Climate change: how to balance freedoms
Thanks for all the comments so far. The post in reply, and new comments have moved on to the new post, over here.
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Earlier this week, one of the key sceptical blogs, Jennifer Marohasy, re-listed a collection of quotes to do with scepticism, denial and free expression. There are pegs on which denial–denial, and not scepticism–finds itself hooked. For example, picking up on inaccuracies in the politicized science. Interestingly, Mahorasy’s list came on the same day as a leaked email from the US Environmental Protection Agency, which has ’silenced its employees on climate change’. What’s going on in relation to climate change and freedom of expression, particularly online? Read more
Mark Watson’s crap at the environment
I just caught the first instalment of Mark Watson’s Radio 4 Book of the Week this morning: the story of his ‘one year of doing the environment better’ that he’s put together in his new book, Crap At The Environment.
Fair play to Mark for taking on the subject, and doing it in both a committed (in terms of time) and common sense way. The way he talks about climate change fixes firmly in the vernacular, and that’s an important way of addressing the subject. Humour helps too. However, although he apologised for being crass about it, this I found highly unfunny:
“Deforestation? Have a look on Google Earth, there seems enough of it left to me.”
Deforestation is a massive climate change and equity issue. There’s just no need to take cheap shots while doing something so worthy. This below, however, is more interesting and opens up the point from which Mark started his internal-investigation into his own crapness towards the environment (there are four more instalments this week). On the programme today, Mark said this: Read more
Should we still be teaching journalism…?
Paul Bradshaw at City has ‘produced’ (and that word is carefully chosen) another inspired blog post, pulling together the views of a number of journalists and academics to answer this question:
Should journalism degrees still prepare students for a news industry that doesn’t want them?
Go read it, it’s excellent. I’ve only a little to add, which I’ve posted there, but will reproduce here. Then I’m having a three day break from the blog. I’ve just read about a quarter of a million words, in journal articles, book chapters and blogs, for a book chapter I’m working on (on media and climate change), and my mind is frying!. So will be back next week. And here’s my comment on Paul’s blog: Read more
‘Oil is everything’: Burn Up on BBC2
“Doubt is our product. We manufacture doubt.” So says Mack, the bastard PR-lobbyist in last night’s BBC2 climate change drama, Burn Up.
It wasn’t a bad attempt at taking on climate change in a dramatic made-for-TV format. The first turns at addressing a new social/political phenomena are always going to be a little cliched. Some of the first literary attempts failed by being too directly about climate change. Maggie Gee’s The Ice People, for example, and the 2nd and 3rd books of Kim Stanley Robinson’s trilogy. Compare to the later mastery of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which doesn’t mention the issue directly, not once.
Burn Up didn’t fail in the same way. It’s TV, not literature, and can be saved by drama. Written by Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty) and produced by the makers of Spooks, it has the pedigree. Read more
C4 Mykura’s half-right contradiction on climate change
Hamish Mykura, Channel 4’s head of documentaries, has published his reply to Monbiot’s claim that Channel 4 has harmed action against climate change.
Mykura’s central tenet is that the vehemence of people such as Monbiot do more harm to the ’cause’ of global warming than a dissenting documentary that is seen by 2.7m viewers. In Mykura’s words:
It is arguable that it is not the Great Global Warming Swindle that has bred public scepticism, but the desire of some environmentalists – evidenced by the identikit complaints orchestrated against the film – to stamp out dissenting voices. This intolerance undermines confidence in the rightness of the cause.
This one’s going to get some comments alright. Maybe aiming for the 1,500 that accumulated under the New Scientist Lynas/White debate at the beginning of the year. Some early comments on the CIF site under Mykura’s article:
- Pretendingtocare: ‘2 more articles like this and we’ll have balance’
- TheLoonyfromCatford: ‘Impact? well it sure got a lot of US right-wing bloggers talking’
- Commander Keen: Hamish, you are a (quoting Durkin) ‘big daft cock’
And isn’t that fulfilling all the promises of new media? Read more
What materially matters: Ofcom and climate
Today’s Ofcom bulletin confirms the ruling on the mistreatment of leading scientists and the IPCC in the ‘Great Global Warming Swindle’, broadcast on Channel 4 back in early 2007. I covered the background to the Great Global Warming Swindle coverage in a previous post.
Ofcom have found Channel 4 in breach of the Broadcasting Code in relation to Rule 7.1, Rule 5.11 and Rule 5.12. But Channel 4 were found not to have breached Rule 2.2:
2.2 Factual programmes or items or portrayals of factual matters must not materially mislead the audience.
Interestingly, Section 2 of the Code is the section tha deals with ‘Harm and Offence’–the suggestion is that to ‘materially mislead’ on factual matters can cause either offence or harm. (And interesting that News is not covered by 2.2, and so in rulings on news there is less suggestion that it can mislead, or harm?) Read more
Courtesy and the Monckton Paper
Courtesy may be a lost art. That’s according to Christopher (Viscount) Monckton of Brenchley, who claimed that the decision of the Committee of the American Physical Society (APS) to retract support for his paper Climate Sensitivity Revisited was ‘discourteous’.
The APS originally published Monckton’s paper in its online journal, Physics and Society, editor Jeff Marque.
Yesterday, APS put this disclaimer in red over the paper:
The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.
Monckton writes:
This seems discourteous. I had been invited to submit the paper; I had submitted it; an eminent Professor of Physics had then scientifically reviewed it in meticulous detail; I had revised it at all points requested, and in the manner requested; the editors had accepted and published the reviewed and revised draft (some 3000 words longer than the original) and I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.
Channel 4 ‘did not mislead’ on global warming
Ofcom will rule next week that Channel 4 did not mislead the public over the science of climate change with its programme the Great Global Warming Swindle, according to Owen Gibson in the Guardian this morning.
There is some criticism of Channel 4 and the GGWS programme, produced by Michael Durkin:
Ofcom is expected to censure the network over its treatment of some scientists in the programme… Complaints about privacy and fairness from the government’s former chief scientist, Sir David King, and the Nobel peace prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be upheld on almost all counts…
But the bigger story is around what Channel 4 won’t be censured for: Read more
Third of Conservatives don’t accept climate change
Yesterday the Guardian published figures showing that a third of Conservative MPs don’t believe, or don’t know what they believe about, climate change. This on the same day that Gordon Brown gave the keynote speech to the Guardian’s ‘Climate Change Summit: how to beat Green Fatigue’ conference.
Writing in yesterday’s Guardian, Brown says climate change “is a challenge that inspires rather than daunts me.” Currently critical columnists (there’s a mouthful of cs) of Brown agree: Jonathan Freeland agress that “Brown sees this vast horizon: Cameron and the others can barely glimpse it.” Yet Cameron is for the Guardian “Britain’s most influential politician”.
Another view, this morning in the New Statesman, is that Labour would do better by leaving the coming economic downturn in the hands of Cameron, as it could mean another 20 years of Labour if the Conservatives get it wrong. Read more
Five reasons Brendan O’Neill is wrong
Articles decrying environmental practice as “a tyranny of environmentalism” which is leaving people with more “fear, self-loathing and a religious-style sense of meekness than any piece of anti-terror legislation ever could” are interesting cultural artefacts to examine.
Like fossils, they help us understand how previous cultures and the people that lived in them went about their business; how they were able to internalise huge global inequities by focusing on impossibly narrow elements of societies and their rare incidents of rhetorical argument. E.g., such as the work of newspaper columnists.
This is the type of fossil that turned up in my RSS feed this morning, from Brendan O’Neill, editor of Spiked, writing today in The Guardian. I felt like one of the actors in Bonekickers, faced with the same quality of writing.
Firstly, comment is free–up to a point. That’s why we have things such as the 1976 Race Relations Act to ensure socially-accepted parameters on the treatment of individuals are upheld, whatever you want to think about freedom of speech. (By the way, I worked unpaid for Index On Censorship, and I’ve led editorial projects in the Balkans, so I have some pedigee). Second, I have no problem with O’Neill bringing issues to the table in this way, and a national newspaper is probably the best place to debate them.
The problem is that journalism, even opinion, is meant to say something new, be interesting, and be accurate.
This article is none of these things: it’s a rehash of something O’Neill did back in 2006, when he was already late to the party on assessing the rhetoric of climate change debates. In that sense, the article is predictable and disappointing in a number of ways, adding nothing to the debate. So, why else is it so bad? Read more
