A classical education - by Richard... Tuesday, February 01, 2011

A classical education - by Richard... Tuesday, February 01, 2011

The Purple Scorpion has an extremely good "take" on last night's climate sceptic documentary. What it is to have a classical education (sort of) ... sigh!

COMMENT: "STITCHED-UP" THREAD

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Three days early - by Richard...

It doesn't sound much. But this website is telling is that the ice pack which is created in the north of the Okhotsk Sea and then is blown down the coast of northern Sakhalin before reaching the Shiretoko coast in the north of Hokkaido, actually arrived in Japanese waters three days earlier than the annual average – on 29 January.

Despite the warmists and their troll friends on numerous websites trying to make out that the Okhotsk Sea ice pack was perfectly normal for this time of year, this source – which relies on data from the Japanese Ibuki satellite project(pictured: enlarged view here click pic when it has loaded) – is telling us that something abnormal was happening in the region.

Ice extent reports also have to be assessed in the context of strident complaints about the decline in the icepack, which was first observed in 1989. Since then, we are told, it "has never recovered to its former levels" – except perhaps now, when it is above average for the time of year.

Certainly, while reports of two-metre ice thickness were being made, scientific modelling in the Sakhalin area seems to suggests that mean maximum annual ice thickness is in the order of 108 cm, of which 70 cm is "congelation ice" and 38 cm is snow–ice, formed later in the season when the heaviest snowfalls are experienced.

As the inquiry into the cause of the Okhotsk Sea crisis now begins to get underway, there must be some explanation for why apparently experienced skippers of major vessels allowed themselves to become trapped in the ice. Having become used to the pack coming late in the Gulf of Sakhalin, where the ships were stranded, the skippers may have been caught out by the ice arriving unusually earlier, or being much thicker than expected.

COMMENT: OKHOTSK SEA CRISIS

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Grovelling in the weeds - by Richard...

If you had a site that had four million people attempting to log on at a rate of 75,000 people a minute, I guess you would be mightily pleased. But, seeing as it was a public service website - showing the locations of reported crimes - the server crashed.

From this, one can deduce several things. The first and most obvious is that, despite being the most expensively funded online content suppliers in the world, the public sector remains totally useless at managing its own websites – possibly even worse than The Daily Telegraph.

Secondly, it shows how much online traffic is generated when an issue is well-publicised and it is of public concern. A flow rate of 75,000 a minute is pretty good by UK standards.

Mind you, there is nothing to say that all were UK residents, or that they were actually genuinely interested in their local crime statistics. The top-scoring comment on the Mail website asked why Downing Street was not on the list, while the second-best rated comment (from a reader in the Netherlands) noted that it "should be at the top off the list for sure as they have been robbing us for years!!"

The third point is more sombre. For this blog to get 75,000 hits in a week would be exceptionally good (although we have done better). That a site can get that much traffic in a minute, and on its first day of business, suggests that we might have a little way to go before we reach our full potential. We are still grovelling in the weeds.

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If it quacks ... its a horse - by Richard...

Or, as Autonomous Mind has found out, the Met Office's seasonal forecasts, which are no longer forecasts, are actually forecasts - except that they aren't ... for the purposes of presentation. Or, in Met-speak - it it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and implements bowel evacuation procedures in a duck-like manner ... it's a horse.

Read also the two previous posts on the AM site. You begin to get a picture that everything is not quite right in this world of ours.

COMMENT: MET OFFICE THREAD

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They have lost their fear - by Richard...

Mervyn King, ruler of the Bank of England and all he surveys, has been awarded a £1.4 million top-up to his already exceedingly generous final income pension scheme. This is at a time when the said King is warning of a contracting economy - not least as a result of his mismanagement - telling us that we are going to have to "tighten our belts".

If there is a good reason why we should not rise up and slaughter them all, I really would like to know it. I am having enormous difficulty working this one out for myself.

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Forum - by Richard...

The forum is open for new applicants today, subject to the usual caveats. If The Daily Telegraphcan't manage to run its own comments properly, at least we can have a civilised discussion here.

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The deed is done - by Richard...

So, the BBC broadcast the programme. Mercifully, it is not available on line, which means I do not have to waste any life energy looking for a suitable shot for a screen grab. Was it a stitch-up? Well, of course it was. That is what was intended, that is what the BBC paid for and that is what it got. It was never going to be any different.

As to how it was done, the technique was fairly simple and direct. First paint a picture of Armageddon, and agree that this is real and has to be taken seriously. Then pick "mad" climate sceptic – enter Monckton – and build him up as representing the entire sceptic case. Go through the charade of exploring his views, refer to grave scientists who say this loon is a loon, "reluctantly" agree and conclude that the scientists must be believed. Game over.

The BBC used roughly the same technique with eurosceptics. They'd pick the maddest they could find, build them up and knock them down. Now they are at it again, although the one consolation is that very few people must have watched the programme.

One does in fact wonder why the BBC bothers, although probably the real reason why they do is that it gives the warmists fresh heart. They've been taking a bit of a bashing lately and needed a morale boost. Watching a film slapping down Monckton is just the sort of thing they love. It is meaningless, and does not change the facts. But it makes them feel better, and at our expense. They bray ... we pay. T'was always thus.

COMMENT: "STITCHED UP" THREAD

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Fun and games - by Richard... Monday, January 31, 2011

The BBC, we are told, has fought off a High Court challenge from Monckton, who has been trying to prevent the broadcast of the "Meet The Climate Sceptics" documentary tonight.

Monckton had applied to Mr Justice Tugendhat for an injunction stopping the programme, on the basis that it had not included his right of reply. He said that he felt he had been "unreasonably treated and misled" and complained of breach of contract. He wanted the programme to include his 500 words or three minutes which, he said, was proportionate in the context of a 60-minute film almost exclusively about him.

Interestingly, Tugendhat in dismissed the application, seems to have agreed with the BBC that there was no contract between Monckton and the film makers that would entitle him to a right of reply. Although "dressed up" as a claim in contract, the real complaint was one of defamation.

It is fascinating that Monckton feels the need to go to court on this, and more so that the BBC and the film-makers sought to defend it. Under normal circumstances, a balanced film would afford those involved plenty of time to argue their case.

But this is climate change, and we are talking about the BBC. Dellers is right. It was always going to be a stitch-up, and we're not going to be disappointed. Already, The Guardian is sniggering that the sceptic cause is "possibly not aided by having as spokesman the hereditary peer Christopher Monckton, who recently needed to be told to stop referring to himself as a member of the House of Lords".

That is the level of "debate" to which we have become accustomed.

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UK consumers are ripped off - by Richard...

A very useful piece here. What is not easy to discern, however, is why the regulator allows the energy companies to get away with what amounts to overcharging. The suspicion is that they are being allowed to build up a war chest to finance the greenery.

Either way, we are being seriously ripped off, and there is no one looking after the consumer interest.

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Comment removed - by Richard...

How ironic it is that Booker should write his column on how the warmists abuse science, only to have a troll launch into the comments with a stream of abuse of Booker ... and myself.

Currently, well over 900 "comments" come from this one troll, aphasicfinder (click the link and "activity" on the toolbar), getting on for a half of the total on the board. This is classic troll abuse, a process that has acquired the label "bombing" and one which, on a well-managed website, would lead to the offender being banned.

But at last, the Disqus/Telegraph team has acted. It has deleted all my posts – every single one. All the hundreds posted on all the Booker columns have gone, most of them without trace. Only occasionally do they leave a forlorn "guest" tracer, with the notice "comment removed" (above). In true Soviet style, I have been "disappeared".

Needless to say, the troll's posts are still there and increasing in number by the hour (examples posted). This is how the newspaper supports its own columnist and his researcher - with that sort of back-up you can really go places. Its idea of support is simply to allow the troll to take over the site. Its activities are untrammelled, its flow of abuse unchecked, spewing out its stuff with an apparent endorsement of the newspaper - and certainly with its permission.

Troll activity on The Telegraph has been a problem for some time. But with this latest inept move, the newspaper has gone so ludicrously off the rails that it is actually supporting the trolls which are disrupting its own sites, insulting its own people and its own readers. No wonder it is a failing business. Any organisation with that much contempt for its own customers deserves to fail.

So, when we see its pompous leaders in its newspapers, instructing us, the government and many others on how to run their affairs, we might recall that this is an organisation which cannot even manage its own webspace properly.

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Stitched up in spades - by Richard...

Dellers on his last but one post kindly put up a generic link to this blog, so I pointed readers to thespecific post to which he was referring. However, events have overtaken me, and he has now put up a further post, which does link directly to my original piece. The circle is now complete.

The latest effort by Dellers is to draw attention to another BBC stitch-up, which purportedly has filmmaker Rupert Murray "taking us on a journey into the heart of climate scepticism to examine the key arguments against man-made global warming" where he tries "to understand the people who are making them".

That comes from the promotional spiel and is patronising tosh. It goes, purportedly to ask: "Do they have the evidence that we are heating up the atmosphere or are they taking a grave risk with our future by dabbling in highly complicated science they don't fully understand? Where does the truth lie and how are we, the people, supposed to decide? "

It is patronising tosh, of course, because – as I explain in my own post – the tone and conclusion of every TV documentary is decided well in advance of its making, long before a camera team captures the first footage. No commissioning editor on this earth – and certainly not the BBC – is going to commit the £300,000 or so budget to an open-ended "journey of discovery". Before any contract is signed with the film-makers, the exact "line to take" has been spelled out and agreed. The job of the film-maker is to deliver it – no matter what it takes.

However, not only is the spiel tosh, it is patronising tosh, for it assumes we are gulled into believing this is an honest journeyman at work. The film features, we are told, Britain's pre-eminent sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton as he tours the world broadcasting his message to the public and politicians alike. "Can he convince them and Murray that there is nothing to worry about?"

The answer to that, inevitably, is "no". We know this without even seeing the programme, which is on tonight at 10 pm on the TV channel BBC Four. And how do we know this? Because many months ago, Rupert Murray was commissioned to make a film to deliver that answer. It is as simple as that.

With all the things going on in this world, and all the important events that assail us daily, one wonders why the BBC bothers - why it is so important to it that the "right" message on climate change is given and maintained. And the answer here is that, currently, the issue climate change underpins a world view to which the BBC subscribes, one which, in its terms, legitimises social intervention on a huge scale.

This is then, less about a low-grade, compliant little programme-maker, and more about power - the imposition of a particular world view, and the suppression by whatever means, of any alternative messages. This is serious stuff.

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