http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/09/something_new_and_not_altogeth.html

“‘Warmist’ attack smacks of ‘sceptical’ intolerance : Richard Black | 16:42 UK time, Wednesday, 22 September 2010 : It seems that something new, and not altogether welcome, may be happening in the politicking over climate change. I have written before of the orchestrated villification that comes the way of climate scientists from some people and organisations who are unconvinced of the case for human-induced climate change – “sceptics”, “deniers”, as you wish. Journalists, including your humble correspondent, receive our fair share too. This week, for the first time, I am seeing the same pattern from their opponents. Joe Romm, the physicist-cum-government-advisor-cum-polemicist, posted a blog entry highly critical of the Arctic ice article I wrote last week. Headlined “Dreadful climate story by BBC’s Richard Black”, it takes me to task, essentially, for not mentioning human-induced climate change explicitly. He then gives my email address and invites his readers to send in complaints. Many have, perhaps swayed by judgemental terms in his post such as “spin”, “inexcusable”, and “mis-reporting”, with several citing his interpretation as gospel truth. He is as entitled to his views as anyone else. But this is, at least in my experience, the first time that “warmers” – those who, like Dr Romm, believe climate change is taking us to hell in a handcart and who lobby for more urgent action on the issue – have resorted to the internet equivalent of taking banners onto the street in an attempt to influence reporting of the issue. At least, that is the surface complaint; what my omission hides, he hints heavily, is an agenda aimed at downplaying the impacts of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions…”

What makes Richard Black, or his editor, think it’s a good use of his time to cover this matter ?

He has admitted, in my direct hearing, that he hasn’t really read the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report, so maybe he should start there instead of covering the A, B, C of normal BBC “environmental reporting protocol” ?

How he’s supposed to write, and the material he’s expected to cover for the BBC audience, and the slant he is told to pitch, seem to be deliberately excluding the very real risks of very real and dangerous change in the climate :-

http://climateprogress.org/2010/09/22/bbc-climate-change-coverage-mark-brayne/

“…heard from a former BBC producer colleague that internal editorial discussions now under way at the BBC on planning next year’s news agenda have in fact explicitly parked climate change in the category “Done That Already, Nothing New to Say.”…”

Well, now, there’s several things that really need to be said in response to that :-

a. Global Warming is accelerating. As each year passes, Climate could change in more extreme ways. Are the BBC ready to tone down everything that comes their way ? Will we be forced to “believe our own lying eyes” ? Will they even bother to cover the next major flooding in Cockermouth, Cumbria and Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire or Carlisle or anywhere in Devon ?

b. Global Warming suffers from a 30 to 40 year time lag, approximately. Richard Black would know this if he’d only read the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report and the work of the esteemed James Hansen. Surely the threat of further serious temperature rises “in the pipeline” would be a story big enough for Richard Black and the BBC ?

c. Climate Sensitivity (the response of the Climate to Global Warming causing further warming) is in the process of being revised – upwards. This is a big deal – bigger than the Pope and the Spending Cuts, and it’s tantamount to disgraceful to water this down.

Why can’t the BBC bring itself to report on the serious nature of Climate Change ?

What stops the BBC from paying attention to the Arctic region meltdown saga, or the worsening Asian drought-flood swings ? What about the feast and famine in European agriculture ? What about the water wars in South America, also brewing in the United States of America ? What about the massive changes in Australian farming ? What about the worsening sustainability of African crop production ? What about the constant weather extremes ? The increase in extreme heatwaves ? China’s responses to environmental risk ? Surely there’s meat enough there for plenty of rapportage and quality journalism ?

Perhaps the BBC have flagged from the conflicts of their social duty to tell the full, unexpurgated truth. If so, why don’t they just admit they don’t want to cover the Environment, because it’s so riven with debate and qualitative views, sack everybody with any training and credentials and ability to spell and get on with feeding the public what it really wants : pap and pop ?

I rubbed my eyes, but the logo didn’t disappear. The Independent newspaper article had a graphic explaining that the article was “in association with Shell” :-

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/newenergyfuture/a-climate-for-european-action-2068570.html

Further clue : the author was Tom Burke, “Mr Clean Coal” to those of us that know of him.

The article was great, up until the paragraph :-

“Without deploying carbon capture and storage technologies for coal and gas, Europe has no workable climate policy…”

Well, we knew Tom Burke was going to say that, didn’t we ?

But why was the article “in association with Shell” ? Is this the start of advertising masquerading as opinion articles ?

What could possibly link Royal Dutch Shell to Carbon Capture and Storage ? The “Enhanced Oil Recovery” (EOR) angle, possibly – Shell offering to pump Carbon Dioxide down into its depleting oil and gas wells in an attempt to raise the pressure on the remaining hydrocarbon, to squeeze it out.

Also – if Shell are going to diversify out of Petroleum and Natural Gas, they need to be doing something to do with Energy – how about offering to pump Carbon Dioxide underground on behalf of the Coal-burning power plant companies, as Coal will be the only fuel left in North-West Europe after the North Sea is significantly depleted of Oil and Gas… ?

Are you beginning to get with the programme here ? This article is ostensibly about the transition to the Low Carbon Economy – but is really all about selling the idea that Royal Dutch Shell should be paid to pump Greenhouse Gas underground – “The EU has already committed several billion euros to meeting this challenge…” as the article points out.

So…is Carbon Capture and Storage actually an excuse for the failing oil and gas companies to beg for public money for “green stimulus” ?

Is CCS just a springboard for a massive bailout of Shell, BP and ExxonMobil ?

Carbon Capture and Storage is always going to be expensive – capturing and pumping Carbon Dioxide underground will take make the plants burn more Coal fuel – and although there are a number of small-scale projects around the world, CCS may never make the jump to being a widely-used technology.

However, I’m sure BP, Shell and ExxonMobil would love to have government and EU money thrown at them to dig big holes and build big pumps and pipelines – that’s their current bread-and-butter in engineering.

When Tom Burke writes, “Only when the ratio of low carbon to high carbon energy investments is clearly changing in Europe and the United States will the rest of the world take our talk of climate change seriously”, although that’s a good piece of logic, underneath it all, what he’s really urging is public money budgets being poured into the new energy systems that the industrialised countries needs.

But, where’s the capital ? Surely BP, Shell and ExxonMobil, who have been making packets of varying sizes in the last decade, can put some of their own money into New Energy ?

It can’t be that all the Oil and Gas institutional pension fund shareholders are going to pull all their funds out tomorrow ? I doubt it.

A recession is a great time to start a new phase of investment, while shareholders are not expecting huge returns on prior holdings, as the general market is depressed.

We don’t need Carbon Capture and Storage, as other solutions to avoid Carbon Dioxide emissions to air will be much more efficient :-

http://rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2010/September/DoWeReallyNeedCarbonCaptureStorage.asp

Carbon Capture and Storage applied to the tailpipes of coal-burning power plants is simply going to eat more Coal fuel, and there are signs that the supply of good quality Coal is stressed – so CCS could get progressively more expensive.

Plus, mining dirtier and dirtier Coal to feed into power plants fitted with Carbon Capture and Storage facilities will create increasing local environmental pollution.

What she writes about is Environment in general, but she takes in Policy, Politics, Economics and Science, and her output is normally balanced, accurate, and free from interference from propaganda and propagandists. Well-rounded, I’d say. Informative and straight.

So how come she’s writing a Financial Times article with quotations from extreme Climate Change sceptics and deniers ?

I suspect a heavy editorial hand :-

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6d1fd25c-9a69-11df-87fd-00144feab49a,dwp_uuid=728a07a0-53bc-11db-8a2a-0000779e2340.html

“Research says climate change undeniable : By Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent, Published: July 28 2010″

This particular article, when picked up by CNN, has been heavily criticised by a Climate Change Science web log “The Way Things Break” :-

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/07/29/climate.change.noaa.ft/#fbid=Sv6nSUfQRmO

http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/new-study-lays-out-11-indicators-of-a-warming-world-media-focuses-on-contrarian-views/

“New study lays out 11 indicators of a warming world, media focuses on contrarian views : July 29, 2010 : Mainstream media reports continue to mislead in the name of “balance”…”

Whoops, cat !

What to make of this ?

Well, first off, I’d suggest that the views of the Climate Change sceptic-deniers quoted by Fiona Harvey are really quite outlandish, not-stand-up-in-a-court-of-law-type claims.

I think that Fiona Harvey was probably under orders to include sceptical-denial views, and chose some hugely outrageous examples in order to do what she was told, yet at the same time indicating to her readership how sane the Science appears by comparison.

For example, would you trust this man’s opinion on Climate Change Science :-

“…David Herro, the financier, who follows climate science as a hobby, said NOAA also “lacks credibility”…”

Maybe Fiona Harvey was instructed to pull as much web traffic to the Financial Times as possible, by offering up something a little itchy and scratchy for the media-followers to get their complaining teeth into.

Maybe Fiona Harvey has written in such a way as to protect her job, or maybe she genuinely believes that ridiculous, inaccurate and highly contentious sceptic-denier opinions need to be aired, one more tiresomely time.

Maybe, and this is a bit of a long-shot, maybe somebody from the corporate world has decided to shove the Financial Times around a bit for being so…so…scientific about Climate Change, and demanded some “balance”.

After all, Climate Change policy is going to involve spending some money in new directions, and that’s going to cost a bit, for a few years. And some people need to be protecting their baselines in the short-term from all that regulation and taxation that will drive the Renewable Energy transition.

Anyway, I give you the Financial Times article in a bit more detail, editing out all the doubt. If you get blocked from reading it through the URL Uniform Resource Locator HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol Internet Address, try Googling the headline and click their link – it should show the article in full :-

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6d1fd25c-9a69-11df-87fd-00144feab49a,dwp_uuid=728a07a0-53bc-11db-8a2a-0000779e2340.html

“Research says climate change undeniable : By Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent, Published: July 28 2010″

“International scientists have injected fresh evidence into the debate over global warming, saying that climate change is “undeniable” and shows clear signs of “human fingerprints” in the first major piece of research since the “Climategate” controversy.”

“The research, headed by the US National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration, is based on new data not available for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report of 2007…”

“The NOAA study drew on up to 11 different indicators of climate, and found that each one pointed to a world that was warming owing to the influence of greenhouse gases, said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at the UK’s Met Office, one of the agencies participating.”

“Seven indicators were rising, he said. These were: air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, marine air temperature, sea level, ocean heat, humidity, and tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the earth’s surface. Four indicators were declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers, spring snow cover in the northern hemisphere, and stratospheric temperatures.”

“Mr Stott said: “The whole of the climate system is acting in a way consistent with the effects of greenhouse gases.” “The fingerprints are clear,” he said. “The glaringly obvious explanation for this is warming from greenhouse gases.””

“Some scientists hailed the study as a refutation of the claims made by climate sceptics during the “Climategate” saga. Those scandals involved accusations…of flaws in the IPCC’s landmark 2007 report, and the release of hundreds of emails from climate scientists…”

““This confirms that while all of this [Climategate] was going on, the earth was continuing to warm. It shows that Climategate was a distraction, because it took the focus off what the science actually says,” said Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics.”

“…Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of NOAA, said the study found that the average temperature in the world had increased by 0.56° C (1° F) over the past 50 years. The rise “may seem small, but it has already altered our planet … Glaciers and sea ice are melting, heavy rainfall is intensifying, and heat waves are more common.””

It’s time we started getting our truth unadulterated and undiluted, in my view.

You, editorial line management at the Financial Times, unhand that young woman freethinker !

The story she covered was about Science and the reality and gravity of the situation. That message should be presented unmuddled and uncompromised, or the Financial Times editors are not doing their job properly, in my view.

Don’t they owe their readership the most accurate information on the real risks and opportunities accruing from Climate Change ?

If companies and investors get in at the basement of the Low Carbon Transition, if capital and assets are directed towards the development and deployment of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, then in the mid- to long- term, these players will be in the best financial position.

It seems like Team Obama will be bypassing the mainstream Media in their Climate Change communications :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/12/us-document-strategy-climate-talks

“…A document accidentally left on a European hotel computer and passed to the Guardian reveals the US government’s increasingly controversial strategy in the global UN climate talks…Top of the list of objectives is to: “Reinforce the perception that the US is constructively engaged in UN negotiations in an effort to produce a global regime to combat climate change.” It also talks of “managing expectations” of the outcome of the Cancun meeting and bypassing traditional media outlets…”

There you have it. I’m not surprised, given the appalling behaviour of some of the Gentlepersons of the Press in recent months…oh, hang on, it doesn’t quite kill off the Media channel of communication :-

“…Media outreach : (*) Continue to conduct interviews with print, TV and radio outlets driving the climate change story. (*) Increase use of off-the-record conversations. (*) Strengthen presence in international media markets during trips abroad. Focus efforts on radio and television markets. (*) Take greater advantage of new media opportunities such as podcasts to advance US position in the field bypassing traditional media outlets. (*) Consider a series of policy speeches/public forums during trips abroad to make our case directly to the developing world…”

This revolution will be televised – Obama will “go through the motions” and speak to the Press and TV as usual, but not rely on the “Fourth Estate” to do the real talking.

Stenographers of the moguls, consider yourselves snookered. You, you people at The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Daily Telegraph, Express, Mail, The Guardian and The Observer, and a host of other European, American, Canadian and Australian sheets, by getting sucked into the Climategate narrative, you have painted yourself into a very sticky corner, in fact, you appear to have sidelined your entire profession.

Hacks and hackettes, journalists and broadcasters, the Obama-leak implication is – you can no longer be trusted to do your job. It’s time to shape up, follow a study course on Climate Change and start cultivating telephone-based relationships with reputable Climate Change Scientists.

Why is it that so many mainstream newspapers repeat the same lazy accusation that somebody has uncovered “yet another error” in the IPCC report ? This looks like a flawed attempt to create a narrative of scandal, where there is actually nothing to find.

Many expert commentators have tried to explain that, yes, the IPCC had a couple of problems, where they have used information that was not peer-reviewed Science, and findings that other experts disagree with. But no, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report still stands, and is still the best statement that Sciencekind can give on the subject of Climate Change.

There is no evidence of the kind of wrongdoing in the work of the IPCC that the Climate Change “sceptics” claim. So why do the journalists carry on with the narrative of doubt ? Could it have something to do with the fact that they don’t check the facts ?

And why do most of the mainsteam news organisations take the same line, with the same sloppy thinking and poor arguments replicated in article after article ? Could it be that there is no investigative journalism left these days ?

Why does it have to fall to the independent web loggers to point out the facts ? Why can’t the newspapers at least hire Environment writers who have studied Climate Change Science ?

If today’s crop of independent commentation on Amazongate is anything to go by, critiquing the poverty of the coverage by the mainstream Media; moguls the length and breadth of the globe should really start to pay attention to the appalling quality of their Environmental journalism :-

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/up-is-down-brown-is-green-with-apologies-to-orwell/

“Up is Down, Brown is Green (with apologies to Orwell) : Filed under: Climate Science — eric @ 15 March 2010 : In the alternate universe of Fox News, Anthony Watts, and many others, up is down. Now, it appears, brown is green. Following the total confusion over the retraction of a paper on sea level, claims of another “mistake” by the IPCC are making the rounds of the blogosphere. This time, the issue is the impact of rainfall changes on the Amazon rainforest. A study in 2007 showed that the forest gets greener when it rains less. A new study, by Samanta et al. in Geophysical Research Letters shows that the earlier work was flawed. Aided by an apparently rather careless press release, this is being used as evidence that the Amazon is less sensitive to rainfall changes than the IPCC claimed. But the Samanta et al. paper actually does not address the central questions at all. It only addresses whether a single anomalous rainfall year had an impact that is measureable and interpretable from a satellite sensor. The conclusion is that they could not detect a change. As noted in a commentary from Simon Lewis, University of Leeds, “the critical question is how these forests respond to repeated droughts, not merely single-year droughts.”…”

http://www.desmogblog.com/it-takes-more-dead-trees-make-credible-newspaper

“15 March 10 : It Takes More than Dead Trees to Make a Credible Newspaper : An article in last week’s British paper, The Telegraph, claimed that the IPCC had made yet another significant mistake – this time overstating the sensitivity of the Amazon rainforest to drought. It turns out that the article severely misrepresented the state of the science. While that one very dry year did not produce the kind of vegetation changes detectible by satellite imagery, it did, in fact, kill a number of trees, turning the rainforest from a “sink” that absorbed 2 billion tons of CO2, to a “source” of even more CO2 from the resulting number of dead trees. The culpa for an initial post to Desmogblog, taking the IPCC to task, is exclusively mea…”

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/its_always_bad_news_for_the_ip.php

“DELTOID : IT’S ALWAYS BAD NEWS FOR THE IPCC : NO MATTER WHAT THE RESULT OF NEW SCIENTIFIC STUDIES ARE, BIASED MEDIA PRESENTS THEM AS PROVING THAT THE IPCC IS WRONG. : It’s always bad news for the IPCC : Posted on: March 14, 2010 2:54 AM, by Tim Lambert : Back in 2007 a paper, Amazon Forests Green-Up During 2005 Drought, was published in Science: “Coupled climate-carbon cycle models suggest that Amazon forests are vulnerable to both long- and short-term droughts, but satellite observations showed a large-scale photosynthetic green-up in intact evergreen forests of the Amazon in response to a short, intense drought in 2005. These findings suggest that Amazon forests, although threatened by human-caused deforestation and fire and possibly by more severe long-term droughts, may be more resilient to climate changes than ecosystem models assume.” This finding that the Amazon was more resilient than previously thought was reported in the London Times and the New York Times. Now a new paper contradicting the previous paper, Amazon forests did not green-up during the 2005 drought has been published: “We find no evidence of large-scale greening of intact Amazon forests during the 2005 drought – approximately 11%-12% of these drought-stricken forests display greening, while, 28%-29% show browning or no-change, and for the rest, the data are not of sufficient quality to characterize any changes. These changes are also not unique – approximately similar changes are observed in non-drought years as well.” So how does this get reported? Here’s Terence Corcoran in the National Post: “But this week new research supports the original Amazongate version of the science. The Amazon may not be at risk from climate change. Researchers at Boston University, headed by Ranga B. Myneni, professor of geography and environment, found that satellite readings used by other scientists were based on contaminated data. In a paper published by Geophysical Research Letters, Prof. Myneni and associates say they found no evidence that the Amazon suffers extreme tree mortality, excessive forest greening or other trauma under extreme climate conditions. The Myneni paper examined the impact on the Amazon of a major 2005 drought. Some scientists have argued that the 2005 drought caused significant rainforest disturbances. But Prof. Myneni says that science is based on satellite data that cannot be reproduced because much of it is “atmosphere corrupted.”" Don’t you love the way Corcoran describes greening as “significant disturbances” and implies that the earlier study found “extreme tree mortality” rather than geening? But while Corcoran is being deceitful, you can’t blame this all on him…”

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

Why should Dr Benny Peiser’s views count ? He is a social anthropologist, specialising in ancient Sport (where all the sportsmen were, fascinatingly, naked and oiled), a commentator in newspapers and a well-known Global Warming sceptic. He hasn’t studied Global Warming as a Science, so the question has to be asked : what is the basis for his Global Warming scepticism ? And why is he sceptical of the way that Science works in relation to the study of Global Warming ? Has he conducted any relevant research ? Has he discovered any vital new facts to add to the canon of knowledge on Climate Change ? I think you’ll find the answer is “no”, “negatory” to all the questions…well, I admit, using rhetorical questions was just a literary device to relay my level of doubt about Benny Peiser’s capacity to be able to speak to the subject of Global Warming and the situation of Global Warming Science.

Personally, I wouldn’t seek Benny Peiser’s views on a very wide range of subjects, but most especially not on Global Warming. So why is he the Director of the newly nascent, privately funded Global Warming Policy Foundation ? What is this group ? Why was it necessary for this group to form ? And why is he in all the papers and all over the Internet ? Just what does he have to add to the non-existent “debate” on whether or not Global Warming is happening, or whether or not Scientists have behaved properly in their work ? (And remember : questioning the integrity of Scientific endeavour is a non-issue which he may have actually invented himself, being the doubter that he is.)

Has Benny Peiser ever interviewed a Climate Change Scientist ? Has he studied how Climate Change Scientists think ? Has he anything more than a few crabby e-mails to go on ? He’s a social anthopologist. The first principle on Social Science is to study the documents of the people you are researching – and if they are living, go talk to them. If Benny Peiser were to talk to some real, live Climate Change Scientists, I am sure he would come away a believer. You cannot encounter the Truth and remain untouched by it.

I think that it is unfair for Climate Change “sceptics” to use the Media as their platform for “debate”. I use the word “sceptic” in quotes to denote that fact that I think they are not genuinely sceptical – that they are actually in denial about the facts of Global Warming. I use the word “debate” because I don’t believe that there is any disputing the facts of Global Warming. The science is settled on the question of whether the world is warming up or not. The answer : it is. And the emissions from humankind’s activities have their Carbon isotope fingerprints all over it.

Yes, it is most unfair to use the Media to promote Global Warming denial. People in the Media are not Scientists. They don’t know how to judge one person from another – whether people are expert in the field or not. The Climate Change Science Obstructers, who call themselves “sceptics” know that the journalists and reporters have no clue about the full and true nature of Climate Change Science. The Obstructers use that ignorance to gain a toehold, demanding the right to speak in the Media, and come to dominate the Media channels with their doubt-mongering.

The underlying reason why there are so many unpersuaded people for George Monbiot to lament, is that the Media is unequipped to cover Climate Change Science.

This is the real problem : the Media. The Media’s extremely shaky coverage of Climate Change Science is a symptom of the Media’s lack of education about Climate Change Science.

It’s no surprise that the population have been taken in by Climate Change “scepticism” – all they know is what the Media tell them – and the Media don’t know what they’re talking about.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/naomi_oreskes_on_merchants_of.php

Please do watch Naomi Oreske’s magristral (not “magisterial”, since she’s female) presentation on her new publication “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming” in the YouTube above.

The presentation is somewhat marred by poor audiovisual capture, but it’s fascinating, all the same, and good to hear her logical argumentation; and be reminded of what has been happening for the last 50 years in the public “debates” on Science.

The Media have still not gotten to grips with what Science actually is, and how to present it, and how to research it, and often end up interviewing and reporting people who are either not expert in the field they are asked about, or have an underlying agenda for misinformation being published.

Why do we not have a School of Science for journalists and others in the Media ? Where can journalists go to complete their knowledge on what Science is and what Science does ?

Why do some Media workers end up with the view that explanations from Science cannot be relied on, and that everything is relative ? If everything were really only relative, and we couldn’t know anything about how the Universe actually works, then I wouldn’t be typing into a computing machine and it wouldn’t be relaying the information on the World Wide Web.

There are evidential facts in the Universe, there are causes and effects. And then there are opinions. The opinions do not always match the evidence, no matter how strongly those opinions are held or how in-depth a self-validating framework they have.

For example : homeopathy and astrology are invalid, hypothetical explanations and/or predictions of evidential facts. The explanations given only work within the parameters set by the frameworks. They don’t relate to actual evidence of causal relationships, and they cannot be used to change or predict future evidence (apart from influencing the minds of people, which may influence the future).

As counter examples, we know, without any real uncertainty, that tobacco smoking causes a range of human disease; and that increased atmospheric Carbon Dioxide causes increased Global Warming.

I feel duty-bound to be polite to people who believe in homeopathy or astrology, but I don’t accept what they say as it has no basis in Science.

Why can’t the Climate Change “sceptics” be more polite and reasonable about those of us who know what the Science says, and know what the evidence means ?

Why are these obstructers of Climate Change Science so obnoxious, insistent and intransigent ?

It has something to do with the techniques they have been learning to de-rail the progress of Science :-

http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/08/global-warming-science-debates-teach-the-controversy/

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.

Do we really need the Met Office to spend another three years analysing data ? We know what the general trend of the observations is : warming (consistently), accelerating (probably), feeding back badly (possibly) :-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7309688/Met-Office-to-look-again-at-global-warming-records.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7039264.ece

Putting the data back under the microscope for three years will achieve only one thing : the obstructers win. This process will license them to carry on carping and whining and undermining by saying, “the science isn’t settled”. They will continue to pour doubt on the quality and integrity of the work of Climate Change Scientists, and they will increase their audience. It’s a Public Relations disaster.

For what reason is the entire canon of Science now under suspicion ? Because Steve McIntyre and his many acolytes say so ? What right does he have to question Climate Change Science ? Why does anyone take what he says seriously ?

My opinion is that it is wrong to be concerned about public opinion.

Only around 20% of the population really care about the Environment. That figure is not going to change very quickly, even as Climate Change disasters mount up.

The only important group of people to convince of the coming dangers are those who make the actual decisions : about energy, transport and trade; those who deal with the companies and organisations that will make the actual adaptation to Climate Change and mitigation of Global Warming.

The general public don’t count : they don’t have a vote on Climate Change policy.

Climate Change has never been an election issue, and even though the Ask the Climate Question campaign is trying, Climate Change may still not be the Number One election issue.

In point of conclusion, the Media has lost its usefulness in terms of communicating Climate Change, by allowing itself to be intellectually corrupted by the Climate Science Obstructers’ fallacious non-arguments.

But it doesn’t really matter what the mainstream Media say, as the views of their general readership don’t count.

However, what matters is that the law-makers, the decision-makers, are not swayed by the nonsense of the Climate Obstructers – and sadly, a lot of them still believe what the Media propagate.

So, if you care about the changes that Society has to undergo to respond to the threats of Global Warming, you still need to care about accuracy in Climate Change reporting.

[ AS AN INTERESTING ASIDE, IT'S CURIOUS THAT THE SIMPSONS CARTOON MAKES MORE SENSE THAN A GREAT DEAL OF THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA JOURNALISTS WHEN THEY ATTEMPT TO WRITE ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE. ]

“I’m going to change this town’s accurate impression of me – I’m going to buy every media outlet…It’s time to win back the love of those hateful morons.”

Amy Turner at The Sunday Times (“yeah ! I’m a feeeeeature cooooolumnist”), in my humble opinion, makes a really poor show of comprehending what’s really going on in the “Blogosphere” (“now there’s a thousand freaks xeroxing their worthless opinions”) :-

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article7043753.ece

As the Blogger Tim Lambert (“the pen is mightier than the flaming bag of poop”) at the Deltoid makes clear, her article could easily be criticised as a blatant attempt to frame the whole Blogging world with her own narrative (or probably that of her ultimate boss, Rupert Murdoch), seemingly deciding on her readers’ behalf who to accept as the “big fish” in the Blogosphere, and who to dismiss as “the amateurs”; and then quoting one of her trusted “big fish” Roger Pielke Jr :-

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article7043753.ece

“…Among these minnows are controversialist bloggers like Tim Lambert, who are professionally unqualified to engage in the substance of most debates (certainly the case with respect to my own work)..”

Now Amy Turner should really have done some more research, in my view. She clearly hasn’t checked Pielke’s views out, and simply allows his explanation of the situation to stand as accurate.

If, however, she were to read Tim Lambert she would find out how Pielke’s views are not necessarily valid :-

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/10/pielke_pity_party.php

Why does it seem to be important to Amy Turner to use both Roger Pielke Jr and Steve McIntyre (another of her “big fish”) to cast doubt on the veracity of Tim Lambert’s work ?

Is it because Tim Lambert (“no, I won’t take your blood ponies”) has started to uncover the failings of Amy Turner’s colleague, Jonathan Leake (“monopolistic, self-aggrandising…stinky pants”) ? :-

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/leakegate_jonathan_leake_strik.php

If you think that’s devious and warped, check this out from Amy Turner’s piece :-

“[Steve] McIntyre founded the Climate Audit blog in response to attacks made against him on Real Climate, a blog for “climate science from climate scientists”, and uses it to campaign for scientists to release information not published in peer-reviewed climate studies. Only in this way, he says, can people begin to rebuild trust in the science establishment which was so damaged by Climategate.”

Er, hang on a minute. Wasn’t Steve McIntyre actually one of the people behind Climategate ? I mean, he might not have been the hacker behind the liberation of the e-mails from the University of East Anglia, but his whole reason for living, since around 2002 or even earlier, appears to be to bring down, obstruct and delay the progress of Climate Change Science.

Steve McIntyre is one of the (legend has it) godfathers of Climate Change denialism, the anti-science movement that spawned Climategate. James Delingpole, despite his stature as supposed “chief” Climategate promulgator, can only hope to play choo-choos at the knees of such a great denier-of-the-facts as Steve McIntyre allegedly is.

Isn’t Climategate all about inventing an excuse, any excuse, or any string of any excuses at all, not to accept Climate Change Science ? And wouldn’t that suit Steve McIntyre’s apparent aims ? Why is he allowed to dictate his own version of reality (“nothing is more pathetic than self-delusion”) by claiming that people have lost trust in Climate Change Science ? And why do the mainstream journalists interview and quote him ?

Amy Turner (“non-violence never solved anything”), whether she knows it or not, is, to my mind, involved in some heavy revisionism here.

I would suggest she speak to some real, live, actual, mainstream Climate Change Scientists (so not the self-confessed “skeptics” such as Roger Pielke Jr, John Christy, Uncle Tom Cobley…), and ask for their opinion about who she should consult for the facts about Climate Change and the world of Climate Change Scientists.

Failing that, she could ask Tim Lambert, who is an excellent researcher and accurate reporter and who is very well qualified to engage in the Climate Change debate, as was apparent in his encounter with Christopher Monckton (“since when are public figures fair game for satire?”) :-

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/debate_with_monckton.php

“It’s not possible to control all the media. Unless you’re Rupert Murdoch. He is one beautiful man…I couldn’t agree more.”

http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Fraudcast_News

http://www.tv.com/the-simpsons/fraudcast-news/episode/325918/trivia.html

I’m actually quite surprised that journalists can understand the Science sufficiently to be able to write accurately.

Wonders will never cease !

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703819904574551303527570212.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsTop

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1233622/Copenhagen-climate-summit-Q-A.html

A joint editorial will be published worldwide :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/06/papers-copenhagen-leader

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/06/copenhagen-editorial

“‘Fourteen days to seal history’s judgment on this generation’”

Besides all this affirmation, letters are being written :-

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article6946458.ece