Johnny Ball was booed off stage last night after questioning man made climate change during his part in a Christmas show celebrating atheism and science. The crowd for 'Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People', organised by BBC regular Robin Ince, was too close-minded to hear him out. Ince has criticised Ball's views on Twitter and Ball says he won't be doing the climate change stuff in future shows. More from the Telegraph. (This is a guest blog from BBC environment correspondent Richard Blackbin in Copenhagen.) Anyone catch wee Douglas Alexander being interviewed on Today this morning @ 7.12am? It seems that the ideal way to assist our soldiers is to send in 1000 UK civilians including "a number of economists" - and that's what Dougie announced. This nonsense was taken by Sarah Montague without comment. What next- a legion of aromatherapists? Richard Black asks 'Why are virtually all climate "sceptics" men?' I don't have time to give this the fisking it deserves but I'll get the ball rolling by noting that the question occurred to him while reading the Guardian on aplane to Copenhagen. What are things coming to? ‘CoJo’ aka BBC College of Journalism. Where? Who has to attend? I'm not the biggest fan of the Cameron-led Conservative Party, but even I was forced to wonder where the Today programme gets balls big enough to follow yesterday's double-team attack on Tory spokesman Phil Hammond with another one-sided assault on Tory policy this morning. Daniel "Danny" Dorling, a socialist professor of human geography, was given the prime-time slot following Thought For The Day to promote the idea of expanding public sector employment and increasing taxation. Conservative-proposed spending cuts were singled out for criticism by Dorling and his softball-tossing interviewer Sarah Montague. There was no one to offer a counter opinion and not the slightest pretence of balance. It's not just the political parties that are already in election mode; the Today programme's manifesto is taking shape too. (Interview can be heard here)
Johnny Ball booed from Robin Ince gig
>> WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2009
I see also that another rationalist, the flimflam debunker James Randi, has expressed scepticism over claims that the science is settled. Like Johnny Ball, he too has come under attack for his views.
(Full disclosure - I'm an atheist climate change sceptic.)Copenhagen Guest Blogger
Why can't more people be just like me?
The question first came to mind on the plane to Copenhagen as I caressed my cheek with my Guardian COP15 84-page pull-out supplement.
If more people were like BBC environment correspondents, I reflected, then the world would be a better place because people like me understand things so much better than ordinary folk.
Gazing out from the window at the frosty city landscape while we circled the airport, another thought struck me: perhaps I should have worn a little more than a Greenpeace T-shirt, Bermuda shorts and Birkenstock sandals.
I asked the stewardess if there was a clothes shop in the terminal building where I could purchase some sturdy boots and a reasonably priced winter coat made from sustainable natural products, but she didn't seem to understand.
"Have you at least heard of Fair Trade in Denmark?" I asked, pointedly.
"Sir, I can't understand a word you're saying when you've got your thumb in your mouth," she replied, rather too harshly for my liking. Maybe she was one of those "conservative women" one sometimes hears about. I was quite shaken, and decided not to press the issue. I would jolly well find a shop myself, I thought.
As things turned out, I didn't have to.
There I was shivering by the baggage carousel waiting for my duffle bag (small size, made from sustainable Romanian hemp) when who should I see but Marmaduke Quimly-Farquharson, one of Oxfam's go-getting young press officers. We have shared many thousands of air miles together travelling the world to exotic locations for various climate conferences. Indeed, we'd both been on the same flight just then but thanks to all this frightful recent scrutiny about BBC expenses I'm no longer able to travel up in first with all my pals from the NGOs.
In one of the many acts of kindness one often experiences at these events (populated as they are by caring planet-loving types and not old right-wing white men with their sceptical views) Marmaduke offered to lend me a coat on condition that I give Oxfam a bit of a mention now and then during my reports. I agreed, of course. "After all, we're in this together!" I said.
"Indeed we are!" he replied. "Why quite can't more people be just like you, Richard?"
My thoughts exactly.
HOPELESS IN KABUL
Group Fisk
>> TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2009
[Hat tips to Rachel Miller (funny name for a climate sceptic) and Roland Deschain in the comments.]
Update. Also, feel free to add your own Richard Black-style questions. For example:
Why are virtually all BBC "journalists" left-wing?
Why are virtually all BBC "environment correspondents" arts graduates?
Why are virtually all "reports by Justin Rowlatt" such desperate pleas for attention?
Update. 17.35. A quick scan of the comments at Black's blog suggests that the group fisk is already taking place over there. Don't let that stop you here, though.A Great Deal of Murdering
Not ‘JoGo’ and ‘PaRo’, the hosts of BBC radio London, obviously.
We’re all used to the Guardian’s overwhelming disdain for Israel. Michael White, their political editor knows a thing or two, and he doesn’t care who hears him say it.
If you trained as an actress and played Carol Sands in Crossroads as well as Rodney’s date in the second episode of only Fools and Horses, you’d be eminently qualified to go ‘mmmmmmm’ in agreement while Mr. White is saying something “"extremely serious and baseless.”
Are you sure? Never mind, if that little something is about Israel, who cares?Today Again
Immediately after Dorling, Justin Webb interviewed Sir David King about his proposal to have a climate scientist on the Bank of England's monetary policy committee. King got very irate when Webb brought up the CRU emails. Even though Webb wasn't challenging the consensus view, the very mention of the emails is now considered off-limits as far as the high priests of the Warmist cult are concerned. Webb took his punishment meekly, like a good on-message Today presenter should. (Interview can be heard here)
Here's a rushed transcript of the relevant segment:King: It's rather like the fact that there's a labour market economist on the MPC itself, on the group, designed to stop monetarists riding roughshod over the jobless people. In other words that person has a particular hat to wear, and I'm saying why not put someone on there who understands energy, energy technology, low carbon moves and wears that hat and can express it right there when policies are being decided on our finances.
"Sir David, thank you very much. May I have another?"
Webb: You look at the University of East Anglia emails and you do wonder, actually, whether putting someone there would just make them a target, quite apart from anyone else, a target from their own colleagues. It's not settled enough, is it, to have someone doing the job and everyone accepting that they are doing the right job?
King: Good heavens. What are you saying is not settled enough? The science of climate change?
Webb: No, not the science, but the arguments, the flurries of discussion and dissent among the scientists themselves, and that to have someone there…
King: There is very little discussion and dissent among the scientists. That's a total misreading of the theft of the UEA emails.
Webb: Well you can see it in the emails, can't you?
King: (getting angry now) I'm sorry, that is an interpretation of the emails - the scientific community is of one voice on the issue. Is the planet warming up at the moment? That was the issue around the emails, and our Met Office, not involved in the issue, has published its own set of data this week demonstrating that of course we know icebergs are melting, we're losing ice around the planet, every single piece of evidence from satellites, from temperature measurements is showing that the temperature has risen by three quarters of a degree centigrade.
Webb: OK, and you want that information to be there at the top table in the Treasury, in the Bank of England. Sir David, thank you very much.
Does anybody else get the impression that Sir David has been rattled by Climategate? As more and more holes appear in their theory, King and his fellow zealots become ever more shrill in their declaration that the science is settled and that all dissent should be crushed. Talking of which, check out the Stalinist heading to King's article in the latest Prospect magazine:The Bank's green future
Darling is getting it wrong on climate change. Now scientists must shape monetary policy.
Update 13.30. Just noticed that Umbongo mentioned these two interviews in the comments to an earlier blog post. Don't want to deprive anybody of a tip of the hat.
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
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