Thursday
Sep262013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill BBC links to BH
Sep 26, 2013 BBC The BBC has linked to the BH in one of its online articles.
But there are also sceptical bloggers such as Anthony Watts and Andrew Montford who accept the basic science that adding carbon to the atmosphere can affect the temperature. They contest mainstream findings on the sensitivity of the climate to carbon and the future impacts on temperature.
I'm trying to remember if this has ever happened before.
Reader Comments (78)
It was a shock to me as well, with the exception of Climategate in a story by Harrabin, I don't ever recall being mentioned by the BBC.
I certainly don't ever recall both of us being mentioned at the same time in a reasonably positive light. Let's borow from climate science and label it "unprecedented".
Is this guy nuts? If ECS turned out to be 1.5 C then there is no problem at all, and we have a hundred years to develop nuclear fusion or whatever. A far greater danger then is the collapse of modern infrastructure by governments listening to him.
This is a nice thread and there are a number of issues running through it.
I always suspected nobody read my posts ^.^ I do not accept that CO2 is currently able to warm our climate. The action of CO2 is logarithmic and there is much evidence to support the view that somewhere between 200 - 280 ppm CO2 ceases to have any effect. I will not bore you with the evidence unless asked.
Has the BBC changed?
One swallow does not make a summer but now we have at least three swallows in Andrew Neil, Jeremy Paxman and Matt McGrath.
Is it a good idea to be a luke warmer? There is not and currently can not be a shred of evidence to prove that CO2 is warming the planet at all. Therefore to nail one's colours to any climate sensitivity figure or range is totally unscientific and unsupportable. This position also strengthens the alarmists and gives idiots like Cook ammunition to distort the facts.
accept the basic science that adding carbon to the atmosphere can affect the temperature.
Who, What, why? Where is the science?
CO2 rises - after warming remember!
Lip service - is all it is.
It should be said, Andrew's blog does attempt a balanced opinion and presents an extremely wide range of points of view.
That's is a country mile away from the type of bilge [Shuckburgh + Stern, then Harrabin et al] which the BBC still accepts as the gospel truth.
Stuff the BBC.
P M Walsh,
"Beware of Romans bearing gifts...perhaps!"
I know what you mean and fair comment it is but you'll find I think that, according to Virgil....... it was originally a tale about the Greeks. But the Romans were as bad:~)
"I fear the Greeks, even those bearing gifts" went it.
@Oakwood
Good point well made. On this side of the aisle we don't think there is a crisis with the climate - and we want our ideas to turn out correct.
Must be odd on the other side of the aisle - to maybe want to be wrong - ie there is no problem - but at the same time to be right.
Here is Richard Black when he was at at the BBC - at one of the regular sessions on "climate communication" [paraphrased]
Sick, really. Like wanting a plane crash to remind people that planes can crash.
Eric Thribb
BBC's new hockey stick should cause some fun in the very near future. I'll wait for the gathering storm.
The question is not whether everyone "accepts basic science", only fools will object to that. But different people accept different things.
Dodgy Geezer
"I like the 'well-resourced' bit..."
So do I. Who wouldn't want to be as well resourced as Bishop Hill and Watts Up With That with rational minds and people representing a wide political spectrum?
Is there any way of challenging the BBC or Matt McGrath to produce evidence to support his claim that sceptical bloggers or citizen scientists are "well resourced"? It seems to me that this is completely untrue and the statement to that effect on the BBC News website should be retracted.
Sep 26, 2013 at 1:50 PM | Eric Thribb
That's an interesting posting by Shukman. I'm aware of the Bangor groups work on Arctica islandica and no where have I ever seen the temperature plot that Shukman shows. All the published temperature records by this group show nothing even remotely resembling this. Moreover their temperature records are based on growth indices and not carbonate shell chemistry. Search for articles by Butler, Wanamaker, Scourse, Richardson and Reynolds.
The only data I've seen from this group that has a shape like the curve presented is a plot of oxygen-16 negative secondary ion emission from a quahog sample. However, this data has absolutely nothing to do with temperature, nor does it cover the range of dates suggested by the BBC news article.
"well-resourced"
The last thing they feel able to do is admit they've had their asses handed to them by a bunch of skint amateur bloggers.
So not peer reviewed data then, in which case IPCC and the Met Office should ignore it......
There must be more 'closet' climate sceptics even in the institutionally biased BBC. But not many have the gravitas and courage to stick their heads above the parapet. There have been famous exceptions- Peter Sissons, Andrew Neil, and of course the author of these quotes
"-And actually there has been no significant rise in global temperatures for more than a decade now.
-What gets up my nose is being infantilized by governments, by the BBC, by the Guardian that there is no argument, that all scientists who aren’t cranks and charlatans are agreed on all this, that the consequences are uniformly negative, the issues beyond doubt and the steps to be taken beyond dispute.
-You’re not necessarily a crank to point out that global temperatures change a great deal anyway. A thousand years ago we had a Mediterranean climate in this country; 200 years ago we were skating every winter on the Thames."
– Michael Buerk, 16 December 2011
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/03/thought-provoking-words-for-the-bbc-and-the-guardian-from-a-podcast-by-the-bbcs-michael-buerk/
I confess to contributing 16.5p per day to Andrew's running costs. Whether this counts as 'well-resourced' when compared to the $6,840,000 per day the US government alone spends on 'official climatology', I'll leave for others to judge.
Sep 26, 2013 at 3:40 PM | Paul Dennis
Clamgate! I can't wait.
Sep 26, 2013 at 2:15 PM | Unregistered CommenterBad Andrew
Yes, I do. Then they compound the error by "predicting" global warming. They are speaking with the vulgar and have not a clue what a scientific hypothesis or prediction looks like. That the "media" have allowed them to get away with such nonsense shows that, when the topic is science, the media can speak with the vulgar but cannot rise above that limitation. As for the politicians, they have the excuse that they are for rent.
Paul Dennis /Eric Thribb
This item was on BBC's 6 o'clock news. May be I missed it but there was no sign of the hockey stick.
Sep 26, 2013 at 5:43 PM | Tim
Sep 26, 2013 at 7:16 PM | David Porter
I've put in a formal complaint to the BBC asking them to investigate and to forward to me a reference for the data, or to indicate who it was who provided the data so that I can ask them directly. AS things stand I'm pretty sure that no such data exists.
Paul Dennis @7.44 PM
Thanks Paul. In view of this being "up your street" I look forward to the response you receive.
There'a an abstract of a German paper on this lamellibranch, mentioning temperature and age etc here
http://www.palaeontologie.uni-mainz.de/Forschung/Publikationen/pdf/Schoene%20et%20al%202005%20PPP%20228_130-_Climate%20records%20sclero%20Arctica%20islandica%20Iceland%20ox%20carb%20iso%20d18O%20d13C.pdf
Sep 26, 2013 at 8:40 PM | Pharos
Schoene has done a lot of work on Arctica including specimens from the North Sea as well as North Atlantic. He has not published a climate record similar to that shown by Shukman. All the long term records published by the Bangor group show very little ocean temperature fluctuation and no sharp 20th century uptick and hockey stick.
I'm calling Shukman out on this one because I don't believe such a record derived from Arctica exists.
The BBC preparing to jump the sinking ship perhaps. At least laying out the mats...
So the Bish gets a mention on the day that the 2xEd sleeping BBC Flanders decides to join one of those nasty bankers that she and the Eds have been bashing. I don't suppose Tony helped, why would he as he hates the Ed's, so clearly he takes the money but has no influence on the rest of the dregs they buy. She has the gall to suggest she's not been able to express her personal beliefs in her BBC role, rollocks, which may well be true as anyone can see it's Ed Balls bollocks she Trots out. I hope they've asked for more output than she ever gave the BBC, it's usually fortnights between her transcriptions of Balls guff.
Popped open the Financial Post opinion page this morning (0500EST)
John Cook, Special to Financial Post | 25/09/13 |
We have a climate
consensus
Andrew Montford, Special to Financial Post | 25/09/13 |
No you don’t
oops
No You Don't
Sep 26, 2013 at 7:44 PM |Paul Dennis
Contrary to my earlier comment on Shukman's item on clams, the news item at 6 o'clock did show a hockey stick.
Part of me wants to rejoice that bias is falling. But no. The BBC is just paying lip service to justified criticism of bias. The main story is in the pictures of the bbc article which are two thirds propaganda and alarmism and only at the end something relevant to the story..
1. Photo of man wading through "high water"
2. Picture of the gabel of a house placed on a pontoon floating in a Dutch lake to make it look like the building is underwater and the people need to be rescued.
and finally for a semblance of balance :
3. Picture of sceptic, Marcel Crok
and so the reader leaves the page after having been exposed to the subliminal message:
PANIC
RISING SEA
WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE
Sep 26, 2013 at 2:44 PM | Dung
I'm with Dung...