James Delingpole hits the spot. Rarely do you see someone reply to a petty put-down with such equanimity, clarity, and ultimately, a devastating trump.
If Ben Goldacre thinks I’m a ***** what does that make him?
The BBC spent 3 hours trying to catch Delingpole out so they could paint him a fool. Obviously he didn’t give them much to work with, but it was enough to bring out the attack dogs.
Delingpole pointed out the moral and intellectual cowardice of those who throw teenage insults.
Taking the standard BBC/Guardian/Independent line on AGW (and related eco-threats) is a very safe thing to do if your target audience is young and hip and instinctively green/liberal-left. It requires no effort, no thought, and certainly no courage.
If Goldacre really wants to stick his neck out, why doesn’t he try arguing against a rich, powerful, bullying Climate-Change establishment which includes all three British main political parties, the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society, the Prince of Wales, the Prime Minister, the President of the USA, the EU, the UN, most schools and universities, the BBC, most of the print media, the Australian Government, the New Zealand Government, CNBC, ABC, the New York Times, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, most of the rest of the City, the wind farm industry, all the Big Oil companies, any number of rich charitable foundations, the Church of England and so on?
I do, almost every day. Not because it makes me money or gets me lots of high-fives from right-on Guardian fans. But because I believe in the truth.
But I’m not doing him justice… read the whole reply.
If that piece is a result of James being bushwhacked and it is, keep going BBC.
Pointman
10
Dellers get it spot on!
10
Dellingpole is spot on about the safe course. Too often when viewing beauty “polls”, many of those agreeing with the concept of AGW do so for that very reason. While he seems to think that Goldacre is some kind of hero for poking fun at many of the hoaxes that pop up, in reality, most are easy to since they do not enjoy the support of virtually the entire government of a nation. Indeed, I am sure those monsignors laughing at Galileo thought they were being heroic and clever as well.
10
Richard North has a blogpost on this topic and Richard’s concluding sentence
is spot on.
As Marc Morano lists on his site, this is all about social justice, not a planetary fever.
We are living in interesting times.
10
“Taking the standard BBC/Guardian/Independent line on AGW (and related eco-threats) is a very safe thing to do if your target audience is young and hip and instinctively green/liberal-left. It requires no effort, no thought, and certainly no courage.”
What the hell? Is there really need to libel young lefties, such as myself and many good people I know, as “possessed of no effort, no though, and certainly no courage?”
So this is what I get for my climate skepticism: called out by a man I don’t even know on bigoted and ridiculous charges against my character.
10
if only this was ABC!
26 Jan: Guardian: John Plunkett: BBC World Service forecast to lose 30m listeners as cuts announced
Government accused of damaging Britain’s reputation overseas by reducing funding by 16%
Peter Horrocks, the BBC’s global news director responsible for implementing the cuts, which will see 650 jobs lost, said they risked damaging the World Service’s reputation and the positive benefits it brought to Britain…
The BBC is being forced to implement the cuts after the World Service’s funding from the Foreign Office was reduced by 16% in the government’s comprehensive spending review in October.
From 2014 the World Service is to be paid for from the licence fee, rather than by direct Foreign Office grant, and the BBC has said it intends to reverse some of the cuts from that point…
Horrocks, briefing staff about the cuts, described it as an “enormous shift” for the World Service, with more than 25% of its employees facing losing their jobs and 480 posts to go over the next 12 months…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/26/world-service-cuts-will-cost-listeners
hmmm! so once taxpayers’ licence fee comes into play (as if it isn’t taxpayers funding the Foreign Office now!), BBC intends “reverse some of the cuts from that point”.
woke up to ABC Radio National doing a piece on how our floods fit with AGW even tho a direct link has not been identified. aaagh!
10
@Mark at 5
Read it again. He didn’t say the “young and hip and instinctively green/liberal-left” is bereft of thought. He said it takes no effort to pander to that group.
In other words : if you, say, wanted to appeal to your ‘young and hip and instincitvely green/liberal left’ audience, all you have to do is get up on stage and say ‘George Bush is dimwitted idiot and Sarah Palin is nuts’. The crowd will go wild and cheer, and you didn’t have to use any effort, thought or courage.
Using effort, thought and courage is making a statement to your readership that may challenge their views and result in you sticking your neck out and going against the popular meme of the day. Which, Goldacre, in his tweets, didn’t do. Instead he resorted to a cheap shot of wrapping his slightly controversial thought ‘the BBC is going on about nothing’ with a bit of audience-appeal side dressing : ‘delingpole is a dick’ ; in other words ‘I’m one of you’.
A courageous tweet would have been ‘The BBC has beaten this all up and intentionally gone out of their way to make Delingpole look bad’.
Re-read, comprehend then post an apology for looking for offense where none existed.
10
Fake Mark #5
And stop using my moniker! I had it long before you appeared on the scene.
10
I read the “no effort” bit to refer to the “standard… line on AGW” in which case my umbrage would be justified, because that is to say that the lack of effort, thought, or courage is “very safe” in appealing to young libs.
However, your reading of the comments on effort, thought, and courage certainly seems highly plausible, if not more so. It makes the sentence more aesthetic and flow much better, and it certainly makes sense. I hadn’t seen that before when I read over his reply, and that’s likely what his intention was. I was however not looking for offense anywhere and my first interpretation is certainly sensible.
10
Less-than-fake-Mark:
I can certainly append an initial to my name if you like. I don’t want to foment confusion! 🙂
10
Pssst. Hey Mark wanna sell that name?
10
It sounds if as usual I’m out of kilter with everyone else. I thought that the Horizon programme was reasonably fair although as far as Delly was concerned with 3 hours of interview there was a lot of one sided editing. Also they cut short on the US professor as well.
However the premise was not to dispute the science or sceptics but to find the reasons why there is so much antagonism against the scientists. And although it highlighted the media, which as I like to think are all becoming tabloid in their approach instead of factual reporting, Nurse did say that the scientists themselves had to carry a lot of the blame.
By the way Jones did look a broken man. if what he said was true about the temperature graph ie his highlighting of the insertion of measured results on top of proxies was removed it looks more like political interference as we all suspect.
10
Mark [B] : commendable post there. So glad to see someone change their initial view rather than double-down and start calling everyone names and asking about their scientific credentials, as others are frequently want to do around climate blogs.
10
The Australian floods were not caused by global warming and neither were those in Pakistan………
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/no_and_pakistans_floods_werent_global_warming_either/
10
James ranks you among illustrious company there, Ms Nova! Good for you.
20
Bill @12
You would think an old hand like D_pole would keep his own copy of the full interview & do some of his own creative editing.
It would make a great counterpoint to demonstrate just how much spin can go with “the scissors”.
Perhaps it could be “YouTubed” as the Not BBC.
10
Here’s the thing. If you read Ben Goldacres book “Bad Science”, and his blog as well, you’ll see that he is rational, does not tolerate fools, calls out crooks and cranks.
He’s the skeptics skeptic.
Yet on AGQ, he has a completely opposite outlook.
Odd, very odd. And disappointing.
[@AGQ did you mean AGW?] ED
10
Ben Pile skewers the weak points in Nurse’s claim that science is under attack, and that public trust in scientific theories has been eroded.
http://thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/2313-ben-pile-nursing-climate-sciences-bruises.html
“What Nurse fails to recognise is the difference between science as a process, and science as an institution.
The background to the climate debate is a collapse of trust in public institutions of many kinds. Echoing this collapse in public reason, Nurse urges, ‘trust no one, trust only what the experiments and the data tell you’. But isn’t this also the message from climate sceptics, who accuse institutional, official science of corruption and political-motivation?”
10
The trick is to make certain not to slip, or trip, and end up falling, to knock them dead without allowing oneself to be ego baited & then dragged down into the bottom of the waiting ad hominen mud wrestling pit of entertainment sludge, only to have the tabloid mentality respond with relish at one’s descent. Seems that character assassination is now routinely used as bait on the Romans and Christians media meathook. They aim to make sleazy Jerry Springer guests of us all, methinks.
10
What I’ve come to understand is that much of the bleating from AGW pushers is a textbook case of projection. The ‘oil shills’ is the perfect and most complete example. They see they are being funded to find and pursue a particular point of view, ergo anyone disagreeing with them must be undergoing the same process but from someone with a different vested interest.
But it also springs up in the name calling, media bias and reputational attacks. Many AGW-bleaters have very little scientific background in the field (Flannery) and so they tend to attack others, forgetting that qualification doesn’t mean a hill of beans if someone can point out a fault in the data or a fault in the theory that stacks up when others look in the same place.
It’s also why places like this often hear cries of ‘censorship’. Because all the other pro-AGW blogs routinely censor anyone with an opposite point of view. They don’t stop to read terms and conditions, they just assume that a factless rant is censored because it pushes the wrong point of view, rather than being censored for being a factless rant.
10
A colleague linked this to me (about the death of climate change policy in the USA):
http://www.thenewtasman.com/2011/01/business-spectator-obamas-hands-are-tied/
Interesting read… especially so when you see the background of the author (i.e. a former Labor advisor).
10
WTF!!!!!!!! Gillard levies to find the money she wasted !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THE COMMUNIST GILLARD AND HER LYING POS CORRUPT COMMUNIST GOVERMENT IS FINISHED AFTER THIS BS LEVY STUNT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/gillard_levies_to_find_the_money_she_wasted/
10
Comrade Gillard wants to up medicare to help the flood ravaged parts of our grand land. This is to be done by appealing to australians concept of “rightness”.
And there is no way i would ever suggest that we shouldn’t help out the residents caught up in that mess.
There are, however a few things that makes this proposal obscene.
Firstly, comrades Gillard and bligh set up the initial financial support to exclude working kiwis who have found their neighbours getting assistance but not them. This is their concept of rightness?
Secondly, if we want to fo tje right thing, surely kiwis who arrived in australia after 1 march 2001 should get a tax break considering they’re not allowed to get centrelink psyments if they fall on on hard times. Wouldn’t this be the right thing to do?
Thirdly, wouldn’t it be the right thing to do to revoke the massive bribes for the independants support in the last coup/election? That would go a long way to help out queensland.
And lastly who will be administering this aid? The same mob that did the BER and the incinerating insulation scheme?
If this and the carbon tax goes ahead, this great country will be heading more towards being the socialist basket case NZ is. It only took around a decade for it to happen there.
This is written by a kiwi who has never got a cent for doing nothing.
10
Joanne – have you seen this?
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2011/01/is-it-time-to-listen-to-so-called-deniers/#more-7359
“Given the IPO was negative and we had a strong La Nina, we could have expected impacts to be magnified and the risk of flooding very much increased in south Queensland and NSW.
In complete contrast, the Bureau of Meteorology advised that spring rainfall in 2010 was going to be “average” except in the south-west of Western Australia where they forecast it would be “wetter than normal”.
What followed were unusually dry conditions in south-west WA while everywhere else got above average rainfall with many parts of the Murray Darling Basin receiving the highest rainfall on record.”
10
I read in a small article in our daily MSM paper that a study is reporting
in some Himalayan glaciers !!! How widely will that be reported ? ( Sorry it’s not on the online version of the paper to give you a link )
10
Ooops , meant to click the bold key for “growth” in 25
10
A levy to fix a flood of spending………..
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_a_levy_to_fix_a_flood_of_spending/
Time for RED gillard to go!!
10
Is something starting to happen behind the scenes in the UK ? Their Govt. Science committee is having a look at the peer review process
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/1/27/scitech-committee-to-investigate-peer-review.html
10
http://www.freestatevoice.com.au/politics/item/421-question-on-the-status-of-the-citizenship-of-the-prime-minister-by-philip-benwell
QUESTION ON THE STATUS OF THE CITIZENSHIP OF THE PRIME MINISTER
10
“100 metres” Williams is already four metres down in four years……
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/100_metres_williams_is_already_four_metres_down_in_four_years/
10
Guess what the Australian of the Year was doing while at the CSIRO?
He was working on suppressing dissenting scientists on global warming to help the ETS effort by the Kruddist Labor Govt.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/csiro-bid-to-gag-emissions-trading-scheme-policy-attack/story-e6frg8gf-1225793355139
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_mckeon
He’s a major political tosser, Libs should be outraged at this misdirection of science to fulfill an odious political goal of the International Socialists and their Eco-socialists thugs.
10
SUBJECT: Petition to Stop Labor’s Unfair Great New Tax
http://www.stopthelevy.com/sign-here.html
Sign the petition and make a difference!!!
Pass this on to everybody!!!!!!!!!!!
10
Warwick Hughes has a new post Australian Bureau of Meteorology report conceals details of high rainfall in February 1893
January 28th, 2011 by Warwick Hughes
On 25 January 2011 the BoM published an amended SPECIAL CLIMATE STATEMENT 24 (SCS24) originally published on 7 Jan on the subject “An extremely wet end to 2010 leads to widespread flooding across eastern Australia.”
The revised SCS24 is nearly doubled in size and is titled, “Frequent heavy rain events in late 2010/early 2011 lead to widespread flooding across eastern Australia.”
The revised SCS24 downplays the huge rain events in Feb 1893 – on page 7 of 28 the BoM says – “Insufficient rainfall data exist for a comprehensive assessment of the 1893 event. However, the available station data indicate that peak rainfalls in the region during the 1893 event were much heavier than those during either the 1974 or 2011 events.”
First I would say – there is plenty of rainfall data from 1893 to allow the Feb 1893 floods event to be realistically compared in various ways with 1974 and 2010/11 – for example on maps – or as I show below with a few examples – by way of a table.
Second I would say that referring to “peak rainfalls” could leave an impression that overall the rain in the 1893 event was not so notable but there were heavy periods. Which is an incorrect impression for the BoM to leave readers with in terms of much of SE Qld.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/
I won’t have time to properly digest it until tonight but some of you will be interested and might have some time today
10
Percival Snodgrass:
I’m being picky here Percival, while Simon McKeon may well be a warmist, purposely placed at the CSIRO to promote the dogma, he cant take the rap for trying to gag Dr Spash in 2009, he didn’t take the rains till June 2010.
Lets make sure we at least have the facts right before we make accusations, other wise we end up with egg on our face.
10
Bob Malloy @#34
To be fair, Bob, Percival’s link is relevant even although it pre-dates McKeon’s appointment.
It’s hardly a coincidence that McKeon’s appointment came so soon after Spash’s departure. Can there be any doubt that the CSIRO considered McKeon an ideal choice to reinforce its grubby work of “suppressing dissenting scientists on global warming to help the ETS effort by the Kruddist Labor Govt.”? After all, McKeon’s alignment with climate alarmism is a matter of record. Relevant to the ETS, for example, is this rubbish on the day of his appointment:
reiterating no doubt his grand plan espoused as he sat across the desk from the cabal at the CSIRO considering him for the position.
10
Graham:
January 28th, 2011 at 10:47 am
As I wrote in my post, I agree Simon McKeon may well be a warmist, purposely placed at the CSIRO to promote the dogma and he may well now be strongly pushing the warmist line, it can only damage our credibility if we accuse any warmist falsely of any impropriety.
We must be ever vigilant for any misinformation, distortions of fact i.e. Browns attributing the Coal Industry for the Queensland floods, and rely on people such as Jo, Anthony Watts and others to expose these charlatans to as wide an audience as possible. However we can only attack them on contestable flaws in their arguments and screeching sermons from the mount, we only damage ourselves by spreading false innuendo, in the worst case scenario this could incur a liable suit against the original poster and anyone that passes on or endorses any false claims.
10
Has anyone ever seen Percival Snodgrass in the same room as one time commenter “wendy”? I’m thinking Clark Kent and Superman…..
10
Good point Bob Malloy@36:
The implications of global warming are serious, and for this reason scientists working in the area should be held to high standards. Skeptics must play their part too, by behaving reasonably and ethically.
It would be a tragedy if AGW had cataclysmic consequences because of inaction caused by overly successful skeptics. It wouldn’t be too good either if we suffered unnecessary hardship in a low carbon future because the climate scientists got it wrong. Everyone involved should behave honourably (while having a bit of fun along the way….).
10
Here’s my weather & blog prediction for the next week:
1) Bianca will track down south and cause some serious weather impact in the populated end of the state:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/8732433/cyclone-threat-to-south-west/
2) Strong weather events (even tropical storms are not unprecendented down this far:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6f/Tropical_cyclones_1945_2006_wikicolor.png
3) Someone (Lewandosky perhaps) will blog (probably at the ABC) the meme that more extreme weather events such as this one (this coming weekend) are to be expected because of global warming.
Let’s see how accurate I am this time next week ;P
10
PS> Here is teh latest satellite image from BoM:
http://www.bom.gov.au/gms/IDE00035.latest.shtml
10
Gillard’s spinning in a straitjacket……..
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Julia-Gillard-floods-levy-politics-pd20110127-DH7J5?OpenDocument&src=spb
10
Save the planet! Burn people for heat
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/save_the_planet_burn_people_for_heat/
10
Here’s the BoM forecast for Bianca:
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDW60281.shtml
Given their accuracy on rainfall forecasts, maybe this means Bianca will hit Sri Lanka instead…
10
John Brookes @#38
Both sides of the debate may well step over the bounds of civility, John, but the primary reasons for doing so are poles apart. As a general rule:
For alarmists, consensus is all. They are idolised by the mainstream media.
For sceptics, empirical evidence is all. They are sidelined by the mainstream media.
10
OT: – Trenberth in the news today over climategate.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/26/trenberth-at-ams-defends-himself-against-deniers/
10
Hmmm. Thanks for the link Bulldust. We (in South Perth) had to replace a sodden carpet after the freak hailstorm last March, so I’m hoping Bianca is all wind and not much rain.
I still remember cyclone Alby hitting Perth in 1978, riding my bicycle down Thomas Street around Kings Park with a gale force wind at my back – now that was fun!
10
Over at Jennifer Marohasy’s blog Cohenite has posted a rebuttal to a recent Drum Unleashed propergander piece by Stephan Lewandowsky.
David Stockwell and Anthony Cox reply to Lewandowsky and His Lies, Dam Lies and Statistics
While prepared to publish Lewandowsky’s offensive opinion, the ABC refused to publish the rebuttal:
10
Bulldust @21,
My own reading of things is a little different:
To Obama nothing he wants is dead. The name may have changed from “spending” to “investment” to protect the guilty but he still intends to spend if he can. You can count on it. Likewise, rumors of the death of climate change policy are greatly exaggerated (with apology to Mark Twain). Browner may see the writing on the wall but Obama does not. Remember, they hope to implement control under the Montreal Protocol which will not need congressional action one way or another. The treaty is already in force. The EPA is proceeding apace and the fight to stop them is going to be very ugly.
What Obama and his supporters say and what they actually do are two different things. The chameleon has just changed color but it’s still the same beast it always was.
PS:
If he accomplishes any of his 66 minute State of the Union trip through la-la-land it will come with federal control over whatever gets implemented. Better it not happen the way he wants.
10
Bulldust @ 43 (re Bianca)
You guys have a more serious problem; that thing is spinning
backwardsForwards (which is backwards)!Out of curiosity are most people in the Southern Hemisphere left handed? 🙂
Roy @ 48, The press (MSM) is all agog about the “brilliant politician” Obama) in that he has pulled himself away from being called a “lefty” (that word is suddenly popular in the MSM too). The MSM is lock-step suggesting that Obama was never as left as his party wanted him to be.
It is my opinion that this is total BS and the average voter is not going to fall for it and certainly not the average Tea Partyer. The Democrats may think that they have pulled a fast one on us but they are still in denial about what caused the rout in November. No slick speech is going to work to make these people go back to sleep.
10
Mark D.,
I have never been through a presidential speech of any kind that was as lacking in substance and as boring as Obama’s nonsense on Tuesday. But I think he really hasn’t been as far left as some wanted him to be. He’s still Obama though! I may be in a small minority but I don’t think his real agenda is socialism. It’s something else. Why would the current public debt not frighten him to death? Could it be that he doesn’t care?
This has been around before and I think it makes Obama make more sense than any other explanation. He talks whatever he thinks people need to hear to get a vote or to get cooperation. But the goal remains the same.
10
How about an a**hole…….
Sorry, someone had to say it. 🙂
Bob
10