http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/20/climate-change-negotiations-failure

“…The closer it comes, the worse it looks. The best outcome anyone now expects from December’s climate summit in Mexico is that some delegates might stay awake during the meetings. When talks fail once, as they did in Copenhagen, governments lose interest. They don’t want to be associated with failure, they don’t want to pour time and energy into a broken process. Nine years after the world trade negotiations moved to Mexico after failing in Qatar, they remain in diplomatic limbo. Nothing in the preparations for the climate talks suggests any other outcome…”

Copenhagen was never seriously going to deliver, and I don’t think most of the protesters on the streets in Copenhagen thought so. Activist demands, including from activist nations, were always going to be ignored, The solutions really didn’t come to the conference, and the problems really lay elsewhere.

But there’s no need to utterly despair, George !

You ask, “Climate change enlightenment was fun while it lasted. But now it’s dead : The collapse of the talks at Copenhagen took away all momentum for change and the lobbyists are back in control. So what next?”, and the two most obvious things to say are :-

a. The media have failed the public.

b. The big institutions working on global issues, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, have failed to perceive and deflect political attacks.

David Cromwell and David Edwards of MediaLens write :-

http://www.medialens.org/board/

http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1285056426.html

“Re: The battle against climate change is now over. Climate change won. : Posted by The Editors on September 21, 2010, 9:07 am, in reply to “The battle against climate change is now over. Climate change won.” : Monbiot: “To compensate for our weakness, we indulged a fantasy of benign paternalistic power – acting, though the political mechanisms were inscrutable, in the wider interests of humankind. We allowed ourselves to believe that, with a little prompting and protest, somewhere, in a distant institutional sphere, compromised but decent people would take care of us. They won’t. They weren’t ever going to do so. So what do we do now?”. We turn on the corporate media that are a huge part of this problem. The attitude of the Greens to the media has always been pitiful. Time and again groups like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the Green Party have told us, ‘We have to maintain good relations with the media.’ But if the world is sleeping, the mainstream media is the great corporate sandman. It really is time to wake up about that. Working through the media does not work. Eds”

Declaring war on the media is quite a bold call. A great number of people straddle and cross the boundaries between science communications and media. Should we ask everyone to step outside the publishing house circus ?

And would we see a different flavour from the writings of those such as Richard Black and Roger Harrabin if they were to quit the BBC ?

Is George Monbiot’s position compromised by continuing to write for The Guardian ? This is a question that has been posed by MediaLens contributors in the past.

Opinion is varied on that. But what is clear is that new non-traditional organisations have the opportunity to take on the role of being the best communicators on Climate Change.

Trouble is, currently that’s mostly the sceptic-deniers. But that could change, and that is maybe what George Monbiot could promote – New Media on accurate Climate Change Science reporting.

George, George, you wonderfully caring fellow, you should keep your spirits up – there are masses of people out there, all over the world, planting trees, growing organic crops, cycling their whole lives, building sustainably and putting up wind turbines – bypassing the politicking and posturing on Climate Change policy and just getting on with the things that need to be done. Quite economically beneficial, too, sometimes.

Get back your positive perspective, George, do. Chin up, old man !

Come, call with us for a truly sustainable media, outside the press barons’ nosebags and troughs. Let us tell the whole, unwholesome, worrisome narrative of the Climate Change Science, and let’s make Climate Change policy a voting-worthy issue !

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 ?

If there’s one thing about Climate Change nobody could be able to disagree on, it’s that there’s a huge amount of literature on the subject.

I figure it would be impossible for any one person to have a good grounding in the totality of the Science, spanning, as it does, most of humankind’s discoveries about the physical world.

It would be hard too to have an exceptionally well-rooted understanding even of the Synthesis of the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.

A human mind is surely not capable of remembering all the facts and figures and how everything relates. My personal forgettery is quite active in selecting what to drop after not using it for a while, and I’m sure others experience the same thing.

For example, I’m sure Dr Judith Curry, accomplished as she is in Earth Sciences, does not remember the entire field, and does not have the tools to look everything up quickly. Which is why she gives shorthand vague, answers on web logs which annoy other people so much :-

http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/08/curry_jumps_the_shark.php

I reckon, though, people should give her a break for a while to let her compose herself, and get over the shock of the Anthony Watts “tribe” eating her heart out with steak knives after she published a proper piece of Science.

It distresses and appals me in equal measure that completely uneducated people make huge sweeping statements about the IPCC’s work without knowing anything much about the content of the Fourth Assessment Report.

It also troubles and irritates me that the public face of the Science can be so easily subverted by people who use emotive language, false accusations and constantly recycled errors to dismiss the work of the IPCC.

Have you, dear reader, been distracted from reading the IPCC by the Climategate revelations ? If so, you are one amongst thousands, perhaps millions of people, who have been treated to a smokescreen of nonsense and filibustering by the likes of Steve McIntyre.

If you want to research the culture of Climate Change, you do need to address the fact that so many people, who know next-to-nothing about it, are willing to adopt a contrary position to the body and work of the world’s largest, cooperatively-managed Scientific network (the IPCC).

In the annals of the philosophy of the history of Science (or the history of the philosophy of Science), one name stands out as having laid the foundations for dismissal of the whole project of Science – Thomas Kuhn.

His claim that Scientists form part of an enclave, an inwardly-focussed “paradigm” of theory and understanding, with its own internally maintained unassailable truth (whether really really true, or not), is an idea that has given a very useful stick to beat Science with.

Truth about the natural world, sceptics argue, is only valid within the “paradigm” of a particular Science community. Outside those ivory towers of academe, the real world can be a lot different, they claim. And sometimes, they assert, within the academic community, what is accepted as truth undergoes a shift, a radical Kuhnian “paradigm shift”.

Kuhn theorised that “paradigm shifts” would come about because of revolutionary new facts or theories – but his theory is only that – a theory. In the real world of Science, the society of co-labourers shifts in ways both large and small – but never really apocalpytically, catastrophically. Kuhn was wrong, and Climategate proves it – Science can withstand culture shocks without dissolution of the whole Scientific enterprise.

The promoters of the non-scandal known as Climategate hoped to create a “paradigm shift” in Science, by seeding a revolutionary idea in the mind of the general public, that anybody related to the IPCC and the University of East Anglia (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in particular, was not to be trusted.

The Climategaters hoped that public opinion about Scientific untrustworthiness would bleed into the structures of authority, causing a “paradigm shift” in the form of a loss of support of the IPCC work, which would then have repercussions within the academic community, causing a shift from the outside to push a shift on the inside.

To a certain extent, they got what they wanted – there have been enquiries, checks, balances, reports written on Science and Scientists, promises and pledges of more “openness and transparency”. But you know what, Science has come out unscathed.

Experts in specialist fields are still experts in specialist fields, and they are still consulted on. The reason ? It is impossible to know everything about the whole of Climate Change Science, and true expertise is something that a pitchfork-armed witch-hunt cannot unsettle.

We are not living in a “post-paradigmatic”, “post normal science” state – Science still goes on, truth is still discovered. The facts are still the facts and the data is still the data and the evidence is still the evidence.

The collective work of the world’s best minds on Climate Change is still our highest achievement as a species. And Governments are still trying to settle on policy to respond to the clear risks and threats from the changing Climate.

The IPCC are gearing up for their Fifth Assessment Report, and I think you’ll find the management of this exercise will have media outreach of the highest order.

The one thing that Climategate has taught us is that press relations are important when launching important information. In the case of Climategate, the information was pseudo- and dis-information, but they handled the media well, with a full spectrum dominance.

Now that Climategate is really quite dead (I date it to Robin McKie’s righteously angry missive in The Observer on 1st August 2010 “A dark ideology is driving those who deny climate change : People who claim that climate science is a conspiracy or the work of charlatans are talking rubbish…Will Hutton is away”), I think it’s time to come right back around to the substantive nature of the work of the IPCC.

After all, quite a few media commentators know nothing about it. You would have thought it would be in their best interest to know what the IPCC work is about, but no, they haven’t read it. They have views about it, gleaned from sceptic websites, but they haven’t actually read the actual text. They may have been given the unholy, unappetising task of reading every last one of Phil Jones’ e-mails, but they haven’t read the Science.

I read most of the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) from 2001, and so far, I have read chunks of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) from 2007 that I thought were the most changed from the previous report – the parts where new discoveries and research have added to our overall knowledge and strengthen our confidence in the conclusions.

However, it is time to read the whole thing, and that is what I intend to do here. I might not finish this little project because other things come in the way. I have studies to complete after all – my own primary, original research. But I do intend to read the whole thing, carefully, and make notes here.

I hope you can join me in this study and stop following the nonsense of the Climate Change sceptic-deniers. Together we can re-focus on the Science rather than the rabble outside the University gates with their grim faces and cynical accusations.

Let’s read the IPCC.

The question arises : since our lifestyles are causing deadly Climate Change for people in other parts of the world, maybe we should have communications based around pictures of suffering children ?

I disagree. I point out that when the environmentalists put out posters about Polar Bears, that the audience pretty quickly realised that the Polar Bears were being used as a “poster child” for Climate Change, and they started to mock the campaigning.

Ten years ago, or even less, a poster depicting a tragic human or endangered animal was still a useful communications tool, but the potential recipients for these communications are now highly sceptical of this device, this attempt to pluck at their emotional/heart strings.

A poster is not useful, I say. What would be useful would be to have a long-running television series on how Climate Change is impacting a town or city in the Global South, or in the Arctic region – sort of like the engagement factor of a soap opera, but with a real-life Reality TV flavour.

I say, we have to get Climate Change under peoples’ noses, in their faces, all the time. More and more information needs to be presented to people, from old and new Media, establishment and informal web stuff.

I said that there has been a lot of criticism of one-shot shock communications, like the UK drink-drive infommercials, the UK Government’s “climate-drive” and “bedtime stories” infommercials, the National Health Service “cancer, sticks” advertisements, and some of the Greenpeace “phaser set to stun” environment campaign materials.

This kind of thing no longer gets through to people.

Even the really successful Smoking Causes Cancer tobacco product labelling is losing its impact – pictures of blackened lungs or no pictures of blackened lungs.

The young female American activist, with the obligatory nose ring, of course, took up my theme, and explained that where she comes from in the United States, if somebody is involved in a drink-drive accident, they are made to face the family of the victim, to see the results of their actions.

People need to be made aware, on an ongoing basis, of the results of the Global North’s use of Fossil Fuel energy.

It’s not a personal thing – communications should not be targeted at individual readers or viewers. If somebody tries to inform somebody else of the risks and realities of Climate Change, the message should not carry the idea that the hearer or viewer is personally responsible; and that they should repent in sackcloth and ashes and never use their car again.

Yet if all Climate Change communications are reduced to “this is a problem, and you need to believe this is a problem”, what can people do when they come to believe it ?

How do we take people on a journey of awakening, guiding them towards effective social and political engagement with the underlying causes of Climate Change ?

After all, it’s not the fault of ordinary people that Climate Change is happening. It’s the fault of those who continue to sell fossil fuels to us, who have made us dependent on products that they should be diversifying out of.

Climate Change is the fault of weak government, who dare not regulate against the monopoly on energy markets that the Oil and Gas (and Coal) companies have.

Climate Change is the fault of the Economy, with its constant drip-feed of messages to Consume.

Ordinary people are just doing the best they can, with the information they have.

People need more information about Climate Change.

For example, we need to have every weather segment on TV and Radio prefaced with a report on the state of the Cryosphere today – how far the Arctic has melted, how much snow and ice has been lost from mountains.

We need to have weather reports outlining the freak weather and extreme droughts and flooding taking place around the world.

We need business programmes and newspaper articles covering the failures in the grain harvests and other crops, the moves by governments and businesses to protect freshwater supplies, analysis of how heatwaves and other extreme weather are damaging enterprises and infrastructure.

You can’t just put up a poster and not deal with the emotional and political reaction it can cause. If you put up a poster, and the viewer has no way of interacting with the information, they will discount it, and become immune to the guilt that they think the poster is designed to trip.

Communications clientele are smarter than they used to be – they know when people are trying to manipulate their feelings – or even when they suspect people are trying to manipulate their feelings.

Let’s be honest, here. Quite a lot of Climate Change communications is deliberately of the “shock” variety – a one-way, short-term, quick-fire informational payload via Media.

But this has no value if it is not backed up with a narrative – an ongoing narrative – about how Climate Change is already impacting our lives and, more severely, the lives of the poorest – how it is a risk-multiplier in everything from freshwater supplies, through food growing to energy supply.

The threats are mounting. A catastrophe is possible.

We have to be prepared, and we have to help others be prepared.

A poster child will not suffice.

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.

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.

Is this deception ? Vainglorious vanity ? Why does Rod Liddle want to appear so…so… young, when he’s actually rather not young in the slightest ?

And is this sleight of face perhaps symptomatic of his other Media forays ?

Is he alleged to be concealing in any other aspects of truth ?

Is he doing this for purported sensationalist purposes ?

Apparently, the The Internet tells me, there is a distinct chance that the The Independent Newspaper might have his graciousness as their Editor.

This would be a travesty, in my view, and likely bring the The Independent clangingly into the gutter, in my estimation, for a number of reasons, chiefly his Climate Change Deniership :-

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brendan-demelle/climate-denier-rod-liddle_b_419267.html

“Brendan DeMelle : Posted: January 11, 2010 : Climate Denier Rod Liddle Considered For Editor Position at The Independent”

But there are other potentially scandalous matters to consider, too :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/11/female-pound-rod-liddle-independent

“Female pound may sink Liddle’s Indy : Rod Liddle likes to wind people up, but if the Independent ignores women readers then the joke may be on them : Gaby Hinsliff : guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 January 2010 : Short of being publicly handbagged by Harriet Harman, there’s probably little Rod Liddle adores more than this. The sisterhood on the warpath against him editing a liberal newspaper. Organic breakfast muesli spat out, as Islington households absorb the threat. His name in lights, columns reprinted (thrill again to the one about why multiculturalism offers goat curry and crime!). For newsprint’s shock jock, what heaven. So I hate to become another humourless harridan, rising to his bait…”

I honestly don’t fancy the The Independent’s chances of making it through the Ongoing Downturn if this happens.

Maybe Rod Liddle ought to face the full facts.

The Media is slowly exuding Climate Change Deniers, like pus oozing out of an old, rank sore on the posterior. They get their bus passes, as is their social right. They’re told to go home and put on slippers and sip cocoa in the evenings, most likely. His time in the scribbler seat of power will come to an end. And after him will come journalists who have actually studied the Science of Global Warming, and know how to communicate it.

The next big question is this : where do Climate Change Denier Journalists go when they retire ? Speaking, or should I say “invective” tours (of spleen) of the United States of America ? Why don’t all Climate Change Denier Journalists just cut out the actual working for a newspaper bit, and shoot straight off States-side ? They’ll get better money. Just ask Christopher Monckton.

I’m not being ageist. I’m old myself. I’m just asking appropriate questions. It’s time the Media started to recount the truth about Science, in my viewpoint, not just reach for the sensationalist quill.

If you can’t write a sensational story about what’s really happening as a result of Climate Change, you really need to get some education, Mr and Ms Hack.

Crack out of the shell of your little self-vindicating, self-validating world of denial and take a look at the Phenology of Global Climate Change, the evidential Data, the Knowledge of Man-made Global Warming.

And that includes you, James Delingpole. I know you’re reading this, (or one of your acolytes is scanning it). Come out of Babylon ! Exit the lair of the great mystical liar and blood-soaked daemon. Stop uttering rabid incantations to a melting god. Come out of her, deniers ! Come to the safe shore of reason, before your iceberg well and truly dribbles away.

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.

Here’s Andy Revkin bouncing off the statistical wall :-

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/02/the-greatest-story-rarely-told/

You’d have thought that Climate Change could perhaps occupy more neural networks than North Korea and Gaza, but you’d be wrong.

So what’s causing this insane lack of perspective ? Why doesn’t the Risk of Total Environmental Catastrophe dominate the News ? Isn’t it somehow more significant than the threat of acts of terrorist violence ?

And what can we do to bring Climate Change to the forefront of peoples’ imaginations and the front pages of the newspapers ?

Should there be a new convention established, to put a summary of the latest Climate indicators on the top of every web page and the front of every magazine ?

Does there need to be a mass induction of journalists and reporters into Climate Change Science ?

Will all the Climate Change institutions and universities in academia hire their own Public Relations guys and gals ?

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.

This has been shown by a very clever experiment :-

http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/does-biased-news-have-a-time-bomb-effect-1596

“Does Biased News Have a ‘Time Bomb’ Effect? : A European study shows that, over time, even the most sophisticated readers can be manipulated. : By: Melinda Burns : November 09, 2009 : Even the most hardened Europeans may succumb to media manipulation and change their political views if they are bombarded long enough with biased news. There’s nobody more cynical about the media than your average European. Only 12 percent of Europeans claim to trust the media, compared to 15 percent of North Americans, 29 percent of Pacific Asians and 48 percent of Africans, the BBC has found. Yet new research out of the London School of Economics and Political Science suggests that even the most hardened Europeans may succumb to media manipulation and change their political views if they are bombarded long enough with biased news. Michael Bruter, a senior lecturer in European politics at the school, fed a steady diet of slanted newsletters about Europe and the European Union — either all good news or all bad — to 1,200 citizens of six countries over two years. Over time, Bruter found, and without exception, the readers subconsciously adopted the bias to varying degrees and changed their view of the EU and of themselves as Europeans, a few of them in the extreme. Surprisingly, they didn’t register any change right after the newsletters stopped — not until full six months later, when they had obviously let down their guard. Bruter calls this the “time bomb” effect of one-sided news. His study paints a blunt picture of how cynicism, far from inoculating citizens to resist political persuasion, merely delays the impact. “We know that an increasing proportion of citizens distrust the media and that some explicitly claim to discount bias in the news that they receive,” he wrote. “However, we show that despite this qualified reading strategy, the effect of news resounds over time…”

It is for this reason that we are duty-bound to point out bias in news, and to ask for it to be eradicated.

It’s not censorship. It’s preventing the communication of error.

Here’s my original complaint :-

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Official Complaint

Subject: Established science is excluded from account

Message

It appears to me from the following blog post :-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2009/10/climates_magnetic_attraction.html

that Richard Black is either (a) entirely ignorant of the relevant science or is (b) deliberately not including the relevant science.

He does not include the well-known counterpoints to Piers Corbyn’s theories on Global Warming.

He poses a challenge to Climate Change scientists that has already been answered in the literature.

In order to restore accuracy to the piece, people would need to contribute comments that informed Richard Black of the relevant science, that he should know about anyway, and should have cited.

Richard Black is thus wasting peoples’ time in my view, either intentionally or accidentally.

He has a position as a senior environmental writer for the BBC Online team, and so in my view, he should have at least some understanding of why Piers Corbyn’s theories are not mainstream science, and how they have been already discredited.

If he does not know this kind of information, he should at least be conscious that it might exist, and he should at least make an attempt to find out, and report his findings.

I remain perplexed that people without any relevant scientific training are writing for the environmental reporting section of BBC Online.

They are good writers, but they appear to lack a depth and range in their knowledge of the state of the science.

I am surprised that Richard Black bothered to attend the presentation by Piers Corbyn, as he should have easily been able to find out why it could be counted as pseudo-science.

My demand is that environmental writers for the BBC Online should undertake a course in Climate Change science, so that it is clear that they understand what they are reporting on, and recognise which views are non-science.

The section I am concerned about is this :-

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…Now, doubtless many of you will have views on the science and everything else in this post, and I look forward to reading them.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with… and so, I’m sure, will everyone anxious to make sure that negotiators in Copenhagen are armed only with the best scientific evidence.

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Although Richard Black asserts that he is not qualified to pronounce judgement, which appears unbiased, he has not made an attempt to explain alternative viewpoints or report them.

He is also laying out for the reader the position of Piers Corbyn, and asking the reader to put some effort in to either confirm or deny this.

However, a simple perusal of the literature would show that Piers Corbyn’s views on Global Warming are easily challenged, and have been done so quite regularly and successfully.

Thus, this blog post for me is biased, unreasonable and provocative and I would call it unacceptable.

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Here’s Richard Black’s rather testy, tetchy reply (well, you would expect him to be a bit miffed : it’s his voice-of-the-nation status he is trying to protect) :-

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Subject: Complaint – news blog?
From: info@bbc.co.uk
Sent: 19 November 2009 14:24:51
To: Jo Abbess

Dear Ms Abbess,

Thank you for your comments.

Having written literally hundreds of articles over the last years dealing with (or directly concerning) the IPCC’s analyses of climate science, I am very familiar with what they contain.

A regular reader would find that this school of climate science forms the basis for virtually everything we report on the issue.

Frankly I am surprised that a reader should take one blog post (note – not a news story) in isolation and try to make deductions from that alone about how the subject is covered on our website.

Furthermore, the blog post makes several reference to mainstream climate science so I am amazed that a reader can think the writer is unaware of the wider context.

If you wanted to contribute, it would be useful to post a comment giving details of the scientific papers that show Mr Corbyn’s ideas have been discredited.

Richard Black
Environment Correspondent
BBC News

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Here is a rather crudely sketched draft reply from me (see below). Do let me know if I should add any other research resources to back up my central points :-

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Dear Richard,

Although you may be aware of a wide range of the work of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change or UNFCCC, it seems that you are not fully cognisant with the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC.

There is a very easy, visual way with which you can engage with the facts. If you care to take a look at the Figure 6.13 of the Chapter 6 of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report Working Group 1, you can see quite clearly that solar irradiance changes do not correlate with the changes in temperature anomalies :-

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch06.pdf

“6.6.3.1 Solar Forcing : The direct measurement of solar irradiance by satellite began less than 30 years ago, and over this period only very small changes are apparent (0.1% between the peak and trough of recent sunspot cycles, which equates to only about 0.2 W m–2 change in radiative forcing; Fröhlich and Lean (2004); see Section 2.7)… There is general agreement in the evolution of the different proxy records of solar activity such as cosmogenic isotopes, sunspot numbers or aurora observations, and the annually resolved records clearly depict the well-known 11-year solar cycle (Muscheler et al., 2006). For example, palaeoclimatic 10Be and 14C values are higher during times of low or absent sunspot numbers. During these periods, their production is high as the shielding of the Earth’s atmosphere from cosmic rays provided by the Sun’s open magnetic field is weak (Beer et al., 1998)…The cosmogenic isotope records have been linearly scaled to estimate solar energy output (Bard et al., 2000) in many climate simulations. More recent studies utilise physics-based models to estimate solar activity from the production rate of cosmogenic isotopes taking into account nonlinearities between isotope production and the Sun’s open magnetic flux and variations in the geomagnetic field (Solanki et al., 2004; Muscheler et al., 2005). Following this approach, Solanki et al. (2004) suggested that the current level of solar activity has been without precedent over the last 8 kyr. This is contradicted by a more recent analysis linking the isotope proxy records to instrumental data that identifies, for the last millennium, three periods (around AD 1785, 1600 and 1140) when solar activity was as high, or higher, than in the satellite era (Muscheler et al., 2006)… In the previous reconstructions, the 17th-century ‘Maunder Minimum’ total irradiance was 0.15 to 0.65% (irradiance change about 2.0 to 8.7 W m–2; radiative forcing about 0.36 to 1.55 W m–2) below the present-day mean (Figure 6.13b). Most of the recent studies (with the exception of Solanki and Krivova, 2003) calculate a reduction of only around 0.1% (irradiance change of the order of –1 W m–2, radiative forcing of –0.2 W m–2; section 2.7). Following these results, the magnitude of the radiative forcing used in Chapter 9 for the Maunder Minimum period is relatively small (–0.2 W m–2 relative to today).”

This is a polite scientist-to-scientist way of saying that changes in solar irradiance, both electric and magnetic cannot be held to account to explain all changes in average global temperatures.

Here’s a more succint and clear rebuttal of the concept that solar irradiation changes are responsible for recent global warming :-

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/prwaylen/GEO2200ARTICLES/Part1/Solar%20variability%20in%20late%2020th%20century.pdf

“Solar variability does not explain late-20th-century warming”

This is an old, old much discredited idea that just refuses to die. Way back in 1992, a paper showed that changes in solar irradiance alone cannot explain global warming :-

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v360/n6402/abs/360330a0.html

“Implications for global warming of intercycle solar irradiance variations” Michael E. Schlesinger & Navin Ramankutty : Nature 360, 330 – 333 (26 November 1992); doi:10.1038/360330a0

This short article by Paul E. Damon reveals that mistakes have been made by those who claim the Sun is entirely responsible for Global Warming :-

http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/DamonLaut2004.pdf

“Pattern of strange errors plagues solar activity and terrestrial climate data” (2004)

Fred Pearce does a nice overview :-

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11650

The Register mentions that Piers Corbyn will not share his so-called “new” theory, so even if he thinks he’s had a revolutionary new insight, if he’s still basing his ideas on changes in solar irradiation, he is in error. They also mention a possible reason why Richard Black went to Piers Corbyn’s presentation.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/29/corbyn

Nobody has yet explained why the BBC published the advertisement for Piers Corbyn’s presentation in an article by Paul Hudson, which has been much dismissed and chided :-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8299079.stm

“What happened to global warming?”

Let us focus on two areas where Piers Corbyn demonstrates a clear denial of the facts :-

1. Ocean acidifcation

Piers Corbyn denies that the oceans are acidifying. It would be sufficient for you to read this paper to understand the true nature of the problem :-

“Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms”
Nature 437, 681-686 (29 September 2005) : doi:10.1038/nature04095; Received 15 June 2005; Accepted 29 July 2005

What does the IPCC uber-review say ?

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch10.pdf

“10.4.2 Ocean Acidifi cation Due to Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide : Increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations lower oceanic
pH and carbonate ion concentrations, thereby decreasing the saturation state with respect to calcium carbonate (Feely et al., 2004). The main driver of these changes is the direct geochemical effect due to the addition of anthropogenic CO2 to the surface ocean (see Box 7.3). Surface ocean pH today is already 0.1 unit lower than pre-industrial values (Section 5.4.2.3). In the multimodel median shown in Figure 10.23, pH is projected to decrease by another 0.3 to 0.4 units under the IS92a scenario by 2100. This translates into a 100 to 150% increase in the concentration of H+ ions (Orr et al., 2005). Simultaneously, carbonate ion concentrations will decrease. When water is undersaturated with respect to calcium carbonate, marine organisms can no longer form calcium carbonate shells (Raven et al., 2005).”

2. Weather forecasting techniques cannot be applied to Climate projections

Piers Corbyn continues to maintain that weather forecasting techniques can be applied to projections of the Climate. He is mistaken. Weather is not the same as Climate.

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