At the end of last month, Newsnight returned to the delicate subject of what President Obama said – or did not say – about science in his inaugural speech. For anyone new to this topic see: BBC Newsnight – Warming up President Obama’s inaugural speech?Here’s what happened in the most recent episode which was broadcasted on 26th March 2009:
Lead-in from Emily Maitlis, the programme presenter: In his policies, George Bush never disguised the fact that he put God many rungs higher than science. So how will life change now there is a US president who believes passionately in the subject. In a wide ranging interview, Harold Varmus, a Nobel Prize winning cancer specialist charged with the task of restoring science to its rightful place talks to our Science Editor Susan Watts.
Ms Watts’ report started with a sound bite from the inaugural speech, part of which will be familiar to many Harmless Sky readers:
President Obama: We’ll restore science to its rightful place, and wield technologies wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.
The last time we heard, ‘We’ll restore science to its rightful place ….’ on Newsnight, the rest of the sentence seemed to be, ‘[and] roll back the spectre of a warming planet’. Unless you happened to have a very good memory, or had just read a transcript of the speech, you would have thought that was exactly what the president had said. Not at all the same thing as the complete sentence accurately quoted above. But where climate science is concerned, can we expect the BBC to concern itself about a trivial matter like misquotation provided that the message is ‘correct’? Using the same seven-word phrase twice in little over a month in such very different contexts leaves one a little breathless.
Evidently Newsnight were not prepared to risk repeating the so-called ‘montage’ that they used in their original coverage of the inaugural speech, in spite of claiming that there was nothing wrong with it.
This is Susan Watts’ introduction to her interview with Professor Varmus:
Watts: There was one line in President Obama’s inaugural speech that stood out for the world of science and that was his pledge to restore it to its rightful place. Well this week, a man whose job it is to help turn that pledge into reality is here at the UK’s National Academy of Sciences to give an idea of how it might happen.
Two hundred or so of Britain’s science glitterati gathered last night to catch a glimpse of science Obama style. They’ve come to hear Harold Varmus, co-chair of The President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. And though not part of the administration itself, he’ll have a big say in how the $20bn science chunk of America’s economic stimulus money will be spent.
The interview opened with some preliminary questions that generously allowed the professor to say all the right things about the new regime’s wonderfully enlightened attitude to science. Then a picture of the earth as seen from space appeared on-screen, looking remarkably familiar to anyone who has watched Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth. This was the prelude to really getting down to business, and Susan Watts intoned the following voice-over:
Watts; One area in which concerns over tampering with scientific evidence famously played out under President Bush was climate science.
Evidently the time had come to pop the big question, and the normally ultra self-assured Ms Watts looked surprisingly nervous. Perhaps some doubts had crept into her mind during preliminary off-air discussions with Professor Varmus.
Watts; The [sic] President Obama’s administration – can we take it – is fully signed up to climate changed being caused by artificial man-made emissions.
Now that sounds more like a proclamation of faith that demands ratification than a searching question from a journalist, but with ingratiating smiles and a few nervous hesitations, Professor Varmus tried to oblige:
Varmus: The president has indicated that he says that.
I don’t speak for the administration. I co-chair an advisory group. Um! Certainly the majority of scientists I know subscribe to that. He has taken a position that, Um! that this seems like the most likely explanation at this time and, Er! it is incumbent on us as citizens of the world, not just the US, to do what we can to restrict emissions.
By now our intrepid reporter’s face was beginning to show signs of panic. Perhaps it was the wonderfully vague reference to ‘restricting’ emissions rather than reducing them, or could it have crossed her mind that even if a majority of the professor’s friends believe in global warming, that also reveals the possibility that there may be a great many who do not. Nevertheless, Susan Watts gamely tried again to guide the professor towards the required response:
Watts: How confident do you feel then that president Obama genuinely will be able to make those difficult decisions, perhaps like when it comes to conflicting interests in spending in different directions.
Her affable victim did his very best to oblige, but seemed unable to overcome the double handicap of being both an outstanding scientist and an honest man:
Varmus: I don’t for a minute, Um! doubt any of the intention, but all presidents work in the context of current reality. Right now the big reality is the economic downturn and I would not be surprised if the base budgets – if the base budgets for scientific, Er! Agencies, don’t rise at the level that was proposed in the campaign. That remains to be seen. But, Um! its not just possible to say that he will be able to do everything that he’d like to do.
At this moment, Ms Watts’ looked very much like someone who had just witnessed a nasty road accident. A somewhat abrupt edit led on to different, and far less dangerous, areas of science policy.
Press reports in the US are now suggesting that President Obama’s plans for cap-and-trade legislation are in tatters, with almost as much opposition coming from his own Democrat Senators as from the Republicans. This is a double bind as it will not only incur the wrath of the ENGO’s and their supporters who helped get him elected, but will also create a huge fiscal black hole. It has been estimated that climate legislation would raise as much as $650bn over the next decade towards balancing the US budget.
Looking further ahead, it also means that the US will come to the Copenhagen climate conference at the end of this year empty handed, when only their willingness to cut emissions is likely to persuade the developing nations to sign up to a successor to Kyoto.
Over at Prometheus, Roger Pielke Jr thinks that there may still be a US climate bill, but that it will be little more than a fig leaf to conceal the new president’s embarrassment, with no impact on carbon emissions whatsoever. This raises the question of whether the new administration is any more convinced by what climate scientists are telling them about a possible human component in global warming than the old one.
The age when global warming alarmism provided our leaders with endless opportunities for Risk Free Politics would seem to have well and truly come to an end.
Afterthought: Susan Watts’ reports for Newsnight usually become the subject of a post on her blog immediately after they are broadcast. This one has not done so. Could this have anything to do with the furious reaction from commenters last time that she attempted to report on the Obama administration’s attitude to climate change, when the unfortunate matter of ‘splicegate’ came to light? Since then, even when she has posted on subjects remote from climate science, there have been comments reminding her that no plausible explanation for that very strange sound bite from the inaugural speech has been forthcoming. Worse, many of them question whether Newsnight can be trusted now.
- 3. At 5:44pm on 29 Jan 2009, FrankFisher wrote:
Interesting story – but how do we know you haven’t just faked it?
Can we get some resolution to the faked Obama quote please? I don’t pay my license fee to fund such trickery, and I’d like an onscreen apology – I think we all would.
BTW, moderators, think carefully before you delete this would you?
I’d have liked to watch this (unfortunately Newsnight on iPlayer only goes back a few days.) Tony, going by your account, there seems to have been a distinct and utter lack of journalistic curiosity, on the part of Susan Watts, as to Profesor Varmus’s actual thoughts on the future of Obama’s initiatives, more a desperate concern that he stick to the script, in the face of what appears to be an increasing lack of official momentum to “tackle climate change.” My impression is that she is as nakedly biased as if she had been sitting there in her birthday suit with “The Science is Settled” written in marker pen across her goose-pimpled skin. This overriding need to be on-message can’t have escaped being noticed by other viewers, surely, however uninvolved they might be in the climate debate, and it would be very interesting to find out if others indeed have also picked up on it.
Here’s a rather bland account of the same interview on the British Ecological Society’s blog.
Alex
The report at the BES site has some interesting background. For instance I wonder how much of the claimed doubling in science funding during the last decade went into climate research that supports government policies.
That said, I was very impressed by Varmus who seemed to be just the kind of scientist that climate research needs but doesn’t seem to have; cautious, straightforward, and totally grounded in reality. As a cancer specialist he must know that if the Obama administration is faced with the choice of either spending on the crusade against climate change or on improving Medicare, then there can be no doubt about the way he will go. Cap-and-trade seems to be the joker in the pack. If the legislation can be bulldozed through, then it will establish a massive long term revenue stream, albeit at tremendous political and economic risk. If not, then it’s back to political business as usual, and the priorities will be very different.
I’ve now had a preliminary response from the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Unit about the ‘splicgate’ complaint which I will post up in a day or two.
Tony: re your wondering about “how much of the claimed doubling in science funding during the last decade went into climate research”, it may be relevant that, at a recent alumni dinner, the President of my college complained about the dearth of government’s funding for scientific research – unless it was “something related to the environment”.
I bet we won’t be seeing anything about this on La Watts’s blog anytime soon. Having to quote the president correctly alongside a piece where his words were spliced would be too much even for Newsnight! I only watch it now if Paxo’s on…
Robin:
Very interesting – I wonder what his discipline is? About a year ago the physicists were squealing about vicious cuts in funding for research with the likelihood that long term research programmes, some of which have been running for decades, would have to be abandoned. At that time a physicist friend abandoned all hope of getting a job in his own field and started to retrain in alternative energy technology. Before doing so he was mildly sceptical, now he’s a devotee. Rather sad.
James:
When my wife saw the way in which the Obama quote had been re-used she was speechless; and she’s pretty used to seeing such things. It’s a point that I will draw the BBC’s attention to when the time comes.
TonyN: I doubt if it’s relevant but he’s a classicist (and accomplished musician) who had a most distinguished career in the Civil Service. He is also non executive chairman of an independent parliamentary office where he has been something of a thorn in the Government’s side. He was talking about college funding (a preoccupation in academia these days) and reviewing how the near drying up of Government grants (in all areas) was causing serious problems.
Robin:
Sounds like a very useful person to have around, but what on earth is an ‘independent parliamentary office’?
It’s an office that reports to Parliament, not to to the Government. The National Audit Office is an example. Admittedly, some are more independent than others.