I thought I was having a Nobel laureate for tea. Instead, the BBC had me for lunch

Nicholas Hallam

I admire your courage for going on these things. It was quite extraordinary that someone like Nurse whose message was "Trust me, I'm as scientist" couldn't spot the blunder about human and natural CO2 emissions.

Paul Owen

The Royal Society has a history of going with a consensus and being subsequently proven wrong. It seems to be honouring a tradition.

Men like Sir Paul Nurse reach elevated positions and then use those positions to bully and silence those who have dissenting opinions. On many many occasions throughout the glorious scientific history of these islands, the scientific establishment has been ultimately proven to be arrogant, corrupt and most importantly wrong. Heroes of science, often after they have died penniless, have been vindicated. Yet the establishment never learn. Still they cling on to their cosy cliques and establishment baubles and imagine that these and not the evidence give them authority. It is part of the human condition of course and was ever thus. But when politicians talk about evidence based policy making it behoves us all to ask questions about where our money is going and where they are taking us.

Sir Paul Nurse and his ilk may have reached their lofty positions and be enjoying them, but they may well go down in history as amongst the worst offenders in science's rollercoaster history of triumph and tragedy given the scale and cost of the AGW panic.

S B

Oh dear. Some people really do see conspiracies at every turn. Not sure how much work was really required but the result did make you look very stupid indeed...

Alan Kennedy

I saw the programme and I think you are being un-necessarily defensive. The question about consensus and the treatment of cancer was artfully posed, but after all cancer is Sir Paul’s speciality. It immediately raises the question why on earth he couldn’t think of anything closer to the topic at hand? Where was the killer question on global warming? The reason, of course, is that he appeared to know very little about the topic. And why should he: it is light years away from his own speciality. To people in the know this was all too evident in the programme itself – parts of which showed him to be (at best) naïve and certainly ill-informed. So this viewer saw your clip simply as an exchange between an amateur journalist and a professional. And the professional was rather too polite.
Cheer up: there are many serious scientists well used to the rough knock-about world of peer review who have grave misgivings about the direction this highly politicised and rather vaguely-defined “science” is taking. Sir Paul did himself and the distinguished Society he represents no good at all.

Bickers

The BBC is institutionally left wing (they did their own internal audit that confirmd the bias) and so politically in favour of supporting AGW because of the socialist agenda that's tied to the stopping of it.

If the BBC really wanted to present the views of sceptics it should have based the programme around interviewing sceptical scientists like Lindzen, Spencer and Christie. It didn't because either they knew that these guys would demolish the basis of AGW as a serious threat or (ii) the guys themselves knew that engaging with the BBC would result in them being stitched up.

olivier soudain

All I can say is keep going. We live in an age where prejudice at an official level is hideously prevalent. Seekers after truth should be encouraged.

Off topic - but in the same vein I was deeply depressed to see an interview by Paxman of the person leading the English Defence League. I am no lover of this group but at least I recognise that they represent an important groundswell of opinion that needs to be understood. Instead Paxo attempted to demean and vilify the man, rather than understand his viewpoint. If the BBC brainwashers have managed to subvert the likes of Paxman then we are in serious trouble.

Frank S

There is often something of the bully-boy about socialists. They claim to be intent on improving things for others, and some are not inclined to let much get in the way of that. Their track-record is in fact one of massively increasing the sum total of humany misery, be it in Germany 1935-1945, the USSR, in Mao's China, and in many other places. That they have so enthusiastically adopted climate change campaigning is a sure warning that unpleasantries will occur, including attempts to smear and discredit any effective opponents. Delingpole and Monckton were and are very effective. The recent BBC blunders featuring them will only add strength to their elbows.

ManicBeancounter

If, to defend a case, it is necessary to resort to distortion, entrapment and denigration of any potential opponent, then you reveal your own insecurities.

Try comparing the robustness of climate science with our knowledge of a common form of cancer. There is a huge gulf. There is an even bigger gulf between our understanding of chemotherapy (with side effects) and the policy treatment for global warming. Part of that reason is new drugs have to pass stringent tests before approval.

Mike10613

The BBC needs to allow all sides to a discussion. We were told by 'scientists' some years ago that Britain would be warmer and we would be growing grapes! The fact that the polar ice caps are melting simply means more unstable weather and I think we have seen that. I think the Thames flood barrier was a wise thing to do based on good science; not some hair brained theory or speculation.

Brian

Aw diddums.

PurpleShoe

As an Aussie, I follow all this propaganda keenly. So read this in the OZ Spectator. I went to the BBC site and found its web site to be such a maze you cannot even send them any feedback. I might add the ABC is exactly the same as the BBC, overrun with frothing at the mouth greenies who literally shout at you about Al Gore's great film! That's it for them:-) Never mind that CO2 spikes about 800 years usually after a warming spike, and is not causal. Plus they have totally as usual got their sums wrong, maybe because they all grew up with electronic calculators, but human induced CO2 is negligible in proportion, as opposed to their exaggerations. Their lack of the Holme's powers of deduction beggars belief, but then it's always better to be emotional. You have to start from the unpalatable truth to get somewhere in real science. The fact East Anglia is still going shows they're entrenched and corrupt. BBC is obviously not interested in "our" views at all, nor is ABC preaching from the pulpit of dogmaville. As we probably head to continued cooling in the next 20 years , they are going to look quite naked like the Emperor.

Rip Roaring Scary Yarn

Bickers mentions a show around interviewing sceptical scientists like Lindzen, Spencer and Christie. If they do one, please add in Bob Carter and Ian Plimer from Australia! Don't let BBC or ABC anywhere near the thing, they have lost all credibility in the scientific community (I know - i..e geologists, medical specialists - you know, the creme de la creme of the brains dept.) They are not hanging about for government grants with "warming" and "CO2" inserted into their proposals, so have no vested interests. And they haven't any shares in wind farms. I mean, we have a Sir so and so, who doesn't even know about the difference between Carbon12 and Carbon 13, let alone other shades of grey in this argument, pronouncing East Anglia’s shananigans are OK! Carbon13 indicates the amount of man made CO2 in the atmosphere is max 4%. Oh, and never mind that it peaks hundreds of years after a warming peak, so how is that causal? But why let the facts get in the way of a rip roaring scary yarn.

Bernie

To get to the bottom of this thing you have to know about the theories of Popper-Lakatos-Feyerabend-Kuhb. They have evolved into the position that in scientific Method Anything Goes. You see truth is relative to something called a "scientific paradigm". What is that? You have to ask the "scientific community" who decide truth according to the reigning "scientific paradigm". So the present scientific community has decided that global warming is real and caused by us. Too much Carbon Dioxide. You don't agree then the "scientif community" thinks that you belong in the nut house. Do you remember Timofei Lysenko in KGBland? He decided that acquired characteristics were inherited. The scientific community decided that if you would cut off the tails of mice, succeeding generations would have shorter tails. Winter wheat grown in progressively colder climates until it could be grown in Siberia. Anyone who disagreed and questioned the "sicentific paradign" on scientific grounds seems to have disappeared. Then there was the "scientific community" in Nazi Germany who made the great discovery of the superiority of the Aryan race. Scientists have gone about their business taking no note of the blather of "philosophers of science". To bone up on the subject read Keith Windschuttles "The Killing of History". You don't have to read the whole thing. Just look up Thomas Kuhn in the index.

David Short

My boss, a very senior UN officer, was totally fitted up by BBC radio in Angola in 1999 or 2000. The editing was outrageous and the presenter, a former Today presenter and TV newsreader, was totally fooled by the government there and the oil companies into putting on air what they wanted and produced an anti-UN programme, which was what the local BBC stringer (posh and female, natch) wanted. Thankfully, this woman has sunk without trace and the presenter is not so prominent now. It is a disgrace that this organisation is subsidised by a compulsory poll tax called the licence fee.

Russell

Every time the Beeb sets a model of scientific sanity to grolloching a sprat, the sprat complains of being stitched uplike a kipper.

Delingpole, poor fish, doesn't seem to realize he has been publicly - and hilariously rumbled.

O when will the editors pass their science A levels and toss this bafflegabbing carp in the Thames ?

Matt

Perhaps if reading peer-reviewed journals isn't your job then you shouldn't comment on the validity of the conclusions of said journals.

Anyone who claims to be "right about everything" on their blog deserves to be torn apart.