Well hallelujah! We’ve been waiting years to read something bordering on sensible from UCC’s ‘Public Awareness of Science’ officer and Irish Times columnist William Reville on the subject of climate change and by golly, this week’s offering was very, very nearly there.
Reville did a review/critique of sorts of Duncan Stewart’s excellent recent RTE documentary, ‘A Burning Question‘ (though he didn’t actually manage to get the title right). Regarding Climategate, Reville has had little short of an epiphany. Today he writes: “…it soon became clear that most of the suspicious e-mail content was just insider jargon and “macho” posturing and did not weaken the overall scientific case for climate change”.
What a fascinating volte face from the ‘Public Awareness of Science’ expert! In the same column in the same paper last December, Reville was, well, revelling in the exposure of the great climate swindle: “The e-mails appear to reveal scientists on the majority side of the debate massaging data to suit their anthropic global warming (AGW) hypothesis, dragging their heels on freedom of information requests, and conspiring to block scientists who oppose AGW from publishing their results”. This was, he breathlessly reported, an “explosive development”. (more…)
Fair play to Duncan Stewart. He was in combative form on Saturday’s Marian Finucane Show on RTE radio. The subject of his interview was the one hour documentary film special, ‘A Burning Question’, which airs this Tuesday (29th) at 10.10pm on RTE 1 and featuring many of the great and the good in the field, from the UN’s Ban Ki Moon to Mary Robinson, Prof John Sweeney and economist and late eco-convert David McWilliams (I’m in there somewhere among the interviewees). Click here to view the film online (in two parts).
The documentary promises to take a forensic look at the ever-expanding chasm between what the science of climate change is telling us and how this critical issue is being presented (and misrepresented) via the media. (more…)
Last April, I gave a lecture to the Met Society of Ireland in Glasnevin. A Sunday Times reporter was in the audience, though she did not make herself known to me, ask any questions or attempt to speak to me afterwards. However, five days later I got a call from said reporter, picking up on some choice observations on my part about the, em, quality of journalism on display post-Climategate/Copenhagen and the winter cold snap.
It must have been a veeery slow week, because two days later, a whopper of a ‘news’ article appeared in the ST, covering around two thirds of page 3 (appropriately enough, for a Murdoch title). I covered this incident on this blog back in April.
And now they’re back. From outer space. Those irrepressible Sunday Times hacks, ever eager to please their billionaire publisher, just couldn’t wait for another juicy ‘climate’ scandal story, they just galloped ahead and made up their own! (more…)
Looking to a statistician or economist for expert guidance on complex scientific matters makes about as much sense as consulting a neurosurgeon or a hairdresser for advice on investing in some arcane corner of the derivatives market.
However, when it comes to climate science, this is exactly what has been happening. A small band of people operating in fields entirely beyond their training or competence have, largely thanks to their skill in gaming the media, emerged as de facto international experts, advising politicians and shaping policy, with a patina of science jargon glossing over a hard core of ideology. (more…)
You would think that people whose business is the weather would be pretty informed about climate change. The reality is a great deal more complex. In the US, weathermen, for many the very public, trusted face of science, are split down the middle, with a prominent rump speaking out vociferously against human forcings driving climate change (assuming they even accept it’s occurring in the first place).
John Coleman is one of the most trusted faces on US television. He founded The Weather Channel back in the early ’80s and is something of an institution. Therefore, when Coleman in November 2007 blogged: “It is the greatest scam in history,” he began. “I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming: It is a SCAM”, he became an instant (septuagenarian) poster boy for the climate denier lobby. (more…)
Bill McKibben has been at the forefront of efforts to alert the public to the dangers of climate change for more than two decades. Today he fronts 350.org, a website dedicated to setting a global CO2 ceiling of 350ppm. Below, he turns his considerable talents to an in-depth analysis of the concerted attack on science, specifically climate science, in recent months, a campaign which has, he writes, been “enormously clever, and enormously effective”.
Twenty-one years ago, in 1989, I wrote what many have called the first book for a general audience on global warming. One of the more interesting reviews came from the Wall Street Journal. It was a mixed and judicious appraisal. “The subject,” the reviewer said, “is important, the notion is arresting, and Mr. McKibben argues convincingly.” And that was not an outlier: around the same time, the first president Bush announced that he planned to “fight the greenhouse effect with the White House effect.” (more…)
The always useful site Skeptical Science, with its handy list of the most common arguments used by climate change sceptics and detailed rebuttals of them, is now available as an iPhone app.
So next time a discussion occurs and one of the old reliable arguments like ‘it’s the sun’ is trotted out, this app will give you the information needed to rebut the argument, and also allow you to report the arguments used, so skepticalscience.com can maintain an up-to-date list of the most common arguments being used by sceptics.
The highly regarded site is operated as a pro bono public information service by Australian physicist, John Cook.
Fat chance, of course, that the climate change deniers/liars from the assorted propaganda factories will, in the end, miraculously turn out to know more about climate science than, well, all of climate science. But hey, when we’re told that natural disasters like flooding can “boost the economy” (wow, lucky old Haiti, then?) we have to admit that anything is, in theory at least, possible.
In that spirit, here’s a cartoon of the nightmare scenario that might unfold should the whole thing turn out to be, speak it softly, a big ol’ h-o-a-x…..
From the website of Australian TV network ABC. Click here to view the debate.
Transcript
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Here is some background notes to tonight’s debate. When Professor Ian Plimer’s outright denial of man-made global warming was championed in the UK Spectator magazine earlier this year after the publication of his book Heaven and Earth in Britain, the magazine’s editor promoted the idea of a great public debate in London between Professor Plimer and the Guardian’s George Monbiot. Monbiot is a renowned champion of climate science. In the end, George Monbiot’s key condition for the debate, that Professor Plimer first answer in writing a series of questions about claims in his book was not met, the debate was cancelled. And tonight, with no preconditions, George Monbiot joins us in Copenhagen and Ian Plimer is here in our Sydney studio.
Oh dear, here we go again. An editorial in the Irish Times yesterday was headlined ‘Global cooling’. It began: “So much for all of that guff about global warming! Are world leaders having the wrong debate? We are experiencing the most prolonged period of icy weather in 40 years and feeling every bit of it”.
In fact, what the above piece illustrates is the hazards of conducting climate science by looking out the window. The good ol’ Daily Express took it a degree or three further yesterday in its screeching front page headline: ‘SNOW CHAOS – And they still claim it’s global warming’.
I could spend another thousand words trying to unpick this silliness, or instead hand over to the excellent Peter Sinclair, who runs an intriguing YouTube channel called ‘Climate Denial Crock of the Week’. The clip below is from Feb 2009, but it perfectly illustrates the recurring problem that as soon as the temperatures plummet, the deniers start banging loudly on their tin drums, and many folks in the media who really ought to know better, just take a peek out through the net curtains, see the snow and experience an almost instantaneous 50-point drop in their IQs.
Over to you, Peter…
An archive of Peter Sinclair’s excellent series can be accessed by clicking here.
One by one, they’re coming out of the woodwork. Occasional climate sceptic William Reville was the latest to re-surface, this time in his weekly Irish Times column. I read it with dismay; I genuinely have no problem with him having a personal pop at me (all’s fair in the public domain) but his cynical piece, masquerading as an honest scientific review of the so-called ClimateGate deserved to be properly dissected and shown for what it is.
I am indebted to writer Marco Chiappi for the article below, which both deconstructs and eviscerates Reville’s contribution:
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Professor Reville (Associate Professor of biochemistry and public awareness of science officer, UCC) in his article published 10/12/2009 characterises the debate surrounding anthropogenic global warming as a debate between a ‘majority’ and a ‘minority’ position and regrets the incivility with which both sides engage. (more…)
I’ve had my say on KennyGate, as have a good many other people (to my new cadre of hate-mailers, sorry for not posting all your anonymous spleen. Life’s a bitch, eh? Give my regards to Elvis). Meanwhile, a regular correspondent, Coilin MacLochlainn, sent in a highly original take , which I hope you’ll enjoy as much as I did. Over to you, Coilin…
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Let’s imagine that Pat Kenny is feeling a bit off colour and decides to visit a psychoanalyst.
Dr Thelme Datruth-Y’Boyo is a bright young thing from Darfur who happens to read a certain column that appears in the Irish Times every Thursday. Her parents and siblings are starving because of drought brought on by climate change and the resulting war in Darfur. She gives John O’Shea of GOAL most of her savings but knows that the war won’t end until the real problem, climate change, is tackled. (more…)
Hell, it seems, hath no fury like a broadcaster scorned. After my recent adventures with RTE’s Pat Kenny, it was only a matter of time before the veteran broadcaster would try to even the score for what he no doubt perceived as slights to the notion that he is capable of being unbiased, objective and responsible on the issue of climate change.
The COP15 gig commences next Monday in Copenhagen, with the great and the good from science, politics and policymaking gathering from the five continents for the world’s most important climate conference since the Rio Summit in 1992. Pat Kenny’s parody of pre-Copenhagen “coverage” involved bringing on a discredited Australian mining industry hack on as an “expert” to challenge the dreadful scientific consensus that Kenny, in the great tradition of Don Quixote, is determined to unseat.
While the mud flies to the left and to the right, now, with just 12 days to the opening of the COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen, looks like it’s all hands on deck, women and children first, etc. etc. as the good ship Hubris stokes up its coal-fired turbines and steams us towards, well, you know…
Heartiest congratulations to all the merry crew of climate deniers and assorted smart alecs and know-alls. We’d never have come so far, so quickly, and been in it quite so deep were it not for your Trojan efforts. Don’t be so modest, you’re the real stars of this Tragedy.
Around seven years ago, I read a history of the planet in the 20th century, entitled ‘Something New Under The Sun‘, by Georgetown University professor, JR McNeill. The book examined the biosphere, slice by slice, and concluded that, whatever else, the 20th century should be seen as a historical once-off.
The 21st century, he noted, would have to be profoundly different – either humanity learns to live within limits (of resources and carbon emissions), or the entire system would crash, with the profoundest of consequences for life on Earth. This book had a major influence on my decision to get involved in writing and campaigning on climate and environmental topics. (more…)
