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…)
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.
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…)
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.
Jim Hoggan chairs the David Suzuki Foundation in Canada. Here is an excellent piece he penned for the Vancouver Sun on the hoary old saw about environmentalism being some kind of ‘new religion’. Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with my ongoing efforts to draw attention to the infiltration into this debate by climate skeptics. Ian Plimer is a grade A charlatan, whose sophistry is well dissected below by Hoggan:
“There is a strange conviction, in certain circles, that the world’s environmental community has grown superhumanly strong — an idea that, with the cock of an eyebrow or the curl of a lip, any leading environmentalist can strike fear into the hearts of academics, politicians and businesspeople around the globe.
As the chair of the David Suzuki Foundation, the leading environmental organization in Canada, I wish that it were so. To borrow the fiery rhetoric of Vancouver Sun columnist Jonathon Manthorpe, I would be delighted, if only for a day, to be one of the “ayatollahs of puritan environmentalism” or the “Torquemadas of the doctrine of global warming.”
Maybe then, I could use the power of religious fundamentalism and the threat of a Spanish-style inquisition to encourage the making climate change policy that was based on actual science rather than on overcharged emotion and obvious self-interest.
Apparently, however, that time has not yet come. Certainly not if we have to contend with the “reality” Manthorpe defined in his July 28, 2009 Sun column, “Global warming is the new religion of First World urban elites.”
Manthorpe rests his entire argument on the work of the Australian climate skeptic Ian Plimer and especially on Plimer’s latest book, Heaven and Earth — Global Warming; The Missing Science.
Plimer, a mining geologist, dismisses the concern about climate change as irrelevant, a view Manthorpe endorses by adding, “It is, of course, not new to have a highly qualified scientist saying that global warming is an entirely natural phenomenon with many precedents in history.”
If that were true, Manthorpe was honour bound to offer examples of these scientific leaders — even one example. Because the record shows that the “highly qualified” scientists — the ones who are actually doing research in the field and publishing their work in reputable journals rather than in populist books — are virtually unanimous that climate change is an urgent concern.
In addition to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the science academies in every major country in the world have endorsed the fundamental science of climate change and urged international action. Check the website of the Royal Society of Canada if you have any doubts.
Certainly, there are contrarian “scientists.” These (like Plimer) tend to be experts in other fields (like geology) and (like Plimer) they are frequently associated with energy industry advocacy groups (like the Natural Resources Stewardship Project) that exist not to further the work of science but to confuse the public conversation.
If Manthorpe were truly interested in climate science, there are dozens of good books and thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers from which he might have gained reliable information. Instead, he read Plimer, whose book is riddled with errors (Google “Deltoid” and Ian Plimer for an entertaining list).
For example, Manthorpe writes: “(Plimer) says atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at the lowest levels it has been for 500 million years.”
Well, Plimer may say so, but it is verifiably not true. There is reliable and widely reported research showing that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is currently higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years — at least.
Again, Google “Lonnie Thompson” and “Antarctic ice cores” if you want confirmation.
Climate change is a serious issue — and one that should be taken seriously, especially by journalists who have a soap box and a good reputation. In an age when reliable, peer-reviewed scientific reports are readily available to anyone with an internet connection, we all should reject arguments that are based on epithets and ad hominem attacks and that gloss over the actual details of this unprecedented scientific and environmental crisis.
But don’t take my word for it. You should search out your own good sources.
And the next time someone tells you that Canadian environmentalists are more influential than, say, the most profitable (energy) companies in the history of profit, pause and reflect. The next time someone argues that selfish (and by implication, dishonest) scientists created the threat of global warming because they want to fatten their research budget, imagine how much easier it would be to get research from government funding agencies or from the private-sector interests devoted to big oil if only your research showed that climate change was, in Manthorpe’s words, “a harbinger of good things to come.”
Despite there being no shortage of hard news to cover right now, RTE’s Prime Time last night took a curious detour to air clips from a propaganda film, Not Evil, Just Wrong, made by two Irish filmmakers. It is, for want of a kinder way of putting this, bullshit par excellence, a bizarre neo-con mix of clichés about freedom, faux concern for ‘poor people’ and undying worship at the altar of bare-knuckle capitalism as the only way to organise world affairs. In short, a narrow, ugly little project.
Yet here we were, just after the main news bulletin, being served up such tripe as: “I don’t think it would be a bad thing for this earth to warm up”. This dense nugget of stupidity comes courtesy of one Patrick Moore, described in caption as ‘founding member of Greenpeace’. Assuming this is the case, I can only assume Moore has long since been drummed out of that organisation, a body which is only too well aware of the calamitous effects of a warming Earth.
The McAleer propaganda film fingers the campaign against DDT as ‘proof’ that these eco types are secretly plotting the deaths of millions of Africans from malaria. To listen to the hand-picked loons interviewed in this mockumentary, you would be left with the impression that DDT is the vapour squeezed from fresh rose petals. It is in fact a ‘persistent organic pollutant’. It has a half-life of 2-5 years. It accumulates in the food web, and concentrates in apex predators, such as eagles and other birds. DDT undoubtedly has its uses in tackling malaria but to suggest that it is benign and poses no health hazards is total bull.
And that’s about as good as this little film gets. The narrator intones: “Al Gore still supports (Rachel) Carson’s discredited claims about the compound…he is now also campaigning against fossil fuels with the same enthusiasm”. Good point, except that (i) Carson’s claims, in her book ‘Silent Spring‘ have never been discredited and (ii) global warming has nothing to do with DDT, no matter how many times these idiots try to smear-by-association.
McAleer appeared in studio to ‘debate’ his film with Dr Kieran Hickey of NUI Galway. Hickey played a blinder, patiently unravelling the web of lies and half-truths and laying its “fundamental flaws” bare. He opened with a damming three-point demolition of the film, pointing out how it had cherry-picked its facts (and contributors) while ignoring the strong consensus view of literally thousands of professional climate scientists, notably via the IPCC’s 20 years of analysis and its four major Assessments Reports.
McAleer again trotted out his bizarre line that the IPCC report had somehow been hijacked by the “many people in the IPCC” that he suggests don’t agree with its findings. Who these people are, what their objections are, we are left none the wiser. The report, by some mysterious osmosis, turns from hard science into what McAleer calls an “alarmist mantra” (I had my fun back in August in a live debate with McAleer on Today FM with Anton Savage).
He then quickly steers off into back to talking about DDT, and warnings that “it’s going to cause cancer, it’s going to kill us all, kill the birds…the result was 50 million women and children died in Africa from a spike in malaria”. No men, Phelim, just women and children. Is that an onion in your top pocket as your eyes begin to well up?
What’s the link with DDT and climate change exactly? “It’s a consensus, like the consensus about BSE, about killer bees…we’ve had these scares before”. Aaaaaah, yes, now I remember the Intergovernmental Panel on Killer Bees (IPKB?) and it’s alarmist report that we’re all doomed. Kieran Hickey interjected mid-rant to point out that the reason BSE was no longer a major threat to public health is precisely that it was taken seriously, the scientists told us feeding animal brains to other animals, and then eating those animals was just asking for trouble – so we stopped doing it.
In McAleer-land, if the fire brigade is called and manages to stop your house burning down, then there can’t have been a fire in the first place. The ‘debate’ descended into pure farce when Hickey challenged McAleer: “let’s talk about climate change”, to which the suddenly modest McAleer replied: “let’s NOT talk about climate change”. A bemused Miriam O’Callaghan intervened, reminding McAleer that this was in fact the reason he was in studio to begin with!
To cover his retreat, McAleer slung out a red herring about the difference between ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’, as if it mattered. Apparently McAleer’s geography teacher back in the 1970s told his class that we were entering a new Ice Age, as presumably reported by the Intergovernmetal Panel of Geography Teachers (IPGT). Ha! So there!
So what’s really behind all these mendacious scientists telling us a pack of lies about global warming? “I think there’s a lot of anti-capitalism, anti-development people behind this global warming hysteria”, said McAleer, a self-appointed spokesman for “the poor people in the world”, who he reckons desperately need global climate collapse brought on by out of control fossil fuel burning to lift them out of poverty – and into the abyss.
Nowhere does McAleer point out that over 90% of all fossil fuel burning to date has been done by us in the developed world, with the direct, tangible and highly damaging brunt of our actions already falling on the world’s poor.
When someone prefaces a statement to you by saying: “with the greatest respect…”, it’s a sure sign they think you’re talking rubbish, and so Miriam O’Callaghan brought McAleer back in to give him a kicking about his utter lack of qualifications for the task he purports to address in his mockumentary. His razor-sharp riposte is that “…but Al Gore’s not a scientist, in fact Al Gore interviews no scientist in An Inconvenient Truth and he wins a Nobel prize…our film has scientists from both sides of the argument”.
He wraps up by trying to smear environmentalists as being the new colonialists, trying to hold back people in developing countries from achieving prosperity. Miriam O’Callaghan’s growing frustration at McAleer’s tortured logic surfaced when she told him: “you’re almost making two different points”. Kieran Hickey scored the final punch when simply asking McAleer why he didn’t just make a film about DDT (given the gaping level of his ignorance on even the most basic science behind climate change).
I think I have the answer: DDT isn’t a bandwagon. Masquerading as a ‘climate sceptic’ gets third rate filmmakers like this onto prime time television – literally, something that would never happen had he restricted his film making to an area in which he is competent (whatever that might be). The meeja loves a good argy bargy, and while I was horrified to see such a spoofer get this kind of publicity, he did remind me a little of P. Flynn on that famous Late Late Show many years ago, where the public saw clean through the gloss to the character beneath.
The so-called climate sceptic camp is getting critically depleted of spokespeople who can even pass for competent. Maybe this is indeed the best way of calling them out.
Denial is a powerful thing. Climate change deniers these days are, like the polar bears, an endangered species, as wave after wave of science fact gradually washes away the last stubborn traces of our excuses for inaction.
Of course, there are some folk for whom this whole climate denial lark is very good indeed for business. Bjorn Lomborg has spun not one but two complete works of science fiction out of the subject, and along the way, made himself a tidy sum, and secured his place on the happy-clappy lecture circuit for the foreseeable future. (more…)
