A Place to Stand

 ALLEGED CATASTROPHIC GLOBAL WARMING

 Since there is no actual evidence for such warming at the very least the default position of any scientist must be that it is questionable. A few years ago the BBC devoted an entire day to Al Gore's Pop Music against Global Warming concert. If that had been the only programme ever done supporting this theory then the BBC, if it were attempting to be impartial would have had to devote 10 hours to the opposite theory. If it devoted 1 hour it could claim to be 10% honest. If the BBC had ever allowed the broadcast of a 1 hour formal debate on the subject (with debaters from both sides) it would be able to claim to be 5% unbiased if only the programmes mentioned had taken place. Obviously the BBC have never done anything remotely as impartial as that & there is no possibility of anybody remotely honest ever suggesting that the BBC's integrity is anything better than asymptotically approaching zero. Their repeated contention that there is a "scientific consensus" on global warming, which they still have not retracted, while censoring any mention of the fact that the largest single expression of scientific opinion, the Oregon Petition says it is false, is deplorable.


 The BBC devote a considerable amount of time to nuclear scare stories, Chernobyl etc. While pushing the LNT theory that there is no safe lower limit to radiation they never report that the LNT theory was a bureaucratic not scientific decision for which not only has there never been any evidence whatsoever but that there is a large mass of evidence for the opposite Hormesis theory.

 WINDMILLERY

 Not only do they omit any mention of relative proven costs in their consistently wildly enthusiastic reporting of windmills but I have never once heard them mention that windmills are far further from being CO2 neutral than nuclear plants.

 SCARE STORIES

 These should be evidence based. Where there is no evidence for such a scare (e.g. GM foods or mobile phones) it is wrong to give equal or close to equal time to those pushing the scare. This gives the impression there is something to it. By comparison in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy the possibility of the Earth being eaten by a giant mutant space goat is raised. The evidence for dangerous giant mutant space goats is exactly the same as for mobile phones, GM foods or cloned animals being harmful & it is quite improper for the BBC to, on purely political grounds, choose to give disproportionate airtime to the latter. I am making no suggestion as to which way movement should go - if the BBC decide to redress the imbalance by giving airtime to the space goat menace that would be equally appropriate as reporting of other "environmentalist" scare stories.

 PERSONNEL

The BBC should appoint science reporters with scientific credentials. Roger Harabin, for example, has an English degree which may, or may not, make him expert in other fields but does not do so in science. On the other hand the BBC decision to cease working with the immensely popular David Bellamy on what can only be described as purely political grounds is disgraceful. On the opposite hand they recently endorsed a statement by David Attenborough that all of Norfolk will be under water by 2026. There is no evidence whatsoever for that & the BBC should issue a clarification that this claim merely represents the very highest standard of accuracy the BBC ever aspire to & thus should not necessarily be believed & that in the event Norfolk does not vanish by the due date, or a significant portion of it by 2011, no statement by any representative of the BBC should ever, under any circumstances be treated as honest without strong independent verification.

 WAY FORWARD

 Diversity should be encouraged. The BBC should commission programmes from a wide variety of individuals, having editorial control of what they say, so long as the science is fact based, Continuance of individual's contracts should depend on popularity not political approval. I have previously suggested that our political life would be improved if we had formal broadcast debates on political issues. The BBC have refused to do this or to say why & the assumption must be that they do not want such improvement. The adversarial process of investigation has a long & relatively successful record of testing evidence. There are quite a number of scientific & technological issues where the public could be both more informed & entertained by such debates (obviously alleged catastrophic warming, but also nuclear power, GM foods, supporting commercial space development, "alternative" power. I would even be happy to see such a debate on evolution - I think a clearly free formal debate on the subject would be decisive - after all it was in Darwin's time. I consider the general refusal of the BBC to give significant airtime to any viewpoint that does not fit their political position is seriously damaging & inconsistent with a free society. Science, in particular, depends on investigative freedom.

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Professor Steve Jones'
The BBC is planning to cut costs by broadcasting more repeats, possibly scrapping Formula 1 and bringing back the test card overnight. Bosses will meet the corporation’s governing body today to explain how to save £1.3billion over four years. This is expected to result in about 3,000 job losses across the organisation. --Daily Mail, 21 July 2011
THE BBC was criticised by climate change sceptics yesterday after it emerged that their views will get less coverage because they differ from mainline scientific opinion. --Nathan Rao, Daily Express, 21 July 2011
Anyone who has followed the BBC’s coverage of the climate change debate in any detail will surely be puzzled by a recommendation that it should give less weight to the views of sceptics. For it does not seem possible that it could give any less weight to those who doubt the strength of the link between carbon emissions and global temperature change, so partial is its approach. --Editorial, Daily Express 21 July 2011
In its explicit attack on the Global Warming Policy Foundation, it is quite apparent that the BBC Trust report is using the 'science-is-settled' mantra as a smokescreen to silence critics of climate taxes and green policies. Instead of using the crisis of British journalism to position the BBC as a fair and impartial news outlet, the report undermines the attempt by Lord Patten, the BBC Chairman, to restore credibility on one of the most contentious public policy issues. –The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 20 July 2011
Accuracy is clearly not one of Prof Jones’ strong points. He uses his BBC report to make an explicit attack on the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which he claims made a submission to his review. However, as the GPWF explain on their website, they did not make any submission to the review at all. If Jones can get something as basic as that incorrect then how can anyone have confidence in his assertions? --Autonomous Mind, 21 July 2011

    An "independent" reoprt on BBC scienece coverage, bought and paid for by the BBC has decided that the BBc is infalible. Congratualtions to the compiler Steve Jones for the mpney he got for this corrupt propaganda anjd his forthcoming |K. You can read it here however here are some extracts (with my comments) from the section on catastrophic warming (p66) to give a feel for it.

I will send this to Jones - according to Richard Black all BBC employees have a duty ot answer queries even if it is to say "f--- off" (though I have noticed them usually falling short of that level of coutresy. We shall see if he makes any substantive points:

Man-made global warming: a microcosm of “false balance”? not exactly an impartial heading



A belief in alternative medicine or in astrology and a fear of vaccines or of GM food are symptoms of a deep mistrust in convenional wisdom. argument by false association ...
Nowhere is the struggle to find the correct position better seen than in the issue of global warming.
.... I have had a number of communications from the public on this issue and the BBC has received many complaints about alleged weanesses in its treatment of the subject. Many emerge from an organised response by determined climate-change deniers rather than being objective disagreements with particular programmes.(mine was one, I was not organised by anybody, if he had any evidence of such he should have produced it together with the evidence that none of the lobbying by eco organisations or political parties had ever been sufficiently organised by such organisations or parties  to be worth mentioning) Thus, Climate Wars (broadcast on 14th September 2008) had 88, the news coverage of the East Anglia e-mail “scandal” at around that time got 122, Panorama’s “What’s up with the Weather?” of 28th June 2010,just 45; Horizon on “Science under Attack” (24th Jan 2011) 101, and the Storyville
documentary of 31st Jan 2011 “Meet the Climate Sceptics” stimulated 67 written complaints. There has in addition been a drizzle of criticism of BBC coverage of the topic in some newspapers, much of it arising from a handful of journalists who have taken it upon themselves to keep disbelief alive.  not accused of "keeping alarmism alive"(what a remarkable and dishionest phrase - why would disbelief in catastrophic warming cease to exist without a handful of journalists and why, turning in the opposite directio are the BBC This barrage of criticism by one side of the argument (matched, to a lesser degree, by complaints from those who believe that man-made global warming is real) shows that the BBC is at least annoying both parties to the debate and is achieving a measure of impartiality by so doing (if using that argument had any validity he would have to have also given the number of .letters to these programmes denouncing them for being too sceptical - my suspicionn is thatb there were far fewer or none which shoots his own defence out of the water)

Even so, the coverage of this topic, and the tone of some reports, has led to many comments during my Review. In some ways global warming shows how hard it is reach due impartiality in the treatment of science and how the BBC in its attmpts to do so may inadvertently achieve almost the opposite.
One of my interviewees described the BBC as having been “scarred” by this controversy. I saw no sign that such a term is justified, but the Corporation has certainly put plenty of effort – and resources – into its attempts to be impartial. There have been seminars with high-profile speakers, there exists a Climate Change Steering Group and there have been lengthy discussions of those involved with the BBC’s Environmnt Analyst.(this is dishonest - the BBC has refused to say who those speakers are but all the evidence is that they,, the members of the group and certainly Harrabin the environment correspondent are unitedly alarmist - if Jones honestly believe what he is saying he must be on record as saying how impartially Stalin found a range of experts to agree with him on Lysenkoism - my suspicion is he hasn't) He made it clear to us quite how seriously the issue was taken, how hard it has been to persuade people to understand estimates of risk (upon which much of the argument turns) (not true  statistical assessment of the risk of catastrophic warming is impossible because there is simply no evidence amenable to statistical analysis) ...

They ("denialists"), with many others, practise denialism: the use of rhetoric to give the appearance of debate. This is not the same as scepticism, for a sceptic is willing to change his or her mind when provided with evidence. A denialist is not. (If Jones is not personally corrupt willing to say anything for the money he would here be able to say where Hansen, Jones, Cameron, Obama etc have shown themselves changing their mind about alarmism - without that this is just throwing around insults) Many among them see themselves as intellectual martyrs in a war against political correctness and as worthy successors to Galieo. Whatever the claim – AIDS has nothing to do with viruses, the MMR vaccine is unsafe, complex organs could never evolve, or even that the 9/11 disaster was a US government plot – the syndrome has some consistent themes. (non-sequiter insults).

Standards of proof should be set so high as to be impossible to attain. (contradicts his earlier about quantifying risk) Personal attacks (Hitler was against smoking) are acceptable and absolutism is useful (one ninety year old smoker proves that tobacco is harmless) (his own use of the term denialist is a personal attack using a term designed to give a false caomparison to Holocaust deniers). Doubt shades into certainty: a scientist can never be sure that a vaccine is always safe – which means that it never is. Often, the proponents unite into a movement that can, in these electronic days, bombard its enemies and give the impression of being far larger than it really is. (for eample government funded alarmists can use propaganda to portray themselves as a "scientific consesns")
Most important in the context of this Report, any concession by the establishment that it is less than certain of the accuracy of its claims – that there is, in other words, room for discussion – is taken as a statement of surrender. (No such acknowledgement is given because no prominent one exists - taking this the other way Jones is justifying censorship of doubt) Because so much of science involves uncertainty, it is open to attack from those who have never experienced that sensation.

Purity of belief makes it easy for denialists to attract the attention of news organisations (that is quite obviously a total lie since sceptics don't "easily" get reported and something Jones could never say if he were remotely honest)  but hard for them to balance thei ideas against those of the majority. This can lead to undue publicity for views supported by no factual information at all.
In its early days, two decades ago, there was a genuine scientific debate about the reality of climate change (although that attracted rather little attention). Now, there is general agreement that warming is a fact even if there remain uncertainties about how fast, and how much, the temperature might rise. At present, the pessimists are in the ascendant and today’s increase in floods and snow (as predicted for a warmer atmosphere which can take up more water)(the predictions, at least those reported by the BBC, were of more drought filled summers it was only after flooding that floods were "oredicted" so he is lying again) is on their side....
Accusations of bias fly, together with claims of fraud (a simplification of an image for the cover of a report means that climatologists are doctoring a graph to hide global cooling, a single mistake in a report about Himalayan glaciers is evidence of a conspiracy to exaggerate the impact of greenhouse gases.(this would be the "mistake" defended for years of caliming the Himalays would melt by 203, now  acknowledged as being deliberate to influence the world's most populaous countries)  Media attention switches to scandal rather than to evidence (what evidence was there for the Himalyas threat that the media didn't report). In the furore, the crucial point that there is always doubt in science (precisely yet even the BBC acknowledge that with 10s of thousands of hours devoted to promoting scepticism they have broadcast not one of scpticism, not even 50% of one),particularly when it tries to look into the future, and that to be uncertain does not inevitably mean to be wrong, is lost.
Where policy is concerned, the argument is far from resolved. Science can inform the debate, but policy implications of global warming remain a legitimate part of the news agenda. In its submission to this Report, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (active in casting doubt on the truth of man-made climate change) told me that they are producing a review with a focus on climate science and science policy. As they say, “… it is one thing to get basic science facts right yet quite another to promote (or criticise) particular science policies”. That is a reasonable point and they should, no doubt, have a voice in this debate. All of us involved in this debate need to remember that we are entitled to our own opinions but none of us are entitled to ourown facts. (yet the only criticism he has allowed of the \Himalyas fraud is of reporting of the proven fact that the claim was untrue)
That is not the case for warming itself, for the evidence is overwhelming. Starting in 1959 with measurements on Hawaii it is clear that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising. Ice cores shows that for half a million years before the Industrial Revolution its level fluctuated between 180 and 300 parts er million. Since around 1800 it has risen from 280 to 390 parts per million; a 40% increase. Basic physics shows that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. There have been many computer models of what may (!)  happen in future, and although there remains controversy as to how much the feedbacks – melting ice, rising seas, dying plants – will multiply (if the feedbacks are negative, as they may well be then they will not multiply, note that rising sea levels are not a serious feedback and "dying plants" are most unlikely when there is more CO2 in the air to feed them)  the direct effect of the gas, almost every climatologist predicts a period of rising temperature (name one single one who is not also a government employee  - if he could he would be doing something no other has - note, however the sleight of hand in pretending that catastrophic anthropogenic warming is the same as any warming and that the evidence he then gives is not for warming at all but for a rise in CO2 which is not remotely the same thing). ....

A 2008 survey to which thousands of Earth scientists responded found that 90% agreed that temperatures have risen since 1800 (but then he dated the CO2 rise which, if ne believes what he says, started in 1959 - in fact it was a bit earlier but long afterv 1800) and that 82% consider that human activity has been significant (another weasel term) in this. 96% of specialists in atmospheric physics agreed with the first statement, and 97% with the second23. Truth is not defined by opinion polls but it is difficult to deny the consensus (so name a single scientist who supports catastrophic warming and isn't paid by the state - if what he says is not a pack of deliberate lies that will be easy - allso he doesn't mention that far amd away the largest expression of scientist's opinin, the Oregon pPetition, says the opposite). Its extent is clear from an open letter to the journal Science by two hundred and fifty members of the US National Academy of Sciences: (Oregon has 31,000 but is airbrushed out)

.... Fewer than half considered that scientists agree that humans are causing climate change (they don't or he would be easily able to name one independent one). The divergence between the views of professionals versus the public may be seen as evidence of a failure by the media to balane views of very different credibility. The BBC is just one voice but so many in Britain gain their understanding of science from its output that its approach to thisquestion must be considered.
Much of it has been exemplary, with the investigations of Roger Harrabin, its Environment Analyst, in particular following every twist and turn in the argument. The BBC itself has accepted in an internal document that the balance of debate has changed. (bullshit - nothing more seems appropriate)

In an Impartiality Report submitted to the Trust in 2008 the Executive noted that: “The centre ground in climate science has shifted markedly. One main reason for the change in global opinion was last year’s resolution of the most fundamental questions in climate sciene by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s official climate change assessment forum (a political rather than scientific body & repeatedly shown to have lied). The IPCC concluded that it is beyond doubt that the climate is warming and more than 90% likely that this has been driven by human activity. Given the weight of opinion building up around the IPCC it makes sense for us to focus our coverage on the consensus that climte change is happening, is serious, but is manageable if tackled urgently…”
These are welcome words(and these are hardly the words of somebody who ever had the slightest intention of producing an impartial report)  ...... The Panorama programme itself came up with a remarkable revelation: that Bjorn Lomborg, previously a major sceptic, was now in accord with most climatologists (deliberate lie - Lomborg has always said he believes warming is happening - but that it is too minor to be worth spending trillions on when there are worse problems and he has not chamnged from this) . This was a telling statement – but to present it in “debate”format (lie - the BBC has never allowed a formal debate on catastrophic warming - this was part of my submission to Jones, and clearly he has not been ionterested in supporting debate or even in saying why he is opposed)  was to set up a false balance; ....
As the Content Analysis indicates, there was a (to put it kindly) nuanced News and Current Affairs treatment of the 2010 Muir Russell Report on the University of East Anglia’s “Climategate” story. The report’s findings were, in order, that the honesty of the scientists involved was not in doubt, that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s conclusions were not undermined by their work, and that they had been insufficiently open about the presentation of some of their data. The major point was the acceptance of scientific accuracy – but most news reports led on the last, openness, (to put it kindly the BBC reporting of this whitewash concealed the fact that Muir Russell made no serious investigation and that the fact that he was fired for allegedly concealing from Scottish politicians the defrauding of the Scottish people of £380 million over the parliament Building, may render his assertions dubious) point; and most included a substantial contribution by climate sceptics whose claims had been refuted rather than accepted by the Reprt itself. (simply a lie) ....
The impression of active debate is promoted by prominent individuals such as Lord Monckton and Lord Lawson. The BBC still gives space to them to make statements that are not supported by the facts; that (in a February 2011 The Daily Politics show) 95% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from natural sources, while in fact human activity has been responsible for a 40% rise in concentration, or (a November 2009 Today programme) (simply a lie - a Parliamentary answer to John Redwood confirmed that  only 3% of CO2 is manmade so it is dishonest of him to claim 5% is understating) that volcanoes produce more of the gas than do humans (the balance is a hundred times in the opposite direction). For at least three years, the climate change deniers have been marginal to the scientific debate but somehow they continued to find a place on the airwaes. Their ability so to do suggests that an over-diligent search for due impartiality – or for a controversy – continue to hinder the objective reporting of a scientific story even when the internal statements of the BBC suggest that no ontroversy exists. There is a contrast between the clear demands for due impartiality in the BBC’s written guidelines and what sometimes emerges n air.
Things are, perhaps, improving. Lord Monckton is, without doubt, a man who adds to the gaiety of nations and is a skilled communicator of his views. However, a recent BBC Four investigation (“Meet the Climate Sceptics”, Storyville, 31st Jan 2011) of his activities made his isolation from mainstream beliefs very clear. A 2011 Horizon in which the President of the Royal Society interviewed other climate sceptics also revealed their marginal postion.

A submission made to this Review by Andrew Montford and Tony Newbery (both active in the anti-global-warming movement, and the former the author of The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science) devotes much of its content to criticising not the data on temperatures but the membership of a BBC seminar on the topic in 206, and to a lengthy discussion as to whether its Environment Analyst was carrying out BBC duties or acting as a freelance during n environment programme at Cambridge University. The factual argument, even for activists, appears to be largely over but parts of the BBC are taking a long time to notice. (he is clearly lying here in suggesting that Montford, the author of Bishopp Hill, cannot argue against tha basic claims of warming alarmism, since he does so daily on his blog - he made a tactical decision to concentrate on 2 instances of obvious corruption in the BBC and Jones has chosen not to address that)

The climate story has lessons about impartiality that could be useful in a wider context. It promotes the essential lesson that science is a process and not a result, that as information grows its narrative can alter and, occasionally, may even change direction.

Uncertainty is part of the system and often means that a discovery can be stated only in terms of probability. Unlike the deniers, scientists accept that they could be wrong. To do so is not to admit that they are dishonest. (he should name a "denier" who says he would never change his mind - by comparison on "SDcienceblogs" and elsewhere I have asked alarmists to say what evidence, short of waiting till 2100, would persude them catastrophic warming is false buty none of the alarmists have given even one instance that would make it a falsifiable theory. Clearly if Jones is not wholly corrupt he will be able to do so) (Note that despite all the stuff about improbability and doubt Jines is totally opposed to any broadcast debate, but refused to say why)