Tony at Harmless Sky has been following , for 18 months at least, development of BBC policy on the coverage of climate change.
He picks up on this line from a rather obscurely-titled BBC report on impartiality:
The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus [on anthropogenic climate change]. From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel, Page 40
As Gareth in the comments points out, the seminar was one of the Real World seminars the BBC holds each year, where execs from the corporation get together to debate particular issues. In 2006, it was focused on climate change. This line from the report worried Tony enough to send the BBC a request under the Freedom of Information Act, and I agree that the response from the BBC is far from satisfying. One reason perhaps is that the Real World workshop quoted was held under Chatham House Rules, so the BBC are stuck in being unable to release information about who attended the seminar.
Tony’s post has been picked up by some other bloggers, one of whom I’ve had debate with recently, who take this as proof that the BBC is proselytising the ‘climate alarmism’ cause (again, on alarmism, see my post on James Risbey’s work). There is a ‘fabulously interesting and in-depth’ post on the Hockey Stick Graph debate over at As with Bishop Hill’s views on the BBC’s position on climate change, I’m not so sure….
I agree this line would seem to be suggest the BBC is taking a particular stance on climate change. But is it one that drops impartiality altogther? The line above is followed in the report by this paragraph:
But these dissenters (or even sceptics) will still be heard, as they should, because it is not the BBC’s role to close down this debate. They cannot be simply dismissed as ‘flat-earthers’ or ‘deniers’, who ‘should not be given a platform’ by the BBC. Impartiality always requires a breadth of view: for as long as minority opinions are coherently and honestly expressed, the BBC must give them appropriate space. ‘Bias by elimination’ is even more offensive today than it was in 1926.
Climate Change was also the subject of a number of series of two-day annual seminars for BBC execs held since 1997, and organised by the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme, co-directed by Roger Harrabin (of BBC Radio 4 Today Programme). These seminars included the first two Real World seminars, looking at the BBC’s reporting of the developing world, held in 2004.
The results were all put together by Joe Smith in his paper ‘Dangerous News: Media Decision Making about Climate Change Risk’ (published in Risk Analysis, 25:6, 2005). It’s a very useful paper. What strikes me most is the reticence and discomfort with which editors at the BBC covered climate change (from 1997 to 2004). A couple of quotes:
Editors have consistently defended themselves [to accusations of dropping climate change stories from the news] within the workshops by suggesting they have a responsibility in their decisions to represent public expectations and priorities about the most relevant news of the day: “an issue may be important as you say…but that doesn’t make it news.”
And another one, a BBC media exec to NGO/scientist audiences in the room:
“You’ve got to understand this–we’re not here to tell the public how to behave–we’re there to tell them what’s happening”
And in response to the scientific/political community urging action on climate change:
Editors are quick to see that the kinds of purposeful social action demanded by the science and policy community carries them quickly out of questions about ‘good science’ and into messy and editorially hazardous ethical-political terrain… ‘buy-in’ to climate change is value threatening and an ideological hazard… which threatens not only the professional reputation of an editor but [also] his or her hard-won position.
If anything, these examples suggest that climate change does not get the coverage that would sit in-line with the consensus, but as Boykoff and Boykoff (2004, 2007, 2008) have shown, offers a disproportionate media representation of the minority of dissenting views, based on journalistic norms such as impartiality.
Has this changed since 2004? Perhaps some, yes, but not that much. It’s worth remembering it was only August last year that the BBC dropped its plans for a ‘Planet Relief’-style evening under criticism from senior BBC executives that it would breach their impartiality code:
Head of BBC TV news Peter Horrocks told a session at the Edinburgh TV festival: “I absolutely don’t think we should do that because it’s not impartial. It’s not our job to lead people and proselytise about it.” Newsnight’s Peter Barron added: “It is absolutely not the BBC’s job to save the planet. I think there are a lot of people who think that, but it must be stopped.”
So, all this together, the BBC report and this ‘no line on climate’ editorial, it’s position looks reasonably clear:
The BBC has many public purposes of both ambition and merit – but joining campaigns to save the planet is not one of them. The BBC’s best contribution is to increase public awareness of the issues and possible solutions through impartial and accurate programming. Acceptance of a basic scientific consensus only sharpens the need for hawk-eyed scrutiny of the arguments surrounding both causation and solution.
That seems pretty emphatic. But. Perhaps the most thorough perspective on BBC and climate change can be found here, an article from Roger Harrabin (who conducted the seminars) and Richard Black. Two key things for me:
Given the weight of opinion building up around the IPCC it makes sense for us to focus our coverage on the consensus that climate change is happening, is serious, but is manageable if tackled urgently. We do not need consistently to ‘balance’ the reports of the IPCC. When we broadcast outlying views we should make sure we do not over represent them and we should keep a rough balance of views from either side of the IPCC. If we do not, we will distort the issue and risk misleading or confusing our audience.
And
We should confidently take these debates forward, with a modern, accurate sense of impartiality in mind.
This ‘modern, accurate sense of impartiality’ is where the debate moves next: as it surely will. As Peter Martin points out, they’ve now ‘made a start’ in ensuring dissenters have their airtime, with the ‘tyrannical’ Brendan O’Neill in the BBC magazine on flat-earthers. We’re not big fans of Brendan here, but you can’t criticize the BBC for not giving voice to the sceptical commentatory.
However, some have, and will cotinue to do so. As Mark Lynas told me during an interview I conducted in June:
I’ve had this argument with the BBC. No-one seeks objectivity on issues such as race or genocide; they’re just too big and important. These things are reported within an ethical context, and this ethical context is just as relevant for climate change.
The forthcoming History of Climate Change series will be one to watch out for. Thanks to Tony for following the BBC on this issue. The BBC report quoted can be found here: BBC Report, From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel.
***
A couple of other interesting links on environmental journalism/reporting on climate change:
- DotEarth: ‘Find the agreement’
- Huffington Post: ‘no delay’
- Cristine Russell in the CJR: ‘Climate Change: Now What’
- Brendan O’Neill: green tyranny
Popularity: 36% [?]
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
Alex,
Thanks for a thoughtful and, in general, well balanced review of what I said in my post at Harmless Sky.
I was not aware that the BBC are claiming that the seminar in question was conducted under Chatham House Rules and I would be very interested to know where this piece of information came from.
Hi Alex
I like what you wrote except for the bit about the so-called “hockey stick”. A report by the US National Research Council’s Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate reviewed all the research that has been done to date on surface temperature reconstructions for the last 2,000 years, including the Mann (or MBH) paper that anti-global warming people refer to as the “hockey stick”. The Committee published a report in 2006 that agreed that there were statistical shortcomings in the MBH analysis, but concluded that they were small in effect. (http://tinyurl.com/36dzh3).
More importantly, the Mann paper was simply the first peer reviewed attempt to qualitatively estimate global temperature trends over the last millennia using palaeoclimatic data, and was published in 1998: since then many other teams of researchers using completely different data sets have carried out independent studies that all came to the same conclusion as the MBH paper had, (as summarised at http://tinyurl.com/37wxu4). The critics of the original Mann paper never criticise the other independent studies – I wonder why not? Even the House of Lords economics affairs committee (which has little or no scientific background, as opposed to the much more qualified Science and Technology Committee, which does; and which was supposed to be investigating the economics rather than the science of climate change) noted that this was very strange, stating that: “One curious feature of the debate over Professor Mann’s time series is that the critics appear to ignore other studies which secure similar hockey stick pictures.” (http://tinyurl.com/j3vgy and http://tinyurl.com/5vp7rn).
It should also be noted that McIntyre and McKitrick have never published on the subject (or on climate change at all) in any respected peer reviewed scientific journal and have had no formal training in climate science.
So one has to question the motives of people who still bring up such an old paper despite all of the above, and I’m surprised that you are willing to give credence to such people.
Dave
Sorry my last post should have read “the Mann paper was simply the first peer reviewed attempt to quantitatively estimate global temperature trends …” (rather than qualitatively).
Dave
Alex
Your original description of the Bishop Hill post on the Hockey Stick was correct and fully justified. I am afraid that Dave Rado’s comment on the subject contains more errors of fact than I am prepared to spend time correcting.
I wonder if the BBC should consider giving more, rather than less, airtime to those who oppose conventional or accepted wisdoms? After all, they often turn out to be right…
I also endorse the Bishop Hill piece, which is a splendid indictment of some of the key AGW supporters. Amazing that they stoop so low to maintain a position they claim is so universally accepted.
“All great truths begin as blasphemies” (GBS)
On further investigation I withdraw the paragraph starting “It should also be noted that McIntyre and McKitrick have never published on the subject”, but as far as I can tell the rest of what I wrote is factual. The Bishop Hill post discusses at great length a single additional study (Amman and Wahl), but ignores the many other studies that have all reached similar conclusions (summary linked to above) and ignores the findings of the US National Research Council.
Sorry I reinstate the paragraph referred to above after all. The Bishop Hill post seemed to imply that M&M had published in GRL, which was why I withdrew it, but I’ve just done a search of Google Scholar and they are not listed there as ever having done so. Their original paper was published in a social science journal called Energy and Environment, and in a breach of scientific protocol, Mann et all were not given an opportunity to peer review it, even though it attacked their paper. The extreme bias of the Bishop Hill post is demonstrated by its reference to the respected climate scientist Stephen Schneider, who has an outstanding publication record in the peer reviewed literature, using the ad hominem “catastrophist”.
Dave
I agree with Tony. I do not have time to correct all of the errors in Dave’s post, but I will address a few. McIntyre and McKitrick did indeed publish in GRL. A good source of published papers on the Hockey Stick controversy is provided at McIntyre’s blog, which interestingly was voted the Best Science Blog of 2007.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?page_id=354
Mann’s paper was thoroughly refuted (and McIntyre and McKitrick’s criticism confirmed) by the Wegman Report which was produced for the benefit of the US Congress and looked specifically at statistical issues. The Congress also requested the National Research Council to produce a report looking more generally at the science and not just the statistics. While the NRC’s report was more polite to the authors of MBH, it sided with McIntyre and McKitrick on all of the important points of science. For example, they agreed with M&M that strip bark bristlecone pine series is not a temperature proxy and should not be used.
Unfortuately for Dave’s argument, all of the subsequent studies that supposedly support MBH make this same mistake. They are not independent studies at all. A temperature reconstruction by Craig Loehle which avoided tree rings altogether restored the traditional view of a very warm Medieval Warm Period and very cool Little Ice Age. This shows there is nothing exceptional about 20th century temperatures.
For me, the best story on the Hockey Stick was published in the Dutch science magazine Natuurwetenschap & Techniek. An English translation is available here.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/Climate_L.pdf
I was confused regarding Dave’s claim that M&M’s GRL paper did not show up in Google Scholar, so I tested it myself. I found the GRL paper listed first. See for yourself.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=+%22temperature+reconstruction%22+author%3A%22s+mcintyre%22&as_publication=&btnG=Search
Dave Rado
Can I gently suggest that you take some time to read Climate Audit before you sound off. McIntyre has links to his publications on the LH side of his website.
The link to GRL is here. IIRC, GRL nominated it as one of their highlights of 2005.
The fact that McIntyre & McKitrick had published in GRL was mentioned in my piece, as was the fact that they had been invited to peer review Ammann in Climatic Change.
You accuse me of making ad-hominem remarks. This is a strange accusation, since Schneider appears only peripherally in my piece. My remarks about his AGW advocacy didn’t form an attempt to rebut his views, but were merely a description of who he is. So they weren’t ad hominem in the normal meaning of the word, any more than any description of a person is ad hominem. Schneider is on record as saying that
“[W]e need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.”
so I don’t think I’ve misrepresented him.
I was anyway actually complimenting him on inviting McIntyre to peer review Ammann’s paper, despite his (Schneider’s) strong pro-AGW views.
Arguing people’s relative qualifications is, of course, a real ad hominem argument(argumentum ad verecundiam). We should remind ourselves that Albert Einstein was a patent clerk when he started publishing papers. The question at issue is the science behind the hockey stick, not the qualifications of the people advocating different views.
You also say that sceptics don’t criticise the other proxy studies which allegedly verify the hockey stick. The very first words written on Climate Audit were:
“Maybe I’ll start blogging some odds and ends that I’m working on. I’m going to post up some more observations on some of the blog criticisms. One of the most common arguments against our criticism of MBH98 is that it is supported by other multi-proxy studies.”
followed by a posting which starts the process of examining other studies. Again, I would urge you to read Climate Audit before you start criticising it. There are acres of articles on other reconstructions. Here are a few:
Briffa et al 2008, Crowley & Lowery 2000, Mann & Jones 2003, Jones & Mann 2004, Rutherford et al 2005, Moberg et al 2005, Hegerl et al, Osborn & Briffa 2006, Juckes 2007, Briffa 2000, Briffa et al 2001, Jones et al 1998, D’Arrigo et al 2006, Esper et al 2002, Jacoby & D’Arrigo 1989.
This is not meant to be a complete list, just a few that I have noted. There is a whole category devoted to the subject if you look in the navigation bar.
And anyway, as you note in your follow-up, my posting was about another study (Ammann & Wahl 2007) which allegedly verified the hockey stick!
There is a bit of a misconception about my posting. It wasn’t an attempt to rebut the hockey stick per se (I haven’t even mentioned principal components!), but rather to tell the story of Wahl and Ammann. So why should I mention other climate reconstructions myself? The NAS report predated Wahl & Amman’s paper, so again, it’s not really relevant. (You don’t mention the Wegman report – funny that!)
I’ll also note in passing that you are wrong to say that the other reconstructions are using different data sets. This one of McIntyre’s regular beefs with the paleo community. Again and again, the same series are turning up. Graybill & Idso’s bristlecone pine series (dodgy), the Gaspe cedars (dodgy), Thompson’s secret ice core data (secret), the Polar Urals series(dodgy). Take away the studies that use one of these, then take away the ones that won’t release their data and code. You are left with the reliable ones. Which are….
Hi Bishop
I apologise for not having been able to find the GRL article on Google Scholar. I withdraw again my statement about that. It is fact, however, that M&M’s original paper on the subject was published in a social science journal (E&E) rather than a natural science one, and that Mann et al were not invited to peer review it, which was a breach of protocol.
Re. your selective quotation out of context of Schneider, see http://tinyurl.com/yog3uz . And on the subject of checking sources, did you ask Wahl and Amman for their comments before publishing your post?
Re. Wegman see http://tinyurl.com/zhkjt .
Interesting the McIntyre has after all criticised some of the other reconstructions on his blog – but (a) most other “sceptics” only talk about the original one, hence the statement by the House of Lords enquiry, and (b) the right place for M&M to criticise the other papers is in the peer reviewed literature (and then by all means blog about it afterwards.
Dave
Sorry the Schneider link should have been http://tinyurl.com/62bxzh (goes straight to the bookmark).
One last point – I don’t see how the US National Research Council’s conclusion that the “there were statistical shortcomings but they were small in effect” could be irrelevant – it seems fundamentally important to me. And their finding is not contradicted by Wegman, who agreed that there were statistical shortcomings but did not investigate whether they made any difference to the final MBH reconstruction. On the other hand, one of Wegman’s team, Hans von Storch, specifically stated during the Q&A that the statistical shortcomings made no practical difference to the final reconstruction.
Dave
It’s irrelevant because it didn’t look at the subject of benchmarking the RE statistic (I think – I’ve searched under “benchmark” and get nothing) which was the subject of my post.
“On the other hand, one of Wegman’s team, Hans von Storch, specifically stated …”
Von Storch was not part of Wegman’s team.
“And their finding is not contradicted by Wegman, who agreed that there were statistical shortcomings but did not investigate whether they made any difference to the final MBH reconstruction.”
What Wegman said was that MBH’s “analysis did not support their conclusions”. This is a polite academic’s way of saying that it was rubbish.
You can prove pretty much any mathematical formula you want if you are allowed to divide by zero at some point in the proof. But everything after that point is irrelevant nonsense.
“I don’t see how the US National Research Council’s conclusion that the “there were statistical shortcomings but they were small in effect” could be irrelevant”
Easily – they did not work through it all, so they had no basis for any assertion about the size of the effect. As Gerry North, the Chairman, put it “we just kind of winged it”.
Boring.
If anyone is interested in this subject, I suggest you go to climateaudit, where all these matters are documented in exhaustive detail. Use the Categories section on the left to work though posts on specific subject areas.
Dave,
It is amazing that you can make so many mistakes in one post. Hans Von Storch was not part of Wegman’s team. The Wegman Report was authored by Edward J. Wegman of George Mason University, David W. Scott of Rice University and Yasmin H. Said of Johns Hopkins University. These men are leading statisticians. The Wegman Report confirmed MM05 finding that the MBH method resulted in a Hockey Stick even when trendless red noise was used as data. This is known as the Artificial Hockey Stick (AHS). See the Wegman Report
http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/others/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf
Hans Von Storch and Eduardo Zorita did their own replication of MBH and found the same thing. Von Storch and Zorita said this did not really matter because MBH9x had so many other problems. See
http://coast.gkss.de/staff/zorita/ABSTRACTS/2005_von_Storch_etal__Comment_on_hockey_stick_GRL.pdf
Von Storch published a blog posting on the decay of the Hockey Stick in 2007. His posting was criticized because he did not give McIntyre proper credit. But you might enjoy reading it as well:
http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2007/05/the_decay_of_the_hockey_stick.html
Thanks for all the comments and links on this article. They’ve all been useful and instructive.
Dave, you said:
“It should also be noted that McIntyre and McKitrick have never published on the subject (or on climate change at all) in any respected peer reviewed scientific journal and have had no formal training in climate science.”
“So one has to question the motives of people who still bring up such an old paper despite all of the above, and I’m surprised that you are willing to give credence to such people.”
You now know about the GRL paper. But do you know that M&M first published in Energy and Environment because their work was shunned (shamefully) by the major peer reviewed journals? It was the attention that this attracted which made it impossible for the major journals to continue to ignore what was obviously a sound and very relevant research.
You seem to be unaware that all the palaeoclimate reconstructions that you are referring to are statistical constructs. M&M’s criticisms have to do with the statistical methodology employed rather than with climate science in the broader sense. Steven McIntyre has a degree in mathematics and Ross McKitrick is a professor of econometrics or, in other words, a statistician.
One of Wegman’s general criticisms of palaeoclimate reconstructions was that, at the time he published his report, there were no statisticians working in this field, and he made a plea for cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Of course your final paragraph is entirely based on an ad hominem attack on Bishop Hill. Perhaps you would like to withdraw that too?
Alex
In view of all the information that you now have regarding Dave’s comment about Bishop Hill’s post, don’t you think that the time has come to reinstate your kind words about it and the link in your post?
Dave Rado Says:
More importantly, the Mann paper was simply the first peer reviewed attempt to qualitatively estimate global temperature trends over the last millennia using palaeoclimatic data, and was published in 1998: since then many other teams of researchers using completely different data sets have carried out independent studies that all came to the same conclusion as the MBH paper had.
Independent, I don`t think so, they are all linked and are in the same grouping, see the Wegman report, this link gives a reasonable explanation as to why the hockey stick is utter rubbish.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3021
ALL the hockey stick studies rely on 2 sets of proxies that are known to be suspect and should NOT be used for temperature . The longer term proxies in M2008 are totally dominated by the Tiljander and the 19 southwestern US “stripbark” pine proxies. It is those proxies, and those proxies alone, that create the Hockeystick shape found in the signal. Remove those proxies and there is NO hockey stick.