Imagine There’s No Medicine

Imagine there’s no Medicine; no doctors, nurses, hospitals, surgeons, ward administrators, paramedics on bicycles in bright yellow and green jackets, ambulances, medical technology or pharmaceuticals. It’s not easy, even if you try. What would your life be like ? Pretty painful and quite possibly nastily shortened, I’d hazard.

There are people in the world who still do not have access to medical care (let’s think…all those Americans without basic health care insurance), so they know the grim realities of it all – but the reason I’m considering this is there could have been a point in human history where the development of Medicine was thwarted by sceptics and people with ulterior motives.

“You’re sick because you’ve sinned”, a portion of humanity used to believe; the wealthy throughout history have sometimes been keen for disease to wipe out the scum of the poor. Appeals to Nature and to God to explain sickness and accidental damage could have been followed by a refusal to care for or treat people – as it was not what the Laws of the Universe dictated.

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How You Were Taken In : Media “Balance”

Poor (middle-aged) old George Monbiot ! He really feels like he’s been wasting his time trying to get through to people to communicate about Climate Change :-

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/03/08/the-unpersuadables/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/mar/08/belief-in-climate-change-science

I don’t think that he should despair. What the ordinary, Tabloid-reading , Daily Telegraph-reading, Times of London-reading or even Guardian-reading man-or-woman-in-the-street thinks about Climate Change Science doesn’t really matter in the end, as long as the policymakers know the direction of travel required. That is, towards strong regulation on Carbon Emissions.

And anyway, I think that the problem of Climate Change “doubt” can be resolved relatively easily – by educating those who work in the Media.

Let me begin my argument by asking a question : is it right and fair and balanced to pitch Dr Benny Peiser against Professor Phil Jones on the subject of the Science of Global Warming ?

I ask this, because this is effectively what happened during the hearings of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee on 1st March 2010, when Dr Benny Peiser and Lord Nigel Lawson were first in the seats, and then Professor Phil Jones and Professor Edward Acton sat in the seats later on :-

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/uc387-i/uc38702.htm

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The Climate Obstructers’ Gameplan

If you have any doubt that Science is under assault from the Climate Change Obstructers (self-styled “sceptics”), you need look no further than this piece of what I consider to be utter, utter, fetid 30-day-old left-in-the-sun tripe :-

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/03/04/global-warming-flaks-reduced-t

The number of outright inaccuracies in the piece is astonishing, including the switch on what Phil Jones really claimed about “statistically significant” global warming.

And it concludes with clear evidence of a globally organised campaign to bring down Climate Change Science, by hook or by crook :-

“There is vastly more material here than you will ever be able to absorb. I realized as I ploughed my way through it, or some of it, that the conclusion is encouraging. I am confident now that the official version is going to be overwhelmed, and that the mainstream media reporters are going to be overwhelmed, too. They are right now facing their own Tsunami of dissent. Politicians know very well what is happening, and cap and trade will not pass the U.S. Senate.”

“Coverage at such warm-supporting organs as the Washington Post and the New York Times has been reduced to a strategy of denial. They have been forced to deny that that there is any problem with the official story beyond what the climate officials themselves admit (and they admit very little — little more than typos).”

“But it doesn’t matter. The web has made all the difference and the reporters working to uphold the official version have more and more been forced into a defensive crouch. The exposure of this massive fraud will be a watershed in the history of environmentalism and it will continue to unfold whatever the mainstream media think or say.”

We have a (non-violent) fight on our hands, not of our own choosing : keep telling the truth, and insisting on correcting falsehoods; or face an uphill ramp of complications and delays.

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The Truth-Tellers Collective

There appears to be a group of reliable truth-tellers building, out there in Web Log Land. The YouTube at the top is from Peter Sinclair and his “Climate Denial Crock of the Week” series. Always worth watching. A calming breath of fresh sane air for the mind :-

http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610

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James Delingpole : “Little Wart”

It pains me to report that the American Energy Secretary thinks that James Delingpole’s favourite e-mail scandal is a “little wart”.

That’s “pains” as in “doubles me up in stitches, laughing” :-

http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/18/scienceenergy-secretary-steven-chu-interview-financial-times-ipcc-climategate/

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a71cf176-1bff-11df-a5e1-00144feab49a,s01=1.html

“…The public polls go up and down on this, with Climategate and all these other things. But if you step back and dispassionately look at it, this is a little wart on the overall amount of information. It’s a little bump…”

To think that James Delingpole will be forever connected to the epithet of “little wart” is highly amusing, in the extreme.

The Media Cannot Be Trusted

When the BBC’s Roger Harrabin arranged a set of questions recently for Phil Jones, the unjustly smeared head of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA), I just wish he had asked for advice from an expert on countering Climate Change denier tactics before answering :-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8511670.stm

The questions made my Public Relations nerves twitch with embarrassment for Phil Jones. The trajectory of events was entirely predictable.

A friend or colleague with experience of having to face down the Climate Change deniers would have strongly advised Phil Jones to answer the questions with extreme care, especially the first one, and demand that anyone who quoted his answer quote him in full, in context.

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The World Warms Up

The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center in their monthly “State of the Climate”, state :-

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/index.php

“Selected Global Highlights for January 2010 : The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January 2010 was 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average of 12.0°C (53.6°F). This is the fourth warmest January on record…”

How can this be ? The newspapers have been saying that Global Warming is just a confused scare story, or perhaps a tax-begging scam, or a bunch of self-important technologists on a gravy train creating false alarm to justify their funding streams – nothing to worry about. And of course, we can believe the mainstream Media implicitly. There are rules about the quality and accuracy of reporting.

Are NOAA sure they’ve checked that their thermometers are calibrated properly ? It all seems rather worrying that such a large American Science agency should be claiming that January 2010 was so warm when there has been all that snow and rain and ice about. The Media tried to point out this bad weather, but the scientists just carried on measuring high temperatures.

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The BBC : Relatively Scary

Take any subject you like, terrorism, bird flu, street crime, elder abuse, credit fraud, political corruption, and the BBC will give you a serious, in-depth and highly concerned feature article with professional photographs and solid headlines.

Everything, that is, apart from Global Warming.

Why is Climate Change so unscary for the BBC ?

Every other problem in the known universe is worthy of gravitas and graveyard intonation, but not Climate Change Science and the implications it has as risk to life, health, wealth and general contentment.

What could be going wrong ? Why the non-long faces when it comes to the most serious risks facing mankind since the Black Death ?

Why does Global Warming get “relativist” treatment when everything else gets the full shadowy-figure-in-a-cloak-with-a-scythe ?

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Climategate Public Relations Fiasco

“Look”, said my telephone correspondent, “lots of people with influence know, deep down, that Climategate is just political, not real. The spin doesn’t disprove the science.”

“I know,” I acquiesced, “but it is still important what the public thinks, and this series of minor scandals, some completely baseless, and blown out of all proportion, needs some kind of comeback.”

Warming to my theme, I burbled on, “We can’t leave it hanging in the air like this. You never know when you will next meet a disparaging sceptic, who belligerently, senselessly, obstructs the good you are doing. And this crowd could influence the next Government…”

“OK then”, caved my buddy on the line, “what do you propose ?”

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Boris Johnson Does Climate Change

It’s hard not to adore the man : all that blond hair and buffoonery, concealing a fairly intelligent personality, although he does have an unfortunate taste in Deputy Mayors :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/22/boris-deputy-resigns

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In The Belly Of The BP

I was warned. And it’s true. BP are so protective of their company image that they live in denial. I should know. I’ve been inside the belly of the beast and spoken to one of their head sustainability honchos. Who had a total disconnect about the risks of Fossil Fuel depletion.

“Oil and gas will remain the mainstay of the “Energy mix”. We’ve said that publicly…”

So they’re telling the world what to believe, are they ?

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Stop Climate Chaos – Ask the Climate Question

http://www.youtube.com/cop15

There is an unelected, shadowy organisation in the United Kingdom; a cultish community of thousands, and their minions, that plots to dictate the leadership of the whole world, starting with the minds of the central Government.

You’ll see them at work in the run-up to the General Election, possibly suspicious figures masquerading as angels of light in brightly coloured costumes and carrying jokey banners; meddling in democracy at every level – leafletting, holding meetings, putting posters in their front windows and holding consciousness-raising green-fests in their local Town Halls.

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Send a Sceptic to Siberia

Yawn. Yet another anti-Science web log page floats into my field of vision. It’s so…boring, trying to keep up with the Global Warming Deniers. I can barely keep awake. Here’s an example of the trite, and frankly, petulant genre :-

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100023339/james-hansen-would-you-buy-a-used-temperature-data-set-from-this-man/

Actually, don’t bother reading it. It’s a waste of column inches.

If only the Climate Change Sceptics would just go away and let us get on with the gargantuan task of revitalising the Energy industry around sustainable technologies.

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Glaciers Melting in the Himalayas

Video Credit : Asia Society

The satellites and cameras do not lie : glaciers in the Himalayas are melting, and the loss of any part of this “third pole” ice cover threatens the freshwater supply for billions.

This weekend’s Media clamour on the subject focuses on the trail of a mis-attribution of a claim regarding the complete meltdown of the mountain glaciers.

Just because somebody’s got their references wrong, doesn’t mean that the glaciers have magically not been melting after all.

Yes, the IPCC process has failed to pick up this prediction error. No, it doesn’t throw the whole of the IPCC reports into the trash can.

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The BBC Reviews Its Trust

The BBC Trust are to review the BBC’s treatment of Science in the BBC Media. I can’t say for sure whether that’s going to result in anything helpful or not, since it’s going to be effectively an “internal inquiry”. Their quest for objectivity may end up in compromise and playing to the heckling balconies :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/06/bbc-trust-science-impartiality-review

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/6941616/BBC-to-launch-review-into-allegations-of-bias-in-its-science-coverage.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1241209/BBC-probes-bias-science-coverage.html

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Gordon Brown Saves The World (2)

Besides announcing lots of money for Renewable Energy :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/03/gordon-brown-wind-energy-programme

Gordon Brown is confident that he can steer the international Climate negotiations to a successful, sign-up-to-able deal :-

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE6021AT20100103

“Brown says climate change agreement possible : Sun Jan 3, 2010 : Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Sunday he believed a global agreement to combat climate change might still be possible despite the limited results of last month’s Copenhagen meeting. “I’ve got an idea about how we can actually move this forward over the next few months and I’ll be working on this,” Brown told the BBC, when asked what came next after the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen. “I think it’s not impossible that the groundwork that was done at Copenhagen could lead to what you might call a global agreement that everybody is happy to stand by,” Brown said. “I’ll be working on that in the next few months and I can see a way forward because what prevented an agreement was suspicion and fear and forms of protectionism that I think we’ve got to get over,” he said, without giving details of his plan…”

Central England Temperature 0.63 Degrees C Above Norm

The final calculations have been done by the Meteorological Office for the average Central England Temperature in 2009 and shown in a graph online :-

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/index.html

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Dude, Where’s My Climate ?

Some of you are probably thinking, “what a crummy out-of-date cliched non-joke of a title !”, but I’m hoping for some web hits on the basis that corny can be cute, sometimes.

But what on Earth do I mean ? Well, just where is Climate Change in the Media ? It is the Number One story of all human time, so why does it still only occupy so few column inches and Tweets and Press Releases and web logs and TV programmes and printed communications, and why do the Westerner populations still think that money is still more important than an inhabitable Biosphere ?

Don’t know, but it’s bound to have to do with cultural inertia, how very slowly the Press, TV and social communications guys and gals are waking up to the overarching problems of Global Climate Change.

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John Humphrys : An End To Fence-Sitting

On 31st December 2009, John Humphrys, well-loved BBC radio interviewer and presenter, amongst other things, wrote an opinion piece for the Daily Mail newspaper.

He weaves a careful argument about why he and others should stop fence-sitting on the issue of Climate Change, but he is still in need of an educational experience to help him understand where the power and drive of Climate Change Denial comes from :-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1239546/JOHN-HUMPHRYS-Noughties-No-Nasties–good-riddance-them.html

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Climategate : George Monbiot Fights Back

George Monbiot recounts the Climategate affair with wit, verve and gusto; and then proceeds to suggest a sharp technique for making a fightback against public lying in the Media. Useful if you happen to be trapped in a television studio with a billion watts of stage lighting shining menacingly right down on you. It’s time that every Climate Change Scientist had their own personal Public Relations manager; because somehow the academic community have to keep the messaging Media-savvy. Seen enough geeks turn into dorks in the Press. Need to see a change.

Gore Was Mostly Right

Al Gore speak at the December 2009 Climate Talks in Copenhagen this week, and you would not believe how he got mauled by the Media and the Denier-Sceptics. Watch and listen to the links below and consider if you can detect the part that stuck in the throat of those who resist putting a halt to Global Warming.

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Answer the Question, Professor Plimer

George Monbiot goes head to head with Professor Ian Plimer, but fails to get a straight answer out of the Australian mining geologist.

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The Daily Hoaxpress ?

The Daily Express newspaper (ably echoed by its cousin The Daily Telegraph) issued an outright Global Warming denial on its front page today :-

http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/146139/100-reasons-why-global-warming-is-natural

“100 REASONS WHY GLOBAL WARMING IS NATURAL : ‘No proof that human activity is to blame’ : Tuesday December 15,2009 : By Martyn Brown : CAMPAIGNERS yesterday attempted to pour scorn on “tenuous” global warming theories by issuing a dossier detailing 100 reasons why climate change is natural and not man-made. The list includes the controversial claim that there is “no scientific proof” that rising levels of greenhouse gases are caused by human activity…”

Intrigued, I actually went to the trouble of purchasing the print edition of the newspaper, so I could gen up. On page 5, the headline “‘There’s little we can do about global warming’”. Oh, so tens of thousands of people in Copenhagen, Denmark, negotiating about the need to reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissions, are all wasting their time ? I think not.

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Copenhagen Punk’d

It appears that the Yes Men have staged a huge coup at the Copenhagen Climate Change talks. First they issued a Press Release saying that Canada was going to offer 40% Carbon Emissions reductions. And then they held a Press Conference with a delegate from Uganda to herald the news – see the video here :-

http://en.cop-15.org/news/view+news_newsid=12888.html
“Canada: We Accept Concept of Climate Debt : Canada gives details of new “Climate Debt Mechanism,” announces details of pilot program in Africa. Ugandan delegation lauds proposal.
Peter Jensen 14/12/2009 13:20″

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It’s the Media, Stupid !

Some news organisations try really hard to bring you crack-up-to-date, snazzy, intriguing, hot-off-the-press narrative on the unfolding chaos of Climate Change.

Other news organisations think that writing about “Climategate”, as if it were a genuine challenge to Climate Change Science, is a serious piece of journalism.

But they’re wrong; so, so wrong.

The real story is Climate Change. It’s here, and it’s happening now. And it’s frightening.

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