has told you how evil the Jews are (but by then most readers have moved on).
Regards
Msilman
"Apologies for any confusion"
Weasel words. To apologise, you have to say "I apologise".