This is a guest post by Matt Daws.
I'm a mathematician at St John's College in Oxford, and so having seen a number of posters around for a conference on climate change in my own college, I decided to head along. The organisers are sense about science who are one of a number of strange UK organisations that, in some sense, grew out of a small left-wing group called living marxism. These people seemed to have had a mass conversion to some form of libertarianism at some point, and now tend to campaign for the right for industry to do exactly what it likes etc. In particular, I have a lot of issues with the Sense about Science take on GM food, for example. So I was a little apprehensive about what this conference would be like. Then, in the UK, Channel 4 decides to show this "documentary", and the timing starts to look, well, interesting. Finally, I wake up Saturday morning to hear from my girlfriend that some climate scientists have been on the radio, complaining about their colleagues being alarmist in relation to climate change. A quick check on the BBC News website reveals that they are associated with the conference I'm about to attend. Here we go I think.
I'm glad to report, however, that I couldn't have been more wrong, really. The day started with two short talks by Keith Groves and Tim Palmer on the techniques used in weather forecasting. I thought this was very interesting: I hadn't, for example, known that now we can give three day forecasts to the same accuracy as a one day forecast 20 years ago. Furthermore, the use of ensemble methods allows probabilities to be given for extreme but maybe unlikely events: the great UK storm of 1986 is an example of this. My only complaint would be that the talks were a little technical: I have taken courses on numerical analysis, have a non-research interest in fractals and chaos theory etc. so I knew the basics of trying to model dynamical systems. I imagine some people in the audience might have been a little lost.
The next session was three short talks by Julian Heming, Chris Collier (from the radio!) and Peter Clark, all on various aspects of extreme weather, namely hurricanes, flash floods and severe winds. All were again pretty technical: most interesting in my view was Heming's talk about hurricanes, and the various ways in which the forecast can be right and wrong. An example was Hurricane Floyd from 1999, which caused the mass evacuation of Florida, but actually made landfall in North Carolina. As Heming explained, the ensemble prediction was for Floyd to parallel up the coast, about 70km off shore. However, this had a error margin of at least 80km: in the event, Floyd stayed about 150km away, but had the error been in the other direction, it would have caused widespread damage. Apparently there was criticism at the time (although this isn't mentioned in the wiki article) about a false alarm. Heming noted, however, that you have to compare the risk to the possible result (more on this later).
Paul Hardaker chaired both these talks. However, neither he, nor Collier in his talk, made any real reference to their position taken on the radio earlier in the day. Collier mentioned briefly that to attribute any one flood to climate change was of course impossible, but qualified that by saying that climate change might well cause more floods, or worse floods, on average.
Lunch was a chance for me to escape and find some real food, and so I missed some demonstrations of climateprediction.net. After lunch it was the turn of climate change, and it started with Peter Gibbs giving a mock-up of what a BBC weather report might be like for May Day 2080. Lots of heat, some water cuts, and some extreme heat predictions for the summer, basically. Actually, the numbers looked "alarmist" to me (average of low 40s Celsius for a UK summer), but no-one questioned them in the slightest, so what do I know? Then Geoff Jenkins and Peter Stott gave two talks on, to my mind, broadly the science and testing of climate prediction models, and likely scenarios for the future (although they had different titles). Again, these did not real tell me a great deal that I didn't know, but they were good talks. Stott was particularly interesting, as he talked about efforts to isolate man's effect on the climate: running models without the real greenhouse gas concentrations, for example, to see what effect the sun, natural cycles etc. would be having. Apparently we should actually now be entering a slight cooling period, which should give the sceptics pause for thought!
Ah, the sceptics. It turns out that I shouldn't have worried about the speakers, but the audience. The day finished with an hour of round table discussions. Some questions were genuinely interesting: a friend of him managed to ask about how climate change might affect the 3rd world, and got some mention of convergence and contraction etc. But many of the questions were deeply sceptical, and from one of two camps. The first camp were the little old men, presumably retired Oxford dons from Engineering or something, who I guess were asking genuine questions, but from a sort of "stick in the mud" position. One guy in particular kept banging on about chaos theory, as if what he'd read in some book in the 80s was the final word on the subject. Sadly, sat behind me were a group of younger people who were asking more snide, politically loaded questions. The best I think was "So I'm lead to believe that most of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not due to man, so how can we be having an effect?" as if he'd never thought about the possibility of something being good in one concentration, and dangerous at another. These questions felt more dishonest, and I doubt anyone had their mind changed. The speakers did their best, however, and carefully answered each question without getting annoyed. I really have a hard time understanding these sceptical questions: it is possible, I guess, that all the climate guys are wrong, but it's not going to be because "they forgot about clouds" or something. The idea that I, as an non-specialist, might notice something all these researchers haven't, is absurd. It's exactly what you see coming from creationists though, but still annoying to witness first hand.
The local organiser, Chris Leaver, asked some leading question to do with the radio interview, and said that he'd just been interviewed by the BBC for another radio show and had defended, say, David King. There wasn't really much response to this: Peter Hardaker made some comment along the lines that this Channel 4 film was "sensationalist, and used some pretty flaky science". Rather weasel words I thought, but his point about climate scientists not responding in an equally sensationalist manner seemed reasonable. Others responded and talked about probabilities: yes, some extreme possible effects on climate change currently seem rather unlikely, but if they happen, they will have such a massive effect, that it seems silly just to ignore the entire possibility. Indeed, it was the Sense about Science chair who made a point of linking the "excess deaths" figure from the various very hot summers we've recently had in Europe to the death tolls from terrorism, hence backing up David King's point.
I suppose, looking for political conspiracies, I have to say that the briefing booklet which Sense about Science gave out at the conference painted a somewhat more conservative picture than any of the speakers did. If one were reading this booklet in conjunction with other reputable sources about climate change, then it would probably provide a good, sober account of some of the more extreme positions (like the gulf stream shutting down, which now looks unlikely). However, my fear is that it will be seized upon by deniers as further "evidence" in their cause. The same applies to Hardaker's position on the radio: if you listen carefully, he doesn't say anything I wouldn't agree with. But then the BBC spins the story slightly on its website, and I'm sure it'll be picked up by deniers. I do wonder if Hardaker had been pushed onto the radio by Sense about Science?
My only complaint about the day itself was that it was so short! There was a lot more which could have been said (for example, how do people take these climate predictions and try to predict how they will impact on people?) But it gave me a little more faith in Sense about Science: it's worth watching their website, as they promised to post as much material as possible from the actual talks.
This is a guest post by Matt Daws.
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Thank you Matt, for your account of the conference. The most interesting part for me was the description of the sceptics' questions in the audience. My guess is we're dealing with a pathology, not a true scepticism, and that's where the political battle belongs, I believe -- in pulling back the veil on that pathology. From a social science point of view, the young men who asked questions fascinate me. What is it that closes their minds? Is there a link between the climate scepticism they express and Altemeyer's theory of authoritarianism?
The reason I'm more interested in the sceptics in the audience is that celebrity sceptics like Crichton and McIntyre and Soon and the rest are nothing without an audience to preach to. Reduce the audience and you silence the voice.
My hypothesis is that the scepticism of the audience (which is clearly different from that of the headline sceptics) is motivated in large part by a common hatred of liberals/socialists. If this is so, then the root motivating force would be fear.
Anyway, just some stray thoughts.
Very interesting post, and I think plum's comment cuts to an important topic. IMO in addition to a dislike of liberalism there is a distrust/dislike of science in general. This probably comes from two sources.
The first is the unbending mental strictness of science itself. The
field is (necessarily) merciless to half baked thinking, and beautiful theories get destroyed by ugly data. A lot of people can't take the effects of the rigour on their ego, and so rebel.
The second is that they see science gradually eroding religion. So it in general becomes the enemy.
Then there is the conflating of ways of thinking about behavior. Scientists can supposedly benefit from seeing a climate threat -so
they make up results to that effect. People unfamiliar with the scientific method fail to see the difference between how we continually check our work, and how a PR -or political campaign is waged.
Firstly, my thanks to Tim for allowing me to guest blog this event. Two very interesting comments above: I wish I'd had the guts to ask some of the audience sceptics who they were: some appeared to know each other, but I guess they could have been anyone really. I think maybe it's that people come with preconceived ideas about how society should function (the "you'll take my automobile from my cold, dead hands" approach) and when they see science contradicting this view (that is, if climate change is really happening, then it is serious, and we need to do something) they feel that the only thing to do is to attack the science.
Some of the newspapers here in the UK covered the event. The Observer has a piece which rather reads like it was cobbled together from a Sense about Science press release. In particular, a little sidebox takes some quotes from the Sense about Science booklet, and in the process of removing the context, rather destroys the careful wording and meaning. I can't help but wonder that Sense about Science were rather asking for this to happen! In contrast, The Independent carries a more sober report, in particular this odd quote:
"Some confusion surrounded the views of the RMS scientists yesterday after Prof Hardaker told the IoS that he could not think of a case where a scientist had overstated the position."
For small-government low-flat-tax libertarians, climate change directly threatens their world-view, because it requires radical state-intervention to do anything about it. So they're reluctant to accept the necessity of this. Then a few Crichton-types come along and tell them it's all a conspiracy, which neatly fits their preconceptions about the state doing anything much.
*falls of chair in shock*
You mean the LM connected pro-GM anti-environmentalist organisation actually looks like it is living up to its name!
I'm shocked I tell you.
Ahh well, its nice to see. I have run into a Living Marxism follower of a moron on Ben Goldacres Bad science forum, who continually belittled the science on global warming due to an a priori conviction that humans are all that matter and anything that is done (such as restricting some forms of development, Kyoto etc) to reduce the environmental damage we do is evil and horrible and should be opposed.
Needless to say, they alwawys got squelched any time they ventutred near the science. THe arguments tended towards pointless debates about meanings.
Summer temps in the 40's in the UK would require massive investment in air conditioning in the UK, and probably big changes in house and building design and methods.
Plus, farmers everywhere would have to completely change their crops, livestock, machinery and install irrigation.
*begin snark*
Our precious British culture would be changed beyond all recognition, and we would switch from fish and chips and beer to wine and ciabbata.
*end snark*
Plum said: "My hypothesis is that the scepticism of the audience (which is clearly different from that of the headline sceptics) is motivated in large part by a common hatred of liberals/socialists."
I think that's a good assessment. My only addition would actually be a subtraction: ie, remove the word "common" and the very last words "of liberals/socialists".
A lot of these rebellious types are motivated by hatred (period) for anyone/any thing that smacks of "telling them what they can and can't do" (which includes physical laws like gravity!).
Matt,
Maybe you're just wandering into this issue brand new, but industry funded science groups have been around for about 15 years. So Sense About Science is nothing new, but just the latest in a series of industry front groups appearing to operate as disinterested science society's.
See their Sourcewatch page:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sense_about_Science
Creating one of these groups involves cultivating academics who appear a bit conservative or outside the mainstream, and then giving them a more public platform to air their views and shape public opinion.
Not all of the members of such a group will be completely crazy, because then that would quickly expose the group to ridicule. So you need to infiltrate with a number of high-profile, older type researchers who are long in the tooth, but well credentialed.
Then you layer in second and third tier thinkers who are easily used by the conservative party. Our current contrarian on the climate change issue is Roger Pielke Jr. who is now doing heavy lifting for the Republican party.
http://republicans.oversight.house.gov/hearings/Testimony.aspx?TID=16
I've posted a couple of times at Crooked Timber and Real Science about the Hardaker interview (my blood is still boiling! - thank God for Marcus Brigstocke). I think Matt's right about the idea that Sense about Science rather liked the publicity it threw up, which fits in nicely with their record and the audience the event seemed to attract. Of course, the media should have known better. Someone has already pointed out the differnce between the Independent's admission from Hardaker that 'He said he did not disagree with any of this (the AAAS statement)', and that 'he and his colleague were not experts on climate change', and the idea gained from the BBC and the Observer that they were.
Since he had already agreed with the statement on Fridays Today programme (while totally failing to condemn the C4 programme, something he at least tried to do on Saturday), why did the Observer write such a rubbish article? They even managed to work in a quote from Broads NYT article, which been given such a kicking on Grist and Real Climate.
SoS relies on lazy jouralists for their lack of knowledge, and they certainly came up roses on this one. I've already written to both the BBC and the Observer about this, so more letters might help to improve future coverage.
It looks like deniers have got a real boost from Hardakers idiocy , and the lackluster reply to Durkin http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=VLYSQ4RHMNIVNQFIQ… , which makes me wonder if this is a trend.
What's really worring me is that either we are going to get more of these naive interventions into the media, or far worse, we are starting to see our own Pielke Jr.s emerging in the UK.
Larry Teabag -- Thanks for that. I'd been wondering how straight up-and-down authoritarian personalities would have had the persistence to keep up with all the (pseudo) science, but it makes sense that libertarian types would have more of a head for figures.
By the way, that's a very ... er ... interesting nickname you have.
mikeb -- I'm afraid I'm missing some context on that Hardaker interview. I gather, reading between the lines on Matt's post, that he's positioned himself as a concern troll on "alarmism". But can you provide a link to those posts you wrote on Crooked Timber and Real Science? I can't find Real Science and you're not on the CT authors list.
Also, can anyone post a quick link to the interview?
Plum,
For the next few days, you can "listen again" to the interview via the BBC Radio 4 website: the one you want is at 8:10am. It's not a very pleasant listen actually, as clearly the interviewer is hoping for some controversy, while Hardaker is trying his best not to say anything he regrets, and basically ends up agreeing with the environmentalist they've bought it. Of course, then end result is that it just adds to the FUD.
I should have spelt this out in the post. I do wonder why these scientists are putting their heads above the parapet in this fashion: they are just asking to be misquoted. Obviously in peer reviewed publishing we need to continue doing what we always do: that is, being very careful about the limits of research etc. But I wonder if, given the rather well-financed denier movement, it wouldn't pay to be a little less naive when talking to the media.
Mikeb: I completely agree that the Observer report was awful: it was also given a large photo spread on page 5, so you think they might have put some effort in. At least it appears that the Independent bothered to actually interview Hardaker, rather than reply on a press release.
Dear Matt
I enjoyed your piece but here are a couple of suggestions.
1. Well, I'm surprised by your reporting of improved weather forecasting, always hopeless when I was at LSE 43 years ago, and no better now in Canberra, where "showers" as forecast yesterday turned into 25mm (one inch), our biggest rain since last July.
2. Pace Nick Stern, there were actually no Katrinas at all in 2006 (he claimed they had become the norm in terms of both frequency and intensity).
3. Clearly you have never lived in a hot country, so "40oC" in summer in England is not very scary to any who have spent longish periods in Cairo, Khartoum, or Dubai. Dubai (up to 50oC in summer) has never before had so many heatseeking Brits living and settling there, and its golf courses are a riot of biodiversity, the birds can be very unsettling on your backswing! The verges and middle reserves on its highways are a standing reproach to you oh so environmentally conscious and "holier than thou" Brits who have never planted even one tree on any motorway verge.
4. It seems clear that your studies have not introduced you to such distinctions as that between cyclical and secular trends. But then you are in good company as Stern merely brushes aside such phenomena as the El Nino cycle, while the IPCC's Summary for Policy makers for its FARt never even mentions it, whereas here since the day the Oz Met Office announced the latest El Nino had ended, we have have had more rain than in the preceding 7 months. For the IPCC the sun is the great Constant, like Muhammed, totally invariant. Allah akbar! - that is indeed the general intellectual level of the IPCC.
Good luck!
Tim
"Clearly you have never lived in a hot country, so "40oC" in summer in England is not very scary to any who have spent longish periods in Cairo, Khartoum, or Dubai."
What do you expect the temperature in Cairo to be when it's 40 in England? What do you expect the quality and amount of water to be available for agricultural irrigation there? And what do you imagine the effect of 12 million starving Cairenes to be on the rest of the middle east?
Is there any crop that will survive 55 degree heat at a concentration that might feed a population the size of Egypt's? They'll all try to walk north, won't they?
TimC,
Please cite how you quantify a 'riot of biodiversity' on Dubai's golfcourses. When was the last in depth survey undertaken quantifying invertebrate and vertebrate diversity there - or are you as usual just speaking utter gobbledegook? The truth is the golf courses are ostensibly biological deserts - barren, homogeneous environments that are wholly destructive to local biodiversity, much like banana and oil palm plantations are. This is hardly new information, but to you it clearly is.
Further, the short-term result of transferring regular summer temperatures of 40C to the UK would result not in a 'riot of biodiversity' but a 'spasm of extinction' that would be unprecedented in scale in millions of years and utterly calamitous. Such an event would have a catastrophic effect on communities and ecosystems, and would cause widespread collapse of a range of ecological services. This is because populations of species occurring in NW Europe are genetically adapted to seasonal moist climate regimes and not to arid, sun-baked conditions. Species have the genetic ability to respond to gradual change, but the paradigm shift you are suggesting would be an unmitigated disaster. No ifs and buts.
I would not normally respond to such a profoundly simple and somewhat bizarre post as your reply to Matt, given that it is scientifically bankrupt, but I thought that as a population ecologist I should nip your ignorant pontifications firmly in the bud.
Dear Plum - Matt beat me to it with the link to the Today interview. I didn't put any links in on Crooked Timber, but Real Climate (not Science - I wrote the post when when my two year old woke me up very early this morning, sorry!) has some posts of mine at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/a-much-more-eloqu…
My comments were 32 & 53 on the thread. Follow the links from there.
BTW - Tim, do you think that perhaps the heats getting to you?
Good luck!
Tim.
In your state of mind, you will need good luck!
I'm going to quote MikeB from the RealClimate thread, as he says what I was trying to say above, but in a much better way:
Whereas the deniers will say something cannot be happening, academics feel much more comfortable with 'maybe and 'possibly'. It's fine when you write it in an article or paper, because we all understand the rules. But when you do it on the Today programme, when you have three minutes before the sport opposite someone who really does not care about truth, its fatal.
Tim Curtin:
Sorry Tim C, but it can't possibly have rained 25 mm in Canberra because you haven't provided evidence of it raining less by 25 mm elsewhere ;O)
(To other readers, yes it's a silly argument, but remarkably similar to an earlier argument made by a certain commenter!)
Why don't you guys talk about the Great Global Warming Swindle documentary?
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/03/great-global-warming-swindle.html
The AGW theory will be soon over and you wouldn't even learn it here.
The ignorance about libertarianism, and our current political situation continue...
It is with a few generous campaign contributions in our current political situation that certain industries are able to do exactly what they like, to the detriment of individuals, or economy and our environment.
In a libertarian society, there would be millions of industry watchdogs (i.e. the people) ready to slap a lawsuit down on any illicit behaviour.
You're being sarcastic, nags?
No. What part did you think might be sarcastic?
This:
>In a libertarian society, there would be millions of industry watchdogs (i.e. the people) ready to slap a lawsuit down on any illicit behaviour.
Actually, Tim, I view Na_gs' view as true - nothing gets done, planned, prevented, or avoided until it happens, then the courts are flooded with lawsuits over damage.
It makes me thing that L-ism was created as a joke by lawyers, sitting at a pub.
Best,
D
Sorry Tim, but I guess I don't see what you're getting at. Do you disagree with my comment? Why?
I would not normally respond to such a profoundly simple and somewhat bizarre post as your reply to Matt, given that it is scientifically bankrupt, but I thought that as a population ecologist I should nip your ignorant pontifications firmly in the bud.
My education in a discipline similar to Jeff's is years less, and when my grad career was going and I did this, I did this in fear of being hammered...but if I may correct Jeff Harvey slightly (in bold):
Ahem. Thank you.
IOW, in Dano terms: Tim doesn't know Jack Sh*t (a Yank phrase).
Best,
D
Better to let the politicians, bureaucrats and Big-Insustry lobbyists bungle it, then declare "soverign immunity" when it hits the fan, leaving no recourse for those harmed, eh Dano?
No, Na_gs, I'm merely pointing out your ideology is reactive, not proactive. You can ascribe whatever fear-mongering things you like to folks who point this out, as free speech is a Constitutional right in our country, unlike other things not defined in the Constitution but certain ideologies act as if they are.
Best,
D
The threat of lawsuits has never acted as a deterrent?
Right.
Not fearmongering, just pointing out the day-to-day functioning of Big-Government.
LOL!
So we have "Constitutional Rights"? You are really too much Dano.
So, were you in favor of the Kelo decision Dano? It's OK to take people's homes to make way for the new Starbucks or Wal-Mart?
Matt, did the print edition of the Observer attribute those three paragraphs to the NYT?
Nanny, I has always assumed that in a consistently libertarian legal system verdicts would be subject to purchased by the highest bidder.
A libertarian government would focus on virtually 2 things: A court system and national defense.
After withdrawing troops from the 135 or so countries that they are stationed in, and dropping all trade and immigration barriers, we'd pretty much be a friend to all, so the resources spent on a national defense would be quite small. That leaves the focus for virtually the entire govenment on a fair and accountable court system. I don't think your chances for a fair trial would be better in any other scenario.
Steve Bloom: I don't think so: the print edition just credited Sense about Science, but so did the online version. I think the text was identical between the two, just the print version had a couple of large, fairly pointless, photos.
Which bits do you think were from the NYT? There does seem to be some link between the Observer and the NYT: you get a nice pull-out in the Observer which is 8 pages of the NYT.
Tell me Nanny, are you familiar with the economic expressions "willingness to pay" and "willingness to accept"?
I won't let this go on, Tim.
So, were you in favor of the Kelo decision Dano? It's OK to take people's homes to make way for the new Starbucks or Wal-Mart?
1. It's curious that eminent domain for road-building never hears ululating at this level by a small ideological minority, but job creation begets much howling, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments.
2. The Constitution does not define 'just compensation' or 'public good'. Society at the time defines that.
If - as the USC reasserted - it is OK for a politician to get elected on 'jobs, jobs, jobs', then living wage job creation (not Wal-Mart like you want to FUD) is a public good (as we all decry the loss of our living wage jobs).
That is the decision - reaffirmed over time - of the USC. Sure the USC is capricious and this all started in the Mahon decision (IMHO bad). But its reaffirmed for a reason.
Best,
D
"The AGW theory will be soon over"
That was in 1983, and 1988, and 1990, and 1995, and 1998, and ... Sounds like the boy who cried, well, you know.
Mikeb, what you'll find is that conservative favorites like Roger Pielke Jr. will work overtime to defend themselves against any characterization as Republican, or conservative, or industry favorites. For instance, Roger furiously guards his wikipedia entry so that none of this stuff tracks him on the internet.
Most journalists don't look beyond the writing of their fellow journalists, so that's how Roger gets away with it. It's usually only bloggers who expose the nonsense.
Libertarian utopians suffer from the same delusion as left-wing utopians:
An unwarranted belief in the goodness of their fellow human beings.
Matt, the last three paragraphs of the Observer story are the same as the third and fourth paragraphs of the Broad piece, with the exception of a couple of minor style changes and the deletion of the phrase "scientists might want" (exact texts appended below). I suppose it's arguable as to whether this latter change is substantive.
As with Broad, what was left unsaid is that Easterbrook is a proponent of a solar cycle hypothesis that the IPCC has explicitly discredited.
Is this accepted journalistic practice in the UK? Is there any point in filing a complaint about it?
NYT:
"I don't want to pick on Al Gore," Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. "But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data."
Mr. Gore, in an e-mail exchange about the critics, said his work made "the most important and salient points" about climate change, if not "some nuances and distinctions" scientists might want. "The degree of scientific consensus on global warming has never been stronger," he said, adding, "I am trying to communicate the essence of it in the lay language that I understand."
Observer:
'I don't want to pick on Al Gore,' Don J Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. 'But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.'
Gore, in an exchange of emails about the critics, said his work made 'the most important and salient points' about climate change, if not 'some nuances and distinctions'.
'The degree of scientific consensus on global warming has never been stronger,' he said, adding 'I am trying to communicate the essence of it in the lay language that I understand.'
Thom - your right about Roger Pielke Jr - its Grist, etc who's tracking him, rather than the NYT.
In the UK, we have a very slightly different situation, since the Conservative Party has always believed in AGW (apart from possibly John Redwood, but he is rather strange - http://www.turnuptheheat.org/?page_id=18 & http://www.johnredwoodsdiary.com/?p=144, there is no straight political fight (as in the US) over AGW, and thus less need for a Pielke like figure to disguise their political leanings. Instead, we have a body of newspaper colunmists, members of right wing think-tanks and professional talking heads who seek to push the anti-AGW line. Its true that this is at the right-wing end of the spectrum, but its certainly not Cameron's agenda.
Stott and his ilk usually get exposure because of the need for 'balance' on programmes like 'Today'(lazy jouralism and the need for a guest who can 'deliver' rather than any malice on the BBC's part), but this tendency is balanced out by the BBC's otherwise strong coverage of AGW.
Stott does have some similarities with Pielke in that he tends to hide his association with Sense about Science and others on the right http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=126 & http://risingtide.org.uk/pages/voices/hall_shame.htm , but he works rather less hard at it. But he really doesn't need to. Indeed, he continues to appear on Radio 4 as a panellist on one show, and regularly appears on the Today programme, so they seem to have little idea of what he's actually about. The broadcast media seems to have taken little interest in his record (or SoS, Spiked, Scientific Alliance or any of the other people associated with them) but instead it's the bloggers, some newspare colunmists and certain websites.
All this bears out your observation about journalists relying on other journalists, as we all saw this week in relation to Hardaker/Collier and the coverage they got. But Marcus Brigstoke did the right thing..so all is not lost!
You all might want to have a look at the letters http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,,2038432,00.html the Guardian received after publishing Mike Hulme's somewhat unenlightening article last week.
Lets just say that they are all highly motivated....My eye was particularly caught by Dr Boehmer-Christiansen, who says 'I know Fred Singer personally and know of his scientific record. This is very prestigious indeed' - 'nuf said (go on, Sourcewatch her, you know you want to).
Do you support the Kelo decision, Dano?
The group that you linked to and seemed to have a problem with were fighting the Kelo decision. Are you with them or against them?
LOL!
That leaves the document WIDE open to any kind of interpretation. The same as having no document at all and just letting politicians do what they want.
I don't care what the judges say, Dano. What is YOUR feeling about Kelo? Judges can be wrong. Didn't you know that?
Kelo was quite interesting, but not in the way it is usually presented. The US Supreme Court said that policy governing takings of property with compensation were basically a political question. The law at the time in Conn. clearly allowed the city to exercise eminent domain.
The reaction in many states was to change the law to narrow the power of counties and cities to exercise eminent domain, something the court foresaw, recommended and was quite comfortable with.
There was, of course, the usual amount of whining. If the law was not changed to your liking, run for office and change the law.
You can LOL all you want at reality, na_gs.
It won't wash away the truth that our Constitution purposely did not define property, but it is our society that defines private property and shapes it according to our mores and norms.
For example, slaves are no longer property. Nor are women. And we overrode the property rights of lunch counter owners to make them act like decent human beings and serve black people. We in some states debated private property in the last election and private property rights initiatives were soundly defeated - and Oregon will repeal theirs soon.
And wrt Kelo, the private property rightists were duped into getting their hopes up, as Kelo has precedence way back to Mahon and the subsequent rulings that upheld that ruling. I, of course, support the rule of law in this country and Kelo is law. And I support anything that thwarts the private property rightists (a small but vocal minority on the planet) as I think their aims are dangerous to the continuation and wellbeing of the public good.
Best,
D
Nice corner you've backed yourself into, Dano...
So, as long as it's a law, you support it? So you support the Patriot Act, Real ID act, elimination of habeus corpus, drug war asset forfeiture, confiscation of Iraqi oil, subsidies to big oil, big farm, etc...? These are all "laws", so you support them all, yes?
And who were these whackos Thoreau, Ghandi, MLK, McWilliams? Just lawless scum who don't know "right" from "wrong"?
Note: If the law was not changed to your liking, run for office and change the law.
Ian, Eli
(Of course, running for office is not the only way to change a law)
Apparently Dano has a problem with a group that is attempting to overturn Kelo. I'm just not sure what makes him so fond of this abusive decision.
I assume that by "Ian" you actually meant "Dano". No biggie, I made a similar mistake myself just the other day.
It's not an abusive decision, nor am I 'fond' of it. Kelo, despite a small ideological minority's ululating and garment-rending assertions otherwise, merely clarified and upheld previous decisions. There was already precedent. There was nothing radical about it.
See, the private property rightists found it to be the last bitter defeat at the national level, and were sad about their inability to score a victory, and thus shifted their focus (OK, Howie shifted his minions' focus) to turn to state level.
Of course, na_gs is grumpy because the private property rightists can't get play at the state level either, because the majority of the population doesn't want their property rights subsumed so a small ideological minority can build something cr*ppy right next door.
So, yes, na_gs I have a problem with a small ideological minority wanting to eliminate the majority's property rights. Thing is, most of the country has a problem too, so there's really no reason to focus your ire in one place, is there?
Best,
D
Want to see a whole _roomful_ of lawyers fall down laughing? Tell them
"In a libertarian society, there would be millions of industry watchdogs (i.e. the people) ready to slap a lawsuit down on any illicit behaviour."
Typical lawyer response is along these lines -- it's happening now, to excess; they oppose the idea:
".... Although many of the cases brought under Proposition 65 have dealt with traditional "toxics," there is a disturbing trend in the cases which points to more and more emphasis on products which involve ingestion through the nose, mouth and skin. This trend is seen in cases such as the nail polish, ceramic ware, wine, lead fishing weights and faucet cases, which have recently been litigated or are being litigated in California Superior Courts...."
http://www.mbvz.com/CM/ArticlesandReports/ArticlesandReports23.asp
Of course, if the citizens, lawyers, laws, and courts were different, things would be different. Nature wouldn't change, though. Imagine if the CFC/ozone problem had been handled by libertarian methods -- we'd all have suntans, parasols and dark glasses by now.
Hank Roberts
If the CFC/ Ozone layer thing had been handled by libertarian methods, we would have:
- phytoplankton levels falling by over 40% all over the oceans (recorded on those parts of the Antarctic oceans beneath the ozone layers)
Phytoplankton is the absolute bottom of the food chain. Disrupt that, and it ripples up through all the higher fish.
- birds dying out due to increased cataracts, and explosive growth of insect populations (no birds to eat the mosquitoes).
- oh and worse global warming
Reread your Coase. An environmental problem can be solved by market means, *if* the property right is fully defined, and enforceable.
In a situation where the property right isn't fully defined (damages unknowable, and general), and isn't enforceable (many manufacturers and users of CFCs, spread all over the world), then you can't rely on the courts to solve the problem.
See also Gareth Hardin 'The Tragedy of the Commons'.
Apologies, typo above.
The phytoplankton falls have been found in areas of the ocean beneath the holes in the ozone layers.
I don't think the phytoplankton are in any position to sue the makers of air conditioning equipment, though.
Ah, but the free market will incentivize them to evolve the capacity to do so.
The organisers are sense about science who are one of a number of strange UK organisations that, in some sense, grew out of a small left-wing group called living marxism. These people seemed to have had a mass conversion to some form of libertarianism at some point, and now tend to campaign for the right for industry to do exactly what it likes etc.
Libertarians are ex-marxists? Objection: at the end of the cold war all marxists turned green not blue. Green-Left in Holland is the best example.
Hans: I posted a number of links to Wikipedia articles giving some background information about LM, Sense about Science, Spiked! etc. You might not believe Wiki as a source, but it does completely address your question, which makes me think that you didn't bother reading the links.
Just a quick update: The Observer of course failed to carry any letter of complaint about its awful reporting from last week.
Anyway, as usual in this blog, it is attacking the messenger and not the message.
Hans: again, did you read my piece? And how can it be "as usual on this blog" when I'm not the owner of this blog? Get your message straight! If you actually read my article, then you'll see that while I was initially worried, because of the "messenger", I actually found the "message" to be fairly beyond reproach. I have some issues with the little booklet which Sense about Science produced, but that was all. So what, again, is your point?
Matt,
Hans has been shown that his tactic of accusing ad hom is a wrong tactic. He's changed his tactic and now instead of calling it ad hom he calls it attacking the messenger.
Of course he is full of sh*t, but that's all he's got. Give the poor shill a break. It's tough out there these days and a lot of work to maintain a delusion message to a dwindling set of dupes.
Best,
D
Matt Daws
LM was famous for attacking 'moderate lefties' and liberals.
Far more so than conservatives.
I believe it was Private Eye which actually outed its financing by some right wing think tanks. I don't think it was ever a genuinely Marxist group, more of a right wing media front, I recall vaguely.
I am fascinated that these people have reincarnated themselves.
I don't think many from the UK's leftist parties (Revolutionary Communist Party, Socialist Workers Party etc.) have reincarnated themselves as 'greens'. However it is an axiom of the SWP operations manual that you adopt whatever the 'trendy anti-establishment' clause of the day, is. Hence the support of George Galloway and Respect in Tower Hamlets, which gives the unlikely vista of a socialist revolutionary party (Trotskyite) joining hands with moslem fundamentalists to campaign against Blair.
From wikipedia (which corresponds with my memory as an occasional reader of the magazine, although I thought New Internationalist was much better):
Views expounded with regularity in LM included opposition to sanctions on apartheid South Africa, downplaying concern over AIDS as a heterosexual disease or as a problem in Africa, attacking environmentalists and eulogising biotechnology. LM writers also engaged in a sustained campaign of denial of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
As the magazine attempted to reinvent itself, however, it sowed the seeds of its downfall. In the same issue the journal was re-christened LM, editor Mick Hume published an article by German journalist Thomas Deichmann which claimed that British Independent Television News (ITN) had fabricated its dramatic discovery in 1992 of prisoners held by the Bosnian Serbs. "The picture that fooled the world" argued that ITN's footage, in which emaciated Bosnian Muslim men clung to barbed wire, showed not a detention centre, as ITN maintained, but "a safe haven for refugees." [4].
The publishers of LM, Informinc (LM) ltd., were promptly sued for libel by ITV and in March 2000 the magazine was forced to close. Reporters Penny Marshall (UK journalist) and Ian Williams were each awarded £150,000 over the "L.M." story and the magazine was also ordered to pay £75,000 for libelling ITN in a February 1997 article.[5] The network now lives on in its current media incarnations, the Institute of Ideas and web magazine Spiked Online, edited by Brendan O'Neill. LM and its successor organisations continue to espouse a range of libertarian views, though they continue to regard themselves as "left wing". [6]
Bully for you Tim. Without the large number of sycophantic cheerleaders, the peer reviewed (peer, in this context, obviously meaning ideologically sympathetic) probably would not get the world changing status they crave.
As anyone who has a little knowledge, of human behaviour and the amount of "dirty" coal in China and India, can see, the rate of CO2 spewed into the atmosphere is not going to abate anytime soon. Of course that's forgetting all the Kyoto targets that have not been achieved and all those new Yankee, coal fired power stations, still coming on line, now and into the future.
That almost certain median term scenario will give even the simplest layman the opportunity to test the accuracy of today's climate models. Let's hope they work in reverse, just in case the non-anthropogenic global warming believers, such as the Russian Abdussamatov, are on the money and the "big freeze" does start in 2012 , with 2040 expected to be a particularly cold year. In that case we might all be heading south for golf or for beaches with bikini clad women.