BBC shows two climate change episodes back to back - you must believe

Tonight on BBC4 you have another chance to see the BBC’s latest propaganda effort on behalf of the climate change alarmism lobby. It’s called Climate Change By Numbers and I reviewed it, briefly, in the Spectator.

Its arguments went something like this: climate change is real because nice, smiley girl with red hair; climate change is real because maths; climate change is real because potted history of US sea captain who standardised methods for measuring water temperature; climate change is real because Tottenham Hotspur; etc. With these ingenious distractions, it effortlessly swerved contentious issues such as the fact that the entire 20th-century temperature record has been subjected to unexplained — and probably unjustifiable — adjustments. I wonder what percentage of its presumably tiny audience it convinced.

Now I see on Twitter that Team Climate (they hunt in packs) are taking umbrage.

Do I realise that the woman I have so peremptorily dismissed as “nice, smiley girl with red hair” is in fact none other than Dr Hannah Fry, a mathematician from University College, London?

Well yes. I thought I’d covered that particular Appeal To Authority, more or less, in the sentence which said “climate change is real because maths.” Had there been space, I suppose, I could have added “climate change is real because doctorate” and “climate change is real because University College, London.” But I’m not sure it would have added a great deal to the point I was trying to make.

Since I have a bit more space here, though, let me elaborate.

With TV the medium is the message. That is, what people say on any given programme is usually far less important than how they say it: their tone of voice, the visual context in which they appear, the way they are introduced, the things they are shown doing, even the way they are lit and the way they are recorded.

It’s no coincidence that the most successful and enduring politicians of the modern era are those who have mastered the medium. However much you loathe Ken Livingstone or Ken Clarke the fact remains that they are superb media operators. Even if you may personally find – as I do – that what they say is often ideologically toxic, they always come across on TV as relaxed and affable. And it’s the relaxed, affable part that most viewers pick up on, not the ideologically toxic part.

So the best compliment I can pay Climate Change By Numbers is that it plays this game very well.

I don’t mean to pick on poor Hannah. She really does come across as a nice person and she does have lovely red hair. But I think it would be naive for any of us to delude ourselves that these trivial details were not in fact at least as important a part of the programme’s message as the fact that she has a maths doctorate.

To put it another way, what this programme was essentially about was reassurance.

If you’d storyboarded it it would have gone something like this:

Here is Hannah with lovely red hair. But she’s not just a pretty face: she’s also a mathematician. With a doctorate. Isn’t that just great? And look, here she is carrying a magic stick thing which, thanks to the miracle of computer technology can make graphs appear from thin air. And graphs are used a lot in science, so you can trust that what we’re telling you has a solid scientific base. A solid mathematical one too because Hannah’s a mathematician – did we mention this? – and she totally agrees with all the maths in this script that we’ve scripted for her.

Ooh – and look, now here’s Hannah smiling (and looking ever-so-slightly queasy!!) in a shaky off-road vehicle, so she’s not just fun but game too. Have you ever been in an off-road vehicle, viewer? Did you feel a bit like Hannah? I’ll bet if you were in an off road vehicle with Hannah you’d find her great company!!!

And, no wait, this is amazing – here’s another mathematician. A bloke this time, but no worries Hannah’s already shown that we’re not sexist or ageist or anything. And here’s the thing: this bloke too totally agrees that the climate scientists are right. And it’s not like he’s thick: he too has a doctorate in maths which is a hard science, don’t you know. And it’s not like he’s biased because he’s a mathematician – did we mention this? – so how could he be?

And what’s this? Noooo! Get in there! He’s a footie fan. Loves Tottenham Hotspur, which means he’s not just a brilliant mathematician but also a regular guy, totally down to earth, probably even eats fast food and goes to the loo occasionally, just like you and me. Now he’s explaining how computer models work. And amazingly, it turns out that predicting the climate is just like predicting how a football team will perform during a particular season. And football’s something we can all relate to more or less, so he’s bound to know what he’s talking about…

Now here’s Formula. Nyeeeeeeeoooooooo. F1. So exciting and noisy. And visual. Speed. Cars. Something about computer models being great? Yeah. Whatever. Nyeeeooooooooo!

Etc.

You were hoping I was going to pick apart the programme’s tendentious arguments and the devious way it managed to pretend to answer all the key questions posed by sceptics while in fact cunningly swerving round them?

Sod that for a game of soldiers: the mighty Booker, as I understand, is going to take care of that side of things. He can take care of the science stuff; I’ll do the cultural analysis and the goading. It’s what we free marketeers believe in: division of labour.

I don't believe anything the BBC tells me anymore, they still think the Boston Marathon Bombing was real.

BIASED BBC.......... is a good website

^ Head in Sand people

I watched it, there was a lot explaining about statistics, I need to watch it again to fully understand it

One interesting measurement, the ocean surface temperature has risen 0.85C since 1880.
I think the problem is what if this trend continues, and perhaps reaches 2.0C warmer, could be about the end of this century.


The other thing to note was that our atmosphere is warming up from the bottom not top, so it is not the Sun
it may be us?

Whether this temperature variation is natural or man made, I do not think anyone knows for certain at the moment.

The weather seems to becoming more extreme nowadays, or is it?
This country would be at risk of more heat waves and increased flooding.

I think?????????

We have progress. Now only 2 metres of ice covering Scotland.

Reporting of weather is more extreme because of the way the competitive media report it.

I can remember back in the 70s being snowed in for 5 days and we had to clamber across the fields and walk on top of hedges with planks of wood as temporary snow shoes/skis

NOW THAT WAS FKN EXTREME!!!

Once upon a time you could walk from the uk to france !!!  No not through the tunnel either!!!

Not recently though

I have no idea whether climate change is a real threat or not myself?

If it was, I have some doubt the World as a whole would do a lot about it anyway, let us hope it is not

Not sure if I believe in climate change or not but thought the programs a load of bollocks. Basically they took the advocates of climate change findings and showed you how they had derived at the conclusion using there maths - not a word of critiscism about how they arrived at there figures either or even if the maths was correct or flawed. Wow guess what using the same formula they arrive at the same conclusions hence climate change must be happening. The other thing that narked me was the mathematician who was a Spurs fan - if I heard him right claimed statistics prove that the greater the wage bill the more points a football team will get -that sounds bollocks to me, yes it is probably correlated to the clubs wealth and why the figures work but the argument itself sounds flawed it like saying if i give my gran a million quid she will give Usain Bolt the race of his life.

I'm pretty sure that Usain would cooperate for half of the cash.

Without all the numbers, anyone who denies climate change has their head stuck in the sand.

Just think about any activity humans do and you'll realise that we are bad for the planet. That's fine if we are low in numbers but there's now 7 billion and growing. If you care about the planet or even if you're a denier then stop having kids because it is they who will suffer.

Personally I'm pessimistic. I think we're past the tipping point. Global warming IS happening and its running away.

I'm afraid I agree with Ovalman.

How do you know!!??  I am more worried about being eaten by a polar bear - I can just see one floating up the thames on a chunk of ice.

Running away, could you expand on this ?

I dont believe in global warming as humans can only control a small percentage of it, i believe in people doing things in a non polluting way without a tax being involved.



Polar bear population is the highest it has ever been, according to the experts.

From what little statistics and graphs I've already seen, the temperature is rising and it's predicted to rise for the foreseeable future, even if we stop pollution straight away. Greenhouse gasses are a good thing, they give us life but just look at Venus to see how too much of it can be a bad thing. I'm pessimistic, I think we're heading the same way as the Venusians.

There's no one piece of clear cut evidence but it's all the little things that convince me. The Hydro Electric Dams we build divert water and ruin ecosystems. Plastic bags that break down into smaller and smaller pieces and will eventually affect all of the food chain. Most of the global warming is currently being saturated by the Oceans but again ecosystems will have to migrate or perish. Pollution we constantly create in the atmosphere and ocean's, who knows where it will lead in the future. To say humans have no or little effect is nonsense.

Everyone talks about green solutions but the biggest problem is over-population. I'm as bad as the next person, I drive a car, I leave my PC on all night, I flew to Manchester and back last weekend. Stopping people from creating greenhouse gasses is impossible. The best solution is stop having kids and then we can create as much polution per person as we want as the global effect will be negligable.

No doubt you think 2014 was the warmest year in history.

Surely you have read about the way they have fiddled the temperature findings

The 2013 hurricane season just ended as one of the five quietest years since 1960. But don’t expect anyone who pointed to last year’s hurricanes as “proof” of the need to act against global warming to apologize; the warmists don’t work that way.
Warmist claims of a severe increase in hurricane activity go back to 2005 and Hurricane Katrina. The cover of Al Gore’s 2009 book, “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis,” even features a satellite image of the globe with four major hurricanes superimposed.
Yet the evidence to the contrary was there all along. Back in 2005 I and others reviewed the entire hurricane record, which goes back over a century, and found no increase of any kind. Yes, we sometimes get bad storms — but no more frequently now than in the past. The advocates simply ignored that evidence — then repeated their false claims after Hurricane Sandy last year.
And the media play along. For example, it somehow wasn’t front-page news that committed believers in man-made global warming recently admitted there’s been no surface global warming for well over a decade and maybe none for decades more. Nor did we see warmists conceding that their explanation is essentially a confession that the previous warming may not have been man-made at all.
That admission came in a new paper by prominent warmists in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Dynamics. They not only conceded that average global surface temperatures stopped warming a full 15 years ago, but that this “pause” could extend into the 2030s.
Mind you, the term “pause” is misleading in the extreme: Unless and until it resumes again, it’s just a “stop.” You don’t say a bullet-ridden body “paused” breathing.
Remarkably, that stoppage has practically been a state secret. Just five years ago, the head of the International Panel on Climate Change, the group most associated with “proving” that global warming is man-made and has horrific potential consequences, told Congress that Earth is running a “fever” that’s “apt to get much worse.” Yet he and IPCC knew the warming had stopped a decade earlier.
Those who pointed this out, including yours truly, were labeled “denialists.” Yet the IPCC itself finally admitted the “pause” in its latest report.
The single most damning aspect of the “pause” is that, because it has occurred when “greenhouse gases” have been pouring into the atmosphere at record levels, it shows at the very least that something natural is at play here. The warmists suggest that natural factors have “suppressed” the warming temporarily, but that’s just a guess: The fact is, they have nothing like the understanding of the climate that they claimed (and their many models that all showed future warming mean nothing, since they all used essentially the same false information).
If Ma Nature caused the “pause,” can’t this same lady be responsible for the warming observed earlier? You bet! Fact is, the earth was cooling and warming long before so-called GHGs could have been a factor. A warm spell ushered in the Viking Age, and many scientists believe recent warming was merely a recovery from what’s called “the Little Ice Age” that began around 1300.
Yet none of this unsettles the rush to kill debate. The Los Angeles Times has even announced that it will no longer print letters to the editor questioning man-made global warming. Had the Times been printing before Columbus, perhaps it would have banned letters saying the Earth was round.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration continues to push to reduce supposed global-warming emissions. Last month, the president even signed an executive order establishing a Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience that could dramatically expand government bureaucrats’ ability to restrict Americans’ use of their property, water and energy to reduce so-called “greenhouse gas emissions.”
Such attempted reductions in other countries have proved incredibly expensive, while barely reducing emissions. But damn the stubbornly weak economy, says President Obama, full speed ahead!
This, even as new data show that last year the US median wage hit its lowest level since 1998 and long-term unemployment is almost the highest ever.
People have a right to religious and cult beliefs within reason. But the warmists have been proved wrong time and again, each time reacting with little more than pictures of forlorn polar bears on ice floes and trying to shut down the opposition. (More bad timing: Arctic ice increased by almost a third this past year, while that at the South Pole was thicker and wider than it’s been in 35 years.)
In war and in science, the bloodiest conflicts always seem to be the religious ones. Time for the American public to say it’s no longer going to play the victim in this one.

The start of that article is confusing short term weather patterns with global warming but don't let that put you off picking and choosing what you want

Not the best article.

But i was trying to find the article where they had used a computer to predict temperatures rather than the actual readings. They used to have 6000 bases that recorded world wide temperatures but now have 3000 so they predicted the other 3000 but rounded up the figures to the figure above.

I could pick and choose articles that counter you arguments but to say humans don't have a massive impact on the planet is just nonsense. It's took the planet millions of years to bury all that fossilised carbon and we are releasing it in a hundred years or so.

We won't have to worry about the problem but our grandkids will.

This is a scientific problem

It was not helped by exaggerated warnings which were given out to start with and have damaged it's credibility

But only scientists can decide if this is real or not, they are the only ones competent to do this, disagreement remains


but the biggest problem is over-population.

I agree ovalman, but nobody is interested in that one

But it needs to work in tandem, we need enough food and energy for every one living



My only suggestion is to move away from fossil fuels to Nuclear fission and renewables

I think we could make more effort in this country

There may be a solution to our energy problems in the future, Nuclear Fusion, but it is proving obstinate

it may be a while, do not let us wreck our own planet in the meantime.

Broadsword - thanks for the heads up about 'Biased BBC'.

http://biasedbbc.org/quotes-of-shame/

Andrew Marr and Jeff Randall sum it up very well.

It's difficult not to be cynical when very wealthy people like Prince Charles get paid millions of pounds to put windmills on their land. Of course he's going to say we need them!!!

But only scientists can decide if this is real or not, they are the only ones competent to do this

Precisely ebulGery - and they seem pretty convinced:

http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

From what little statistics and graphs I've already seen, the temperature is rising and it's predicted to rise for the foreseeable future, even if we stop pollution straight away.

Problem is , the graphs they had 15-18 years ago predicted a significant rise by 2015 . And now we are in 2015 there has not been a significant rise since then . Or indeed any rise at all

who are "they" please be specific ...a want names and quotes and refrences please  .

do you not accept that their is an upward trend in global temps  since the early 1800,s ? there has been peroids when things have flatlined before but the there does appear to be a overwhelming upward trend ...would you not agree ?

am not sure exactly  what you are saying ?  the gathering of temp data is now on a scale never seen before and accuratley being mapped ,unless you can prove the previous years data is wrong/false i dont see the arguement .
watched a programme () tother night about the way they are going over historic data and errm ...tweeking around wi it and the way they explained a big jump was down to the war peroid and sailors using water from the engine rooms instead of using the instraments (thermometer i presume ) over the side of the ships because ...err it was dangerious up top during the war
now that is supposed to explain about a 2c jump or sumit during the forties ....really ?

of cours its a massive headfck and we dont trust scientists and goverments but does that mean its a load of bollocks ? ,lets ignore and believe that fossil fuels have no impact on climate ,co2 is not a driver of climate change and the figuers have all been manipulated and its just a con to extract maximium amounts of tax out of us .....shirley knot


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_impacts_of_climate_change

a used to be a cynic but now am not so sure

1800's ?

since the  early 18 hundreds

any links ?

not sure where you would find them IS .

who are "they" please be specific ...a want names and quotes and refrences please

'they' being the IPCC

The First Assessment Report (of the IPCC in 1990) predicted that global temperature would rise by 1.0 [0.7, 1.5] Cº to 2025, equivalent to 2.8 [1.9, 4.2] Cº per century. The executive summary asked, “How much confidence do we have in our predictions?” IPCC pointed out some uncertainties (clouds, oceans, etc.), but concluded:

“Nevertheless, … we have substantial confidence that models can predict at least the broad-scale features of climate change. … There are similarities between results from the coupled models using simple representations of the ocean and those using more sophisticated descriptions, and our understanding of such differences as do occur gives us some confidence in the results.”

That “substantial confidence” was substantial over-confidence. A quarter-century after 1990, the outturn to date – expressed as the least-squares linear-regression trend on the mean of the RSS and UAH monthly global mean surface temperature anomalies – is 0.34 Cº, equivalent to just 1.4 Cº/century, or exactly half of the central estimate in IPCC (1990) and well below even the least estimate (Fig. 2).

Problem is , the graphs they had 15-18 years ago predicted a significant rise by 2015 . And now we are in 2015 there has not been a significant rise since then . Or indeed any rise at all


Scientists think the Oceans are soaking up much of this latent heat which is actually more disastrous for the planet.

Oh look, a deniers thread. Not seen 1 of these for years, I thought they'd all been sectioned. Clearly 1 or 2 left. Bless.

If it's too cold you turn on the central heating.
If it's too warm you turn on the air conditioning.

Where's the problem?

....was discussing this last week at work - expressed my annoyance and anger at the lack of real scientific rigour employed by Man-made Climate Change Theorists - this concerns me, a different subject though. Apparently calling it a "theory" was enough to send one "believer" into a rage, she said no point discussing it with me, stormed off. I was unaware it was a proven scientific fact!

My position is one of being proudly sceptical (in the true sense, rather than being negative. The accusations of being "in denial" etc etc - used to annoy me, now I quite like it. The "theorists" most certainly have taken on some of the characteristics of a "cult" - seeing what they want to see, hearing what they want to hear - even when the scientific facts say otherwise. Sometimes it bears more resemblance to a Monty Python sketch - some sleet in late April and its further evidence of impending doom, not to mention a river bursting its banks, then its truly Armageddon.

....quite buoyed by the fact that more and more people I encounter are becoming increasing dubious. Pleasing.

I think you are right Wallflower, since the earlier alarmist predictions did not turn out to be true, there is now a serious
credibility problem.

Scientist's do not all agree, but at any one time there is a consensus view, so it is probably best we go by that.
I am not sure what that is at the moment. The problem is that although the earth does go through different temperature phases, we
have never had the amount of fossil fuels burnt as we are burning now. So this is a new situation for us.

I like the idea of us building renewables. We have no need to bankrupt ourselves, but the more energy we provide from these sources
the better I believe. Fossil Fuels are not going to last forever anyway. I do not think Wind Farms are unattractive
no worse than Pylons or telegraph poles, so I think we need to continue building them.

Objections to them tend to be rather selfish. Also the Sun and Wind are free, and not likely to run out.