Green Left Weekly has attacked the lone voice of reason at the Australian ABC (Chairman Maurice Newman), and demanded he be removed, all because Newman dared to suggest to ABC reporters that they might want to present both sides of the story. How scandalous!
Green Left is an Australian magazine that’s been in publication since 1990. In 2005, it apparently won an award as “Australia’s most popular political site”. How times have changed.
The story: “ABC chair pressures journo’s on climate change”
Green Left effectively claims that Newman is a nasty man who’s trying to “influence” journalists. So what does the Green Left team think it’s trying to do… err, influence journalists? The single point that sucks the moral foundations out from under Green Left is that Newman is not trying to suppress anyone, but the greenies sure are.
Only a few weeks ago, they were claiming to fight for free speech in Brunswick, Melbourne, and a few days ago, for free-speech at Sydney University. When Barkly Square Management confines them to just one stall “in a dead location”, that’s an attack on freedom of speech, but when the ABC chairman suggests reporters interview scientists on both sides of an issue, free-speech be damned: It’s time to howl “intimidation”.
Why are they so afraid of skeptical scientists getting a hearing? The evidence is errr…overwhelming, eh? Or is it just the PR that’s overwhelming?
Renfrey Clarke was once Green Left‘s Moscow correspondent (where better to learn good Green values?). He could always point out the “obvious” scientific errors skeptics apparently make, but is too busy making ad hominem slurs.
Green confusion and smell-o-rama
Clarke backs his strong claim with comments from Clive-Let’s-Suspend-Democracy-Hamilton (who calls us “conspiracy theorist deniers” while he invokes conspiracies, throws insults, and denies the evidence). What can I say? The inconsistent quotes the confused.
Clarke thinks Fran Kelly should have asked Christopher Monckton why he “lied” about being a member of the House of Lords? The answer is because Fran Kelly is too smart for that. She knew Monckton would make her look like a fool if she asked that question. He would have said what he always says, that he is a member of the House of Lords. He’s a non-voting member, a hereditary peer, as in “Lord” Christopher Monckton. He can attend, he can pose questions, but he can’t vote. And it’s a big “so-what” in any case. Is the climate changing due to man-made carbon emissions? Christopher Monckton’s biography is not the place to find the answer.
Fran Kelly probably wouldn’t ask Al Gore if he felt he deserved his Nobel Peace Prize for a science documentary full of errors and half-truths promoting an industry that he has already made millions of dollars from. Gore is not a scientist, but he does stand to become one of the first carbon billionaires. Isn’t that worth the odd grilling?
Green Left should be turning itself inside out wondering how it came to be defending billionaires and bankers, and attacking self-funded independent people who represent a vast slab of the community. What about tolerance of other views? No No No. Green Left expects taxpayers’ dollars (through “our ABC”) to be used to unquestioningly promote claims of intergovernmental committees and massive financial houses. And free speech is optional for 40+% of Australians who don’t agree with them.
The bluster rolls on and on
The last serious effort to pose an alternative, “natural” cause for global warming, Henrik Svensmark’s theory of the effects of cosmic rays on cloud formation, was disproved years ago.
Clarke doesn’t know it, but he’s probably referring to Lockwood and Frolich, who reckoned that Svensmark was wrong. But, they tracked the wrong kind of cosmic rays with the wrong temperature sets, and came to the conclusion that although cosmic rays and sunlight were very well correlated until 1980, it all fell apart after that. Svensmark had no trouble putting them straight, and his devastating graph shows what a real correlation is. (Click on the graph to read my short synopsis of the cosmic ray theory.)
Cosmic Rays debunked? I don't think so.
That Clarke thinks he can make a statement like this without reference to any scientific reviews or papers shows how unskeptical he is. And what’s the opposite of skeptical? Gullible. The “Gullible Greens” is a title that will stick for years to come as the Green movement gets exposed for being an unwitting tool of big banks and big bureaucracy. Huge banking institutions soak in the false free market of “carbon credits”, where no real commodity is traded back and forward and then “sold” to consumers who are forced to pay for something they would never give a cent for in a real market. These meaningless, unverifiable permits to air over China that-might-have-more-carbon-in-it is the very antithesis of a free market. But, flaky uneconomic Greens can’t tell the difference between a free market and a fake one.
Play the confound-it card
Any halfwit can claim to blow away an argument by association with dubious other unrelated topics. And the Greens are notoriously bad at sticking to a topic. They don’t just go outside the room, across the road, and out of their way to drag in the mud, they resort to time travel to find the most irrelevant dirt they can dig up.
Where does demanding “balance” in the reporting of science lead? To requiring that evolution be balanced with creationism, modern medicine with leech therapy, and astronomy with the signs of the zodiac?
See, we can do that too. We can match them for glorious scientific scandal after scandal:
Where does following a consensus get us? It slows progress and kills people. The “consensus” once told us that human-powered flight was impossible, that continents couldn’t drift, that bacteria couldn’t cause stomach ulcers, and that surgeons didn’t need to wash their hands. The “consensus” killed tens of thousands of women in their prime, stealing mothers away from newborn babies, and continued to do so even after one doctor bucked the trend and published empirical evidence detailing the hundreds of lives he had saved…
But, I’m not just matching them with irrelevant blather. I’m asking questions about how we resolve a scientific question, and my examples are directly relevant to logic and reason. I’ve used a story from 150 years ago, but it’s timelessly correct. Their line of thought about “whether to write both sides of the story” is not about science, but about censorship.
The Green Faith depends on suppression; it can’t survive open discussion
Posts like Clarke’s tell us why the Greens are destined to always be a minor party. Rather than consult widely, they suppress and insult a large part of the voting population. They embarrass themselves trying to crush a community movement that’s mostly made of volunteers. Then, when they do speak “science”, they trip over themselves to show how unscientific they are, making baseless assertions and logical errors, and spouting things that are simply wrong.
They “reason” from the Stone Age, and wonder why they’re destined to be sidelined in the Space Age.
Other Articles Tagged Clive Hamilton BTW…
Demanding equal time for climate denier disinformation is similar to demanding equal time for creationism. It’s no coincidence that people who deny human-caused global warming often turn out to deny evolution too.
[Glen Beck says when Arguing with Idiots, the only thing that beats them is the truth, but what if they are not smart enough to understand they are wrong? substanti-whatever has been held in moderated “indefinitely” for another comment on another thread. I explained why this reasoning above was fallacious… ah — right above in the post. He needs to apologize and for throwing baseless names, and convince me he’s learnt to reason (with manners) overnight. Thanks for the mud throwing confounder. We don’t discuss “creationism” here, it has nothing to do with the climate.–JN]
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Since yesterday was Easter
Ecclesiastes 10:2
A wise man’s heart is at his right hand; but a fool’s heart at his left.
I guess King Solomon commented on fools on the Left a few thousand years ago.
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What utter nonsense substanti8 ! You would love to believe that because then you can continue your self deception. Get a life and do some of your own thinking. Research, question and be sceptical. Because if you don’t you’ll be left with the dogma and perceived wisdom you so obviously favour.
I, like many of my co-sceptics, am a radical atheist, socialist who is amazed by the wonder of evolution. All I want to see is the truth and the truth or otherwise of AGW is not affected by my or your beliefs.
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Substanti8: Where do you draw the line between denier disinformation and legitimate scientific disagreement? I desperately need to know, since I want to avoid being executed for treason. Is it OK to say that 80% of global warming is anthropogenic? How about 60? Or 40? Or…20?
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substanti8: I am a creationist, a believer in the free market and an AGW sceptic, which makes me a contrarian but I try to think for myself and not merely follow the consensus.
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substandardi8~ Please cite some of this ‘denier disinformation’ you mention. Examples plus links, if you please.
And if you cannot, go pound sand.
I am betting you cannot.
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I know this is OT but I have a question…Does or has anyone figuired the “total Volume” of our atmosphere??? You know from the ground up!
Richard S. Courtney, would you happen to know??? If this figuire is out there, I would appreciate your response…
Keep goin’ after them, Joanne!!!
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For those from the Green Left and others who intone the “science is settled” and “overwhelming consensus” mantras, at least have a look at the following website “UN Scientists Speak Out”.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprints/un_scientists_speakout_pdf
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Prophetic words indeed ! From Svensmark’s putting Lockwood and Frolich straight, in 2007
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[…] Jo Nova picks up on the green lefts frothing at the mouth over Maurice Newman’s reasonable request for the ABC to try some impartiality in reporting. The left is acting like the ABC is Gollum’s ring! When in reality the ABC should be there to reflect the opinions of all taxpaying Australians. […]
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i am constantly amazed that the greens still support agw when there is so much evidence to show that the world is acting very normally. what is even more surprising is that they are actively encouraging the financial houses to make even more money. aren’t these the same people who demonstrate against the g8 and g20? who hate globalisation? inconsistent and being manipulated.
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[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by d l. d l said: @Life0Riley GreenLeft, 3000 years behind the scientific times #global warming #climate change http://bit.ly/dj9Ihh […]
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I don’t understand,
If the watermelons want to reduce carbon emissions – why don’t they move to North korea – their carbon footprint is really low. They’d love it over there – supression of views contrary to the manufactured consensus etc etc.
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I think you are a bit unfair in presuming that the present-day socialist oriented Green movement is the entire Green movement for all time. There are decentralized Green elements all over the place with a wide range of beliefs, it merely happens to be that the centralized socialist elements are the loudest and most easily identified.
We all feel confident that the global temperature is not about to soar upwards as the IPCC doomsayers predict. Once the Green constituents see that their leaders have screwed up badly it will diffuse and shuffle for a while before gathering together along different lines (hopefully something more positive, gotta hope for something).
For example, there has been a lot of work done on improving building efficiency with regards to heat and light. This work is still valuable even without a CO2 disaster because the fossil fuels are slowly going up in price and we are steadily constructing more buildings. The real problem is that people seem to think that only a CO2 disaster can justify this kind of work… that’s something they will just have to get over when the CO2 disaster persistently fails to show up.
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Substanti8~ I agree, Greenpeace is a Perfect example of disinformation!
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Lest we forget that scientists and educators are paid by politicians. They do not want a rocking boat BUT when real knowledge and science is surpressed, then the truth gets distorted as well.
I did the most foolish thing of my life and looked for the truth of how and why we are created. I found a good majority of science is tainted to fit into keeping our society complacent and in the dark.
The majority of science we know is not truthful and will defend this by being government protected along with religion.
Huge sections of science is missing and many theories are incredibly inadequite to fill the space.
Religion is good for morals and values but little else.
There is truth out there but you will not find it in any article or website as it is being suppressed.
Our planet has made some amazingly complex evolutionary systems to create the balance of life we see today.
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substanti8 @ #12:
Re:
Thankyou for the helpful word search on “Climate Change”.
None of these proves that anthropogenic CO2 emmissions are causing it ‘though.
Indeed, if the computer models are correct, they have pretty much disproved it.
Where is the lower tropospheric Hotspot ?
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I must stop reading this Green tripe … it just gets me riled up with it’s blatant, blinkered and patronising stupidity. I am sure it is not good for the blood pressure.
I see El Nino kept the UAH temps high for March… no doubt there will be another wave of catastophism posted after 3 months of highish anomolies. Never mind the lack of solar activity and El nino conditions… I am sure it is all to do with a surge in CO2 emissions. So who was the culprit?
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How about a debate on the ABC between the people who said “The writers show that rising concentration of CO2 should result in the cooling of climate“and on the other side these people who said “A lazy Sun launches iceberg armadas“.
For such a debate you would skip the normal presenters and get someone who said something neutral like “The global Earth is not too green” to moderate.
Who cares what the tree starvers want to watch?
Lance Pidgeon
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Tel @ 16. In general I agree with you and this is what I cannot understand with the “average enviromentalist”. Why don’t they come out and condemn the extremism of elements of the Green movement? Also why can they not see that their cause has to a large degree been highjacked by the politicians and money men ? I think what has happened in recent months has put their cause back 15+ yrs. I am not a member of any green party or organisation. I don’t agree with the AGW theory but I do agree with some of the things environmental groups have done and pushed for.
( Recycling , cleaning up rivers and lakes , water conservation , searching for economic alternative energy sources etc etc )
Last night ( after reading Jo’s thread on Greenpeace ) I was trying think of the last positive thing to come out of Greenpeace dispite the massive funding it attracts –I could not think of one thing.
In short I think the green movement is rapidly losing the ” average Joe public” support, because it has allowed the extreme elements to run riot.
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Denny: The volume of the atmosphere is a problem because you can’t find a definite upper boundary.
The mass is easy though. Multiply the surface area of the earth by the average pressure at the surface (1013.25hPa). A Pascal is a Newton/square meter. The mass of atmosphere above every square meter is a little more than 10 tonnes.(10,000 kilograms). With a radius of roughly 6400km the area of the Earth is about 5.15 x 10E8 sq Km or 5.15 x 10^14 sq m for a mass of about 5.2 x 10^18 kilograms.
Nice to see you picked up on the “banksters”, Jo.
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To Editor:
A formal debate forum, in which I participated, would simply remove any sentences that contained disparagement of an opponent. Perhaps that could be done with sentences that contain the pejorative, ‘denier’.
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Sean, I agree. leaving some of the offending post is valuable as proof of the offense. Removing the post entirely leaves replies hanging with no offending original left to refer to.
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Morning All.
It seems that the Green Left believe that everyone has the right to THEIR opinion!
As Mr. Voltaire never said:
“I disagree with what you say, and will fight to the death against your right to say it.”
Cheers,
Speedy.
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Hmmm speedy… I am not so sure I would be as keen as Voltaire to throw my life down to protect Green Left’s right to rant incomprehensibly, but then I am a cynical (realistic?) bastard at heart.
I love the damage control that has been going on at Greenpeace (see link in previous thread). The Greenpeace web guy is in overdrive trying to tone down the interpretations of what Gene said, which were quite clearly a call to arms (metaphorically speaking).
But I doubt this Greenpeace PR fiasco will make the evening news on any Aussie channel as we are all to PC for that. No doubt there is a baby elephant that needs more news coverage somewhere…
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Jo @ 1 (comment):
I am not sure that I agree with Glenn Beck, unless it is to an audience that can discern the truth, of course. I thought the saying about arguing with fools went something like this:
Then there is always the danger Mark Twain (attributed) highlighted:
Wise words these…
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Bulldust
Voltaire appreciated that the right to free speech ceases to be a right when it is granted selectively. In defending the ranting greens, we are really supporting a society that tolerates a divergence of opinion. The fly in the ointment here is when you defend the rights of someone who is intent on removing yours…
Bumped into a pan-handler from Greenpeace at lunchtime. My largesse did not extend to financial support, but I did remind him of yesterday’s web page.
Cheers,
Speedy
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Denny:
At #7 you as me:
Your question needs to be more specific because it is not clear what you mean by “our atmosphere”? Are you thinking of the troposphere or the total volume of the troposphere, stratosphere and thermosphere?
If you want that total volume then the result will depend on where you define the top of the thermosphere to be.
A simple estimate of the tropospheric volume is as follows, but it uses several assumptions and probably has an error of about +/- 10%.
Volume of the Earth.
(4 pi(6378.15)^3) /3 = 10.8687 x 10^20 m^3
Radius from the centre of the Earth to the top of the troposphere (this value has large error and is an average):
= 6378.15 + 16 = 6394.15 km
Volume to the top of the troposphere.
(4 pi(6394.15)^3) /3 = 10.9506 x 10^20 m^3
Volume of the troposphere.
(10.9506 – 10.8687) x 10^20 m^3 = 8.14 x 10^18 m^3
But this estimate assumes the density of the air is constant throughout its volume and it is not (the density is not constant as it decreases rapidly with height; it is 1.225 kg/m^3 at the Earth’s surface and 0.1654 kg/m^3 at the average altitude of the top of the troposphere, ~16 km).
I hope this helps.
Richard
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One thing for sure is that most of us underestimate how huge our atmosphere actually is – when they say we produce so many million tons of CO2 it’s just a drop in the ocean of our atmosphere.
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Janama: @ #29
“One thing for sure is that most of us underestimate how huge our atmosphere actually is – when they say we produce so many million tons of CO2 it’s just a drop in the ocean of our atmosphere.”
Hence the persistent use of the number 380 ppmv instead of 0.038% CO2 by volume.
It’s a widely known advertising ploy to exaggerate some property of an object.
I used to sell Hi Fi decades ago (while my peers drove taxis when the mining busts occurred) and the technique works either ways – reduction of something to, say a daily cost in dollars, “Sir, if you buy this now then it will only cost you $1 per day, half a sandwich” type of argument, or if you wish to make the amplifier output of the Hi Fi you are selling sound impressive you could discribe its output as “peak Music power output” which is the RMS output multiplied by 4, Music out put being x 2, and that again by 2 to yield the peak music, soa 20 watt RMS b Class amplifier would produce 40 watts music and 80 watts peak music. Technically correct but only applies to transients in the output. 20 watts RMS is the steady output over an 8 ohm resistive load. You can cheat even further by doubling everything again to 160 watts peak music output into 4 ohms load.
So this why they either show temperature anomalies to exaggerate the miniscule fluctuations in the signal, or use large numbers to emphasise something which is miniscule.
It’s why most industry geologists dismiss AGW as rubbish because they have to make their theories work in real life. Academics don’t, all they have to do is impress their peers, but when the pseudo-intellectuals needs to “sell” the lumpen prols an idea, then the techniques I briefly discussed above, become crucial.
Remember that the anthropogenic proportion is roughly 3% of the total CO2 emissions, and probably even lower as it is becoming clearer that the earth is exuding methane and CO2 via its pervasive fractures produced by the deep hot biosphere underneath us. The evidence is there, but the mainstream science, institutionalised as it is, rejects it.
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O/T but the UK election is set for May 6:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/7028132/uk-election-set-for-may-6-brown/
I wonder if the climate debate will feature in the campaigns at all.
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Apologies:
I missed out two commas, so it’s “exuding methane and CO2, via its pervasive fractures, produced by the deep hot biosphere”
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Louis Hissink @ 30:
Did a quick Google and this decent summary popped up:
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_1.shtml
I wonder why people refer to one third as “200% less”… to my mind 200% less than a value would yield negative 100% the original value … i.e. 1 – 2 = -1. Apart from that minor gripe I think the discussion provides a balanced view on the uncertainty of past data relating to CO2 and the complexity of modelling the natural systems.
This refreshing emphasis on uncertainty is something that is sadly lacking in IPCC documents where the doubt is hidden by weasel-words such as “likely” and “very likely”, leaving the reader in the dark as to the actual levels of uncertainty.
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Scientists have created an arrogance of science because we are man and high in the food chain order.
Darwins theory is of mans evolution. This is incorrect. Our planet evolved changing species and diversifying more chemical changes and higher complex organized plant and animal life diversified.
Being an arrogant species, we missed a great deal of science and have called science settled even though many areas of science is incorrect. We have individualized many areas without incorporating their interactions in other areas.
Rotation of an orb is a highly complex action. In our arrogance science believes suns and planets are created to rotate forever. Not thinking that Planets and suns are infused with energy and we are benefiting from the slow leaching of this rotational energy. In doing so, the planet slows. Not the moon slows the planet that is the current theory. This action can also change densities.
We have gravity and atmospheric pressure exerting on all of us. Why are we not pools of chemicals with all this force pushing on us?
Rotational energy is the counter balance that allows gases and vapours to rise.
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it also explains why the other 6 people apart from a grazier at my table at the Monckton debate in Brisbane were all geologists 😉
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What is my point?
We made science and religion to fit into the homo sapien world with no regard that our planet was here long before us and it has achieved some amazing feats of interactive cooperation of science to evolve and change.
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Well they do. You might remember David Bellamy from BBC television. He was forcibly “retired” by the BBC because he didn’t support their AGW agenda but he is no less of an environmentalist than he ever was. He also tried to force the UK government to offer a referendum on joining the EU, he failed but don’t blame the guy for not trying.
Thing is, an awful lot of people will sit back and see something like that happen and just shrug and feel helpless. They won’t even go out and raise awareness about the sort of thuggery that is going on out there. The consequence is that the opinions of the noisy handful are the only opinions visible… and that’s where we stand right now.
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It would be interesting to see a list of prominent environmentalists that are sceptical of AGW hypotheses or the approach to dealing with climate change. Ones that spring immediately to mind are the likes of Prof David Bellamy, Peter Taylor (of Chill fame), Bjorn Lomborg*, and former Greenpeace mover and shaker and nuclear power supporter Patrick Moore.
* Yes I realise Bjorn agrees with the basic AGW hypothesis, but he argues vehemently against CO2 taxes and ETS solutions, and is therefore notable.
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The arrogant ignorance of the comments of the sycophant ALP supporters beggars belief. No doubt since Saint Rudd was elected there is no more poverty, no more recessions, the planet is saved, no more worries – groceries are cheaper, petrol prices are lower, utility prices are lower, the ETS is not a tax and all other taxes and interest rates will not go up – all due to Kev and Swannie…just like they promised. Welcome to the banana republic of Australia where ignorance, apathy and self promotion reign supreme over the National interest.
Rudd is PM – Australians all let us rejoice…yeah right!!!
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Louis, I’v observed that what you said is true Geologists tend to be skeptical, along with Meteorologists, and several other specialties and engineers in many fields. The fields that are always considering long term observations and or real-time effects of their decisions (as in will the bridge stay up)
The fields promoting AGW tend to be very deep explorers of very short term systems (Biology, etc.)
Maybe we should push for an idea that the “earth sciences group” be divided into two groups namely Gaia Sciences and Earth sciences using AGW as the deciding factor? That should help with the claims of “consensus”.
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Seriously Tel, you don’t really fall for that “Bellamy forcibly retired” rubbish do you? You can find your own link but Bellamy’s conversion to skepticism came years after his last BBC tv efforts.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/04/climate-change-scepticism-climate-change
“David Bellamy – Television presenter
Key claim
Has denounced global warming as “popycock” and “lies” and said he was stopped from making TV programmes because of his views on climate change.
Could it be true?
Bellamy stopped making programmes in 1994 but his first sceptical public statement about climate change was in 2004.”
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MarkD @40:
Burt Rutan recently wrote on Climate Change:
Full PDF
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Matt B:
At #42 you assert:
Nonsense! David Bellamy and I each stood on a public plarform at a meeting in 2001 when we each opposed AGW.
2001 was before 2004. And long before then the BBC did drop him from programmes because he refused to toe the AGW line. Ask him yourself.
Please go to the source and not some smear blog when seeking information concerning any climate realist.
Richard
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From post #1,
That was all you can come up with as your ahem….. counterpoint?
bwahahahahahahahaha!
Try making a real counterpoint and drop this trolling baloney.
Is it no wonder why many AGW believers fall apart so easily when presented with a different viewpoint on the topic that they suddenly can not reply rationally?
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Mike Borgelt: Post 21,
Mike, thanks and I was “afraid” you would state that! I thought that this interpretation would be in question as the effects of atmosphere at the top, where do they stop?? Nobody knows this…or should this be a ????
Richard S. Courtney: Post 28,
Hi Mr. Courtney and thank you for your response. My mindset is on the right track because I suspected this “issue”, about where the troposphere ends, is not an “absolute”! It’s a matter of Perspective…I’m seeing our atmosphere ends where the effect of climate within the atmosphere “ceases” to occur. The “vaccum” is prevelent and gas molecules are sparse but equal density in a cubic meter of space. To me the atmosphere starts at the ground. I was hoping that this issue had been determined by now and maybe it has. Yes, I also concurr with you Mr. Courtney that you would still have to take an “average” since the ground isn’t “perfectly” round; mountains,area’s below sea level, etc…In conclusion, I was hoping to receive the “average” volume of atmosphere.
What I would like to present is the “volumic proportion” of the Greenhouse Gases in relation to the “total Volume” of the atmosphere. Your numbers look reseasonable in your post Mr. Courtney and thanks for your input…I always give credence towards your knowledge…I think presenting such a relationship would make one, let’s say, rather “Humble”…Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Courtney???
The thing that upsets me is the “Alarmists” use tonage of Man-made CO2 in their responses…I think if this was translated into volume porportions, it would make “their” figure very small…The word “tonage” is a strong word in my mind’s eye…But put it in a “real” proportion then that discredits this word in its context of use…
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Greenies never like to have a debate. Like all extreme left and right wing lunatics they prefer to use propaganda and lies.
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since when was The Guardian a smear blog?
Here is an interview from November 21 2000:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/forum/1023503.stm
“David Bellamy
Certainly the burning of fossil fuels, the drainage of wetlands, the felling of forest and the erosion of soil is all affecting the earth’s temperature. The earth is in a very sick state and therefore 30-year storms when they come cause havoc. We must also remember that the poor people of the world are affected much more than the rich people. We may lose property, they lose their lives and their livelihoods.”
and here is a good one… “David Bellamy:
I think there is a problem of the Tower of Babel. I worry when I read on Internet sites codswallop and downright lies. How do, especially young people, make the decision as to who to listen to. Just think of the problem if Adolf Hitler had had the Internet? I am not a Luddite but use with great care.”
wow even a Flannery fan “David Bellamy:
You probably are a better expert than I on web sites. Contact your local Friends of the Earth web site, they usually give good basic common sense. Or if you want to read a book, try Tim Flannery’s the Future Eaters.”
So Richard – I can give pro-AGW quotes from late 2000, vs your word in 2001, and vs one of the UK’s top newspapers… hmmm.
And here he is in 2002 giving reasons he is not on TV anymore… relating to running against John Major in the election “In 1997, he stood unsuccessfully against incumbent Prime Minister John Major for the anti-European Union Referendum Party. Bellamy credits this campaign with the decline in his career as a popular celebrity and television personality, saying in 2002::”In some ways it was probably the most stupid thing I ever did because I’m sure that if I have been banned from television, that’s why. I used to be on Blue Peter and all those things, regularly, and it all, pffffft, stopped.”::(The Guardian)” (wikipedia)
So there – in 2002 Bellamy does not blame his AGW position for not being on TV any more…
Direct Quote from Bellamy… “Then, when temperatures took an upward swing in the 1980s, the scaremongers changed their tune. Global warming was the new imminent catastrophe.” from the Times… but cheeky bugger said THIS in 1989, In his foreword to the 1989 book The Greenhouse Effect[3] : (ie he WAS one of the scaremongers).
“The profligate demands of humankind are causing far reaching changes to the atmosphere of planet Earth, of this there is no doubt. Earth’s temperature is showing an upward swing, the so-called greenhouse effect, now a subject of international concern. The greenhouse effect may melt the glaciers and ice caps of the world causing the sea to rise and flood many of our great cities and much of our best farmland.”
Here is another nice summary: http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2008/11/08/david-bellamy-victim-but-of-who/
it makes not an iota of difference to the science, of course, but surely a real skeptic like Tel or Richard would be more skeptical about Bellamy’s inconsistent claims.
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Lol I see Tel has been down this road before now I read on in Greenfyre.
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Matt B:
You ask me:
I think you will find that was 5 May 1821.
Richard
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Yes and I took the trouble to look up a TV show database such as here:
http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/individual/3871?view=credit
You might note that the Greenfyre argument that Bellamy’s career “tanked” in 1994 does not match up with the database showing multiple appearances in 1994, a few in 1995 and quite a lot in 1996 and steady appearances in following years, but what I have learned is that you can never take stuff like Greenfyre on face value. They twist and turn any which way to suit their needs, with no regard for logic, reason or even basic honesty.
When I tried to point out as much, I got more slippery excuses.
As pointed out in the above TV database, this is crap, and quite frankly, anyone could look that up with a very small spark of interest in fact checking.
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Tel “steady appearances in following years” kinda kills Bellamy’s entire bogus argument wouldn’t you say? Can’t have it both ways. I’m pretty sure the 1994 comment is Bellamy’s.
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Bernd Felsche: @ 43
April 6th, 2010 at 11:26 pm edit
Full PDF
Thanks Bernd! the PDF is great as are the other things he has links to:
http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm
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Mark D,
Rutan is on to something. AGW pushers never have to live with the consequences of their mistakes. I sure wish I could do that. Instead I have to get my job done right because no one will pay me for getting it wrong.
I wonder how many in the UN, the IPCC, CRU, Greenpeace and a whole lot of others could hold down an honest job as engineers, scientists, computer programmers or…you name it.
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Bulldust @ #33
You won’t find many, if any in fact, references to the prodigious output of CH4 and CO2 from the earth’s crust on the internet – I based my comment on Tommy Gold’s idea and the Russian-Ukrainian theory of abiotic oil.
It is a CO2 source that is unsatisfactorily accounted for in the carbon cycle model of Kevin Trenberth.
You will also find that historical peak atmospheric CO2 levels would coincide with kimberlite eruptions and associated mass species extinctions, though the correlation is somewhat bizarre as the geological time scale has been inadvertenly stretched into an almost incomprehensibly slow motion notion – and a pseduo-intellectual could have come up with it.
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Roy Hogue @ #54
Precisely what Thomas Sowell wrote in his book “Intellectuals and Society” – which makes AGW purely an intellectual contrivance, not a physical fact.
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Errata post #55 and “only” a pseudo-……
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Matt B:
At #42 you said:
At #44 I pointed out that this was not true, saying:
Then, at #48, you refused to withdraw saying you were quoting the Guardian and Greenfyre. And you asserted that Bellamy must have opposed AGW because Flannery supported him.
Now, it is a fact that Bellamy spoke against AGW in a public meeting in 2001 which is before 2004. I know it is a fact because I was there and I heard him.
Hence, an assertion that Bellamy did not speak against AGW in public before 2004 is either an error or a lie. And the falsehood is not metamorphosed into being a fact by its being promoted by the Guardian, Greenfyre, Flannery, you, or anybody else.
So, Bellamy did speak against AGW years before 2004. Hence, it is wrong to assume that those who say he did not are correct when they say he supported AGW in 1994: providers of one falsehood often support it by providing an additional falsehood.
And there is clear reason why the Guardian, Greenfyre and Flannery want to misrepresnt Bellamy’s views in 1994. It is a matter of record that the BBC dumped Bellamy when his TV programmes were very popular. And the BBC dumped him because he refused to toe the BBC line on AGW. This is clear evidence of the BBC’s bias on AGW.
The likes of you, the Guardian, Greenfyre and Flannery do not want that evidence widely known.
But everyone who examines the BBC reporting of AGW soon discovers that the BBC is the single main provider of pro-AGW propoganda to the masses world-wide.
Richard
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Richard I have provided a direct quote from Bellamy from 2002 that attributes his lack of TV appearances to things other than AGW skepticism. So regardless of when he became a sceptic (which is after November 2000 as per other direct quotes above) he did not blame this until well after the fact. I do wonder if you are confusing skepticism with opposition to wind farms – with Bellamy public about this much earlier. I don’t know, and I don’t dispute your claims.
I do, however, believe Bellamy’s 2002 statements about the cause of the end of his TV career.
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Sadly the contact form on Bellamy’s website is broken so I can’t just ask him myself. http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com/page2.htm
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Richard: “And you asserted that Bellamy must have opposed AGW because Flannery supported him”
To coin a Bellamyism… POPPYCOCK! I did nothing of the sort. (I also think you meant “must have supported”.
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From where?
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You;re right – I can only find a 1996 reference from Bellamy (see below)
So note I’ve now provided a 2008 quote from Bellamy stating it was his 1996 opposition to wind farms that caused the division with the BBC. Note I’ve provided a November 2000 quote from Bellamy stating his support for the AGW hypothesis in general (quite different from opposition to wind farms as I tend to agree with that). Note I’ve provided another quote from Bellamy stating his TV career ended as he ran against John Major in a 1997 election.
“It was in 1996 that I criticised wind farms while appearing on children’s program Blue Peter, and I also had an article published in which I described global warming as poppycock. The truth is, I didn’t think wind farms were an effective means of alternative energy, so I said so. Back then, at the BBC you had to toe the line, and I wasn’t doing that.
At that point, I was still making loads of TV programs and I was enjoying it greatly. Then I suddenly found I was sending in ideas for TV shows and they weren’t getting taken up.”
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Also Tel you may wish to revisit your tv website: http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/individual/3871?view=credit
“Disneytime: Summer Disneytime (1998)” is his only BBC appearance since 1994 – with all the rest on ITV or Channel 4 or Channel 5.
So to be honest he had a MASSIVE BBC career for 20 odd years, which ended in 1994, as accurately reported in Greenfyre.
And bear in mind that as a 37 year old former Pom I was brought up on Bellamy and am a huge fan and would gush like a schoolkid given the chance to meet him.
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INterestingly your TV site does not mention his Blue Peter appearances. so I’m not claiming it is 100% accurate.
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Bellamy’s disagreement was with the BBC, and the fact that he was able to find work elsewhere demonstrates Greenfyre’s comment “his career tanked in 1994” to be complete rubbish, it certainly does not demonstrate that the BBC treated him decently. Exactly when the BBC turned against him, why they did and how this exhibited itself is more difficult to pinpoint. You might have noticed that corrupt people tend not to take out full page newspaper adverts documenting their activities.
Frankly, if Bellamy claims that he sensed a significant change in their treatment toward him then I’m inclined to take him at his word unless someone can produce verifiable evidence otherwise. The fact that Greenfyre cannot give a simple straight answer as to what evidence he has for the “career tanked in 1994” claim even when documented evidence indicates otherwise makes me rather distrustful. Seeing Richard claim to have been there in 2001 hearing Bellamy speak against AGW makes me even less inclined to believe Greenfyre. If Richard could produce some third-party documentation of the 2001 meeting then I’d be quite confident on the matter…
This is what I find time and again with AGW supporters — things that just don’t add up when you do a bit of fact checking.
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I can only say
Speedy for PM!
You’re a genius, mate.
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Actually Tel I’ve not disagreed with Richard… and I’ve taken his advice and asked the man himself… indirectly due to non working website contact form but will see how we go. Seriously if you take Richard’s word over Bellamy’s though I find it a bit strange. BBC ends in 1994, Richard claims 2001 he was skeptical, I show in late 2000 he was not, so it is 7 years minimum, with quote after quote of Bellamy saying it was not about AGW, until recently he starts to say it. Maybe someone has told him why it was in recent years, and in the past when he guessed it was something else it was wrong.
Now Tel I’ll simplify things… he last worked for the BBC other than a one-off in 1994 – TRUE (source Tel’s TV website).
He stated in 2000 “David Bellamy
Certainly the burning of fossil fuels, the drainage of wetlands, the felling of forest and the erosion of soil is all affecting the earth’s temperature. The earth is in a very sick state and therefore 30-year storms when they come cause havoc. We must also remember that the poor people of the world are affected much more than the rich people. We may lose property, they lose their lives and their livelihoods.””
So that is 6 YEARS AFTER BBC RELATIONSHIP ENDS and Bellamy is STILL A WARMIST.
You simply cannot argue with that, sorry. Greenfyre, at most, is 3 years out but I guess they didn;t have Richard’s 1st hand account, just what is on public record.
That is what I find time and time again with “skeptics”… time and time again they continue to tell you things don’t add up, even when it is spelled out clear as daylight.
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Tel:
At #66 you say:
OK. I will email the organiser of that meeting.
Richard
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Friends:
I have heard from the organiser of the event in Saddleworth, Yorkshire.
She confirms my memory but tells me that the event was covered by a local newspaper, The Oldham Chronicle.
I am trying to get the newpaper report as that would be the requested “documentary evidence”.
Richard
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[…] […]
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FYI the documentary evidence, while it could confirm Richard’s version of events (which I don’t doubt), still don;t change the fact that in November 2000 I have provided a quote… so maybe he was still publicly in the closet who knows. So we have Tel’s tv website backing up the BBC 1994 claim, and a 200 quote showing him to be a public warmist…. so I’m pretty comfortable that the contemporary Bellamy version of “dumped by ABC due to AGW comments” does not stand up to investigation. Withh Greenfyre maybe being a bit late with 2004 based on Richard’s event that is not on the easily available record.
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Could I ask why this really small issue is so consuming?
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Because Tel in 37 said “Well they do. You might remember David Bellamy from BBC television. He was forcibly “retired” by the BBC because he didn’t support their AGW agenda”. And it is simply not true according to any source of information available to myself and Tel.
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MattB
How about getting back to some insightful and humorous comments as opposed to the trivial nitpicking you have adopted over the last few weeks.
You may in fact be able to assist me. I am having great difficulty in finding non tree ring proxies from the NH, excluding Europe and Greenland, and SH that support the idea that the MWP was only a regional event. If you can point me to this evidence it would be appreciated.
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You know what Allen… that sounds a bit nit-picky to me.
If a discussion about evidence and truth is nitpicky to you, then I can’t do much about that sorry:)
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Matt
The only person who knows the truth is Bellamy. You will not accept him at his word but rely on conjecture from partisan third parties.
Between the vagaries of the English language, context and quote mining it is easy to assume a position and defend it to the death. To debate a trivial issue that will remain unresolved seems pointless to me but if it works for you fine.
BTW I am serious about the MWP any info would be appreciated.
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No it does not back your claim from #44 above, quite the contrary, your claim was:
… now the sands shift around and somehow we seem to be pretending that someone’s career is automatically over if they don’t work for the BBC. Don’t think anyone is impressed by trickiness when the entire details are spelled out for for reference above.
The man’s career didn’t stop in an afternoon. There wasn’t a giant red button that got pushed for one reason and one reason only. Quite likely there were a bunch of reasons why the BBC pushed him out and one of them was AGW skepticism, another was windmill skepticism and another was being a Euro-skeptic and believer in Democracy. Any one of those reasons still shows outrageous bias on the part of the BBC — which is the whole point.
When I said “retired” it was deliberately in quotes because the BBC treated him as if he was retiring while he was busy looking for work elsewhere. It was an attempt to be ironic which in retrospect I apologize for. I did not put an exact date on my comment because picking an exact date for such events is imprecise at the best of times.
As for his supposedly sudden conversion in 2004, here’s a quote from 2000 that is decidedly borderline:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/forum/1023503.stm
It makes perfect sense that there was not one morning when Bellamy suddenly woke up skeptical in 2004 but he had made a gradual transition. However, even the above comment would be enough to set off alarm bells in a true-believer AGW supporter. He was speaking out about wind farms by at least 2003:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/lancashire/3164230.stm
And he was pro-referendum sometime before 2001:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/news/vote2001/hi/english/features/newsid_1362000/1362285.stm
Who knows exactly who at the BBC got cranky and exactly how they exerted their influence? Who knows how many offhand comments might has raised their suspicions that Bellamy wasn’t a true believer?
Given that the details of the man’s life are not available for general scrutiny I’d say that events around 2000 are at least mostly consistent with Bellamy’s claims. At any rate much more consistent that the blunt attempts to discredit him coming from Greenfyre and the Guardian.
And after all this time we still don’t have any source for the “career tanked in 1994” claim either.
And maybe it’s not a big issue but I do find it amazingly difficult to get a straight answer out of any AGW supporter, on any issue, big or small. Always there is sidestepping, ducking and weaving and as we see here, shifting sands of claims that turn into whatever might be convenient at the time.
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Tel, I appreciate this goal and your efforts. My question wasn’t trying to be rude, I guess I was concerned that you’d save your energy for the next JM or Brendan H or Sapherica 🙂
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Sorry Tel but I’m going to have to call you up on “sidestepping, ducking and weaving and as we see here, shifting sands of claims that turn into whatever might be convenient at the time.”
The ONLY shifting sands are in fact my preparedness to look at the available information, upon which you and I both base our claims, and happily move from the 1994 – 2004 claims to say 1994 – 2001.
You quote “my claim” in #44… however that is clearly a quote from The Guardian (actaully I can see you’ve just trusted Richard’s claim that it was my claim in #42 so maybe you can blame him for crediting me with the Guardian’s writing) and I’ve happily moved from that based upon what you’ve brought to the table… the place I’ve ended up is where what you’ve brought to the table takes us… the place you have ended up is not based on anything. Heck I’m not even arguing with Richard’s 2001 claim. I’m not even arguing with Bellamy’s claims to have spoken out against windfarms on Blue Peter (a show I watched for about 10 years) in the mid-1990s – but opposition to wind farms is completely different to AGW skepticism – and I give you Prof Barry Brook as a prominent warmist who is essential anti-wind farm in that they are expensive and don’t provide any real energy solutions.
As for
This whole issue is about Bellamy and the BBC… as for your most recent “we still don’t have any source for the “career tanked in 1994″ claim”… well the source is YOUR referenced TV website which quite clearly shows the end of a long and consistent relationship with the BBC in 1994, which is what Bellamy now blames on his AGW stance.
Shifting sands from me? seriously Tel I don’t expect better from many folks on here, but I do from you.
“sidestepping, ducking and weaving and as we see here, shifting sands of claims that turn into whatever might be convenient at the time.” is certainly a strange way to describe “moving from a previously held position based on the evidence brought to the table by another which upon examination appears to be true”.
And Mark D – the issue is now important not because of Bellamy, but because someone is having the cheek to tell ME that I’m not interested in evidence and that I’m ducking and weaving. If I was Richard I’d be shrieking APOLOGISE NOW! 😉
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Allen, I’ve never done a detailed investigation in to the MWP sorry.
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Sorry Matt, I did get the impression that you were standing by the “Bellamy stopped making programmes in 1994” claim but I’m glad to see you have abandoned that one. We can both agree that the Guardian was completely wrong on that particular score.
You still seem to be under the impression that working for the BBC is the only way to make a career in television, and I’ll disagree with you, but I guess it’s a matter of opinion that cannot be settled by measurement. I happen to also believe that anyone making a claim like “career tanked” who was really only talking about one particular employer should also be specific and mention that they are only talking about one particular employer. That’s just in the interests of communication — and not having people haul them up and point out they are wrong.
Yes, we also seem to disagree over the exact details of the way in which the BBC shows prejudice on politically correct issues, but we agree that the BBC does show prejudice and that speaking out of school on some issues can invoke repercussions. I would say the BBC are not the only one, and this is a common trait of government departments and government funded enterprise — they are funded in return for favours.
This in itself is enough to explain why many environmentalists would not speak out against their crowd — they are not brave enough to handle the repercussions. As Kevin Rudd says, I make no apologies for speaking my mind on such matters because I believe that speaking openly is one of the foundations of rationality. Being able to speak openly is what makes our society better than theocratic intolerance, or socialist party groupthink that exists in other societies. If we lose that, we lose the most valuable thing we have.
Finally, the BBC treatment of Bellamy is not an isolated incident. AGW advocates are constantly coming up with comments along the lines that anyone who disagrees with them must be stupid because they don’t have enough PhD’s and they aren’t a real certified climate scientist, so they aren’t entitled to have any opinion other than what they are told to have. The whole gist of the AGW movement is argument by authority — and every single time they come to the conclusion that the only acceptable authority just happens to be themselves, or someone who closely agrees with them.
For all of these reasons I still support Bellamy’s public disgust at how he was treated and I’m very happy to see other people stand up and agree that what happened was wrong. If people can’t stand up against a broken system then it can never get fixed.
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Of course Svensmark is such a “crap scientist” and his theories have all “been proved wrong”. Also his experiments were “fraud”. That’s why he is involved with the Clouds Experiment at CERN
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Spotlight/SpotlightCloud-en.html
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@ allen mcmahon Re “I am serious about the MWP any info would be appreciated”
Has you been to this site, read this or seen the map?
“Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 817 individual scientists from 486 separate research institutions in 43 different countries … and counting! This issue’s Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from Raffels Sø, Liverpool Land, East Greenland. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project’s database, click here.”
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Maybe it was MORE regional on Mars.
Have not “Has” Oooops need to click that preview button.
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