Bishop Hill The BBC's week of lies
Dec 2, 2015 BBC Matt Ridley The tsunami of environmentalist disinformation, naked campaigning and outright lies coming from the BBC this week is quite extraordinary. It's impossible to keep up with it all and I'm not even going to try. I'll leave this as an open thread for anyone who wants to post stuff. Feel free to transfer things from unthreaded too.
As a starter for ten, in an email Tony Newbery notes Nick Robinson's frantic attempts to make sure that all the listeners knew that Matt Ridley is not a scientist and compares this with the introduction given to Britt Basel in a segment the same day about Vanuatu: the lady in question was introduced as "a climate change adviser". However, this is not how she describes herself:
I’m an adventurer, a socio-environmental scientist, and a storyteller. Challenge, learning, and exploration fuel me. The diversity and richness of our world fascinate me. I am driven by a conviction that there is a more sustainable and satisfying way of living of our daily lives. My passion and my work have brought me to more than 30 countries. My camera is my constant companion.
And that, ladies and gentlemen is why the BBC should be closed.
Amusingly, Ms Basel has posted the adaptation plan she developed for some of the Solomon Islanders. Seriously.
;)
Reader Comments (106)
@geoffchambers That new Lewandowsky Guardian smear job against Ridley is chock full conspiracy lunatics spouting bile
It's well sick in the old sense of the phrase. They are swarming like ants. Do they live on an anti Exxon blog or something ?
and Esmiff says here on BH is "like a bunch ten year olds"
I presume the "post deleted" comments there are the ones where someone wrote something sane.
Hang on,someone there has just mentioned a new paper
They link to Bloomberg, which links to The Nature Paper by Justin Farrell (Assistant Professor of Sociolog, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale) seems he pops out similar papers from time to time. Like every other month October PNAS, ..July in Nature. Jeez he must be atop writer to get published so easily whilst others struggle.The BBC has an ideological approach to everything. Even the joke that is Sports Personality of the Year has a shortlist drawn up by a panel of the great and good because the public didn't include a lady athlete one year. So they now have a popularity contest that is no longer based on a popular voting system.
The BBC viewing figures - as with most TV stations - speaks for itself.
In real reality, the temperature rise over the last three decades is the same as the temperature rise between 1917 and 1946.
"How could this level of intelligence possibly pass through the sieve of natural selection?"
It's a form of equality: even stupid people have the right to have authority and make idiot decisions for everyone else.
esmiff
dunno about bikesheds - there *has* to be a point where the BBC gets its comeuppance. I'd rather it crashed and burned than did some kind of public sector rebranding resulting in more bloodsucking, sneery posing and weapons grade mendaciousness.
Yep - previous posts - Sky is just as bad....
Multiple interviews with 'alarmists' - you can almost see the spittle at the corners of their mouths...and then an aerial view of some Pacific islands with the voiceover stating that 'if sea levels CONTINUE to rise (really,,?) due to the ice caps MELTING (really..?).... etc, etc.....'
I can't watch for very long - have to change over to something where genuine research has been done, to make the character believeable (Doc Martin)...
In real reality, the temperature rise over the last three decades is the same as the temperature rise between 1917 and 1946.
The may look similar eyeballed like that but in fact the earlier trend is 1.47C/century vs 1.55/century.
But Ridley was referring to the three decades ending 2010, perhaps if we shift your comparison back 5 years? Nope, trend 1980-2010 was 1.77C/century.
Plus of course, three decades is a fairly arbitrary number, in this dataset, the linear trend for the last 40 years is 1.70C/century, and shows no sign of letting up. Both more rapid and longer lived than your historical comparator.
But thanks for showing up talk of a 'pause' as not real-reality-based :-)
I dunno....
All these conferences....
All these thousands of people from hundreds of countries....
All to 'tackle climate change'....
And what happens..?
Nothing - it stays the same...!!
Phil Clarke
"Nicholas Ridley is a failed banker, wrong about some things, dangerously wrong about others."
What was that about ad-homs..?
What was that about ad-homs..?
If you read the linked piece, it draws a connecton between Ridley's discredited views on financial regulation and his views environmental regulation.
Besides, 'failed banker' is as least as accurate as 'scientist'.
Phil Clarke
Based on actual evidence, Ridley has proved more accurate about actual climate change, than actual climate scientists. His opinion on the perfect roast potato, may not be the same as mine, but neither of us is trying to impose our cooking on others.
Climate scientists with an actual track record of not being right, still want to cook records to impose their view.
You seem very confident about the accuracy of 1.47 vs 1.55 in historical records. Why?
In Vanuatu they did the stunt with snorkeling to play up their plight. But when courting investors for a big hotel complex, it was all "no worries, long term investment is good, we aren't flooding". Hilarious.
Phil Clarke - I presume you meant to be rude about Matt Ridley? Nicholas Ridley is someone else entirely.
Based on actual evidence, Ridley has proved more accurate about actual climate change,
Go on then, provide some of this evidence...
The BBC are playing the China Pollution trick for all its worth, linking smog to climate change (e.g. at the end of this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S27ycsxUtRM). Yes, their smog is caused by coal, but coal burned for heating and in factories, NOT in power stations. What they need is MORE power stations, and natural gas.
I can reject that assertion too. The satellite data shows "the pause", as you well know. If the satellite record was as long as the more compromised land data, then maybe that too would show there is nothing exceptional about warming since 1979 when compared to earlier periods. Who knows? Speculation is the more usually realm of climate alarmists, so I'll leave that to them.
Last time I checked, Matt Ridley still has a Ph.D. in Zoology. The Ph.D. is often regarded as 'the scientist's union card'. Richard Black, formerly of the BBC, only had a BSc in the same, if I remember correctly, but he seemed to be accorded greater respect for some reason best known to the BBC.
As I said on another thread, Matt Ridley is frequently attack by Arts graduates in the media probably because his pleasant manner and quiet competence is seen as a threat to the 'communication' of their cherished global warming assumptions and beliefs.
Nicholas Ridley is dead. He was an MP and minister in the Thatcher era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Ridley,_Baron_Ridley_of_Liddesdale
The other one was a 16th century martyr, burned at the stake, and Bishop of London.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Ridley_%28martyr%29
JoNova is already picking apart the Justin Farrel conspiracy
paperLETTER I mentioned above"I created an affiliation network (9–10 ) whereby I identified 4,556 individuals with ties to these organizations"
Santa'sJustin's making a list,And checking it twice,
Gonna find out who's naughty or nice.
Justin is going to town!
He sees that you've been blogging
He knows you're not a flake.
.... etc.
Ah BTW buried in the abstract it says it's a letter not a paper, so has probably not been peer reviewed.
If we're going to be uber-pedants, he has a D.Phil.
Phil Clarke, evidence temperatures are not rising in accordance with Mann's Hockey Stick? Oceans are not acid? Storms are not worse? Sea levels are not rising any faster? Deserts are not getting bigger? Polar bears are not dying out? Sea ice is not disappearing?
Or would you prefer to stick with 5/100 ths of a degree from when thermometers were a bit iffy about a tenth?
Says the man who just tried to pretend that 1.47C/century vs 1.55/century, and that using cherry picked dates from a suspect dataset, are significantly different.
lol
Says the man who just tried to pretend that 1.47C/century vs 1.55/century, and that using cherry picked dates from a suspect dataset, are significantly different.
Read back and you will discover that I picked neither the dataset nor the dates.
I can reject that assertion too. The satellite data shows "the pause", as you well know.
Starting in or around the year of the Super El Nino. The troposphere is more sensitive to ENSO than the surface, with a lag of several months. It will be interesting to watch what happens to the 'pause' over the next half-year. And if you think RSS/UAH has not been adjusted according to a highly complex model, I suggest you do some reading.
Here is some data from thermometers
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2015/06/19/desperate-for-a-pause/
evidence temperatures are not rising in accordance with Mann's Hockey Stick? Oceans are not acid? Storms are not worse? Sea levels are not rising any faster? Deserts are not getting bigger? Polar bears are not dying out? Sea ice is not disappearing?
That would be great, well the non-straw men anyway. Start with the sea ice.
To save you going back to Wikipedia "The University of Oxford (and the University of Sussex) also abbreviates their Doctor of Philosophy degree as D.Phil. but in other respects is equivalent to a PhD."
An article on the BBC here is like click bait!
Yes ... Phil Clarke ... an anomaly at the end of a record can bias a trend calculation ... smart statement by you ... but then when the La Nina hits after the present El Nino it will be back to pause ... but maybe you hope to achieve your goals before that point, while people can still be mislead by the soon to come El Nino impact, whatever size that turns out to be???
then when the La Nina hits after the present El Nino it will be back to pause
But a pause at a higher temperature than the last:;-)
Besides, it appears to me that the satellite data should be subject to a little bit more 'scepticism' ...
Phil Clarke, sea ice has advanced and retreated through recorded history. Who first went through the North West Passage, linking the Atlantic to the Pacific? What stories, legends or facts convinced the British to believe it was there in the 1840s?
How many vessels managed it in 2015?
Google 'HMS Investigator wreck pictures' and ask yourself how that sailing boat got where it did, and was found in the same place it got stuck.
You introduced the concept of three decades, not me, by quoting Ridley. Then you went off talking about 40 years without justifying why. The fact remains we were discussing recent warming and your claims that it is exceptional, when it clearly isn't. If I wanted to, I could have chosen dates and times to show cooling, but I chose not to.
So you didn't name a dataset? But you made a claim anyway. Using some unnamed dataset. Some would get the impression that you are making claims and deciding how you are going to define them afterwards, when someone challenges your claims.
I went to Tamino's blog once a long time ago, and found it one of the most offensively misleading blogs on the internet. And even more contemptuous than Gavin Schmidt of people who disagreed with him. I won't go back.
Phil Clarke, sea ice has advanced and retreated through recorded history. Who first went through the North West Passage
I guess your definition of evidence differs from mine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Bremen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Nordic_Orion
http://www.crystalcruises.com/alaska-cruises/northwest-passage--6319
But I was after evidence that sea ice is not in decline, not anecdotes.
http://nsidc.org/news/newsroom/PR_2015meltseason
So you didn't name a dataset? But you made a claim anyway. Using some unnamed dataset. Some would get the impression that you are making claims and deciding how you are going to define them afterwards, when someone challenges your claims.
YOU chose the dataset and the dates in your post at 12.27! Sheesh.
Phil Clarke
Satellite data ? skepticism? whoah ! - care to apply a bit of what you've got there to OCO-2 observations of CO2 ? - don't forget to elaborate how well it fits with consensus explanations of what's going on eh?
Am I supposed to guess which unnamed dataset you are using to make your claims that you may, or may not, choose to define later? There aren't many datasets, but I can substantiate my claims with the other datasets. You haven't even started attempting to properly describe the basis for your claims.
You take a swipe or two at Matt Ridley and then go all vague.
Perhaps the BBC would like to invite Dr Doug McNeall on and have him explain his tweets to Naomi Oreskes when she tried to deny the pause,
two tweets in particular:
"Because pause, hiatus, slowdown etc are in common use in the climate science community"
followed by
"ignoring it won't make it go away".
Phil Clarke might learn something too. Since the Met Office, and the 'climate science community' believe in the pause, hiatus, slowdown etc. then he's on a sticky wicket in trying to deny it.
Ah, good old Phil Clarke. This tiresome troll has been haunting the Contractor UK forums for a while now, ensuring all threads discussing Global Warming get a good spray of Skeptical Science rebuttal and the usual drench of ad-homs (Anthony "40W" Watts - ho-ho) to clamp down on any dissent and, of course, to make sure nothing gets in the way of "the cause".
A degree in Pure and Applied Physics, a self-confessed Watermelon and Green Party sympathist, it gives him great pleasure to lord over you with his Chicken Licken stories of doom. A burst of impetus due to COP21, no doubt.
But be careful when engaging: he has a whole archive of snark and links to bore you into tedium.
Phil Clarke, how many cruises ships got through the North West Passage in 2015? Some of those cruises advertised for 2016 are on icebreakers.
Dismissing the UK's tragic history in finding the NWP in the 1840s - 1850s, as 'anecdotal', really says a lot about your selective logic processing.
Guys
You're wasting your time with P Clarke. He doesn't want to hear nor will he listen to anything that intrudes or conflicts with his perceptions and beliefs.
Confusing the Ridleys should be a clue to his critical thought processes and reasoning skills.
Re the BBC, they are not alone, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC, is behaving the same way as are some of the American networks. It's a laugh a minute at the moment.
Am I supposed to guess which unnamed dataset
Not un-named. Its HADCRUT4, the one YOU chose for your comparison.
Am I supposed to guess which unnamed dataset
Not un-named. Its HADCRUT4, the one YOU chose for your comparison.
get a good spray of Skeptical Science rebuttal and the usual drench of ad-homs
And evidence. Don't forget the evidence.
'Troll': term of abuse for somebody when you cannot find anything factually wrong with their arguments. To be worn with pride.
"And that, ladies and gentlemen is why the BBC should be closed."
Seconded.
The trouble is that ITV and Chanel 4 are just as bad. It is a s though they are evangelists proselytising a religion. There is no room for doubt and no place for doubters. Thank goodness for the blogs!
@Michael Hart that Phil Clarke 11.45am post no longer mentions the claim you tacked ""In reality the rise over this period [last three decades] has been the most rapid since instrumental records began."
Dec 2, 2015 at 11:45 AM ..did he go back and materially edit it after making it ?
#2 Yes the graphs you linked to, to show past trends as steep as recent, were Hadcrut, but half the other options show the same.
Furthermore, you are up against the reliability of old records and close differences often seem to be within the error margins of the stats.
Clarke is right you still get a steep line for last 40 years, but you can play around picking dates and time periods to get different trends eg. the short term, or 50 year trend shore much less steep trends
Well I would go against the grain here and welcome PhilC's participation. It needs two sides for a debate and in the antagonistic world of the climate wars that is a rarity.
From what I've seen Phil (CyberC at TMF?) is certainly knowledgeable and relatively polite in the great scheme of things. He's looked at the same data as us...and just come to a different (wrong!) conclusion. Let's find out why. There are lots of clever folk here, you shouldn't be frightened of being challenged, isn't that what you (rightly) accuse believers of?
Phil if you can lower the snark quotient (difficult I know) please stick around. As a (probably unwanted) observation, like most you've been dragged down into tribal behaviour and lost your objectivity recently IMHO. I think you were the first person to direct me to a lot of interesting climate articles years ago (albeit I saw them differently) and I valued your input.
As a suggestion, can you attempt to wipe your mind clear and imagine you're approaching this subject afresh and don't know any of the participants. Then looking at all the data, model performance whatever, can you hand on heart say that climate change is a potential catastrophic problem that should be up there with WW3 in the Paris talks?
If so, I for one would like to hear why, maybe over on the discussion forum here.
(IMHO Phil is levels above the other guys who've had a go here only to slink away again soon after)
SimonW, dismissing inconvenient evidence as 'anecdotal' is hardly scientific. But nor is computer adjusted climate science anyway.
Then looking at all the data, model performance whatever, can you hand on heart say that climate change is a potential catastrophic problem that should be up there with WW3 in the Paris talks?
I don't think I've used the word 'catastophic' anywhere as it requires a value judgement, there are those for whom it is already a catastrophe, however for those of us fortunate to be living in wealthy countries with temperate climates, it seems likely that climate change will bring a net benefit in my lifetime.
WW3 it is not, (although if we were spend something like the defence budget, we would have less of a problem) and globally there are far more urgent issues - poverty, hunger, access to clean water, and so forth. But AGW is different in two respects - we can make small (in the overall scheme of things) changes now to avert a large, and potentially very serious problem decades hence and secondly, nobody is denying the very existence of poverty.
PS On the models, as the current surge continues, so observed temperatures converge with modelled.
Click
drench of ad-homs (Anthony "40W" Watts - ho-ho)
Was that really one of mine? Did you see the series of posts where he implied that GISS was biased warm because it had higher anomalies than other datasets? Without taking account that they have different baselines? This is like comparing the heights of two people when one of them is standing on a box.
And this is his 'specialist subject' Not the sharpest tool in the drawer, is Willard.
Phil Clarke (Dec 3, 2015 at 12:30 PM), any idea why the basic plot of HADCRUT4...
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl
...does not show the 'surge' that your plot does?
any idea why the basic plot of HADCRUT4…
Looks like Woodfortrees data only goes up to May, which is unusual. Full dataset is here
2015 so far looks like this:
2015/01 0.688
2015/02 0.66
2015/03 0.681
2015/04 0.656
2015/05 0.696
2015/06 0.73
2015/07 0.696
2015/08 0.74
2015/09 0.785
2015/10 0.811
Phil Clarke (Dec 3, 2015 at 2:19 PM), thanks for the update but why does your plot not show the 'peak' around 2000AD?