THIS PAGE HAS BEEN ACTIVATED AS THE NEW STATESMAN BLOG IS NOW CLOSED FOR COMMENTS
At 10am this morning, the New Statesman finally closed the Mark Lynas thread on their website after 1715 comments had been added over a period of five months. I don’t know whether this constitutes any kind of a record, but gratitude is certainly due to the editor of of the New Statesman for hosting the discussion so patiently and also for publishing articles from Dr David Whitehouse and Mark Lynas that have created so much interest.
This page is now live, and anyone who would like to continue the discussion here is welcome to do so. I have copied the most recent contributions at the New Statesman as the first comment for the sake of convenience. If you want to refer back to either of the original threads, then you can find them here:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with all 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
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10,000 Responses to “Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs.”
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James (#7749), that’s an interesting case and has also made it into the national news – I just managed to catch the end of a BBC Breakfast News item about it this morning, and the BBC have an article on it here. It appears the Danone ad was in breach because it stated that Actimel was “scientifically proven to help support your kids’ defences”. “The advert showed a bottle of Actimel jumping over a skipping rope over a soundtrack of cheering children. A voice-over said “kids love Actimel and it’s good for them too” before the words “scientifically proven” were stamped on the screen.”
Now here’s the interesting bit. Again from the Beeb:
“ASA chief executive Guy Parker said the ruling was not a comment on whether Actimel worked per se, but was an adjudication on whether or not the specific claim that they made was supported by adequate evidence.
“We thought that their evidence fell short. It wasn’t a million miles away, it wasn’t actually bad evidence, compared to some that we see, but it wasn’t good enough to prove the claim,” he said.”
So, maybe fairly solid, not “bad”, “but it wasn’t good enough to prove the claim”. Under these criteria, how would the “Act on CO2” ad fare?
I think there is a case for a ruling against the “Act on CO2” ad, and the ruling could be said (to tweak Guy Parker’s words a little) to be: not be a comment on whether man-made global warming/the greenhouse effect existed per se, but an adjudication on whether the specific claim that the advertisers made was supported by adequate evidence.
What specific claims does the ad make? Here the case might well get a little difficult, as so much is implied rather than explicitly stated. They say things like “Scientists said it [strange weather] was being caused by too much CO2, which went up into the sky when the grown-ups used energy.” “Scientists said…” is admittedly somewhat different to “Scientists have demonstrated, beyond all reasonable doubt…”
Obviously I do think that the ad misleads. Where I really think it is out of order is the implicit connection it makes between, for example, failing to switch off a bedroom light and causing a flood. I can see how a young child’s mind might work with this (“Yesterday, I was naughty and didn’t switch off my light, and so today Gloucester is under four feet of water.”) A lot will depend, I suppose, on how the ASA tends to view such implicit claims.
Jack: your waffly post (7750) suggests to me that you haven’t read Lawson’s book. Have you?
Essentially, what he does is this: (1) he reviews the science of AGW and concludes (to quote from the book) that it’s “prudent to err on the side of caution”. He therefore assumes, for the sake of the main thrust of his book, “that the majority (IPCC) view … is correct” and (2) goes on to identify practical difficulties with proposed solutions – from the perspective of global politics, economics and ethics.
What, specifically, is wrong with that?
So far as AGW as religion is concerned, he says “… unbelievers should not be dismissive of the comfort that religion can bring, even if some of us prefer to seek our spiritual solace in the music of Mozart, for example.” But he adds that AGW as a religion (like The Da Vinci Code) “contains a grain of truth – and a mountain of nonsense”. Seems about right to me.
No I haven’t read all of it, I read some of it and not with a little prejudice as I’ve already made clear enough, though ‘waffly’ would probably fairly aptly describe how I tried to explain something probably too far off the radar.
But waffly, does seem to me to come across as condescendingly dismissive of my wider, off the radar, points, or just my comments in general – perhaps I deserve it.
On which note, I seem to recall what I percieved as similar condescension with regards to some of what Lawson said regarding religion in Appeal To Reason.
Hmmm… I’ve just re read my post, funny how it’s not until I actually commit to posting that see how garbled my words are… nevermind
Yes, Jack, I suppose Lawson is rather condescending about religion. Hmm … but, on occasion, that may be no bad thing.
But what has all this got to do with Lindzen’s quoted comment?
The BBC has today reverted to type with a scary story about Arctic ice. It seems that, “The Arctic Ocean could be largely ice-free and open to shipping during the summer in as little as ten years’ time” – according to a, wait for it, “top polar specialist”. (Hmm … at least that’s an improvement on Al Gore who, earlier this year, said “the entire north polar ice cap may be gone in five years”.)
“It’s like man is taking the lid off the northern part of the planet,” said Professor Peter Wadhams, of Cambridge University.
He bases this view on findings of the (unfortunate) Catlin Arctic Survey which, it seems, “found that the ice-floes were on average 1.8m thick – typical of so-called “first year” ice formed during the past winter and most vulnerable to melting”.
But wait a minute. Compare this with an NSIDC press release dated 6 October 2009 that reported that “Second-year ice made up 32 percent, compared to 21 percent in 2007 and 9 percent in 2008”.
Commenting on this, NSIDC Scientist Walt Meier said, “We’ve preserved a fair amount of first-year ice and second-year ice after this summer compared to the past couple of years. If this ice remains in the Arctic through the winter, it will thicken, which gives some hope of stabilizing the ice cover over the next few years”.
The Catlin fiasco wasn’t a scientific expedition, it was a publicity stunt. And this is the standard of reporting we can now expect from a BBC science correspondent?
There’s an interesting report here on the Advertising Standards Authority’s website. It’s entitled “Anticipating Children’s Reactions to Television Commercials: Emulation, Fears, and Misunderstandings” and IMHO contains material very relevant to complaints to the ASA about the Government’s scary bedtime story advertisement. Here are two extracts:
I’ve only seen stills from the ad, but wasn’t it put out during Coronation Street? I can’t imagine many children watch that, but if it was aimed at the adults, why the cartoon format? I hope it wasn’t a comment on the mental age of the viewers!
Good comment on the Nature blog…
When a government is spending millions on propaganda to convince the citizens of something, the lesson of history is that it is almost certainly untrue.
No, James, I don’t think the ad was specifically targeted at children – indeed its intention was, I think, to make parents feel guilty re their children. But it is almost certain (in today’s culture) that some children will have watched it. Therefore, I believe the advertiser should have been especially careful – which patently they were not. Of course, this is only one aspect of what I believe should be a multi-faceted complaint – see my 7734.
Jack
Re ur 7740 with the Moyers/Goleman interview.
OK. Daniel Goleman is a psychologist, science journalist and author of two brilliant psychological bestsellers, “Emotional Intelligence” and “Social Intelligence”.
You could describe him as an “egghead version of Dr. Phil”, without the practical solutions for individuals but with more abstract philosophical deliberations of what makes people tick.
But Goleman has clearly moved out of his depth when he entered the field of ecology and the environment with his new book “Ecological Intelligence”, even though his motivation may well have been at least partially noble.
The “Life Cycle Assessment” of products we use (as a guide for what products we should or should not be buying) will supposedly provide us “radical transparency” and have a “radical impact on the way we do business”.
Comparing the “toxic assets” of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown with “toxic goods” we buy and use for our homes is an absurd stretch.
Goleman tells us that there are 1,957 steps in the process of creating a glass bottle, forgetting to mention that each of these steps provides employment for those implementing them.
I am all for a clean environment, energy conservation, elimination of waste, pollution abatement, etc., whether from the industries that produce our products or from ourselves. But the LCA as a guide to personal lifestyle choices is a bit too abstract for me.
In a “Time” review by Bryan Walsh we read:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1884779_1884782_1884776,00.html
Obviously Goleman has lived a privileged life and never had to conserve resources and battle a hard “Mother Nature” in order to survive, like the inhabitants of Sher.
Max
JamesP
Robin is absolutely right that it will be seen by children and its time slot would ensure that is so. The organisation involved would be fully aware of ‘pester power’ and that indoctrination in our schools makes children very aware of the overall message.
tonyb
tonyb
indoctrination in our schools
I’m happy to report that my son’s science teacher doesn’t support AGW. It may be significant that the middle school in question is slated for closure under local council plans to eradicate them, so concern for her job may not be an issue!
Robin
I’m sure you’re right about the targeting intention. Your excellent letter makes all the right points, but I think the charge that the ASA will be most sensitive to (as you have hinted in 7758) is that of allowing children to be scared into believing something that may not even be true.
Max
“We once had the luxury to ignore our impacts,” says Goleman. “Not anymore.”
This may be a cheap shot, but you have to ask what, if he really believes this stuff, he is doing about it. As with George Monbiot, who discovered that he couldn’t really function without a car (or aircraft, come to that), the suggestion that we all need to live Tibetan lifestyles remains an academic point unless and until we are forced to do it. I suspect that the population density in Sher is on the low side, too.
I could recommend all sorts of things to reduce pollution and waste, but unless I had the strength of character to adopt them myself first, I wouldn’t have the hubris to recommend them to everyone else.
This from the UK Daily Mail…..
What Happened To Global Warming?
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1220052/Austria-sees-earliest-snow-history-America-sees-lowest-temperatures-50-years-So-did-global-warming-go.html
I have put up a new thread to discuss the government advertising camppaign here:
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=228
This has some interesting updates from Robin and no doubt there will be more to come.
Please post all your comments on this topic there.
James P
Yes.
Goleman can pontificate about the ecological alternates facing Tibetan villagers in the harsh climate of Sher, but to equate this with the environmental choices that need to be made by affluent western consumers (like himself) when buying articles that these poor Tibetans could only dream about is pure balderdash.
Golemen wrote two really great books about human psychology. I read them both and found them excellent.
He should go back to what he is good at, rather than trying to cash in on the environmental movement, where he really has absolutely no notion.
Max
Hi Max
Thought you would be interested in a resarch project I have been doing.
I have been looking through the figures and find no less than 150 giss temperature data sets that show cooling. It is obvious that the globe is not warming equally, large parts are cooling and have been for years. This trend is apparent if you take 30 years or more back from 2009 (not the giss 1961-1990) i.e. long enough to be a climatic trend.
Alternatively, by looking at the REALLY long data sets ( I now have 40 back as far as 1660 with a lage grouping starting in the early 1700’s) the cooling trend to the modern day kicks in in at either around 1935 or around 1880 for a significant number of individual places.
The cyclic variability (warm cold warm cold) comes over really clearly if you look far enough back in time. These actual giss temperature falls are even without factoring in UHI, which is very notable in many urban databases (which also tend to be the longest).
The cooling is occurring at one or more temperature data sets in some 32 countries, with some 10 still to check. The temperature increase in other places has disguised this counter cyclical cooling trend but will become more noticeable as more data sets start to fall into the real 30 year climate trend window going back from 2009.
By the way La Chaux de fond and ST Moritz have been cooling since 1955 asnd 1935 respectively. 8 places in Autsralia have been cooling including Dubbo from 1882 and Echuca since 1881 Adelaide from the same date and Cape Otaway since 1865.
No wonder they stopped using the term ‘global warming’ and started using ‘Climate change’.
Tonyb
How can Al Gore be wrong about so many things?
Seasonal Tropical Cyclone Activity Still at 30 Year Lows
Hi TonyB
Thanks for info on your research project. I will be interested to see the shift in trend that you get from using 1980-2009 rather than 1961-1990, as GISS uses.
It would also be interesting to see how the data stack up if all of the stations in large urban centers are simply removed from the record. I could imagine that this would have a major impact on the trend.
I also do not know how many of the old USSR stations that were shut down around 1990 (Climate Audit) are in the GISS database. It would also be interesting to see what happens if these are removed from the pre-1990 record.
Comparing the trends with and without these two changes in data sets could give a good indication of what the UHI impact truly is on the record (certainly more meaningful than the Parker “calm night / windy night” comparison, which IPCC used to discount the UHI impact).
On top of this come the distorted readings resulting from poor siting of individual stations (Watts), which are a bit harder to isolate. There is no question that these have had a spurious net warming impact on the record, as the Orland/Marysville (CA) comparison (WUWT) clearly showed.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3379/3445494806_d4152f9509_b.jpg
Keep us informed once you publish your results. Thanks.
Max
tonyb
WRT old data, this isn’t too specific or scientific, but may be a useful indicator of a change of attitude in the MSM. I think even the BBC touched on it on the Today programme recently, although of course they didn’t express any of the more obvious conclusions!
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1218474/How-Captain-Cooks-ship-logs-helping-scientists-chart-global-climate-change.html
One has to wonder why it has taken until now for climatologists to investigate what are clearly well-kept and well-informed records…
Hi JamesP
Yes I saw those logs before they were digitised. I took information from this and other ships logs to help construct my article on arctic warming from 1815-1860 carried on WUWT. The trouble is the digitised ones were created specifically to search for evidence of man made wartming and came from Exeter Uni where Hadley centre have a climate chair, so not too hopeful it will be objective.
I now have 54 pre 1850 temperature data sets. The cyclical cooling and warming is very apparent. I have now finished looking at all the Giss records which show hundreds of places cooling for at least 30 years (many for much longer) as well as those warming. Obviously CO2 is a very versatile gas if it can do both at the same time.
Tonyb
I keep wondering when the record warm temperatures that Al Gore and his band of global warming cult members promised are going to set in……
A cold start to fall: over 4500 new snowfall, low temp, and lowest max temp records set in the USA this last week
Brute,
Sure, it is getting colder in localities all over our globe (as TonyB has documented), the USA has unusually cold temperatures all over the map, record October snow is being dumped on the Alps, etc. but this is only weather.
At the same time computer models fed by climate scientists tell us that the climate is warming dangerously.
It is important to distinguish between weather and climate.
Weather is what we observe physically at many locations, measure with thermometers, etc. and record (even over longer periods of time, as TonyB does).
Climate is what comes out of computer models, but is never really observed locally (or anywhere) with thermometers, etc.
Max