How You Were Taken In : The Manufacture of Doubt

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.

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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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Rod Liddle : Gutter Press

There’s something that’s been threatening to keep me awake at night, and it’s not drinking too much coffee. I don’t drink coffee, normally, by the by. No, it’s this : why does Rod Liddle’s photograph on the The Spectator website look remarkably unlike the way he looks in realtime, that is, today ? Here’s what I mean :-

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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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The Tetchiness of Richard Black

[ UPDATE : More science on solar irradiation change and how it cannot explain the high levels of recent Global Warming : http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/a-problem-of-multiplicity/ ]

Some people have been asking why I’ve been so picky about Richard Black, the BBC environmental journalist.

I found fault with a blog post of his that had a lot of good, illuminating stuff in it, yet still managed to misdirect people, in my opinion.

What we read in the papers, online and watch on the television has a longlasting effect on us. If the news is skewed, and if it continues to be skewed, we are being manipulated.

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The Hudson Tunnel

The computer equipment you are at this moment using relies on an effect known as “quantum tunneling”, delivering an energy payload across a seemingly inpenetrable medium.

It is, if you like, a subversion of the apparent macro-scale laws of the universe. Nothing is quite what you think it is.

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The Spectator : Playground Bullies ?

Virtually all the world’s nations, a very significant proportion of the world’s science bodies, countless universities, research establishments, and even major oil companies accept the facts of man-made Global Warming.

But that doesn’t stop commentators at The Spectator magazine from not only attacking Climate Change science, but also scientists and writers who are experts in the field. Some could say it makes them look foolish. Or illiterate.

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The Guardian Stops Guarding The Environment

I always thought it was a bit strange that the The Guardian’s Environment pages were confined to the Wednesday Society section of the “print edition” of this national newspaper.

Did that mean that the cranky, obsessive, possibly mentally unhinged eco-hippies should be shovelled in with the Social Workers, Educationalists, Housing Associations and Trades Unionists ?
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The Man on the Clapham Omnibus – He Say “Yargh”

LONDON 22:30 – The Man on the Clapham Omnibus reacted strongly to a chickpea curry he ate at lunchtime today. At hand to assist with his sufferings was a comfortably recognisable news sheet.

But all was not as it seemed. This publication was no ordinary newspaper, oh no. This was from a print run far, far away, way into the future, in fact. From 2020, in fact.

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Read all about it ! End of the World edition !

Calling all dudes. Calling all honeys. Come and hand out London’s brightest and brashest free newspaper, and give the paid ones a seeing to in the process.

Dudes, remember the glory days of old, handing out trillions of arch and angry political leafletry stamped with cardinal colour logos and smeared with carbon black ?

Bring back those golden, sunny hours of innocent street flirting and lung-gurgling puffs of the harshest baccy, calling out around the world, are you ready for a brand new ideological heartbeat ?

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Reclaim the Sheets – the Real Story so far

It was a tale of intrigue, passion and suspicion, that ended with a slap in the face for journalism today.

The architects of Reclaim the Sheets were young. They were frisky. And they were disgruntled.

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Reclaim the Sheets

STOP PRESS: News from the future‏

This week, we’re printing a special publication, urging journalists
and big business to put people first. With 2020 hindsight, we’ll show
how action today made the future possible.

Without radical change, the world will soon be a hostile environment,
unleashing weather of mass destruction on our Age of Stupid. So what’s
stopping us? In simple terms: the economy, stupid.

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Ice Age of Stupid

Ouch ! I can feel the pain from the stinging reviews, even from this safe distance !

The film “The Age of Stupid” has free-minded, liberal, tolerant film reviewers and social commentators reaching for their ice picks.

Apparently, the film is a “hecture”, a hectoring lecture, according to The Observer :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/mar/21/the-age-of-stupid-review

And David Cox pulls out all his nauseating stops by damning it a “conceit” in The Guardian :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/mar/23/the-age-of-stupid

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