Thursday
Mar292012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Me and Richard B in the Guardian
Mar 29, 2012 Climate: MetOffice Climate: Sceptics Leo Hickman has written an article about the Met Office's outreach to sceptics, covering my visit to Exeter in some detail.
Last June, I wrote a blog post in which I proposed that a "meeting of moderate minds" within the climate debate might be a productive way forward, even if it's just to see if any common ground could be identified. The idea wasn't exactly warmly received - not least by Montford's readers! - but I still hold firm that there is some sense to this idea. It is, therefore, refreshing to hear that the Met Office is now holding such "conversations" with its critics. The testimony of both Montford and Betts show that such efforts can produce positive, if tentative, steps forward.
Reader Comments (145)
May I remind everyone that Vogon poetry is widely accepted as being only the third worst in the Universe. There must therefore be examples of even more dreadful verse to be found, and I implore anyone intending to post it to consider warning us all beforehand. Thank you.
Talking of books and jellyfish and the Guardian, I've yet to read Leo Hickman's Will Jellyfish Rule the World? but for his next book, I recommend that he teams up with former Guardian columnist Guy Browning, who wrote the informative and rather hilarious Never Hit a Jellyfish with a Spade: How to Survive Life's Smaller Challenges.
As global warming may well indeed turn out to be one of "life's smaller challenges", the result might then be a book on climate change that was both useful and very funny - something of a rarity. :o)
Mar 29, 2012 at 7:55 PM | Mac
Very good indeed - does that mean that you write poetry because underneath your mean, callous heartless exterior, you really just want to be loved - is that right?
:-)
Conditions for warmie surrender:
-Make climate paper data, code, metadata available.
-Disband IPCC/UNFCCC
-Make climate science exciting by making curiosity-driven science videos
-Dismantle REDD-driven research and data collection - don't sell that which does not belong to you
Papers to be signed in front of Church of Fossil Fuels
(list not exhaustive)
:)
Richard - as I recall, despite his promise, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz threw Arthur out anyway. I'm sorry, but I think Leo is about as trustworthy.
Shub
I’m not sure that disbanding the IPCC is within Leo’s gift, (but I bet he wishes it was). Mind you, in a world where you can summon up Professor Betts by reciting Vogon poetry, anything’s possible.
Alex
The second worst poetry in the world has long been available here. And if anyone tries to top that , I’m emigrating to Skeptical Science.
Mac Mar 29, 2012 at 7:55 PM
Your evocative ecopoem is tailor made for the new course curriculum discussed on the previous Hulme thread!
I think that I wrote the first ever Limerick on the Bishop's blog.
It was way back on July 21 2010
Comment On: Media blitz thread
Journal Entry Comment by RETEPHSLAW on Jul 21, 2010 at 8:48 PM
Thanks Phillip and the Don for that info on snowfall. Here is one for his grace:
The Bishop is head of our board,
With him we are all in accord
His book, The Illusion
Caused lots of confusion
In the ranks of the n'er do well horde.
Geoff. If Leo wants to be nice, then he ought to try just being a little bit more humble first. I'm not saying he should pen some kind of mea culpa; but pretending to have invented the idea of discussion between scientists and sceptics -- only the moderate ones he approves of though -- is simply too rich. Maybe he should [snip - abuse] write something that was a little bit more circumspect than the tedious alarmism and shrill moralising that he usually churns out. We both know why that isn't possible - he's not capable of it.
Look here, upon this thread, and on this,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/mar/29/met-office-conversations-climate-sceptics
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See, what a Grace was seated on this blog..
Ben Pile
I do believe Leo’s trying. People here should lay off the Douglas Adams and read a bit more le Carré. Take a long spoon and all that, but imagine his position. I’ve been waiting for years for the tiniest glimmer of a sign that someone at the Graun would realise what a hole they’re digging, for themselves, for their readers (which includes a sizeable proportion of the ruling class) and for the poor sods who will have to endure the results of the policies their science-based madness are leading to.
I’m happy to kiss Leo’s hand if it means my mum’s heating bill doesn’t go up.
The Alarmist establishment CANT CONNECT TO THE PUBLIC
People like me with a non scientific background who drive white vans and pay income tax (and cant spell)
And exactly where is the public right now
they re sitting in their car outside petrol stations panic buying
With the TANKER DRIVERS threatening to STRIKE this govenment the Met Office and the Guardian are about to find out just how important fossel fuels actually are before they go cutting them anymore
One should always be careful about seeking common ground. What can happen is that a climate realist / sceptic "admits" that the earth has warmed; "admits" that some of the warming could have been caused by rising CO2 levels, and "admits" that sea levels are rising, and glaciers melting. So even the hardened sceptics can be shown to be really part of the consensus. What the PR people fail to point out is that the biggest gulfs are in the prediction of future catastrophe and the chosen policies to avert such a prospect.
Hickman's earlier article tries to compare bringing the sides together with peace talks - such as in Northern Ireland. Such peace talks worked, I believe, due to people realizing that conflict was only maintained by demonizing the other side. Making peace enabled the vast majority to live better lives, free from fear and hatred. The issue that the climate community know deep down is that their extreme beliefs are based on precarious foundations and maintained by a climate of fear. Without it over 90% of the funding for research and 99% of the funding for hangers-on disappears. They need their bogeymen, just as McCarthyists of the 1950s needed their "reds under every bed".
One of my shortest-lived CIF monikers was "JellyFishRuleOK" - it lasted less than four hours, which is odd when we all know that Graun hacks have no influence on moderation.
In my experience of debating Leo with multiple identities on CIF and more recently on Twitter - he comes over as a rather vain, dimwitted and evangelical activist rather than a journalist.
But I'm sure he's a nice bloke with it :-)
...... and I'd like to join with geoff in giving his ickle book a plug so that we can help inch it up from its Amazon ranking of 425,284 (if you're quick they've got a second hand copy listed for the pretty reasonable price of £0.01)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Will-Jellyfish-Rule-World-Climate/dp/0141323345/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333054177&sr=1-1
I like to think of the BBC, Guardian, Hickman et al as doing for the alarmist media, what Pachauri is doing for the IPCC. They're generally considered PR liabilities and albatrosses around the neck of "the cause" at this stage, so they should be left in place. And anyway, they're essentially entities that cannot adopt to a changing environment and we all know what that leads to.
Was it Disraeli or Palmerston, who said it was sometimes vitally important to do nothing?
Pointman
All
Can we please try to raise the tone of this thread.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOg8IqkS4PA
Why should we have anything to do with these idiots
They are a bunch Public Sector Smug Arrogant overpaid Civil Servants Quagocrates protecting their self interest
When do they care about ordinary people trying to get out of this recession fighting for their jobs and thier futures
The Office for Metorogy and Climate Change
George Osborne Privatise the Met Office
Then they will care about ordinary people because then they will be like them themselfs
Theres only six things that need to be in the public sector
Police Courts And Prisons to protect the State from trouble on the inside
Army Navy and Airforce to protect the state from trouble on the outside
Everything else can go private ( in theory anyway )
I wonder they mean by a "productive way forward".
Whose watching newsnight
Their gas leak at a North Sea Rig at the moment
A couple of firms are pulling out of building Nuclear
The wind farm are launching an advertizing campaign
Theres panic Petrol buying
Bish
Sorry to take the thread down a daft route! :-)
To come back to a serious question though, I'd be interested to know whether your visit had any impact on your view of the Met Office and / or climate models?
A friendly chat with people who are ripping off every taxpayer in this and many other countries? No thank you. Yet again recently we have all paid for a new supercomputer for the met office. Did somebody finally solve the equations that would enable them to model the atmosphere in real time? I dont think so and therefore they just get a bigger toy to play with and make more exciting graphical displays of their hit or miss forecasting. In terms of their predictions of climate change: those are all misses.
I found the tone of the article surprisingly reasonable. Scientifically educated sceptics find it pleasant when it is acknowledged that they even exist, and may not be possessed of the cloven hoof. [I used to be a regular reader of The Guardian, and a New Scientist subscriber.]
Unfortunately many people don't just want their views to prevail, but now also wish to score a crushing 'victory' at the same time. It can be very difficult to contrive an 'honourable' escape route for an opponent once the debate becomes too politicised.
Michael Hart - 'Unfortunately many people don't just want their views to prevail, but now also wish to score a crushing 'victory' at the same time.'
That's not why people weren't convinced by the article. They weren't convinced because they didn't believe that the author of so many articles which emphasised alarmist stories, and made statements about sceptics, had overnight developed a more reasonable attitude. That, and the fact that a careful reading of the article revealed that the same prejudices had in fact survived the author's putative epiphany.
Ben Pile (Mar 29, 2012 at 11:26 PM) has the correct analysis of why the thread has developed this way, and michael hart (Mar 29, 2012 at 11:03 PM) shows the way forward. There’s no fundamental contradiction between the home truths being pointed out on both sides.
Have a look at the comments thread at Leo’s article. I bet he’s doing the same and wishing he could have this thread instead of the one he’s got, rude comments and all.
Well he can’t, and the day he and Rusbridger work out why, we may see big changes. It’s about bigger things than the character of this or that journalist, and, with all due respect, it’s about bigger things than whether His Grace enjoyed his trip to Exeter. I look forward to hearing more about that though.
Ben Pile-
I don't disagree with you, but I'm not familiar with Hickman's writings because I consciously steer myself away from The Guardian these days.
The BBC is harder to ignore, is less likely to be troubled by dissentients who don't wish to buy it, and needs more scrutiny. Yet I have noticed that the other Richard B. [Richard Black] also puts in a more measured article now and again. I wonder about the reasons, but that's best left for other occasions. [The title of this article initially caught my attention for that reason, and any confusion between the two Richards doesn't seem fair to Richard Betts]
As an example of the hole the Graun is in, see how they treat the latest IPCC publication on their environment page, and compare it with the article by Roger Pielke jnr at the GWPF.
The Graun have got at least six full-time environmental journalists, dozens of stringers, and a score of associates in the Guardian Environment Network, yet all they can do is reproduce the Associated Press release. Not a peep out of anyone in-house.
They are paralysed with fear. Someone or something is breathing down their neck. Whether it’s Autotrader, Rusbridger, the bank manager, or a posse of their own journalists who are fed up with being associated with a bizarre sect, I don’t know.
I’d guess that Leo has been told to practice some Outreach (to borrow a Skeptical-Scientific term) which can only be a good thing.
If I had the choice between all the raw data Phil Jones has thrown away, and a peek at the Graun’s internal emails, I know which I’d choose.
geoffchambers,
Do you sense a watershed moment? Are there other symptoms?
Is the Graun, what used to be known of over here as the Manchester Guardian? I ask because I knew people who read it here in the Chicago Public Library.
This proposed rapprochement seems something worth abetting. We USers are clearly bystanders, but we could follow your example if you all can make it start.
We've had much trouble in the US with the more "considerate" warmist view that "if you don't understand it, maybe we haven't explained it well enough." They think they are being compassionate, and yes, it's an insulting view, but better than being condemned to wherever the 10:10 types would have us go.
Sometimes it's conveyed in terms of "communicating the science." Few who say this sort of thing ever consider the possibility that the "science" was plenty well communicated and we don't think much of it.
good luck with this. I too (1+) would also like to read what his Grace has to report on his visit to the met office.
Who would ever think that 14 minutes might not be enough time to get the fuzz out of a comment.
jferguson
Yes, it’s the old Manchester Guardian, and it’s been the voice of liberalism (ie the centre left) in Britain since the time of the anti-slave movement.
I’m probably making too much of this. Leo Hickman is hardly a household name, and the BBC is certainly more important as an institution.
Professor Richard Betts is the key figure here, since his presence at His Grace’s Residence is a kind of establishment acknowledgement that we’re not a bunch of fruitcakes. Some resent this, and I have to admit there’s a certain perverse pleasure to be had from being considered a fruitcake, when normal people like the President of the Royal Society are walking around in hair shirts and “The End is Nigh” sandwich boards.
Britain is unique in the English-speaking world in that there is no elected politician crying “scam”; there has been no letter from 16 scientists in a major newspaper asking questions. Until this happens, the BBC and other serious media are more or less bound by their rules to ignore us.
It’s the lack of any mainstream democratic outlet for our feelings that leads to our talents overflowing in strange ways, as on this thread. I consider this blog as a kind a collective work of performance art. I hope His Grace will consider donatng it to the nation, to be preserved as a national monument. Like Stonehenge, future generations will gaze on it and wonder what on earth it was alll about.
jferguson
I like the idea of the Manchester Guardian still being read in Chicago Public Library. Are they still campaigning for Britain to cease trading with the Confederate States?
I once contributed to an anarchist magazine in London which kept going thanks to the subscriptions of American university libraries. Like the fairies in Peter Pan, or the idea of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, it only existed because people believed it did.
meanwhile, over in the US, a retired Admiral from the Britain's Royal Navy, is taking part in this effort to make Believers think well, it must be real:
29 March: Detroit Free Press: Brian Dickerson: Global warming biggest threat to U.S. security, retired officer says
Lee Gunn — “Lee” is how he introduces himself, although most people call him Admiral Gunn, in deference to his 35 years as a U.S. Naval officer — does not look like a Prius driver, much less a tree-hugger.
Which is why many people do a double take when the Pontiac-born Gunn tells them that global warming is the most serious national security issue confronting the U.S. — or, as he puts it, ” the existential threat to America and its influence in the world” as humanity’s appetite for energy mushrooms…
But the 70-year-old Gunn is deeply concerned about all these things — which is why he is touring the country with another retired admiral from Britain’s Royal Navy, telling governors, state legislators and editorial boards that they’d better get busy about developing new sources of energy or resign themselves to the end of America’s economic and military supremacy.
Gunn is the president of the Institute for Public Research at CNA, a 70-year-old Virginia-based research organization that also includes the Center for Naval Analyses.
CNA began staking out a prominent role in the renewable energy debate five years ago, when its Military Advisory Board (“mostly retired three- and four-stars or flag officers”) issued a widely circulated report called “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change.”…
Gunn and his retired naval colleagues have spent much of this week talking to Republicans in the state Legislature and the Snyder administration, whom they describe as genuinely interested in pushing beyond the partisan gridlock between drill-baby-drill Republicans and tree-hugging Democrats…
Jeremy Kalin, a “recovering state legislator” from Minnesota who accompanied Gunn on his mission to Lansing, said the pair has eschewed diversionary arguments about the causes of climate change or which energy technologies are the most promising to emphasize that Michigan should be aggressively making use of all energy sources, with an eye to reducing environmental and national security risk and averting “bad consequences” in the future…
http://www.freep.com/article/20120329/COL04/203290455/Brian-Dickerson-Global-warming-biggest-threat-to-U-S-security-retired-officer-says
tamsinedwards commented on Leo’s article yesterday, 29 March 2012 5:09PM
Thanks Geoff, here is her post:
Geoffchambers: I can see why you'd welcome suggestions of a rapprochement, but I wonder why the alarmists need one, the field is there's, at least until the Republicans get a president. Look at the reality, they have a Climate Change Act, promising to spend billions a year on climate change avoidance, they have a MSM blackout on dissenting voices, they have politicians referring to us as "flat-earthers", "creationists", "troofers" and "deniers". The Prime Minister's family are making good money out of the hysteria, wind farms are being planned all over the country, our future energy policies from nuclear and fossil fuels are in tatters, the Met Office has just obligingly dropped past temperatures to make 2010 the hottest year on record without a peep from the MSM. Why on earth would they want a rapprochement with "deniers"? Activists scientists (Slingo, Pope, Jones etc.) are still allowed free rein with outrageous statement s like "multiple lines of independent evidence", or the science is settled, going unchallenged. And a lot more. The only weapon we have in our armoury is that the observational evidence doesn't indicate upcoming disasters. And of course blogs like this.
So I am puzzled as to why Leo, who appears to be an green activist with a particularly strong bias, and indeed almost hatred, of sceptics, would feel the need for a rapproachement of any sort. Unless there has been a change of heart by the Guardian, or, less likely I'd admit, Leo is beginning to have doubts. George Monbiot, who is blessed with a personality sans self-doubt has announced he's not talking about global warming anymore, but that cannot be because he has doubts because as far as I can tell he is the sort if person who if he was made of chocolate he'd eat himself.
I have some criticisms of the article (although not those produced by many here).
Firstly, moderate and reasonable people have always discussed things, even in the climate debate. This is nothing new in the climate debate and I don't understand why Leo Hickman is suggesting this is some kind of revelation. Although to be kind to him he may be saying that the scales are falling from his eyes.
Secondly, everything is spun one way in his article. It is the poor climate scientists who are being misrepresented by sceptics and maybe outreach by scientists to sceptics will help. Hang on, how about people misrepresenting the views of sceptics as well? Leo has form in this regard himself. He goes on to add,
Since when have climate scientists just let the science do the talking? Activists like James Hansen, who still command enormous respect in the scientific community, preaches ideology and opinion backed by very little substantive evidence. That's not science doing the talking.
Sure, there are many sceptics who are just as bad, but the scales falling from Leo's eyes are still rather selective scales. He complains about the online groupthink (which certainly exists) but not the groupthink within the scientific community (which can be just as bad).
Just to be clear, Kudos to Andrew and Richard for getting together and talking etc, but I'm afraid I am struggling to see the great breakthrough here. Moderate people have always communicated in this debate. The fringe haven't. Moderates and fringe are in evidence on both sides. This hasn't changed now, and it won't be changing any time soon. What's new?
7:24 AM | pat
I have emailed your Brian Dickerson asking the name of the British Admiral who is touring with Admiral Gunn - a name might be revealing, as there are some pretty wild, starey-eyed retired admirals about - viz. Admiral Lord West of Spithead.
As I've been saying here for some time, people should not demand humiliating surrenders. Is it more important that truth is out, or that old combatants are punished?
We all have to live together at the end of this, so if people are making even the slightest move away from extremism towards common ground, then we should take a chance on it and let them see that moving back towards the core of real science is not something they will be hammered for - but welcomed - not forgotten but forgiven.
Remember that most scientific skeptics, myself included, went through a phase near the start of implicitly believing the myth too - I remember trying to convince someone of the impending reality of the HS - long before I ever thought to question it. It makes sense not to question scientists in general, they built the modern world we all enjoy, you can't criticise people being sensible.
What's more important... grinding people into the dirt? Or the return of sanity? If we insist on the former, all we'll do is extend the madness for another generation as the diehards cling to alarmism because they know there's no way back.
In reply to geoffchambers: I have had some dialogue with a 'die-hard alarmist' on Spencer's blog which I suspect is typical of the gradual realisation that they have been conned: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/03/global-warming-as-cargo-cult-science/
[Be aware that I commented under the user name 'turnedoutnice']
To summarise, in the Trenberth-Kiehl 2009 energy budget, 333 W/m^2 'back radiation' adds to the presumably experimentally measured 63 W/m^2 IR make the IR emitted from the Earth's surface exactly equal to the S-B prediction of the flux from a black body at 16°C. Thus this is a calibration for the climate models. Unfortunately, it's wrong as I and others explain.
A recent respondent tried to take me to task by telling me the 396 W/m^2 is the sum of all the heat transfer modes. It isn't as proved by the fact that the sums add up both with and without the 333 W/m^2. The latter is an [incorrect] assumption, a fudge factor to make up the 396 W/m*2, which magnifies heat absorption in the atmosphere by 2.7, for IR absorption a factor of 4.3.
The experimental assessment by pyrgeometers is a mistake because they measure the temperature of the atmosphere convolved with emissivity. The positive feedback in the models is incorrect physics. This mistake has lasted since 1967, Manabe and Wetherald. That's 45 years of fake science.
geronimo
You’re quite right about the overwhelming force on their side. This is a point I’ve often made here when others were crying “we’ve won!” over some minor victory. And i’m just as puzzled as you about Leo’s apparent change of heart.
If you look at his article last June, you’ll see the same tactic, and the same tone which so irritates many here. That time, he intervened after just six hours of below-the-line comments to say the engagement was off (“It's a shame that there doesn't appear to be any common ground at all, but I'm glad I asked the question.” Jun 21, 2011 at 10:43 PM | Leo Hickman). His silence this time is promising. He, or his bosses, must realise that it is absurd that the scientific establishment should be making overtures to Andrew, while the mainstream media continue to ignore him. Perhaps they’ve learned something from the Heartland and now the GWPF debacles.
Hickman and Monbiot are commenters and can do more or less what they want. Goldenberg is a reporter, and American, and after her Heartland articles, I doubt whether she could ever work for a US newspaper. Betts is clearly unhappy about his profession being used in what the public sees as a sectarian wrangle. When I worked in market research, researchers used to hate the publicity that came from party political polling. Not that they didn’t like the money and the fame, but the inevitable media and political distortion was felt as threatening to the profession as a whole. These kind of arcane intra-professional considerations probably count more in the motivations of individuals than any big strategic considerations about resolving ideological conflict.
Even academics and Presidents of the Royal Society may one day come round to seeing the damage done to their professional reputation by the espousal of a cause.
Did you know you get an honourable mention in Skeptical Science’s Tree Hut Papers?
@geoffchambers
You suggest that we 'should consider Leo Hickman's position'.
I did. It is 'very vulnerable'
He is a 'journalist' with public egg all over his face after his balls up over the Fakegate affair.
He works for a newspaper that is in deep financial doodoo
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/8583220/Riches-to-rags-as-Guardian-bleeds-33m-in-a-year.html
and that newspaper has very publicly and very loudly supported the alarmist cause for many years. Hickman has been one of the cheerleaders as public support for this has gone from mildly positive to actively hostile...his chosen topic now causes 'climate fatigue'. This is not a place for a journalist with a family and a mortgage to be.
And he has probably watched and learnt from George Monbiot - who also found his near guru-like status among the faithful dwindling into nothingness and jumped off the sinking ship CAGW pronto.
If I were him, I too would be looking to dig a tunnel out of the situation I find myself in. And that is what I guess he is doing here.
Peter Walsh Mar 29, 2012 at 9:26 PM
Sure and it takes an Irishman to write a decent limerick! [:-)
The 'pressure' on LH to moderate the us/them good/evil surely comes from a) keeping his readers happy, b) people like Betts/Tamsin being happy to engage, and maybe c) some splintering of enviros like Monbiot/Lynas on policy objectives. Let it run. Let the evil fossil-fuelled Tory disinformation corporate immoral nonsense meme just .... run out of fuel, by being as little like it as possible.
My basic thrust is to accept WGI, because I only care about WGII and III, where little is 'settled' and much has nothing to do with 'accepting the science'.
Edwards stopped me from stating on her blog that 'back radiation' is false physics without which there is no positive feedback from CO2 in the climate models, therefore no climate model can predict climate.
It's understandable when you realise that to admit there has been 45 years of a fundamental mistake in the science, she and many thousands of other climatologists would be out of a job!
I thought that the idea was well received by the readers of this blog. I, for one, welcomed it in a comment at the time. However I suppose the writer thought it necessary to reassure Guardian readers that the people who read sceptical blogs do conform to the stereotypes that Guardian readers have in mind.
Tamsinedwards’ comment on Leo’s article at CiF got 18 recommends before anyone here noticed it, which suggest that the two “sides” are not as hermetically sealed as many think.
OPatrick’s criticism of Montford is essentially that His Grace doesn’t apply enough censorship. OPatrick’s coment has now (disgracefully in my opinion) been removed by CiF moderators.OPatrick replied to Tamsin as follows:
This is truly the world turned upside down. Cue for some Vogon poetry, I think.
That Leo tires to set himself ,and the Guardian up, as pace makers is frankly hilarious given they been in the vanguard of dehumanizing and demonizing AGW skeptics . If the issue has become unnecessarily bitter between the two sides , CIF environmental has very much played a active role in this , lets remember that is was Monboit how drove the idea of AGW skeptics being stupid , right-wing and equal to holocaust deniers .
THis sounds alsmost just like me and my experience! 2 years ago (my then five year old)
--------------------------------------
"My six-year-old daughter,..., the eldest of three, is so far the only one with any concept of climate change. I don’t think she knows the term itself, but she has brought home from school related talk of how “leaving lights on can cause the ice that polar bears live on to melt”.
------------------------------------------
But that was Leo Hickman talking....
http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/3204
My daugter came home and ran around the house, turning the lights off, and cried when I asked her why, because the polar bears are dying.... (I even mentioned this is an email to R Harrabin, back then, saying why this had helped me become very sceptical)
Interstingly. My reaction to this was very different to Leo's - BOTH of us, of course concerned for our daughters wellbeing..
I've got hard science degrees,(BSc, MSc) etc background, I wonder what is Leo's educational background, might help explain different reaction (emotive arts/english? vs cynivcal scientist?) (both middle aged white english guys with three kids)
Leo Hickman is an eco-zealot, and he gets nicely paid for it. However, I do not see that there is now much more future in that due to overwhelming climate fatigue. The Global Warming meme is waning fast. People have more important matters onn their minds, their jobs, their mortages, their rents, energy bills and food bills. What is the point of saving the planet if the planet won't save you? There is no future in poverty, just ask all those third world and developing countries.
On genuine peacemaking in a highly polarised situation I recommend another look at the amazing tale of Brendan Duddy, whose story broke in March 2008 after more than 20 years unsung contribution to the country he loves. There were massive sacrifices to be made. That's why such things so seldom happen.
Compared to what the Duddy family endured our annoyance or otherwise with Leo Hickman seems pretty small beer. Geoff Chambers have just given a fascinating example of how things are viewed and moderated elsewhere. But our mission, should we choose to accept, goes beyond that. As Pointman pointed out at the start of his blog the key moral issue with CAGW is the atrocious damage done to the world's poorest in its name. My own approach to the more minor matters (like Hickman perhaps claiming more kudos for climate peacemaking than he deserves) is to keep the ones dying without any name firmly in mind. Total cosmic justice won't happen in this age (as Thomas Sowell has explored so well) so let's focus on what matters and make friends where we can.
It takes a long time to dig people out of entrenched positions.
One can continue this World War One metaphor almost ad infinitum and we have already seen references to football matches in No Man's Land and sticking one's head above the parapet.
It's also worth bearing in mind that artillery barrages are largely aimed at keeping the enemy's head well below the parapet while you attack. Pinpoint accuracy is not required.
Demands by alarmists (the name 'Gleick' inevitably springs to mind) for a proper debate are merely part of the barrage — smokescreen in this case as opposed to star shell! There is no intention to debate, only to convince neutrals that you are the wronged party when the deal falls apart.
The same applies to the need to "communicate the science better". Communication usually (not always) is by megaphone from well behind the battlefront and gets lost in the explosions while attempts to reply are likewise not heard properly or at all.
As an example, it's a bit disappointing, as mydog tells us, that Tamsin is refusing to listen to an opposing point of view on the subject of back radiation since most of us thought that she was open-minded enough actually to discuss these matters with those who disagreed.
What exactly is her problem? Is she frightened he may be right and she is wrong? In that case a real scientist ought to welcome the debate?
Is she totally convinced that she is right and he is talking rubbish? In that case why not use her blog to explain exactly where he is in error and put an end to this (to my mind) increasingly childish "yes it is - no it isn't - yes it is" argument about this and other aspects of the science?
I know that science doesn't have all the answers for everything in the universe (or at least we haven't found them all yet) and this has become very obvious in the last few months when both sides of the argument have been reluctant to allow different scientific possibilities to see the light of day on their blogs.
Tamsin doesn't like the idea that back radiation doesn't exist while Anthony Watts refuses to allow a sky dragon debate. I don't know from nothing about either but it does seem to me that if we don't come out of our trenches and put our minds to solving these problems then — as usual — the string-pullers sitting in their comfortable bunkers miles from the front line (in this case the eco-activists and politicians for whom climate is only a means to an end) will be the only winners.
Whether Hickman (and his kin) are part of the problem or potentially part of the solution depends mainly on what his motivation is. Is he an eco-activist who believes that the end (a carbon-free economy) justifies the means (tell 'em anything) or is he an egomaniac who enjoys the power that his position as a commentator gives him or is he (deep down) a journalist with still some residual memory of the principle that his job is to try and inform the public honestly and that he can only do that by not taking anything anyone tells him at face value?
I consider following a link to any article in the Guardian (regardless of subject matter) very much like going out on a blind date: I have no great expectations, so I'm never disappointed - and occasionally I'm pleasantly surprised!
To my mind this article falls short of being pleasantly surprising!
Hickman's considerable involvement in l'affaire Tallbloke and l'affaire Gleick have left me somewhat wary of his choices. Let's face facts, folks: Hickman - not unlike others in the Guardian stable of journolites™ - has never been known for being a stickler for accuracy, brevity or clarity.
Consider some of his choices of phrasing in this particular article:
Excuse me?! I mean no disrespect to Richard Betts, but hands up all who had even recognized his name before he had ventured into the discussions here - let alone "placed [him] very much under scrutiny"?
Hickman speaks of:
Has he redefined "hostile" so that it means blogs that do not unquestioningly accept chapter and verse of the Climate Bible?!
Perhaps unwittingly he betrayed his commitment to "the cause" when during his June 2011 call for "peace talks" he followed his:
with a rather unfortunate praising with damnation (to my mind at least):
I found it somewhat amusing though that in his "peace talks" post Hickman had assessed himself as follows:
But isn't it interesting to note when the gates to "discussion" are opened on Hickman's posts (viz his current post and his call for peace talks) - and when they are not (viz his Tallbloke and Gleick posts)?!
Mike, if mydog advanced his theories using his real name I'd feel more sympathetic. The fact he's just admitted he uses different pseudonyms on different blogs increases my joy in the news that Tamsin took a strong line with him. To make such grand claims about the overthrow of greenhouse theory without using one's real name is highly ridiculous and should widely be viewed as such.