A Place to Stand

I heard this BBC report on the radio this morning as well.

Two leading UK climate researchers have criticisms those among their peers who they say are "overplaying" the global warming message.

Professors Paul Hardaker and Chris Collier, both Royal Meteorological Society figures, are voicing their concern at a conference in Oxford ....

As an example, they point to a recent statement from one of the foremost US science bodies - the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The association released a strongly worded statement at its last annual meeting in San Francisco in February which said: "As expected, intensification of droughts, heatwaves, floods, wildfires, and severe storms is occurring, with a mounting toll on vulnerable ecosystems and societies.

"These events are early warning signs of even more devastating damage to come, some of which will be irreversible."

According to Professors Hardaker and Collier, this may well turn out to be true, but convincing evidence to back the claims has not yet emerged.

Richard Dawkins once mentioned the role of the media in promoting stories. His experience being that on some subjects if he said something the media effect was as if he had a loudspeaker but on other subjects he found he was speaking into a microphone that had been turned off.

I very much doubt if, before the very positive public reaction to Mr Durkin's Warming Swindle documentary, the BBC would have reported this at all. They never did for anybody else. Also a few days ago BBC Scotland did a short interview with an academic who said, as I have earlier, that if Gore's film is to be shwn in schools there is a duty to sgow Durkin's, or equivalent. I forecast rather fewer of the items starting "scientists/researchers/spokesmen are warning that global warming may be worse than previously thought....."

I'm not expecting them to give up their official policy of warming partisanship

For years on Newsnight we've reported concerns about the effects of climate change with caution, due scepticism and balance. But at a certain point I think you've got to assemble all the available evidence and decide whether the threat is real or not. I think we're past that point and that the threat is real.

but will cover their posteriors with greater care in future. I think we have passed beyond the end of the beginning of the this current eco-scare & are perhaps seeing the beginning of the end.