I'm not surprised.
Disappointed yes, but surprised no.
The ABC's performance last night concerning the screening of The Great Global Warming Swindle, especially that of Tony Jones, was nothing short of a disgrace to any principles of fair and objective journalism.
Bill Leak's cartoon above from this morning's issue of The Australian distils Jones' unconcealed bias and refusal to even for a moment consider a contrary argument.
I mean really, do you think for a moment that the ABC would have had Jones at the front of a specially built set and solemnly intoning that the following program does not reflect the views of the ABC, (as he did last night - think about that for a moment, because it was actually very revealing), almost apologising to the true believers for allowing such dangerous heresy to be seen in the first place, if it was An Inconvenient Truth?
Can you really imagine Jones going after Al Gore in the same 'attack dog' fashion as he went after Durkin last night?
Of course not.
And Jones clearly packed a hatchet in his bag for the trip to London and was determined to do a 'job' on Durkin no matter what.
I'd have to say though, Durkin looked nervous and didn't do a very good job of taking the argument up to Jones (who knows less than he thinks).
So I was sitting there last night consumed with the frustration that comes from knowing how Jones was dealing in misleading information to try and make it look as if it was Durkin doing so, and thinking to myself "I know the answer to this and could do a better job of explaining why Jones was wrong."
And I see that Jones is not above indulging in cheap tabloid tricks to advance his cause.
Anyone watching Durkin's film would be struck by the stellar cast of high-profile and well credentialed climate scientists, as well as the co-founder of Greenpeace and a former editor of New Scientist, all saying that anthropogenic climate change is rubbish.
What's Tony to do?
Head for the margins!
Ignore Richard Lindzen from MIT or John Christy etc, make out that a letter being published in 1996 is a big issue, (despite no claims or suggestions it was written later than that - see the trick?), or make out that something dishonest must be going because the term of office of the first director of some meteorological institute wasn't given, even though any half-wit should be able to work out that if you are being described as the "first" director then you obviously aren't the current one and there may have been several people who had followed you in that position.
Okay, he ceased that position back in the '60s. What, he magically stopped being a climate scientist and just forgot everything? He'd done nothing in the field of climate science since? The man was clearly well qualified to express an opinion on climate science and it was just an cheap and unethical ploy on the part of Jones to discredit someone, rather than answer their arguments.
Predictably the ExxonMobil excuse was trotted out. I don't care if someone has got money from them. It doesn't provide me with an excuse to use this fact as a way of dismissing an argument rather than answering it. And getting money from big oil doesn't mean you are wrong.
The fact that the Medieval Warm Period definitely was warmer than today, irrespective of any dodgy IPCC graphs (and if only you knew what they get up to with those), and that this is confirmed by not just scientific data, but also the historical record, is a point Durkin didn't get across.
Not that Jones was at all interested in listening anyway.
And we don't know what the ABC cut out of the interview to "shape" it the way they wanted it.
I found the Ebola virus analogy used by one of the counter-scientists to try and deflect attention away from the inconvenient truth that CO2 makes up just a tiny fraction of a percent of the Earth's atmosphere, (and that the CO2 that is man made represents an even smaller fraction), laughable and ridiculous in equal measure.
You don't have to be an epidemiologist to see what nonsense that was!
What kills you isn't a small number of Ebola viruses. What kills you is the millions or billions of them in your body produced by the initial few. What an idiot.
Now, no doubt Tony was cheered today as he entered the cafeteria at the ABC in Sydney. After all, he'd done the job they expected of him.
But has he?
I'm sure some people were convinced by him, but I still reckon most people can see through the organised gang-assault orchestrated on Durkin and the sheer quality of the scientists featured in the film and their arguments.
I watched the program with my mum, and as Jones began his precis of Durkin's earlier work she turned and said "now the character assassination begins." And how right she was.
A work colleague tells me "I watched it with a couple of others last night who were sceptical about my scepticism, but after watching the debate they now think there is something dodgy going on. And they didn't like the science nerd (David Karoly) - too rude and smarmy."
In being so desperate to make sure that their audience, (who they clearly don't trust to make up their own minds), reached the "right" conclusion about TGGWS, perhaps they've over-reached?
Disappointed yes, but surprised no.
The ABC's performance last night concerning the screening of The Great Global Warming Swindle, especially that of Tony Jones, was nothing short of a disgrace to any principles of fair and objective journalism.
Bill Leak's cartoon above from this morning's issue of The Australian distils Jones' unconcealed bias and refusal to even for a moment consider a contrary argument.
I mean really, do you think for a moment that the ABC would have had Jones at the front of a specially built set and solemnly intoning that the following program does not reflect the views of the ABC, (as he did last night - think about that for a moment, because it was actually very revealing), almost apologising to the true believers for allowing such dangerous heresy to be seen in the first place, if it was An Inconvenient Truth?
Can you really imagine Jones going after Al Gore in the same 'attack dog' fashion as he went after Durkin last night?
Of course not.
And Jones clearly packed a hatchet in his bag for the trip to London and was determined to do a 'job' on Durkin no matter what.
I'd have to say though, Durkin looked nervous and didn't do a very good job of taking the argument up to Jones (who knows less than he thinks).
So I was sitting there last night consumed with the frustration that comes from knowing how Jones was dealing in misleading information to try and make it look as if it was Durkin doing so, and thinking to myself "I know the answer to this and could do a better job of explaining why Jones was wrong."
And I see that Jones is not above indulging in cheap tabloid tricks to advance his cause.
Anyone watching Durkin's film would be struck by the stellar cast of high-profile and well credentialed climate scientists, as well as the co-founder of Greenpeace and a former editor of New Scientist, all saying that anthropogenic climate change is rubbish.
What's Tony to do?
Head for the margins!
Ignore Richard Lindzen from MIT or John Christy etc, make out that a letter being published in 1996 is a big issue, (despite no claims or suggestions it was written later than that - see the trick?), or make out that something dishonest must be going because the term of office of the first director of some meteorological institute wasn't given, even though any half-wit should be able to work out that if you are being described as the "first" director then you obviously aren't the current one and there may have been several people who had followed you in that position.
Okay, he ceased that position back in the '60s. What, he magically stopped being a climate scientist and just forgot everything? He'd done nothing in the field of climate science since? The man was clearly well qualified to express an opinion on climate science and it was just an cheap and unethical ploy on the part of Jones to discredit someone, rather than answer their arguments.
Predictably the ExxonMobil excuse was trotted out. I don't care if someone has got money from them. It doesn't provide me with an excuse to use this fact as a way of dismissing an argument rather than answering it. And getting money from big oil doesn't mean you are wrong.
The fact that the Medieval Warm Period definitely was warmer than today, irrespective of any dodgy IPCC graphs (and if only you knew what they get up to with those), and that this is confirmed by not just scientific data, but also the historical record, is a point Durkin didn't get across.
Not that Jones was at all interested in listening anyway.
And we don't know what the ABC cut out of the interview to "shape" it the way they wanted it.
I found the Ebola virus analogy used by one of the counter-scientists to try and deflect attention away from the inconvenient truth that CO2 makes up just a tiny fraction of a percent of the Earth's atmosphere, (and that the CO2 that is man made represents an even smaller fraction), laughable and ridiculous in equal measure.
You don't have to be an epidemiologist to see what nonsense that was!
What kills you isn't a small number of Ebola viruses. What kills you is the millions or billions of them in your body produced by the initial few. What an idiot.
Now, no doubt Tony was cheered today as he entered the cafeteria at the ABC in Sydney. After all, he'd done the job they expected of him.
But has he?
I'm sure some people were convinced by him, but I still reckon most people can see through the organised gang-assault orchestrated on Durkin and the sheer quality of the scientists featured in the film and their arguments.
I watched the program with my mum, and as Jones began his precis of Durkin's earlier work she turned and said "now the character assassination begins." And how right she was.
A work colleague tells me "I watched it with a couple of others last night who were sceptical about my scepticism, but after watching the debate they now think there is something dodgy going on. And they didn't like the science nerd (David Karoly) - too rude and smarmy."
In being so desperate to make sure that their audience, (who they clearly don't trust to make up their own minds), reached the "right" conclusion about TGGWS, perhaps they've over-reached?
4 comments:
Can you explain how the historical record can be used to record the climate and temperature? I've seen those IPCC graphs but I've not seen the climate history based on the historical records before. Does it show that the medieval warm period was definitely warmer than now?
Not record a temperature, like a thermometer, but giving us a comparison to today.
So it is clear that the southern fringes of the island had less ice than today - allowing the Vikings to settle and farm in a way that even today would be impossible for them - and thus we can make an inference about the temperature.
I'm really on the fence about this one and I really want to see some sort of evidence either way. Perhaps you've got access to the information about Greenland? I've read excerpts of the Viking's chronicles which suggest that they ate a lot of fish and din't do much in the way of farming and cultivation. However, I'd be swayed by some geographical evidence that suggested which areas were snow covered and which weren't back in their time. I hope that you can understand my position. I've actually seen the graphs which seem to show that it wasn't as warm then as now, but I haven't seen much in the way of convincing evidence that it was definitely warmer then.
The Vikings there certainly ate a fair bit of fish, but the same records you mention also refer to their sheep and their cattle, the hay they grew for them (presumably as a by-product of growing grain) and the vegetables they grew for themselves.
Depends on which graphs you are looking at.
A graph is only as good as the data it is expressing.
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