I sent out the story of the Ofcom report two days ago as “Channel 4 was judged "RIGHT" to screen 'Great Global Warming Swindle'”. The thing that struck me as extraordinary was that The Guardian had reported it straight without the expected ‘warmist’ spin! But they’re all falling back into line now it seems. Tonight Newsnight tried to cover the story but tried to do so on a night of one major story after another (oncluding Mugabe trying to do a deal, Bosnian Serb leader’s arrest for war crimes) so that a confrontation betweeen C4’s boss in the studio and Dr King somewhere else degenerated into a mutual shouting match - insufficient planning rather than bias. Then I am indebted to Edward Spalton for forwarding to me an article from “The Register”, an American publication which reacts strongly against the attempt by the American Physical Society to deter its own members from reading a paper which it itself had commissioned. It did so because it contradicted the received wisdom of the tiny number of government scientists who are doing very nicely, thank you, from peddling the flawed warmist science. Christina Speight ============================= EUREFERENDUM Blog 21.7.08 An unprecedented amount of scrutiny … That was Channel 4's own description of the reaction to its programme, "The Great Global Warming Swindle," which has been subject to an Ofcom investigation, the results of which are published today. The "warmist" Beeb is trying to spin it as a big deal, but the fact is that nothing in the programme "materially misled so as to cause harm or offence". That was despite 265 complaints having been received by Ofcom, including one 176-page document alleging 137 breaches of the Broadcasting Code. The Broadcasting Code, we are told, requires Channel 4 to show "due impartiality" on "matters of major political and industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy". The substance of the Ofcom finding was that the last segment of the programme, dealing with the politics of climate change, broke this obligation, It did not reflect a range of views, as required under the code. But the main portion of the film, on climate science, did not breach these rules. Ofcom's logic, says the Beeb, is that "the link between human activity and global warming... became settled before March 2007". This being so, it says, climate science was not "controversial" at the time of broadcast, so Channel 4 did not break regulations by broadcasting something that challenged the link. Andrew Bolt, however, has a slightly different take on the issue. The Guardian, predicably, gives house room to an opposing view (no impartiality or "balance" there). David Hughes of The Daily Telegraph notes that the climate change lobby tends to react like scalded cats should anyone have the temerity to question their assertion that global warming is a man-made phenomenon. So certain are they of the righteousness of their case that it has taken on the aura of a religious faith - and heresy will simply not be tolerated. But, he observes, the programme was actually polemical and since when are polemics supposed to be impartial? He, like us, does not recall Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" being impartial, or giving a voice to a range of views. But then, it has not yet been broadcast on British television. When or if it is, we shall have some fun. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Posted by Richard North ===================== THE REGISTER 21.7.08 American physicists warned not to debate global warming Climate row heats up By Andrew Orlowski Bureaucrats at the American Physical Society (APS) have issued a curious warning to their members about an article in one of their own publications. Don't read this, they say - we don't agree with it. But what is it about the piece that is so terrible, that like Medusa, it could make men go blind? It's an article that examines the calculation central to climate models. As the editor of the APS's newsletter American Physics Jeffrey Marque explains, the global warming debate must be re-opened. "There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S concerning that conclusion," he wrote. American Physics invited both believers and sceptics to submit articles, and has published a submission by Viscount Monckton questioning the core calculation of the greenhouse gas theory: climate sensitivity. The believers are represented by two physicists from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, who state that: "Basic atmospheric models clearly predict that additional greenhouse gasses will raise the temperature of Earth. To argue otherwise, one must prove a physical mechanism that gives a reasonable alternative cause of warming. This has not been done. Sunspot and temperature correlations do not prove causality." But within a few days, Monckton's piece carried a health warning: in bright red ink. 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. Not so much Medusa, then, as Nanny telling the children what not to think. "The first sentence [above -cs] is nothing more or less than a deliberate lie," writes Professor John Brignell on his Numberwatch blog. "The second is, to say the least, contentious; while the third is an outrageous example of ultra vires interference by a committee in the proper conduct of scientific debate." Monckton has asked for an apology. In a letter to the APS President Arthur Bienenstock, he writes: "If the Council has not scientifically evaluated or formally considered my paper, may I ask with what credible scientific justification, and on whose authority, the offending text asserts primo, that the paper had not been scientifically reviewed when it had; secundo, that its conclusions disagree with what is said (on no evidence) to be the "overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community"; and, tertio, that "The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article's conclusions"? Which of my conclusions does the Council disagree with, and on what scientific grounds (if any)?" Believers and sceptics have spent the past few days examining the value of "peer review", and the weight of validity that should be placed on "publication". Monckton is a classics scholar and former journalist, which believers maintain is enough to disqualify him from holding an opinion. (Whether it's science is not in question - whether it's "good science" or "bad science" is the question. An earlier presentation by Monckton examining questioning climate sensitivity received was examined by NASA's Gavin Schmidt on the believers' blog, RealClimate.org.) But for anyone without a dog in this race, and perhaps not familiar with the "state of the science" there may be a couple of surprises in Monckton's paper. One is how small the field of "experts" really is. The UN's IPCC is tasked with producing a summary of the "scientific consensus" and claims to process the contributions of some 2,500 scientists. But as Monckton writes: "It is of no little significance that the IPCC’s value for the coefficient in the CO2 forcing equation depends on only one paper in the literature; that its values for the feedbacks that it believes account for two-thirds of humankind’s effect on global temperatures are likewise taken from only one paper; and that its implicit value of the crucial parameter ? depends upon only two papers, one of which had been written by a lead author of the chapter in question, and neither of which provides any theoretical or empirical justification for a value as high as that which the IPCC adopted." [our emphasis] Another eye-opener is his explanation of how the believers' climate models are verified: "Since we cannot measure any individual forcing directly in the atmosphere, the models draw upon results of laboratory experiments in passing sunlight through chambers in which atmospheric constituents are artificially varied," writes Monckton. "Such experiments are, however, of limited value when translated into the real atmosphere, where radiative transfers and non-radiative transports (convection and evaporation up, advection along, subsidence and precipitation down), as well as altitudinal and latitudinal asymmetries, greatly complicate the picture." In other words, an unproven hypothesis is fed into a computer (so far so good), but it can only be verified against experiments that have no resemblance to the chaotic system of the Earth's climate. It is not hard to see how the scientists could produce an immaculate "model" that's theoretically perfect in every respect (all the equations balance, and it may even be programmed to offer perfect "hind-casting"), but which has no practical predictive value at all. It's safe from the rude intrusion of empirical evidence drawn from atmospheric observation. The great British-born physicist Freeman Dyson offered an impertinent dose of reality which illustrates the dangers of relying on theory for both your hypothesis and the evidence you need to support it. Since 8 per cent of atmospheric CO2 is absorbed by the planet's biomass every year, notes Dyson, the average lifespan of a carbon molecule in the atmosphere is about 12 years. His observation leaves the "climate scientists" models as immaculate as they were before, but suggests a very different course of policy action. It suggests our stewardship of land should be at the forefront of CO2 mitigation strategies. That's not something we hear from politicians, pressure groups and, yes ... climate scientists