Things I don’t understand ||

GBP 200,000 worth of great science.

Following on from yesterday’s discussion, here are some of the feedback responses that the BBC did allow through the censorship:

Ah, but you are missing a vital part of the puzzle of ‘historical’ films. The problem now is that people take them as fact. They do not research, study and examine the evidence of the perios, they believe the film and consign it to memory. Your lovely illustration from Kenneth Baker: “And in the words of Henry V at Agincourt - ‘He that hath no stomach for the fight, let him depart’” is key. You say that it is obvious that Henry V never said these words. Of course it is, to you or I. But to the millions of not so educated persons. I think not.
Richard Holloway, London

This one is from a fellow historian:

Shocked and surprised is my reaction. I am a historian writing a biography at the present time and uncovering mistake after mistake, where other historians have copied one another without checking the source or applying that most basic of instincts, common sense. Now I find that directors and scriptwriters can follow in the dreaded Shakespeare’s footsteps and throw facts to the wind to make a good story. Much damage has been done over the years to the reputations of many fine people by this attitude, especially from Shakespeare, and now it is being advocated as a Good Thing by another writer.May we please, please, return to the FACTS and build a story around them! There is hardly a period of history that does not have first rate action in it, without recourse to throwing the facts out of the window. The current Tudor series is a case in point, starting with a black haired Henry when he was blonde … and that’s without the endless stupid errors of radiators and the like. If this is the attitude of script writers, why am I bothering to check the minutest detail of the movements of the Earl of which I write, to get it right for others to use? But then again, what novel has not been wrecked by translating it to the so-called ’silver screen’ with its characters maligned and the story bent out of all recognition? Why then should I think they would not do the same with history. I despair. Literally.
Dorothy Davies, Ryde, IOW UK

A short response:

Propaganda - History is thy name!!
Stephen

And feedback to Dorothy Davies:

I’m in much the same situation as Dorothy Davies and agree with her. There is surely an ethical issue here, involving fictional treatments of real people, past or present. Peddling propaganda and myth at the expense of accuracy is as dangerous (politically and culturally) as it is dishonest and dishonourable.
Dr M M Gilchrist, Glasgow, Scotland

I’ve just read this on the BBC website. I ought not to be shocked, but then I’m only so far in my BBC desensitization course:

The preamble:

It doesn’t matter if films play fast and loose with historical facts. What matters is to convey the spirit of the age - and its players.

No of course not. Especially if you want to propagandize them.

There have been murmurings of reproach over the film’s breaches in historical authenticity, with commentators expressing their anxiety at its tampering with the facts, and the liberties taken in the plot, in terms of what can only be described as moral dismay. Ought I as an historian to share the critics’ disapproval? The fact is, I simply don’t.

Because after a career spent poring over the surviving documents from the 16th and 17th centuries, clutching at any emotional straw in the form of an overlooked manuscript jotting or a recently-discovered folio of contemporary eye-witness observations, I find the heroic confidence of Blanchett’s portrayal of Elizabeth I positively exhilarating.

Exhilarating.

Here is my response:

So there you have it. It’s OK to teach people a false history because although its false, its entertaining.

“…ought we not self-confidently to revel in the universal appeal of the story of an underdog nation triumphing against the odds, and the creative retellings it continues to inspire?”

That’s what Goebbels did as a pretext to the persecution of the Jews of Germany - produce historical dramas which portrayed Jews in a continuously bad light. The German people got the message.

Its astonishing to me to have a historian approve of deliberate historical inaccuracy in favour of entertainment. You would have thought that historians, of all people, would realise that distortions of history are political propaganda and are the pretexts for civil strife and war.

Clearly not all historians have learnt much about history, it appears

I am reminded of Leonard Nimoy’s prologue at the start of an episode of “The Simpsons” which featured the actors from “The X Files”:

Hello. I’m Leonard Nimoy.

The following tale of alien encounters is true.

And by true, I mean false. It’s all lies. But they’re entertaining lies.

And in the end, isn’t that the real truth?

The answer is: No.

I’ve just sent this in, but the chances of a reply are frankly minimal:

“Nature’s refusal to publish a re-analysis by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick of the famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) “hockey stick” graph has been so well documented elsewhere, not least in hearings instigated by US congressmen, that there is really nothing new to say.”

You know what’s really interesting, Richard? Despite the centrality of the Hockey Stick in formulating policy, being the subject of Congressional investigation and claims made by extremely well qualified scientists and statisticians that the Hockey Stick is trash, neither you nor the BBC ever felt the need to report on any of this.

Why not?

 Following on from yesterday’s trash piece from Richard Black comes yet another tissue of misrepresentation. Here is my reply, kept safe because I know that the BBC doesn’t ever allow criticism of itself on its own website.

Once again another piece of Black Propaganda:

“Of all the accusations made by the vociferous community of climate sceptics, surely the most damaging is that science itself is biased against them.”

Really? Where did any of the skeptics claim that “the science” was biased against them?

Nowhere. You made up a straw man right from the start. They did not claim that “science” was biased against them, they claimed that some scientific journals refused publication and some funding agencies refused to find research for spurious reasons to prevent the questioning of key studies which are foundational to the IPCC’s output.

“Nature’s refusal to publish a re-analysis by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick of the famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) “hockey stick” graph has been so well documented elsewhere, not least in hearings instigated by US congressmen, that there is really nothing new to say.”

That’s fascinating. Of course, you covered the congressional hearings and made clear mention of the report of a highly distinguished and independent statistician Edward Wegman, who found Steve McIntyre’s criticism of the Hockey Stick to be “valid and compelling” and the the conclusions of the study that the 1990s where the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year of the millienium, cannot be sustained”?

No you didn’t.

What you did do was studiously ignore any findings which showed very clearly how false the Hockey Stick study really was and is. You did not write about the so-called “confirming studies” which were corrupted by use of the Hockey Stick as an proxy in itself and the Hockey Stick methodology which the NAS Panel specifically decried.

You even reported that the NAS Panel “backed the Hockey Stick” when in fact they demolished the methodology as flawed, recommended that bristlecone pine proxies should not be used as they are not temperature proxies and downgraded the Hockey Stick’s claims down to “plausible” which my dictionary defines as “Plausible … describe[s] that which has the appearance of truth but might be deceptive. The person or thing that is plausible strikes the superficial judgment favorably; it may or may not be true: a plausible argument (one that cannot be verified or believed in entirely).”

So it may be documented very well elsewhere, but not on the BBC, because the BBC is clearly not interested in science that disconfirms its prejudged views.

So once again, bias, censorship and straw man fallacies are the key ways that you continue to misrepresent scientific arguments that do not fit your pro-IPCC agenda. And it is an agenda, Richard. Please don’t confuse this continued bias with accurate journalism, because it ain’t.

More fun and games from the BBC as the IPCC report gets ever nearer.

Richard Black is at it again. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7081026.stm

Here is my reply. It won’t get published, still less listened to, because it directly attacks the scaremongering and censorship by the BBC on all things environmental, but at least you can have the benefit:

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Having already decided that the objections made by climate skeptics are easily answered ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/629/629/7074601.stm ), then will this be yet another attempt to smear them with false statements to make them look contemptible?

A: Yes.

The plain facts are that none of the “answers” given are true. Many of them are tendentious, and quite a few are false.  For example, just the first answer:

” Warming is unequivocal. Weather stations, ocean measurements, decreases in snow cover, reductions in Arctic sea ice, longer growing seasons, balloon measurements, boreholes and satellites all show results consistent with the surface record of warming.”

Yes but over what timescale? There is warming since the 1970s, but is it warmer than the 1930s? No. Even James Hansen had to admit that in the US, the best kept temperature network in the world, the 1930s not the 1990s were the warmest decade. This was after Steve McIntyre pointed out his errors to him. Long standing well-documented stations in Nuuk (Greenland), Punta Arenas (Chile) and Cape Town (South Africa) all show the same answer: the 1930s was warmer than the 1990s

“The urban heat island effect is real but small; and it has been studied and corrected for.”

Studied - yes. Corrected for? No. The key paper used by the IPCC was a study done by Phil Jones in 1990. Recently a substantial part of the dataset has come under fire as a case of scientific fraud by mathematician Doug Keenan (see http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620.htm ) and a conference was convened to Portugal to discuss it and matters arising (did the BBC report any of this? Nope. )

“Analyses by Nasa for example use only rural stations to calculate trends.”

Those were the ones that James Hansen had to restate, showing that the 1930s not the 1990s were the warmest of the 20th Century.

“Recently, work has shown that if you analyse long-term global temperature rise for windy days and calm days separately, there is no difference. If the urban heat island effect were large, you would expect to see a bigger trend for calm days when more of the heat stays in the city.”

Except that that paper was shown by Steve McIntyre again to be false, since there was a distinct difference between adjusted urban and rural temperature rises. (See http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1859 and http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1857 )

“Furthermore, the pattern of warming globally doesn’t resemble the pattern of urbanisation, with the greatest warming seen in the Arctic and northern high latitudes.”

Again, the Northern high latitudes includes the rapidly warming urbanized cities of Siberia. When these are excluded, the Arctic is no warmer than it was in the 1930s. See http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=112204A

“Globally, there is a warming trend of about 0.8C since 1900, more than half of which has occurred since 1979″

Yes, but its been warming since the trough of the Little Ice Age in the early 17th Century, well before the rise in greenhouse gases began. Something that you never, ever point out to readers even though its been pointed out many times to you.

So once again, a set of statements which are materially false and misleading gets reported by the BBC. When papers get debunked or rejected, when frauds are discovered and discussed, when Hockey Sticks get broken again and again, the BBC will always be onhand to completely ignore all of them ready for the next scarefest. No criticism is allowed, no opposing view entertained and no computer model ever questioned.

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It doesn’t really matter since the BBC is now engaged in (Richard) Black Propaganda ready for the next IPCC scareathon. There’s nothing like softening up an audience before the main event, is there?

PZ Myers comes unglued when Climate Audit wins a straw poll for Best Science Blog (the one PZ won last year):

Hi, Stan. You’re new here, like a whole lot of people. You’ve just shown up, and here’s your very first comment.

I noticed that this blog is in the running for a Best Science Blog award.

I’ve looked over the site. Cna someone point out where the science is on it. I have looked but I can’t find any.

Let me introduce myself. My name is PZ Myers. I’m an associate professor of biology at a small liberal arts university in the upper midwest. I make no grand claims for myself, but I have been exceptionally busy lately, with lots of travel and lectures, and it’s all on top of teaching two courses, one of which is both new to me and a new course in our discipline, so I’m writing lectures at a frantic pace and trying to keep up with 80 students. I’m also working on a book and have a magazine column to write, in addition to other irregular writing jobs. I’m stretched very, very thin right now, I’m a bit frustrated myself that I haven’t had much spare time for the blog, and I’m feeling extremely cranky.

Welcome, Stan Palmer, I’m going to unload on you as a proxy for all your fellow denialist idiots!

First, though, I’ll help you out. Look on the left sidebard, for A Taste of Pharyngula. If that’s not enough, there’s an archive of my Seed columns. You didn’t seem to look very hard before leaping to your rather clueless indictment; I suspect you were directed here by one of those right-wing sites and came here with preconceptions. I daresay you probably didn’t look at all, but instead simply scampered over here to toss off your petty, ignorant comment.

And then, of course, what’s bringing you and your fellow naive whiners here is the need to defend the climate change denialist, McIntyre — so many of you, after carping that I’m not meeting your demands, are protesting that he’s not a denialist, and you aren’t denialists, and you’re all here in the cause of good science.

Bullshit.

My expertise is not in climate, but in biology, and I’m familiar with his type — it’s a common strategy among creationists, who do dearly love to collect complaints. There are people who put together a coherent picture of a scientific issue, who review lots of evidence and assemble a rational synthesis. They’re called scientists. Then there are the myopic little nitpickers, people who scurry about seeking little bits of garbage in the fabric of science (and of course, there are such flaws everywhere), and when they find some scrap of rot, they squeak triumphantly and hold it high and declare that the science everywhere is similarly corrupt. They lack perspective. They ignore everything that doesn’t fit their search criterion, and of course, they’re focused only on putrescence. They aren’t scientists, they’re more like rats.

And the worst of the rats are the sanctimonious ones that declare that they’re just ‘policing’ science. They aren’t. They’re just providing fodder for their fellow denialists, and like them all, have nothing of value to contribute to advance the conversation. You can quit whining that you and McIntyre are finding valid errors; it doesn’t matter, since you’re simultaneously spreading a plague of lies and ignorance as you go.

So bugger off, denialists. I am not impressed.

Everyone else, please do vote for Bad Astronomy. Real scientists can see the big picture and understand that the real power of science lies in the explanations, not the pettifoggery with statistics — not that I expect the right-wing gomers at the Weblog Awards who nominated the purveyors of junk science for their award to to know that, or for the swarms of freepers and limbots to care.

Oh, and the next clueless ass to whine at me that they can’t find any science here will be disemvoweled. I’m feeling peevish, so it’s not a good time to prod.

And later in the comments:

More rats. Rats with their moldy flecks of rotting garbage. You guys don’t get it, do you?

Something tells me PZ needs a hug.

I must remember to dumb it down so as to get a few more visitors…