Our correspondent T** S****** sent us a couple of interesting links to pages on the BBC News website. We all know, of course, that the BBC's traditional reputation for fair and honest reporting has taken a bit of a hammering lately as it has been revealed just how left-leaning, PC, green-biased and basically dishonest they can be. Still, on the principle of "knowing your enemy", it can't do much harm to have a look …
The first is an article giving what it calls the top ten arguments used by opponents of man-made global warming theory, together with the Global Warmers' counter-arguments.
Leaving aside the massive presumption of the authors in daring to produce a list that really ought to have been compiled by the anti-global-warmers themselves, it may be significant that in eight out of the ten "arguments" the GW response is longer. One of the hallmarks of the case for man-made global warming has from the start been the attempt to win the day by swamping a bemused public with a plethora of words, vague scientific data-references that cannot be meaningful without a broad and secure knowledge of the background, and constant assurances that the argument is over so there's no point in going on about it any more.
In the words (more or less) of the Immortal Bard, "methinks they do protest too much". If the argument really has already been won, why do they keep banging on about it and why is it still necessary to spend so much public money on "climate research"?
The second link is to an article by one Richard Black, the website's environmental correspondent, and it offers a new and rather silly slant to the whole debate.
Under the heading "What do climate sceptics believe?" Black discusses the fact that some people think the world is not warming, others (The GOS among them) believe it is warming but it's a completely natural process, while others will tell you that man-made emissions may have affected the climate but there's nothing practical to be done about it - a viewpoint one must sympathise with, seeing some of the really stupid ideas scientists have put forward: 200-foot high towers mounted on ocean-going electric yachts roaming the ocean spraying water about? For God's sake, get real - any amateur yachtsman could pinpoint the flaw in that proposal!
Black uses some emotive language, writing disparagingly, for instance, about the 61 'self-styled accredited experts in climate and related scientific disciplines' who wrote an open letter to Canada's prime minister Stephen Harper, asking his government to initiate hearings into the scientific foundations of the nation's climate change plan. Yet a paragraph or two later he admits that most of the signatories were indeed scientists active in fields relating to climate science.
His argument appears to be that the sceptics should not be taken seriously because they don't agree with each other and present a united front. He is either staggeringly naïve or cynically dishonest. Disagreeing with each other is what scientific debate is all about. If the entire world had agreed that the Earth was flat, vast herds of bison would still roam the plains of America and Al Gore would be a European. Irish, probably.
And what of Al Gore himself, that arch-exponent of global warming correctness? Does he agree with all the other global warmers?
Well, no. He is busy telling anybody who'll listen (and British schoolchildren who don't get much choice) that the sea is going to rise many metres and we'll all perish. Meanwhile the IPCC are predicting sea-level rises measured in centimetres. So what is Black on about? He seems to think that it's OK for the global warmers to spray us with a broad spectrum of threats, dire predictions and statistics from the backs of cornflake packets, but the sceptics have to sing from the same hymnbook or else.
And he mentions in tones of subtle indignation that some of the people he talked to did not entirely welcome his line of questioning: "This exercise would not be complete without discussing some of the non-scientific comments and responses to my mailout, which represent a window into the suspicion, indignation and politicisation surrounding climate science today."
Dear me. Some of these sceptics were unkind? Perhaps a few of them were a bit rude?
Well, Richard Black, they might just have been having a bad day. Perhaps they'd been dwelling on silly things, like the death threats some of them have received, or the calls for anyone who doesn't accept global warming orthodoxy to be prosecuted - see here and here.
Or perhaps, like Dr.Marlo Lewis, they'd just received an email that said …
You are so full of cr*p. You have been proven wrong. The entire world has proven you wrong. You are the last guy on Earth to get it. Take this warning from me, Marlo. It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on.
Mike
Michael T. Eckhart, President
American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE)
Nice.
The GOS says:For anyone interested in reading some mature and intelligent discussion (i.e. not written by Richard Black then, and not on a BBC website) on the issue of global warming, here are some links that I found particularly enlightening …
Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
Link 4
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