Buy

Books
Click images for more details

Twitter
Support

 

Recent comments
Recent posts
Currently discussing
Links

A few sites I've stumbled across recently....

Powered by Squarespace

Discussion > BBC & Media Bias re :climate/energy/green issues ..new thread

Alan Kendall

You can do all the statistical trickery you like, I look at a temperature curve (with all that is wrong with it), observe in it a flattening since around 1998, and reach my own conclusions.

This was what I meant by Level 1 thinking. You look at the temperature curve and see every short term decrease in slope as proof that global warming has stopped. More sophisticated observers see noise perturbing a long term trend.

Phil Jones, Michael Mann and I look at the curve and see an underlying trend perturbed by short term variation due to transient changes in other factors. In this case increased albedo due to increased pollution by China and above average vulcanism are sufficient to explain the temporary reduction in warming rate in the noughties.

You earlier invoked natural variation as a sufficient cause of changes in climate.Now you reject the possibility that natural variation can cause short term perturbations in a long term trend.

May 12, 2016 at 9:32 AM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

Level 1. See a flattening.
Level X. See a temporary reduction.

Observers at level X must have crystal balls.

May 12, 2016 at 10:24 AM | Unregistered CommenterAlan Reed

Alan Kendall & Sandy S, if you had studied Fantasy Climate Science, you would know about fire breathing dragons. The reptillian digestive system did not evolve to cope with the high fibre diet resulting from the consumption of particularly wooly mammoths, and modern dieticians had not evolved quick enough to advise on the consequences.

Back-firing, fire breathing dragons cause horrendous damage at ground level. Flying at 35 thousand feet, these high carbon dioxide emissions cause lasting damage to the atmosphere, jet stream, and the rotational spin speed of the planet. It does not do much for the aerodynamics of the dragon concerned, and may explain why dragons are never seen flying in tight formations.

May 12, 2016 at 10:39 AM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

gC. I thought the dragon slayers (whoever they are) got them all.

May 12, 2016 at 11:08 AM | Unregistered CommenterAlan Kendall

No EM I look at the record and see a long term trend of increasing temperatures since the LIA. I see a trend in the earlier part of the 20th century that cannot be distinguished from a similar trend in the later part of the same century, which is where it is linked to CO2. In other words the entire AGW edifice is based on a less than 30 year trend that is not particularly unusual.

You, Mann and company must wear awfully strange glasses. I trust my own eyesight more than yours.

Type1 thinking? Go back to school man.

May 12, 2016 at 11:21 AM | Unregistered CommenterAlan Kendall

Alan Reed, I don't think it's nice of you (by implication) to comment on the transparency of EM's equipment.

May 12, 2016 at 11:23 AM | Unregistered CommenterAlan Kendall

Alan Kendall

I'm not sure I know what you mean.

I have never witnessed entropic change ...to any higher level....and if I ever spotted a double entendre in my own post i'm sure I'd be the first to whip it out.

However, I will apologise to Kenneth Williams.

May 12, 2016 at 3:11 PM | Unregistered CommenterAlan Reed

Alan Reed,

A superb line about whipping it out. However, I believe it was the marvelous Kenneth Horne, and not the equally marvelous Kenneth Williams that you are quoting:
https://mikejackson1948.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/im-all-for-censorship-if-ever-i-see-a-double-entendre-i-whip-it-out-kenneth-horne/

May 12, 2016 at 4:09 PM | Unregistered CommenterDavid Smith

David Smith
Good catch!

I could swear I heard it once from Williams - and he was in Round the Horne - but Google gives me no comfort here.

Apologies to Kenneth Horne.

May 12, 2016 at 4:23 PM | Unregistered CommenterAlan Reed

Alan Kendall et al

Note duly taken that you resorted to insult rather than answering my point in scientific terms.

And you wonder why you are no longer invited onto television discussions!

May 12, 2016 at 5:43 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

"That there is a systematic culture of bias on climate/energy/green and that sometimes it's well over the top." And the EU and the Tory Party.

On climate it's actually difficult to see how they can take any other stance. They go to the scientists for their information and they get told human emissions will cause warming and catastrophes, why would they cast about for different views?

They are also not engineers, so when it comes to energy policy they've been using Lord Oxburgh to talk about energy policy seemingly confusing the fact that he was interim chairman of Shell and as such would know something about energy generation. For sure there's no journalistic ability to dig into the disaster that is the CCA, in any of our broadcasters, so again they'll go along with the party line.

As for the Greens, well it's virtue signalling saving the planet and can't be challenged, and if it is the Greens inundate the BBC and Ofcom with complaints, so it's probably not worth it.

I'm not saying that the ideas of the people in the BBC don't resonate with the left-wing/green/environmental Notting/Islington set, they do, and they also resonates with the luvvies and right-on comedians who feed at the BBC's teat.

Yes, they are biassed but not consciously. I don't know if it was always like this, in years gone by the BBC seemed to have a right wing bias and was very patriotic - whereas today the BBC is distinctly anti-British, and whatever the bias, right wing or left wing, it still has complete and condesension for the working classes.

May 12, 2016 at 5:56 PM | Registered Commentergeronimo

EM. You first called into question my higher level thinking abilities and told me what I should be thinking. I responded in kind, telling you how I saw the record. I don't know how anyone can see the record differently so resorted to weak humour about your glasses.

I don't see where I insulted you.

My interchange with Alan Reed was about his unintentional double entendre, and was not intended to wound you. I am told I have a thin skin, but I would have simply smiled if I had been in your place. I have also been accused of arrogance, but don't you think you might have been to me, implying you think on a higher level than I do, and so on?

May 12, 2016 at 6:11 PM | Unregistered CommenterAlan Kendall

EM:

This was what I meant by Level 1 thinking. You look at the temperature curve and see every short term decrease in slope as proof that global warming has stopped. More sophisticated observers see noise perturbing a long term trend.
Obviously, you do not see this paragraph as offensive in any way, whatsoever. Hmmm….

May 12, 2016 at 6:17 PM | Registered CommenterRadical Rodent

The CO2 true believer sees, as we can observe here, a climate crisis in every breeze, cloud or contrived graphic. They are at least as benighted as those who still believe Paul Ehrlich and pals.

May 12, 2016 at 9:11 PM | Unregistered Commenterhunter

Further to your Level 1 thinking, EM, consider this graph, and see that, in the long term, this rise that you are in such a lather about is but a slight blip in the steady downward trend to the next ice age. What you are in such high dudgeon about in your Level 2 thinking is what the truly sophisticated thinkers realise is just noise perturbing a long-term trend; we see that it is a noise that we could do with more of, as the alternative is not a welcome prospect (unless you want to see most of the Northern Hemisphere under kilometres of ice, of course).

May 12, 2016 at 9:37 PM | Registered CommenterRadical Rodent

Alan Kendall

see a long term trend of increasing temperatures since the LIA. I see a trend in the earlier part of the 20th century that cannot be distinguished from a similar trend in the later part of the same century, which is where it is linked to CO2. In other words the entire AGW edifice is based on a less than 30 year trend that is not particularly unusual.
30 year trends. These are the linear regressions for the first thirty years of the century and the last thirty years.

The trend for the period 1901-1930 is 0.04C/decade. The trend for 1971-2000 is 0.15C/decade.

They can be distinguished.

The problem with direct inspection is that it gives free reign to cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias. I am as prone to that as anyone else, which is which I prefer to check my ideas against the numbers sand the statistics.

The purpose of statistical methods is to bring some objectivity to the analysis. Even very basic regression does better than the unaided eyeball.

May 12, 2016 at 9:38 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

Alan Kendall

I hate tablets!

This was the graph.

May 12, 2016 at 9:45 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

Radical Rodent

Sorry, your link didn't work.

May 12, 2016 at 9:48 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

SandyS

As the plant with the greatest influence on modern climate I would nominate sphagnum moss, the main plant growing on the tundra.

May 12, 2016 at 10:31 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

... the BBC is distinctly anti-British...
May 12, 2016 at 5:56 PM | Registered Commentergeronimo

I remember, at the time of the Falklands war, a BBC representative was asked "Why don't you talk about *our* aircraft?".

The BBC person haughtily replied "Because the BBC does not have any aircraft".

May 12, 2016 at 10:48 PM | Unregistered CommenterMartin A

Level 1 Climate Science states that everything must be blamed on CO2, no matter how implausible.

Level 2 Climate Science simply states that in an emergency or panic, go to Level 1.

May 12, 2016 at 11:17 PM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

I'm still stuck at Level 0 thinking.
Still trying to test my axioms from which to reason.
Still trying to prove that the observations of man's influence are measurable.

But that has nothing to do with media bias.
Except that the media are not interested in introspective analysis. They never question their bias.
Not even the BBC.

May 12, 2016 at 11:41 PM | Registered CommenterM Courtney

Entropic man: it does for me. I do try to check it works by doing a preview, and had no problems at any point. Does anyone else have a problem with it?

May 12, 2016 at 11:44 PM | Registered CommenterRadical Rodent

Radical Rodent

Still not working. This is the error message.

iceagenow.info 403 Forbidden Error Page

May 12, 2016 at 11:48 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

Radical Rodent, for once, EM is correct.

May 13, 2016 at 12:59 AM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie