Wednesday
Oct032012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Broken Filter seminar
Oct 3, 2012 Media The Frontline Club recently held a discussion about whether the media is up to the job of covering the energy and climate change debate. Chaired by Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, the evening featured many familiar names to those in the blogosphere and twittersphere.
Update on Oct 3, 2012 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
Ben Webster's comments at 37min are interesting
- there is a problem with environment correspondents going native
- some environmental correspondents sleep with environmentalists.
Reader Comments (24)
Checkout the panel before deciding whether it might be worthwhile for you to look at the video.
http://www.frontlineclub.com/events/2012/10/broken-filter-is-our-journalism-up-to-the-debate-over-energy-and-climate-change.html
A warmist washout.
Interesting to hear Rusbridger admit that he didn't know much about climate change, but that he had invested lots of GMG's resources to it -- it is things like Al Gore's AIT and other theatrical stunts like Emmott's lecture that inspire him. Rusbridger didn't seem to want to reflect on his own paper's role in setting the high-pitched tone of the wider debate, leading to the situation in which Greenpeace organise a seminar, where everyone scratches their heads about why the message doesn't seem to be getting across as they wanted.
Six people standing on a stage with their heads up their backsides would have shed more light on the media's role in the climate change debate.
THE HERETIC
I trust Your Grace has noted the sympathetic review in Rusbridger's paper of the play we enjoyed a few months ago.
Not that many in Salford seem to have bothered to see it.
Pity !
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/oct/02/heretic-review
Ben PIle:
Better than I expected then.
One day they'll realise or be told that we get the mesage, thank you - its just that lots of reasonable, educated people and lots of experts think its a pile of sh*t.
The intellectual vacuity of the whole thing was quite remarkable.
Well I have got to 50 mins... can I stop now?
Is that the best they can do?
Jeez... they haven't a clue.
And what a glimpse in that world. A bubble.
Sorry I have stopped... we could tell them better what their problem is...
... but our voice is not to be trusted.
A kind of Guardian love-fest, sweet really. I thought Alice Bell was good, especially mentioning the need for more humour in the debate ;-)
Richard Drake - Better than I expected then.
These things are useful insofar as they are an opportunity to see under the skin of environmentalism proper.... Not just the vacuity, the bubble, and the six ciphers bent over with self-regard, but also where it comes from: the editor, the journalist, the activist, the man from the quango, the academic (yeah right!), and the equally vapid speakers from the floor from an assortment of organisations are no more than the establishment whingeing to themselves about nobody listening to them.
totally insular green bubble..
nice to see the CarbonBrief there.
Pity you can't seal the doors and let them carry on talking to themselves with no one else listening.
Alice Bell - what a lot of waffling...and when I heard Alan Russbridger talk of 'open journalism' I thought of the Environment section of the Guardian....
On BW's "there is a problem with environment correspondents going native"...
Going native? They were born there.
They talked a lot about skeptics, and about the GWPF. Did they invite any skeptics and/or the GWPF?
Almost certainly not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg0yIPZdUZY
Sorry couldn't resist it.
It's a new world indoor record for narcissism and sanctimonious posturing.
There's a theme developing here - eg Shuck's vapid report into why turning the propaganda up to 11 hasn't worked. These people know they are losing and they are just boo-hooing about how it's all soooo unfair.
I refuse to watch the video unless I get paid for the ordeal. It seems they've only gathered for a group therapy anyway. That Alan Rushbridger chaired the session is quite significant.
The Guardian is still my favourite media outlet but its Environment section is so full of lies and distortions and exaggerations that the day they admit they are wrong about climate catastrophe will be the day I begin to worry about the climate.
I can't remember when I last read anything by John Vidal, Leo Hickman, Damien Carrington or Andrew Simms. I reckon I stopped paying any attention to them before I gave up on George Monbiot, and the last Monbiot piece I looked at -just 'look at', not read- was the one in which he said 'you see that snow outside your window, that's how global warming looks like'. There are limits to my masochism.
I watched that just to be sure, but the Bish is right, utter vacuity from beginning to end.
It is quite astonishing these people are willing to leave this record of the droning inanity that goes on in their tiny minds.
A couple of loons in the audience brightened things up. I love the psychologist who thought violence sells, and that blaring alarmist headlines were required today so future generations will at least know we tried. Moron.
The panel quickly moved on when someone suggested that we could learn from the latest Muse* album about our "unsustainable society" :)
The guy on the panel who seemed to think he had insouciance sown up (thanks Geoff ;) ) was a nice contrast to the dithering blithering drivel from the others in that I think he thought he came across as plain speaking when in fact he was just plain bullshitting with a straight face.
At about 44 minutes, when talking about the cost for the ordinary person, he totally gives in on nuclear without a fight because it will upset the sandal wearing hippies, and then dismisses shale by starting
"There is a lot of stuff talked about shale gas that has no basis in fact…”
and then just does some practised dismissive hand-waving about how hopeless it is.
Then when talking about the projected increase of fuel bills from low carbon energy in 2020 he dismisses the rival claims of it being on the order of several hundreds
“the fact is it’s £100”.
Note this *fact* is about the future. Good eh? Claims that a fuel that can be seen today to bring down prices cannot be “fact”, however he dismisses rival projections of cost in 2020 by claiming he knows the actual facts that are going to be true then. Arse.
*Now what has Matt Bellamy of Muse been quoted as saying about 911 in the past? One for Lewandowsky ;)
Thanks for the warning as we are re-decorating and don't have time to waste. Sounds pretty much like any group of luvvies who don't have to earn their own folding stuff but are suckling at the public's teat.
Following TLITB's comment about Matt Bellamy of Muse changing his mind about conspiracy theories for 911, I did a google search to a website for those comments.
The context sensitive advert that appeared was:
"University of East Anglia
Register for our final open day of 2012 on Sat 6th October
www.uea.ac.uk/openday"
Bishop very OT but very immediate.
Wright Stuff on Channel Five Mathew is discussing Bringing Back Grammar Schools.
You were talking about the poor standard and Political Correctness of your kids science education few weeks ago
Me TV addict there's a Channel Five plus one channel on the Freewview Box..
See what a bad comprehensive education is like then look at me.Im trying to catch up now
Glib, loquacious, unimpressive. These are voices on the victorious side of the climate alarm debate. The side that led us, for example, to the Climate Change Act, a BBC devoted to avoiding ‘balance’, a Royal Society that has dissed its own motto, and a government which distributed Gore’s AIT to schools. Did they ever study the case for alarm, or did they acquire their opinions by intellectual contagion, given that there has been an epidemic of CO2 Alarm spreading over much of the world in recent decades? Why did they not automatically challenge it? What was it that made it so congenial for them? How can they retain their apparently shared view that ‘the sceptics’ are on the one hand and ‘the scientists’ on the other? One speaker from the floor said that [CAGW – his ‘elephant in the room’, I presume] is ‘incredibly threatening’. I have to agree. It is not at all credible. I’d also agree with a subsequent speaker from the floor who wonders if journalists have not been critical enough about environmental stories. So, while the whole video is primarily of interest to anthropologists studying climate alarm, it was not an entirely depressing 90 minutes.
Environmental correspondents sleeping with Environmentalist and Undercover Cops.
Agree with all the comments above. I'm transcribing it for Alex's Mytranscriptbox and loving every second.