Monday 14 December 2009

Conflict of interest? Not when you’re a climate alarmist [update 4]

The hacked ClimateGate emails “don’t support claims that the science of global warming was faked” says a thorough word-by-word study by . . . Seth Borenstein, one of the very journalists whose cosy relationship with warmist “scientists” was exposed by the emails themselves.

And not only that, his dismissal of the oceans of hacked data and more than 2000 emails was based in large part on “reactions” from so-called “moderate” scientists, which those emails themselves showed not to be moderates at all but “full-fledged warmists.” As Andrew Bolt says, “Borenstein is sure the Climategate emails don’t amount to much because he asked global warming believers if they now admitted they were wrong.”

So much for journalistic integrity.

D’you think The New Deniers – who are legion – even understand the concept of conflict of interest? Or integrity. Or the first thing about confronting the real facts? Let me give them some advice. In fact, let George Monbiot, writing in the Guardian, give them some advice:

_quote Confronted with crisis, most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial. . . Pretending the climate email leak isn't a crisis won't make it go away. . . There is no helping it; Phil Jones [the source of most of the emails] has to go, and the longer he leaves it, the worse it will get. “

And AP’s science reporter Seth Borenstein has to go as well – if not from his job at AP, but at the very least from the pages of the Herald where his bullshit is being peddled.

Why not write and tell them so? It only takes a minute.

UPDATE 1: Andrew Bolt reports a similar theme from Aussie journos:

The ABC’s chief science reporter, Robyn ”100 metres” Williams, writes nearly 1000 words to dismiss the Climategate emails as a storm in a teacup. Of all those words, these are all you need read:

So what do the emails reveal? I hesitate to pronounce. I haven’t read them.

UPDATE 2: And Paul Walker reckons things haven’t changed much in sixty years.  Here’s peer-reviewed science circa 1945.

UPDATE 3: Maybe local journos are doing better than we think, at least at Newstalk ZB.  Petra Bagust, (yes, Petra Bagust!) put together the two scientists that Mark Sainsbury should have had on his Close UP programme recently: Jim Salinger and Bob Carter, over two hours last night.  Here’s the first hour, which was mostly Salinger, and here’s the second. (Scroll past the news at the start of each hour.)

And Kerre Woodham spent part of her Sunday programme harassing Jeanette Fitzsimplesimons. Good stuff, apparently. The interview starts around fifteen minutes into this this audio.

UPDATE 4: They faked the Siberian tree figures. They put their CO2 measuring meters next to volcanoes and exhaust systems. They warmed up the data in Wellington. They warmed up the data in Darwin.  They warmed it up in Alaska and Orland. And now they’re warming it up in Antarctica.

Crikey, it’s almost as bad as Bob Jones’ satirising The Beards in his novel Full Circle, in which a ship full of hookers parked up at the Pole for the winter to keep the Beards company raised weather temperatures to record levels by dumping hot water on the thermometers.

2 comments:

Willie said...

"And AP’s science reporter Seth Borenstein has to go as well" ...

"Why not write and tell them so?"

Why not scream at a brick wall, imploring it to move?

JC said...

Look on the bright side.. a goodly number of Herald readers will have looked up from their Kornies and said "Climategate? What emails?"

What the AP has done is to pre-emptively defend itself from decades of scientific cosiness, easily won headlines and inability to separate politics and superstition from the news.

Somewhere there's a Pope or three giggling and saying "Not so much change since Gallileo, then"

JC