Bishop Hill Soft on greens, soft on greenery
Jul 13, 2014 BBC Climate: Sceptics Greens Paul Homewood points us to this incredibly soft BBC interview with Al Gore, who is in Australia promoting his pet climate project. The powers that be at the corporation seem to have decided that they want to put their considerable weight behind Mr Gore's campaign and interviewer Paul Donnison is right on message, apparently viewing his role as providing the maximum PR opportunity for Mr Gore: most questions are along the lines of "are your opponents dishonest or irresponsible" and there is litte by way of challenge to the great man.
Not that there weren't opportunities to do so. When An Inconvenient Truth was mentioned, it would have been a great opportunity to question Mr Gore about the UK judicial ruling on the film's "errors", something I don't think Mr Gore has ever discussed. However, a BBC interviewer is never going to tread on the toes of a prominent environmentalist and Gore was left free to propagate some wholly new errors, declaring that we have seen nothing like recent Australian droughts before. This position is, I think, probably without any scientific support whatsoever.
We can now begin to see how the BBC's editorial policy is going to pan out. Sceptics are wrong even when they are right; politicians who question alarmism will therefore be introduced as being "wrong" and will be challenged on everything they say. Greens are right even when they are lying; they will be given a free pass and no challenge of their views is to be permitted.
Reader Comments (79)
According to old fake face Al Gore there wasn't supposed be anymore snow flakes left to count.
Al Gore is quite right in the BBC proffered tag line...
The mendacious promotion of a fantasy in the face of evidence - in order to enrich people like him and his chums by way of ransoming as many of the basic things that allow developed countries to function - as they think they can get away with...
Gore is a shameless and serial liar so fits in well with BBC ethics...
What was Jon Donnison doing in Australia anyway? Was he attending Gore's training course?
If this quote from the BBC ruling on the Lawson complaint is correct:
“Lord Lawson’s views are not supported by the evidence from computer modelling and scientific research.”
then that is astonishing, the BBC has decided what is/not supported by scientific research.
Will this come to be known as Lawson-gate?
Bad andrew says comment @5.34 gore looks a bit puffy.That is because he is full of s#it.
Even most of the alarmists I know think that Gore is a phoney and dishonest. Maybe in 50 years the BBC will catch up to this.
O dear, who would ever have thunk (thunk, beeb latest lingo) it possible?
Was Lawson Right about the UK Floods?
ManBearPig rides again. Surely if we all make formal complaints to the BBC trust, it should have more effect than a single green activist and subsidy-farmer. Ok perhaps not.
Need to watch time lines here.
Most snow in Australia falls on the Alps near the east part of the NSW.Vic border. This year 2014 the big snows started a couple of weeks late - ence alarmism - but when they fell at the start of July, we have ski resort operators advertising the most and best snow for many years, even terms like 'best in my memory'.
As to drought, there is a constant official tension to declare that drought is worsening in Australia. The subjective Establishment views of Henessey a couple of years ago, aiding this tension, were effectively rebutted by my friend Dr David Stockwell, who has his birthday today. References are easy to find under Drought & ecxceptional circumstances etc.
Sadly for some, the feel of the weather in Australia is much the same for people like me past the year 70. Can't recall anything extreme, just monotonously pleasant weather for decade after decade. Alarmism underestimates this tactile factor in the populace.,
I live close to the big NSW ski resorts, and operators there are having a bumper season. For a quick roundup of resort conditions across the country, see:
http://ski.com.au/snowreport.html
It was -4C here last night, which is exactly as expected for this time of the year. Our dams are well filled.
The worst recorded drought since European settlement was the Federation Drought around the end C19th - early C20th.
Where does Gore get this dodgy data from? The back of a Green cornflakes packet?
Jul 13, 2014 at 10:46 AM | Adrian Kerton
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Except that we're having one of the best snow seasons in Australia in living memory ... obviously no el Nino this year !
Offer him some money, he'll say whatever you want.
Albert is all about the Benjamins.
Skepticism still suffers stereotyping however, as Steve Goddard and now Joanne Nova are strongly pushing crackpot excesses which few everyday skeptics are willing to condem.
That is what makes scepticism so interesting. There are a number of alternate theories. And BTW JoNova's stuff is not as "out there" as you believe. She (with her husband) have come up with something similar to what Habibullo Abdussamatov has found by a different means. And if we are heading for a "little ice age" based on solar effects? Wouldn't that be news? We would know more than we used to.
how classy is this from Australia's Opposition Leader, the same day a poll showed 53% of Australians want the carbon dioxide tax abolished? no doubt Lenore thinks it is cool talk! btw the tax should be abolished by tonite Australia time, provided there are no more surprises:
14 July: Guardian: Lenore Taylor: Carbon tax repeal almost certain as PUP seals amendments deal
The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said Australia’s response to global warming must “sooner rather than later include an emissions trading system”, saying an ETS guaranteed the lowest price greenhouse gas abatement for families and for businesses…
He accused the prime minister of “sleepwalking his way into a major climate policy disaster, a disaster for the Australian economy and for our environment, a disaster that guarantees that forever more Tony Abbott will be remembered as an environmental vandal”.
Shorten described the opposition’s alternative “direct action” plan as “an amateur, ill-conceived, centralist Soviet-style voucher system that will give the nation’s biggest polluters great wads of taxpayers money to keep polluting”.
“Direct Action is a policy designed solely for the PM’s personal core constituency, the Flat Earth Society. It is a policy concocted purely to appease … the cranky radio shock jocks and extreme columnists,” he said.
Shorten said Abbott was leading “the most ignorant government”, driven by “book-burning instincts and ideology”…
Supermarkets such as Woolworths are saying that because very few prices actually went up when the tax was introduced, few would now be coming down. Most state electricity regulators have announced that household bills will rise by less if the carbon tax repeal goes through.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/14/carbon-tax-repeal-almost-certain
You guys actually pay the tele tax then, you do know that you don't need to do that, and what's more you'll be far more selective in the catchup content you do decide to watch.
johanna,
How many times?
How many times, does the man with a carbon footprint 10,000 x of us mere mortals [little people], a 'climate guru' [expert? - ha ha ha ha!], massage parlour frequenter, sea level prognosticator and beach front property magnate, nearly man politician and failed law student 'BIG AL' have to say it?........................ "you've gotta read the runes!"
And besides all that, a man who is revered by the bbc - his words sent down from on high!
We are not worthy.........."oh climate master".
Here's an interview with a leading environmentalist (Greenpeace co-founder no less) the BBC climate censors would ensure was never broadcast:
Dr Pat Moore, on blaming global warming for everything.
The CO2 global warming scare has evidently been wildly exaggerated, and the BBC (and most other state broadcasters) are failing their license fee payers and viewers by not properly scrutinising the unvalidated and failed climate models and the activist scientists who produce them. As seen in the climategate emails, many senior climate scientists in the IPCC have succumbed to noble cause corruption and allowed the political agenda of the environmentalists to colour their output. Instead of questioning and exposing the the unproven CO2 thesis, the BBC have decided to not just defend the establishment line, (as would be expected of a state broadcaster), but to censor and denigrate anyone who questions the faith. But as the planet's average temperature continues to flat-line and even decline, history will not be kind to them.
I find it despicable that (afaik) BBC did not give a mention to the recent passing of Nigel Calder, not even a page on their website. Contrast this with the blanket coverage they gave to the death of Peaches Geldof. Even the Guardian published an obituary for Nigel, but the BBC, despite all the great Horizons he produced in the 80s, chose not to? Was his climate scepticism entirely coincidental? Or was it that the BBC is now run by teenagers who didn't even know who he was? The BBC is no longer an organisation which commands any respect, as it is now run by activists who put their pet political agendas and dumbed-down values above all else.
Thanks to those who complained to the BBC, come on the rest of you, COMPLAIN
Streetcred
"Except that we're having one of the best snow seasons in Australia in living memory ... obviously no el Nino this year "
That's not what the BBC reported so did they get that wrong as well?
The old joke about "Buggers Broadcasting Communism" appears to be literally true these days.
Listen up chaps. Gore spent his whole career promoting Occidental Petroleum, he is an intelligent human being. He does NOT believe in the f* ManBearPig.
I may be the only Guardian reading, New Age, pinko vegan who is proud to have helped BP build the Sullom Voe oil terminal. That was when men were men and managers who marked workers absent were found floating face down in the water the next day.
That is something I strongly approved of.
I think it fair to say that in general the BBC is a disgrace. Hopefully its days will soon be numbered.
So Lawson must be exiled from the public square for commenting on climate without a license, but Gore gets a softball interview on climate?
BBC: the news organization that would make Pravda proud.
Algore -- flunked out of Divinity School. Descended into of a drug haze. His daddy the Senator (having gotten him into a plush prep school and Harvard and kept him out of fire in Vietnam) arranged for him to get a job with the Tennessean newspaper (run by loyal Democrat operative John Seigenthaler, an aide in the Kennedy administration, and later caught obstructing justice in an FBI raid of a corrupt Democrat politician). When the drug haze lifted, his daddy got him into law school, but he dropped out to run for the Congressional seat his daddy lined up for him.
A real academic superstar.
The book 'Al Gore:a user's manual' was published in 2000 and is still available on Amazon, where the reviews are well worth a read while you await delivery.
Al Gore mentions the "opportunities" to be made from climate change - well, we all know he's making the most of his opportunities (while fleecing the rest of us poor saps). No wonder he looks so smug. I guess if you speak nice and slowly the less chance there is of anyone slipping in difficult question, not that there was any danger of that in this case. Honestly, what a rubbish interview. He talks about being a recovering politician. I wonder when he'll become a recovering alarmist?
A transcript of the interview is now available here:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20140707_ag
Gore's Hockey Schtick:
Testing the hockey-stick hypothesis by statistical analyses of a large dataset of proxy records
Pattern Recogn. Phys., 2(2), 36-63, Published: 23/Apr/2014
http://pattern-recognition-in-physics.com/pub/prp-2-36-2014.pdf
Abstract:
This paper is a statistical time-series investigation addressed at testing the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis known as the “hockey-stick”. The time-series components of a select batch of 258 long-term yearly Climate Change Proxies (CCP) included in 19 paleoclimate datasets, all of which running back as far as the year 2192 B.C., are reconstructed by means of univariate Bayesian Calibration. The instrumental temperature record utilized is the Global Best Estimated Anomaly (BEA) of the HADCRUT4 time series readings available yearly for the period 1850-2010. After performing appropriate data transformations, Ordinary Least Squares parameter estimates are obtained, and subsequently simulated by means of multi-draw Gibbs sampling for each year of the pre-1850 period. The ensuing Time-Varying Parameter sequence is utilized to produce high-resolution calibrated estimates of the CCP series, merged with BEA to yield Millennial-scale Time Series (MTS). Finally, the MTS are individually tested for temperature single break date and multiple peak dates. As a result, the estimated temperature breaks and peaks suggest widespread rejection of the hockey-stick hypothesis since they are mostly centered in the Medieval Warm Period.
Descended into of a drug haze.
Is this better or worse than an alcohol haze?
Believe it or not I actually object to this kind of stereotyping. Even for Al Gore. I understand that the emotionalism this evokes has more effect than a rational critique. I still prefer rational criticism. It endures.