On then to the shock of the night - Mehmood Mirza wins in Boleyn.
MIrza and his group broke with Labour in a particularly nasty internal spat in the post-Corbyn era. The Newham Mayor, Roksana Fiaz, had used the Corbynites to depose veteran Mayor and staunch Blairite Sir Robin Wales and they had delivered her the Mayoralty in 2018 and a clean sweep of the Borough.
However, the coming of Starmer has changed the internal Labour landscape and Fiaz quickly saw which way the wind was blowing and pledged her allegience to Starmer and to his anti-Corbyn activities which led to a huge row within Newham Labour and the departure of Mirza and his cohorts who I thought were going to form their own group but in 2022 stood as Independents.
Mirza stood as Mayor but finished fourth - he's had some form of redemption with this success. I know from Wall End he had quite a group of activists and followers so presumably they worked Boleyn very hard and have got a tremendous result.
Were Labour complacent? Perhaps - they were working the wrong Ward yesterday but the margin of Mirza's win was notable and he joins the two Green councillors on the Opposition benches at the Town Hall.
The Greens badly under-performed - I thought they would run Labour close but this was a disappointing performance while the Conservative vote disintegrated as the Party abandoned the seat - in 2022 the top Conservative in Boleyn polled 538 votes, last night the candidate got 69 votes so where did all the Tories go? Perhaps they weren't Conservatives at all but simply anti-Labour. I wonder whether Mirza will stand in East Ham next year - my information is Sir Stephen Timms will run again for the seat.
As for the others, the LDs had the ignominy of finishing one vote behind Reform but with both polling 45 votes between him it's of the slightest significance.
Mirza's group now has a foothold and I could see him picking up the other Boleyn seat in 2026 especially if they are standing on a radical socialist anti-Starmer platform.
I have just been reading this paper from the 'International journal of Environment and Climate Change'. It suggests that achieving net zero may only be part of the picture in avoiding catastrophic climate change, and that there is a bigger problem with a decline in marine biodiversity. The writers appear to be connected to Edinburgh University. The paper concludes with the following 'recommendations':
"We must continue with carbon mitigation, but as a matter of urgency, we must eliminate the dumping of all toxic forever lipophilic chemicals, as well as plastic and black carbon soot, into the environment. All wastewaters must be treated, we must not pollute our environment, we must DO NO HARM to nature on land and to marine life in the Oceans. We must start doing some GOOD and transition from destructive farming and unsustainable fishing practices to rewilding and regenerate ecosystems on land and in the oceans. We should also give serious consideration to changing sea water chemistry by increasing calcium and alkalinity concentrations, which we consider to be a no-risk strategy.."
I go along with the consensus of opinion about climate change and what we need to do about it. But I find the subject very difficult because everything I read seems to be driven by a 'we need to this now and anyone who disagrees is evil' activism, exemplified by the quote above. If the science is being driven by activism and a politicised narrative of right and wrong, then it seems less likely that we will ultimately know what interventions are good and what are harmful, which can only occur when there is free enquiry unconstrained by politics.
They're obviously right. It's like driving a car without maintaining it. You are bound to have a catastrophic failure whether it's the brakes or the wheel bearings or the lub or the cooling system which goes first. Overfocusing on climate change is like paying no attention to any of your readouts except the fuel gauge. We are doomed.
But alternatively, is this not just the recurring human predeliction to think that we are in mortal danger and the world is coming to an end. The natural and instinctive response to chaos.
Crying wolf, jumping off a 100 storey building and thinking things are OK as you pass the third floor, and cultures in flasks which double in size every day are all relevant memes here.
I only know of 'podule' wrt Acorn computers - a term for hardware expansion cards. Is there another meaning?
The word "podule" came up when @Leon used it when describing a holiday he took. I contend that this places him, as it's a term usually used by British fifty-sixty somethings.
The word "podule" is a mangling of the words "pod" and "module". IIUC it was first used in that Not The Nine OClock episode in 1980 and then repurposed by the ARM team in the early 80's for their thing. Being young British computer nerds in the 1980s they would have been busily quoting sketches as they worked.
Ah, thanks. From memory, and it might be wrong, we didn't use 'pod' internally - but I was there near the end, not the beginning. I thought it meant 'Peripheral Module', as opposed to 'Module', which was the OS's software organisation. I do recall someone using 'Sodule' for 'Software module' - although he meant Sod-you-all...
And to take it further down a rabbit hole that will interest no-one, I've just checked the 1991 edition of the Acorn Technical Publications Style Guide, and it says that the use of 'podule' was deprecated, and instead it should be 'expansion card'. Sadly, there is no definition of what it means.
It's probably a mix of its being a Red Wall seat, and Labour still suffering (rightly) from the record of the local council.
Even in May, there were places where the Conservatives pulled off good results (eg East Cambs., Slough, Torbay, Bedford, Leicester) due to local factors. That is a difference from 1994-96, were results were just appalling everywhere.
I wouldn't call Laughton-en-le-Morthern (nice church) or Anston (nice woodland) particularly Red Wall. They are turning into commuter villages. Dinnington itself still is a bit ex-mining though.
I'm in a neighbouring ward to Dinnington which remained Labour in the LEs. It's not dissimilar to Laughton and Firbeck so perhaps the Tory vote is coming from Dinnington proper these days !
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
The scientific research funding follows the scientific evidence.
The vested interest funding, well there's been plenty of that for climate 'sceptics'. And probably much more lucrative for those involved.
(I do find the idea of funding bias bizarre. It's in no government's interest to fund only one side of climate science, if there were really two sides. Climate science as it stands is a massive headache for governments - it means taxing/regulating things that people like, in really unpopular areas. There's a massive incentive for governments to fund any science that would question the IPCC conclusions - making it all go away would solve a whole load of political problems. Unfortunately, science doesn't work like that - you can't just get the answers you want because if you do other people are going to point out what you've done and it's easy* for other groups to check)
*in most areas. Far less so in my field of epidemiology where we cannot share or publish the patient-level data for others to verify, due to entirely legitimate data protection concerns. Other groups could request the same data, but I'm not sure you'd get that far on public interest grounds to simply verify pre-existing research. We need more like openSAFELY where anyone can run their own code to check conclusions. This would be possible if e.g. NHS Digital had a service to hold copies of supplied data and run, on demand (at low fee) code on it and provide the results (there would still be a need to ensure no sensitive disclosure in analysis results, which is probably why this hasn't happened).
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
The scientific research funding follows the scientific evidence.
The vested interest funding, well there's been plenty of that for climate 'sceptics'. And probably much more lucrative for those involved.
(I do find the idea of funding bias bizarre. It's in no government's interest to fund only one side of climate science, if there were really two sides. Climate science as it stands is a massive headache for governments - it means taxing/regulating things that people like, in really unpopular areas. There's a massive incentive for governments to fund any science that would question the IPCC conclusions - making it all go away would solve a whole load of political problems. Unfortunately, science doesn't work like that - you can't just get the answers you want because if you do other people are going to point out what you've done and it's easy* for other groups to check)
*in most areas. Far less so in my field of epidemiology where we cannot share or publish the patient-level data for others to verify, due to entirely legitimate data protection concerns. Other groups could request the same data, but I'm not sure you'd get that far on public interest grounds to simply verify pre-existing research. We need more like openSAFELY where anyone can run their own code to check conclusions. This would be possible if e.g. NHS Digital had a service to hold copies of supplied data and run, on demand (at low fee) code on it and provide the results (there would still be a need to ensure no sensitive disclosure in analysis results, which is probably why this hasn't happened).
It's probably a mix of its being a Red Wall seat, and Labour still suffering (rightly) from the record of the local council.
Even in May, there were places where the Conservatives pulled off good results (eg East Cambs., Slough, Torbay, Bedford, Leicester) due to local factors. That is a difference from 1994-96, were results were just appalling everywhere.
I wouldn't call Laughton-en-le-Morthern (nice church) or Anston (nice woodland) particularly Red Wall. They are turning into commuter villages. Dinnington itself still is a bit ex-mining though.
I'm in a neighbouring ward to Dinnington which remained Labour in the LEs. It's not dissimilar to Laughton and Firbeck so perhaps the Tory vote is coming from Dinnington proper these days !
Who knows! Probably still commuterville rather than the old mining communities?
I got that wrong of course, North Anston is not lumped in with Dinnington, but Firbeck and Slade Hooton are.
It isn't a ward that typically looks like the 'outsiders' view of Rotherham, in any case.
[I had a wander around the Earl of Scarbrough's land recently]
But if what they've quoted is typical (given the extent of what they are uncovering it may not be) perhaps most interesting for confirming what was already thought - it was Cecil who arranged the succession of James without a formal nomination, and that the Pope and Elizabeth didn't like each other?
There was something similar when Domenic Mancini's Occupatione was found - the main thing it did was make all admirers of Clements Markham's theories look like idiots.
It's my recollection from the mid-90s the Conservatives certainly didn't lose every council by-election. Indeed, as we got nearer the 1997 GE there was some evidence of a turn round particularly when seats which had been contests in 1994 and 1995 came up.
The Conservative recovery began on May 1st 1997 - while the Westminster elections were a bloodbath, the local elections fought the same time saw much better results for the party than had been the case in 1993.
Even in the darkest of times, the strongholds remained such and to assume Starmer is doing badly because he isn't winning every local contest is partisan wibbling at best.
On then to the shock of the night - Mehmood Mirza wins in Boleyn.
MIrza and his group broke with Labour in a particularly nasty internal spat in the post-Corbyn era. The Newham Mayor, Roksana Fiaz, had used the Corbynites to depose veteran Mayor and staunch Blairite Sir Robin Wales and they had delivered her the Mayoralty in 2018 and a clean sweep of the Borough.
However, the coming of Starmer has changed the internal Labour landscape and Fiaz quickly saw which way the wind was blowing and pledged her allegience to Starmer and to his anti-Corbyn activities which led to a huge row within Newham Labour and the departure of Mirza and his cohorts who I thought were going to form their own group but in 2022 stood as Independents.
Mirza stood as Mayor but finished fourth - he's had some form of redemption with this success. I know from Wall End he had quite a group of activists and followers so presumably they worked Boleyn very hard and have got a tremendous result.
Were Labour complacent? Perhaps - they were working the wrong Ward yesterday but the margin of Mirza's win was notable and he joins the two Green councillors on the Opposition benches at the Town Hall.
The Greens badly under-performed - I thought they would run Labour close but this was a disappointing performance while the Conservative vote disintegrated as the Party abandoned the seat - in 2022 the top Conservative in Boleyn polled 538 votes, last night the candidate got 69 votes so where did all the Tories go? Perhaps they weren't Conservatives at all but simply anti-Labour. I wonder whether Mirza will stand in East Ham next year - my information is Sir Stephen Timms will run again for the seat.
As for the others, the LDs had the ignominy of finishing one vote behind Reform but with both polling 45 votes between him it's of the slightest significance.
Mirza's group now has a foothold and I could see him picking up the other Boleyn seat in 2026 especially if they are standing on a radical socialist anti-Starmer platform.
If the anti-Starmer Corbyn coalition can get their act together for the GE across England and Wales they can ensure another five years of inch-perfect Conservative Governments. What's not to like if you are a Corbynista?
On topic, I am one of those leave voters who doesn't particularly want Johnson back. His usefulness from my perspective was as the only possible challenger to Sunak who wouldn't face calls for a GE if he was made leader and PM - at least not serious ones, because of his mandate. But that challenge has been neutralised, and there seems little point in trying to rehabilitate Johnson at this point. If he wants to get himself elected to parliament and have a long term plan to get back in, fine.
And as it happens, Sunak is doing so badly that a pre-election challenge seems legitimate whether it comes from Johnson, Mordaunt, or the Downing Street cat frankly.
It's my recollection from the mid-90s the Conservatives certainly didn't lose every council by-election. Indeed, as we got nearer the 1997 GE there was some evidence of a turn round particularly when seats which had been contests in 1994 and 1995 came up.
The Conservative recovery began on May 1st 1997 - while the Westminster elections were a bloodbath, the local elections fought the same time saw much better results for the party than had been the case in 1993.
Even in the darkest of times, the strongholds remained such and to assume Starmer is doing badly because he isn't winning every local contest is partisan wibbling at best.
The other thing is- always- Local Factors, especially independent candidates. Especially especially when they are linked to bustups within local parties.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
The scientific research funding follows the scientific evidence.
The vested interest funding, well there's been plenty of that for climate 'sceptics'. And probably much more lucrative for those involved.
(I do find the idea of funding bias bizarre. It's in no government's interest to fund only one side of climate science, if there were really two sides. Climate science as it stands is a massive headache for governments - it means taxing/regulating things that people like, in really unpopular areas. There's a massive incentive for governments to fund any science that would question the IPCC conclusions - making it all go away would solve a whole load of political problems. Unfortunately, science doesn't work like that - you can't just get the answers you want because if you do other people are going to point out what you've done and it's easy* for other groups to check)
*in most areas. Far less so in my field of epidemiology where we cannot share or publish the patient-level data for others to verify, due to entirely legitimate data protection concerns. Other groups could request the same data, but I'm not sure you'd get that far on public interest grounds to simply verify pre-existing research. We need more like openSAFELY where anyone can run their own code to check conclusions. This would be possible if e.g. NHS Digital had a service to hold copies of supplied data and run, on demand (at low fee) code on it and provide the results (there would still be a need to ensure no sensitive disclosure in analysis results, which is probably why this hasn't happened).
I have just been reading this paper from the 'International journal of Environment and Climate Change'. It suggests that achieving net zero may only be part of the picture in avoiding catastrophic climate change, and that there is a bigger problem with a decline in marine biodiversity. The writers appear to be connected to Edinburgh University. The paper concludes with the following 'recommendations':
"We must continue with carbon mitigation, but as a matter of urgency, we must eliminate the dumping of all toxic forever lipophilic chemicals, as well as plastic and black carbon soot, into the environment. All wastewaters must be treated, we must not pollute our environment, we must DO NO HARM to nature on land and to marine life in the Oceans. We must start doing some GOOD and transition from destructive farming and unsustainable fishing practices to rewilding and regenerate ecosystems on land and in the oceans. We should also give serious consideration to changing sea water chemistry by increasing calcium and alkalinity concentrations, which we consider to be a no-risk strategy.."
I go along with the consensus of opinion about climate change and what we need to do about it. But I find the subject very difficult because everything I read seems to be driven by a 'we need to this now and anyone who disagrees is evil' activism, exemplified by the quote above. If the science is being driven by activism and a politicised narrative of right and wrong, then it seems less likely that we will ultimately know what interventions are good and what are harmful, which can only occur when there is free enquiry unconstrained by politics.
They're obviously right. It's like driving a car without maintaining it. You are bound to have a catastrophic failure whether it's the brakes or the wheel bearings or the lub or the cooling system which goes first. Overfocusing on climate change is like paying no attention to any of your readouts except the fuel gauge. We are doomed.
But alternatively, is this not just the recurring human predeliction to think that we are in mortal danger and the world is coming to an end. The natural and instinctive response to chaos.
It's worth considering why humans might have evolved to have this predeliction though!
But if what they've quoted is typical (given the extent of what they are uncovering it may not be) perhaps most interesting for confirming what was already thought - it was Cecil who arranged the succession of James without a formal nomination, and that the Pope and Elizabeth didn't like each other?
There was something similar when Domenic Mancini's Occupatione was found - the main thing it did was make all admirers of Clements Markham's theories look like idiots.
Markham is a towering figure, who else has been so majestically wrong in such disparate areas? He was the chief sponsor and promoter of that utter arse Scott (South Pole bloke).
It's probably a mix of its being a Red Wall seat, and Labour still suffering (rightly) from the record of the local council.
Even in May, there were places where the Conservatives pulled off good results (eg East Cambs., Slough, Torbay, Bedford, Leicester) due to local factors. That is a difference from 1994-96, were results were just appalling everywhere.
I wouldn't call Laughton-en-le-Morthern (nice church) or Anston (nice woodland) particularly Red Wall. They are turning into commuter villages. Dinnington itself still is a bit ex-mining though.
I'm in a neighbouring ward to Dinnington which remained Labour in the LEs. It's not dissimilar to Laughton and Firbeck so perhaps the Tory vote is coming from Dinnington proper these days !
Who knows! Probably still commuterville rather than the old mining communities?
I got that wrong of course, North Anston is not lumped in with Dinnington, but Firbeck and Slade Hooton are.
It isn't a ward that typically looks like the 'outsiders' view of Rotherham, in any case.
[I had a wander around the Earl of Scarbrough's land recently]
Ah yes, the biggest pile in my neighbourhood. I think he's the chief landlord in Maltby, his tenant's (White city, Maltby) and his own places are quite the contrast. Bit of a shame he doesn't ever open his house/grounds to the public tbh.
Thanks - I cannot remember seeing that doc before. But does it actually define what 'podule' means?
I'm perfectly willing to accept that 'podule' came from Not the Nine O'Clock News; it's just that I always heard of it used as 'Peripheral Module'.
It describes what a podule is, and the specifications of various podules, but it does not give the etymology. It does confirm that the word was in common and official use. I found another reference to an article in Byte magazine describing podules that would be available, so it was the accepted term for these things, right up until it wasn't anymore...
Some more "Partisan Blethering" on the Dinnington By Election. This is from the preview on Britain Elects. They clearly did not think that the tories would hold the seat.
"The circumstances of this by-election don’t give the Conservatives much encouragement to start with. It has been provoked by the disqualification of their councillor Charlie Wooding, who failed to turn up to any Rotherham council meetings in six months. With this being a traditionally-Labour ward in a parliamentary seat on the Labour target list, the result should be watched closely."
Not much change on this week's Techne poll - Labour down one, LDs up one so basically MoE.
Just skimming the Techne tables, 2016 LEAVE voters vote Conservative 44%, Labour 29%, Reform 11% - this was the group which delivered the Conservative majority in 2019 when they split 73-15 for Boris Johnson.
Now, if you add the Reform numbers to the Conservative numbers the split becomes 55-29 which is a 16% swing and matches the swing in the top line figures.
I have just been reading this paper from the 'International journal of Environment and Climate Change'. It suggests that achieving net zero may only be part of the picture in avoiding catastrophic climate change, and that there is a bigger problem with a decline in marine biodiversity. The writers appear to be connected to Edinburgh University. The paper concludes with the following 'recommendations':
"We must continue with carbon mitigation, but as a matter of urgency, we must eliminate the dumping of all toxic forever lipophilic chemicals, as well as plastic and black carbon soot, into the environment. All wastewaters must be treated, we must not pollute our environment, we must DO NO HARM to nature on land and to marine life in the Oceans. We must start doing some GOOD and transition from destructive farming and unsustainable fishing practices to rewilding and regenerate ecosystems on land and in the oceans. We should also give serious consideration to changing sea water chemistry by increasing calcium and alkalinity concentrations, which we consider to be a no-risk strategy.."
I go along with the consensus of opinion about climate change and what we need to do about it. But I find the subject very difficult because everything I read seems to be driven by a 'we need to this now and anyone who disagrees is evil' activism, exemplified by the quote above. If the science is being driven by activism and a politicised narrative of right and wrong, then it seems less likely that we will ultimately know what interventions are good and what are harmful, which can only occur when there is free enquiry unconstrained by politics.
They're obviously right. It's like driving a car without maintaining it. You are bound to have a catastrophic failure whether it's the brakes or the wheel bearings or the lub or the cooling system which goes first. Overfocusing on climate change is like paying no attention to any of your readouts except the fuel gauge. We are doomed.
But alternatively, is this not just the recurring human predeliction to think that we are in mortal danger and the world is coming to an end. The natural and instinctive response to chaos.
It's worth considering why humans might have evolved to have this predeliction though!
Once the threat of imminent death is removed then you have to find something to worry about.... This and the need to make sense of intractably complex problems.
This is not to trivialise climate change, but AI and nuclear holocaust are higher up my list of existential concerns.
For one of the functions of Just Stop Oil, XR, and similar fake-oh climate change activism, see the criticism of Volkswagen. The company owns Audi, Bugatti, Lamborghini, and Porsche, and the majority of its voting rights are in the hands of the Porsche family. It's currently being criticised by climate change activists AND by those who are concerned with the plight of the Uighurs in Xinjiang under the Han Chinese dictatorship.
Those two concerns shouldn't go together at all. But that's not the impression given by the news coverage.
Xinjiang is a place to watch for anyone who's interested in what's going on in the world. OCPD-afflicted experts on legal process and 1970s by-elections haven't latched on to it yet.
To take one example, the grid-based surveillance of internet use that has operated for some time in Urumqi and Kashgar is about to be installed in Sao Paulo in Brazil.
Volkswagen has a plant in Xinjiang and the company has been accused of using forced Uighur labour. There's also a Porsche showroom in Urumqi. Germany has far less stringent rules than the USA on importing products made in Xinjiang.
But apparently the weather's getting a bit hotter and we're all going to parch to death if governments globally don't say x% rather than y%, or is it x degrees Celsius, or maybe it's stop the proles driving cars without an "organic" licence by year X. FFS! This is how the distraction works. Genuine exposure of crimes against humanity committed by the Chinese authorities (an obviously leftwing issue, because when has the right wing ever given a toss about such stuff) gets bundled together with green bullsh*t. How the Porsche family must be laughing.
Some more "Partisan Blethering" on the Dinnington By Election. This is from the preview on Britain Elects. They clearly did not think that the tories would hold the seat.
"The circumstances of this by-election don’t give the Conservatives much encouragement to start with. It has been provoked by the disqualification of their councillor Charlie Wooding, who failed to turn up to any Rotherham council meetings in six months. With this being a traditionally-Labour ward in a parliamentary seat on the Labour target list, the result should be watched closely."
They are local elections yet didn't you claim the Conservative vote "doubled" in Wall End? The Conservatives poured resources into the Ward (abandoning their candidate in Boleyn by the way) yesterday yet didn't get to half the Labour vote.
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
The scientific research funding follows the scientific evidence.
The vested interest funding, well there's been plenty of that for climate 'sceptics'. And probably much more lucrative for those involved.
(I do find the idea of funding bias bizarre. It's in no government's interest to fund only one side of climate science, if there were really two sides. Climate science as it stands is a massive headache for governments - it means taxing/regulating things that people like, in really unpopular areas. There's a massive incentive for governments to fund any science that would question the IPCC conclusions - making it all go away would solve a whole load of political problems. Unfortunately, science doesn't work like that - you can't just get the answers you want because if you do other people are going to point out what you've done and it's easy* for other groups to check)
*in most areas. Far less so in my field of epidemiology where we cannot share or publish the patient-level data for others to verify, due to entirely legitimate data protection concerns. Other groups could request the same data, but I'm not sure you'd get that far on public interest grounds to simply verify pre-existing research. We need more like openSAFELY where anyone can run their own code to check conclusions. This would be possible if e.g. NHS Digital had a service to hold copies of supplied data and run, on demand (at low fee) code on it and provide the results (there would still be a need to ensure no sensitive disclosure in analysis results, which is probably why this hasn't happened).
In what way was Lloyd George the last Liberal to hold government office before Nick Clegg in 2010?
Is that a trick question because Nick Clegg is a Tory? Come to think of it, so was Lloyd George.
The irony is, your second sentence is close to the truth - probably closer than you realise.
Which Lloyd George? The Home Secretary to Winston Churchill?
We have a winner!
And even if you believe that he was a Conservative in 1954 (he always described himself as a Liberal) he was also Minister for Fuel and Power from 1942-45 and the only minister holding the Liberal whip in Churchill's wartime coalition not to lose his seat in 1945.
He did not describe himself as a 'National Liberal.' Wikipedia does because it's edited by idiots. In just the same way as it says Richard III didn't kill his nephews, Catherine Nixey's work is dissed only by Christians, Harry Truman was a millionaire or periodically claims that most historians think Jesus never existed.
Gwilym Lloyd George called himself 'a Liberal supporting the National Government.' In 1951 he was elected in Newcastle upon Tyne North as a Liberal but without the support of the Liberal party, and ironically opposed by a Conservative who had been disowned by the national Conservative party. In various indices of MPs of the time he was described as a 'Liberal and Conservative' but he wouldn't have recognised that label.
This was somewhat more complicated as until 1970 party affiliation wasn't on the ballot paper so could be rather more fluid than it is now.
I did wonder whether you had Gwilym in mind. I had forgotten he was a "National Liberal" and not a Tory. My family were big fans of Desmond Donnelly, so take 129 votes Lord Tenby. They also had connections with Lady Megan after her defection to Labour. It wasn't so much "Lloyd George knew my father, my father knew Lloyd George", so much as Lloyd George's daughter knew my Grandfather etc...
It's probably a mix of its being a Red Wall seat, and Labour still suffering (rightly) from the record of the local council.
Even in May, there were places where the Conservatives pulled off good results (eg East Cambs., Slough, Torbay, Bedford, Leicester) due to local factors. That is a difference from 1994-96, were results were just appalling everywhere.
I wouldn't call Laughton-en-le-Morthern (nice church) or Anston (nice woodland) particularly Red Wall. They are turning into commuter villages. Dinnington itself still is a bit ex-mining though.
I'm in a neighbouring ward to Dinnington which remained Labour in the LEs. It's not dissimilar to Laughton and Firbeck so perhaps the Tory vote is coming from Dinnington proper these days !
Who knows! Probably still commuterville rather than the old mining communities?
I got that wrong of course, North Anston is not lumped in with Dinnington, but Firbeck and Slade Hooton are.
It isn't a ward that typically looks like the 'outsiders' view of Rotherham, in any case.
[I had a wander around the Earl of Scarbrough's land recently]
I think he's the biggest landlord in Maltby, his tenant's (White city, Maltby) and his own places are quite the contrast. Bit of a shame he doesn't ever open his house/grounds to the public tbh.
Yes, I agree about that. I don't know how there aren't any rights of way across the main estate, either.
Maltby definitely is Red Wall (and somehow also Tory?). That might have been a better political test.
Some more "Partisan Blethering" on the Dinnington By Election. This is from the preview on Britain Elects. They clearly did not think that the tories would hold the seat.
"The circumstances of this by-election don’t give the Conservatives much encouragement to start with. It has been provoked by the disqualification of their councillor Charlie Wooding, who failed to turn up to any Rotherham council meetings in six months. With this being a traditionally-Labour ward in a parliamentary seat on the Labour target list, the result should be watched closely."
I was definitely surprised Labour didn't take it. My only thought is that it's an anti incumbents vote for the council rather than national lines. Still Alex Stafford and Brendan Clarke Smith have their tails up about the result though.
On-topic: re. Johnson and his phone: "Allies on Thursday suggested to the newspaper it was not correct to say he could not recall the PIN's digits, but instead that he was not entirely sure of them."
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
All those claiming Boris Johnson to be a risk to national security wash your mouths out.
After 24 hours of waterboarding, the f***** wouldn't divulge his mobile phone PIN. Not least because he couldn't. Make him Foreign Secretary, and now!
For one of the functions of Just Stop Oil, XR, and similar fake-oh climate change activism, see the criticism of Volkswagen. The company owns Audi, Bugatti, Lamborghini, and Porsche, and the majority of its voting rights are in the hands of the Porsche family. It's currently being criticised by climate change activists AND by those who are concerned with the plight of the Uighurs in Xinjiang under the Han Chinese dictatorship.
Those two concerns shouldn't go together at all. But that's not the impression given by the news coverage.
Xinjiang is a place to watch for anyone who's interested in what's going on in the world. OCPD-afflicted experts on legal process and 1970s by-elections haven't latched on to it yet.
To take one example, the grid-based surveillance of internet use that has operated for some time in Urumqi and Kashgar is about to be installed in Sao Paulo in Brazil.
Volkswagen has a plant in Xinjiang and the company has been accused of using forced Uighur labour. There's also a Porsche showroom in Urumqi. Germany has far less stringent rules than the USA on importing products made in Xinjiang.
But apparently the weather's getting a bit hotter and we're all going to parch to death if governments globally don't say x% rather than y%, or is it x degrees Celsius, or maybe it's stop the proles driving cars without an "organic" licence by year X. FFS! This is how the distraction works. Genuine exposure of crimes against humanity committed by the Chinese authorities (an obviously leftwing issue, because when has the right wing ever given a toss about such stuff) gets bundled together with green bullsh*t. How the Porsche family must be laughing.
Probably the best thing to do is a boycott of chinese made consumer goods, or businesses like volkswagen. It is quite surprising how this has never come on to the agenda. There is a load of interest in things like Black Lives Matter but this situation never catches peoples attention in the same way.
The roll out of dystopian surveillance in Brazil is worrying but just isn't really our business. Given their problems with crime it will probably be quite popular.
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
All those claiming Boris Johnson to be a risk to national security wash your mouths out.
After 24 hours of waterboarding, the f***** wouldn't divulge his mobile phone PIN. Not least because he couldn't. Make him Foreign Secretary, and now!
Boris is definitely one of those people who uses the same password for every account and his phone pin is the same as credit card pin...with the failed thinking is ok because the password is some obscure latin or greek so nobody could guess it...
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
The scientific research funding follows the scientific evidence.
The vested interest funding, well there's been plenty of that for climate 'sceptics'. And probably much more lucrative for those involved.
(I do find the idea of funding bias bizarre. It's in no government's interest to fund only one side of climate science, if there were really two sides. Climate science as it stands is a massive headache for governments - it means taxing/regulating things that people like, in really unpopular areas. There's a massive incentive for governments to fund any science that would question the IPCC conclusions - making it all go away would solve a whole load of political problems. Unfortunately, science doesn't work like that - you can't just get the answers you want because if you do other people are going to point out what you've done and it's easy* for other groups to check)
*in most areas. Far less so in my field of epidemiology where we cannot share or publish the patient-level data for others to verify, due to entirely legitimate data protection concerns. Other groups could request the same data, but I'm not sure you'd get that far on public interest grounds to simply verify pre-existing research. We need more like openSAFELY where anyone can run their own code to check conclusions. This would be possible if e.g. NHS Digital had a service to hold copies of supplied data and run, on demand (at low fee) code on it and provide the results (there would still be a need to ensure no sensitive disclosure in analysis results, which is probably why this hasn't happened).
"Points" from someone whose head is obviously completely up the system.
The points about funding are definetely valid, even if they don't resolve the 'groupthink amongst academics' problem.
Yep, there's definite scope for problems there. One thing becomes accepted and everyone else takes it as read. We've seen that often enough - but we've seen that often enough because eventually someone shows that's not how things work afterall.
Again, I'm long out of this field and wasn't that closely involved to start with, but I saw a lot of disagreement among climate scientists on how the feedbacks worked and interacted. Plenty of 'out there' ideas being presented where if thing A works differently to the general perception then thing B will happen and we can test that witthin 5-10 years etc. I think there are enough people with different backgrounds in different centres studying data from different sources with different designs to reduce the risk of too much groupthink here.
I may be wrong, of course and maybe there are more people training in 'climate science' at a lower level and being taught 'truths'. The nice thing 15 years ago, which may or may not still be the case, was that climate research was brining together people from a lot of disparate disciplines with different ideas and, in most cases, not a great deal of formal training in any accepted truth of the field. The main danger was that most people on the modelling side were working on a limited number of base models, so a fundamental error in one base model could lead to errors in many people's research. But, if so, there would be a whole lot of research that quickly diverged from new observations, unless you were really unlucky. There are also, of course, a lot of people not working on models at all, but working on comparing model predictions, forwards or backwards with observations on the ground and finding better ways of doing those observations.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
There is a phenomenon of "scientific reticence" on climate change, where climatologists consistently underestimate it.
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
'PIN number' really bugs me. Along with 'ATM machine'. I know it shouldn't, but it does
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
All those claiming Boris Johnson to be a risk to national security wash your mouths out.
After 24 hours of waterboarding, the f***** wouldn't divulge his mobile phone PIN. Not least because he couldn't. Make him Foreign Secretary, and now!
Boris is definitely one of those people who uses the same password for every account and his phone pin is the same as credit card pin...with the failed thinking is ok because the password is some obscure latin or greek so nobody could guess it...
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
The BBC largely does it's job as a neutral platform. As the literal voice of the establishment it pisses off the left. And as a den of leftie woke liberals it pisses off the right.
As an example, Laura K seems to wind up a lot of people with her "bias" but so many of the accusations don't stand up to scrutiny. People call others biased when they don't say what they think.
Where the been has crossed the line has been the imposition of direct Tory party plants to head BBC News, be DG and Chair. Though their malign influence the left alleges is so subtle as to hardly be an issue. Not compared to right wing tabloids anyway.
There was a very famous media study done by Ben Gurion University in Israel. They took footage of the Gaza strip and a team of students, half Israeli half Palestinian, spend some time crafting an incredibly neutral - solely fact based - story that they claimed was played on television. They asked both Israeli and Palestinian students to opine on which TV channel it was shown, whether it was biased, how it was biased, etc.
Everyone thought the story was biased. Israelis thought it pro-Palestinian. Palestinians thought it pro-Israeli. Because it didn't show the narrative they wanted (their side good, the other bad), it was inherently considered to be the work of political opponents.
It turns out humans don't really want impartiality; what they want is their existing preconceptions to be reinforced.
If you were wanting to do a study on how attempts at factual unbiased reporting is perceived by different groups it would be hard to imagine a worse or less representative way of doing it than in Israel dealing with issues in Gaza.
Two more things; is there really such a thing as a 'fact' as opposed to value laden facts in any sort of reporting.
Secondly, what would unbiased reporting of the Ukraine/Russia war be like, and does anyone try?
There certainly are historical facts. Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808. The Holocaust happened. The UK decalared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939.
There are of course, any number of historical opinions, for which better or worse arguments can be put forward.
My understanding that scientists will say that relatively few things are facts, and that what laymen would call facts are are usually described as theories by scientists. Theory, being something that is almost certainly true.
There can always be arguments even about facts. Some of them based on better grounds than others.
For example, did Napoleon invade Spain in 1808, when he arrived in person to try and sort out the mess, or in 1807 when French armies began campaigning there on his orders?
On September 3rd, did Britain declare war or did it accept a state of war? Given Neville Chamberlain's rather strange broadcast on the subject you could argue it just sort of happened.
Even with the Holocaust, you can find endless arguments about whether it the victims of (say) Aktion T4 should be included in it or not.
Similarly, Richard III. He usurped the throne in July 1483, and later that same summer had his nephews (the rightful king and his heir) murdered. But you will always find people who say maybe he didn't really usurp the throne because it's possible Edward IV was married to somebody else and therefore Edward V wasn't really the king, and perhaps somebody else killed Edward V and the Duke of York.
There is a wonderful recent pic of King Charles in Scotland, with a load of banners behind him saying "Not Our King". I am a monarchist and I like living in a country where you can say "Not Our King" to him.
But an attempted factual statement of an obvious and simple sort like "Charles III is the king of GB and NI" conceals a vast array of social construct. Within the coherent web of law and constitution this is a fact, but if you ask: Does he have the powers associated with the idea of kingship the answer is NO, and if you ask is his claim to kinship legitimate, a chorus of confusion arises.
So in tiny way the factual statement I began with belongs in the same box as: Kim Jong Un is the legitimate leader of DRK; or Netanyahu is the legitimate PM of Israel. To say it is to take a side.
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
There’s so much of that phone story, that is baffling to anyone familiar with phones and security.
Did the PM literally buy the phone from a shop and set it up himself as a personal device, but with enough knowledge to switch off all the cloud functionality and never back it up to a computer? Because that’s about all that makes sense.
Either the Party, the Commons authorities, or the Cabinet Office, need to be in charge of issuing and managing phones. It’s a massive security loophole.
(I actually have a lot of sympathy with people being asked to turn over phones, a lot of the communication is going to look really bad with no context and the benefit of hindsight. They wouldn’t have expected at the time, that the messages were not considered private).
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
The scientific research funding follows the scientific evidence.
The vested interest funding, well there's been plenty of that for climate 'sceptics'. And probably much more lucrative for those involved.
(I do find the idea of funding bias bizarre. It's in no government's interest to fund only one side of climate science, if there were really two sides. Climate science as it stands is a massive headache for governments - it means taxing/regulating things that people like, in really unpopular areas. There's a massive incentive for governments to fund any science that would question the IPCC conclusions - making it all go away would solve a whole load of political problems. Unfortunately, science doesn't work like that - you can't just get the answers you want because if you do other people are going to point out what you've done and it's easy* for other groups to check)
*in most areas. Far less so in my field of epidemiology where we cannot share or publish the patient-level data for others to verify, due to entirely legitimate data protection concerns. Other groups could request the same data, but I'm not sure you'd get that far on public interest grounds to simply verify pre-existing research. We need more like openSAFELY where anyone can run their own code to check conclusions. This would be possible if e.g. NHS Digital had a service to hold copies of supplied data and run, on demand (at low fee) code on it and provide the results (there would still be a need to ensure no sensitive disclosure in analysis results, which is probably why this hasn't happened).
"Points" from someone whose head is obviously completely up the system.
The points about funding are definetely valid, even if they don't resolve the 'groupthink amongst academics' problem.
Yep, there's definite scope for problems there. One thing becomes accepted and everyone else takes it as read. We've seen that often enough - but we've seen that often enough because eventually someone shows that's not how things work afterall.
Again, I'm long out of this field and wasn't that closely involved to start with, but I saw a lot of disagreement among climate scientists on how the feedbacks worked and interacted. Plenty of 'out there' ideas being presented where if thing A works differently to the general perception then thing B will happen and we can test that witthin 5-10 years etc. I think there are enough people with different backgrounds in different centres studying data from different sources with different designs to reduce the risk of too much groupthink here.
I may be wrong, of course and maybe there are more people training in 'climate science' at a lower level and being taught 'truths'. The nice thing 15 years ago, which may or may not still be the case, was that climate research was brining together people from a lot of disparate disciplines with different ideas and, in most cases, not a great deal of formal training in any accepted truth of the field. The main danger was that most people on the modelling side were working on a limited number of base models, so a fundamental error in one base model could lead to errors in many people's research. But, if so, there would be a whole lot of research that quickly diverged from new observations, unless you were really unlucky. There are also, of course, a lot of people not working on models at all, but working on comparing model predictions, forwards or backwards with observations on the ground and finding better ways of doing those observations.
Not a scientist but I think there's probably a misconception about how "big picture" a lot of science is or rather is not. A typical climate scientist is probably doing a postdoc on summer temperatures in East Anglia, as measured by elm and aspen tree rings, between 1351 and 1420. If he has a global and overarching theory about the bigger picture he has it in his spare time.
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
All those claiming Boris Johnson to be a risk to national security wash your mouths out.
After 24 hours of waterboarding, the f***** wouldn't divulge his mobile phone PIN. Not least because he couldn't. Make him Foreign Secretary, and now!
Boris is definitely one of those people who uses the same password for every account and his phone pin is the same as credit card pin...with the failed thinking is ok because the password is some obscure latin or greek so nobody could guess it...
If all his accounts including credit cards are on one PIN and he's forgotten it, is that why he had to go to Richard Sharp to get some money?
Got to wonder where the Johnson story will go next. Thoughts of his running in a near-future by-election are nuts IMO, but the story's clearly not at an end yet.
For the astronomers out there in PB land people are starting to get interested in Betelgeuse again and when it will go supernova because of a recent paper.
It appears the star is further along its burning cycle than previously thought. Now in late stage carbon burning. The burning cycle shortens as you move further along the periodic table.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
The scientific research funding follows the scientific evidence.
The vested interest funding, well there's been plenty of that for climate 'sceptics'. And probably much more lucrative for those involved.
(I do find the idea of funding bias bizarre. It's in no government's interest to fund only one side of climate science, if there were really two sides. Climate science as it stands is a massive headache for governments - it means taxing/regulating things that people like, in really unpopular areas. There's a massive incentive for governments to fund any science that would question the IPCC conclusions - making it all go away would solve a whole load of political problems. Unfortunately, science doesn't work like that - you can't just get the answers you want because if you do other people are going to point out what you've done and it's easy* for other groups to check)
*in most areas. Far less so in my field of epidemiology where we cannot share or publish the patient-level data for others to verify, due to entirely legitimate data protection concerns. Other groups could request the same data, but I'm not sure you'd get that far on public interest grounds to simply verify pre-existing research. We need more like openSAFELY where anyone can run their own code to check conclusions. This would be possible if e.g. NHS Digital had a service to hold copies of supplied data and run, on demand (at low fee) code on it and provide the results (there would still be a need to ensure no sensitive disclosure in analysis results, which is probably why this hasn't happened).
"Points" from someone whose head is obviously completely up the system.
The points about funding are definetely valid, even if they don't resolve the 'groupthink amongst academics' problem.
Yep, there's definite scope for problems there. One thing becomes accepted and everyone else takes it as read. We've seen that often enough - but we've seen that often enough because eventually someone shows that's not how things work afterall.
Again, I'm long out of this field and wasn't that closely involved to start with, but I saw a lot of disagreement among climate scientists on how the feedbacks worked and interacted. Plenty of 'out there' ideas being presented where if thing A works differently to the general perception then thing B will happen and we can test that witthin 5-10 years etc. I think there are enough people with different backgrounds in different centres studying data from different sources with different designs to reduce the risk of too much groupthink here.
I may be wrong, of course and maybe there are more people training in 'climate science' at a lower level and being taught 'truths'. The nice thing 15 years ago, which may or may not still be the case, was that climate research was brining together people from a lot of disparate disciplines with different ideas and, in most cases, not a great deal of formal training in any accepted truth of the field. The main danger was that most people on the modelling side were working on a limited number of base models, so a fundamental error in one base model could lead to errors in many people's research. But, if so, there would be a whole lot of research that quickly diverged from new observations, unless you were really unlucky. There are also, of course, a lot of people not working on models at all, but working on comparing model predictions, forwards or backwards with observations on the ground and finding better ways of doing those observations.
My concern with it all is that right now, dissent is not allowed. We are at a stage whereby no one would put their heads above the parapet. Well that means that the overwhelming majority - thousands upon thousands - of climate scientists agree hence it is settled. But without going all Galileo about it is that we are in a period of absolute orthodoxy whereby dissenting views are simply not entertained.
No one disputes that the temperatures are rising but it is modelling that is telling us what happens next. Is it like cigarettes where a link has been shown to exist? Not being a climate scientist I have no idea.
I just feel uncomfortable that there is no Jeremy Paxman ("why is this lying bastard lying to me") to question it all. Are all those on here, for example, comfortable not wanting to question what is, in the end, a prediction based upon modelling and hence originates in the human mind.
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
All those claiming Boris Johnson to be a risk to national security wash your mouths out.
After 24 hours of waterboarding, the f***** wouldn't divulge his mobile phone PIN. Not least because he couldn't. Make him Foreign Secretary, and now!
Boris is definitely one of those people who uses the same password for every account and his phone pin is the same as credit card pin...with the failed thinking is ok because the password is some obscure latin or greek so nobody could guess it...
Figures he apparently admires include...
* the emperor Augustus (probably genuinely) * Jean Monnet (only so he can seem to be bright enough to recognise skills of his opponents?) * Winston Churchill (when Tory bores are around?)
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
There’s so much of that phone story, that is baffling to anyone familiar with phones and security.
Did the PM literally buy the phone from a shop and set it up himself as a personal device, but with enough knowledge to switch off all the cloud functionality and never back it up to a computer? Because that’s about all that makes sense.
Either the Party, the Commons authorities, or the Cabinet Office, need to be in charge of issuing and managing phones. It’s a massive security loophole.
(I actually have a lot of sympathy with people being asked to turn over phones, a lot of the communication is going to look really bad with no context and the benefit of hindsight. They wouldn’t have expected at the time, that the messages were not considered private).
The cloud functionality isn’t setup by default. If you buy a new iPhone, one of the steps is to login to your iCloud user/password. Or you can bypass the step.
I know a bunch of people who haven’t bothered/find that a bit “techy”/have no idea what that is
LBC just had a call from a Caribbean national who has been here since aged 12 and is a Pilot in the RAF. Despite paying tax and NI, he is required to pay this increased NHS surcharge for non- UK nationals.
This is my periodic reminder that the UK space programme currently consists of a Virgin plane that doesn't work and that Top Gear Robin Reliant.
(punches wall in irritation)
Cost was £70 million apparently. I expect £70M wouldn't go as far in any potential space program of ours.
Falcon 9 has an estimated marginal cost in the £20-25 million pound range.
Development, according to a NASA investigation of development process, was a billion or 2.
Big And Expensive always like to quote £25 Billion+ to develop a medium lift rocket - whenever the politicians want an independent space program.
£25bn, on a “cost plus” basis, index-linked, subject to annual review and additional milestone payments, with an expected timeline of 10-15 years.
And they wonder why a fresh startup run by a mad guy, is eating their lunch and then some.
And the overrun would be 100%
Some time back, the US Airforce wanted a demo of rapid availability space launch. Hilariously, they gave the contract to Boeing, who bid…. A spaceplane first stage, with an RS-25 as the engine. Stop laughing in the back, there.
After spending several hundred million dollars, Boeing announced it was too difficult and cancelled the contract. Literally nothing for the money.
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
There’s so much of that phone story, that is baffling to anyone familiar with phones and security.
Did the PM literally buy the phone from a shop and set it up himself as a personal device, but with enough knowledge to switch off all the cloud functionality and never back it up to a computer? Because that’s about all that makes sense.
Either the Party, the Commons authorities, or the Cabinet Office, need to be in charge of issuing and managing phones. It’s a massive security loophole.
(I actually have a lot of sympathy with people being asked to turn over phones, a lot of the communication is going to look really bad with no context and the benefit of hindsight. They wouldn’t have expected at the time, that the messages were not considered private).
The cloud functionality isn’t setup by default. If you buy a new iPhone, one of the steps is to login to your iCloud user/password. Or you can bypass the step.
I know a bunch of people who haven’t bothered/find that a bit “techy”/have no idea what that is
You can do the basic setup without an ID, but you can’t get to the App Store or iMessage without logging in, and once you do the cloud stuff is now all on by default. Perhaps the phone was old enough for this not to be the case?
For the astronomers out there in PB land people are starting to get interested in Betelgeuse again and when it will go supernova because of a recent paper.
It appears the star is further along its burning cycle than previously thought. Now in late stage carbon burning. The burning cycle shortens as you move further along the periodic table.
LBC just had a call from a Caribbean national who has been here since aged 12 and is a Pilot in the RAF. Despite paying tax and NI, he is required to pay this increased NHS surcharge for non- UK nationals.
Doncha love this iteration of Conservatism?
Has anyone done the overall knockon effects analysis of this change?
Like Labour's VAT on private schools thing, it presumably brings in less than hoped and has consequential costs that haven't been factored in for.
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
To be fair, the Russians have demonstrated how moronic they are on data security too.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
The scientific research funding follows the scientific evidence.
The vested interest funding, well there's been plenty of that for climate 'sceptics'. And probably much more lucrative for those involved.
(I do find the idea of funding bias bizarre. It's in no government's interest to fund only one side of climate science, if there were really two sides. Climate science as it stands is a massive headache for governments - it means taxing/regulating things that people like, in really unpopular areas. There's a massive incentive for governments to fund any science that would question the IPCC conclusions - making it all go away would solve a whole load of political problems. Unfortunately, science doesn't work like that - you can't just get the answers you want because if you do other people are going to point out what you've done and it's easy* for other groups to check)
*in most areas. Far less so in my field of epidemiology where we cannot share or publish the patient-level data for others to verify, due to entirely legitimate data protection concerns. Other groups could request the same data, but I'm not sure you'd get that far on public interest grounds to simply verify pre-existing research. We need more like openSAFELY where anyone can run their own code to check conclusions. This would be possible if e.g. NHS Digital had a service to hold copies of supplied data and run, on demand (at low fee) code on it and provide the results (there would still be a need to ensure no sensitive disclosure in analysis results, which is probably why this hasn't happened).
"Points" from someone whose head is obviously completely up the system.
The points about funding are definetely valid, even if they don't resolve the 'groupthink amongst academics' problem.
Yep, there's definite scope for problems there. One thing becomes accepted and everyone else takes it as read. We've seen that often enough - but we've seen that often enough because eventually someone shows that's not how things work afterall.
Again, I'm long out of this field and wasn't that closely involved to start with, but I saw a lot of disagreement among climate scientists on how the feedbacks worked and interacted. Plenty of 'out there' ideas being presented where if thing A works differently to the general perception then thing B will happen and we can test that witthin 5-10 years etc. I think there are enough people with different backgrounds in different centres studying data from different sources with different designs to reduce the risk of too much groupthink here.
I may be wrong, of course and maybe there are more people training in 'climate science' at a lower level and being taught 'truths'. The nice thing 15 years ago, which may or may not still be the case, was that climate research was brining together people from a lot of disparate disciplines with different ideas and, in most cases, not a great deal of formal training in any accepted truth of the field. The main danger was that most people on the modelling side were working on a limited number of base models, so a fundamental error in one base model could lead to errors in many people's research. But, if so, there would be a whole lot of research that quickly diverged from new observations, unless you were really unlucky. There are also, of course, a lot of people not working on models at all, but working on comparing model predictions, forwards or backwards with observations on the ground and finding better ways of doing those observations.
My concern with it all is that right now, dissent is not allowed. We are at a stage whereby no one would put their heads above the parapet. Well that means that the overwhelming majority - thousands upon thousands - of climate scientists agree hence it is settled. But without going all Galileo about it is that we are in a period of absolute orthodoxy whereby dissenting views are simply not entertained.
No one disputes that the temperatures are rising but it is modelling that is telling us what happens next. Is it like cigarettes where a link has been shown to exist? Not being a climate scientist I have no idea.
I just feel uncomfortable that there is no Jeremy Paxman ("why is this lying bastard lying to me") to question it all. Are all those on here, for example, comfortable not wanting to question what is, in the end, a prediction based upon modelling and hence originates in the human mind.
That is why all good science goes through peer review, and often public criticism at scientific meetings.
Scientifically valid criticism is not merely allowed, it is actively encouraged.
Aggressive questioning by a scientifically and numerically illiterate TV presenter is not likely to be constructive.
This is my periodic reminder that the UK space programme currently consists of a Virgin plane that doesn't work and that Top Gear Robin Reliant.
(punches wall in irritation)
Cost was £70 million apparently. I expect £70M wouldn't go as far in any potential space program of ours.
Falcon 9 has an estimated marginal cost in the £20-25 million pound range.
Development, according to a NASA investigation of development process, was a billion or 2.
Big And Expensive always like to quote £25 Billion+ to develop a medium lift rocket - whenever the politicians want an independent space program.
£25bn, on a “cost plus” basis, index-linked, subject to annual review and additional milestone payments, with an expected timeline of 10-15 years.
And they wonder why a fresh startup run by a mad guy, is eating their lunch and then some.
And the overrun would be 100%
Some time back, the US Airforce wanted a demo of rapid availability space launch. Hilariously, they gave the contract to Boeing, who bid…. A spaceplane first stage, with an RS-25 as the engine. Stop laughing in the back, there.
After spending several hundred million dollars, Boeing announced it was too difficult and cancelled the contract. Literally nothing for the money.
The Artemis programme, to turn re-useable RS-25 engines into expendable ones, belongs in a special category all by itself.
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
There’s so much of that phone story, that is baffling to anyone familiar with phones and security.
Did the PM literally buy the phone from a shop and set it up himself as a personal device, but with enough knowledge to switch off all the cloud functionality and never back it up to a computer? Because that’s about all that makes sense.
Either the Party, the Commons authorities, or the Cabinet Office, need to be in charge of issuing and managing phones. It’s a massive security loophole.
(I actually have a lot of sympathy with people being asked to turn over phones, a lot of the communication is going to look really bad with no context and the benefit of hindsight. They wouldn’t have expected at the time, that the messages were not considered private).
The cloud functionality isn’t setup by default. If you buy a new iPhone, one of the steps is to login to your iCloud user/password. Or you can bypass the step.
I know a bunch of people who haven’t bothered/find that a bit “techy”/have no idea what that is
You can do the basic setup without an ID, but you can’t get to the App Store or iMessage without logging in, and once you do the cloud stuff is now all on by default. Perhaps the phone was old enough for this not to be the case?
Or maybe Johnson doesn't have a clue and is making stuff up on the hoof.
Excuse me- the doorbell has just rung; I believe William of Ockham is at the door. Must go and see what he wants.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
The scientific research funding follows the scientific evidence.
The vested interest funding, well there's been plenty of that for climate 'sceptics'. And probably much more lucrative for those involved.
(I do find the idea of funding bias bizarre. It's in no government's interest to fund only one side of climate science, if there were really two sides. Climate science as it stands is a massive headache for governments - it means taxing/regulating things that people like, in really unpopular areas. There's a massive incentive for governments to fund any science that would question the IPCC conclusions - making it all go away would solve a whole load of political problems. Unfortunately, science doesn't work like that - you can't just get the answers you want because if you do other people are going to point out what you've done and it's easy* for other groups to check)
*in most areas. Far less so in my field of epidemiology where we cannot share or publish the patient-level data for others to verify, due to entirely legitimate data protection concerns. Other groups could request the same data, but I'm not sure you'd get that far on public interest grounds to simply verify pre-existing research. We need more like openSAFELY where anyone can run their own code to check conclusions. This would be possible if e.g. NHS Digital had a service to hold copies of supplied data and run, on demand (at low fee) code on it and provide the results (there would still be a need to ensure no sensitive disclosure in analysis results, which is probably why this hasn't happened).
"Points" from someone whose head is obviously completely up the system.
The points about funding are definetely valid, even if they don't resolve the 'groupthink amongst academics' problem.
Yep, there's definite scope for problems there. One thing becomes accepted and everyone else takes it as read. We've seen that often enough - but we've seen that often enough because eventually someone shows that's not how things work afterall.
Again, I'm long out of this field and wasn't that closely involved to start with, but I saw a lot of disagreement among climate scientists on how the feedbacks worked and interacted. Plenty of 'out there' ideas being presented where if thing A works differently to the general perception then thing B will happen and we can test that witthin 5-10 years etc. I think there are enough people with different backgrounds in different centres studying data from different sources with different designs to reduce the risk of too much groupthink here.
I may be wrong, of course and maybe there are more people training in 'climate science' at a lower level and being taught 'truths'. The nice thing 15 years ago, which may or may not still be the case, was that climate research was brining together people from a lot of disparate disciplines with different ideas and, in most cases, not a great deal of formal training in any accepted truth of the field. The main danger was that most people on the modelling side were working on a limited number of base models, so a fundamental error in one base model could lead to errors in many people's research. But, if so, there would be a whole lot of research that quickly diverged from new observations, unless you were really unlucky. There are also, of course, a lot of people not working on models at all, but working on comparing model predictions, forwards or backwards with observations on the ground and finding better ways of doing those observations.
My concern with it all is that right now, dissent is not allowed. We are at a stage whereby no one would put their heads above the parapet. Well that means that the overwhelming majority - thousands upon thousands - of climate scientists agree hence it is settled. But without going all Galileo about it is that we are in a period of absolute orthodoxy whereby dissenting views are simply not entertained.
No one disputes that the temperatures are rising but it is modelling that is telling us what happens next. Is it like cigarettes where a link has been shown to exist? Not being a climate scientist I have no idea.
I just feel uncomfortable that there is no Jeremy Paxman ("why is this lying bastard lying to me") to question it all. Are all those on here, for example, comfortable not wanting to question what is, in the end, a prediction based upon modelling and hence originates in the human mind.
The basic link (CO2 and other gases leading to warming) is very well understood and demonstrable in a lab (or classroom). We know the incident EM radiation from the sun. We know the temperature of Earth and so we know the frequencies at which energy is radiated from Earth back out into space. We know that CO2 (and others) are good absorbers and re-emitters of this energy (in random directions, including back towards the surface) and can therefore explain how greater CO2 concentration in the atmosphere causes less of the incident energy from the sun to be, ultimately, radiated off into space. All of that is not really disputable.
So, anyone who want to claim that this will not lead to warming needs to explain the feedback loops that will prevent that. They may exist*. But the deniers refuse to engage with the simple facts at the centre of the science.
*it's seriously complicated - does warming lead to more evaporation and more cloud cover, reflecting more incident energy from the sun back into space? maybe. does warming kill vegetation and increase desertification, which is also a better reflector of incident energy back into space than plants are? maybe, probably in fact, but then you also have to take account of reducing ice extent (another good reflector) with replacement by darker vegetation. And that is, excuse the pun, the tip of the iceberg. That's where true sceptical debate would lie (and there is a lot of research and debate on these feedbacks)
On topic, I am one of those leave voters who doesn't particularly want Johnson back. His usefulness from my perspective was as the only possible challenger to Sunak who wouldn't face calls for a GE if he was made leader and PM - at least not serious ones, because of his mandate. But that challenge has been neutralised, and there seems little point in trying to rehabilitate Johnson at this point. If he wants to get himself elected to parliament and have a long term plan to get back in, fine.
And as it happens, Sunak is doing so badly that a pre-election challenge seems legitimate whether it comes from Johnson, Mordaunt, or the Downing Street cat frankly.
I don't think there will be a challenge to Sunak pre GE for three reasons. There isn't time. It's further farce building upon the already farcical line of elections and PMs from 2016 so can't do any immediate good for the prospects of the party.
The major reason is that there won't be a challenge unless at least one well supported challenger thinks it is a clear and distinct advantage to become leader pre election and lose the GE, over losing the GE and then challenging. There is no such advantage.
They will calculate and note that if they become leader and lose the 2024 GE (overwhelmingly probable) they probably won't survive.
Challenging and winning in not in the Tory's hands. Only Labour can win the election for the Tories.
My concern with it all is that right now, dissent is not allowed. We are at a stage whereby no one would put their heads above the parapet. Well that means that the overwhelming majority - thousands upon thousands - of climate scientists agree hence it is settled. But without going all Galileo about it is that we are in a period of absolute orthodoxy whereby dissenting views are simply not entertained.
No one disputes that the temperatures are rising but it is modelling that is telling us what happens next. Is it like cigarettes where a link has been shown to exist? Not being a climate scientist I have no idea.
I just feel uncomfortable that there is no Jeremy Paxman ("why is this lying bastard lying to me") to question it all. Are all those on here, for example, comfortable not wanting to question what is, in the end, a prediction based upon modelling and hence originates in the human mind.
Okay - what questions should Paxman be asking? There is plenty of scientific evidence not only that land and sea temperatures are rising but the rate of increase is unprecedented and it's the second bit which worries me most.
It's also the aspect which defies the modelling - some things are happening in some places at an alarming rate - what will this mean for the rest of the planet? Europe is warming very fast - I get less excited about 40c in Spain, Italy and Greece but 50c would be very different.
It's the unknown which I suspect is worrying the scientific community - yes, it might all just plateau and we might have decades of a new "normal" (I don't know) but the suspicion is we have set in train a series of events whose consequences might be far reaching and not all together optimal. To imagine, as some seem to, that none of this is happening and it's nothing to worry about or to contend our way of life in all its facets is to be defended at all costs and there can be no mitigation to the way we live, are equally flawed and dangerous.
Nor am I suggesting the radical authoritarianism of some on the Green fringe - I'm an optimist inasmuch as I believe human ingenuity and technological innovation can find resolutions but my fear is a lot of damage has been done and the consequences of our lack of action in the past 30 years will be illustrated in the next 30.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
The scientific research funding follows the scientific evidence.
The vested interest funding, well there's been plenty of that for climate 'sceptics'. And probably much more lucrative for those involved.
(I do find the idea of funding bias bizarre. It's in no government's interest to fund only one side of climate science, if there were really two sides. Climate science as it stands is a massive headache for governments - it means taxing/regulating things that people like, in really unpopular areas. There's a massive incentive for governments to fund any science that would question the IPCC conclusions - making it all go away would solve a whole load of political problems. Unfortunately, science doesn't work like that - you can't just get the answers you want because if you do other people are going to point out what you've done and it's easy* for other groups to check)
*in most areas. Far less so in my field of epidemiology where we cannot share or publish the patient-level data for others to verify, due to entirely legitimate data protection concerns. Other groups could request the same data, but I'm not sure you'd get that far on public interest grounds to simply verify pre-existing research. We need more like openSAFELY where anyone can run their own code to check conclusions. This would be possible if e.g. NHS Digital had a service to hold copies of supplied data and run, on demand (at low fee) code on it and provide the results (there would still be a need to ensure no sensitive disclosure in analysis results, which is probably why this hasn't happened).
"Points" from someone whose head is obviously completely up the system.
The points about funding are definetely valid, even if they don't resolve the 'groupthink amongst academics' problem.
Yep, there's definite scope for problems there. One thing becomes accepted and everyone else takes it as read. We've seen that often enough - but we've seen that often enough because eventually someone shows that's not how things work afterall.
Again, I'm long out of this field and wasn't that closely involved to start with, but I saw a lot of disagreement among climate scientists on how the feedbacks worked and interacted. Plenty of 'out there' ideas being presented where if thing A works differently to the general perception then thing B will happen and we can test that witthin 5-10 years etc. I think there are enough people with different backgrounds in different centres studying data from different sources with different designs to reduce the risk of too much groupthink here.
I may be wrong, of course and maybe there are more people training in 'climate science' at a lower level and being taught 'truths'. The nice thing 15 years ago, which may or may not still be the case, was that climate research was brining together people from a lot of disparate disciplines with different ideas and, in most cases, not a great deal of formal training in any accepted truth of the field. The main danger was that most people on the modelling side were working on a limited number of base models, so a fundamental error in one base model could lead to errors in many people's research. But, if so, there would be a whole lot of research that quickly diverged from new observations, unless you were really unlucky. There are also, of course, a lot of people not working on models at all, but working on comparing model predictions, forwards or backwards with observations on the ground and finding better ways of doing those observations.
My concern with it all is that right now, dissent is not allowed. We are at a stage whereby no one would put their heads above the parapet. Well that means that the overwhelming majority - thousands upon thousands - of climate scientists agree hence it is settled. But without going all Galileo about it is that we are in a period of absolute orthodoxy whereby dissenting views are simply not entertained.
No one disputes that the temperatures are rising but it is modelling that is telling us what happens next. Is it like cigarettes where a link has been shown to exist? Not being a climate scientist I have no idea.
I just feel uncomfortable that there is no Jeremy Paxman ("why is this lying bastard lying to me") to question it all. Are all those on here, for example, comfortable not wanting to question what is, in the end, a prediction based upon modelling and hence originates in the human mind.
The basic link (CO2 and other gases leading to warming) is very well understood and demonstrable in a lab (or classroom). We know the incident EM radiation from the sun. We know the temperature of Earth and so we know the frequencies at which energy is radiated from Earth back out into space. We know that CO2 (and others) are good absorbers and re-emitters of this energy (in random directions, including back towards the surface) and can therefore explain how greater CO2 concentration in the atmosphere causes less of the incident energy from the sun to be, ultimately, radiated off into space. All of that is not really disputable.
So, anyone who want to claim that this will not lead to warming needs to explain the feedback loops that will prevent that. They may exist*. But the deniers refuse to engage with the simple facts at the centre of the science.
*it's seriously complicated - does warming lead to more evaporation and more cloud cover, reflecting more incident energy from the sun back into space? maybe. does warming kill vegetation and increase desertification, which is also a better reflector of incident energy back into space than plants are? maybe, probably in fact, but then you also have to take account of reducing ice extent (another good reflector) with replacement by darker vegetation. And that is, excuse the pun, the tip of the iceberg. That's where true sceptical debate would lie (and there is a lot of research and debate on these feedbacks)
Isn't there quite a lot of evidence that planting trees in temperate latitudes achieves very little climate wise? For various reasons, including albedo. And at high latitudes it is definitely warming.
So all this million tree planting lark is a bit of a waste of time, unless of course you like trees.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
The scientific research funding follows the scientific evidence.
The vested interest funding, well there's been plenty of that for climate 'sceptics'. And probably much more lucrative for those involved.
(I do find the idea of funding bias bizarre. It's in no government's interest to fund only one side of climate science, if there were really two sides. Climate science as it stands is a massive headache for governments - it means taxing/regulating things that people like, in really unpopular areas. There's a massive incentive for governments to fund any science that would question the IPCC conclusions - making it all go away would solve a whole load of political problems. Unfortunately, science doesn't work like that - you can't just get the answers you want because if you do other people are going to point out what you've done and it's easy* for other groups to check)
*in most areas. Far less so in my field of epidemiology where we cannot share or publish the patient-level data for others to verify, due to entirely legitimate data protection concerns. Other groups could request the same data, but I'm not sure you'd get that far on public interest grounds to simply verify pre-existing research. We need more like openSAFELY where anyone can run their own code to check conclusions. This would be possible if e.g. NHS Digital had a service to hold copies of supplied data and run, on demand (at low fee) code on it and provide the results (there would still be a need to ensure no sensitive disclosure in analysis results, which is probably why this hasn't happened).
"Points" from someone whose head is obviously completely up the system.
The points about funding are definetely valid, even if they don't resolve the 'groupthink amongst academics' problem.
Yep, there's definite scope for problems there. One thing becomes accepted and everyone else takes it as read. We've seen that often enough - but we've seen that often enough because eventually someone shows that's not how things work afterall.
Again, I'm long out of this field and wasn't that closely involved to start with, but I saw a lot of disagreement among climate scientists on how the feedbacks worked and interacted. Plenty of 'out there' ideas being presented where if thing A works differently to the general perception then thing B will happen and we can test that witthin 5-10 years etc. I think there are enough people with different backgrounds in different centres studying data from different sources with different designs to reduce the risk of too much groupthink here.
I may be wrong, of course and maybe there are more people training in 'climate science' at a lower level and being taught 'truths'. The nice thing 15 years ago, which may or may not still be the case, was that climate research was brining together people from a lot of disparate disciplines with different ideas and, in most cases, not a great deal of formal training in any accepted truth of the field. The main danger was that most people on the modelling side were working on a limited number of base models, so a fundamental error in one base model could lead to errors in many people's research. But, if so, there would be a whole lot of research that quickly diverged from new observations, unless you were really unlucky. There are also, of course, a lot of people not working on models at all, but working on comparing model predictions, forwards or backwards with observations on the ground and finding better ways of doing those observations.
My concern with it all is that right now, dissent is not allowed. We are at a stage whereby no one would put their heads above the parapet. Well that means that the overwhelming majority - thousands upon thousands - of climate scientists agree hence it is settled. But without going all Galileo about it is that we are in a period of absolute orthodoxy whereby dissenting views are simply not entertained.
No one disputes that the temperatures are rising but it is modelling that is telling us what happens next. Is it like cigarettes where a link has been shown to exist? Not being a climate scientist I have no idea.
I just feel uncomfortable that there is no Jeremy Paxman ("why is this lying bastard lying to me") to question it all. Are all those on here, for example, comfortable not wanting to question what is, in the end, a prediction based upon modelling and hence originates in the human mind.
The basic link (CO2 and other gases leading to warming) is very well understood and demonstrable in a lab (or classroom). We know the incident EM radiation from the sun. We know the temperature of Earth and so we know the frequencies at which energy is radiated from Earth back out into space. We know that CO2 (and others) are good absorbers and re-emitters of this energy (in random directions, including back towards the surface) and can therefore explain how greater CO2 concentration in the atmosphere causes less of the incident energy from the sun to be, ultimately, radiated off into space. All of that is not really disputable.
So, anyone who want to claim that this will not lead to warming needs to explain the feedback loops that will prevent that. They may exist*. But the deniers refuse to engage with the simple facts at the centre of the science.
*it's seriously complicated - does warming lead to more evaporation and more cloud cover, reflecting more incident energy from the sun back into space? maybe. does warming kill vegetation and increase desertification, which is also a better reflector of incident energy back into space than plants are? maybe, probably in fact, but then you also have to take account of reducing ice extent (another good reflector) with replacement by darker vegetation. And that is, excuse the pun, the tip of the iceberg. That's where true sceptical debate would lie (and there is a lot of research and debate on these feedbacks)
I think your asterisked paragraph sums it up. Not that is complicated - no shit sherlock - just that you have casually reeled off several elements to which we don't know the answer and yet you are saying that the central premise, also elegantly articulated by you, is overriding. You answer "maybe" to several parts of the puzzle and yet that doesn't shake the central belief.
Have such issues been developed to the point whereby we can replace your maybes with your former paragraphs' certainties and can you see how seemingly unscientific that sounds.
As is often said, we know more about outer space than we do about our own planet.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
The scientific research funding follows the scientific evidence.
The vested interest funding, well there's been plenty of that for climate 'sceptics'. And probably much more lucrative for those involved.
(I do find the idea of funding bias bizarre. It's in no government's interest to fund only one side of climate science, if there were really two sides. Climate science as it stands is a massive headache for governments - it means taxing/regulating things that people like, in really unpopular areas. There's a massive incentive for governments to fund any science that would question the IPCC conclusions - making it all go away would solve a whole load of political problems. Unfortunately, science doesn't work like that - you can't just get the answers you want because if you do other people are going to point out what you've done and it's easy* for other groups to check)
*in most areas. Far less so in my field of epidemiology where we cannot share or publish the patient-level data for others to verify, due to entirely legitimate data protection concerns. Other groups could request the same data, but I'm not sure you'd get that far on public interest grounds to simply verify pre-existing research. We need more like openSAFELY where anyone can run their own code to check conclusions. This would be possible if e.g. NHS Digital had a service to hold copies of supplied data and run, on demand (at low fee) code on it and provide the results (there would still be a need to ensure no sensitive disclosure in analysis results, which is probably why this hasn't happened).
"Points" from someone whose head is obviously completely up the system.
The points about funding are definetely valid, even if they don't resolve the 'groupthink amongst academics' problem.
Yep, there's definite scope for problems there. One thing becomes accepted and everyone else takes it as read. We've seen that often enough - but we've seen that often enough because eventually someone shows that's not how things work afterall.
Again, I'm long out of this field and wasn't that closely involved to start with, but I saw a lot of disagreement among climate scientists on how the feedbacks worked and interacted. Plenty of 'out there' ideas being presented where if thing A works differently to the general perception then thing B will happen and we can test that witthin 5-10 years etc. I think there are enough people with different backgrounds in different centres studying data from different sources with different designs to reduce the risk of too much groupthink here.
I may be wrong, of course and maybe there are more people training in 'climate science' at a lower level and being taught 'truths'. The nice thing 15 years ago, which may or may not still be the case, was that climate research was brining together people from a lot of disparate disciplines with different ideas and, in most cases, not a great deal of formal training in any accepted truth of the field. The main danger was that most people on the modelling side were working on a limited number of base models, so a fundamental error in one base model could lead to errors in many people's research. But, if so, there would be a whole lot of research that quickly diverged from new observations, unless you were really unlucky. There are also, of course, a lot of people not working on models at all, but working on comparing model predictions, forwards or backwards with observations on the ground and finding better ways of doing those observations.
My concern with it all is that right now, dissent is not allowed. We are at a stage whereby no one would put their heads above the parapet. Well that means that the overwhelming majority - thousands upon thousands - of climate scientists agree hence it is settled. But without going all Galileo about it is that we are in a period of absolute orthodoxy whereby dissenting views are simply not entertained.
No one disputes that the temperatures are rising but it is modelling that is telling us what happens next. Is it like cigarettes where a link has been shown to exist? Not being a climate scientist I have no idea.
I just feel uncomfortable that there is no Jeremy Paxman ("why is this lying bastard lying to me") to question it all. Are all those on here, for example, comfortable not wanting to question what is, in the end, a prediction based upon modelling and hence originates in the human mind.
The basic link (CO2 and other gases leading to warming) is very well understood and demonstrable in a lab (or classroom). We know the incident EM radiation from the sun. We know the temperature of Earth and so we know the frequencies at which energy is radiated from Earth back out into space. We know that CO2 (and others) are good absorbers and re-emitters of this energy (in random directions, including back towards the surface) and can therefore explain how greater CO2 concentration in the atmosphere causes less of the incident energy from the sun to be, ultimately, radiated off into space. All of that is not really disputable.
So, anyone who want to claim that this will not lead to warming needs to explain the feedback loops that will prevent that. They may exist*. But the deniers refuse to engage with the simple facts at the centre of the science.
*it's seriously complicated - does warming lead to more evaporation and more cloud cover, reflecting more incident energy from the sun back into space? maybe. does warming kill vegetation and increase desertification, which is also a better reflector of incident energy back into space than plants are? maybe, probably in fact, but then you also have to take account of reducing ice extent (another good reflector) with replacement by darker vegetation. And that is, excuse the pun, the tip of the iceberg. That's where true sceptical debate would lie (and there is a lot of research and debate on these feedbacks)
I think your asterisked paragraph sums it up. Not that is complicated - no shit sherlock - just that you have casually reeled off several elements to which we don't know the answer and yet you are saying that the central premise, also elegantly articulated by you, is overriding. You answer "maybe" to several parts of the puzzle and yet that doesn't shake the central belief.
Have such issues been developed to the point whereby we can replace your maybes with your former paragraphs' certainties and can you see how seemingly unscientific that sounds.
As is often said, we know more about outer space than we do about our own planet.
Quite a bit of climate science began in working out what was going on Venus and Mars, incidentally.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
The scientific research funding follows the scientific evidence.
The vested interest funding, well there's been plenty of that for climate 'sceptics'. And probably much more lucrative for those involved.
(I do find the idea of funding bias bizarre. It's in no government's interest to fund only one side of climate science, if there were really two sides. Climate science as it stands is a massive headache for governments - it means taxing/regulating things that people like, in really unpopular areas. There's a massive incentive for governments to fund any science that would question the IPCC conclusions - making it all go away would solve a whole load of political problems. Unfortunately, science doesn't work like that - you can't just get the answers you want because if you do other people are going to point out what you've done and it's easy* for other groups to check)
*in most areas. Far less so in my field of epidemiology where we cannot share or publish the patient-level data for others to verify, due to entirely legitimate data protection concerns. Other groups could request the same data, but I'm not sure you'd get that far on public interest grounds to simply verify pre-existing research. We need more like openSAFELY where anyone can run their own code to check conclusions. This would be possible if e.g. NHS Digital had a service to hold copies of supplied data and run, on demand (at low fee) code on it and provide the results (there would still be a need to ensure no sensitive disclosure in analysis results, which is probably why this hasn't happened).
"Points" from someone whose head is obviously completely up the system.
The points about funding are definetely valid, even if they don't resolve the 'groupthink amongst academics' problem.
Yep, there's definite scope for problems there. One thing becomes accepted and everyone else takes it as read. We've seen that often enough - but we've seen that often enough because eventually someone shows that's not how things work afterall.
Again, I'm long out of this field and wasn't that closely involved to start with, but I saw a lot of disagreement among climate scientists on how the feedbacks worked and interacted. Plenty of 'out there' ideas being presented where if thing A works differently to the general perception then thing B will happen and we can test that witthin 5-10 years etc. I think there are enough people with different backgrounds in different centres studying data from different sources with different designs to reduce the risk of too much groupthink here.
I may be wrong, of course and maybe there are more people training in 'climate science' at a lower level and being taught 'truths'. The nice thing 15 years ago, which may or may not still be the case, was that climate research was brining together people from a lot of disparate disciplines with different ideas and, in most cases, not a great deal of formal training in any accepted truth of the field. The main danger was that most people on the modelling side were working on a limited number of base models, so a fundamental error in one base model could lead to errors in many people's research. But, if so, there would be a whole lot of research that quickly diverged from new observations, unless you were really unlucky. There are also, of course, a lot of people not working on models at all, but working on comparing model predictions, forwards or backwards with observations on the ground and finding better ways of doing those observations.
My concern with it all is that right now, dissent is not allowed. We are at a stage whereby no one would put their heads above the parapet. Well that means that the overwhelming majority - thousands upon thousands - of climate scientists agree hence it is settled. But without going all Galileo about it is that we are in a period of absolute orthodoxy whereby dissenting views are simply not entertained.
No one disputes that the temperatures are rising but it is modelling that is telling us what happens next. Is it like cigarettes where a link has been shown to exist? Not being a climate scientist I have no idea.
I just feel uncomfortable that there is no Jeremy Paxman ("why is this lying bastard lying to me") to question it all. Are all those on here, for example, comfortable not wanting to question what is, in the end, a prediction based upon modelling and hence originates in the human mind.
The basic link (CO2 and other gases leading to warming) is very well understood and demonstrable in a lab (or classroom). We know the incident EM radiation from the sun. We know the temperature of Earth and so we know the frequencies at which energy is radiated from Earth back out into space. We know that CO2 (and others) are good absorbers and re-emitters of this energy (in random directions, including back towards the surface) and can therefore explain how greater CO2 concentration in the atmosphere causes less of the incident energy from the sun to be, ultimately, radiated off into space. All of that is not really disputable.
So, anyone who want to claim that this will not lead to warming needs to explain the feedback loops that will prevent that. They may exist*. But the deniers refuse to engage with the simple facts at the centre of the science.
*it's seriously complicated - does warming lead to more evaporation and more cloud cover, reflecting more incident energy from the sun back into space? maybe. does warming kill vegetation and increase desertification, which is also a better reflector of incident energy back into space than plants are? maybe, probably in fact, but then you also have to take account of reducing ice extent (another good reflector) with replacement by darker vegetation. And that is, excuse the pun, the tip of the iceberg. That's where true sceptical debate would lie (and there is a lot of research and debate on these feedbacks)
I think your asterisked paragraph sums it up. Not that is complicated - no shit sherlock - just that you have casually reeled off several elements to which we don't know the answer and yet you are saying that the central premise, also elegantly articulated by you, is overriding. You answer "maybe" to several parts of the puzzle and yet that doesn't shake the central belief.
Have such issues been developed to the point whereby we can replace your maybes with your former paragraphs' certainties and can you see how seemingly unscientific that sounds.
As is often said, we know more about outer space than we do about our own planet.
They are my 'maybes'. Because my knowledge of this is 15 years out of date and even then was mostly from reading some papers, working with people more involved and attending seminars/conferences - 'maybe' is much quicker than providing an well out of date summary of the understanding. But no, there was no identified feeback at that point that would counteract warming sufficiently before things got very nasty for us (whether feedbacks after mass extinctions would eventually, over thousands of years, cool things back down again was debated at that point - some saw that and some saw a spiral to ever increasing temperatures, I don't know whether it's more settled now) And even then, taking everything into account the range of esimates ran from if 'we commit to doing this by date X, we can limit the damage' to 'we're already totally fucked'. But there is uncertainty within those ranges and it's quite important to debate where we are - are the targets in any way meaninful, are they not ambitious enough or does it not matter at this point anyway and we should focus more on mitigation (in countries rich enough to do that).
Those are the 'other sides' that should have been in the debate. Instead, we got people wibbling on about a cold winter or rain in July and others wibbling on about variations in solar activitiy (which is included in the models).
But, seriously, if you want to know where we're up to, read an IPCC report. Just keep in mind that many climate scientists think those reports paint altogether too rosy a picture - they report what enough people can agree to, which tends to be a little towards the less extreme range of predictions.
ETA: Anyway, enough from me. There surely must be someone posting on PB with better and more up to date knowledge than me on this - some oceanographer or earth scientist or someone at the Hadley Centre? If not we need to do some recruitment!
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
All those claiming Boris Johnson to be a risk to national security wash your mouths out.
After 24 hours of waterboarding, the f***** wouldn't divulge his mobile phone PIN. Not least because he couldn't. Make him Foreign Secretary, and now!
Conversely he may just be lying. I know. 'Mazing. Who knew?
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
'PIN number' really bugs me. Along with 'ATM machine'. I know it shouldn't, but it does
It has never bothered me, but it does now you have raised it.
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
'PIN number' really bugs me. Along with 'ATM machine'. I know it shouldn't, but it does
It has never bothered me, but it does now you have raised it.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
The BBC largely does it's job as a neutral platform. As the literal voice of the establishment it pisses off the left. And as a den of leftie woke liberals it pisses off the right.
As an example, Laura K seems to wind up a lot of people with her "bias" but so many of the accusations don't stand up to scrutiny. People call others biased when they don't say what they think.
Where the been has crossed the line has been the imposition of direct Tory party plants to head BBC News, be DG and Chair. Though their malign influence the left alleges is so subtle as to hardly be an issue. Not compared to right wing tabloids anyway.
There was a very famous media study done by Ben Gurion University in Israel. They took footage of the Gaza strip and a team of students, half Israeli half Palestinian, spend some time crafting an incredibly neutral - solely fact based - story that they claimed was played on television. They asked both Israeli and Palestinian students to opine on which TV channel it was shown, whether it was biased, how it was biased, etc.
Everyone thought the story was biased. Israelis thought it pro-Palestinian. Palestinians thought it pro-Israeli. Because it didn't show the narrative they wanted (their side good, the other bad), it was inherently considered to be the work of political opponents.
It turns out humans don't really want impartiality; what they want is their existing preconceptions to be reinforced.
If you were wanting to do a study on how attempts at factual unbiased reporting is perceived by different groups it would be hard to imagine a worse or less representative way of doing it than in Israel dealing with issues in Gaza.
Two more things; is there really such a thing as a 'fact' as opposed to value laden facts in any sort of reporting.
Secondly, what would unbiased reporting of the Ukraine/Russia war be like, and does anyone try?
There certainly are historical facts. Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808. The Holocaust happened. The UK decalared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939.
There are of course, any number of historical opinions, for which better or worse arguments can be put forward.
My understanding that scientists will say that relatively few things are facts, and that what laymen would call facts are are usually described as theories by scientists. Theory, being something that is almost certainly true.
There can always be arguments even about facts. Some of them based on better grounds than others.
For example, did Napoleon invade Spain in 1808, when he arrived in person to try and sort out the mess, or in 1807 when French armies began campaigning there on his orders?
On September 3rd, did Britain declare war or did it accept a state of war? Given Neville Chamberlain's rather strange broadcast on the subject you could argue it just sort of happened.
Even with the Holocaust, you can find endless arguments about whether it the victims of (say) Aktion T4 should be included in it or not.
Similarly, Richard III. He usurped the throne in July 1483, and later that same summer had his nephews (the rightful king and his heir) murdered. But you will always find people who say maybe he didn't really usurp the throne because it's possible Edward IV was married to somebody else and therefore Edward V wasn't really the king, and perhaps somebody else killed Edward V and the Duke of York.
There is a wonderful recent pic of King Charles in Scotland, with a load of banners behind him saying "Not Our King". I am a monarchist and I like living in a country where you can say "Not Our King" to him.
But an attempted factual statement of an obvious and simple sort like "Charles III is the king of GB and NI" conceals a vast array of social construct. Within the coherent web of law and constitution this is a fact, but if you ask: Does he have the powers associated with the idea of kingship the answer is NO, and if you ask is his claim to kinship legitimate, a chorus of confusion arises.
So in tiny way the factual statement I began with belongs in the same box as: Kim Jong Un is the legitimate leader of DRK; or Netanyahu is the legitimate PM of Israel. To say it is to take a side.
What they're actually saying is "ought not to be our king,"
My concern with it all is that right now, dissent is not allowed. We are at a stage whereby no one would put their heads above the parapet. Well that means that the overwhelming majority - thousands upon thousands - of climate scientists agree hence it is settled. But without going all Galileo about it is that we are in a period of absolute orthodoxy whereby dissenting views are simply not entertained.
No one disputes that the temperatures are rising but it is modelling that is telling us what happens next. Is it like cigarettes where a link has been shown to exist? Not being a climate scientist I have no idea.
I just feel uncomfortable that there is no Jeremy Paxman ("why is this lying bastard lying to me") to question it all. Are all those on here, for example, comfortable not wanting to question what is, in the end, a prediction based upon modelling and hence originates in the human mind.
Okay - what questions should Paxman be asking? There is plenty of scientific evidence not only that land and sea temperatures are rising but the rate of increase is unprecedented and it's the second bit which worries me most.
It's also the aspect which defies the modelling - some things are happening in some places at an alarming rate - what will this mean for the rest of the planet? Europe is warming very fast - I get less excited about 40c in Spain, Italy and Greece but 50c would be very different.
It's the unknown which I suspect is worrying the scientific community - yes, it might all just plateau and we might have decades of a new "normal" (I don't know) but the suspicion is we have set in train a series of events whose consequences might be far reaching and not all together optimal. To imagine, as some seem to, that none of this is happening and it's nothing to worry about or to contend our way of life in all its facets is to be defended at all costs and there can be no mitigation to the way we live, are equally flawed and dangerous.
Nor am I suggesting the radical authoritarianism of some on the Green fringe - I'm an optimist inasmuch as I believe human ingenuity and technological innovation can find resolutions but my fear is a lot of damage has been done and the consequences of our lack of action in the past 30 years will be illustrated in the next 30.
The problem is communication and action. The physics of nuclear weapons is no doubt difficult; but the prospect of the outcome of their mass use is unambiguous requiring no experts to tell us why they should not be used. Obvs this may or may not work in the long run.
The physics of climate change - the effects of human planetary action on the atmosphere - is perhaps less complicated. We all understand the greenhouse analogy.
But the outcomes are, unlike mass nuclear attack, complicated. Certainty of the general physics is one thing. Certainty about outcomes feels like intellectual superstition. Secondly, the world neatly divides between those who think the answer is much more technology and those who think the answer is much less of it.
Plus, there is the innocent torturer problem (h/t Derek Parfit). If one person runs 1000 volts through a victim, they are a torturer. If 1000 people are responsible for one volt each, they arguably are not. We see this all the time - "Activity/nation/individual X is only responsible for n trillionth% of carbon output therefore....."
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
'PIN number' really bugs me. Along with 'ATM machine'. I know it shouldn't, but it does
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
The scientific research funding follows the scientific evidence.
The vested interest funding, well there's been plenty of that for climate 'sceptics'. And probably much more lucrative for those involved.
(I do find the idea of funding bias bizarre. It's in no government's interest to fund only one side of climate science, if there were really two sides. Climate science as it stands is a massive headache for governments - it means taxing/regulating things that people like, in really unpopular areas. There's a massive incentive for governments to fund any science that would question the IPCC conclusions - making it all go away would solve a whole load of political problems. Unfortunately, science doesn't work like that - you can't just get the answers you want because if you do other people are going to point out what you've done and it's easy* for other groups to check)
*in most areas. Far less so in my field of epidemiology where we cannot share or publish the patient-level data for others to verify, due to entirely legitimate data protection concerns. Other groups could request the same data, but I'm not sure you'd get that far on public interest grounds to simply verify pre-existing research. We need more like openSAFELY where anyone can run their own code to check conclusions. This would be possible if e.g. NHS Digital had a service to hold copies of supplied data and run, on demand (at low fee) code on it and provide the results (there would still be a need to ensure no sensitive disclosure in analysis results, which is probably why this hasn't happened).
"Points" from someone whose head is obviously completely up the system.
The points about funding are definetely valid, even if they don't resolve the 'groupthink amongst academics' problem.
Yep, there's definite scope for problems there. One thing becomes accepted and everyone else takes it as read. We've seen that often enough - but we've seen that often enough because eventually someone shows that's not how things work afterall.
Again, I'm long out of this field and wasn't that closely involved to start with, but I saw a lot of disagreement among climate scientists on how the feedbacks worked and interacted. Plenty of 'out there' ideas being presented where if thing A works differently to the general perception then thing B will happen and we can test that witthin 5-10 years etc. I think there are enough people with different backgrounds in different centres studying data from different sources with different designs to reduce the risk of too much groupthink here.
I may be wrong, of course and maybe there are more people training in 'climate science' at a lower level and being taught 'truths'. The nice thing 15 years ago, which may or may not still be the case, was that climate research was brining together people from a lot of disparate disciplines with different ideas and, in most cases, not a great deal of formal training in any accepted truth of the field. The main danger was that most people on the modelling side were working on a limited number of base models, so a fundamental error in one base model could lead to errors in many people's research. But, if so, there would be a whole lot of research that quickly diverged from new observations, unless you were really unlucky. There are also, of course, a lot of people not working on models at all, but working on comparing model predictions, forwards or backwards with observations on the ground and finding better ways of doing those observations.
My concern with it all is that right now, dissent is not allowed. We are at a stage whereby no one would put their heads above the parapet. Well that means that the overwhelming majority - thousands upon thousands - of climate scientists agree hence it is settled. But without going all Galileo about it is that we are in a period of absolute orthodoxy whereby dissenting views are simply not entertained.
No one disputes that the temperatures are rising but it is modelling that is telling us what happens next. Is it like cigarettes where a link has been shown to exist? Not being a climate scientist I have no idea.
I just feel uncomfortable that there is no Jeremy Paxman ("why is this lying bastard lying to me") to question it all. Are all those on here, for example, comfortable not wanting to question what is, in the end, a prediction based upon modelling and hence originates in the human mind.
The basic link (CO2 and other gases leading to warming) is very well understood and demonstrable in a lab (or classroom). We know the incident EM radiation from the sun. We know the temperature of Earth and so we know the frequencies at which energy is radiated from Earth back out into space. We know that CO2 (and others) are good absorbers and re-emitters of this energy (in random directions, including back towards the surface) and can therefore explain how greater CO2 concentration in the atmosphere causes less of the incident energy from the sun to be, ultimately, radiated off into space. All of that is not really disputable.
So, anyone who want to claim that this will not lead to warming needs to explain the feedback loops that will prevent that. They may exist*. But the deniers refuse to engage with the simple facts at the centre of the science.
*it's seriously complicated - does warming lead to more evaporation and more cloud cover, reflecting more incident energy from the sun back into space? maybe. does warming kill vegetation and increase desertification, which is also a better reflector of incident energy back into space than plants are? maybe, probably in fact, but then you also have to take account of reducing ice extent (another good reflector) with replacement by darker vegetation. And that is, excuse the pun, the tip of the iceberg. That's where true sceptical debate would lie (and there is a lot of research and debate on these feedbacks)
I think your asterisked paragraph sums it up. Not that is complicated - no shit sherlock - just that you have casually reeled off several elements to which we don't know the answer and yet you are saying that the central premise, also elegantly articulated by you, is overriding. You answer "maybe" to several parts of the puzzle and yet that doesn't shake the central belief.
Have such issues been developed to the point whereby we can replace your maybes with your former paragraphs' certainties and can you see how seemingly unscientific that sounds.
As is often said, we know more about outer space than we do about our own planet.
They are my 'maybes'. Because my knowledge of this is 15 years out of date and even then was mostly from reading some papers, working with people more involved and attending seminars/conferences - 'maybe' is much quicker than providing an well out of date summary of the understanding. But no, there was no identified feeback at that point that would counteract warming sufficiently before things got very nasty for us (whether feedbacks after mass extinctions would eventually, over thousands of years, cool things back down again was debated at that point - some saw that and some saw a spiral to ever increasing temperatures, I don't know whether it's more settled now) And even then, taking everything into account the range of esimates ran from if 'we commit to doing this by date X, we can limit the damage' to 'we're already totally fucked'. But there is uncertainty within those ranges and it's quite important to debate where we are - are the targets in any way meaninful, are they not ambitious enough or does it not matter at this point anyway and we should focus more on mitigation (in countries rich enough to do that).
Those are the 'other sides' that should have been in the debate. Instead, we got people wibbling on about a cold winter or rain in July and others wibbling on about variations in solar activitiy (which is included in the models).
But, seriously, if you want to know where we're up to, read an IPCC report. Just keep in mind that many climate scientists think those reports paint altogether too rosy a picture - they report what enough people can agree to, which tends to be a little towards the less extreme range of predictions.
ETA: Anyway, enough from me. There surely must be someone posting on PB with better and more up to date knowledge than me on this - some oceanographer or earth scientist or someone at the Hadley Centre? If not we need to do some recruitment!
Some of us have decided it is pointless. It changes no minds and only leads to conflict. Actually knowing something about a subject is not grounds for any serious discussion when it is such a point of religious belief. My specialism by the way is palaeoenvironment modelling although I only do that professionally now for archaeological rather than geological work and make most of my money out of the evil hydrocarbon business.
For the astronomers out there in PB land people are starting to get interested in Betelgeuse again and when it will go supernova because of a recent paper.
It appears the star is further along its burning cycle than previously thought. Now in late stage carbon burning. The burning cycle shortens as you move further along the periodic table.
Thankfully it is far enough away (anything less than 150 light years from us is considered bad news) that it should just be pretty rather than deadly.
IK Pegasi is the only one within 150 light years which could do us some harm if it went, however by the time it does go it will be far further out than that, we will be long gone too.
Given how far away Betelgeuse is it may well already have gone Supernova.
The last visible Supernova was in the middle ages and it is estimated that there are 2 supernova per century in the milky way so we will be very very privileged to see it if it does.
I would love to see it. There has been a proliferation of "Betelgeuse is about to explode" videos on youtube, Although these are usually short on substance and are just youtube clickbait this seems alot more substantive.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
The BBC largely does it's job as a neutral platform. As the literal voice of the establishment it pisses off the left. And as a den of leftie woke liberals it pisses off the right.
As an example, Laura K seems to wind up a lot of people with her "bias" but so many of the accusations don't stand up to scrutiny. People call others biased when they don't say what they think.
Where the been has crossed the line has been the imposition of direct Tory party plants to head BBC News, be DG and Chair. Though their malign influence the left alleges is so subtle as to hardly be an issue. Not compared to right wing tabloids anyway.
There was a very famous media study done by Ben Gurion University in Israel. They took footage of the Gaza strip and a team of students, half Israeli half Palestinian, spend some time crafting an incredibly neutral - solely fact based - story that they claimed was played on television. They asked both Israeli and Palestinian students to opine on which TV channel it was shown, whether it was biased, how it was biased, etc.
Everyone thought the story was biased. Israelis thought it pro-Palestinian. Palestinians thought it pro-Israeli. Because it didn't show the narrative they wanted (their side good, the other bad), it was inherently considered to be the work of political opponents.
It turns out humans don't really want impartiality; what they want is their existing preconceptions to be reinforced.
If you were wanting to do a study on how attempts at factual unbiased reporting is perceived by different groups it would be hard to imagine a worse or less representative way of doing it than in Israel dealing with issues in Gaza.
Two more things; is there really such a thing as a 'fact' as opposed to value laden facts in any sort of reporting.
Secondly, what would unbiased reporting of the Ukraine/Russia war be like, and does anyone try?
There certainly are historical facts. Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808. The Holocaust happened. The UK decalared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939.
There are of course, any number of historical opinions, for which better or worse arguments can be put forward.
My understanding that scientists will say that relatively few things are facts, and that what laymen would call facts are are usually described as theories by scientists. Theory, being something that is almost certainly true.
There can always be arguments even about facts. Some of them based on better grounds than others.
For example, did Napoleon invade Spain in 1808, when he arrived in person to try and sort out the mess, or in 1807 when French armies began campaigning there on his orders?
On September 3rd, did Britain declare war or did it accept a state of war? Given Neville Chamberlain's rather strange broadcast on the subject you could argue it just sort of happened.
Even with the Holocaust, you can find endless arguments about whether it the victims of (say) Aktion T4 should be included in it or not.
Similarly, Richard III. He usurped the throne in July 1483, and later that same summer had his nephews (the rightful king and his heir) murdered. But you will always find people who say maybe he didn't really usurp the throne because it's possible Edward IV was married to somebody else and therefore Edward V wasn't really the king, and perhaps somebody else killed Edward V and the Duke of York.
There is a wonderful recent pic of King Charles in Scotland, with a load of banners behind him saying "Not Our King". I am a monarchist and I like living in a country where you can say "Not Our King" to him.
But an attempted factual statement of an obvious and simple sort like "Charles III is the king of GB and NI" conceals a vast array of social construct. Within the coherent web of law and constitution this is a fact, but if you ask: Does he have the powers associated with the idea of kingship the answer is NO, and if you ask is his claim to kinship legitimate, a chorus of confusion arises.
So in tiny way the factual statement I began with belongs in the same box as: Kim Jong Un is the legitimate leader of DRK; or Netanyahu is the legitimate PM of Israel. To say it is to take a side.
What they're actually saying is "ought not to be our king,"
That he is their king is indisputable.
Yes it is. It's highly disputable. Kingship is a social construct and an abstract noun not a verifiable fact about the empirical nature of the universe. The description ascribes to him a legitimacy which is disputable once you stand outside the elaborate structure of the state. It's like saying that Jesus is the Messiah just because some societies purport to compel assent to that concept.
On topic, I am one of those leave voters who doesn't particularly want Johnson back. His usefulness from my perspective was as the only possible challenger to Sunak who wouldn't face calls for a GE if he was made leader and PM - at least not serious ones, because of his mandate. But that challenge has been neutralised, and there seems little point in trying to rehabilitate Johnson at this point. If he wants to get himself elected to parliament and have a long term plan to get back in, fine.
And as it happens, Sunak is doing so badly that a pre-election challenge seems legitimate whether it comes from Johnson, Mordaunt, or the Downing Street cat frankly.
I don't think there will be a challenge to Sunak pre GE for three reasons. There isn't time. It's further farce building upon the already farcical line of elections and PMs from 2016 so can't do any immediate good for the prospects of the party.
The major reason is that there won't be a challenge unless at least one well supported challenger thinks it is a clear and distinct advantage to become leader pre election and lose the GE, over losing the GE and then challenging. There is no such advantage.
They will calculate and note that if they become leader and lose the 2024 GE (overwhelmingly probable) they probably won't survive.
Challenging and winning in not in the Tory's hands. Only Labour can win the election for the Tories.
You make good points. However, the lateness of time I think most will see a heavy loss as baked in now - I don't see the new leader being blamed for that. They would quite comfortably keep their position imho. This is for someone who wants to be 'the alternative' and potentially doesn't want to go through a whole rigours of a competitive leadership election. That looks like Penny to me. I agree it's not a dead cert.
Not much change on this week's Techne poll - Labour down one, LDs up one so basically MoE.
Just skimming the Techne tables, 2016 LEAVE voters vote Conservative 44%, Labour 29%, Reform 11% - this was the group which delivered the Conservative majority in 2019 when they split 73-15 for Boris Johnson.
Now, if you add the Reform numbers to the Conservative numbers the split becomes 55-29 which is a 16% swing and matches the swing in the top line figures.
I have the impression, Stodge, that a good deal of the Conservative support that has drifted away has gone on the direction of Reform which is beginning to record some decent figures.
This has serious and quite worying implications for the long-term future of the Part (the Conservaitve one, that is.)
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
The scientific research funding follows the scientific evidence.
The vested interest funding, well there's been plenty of that for climate 'sceptics'. And probably much more lucrative for those involved.
(I do find the idea of funding bias bizarre. It's in no government's interest to fund only one side of climate science, if there were really two sides. Climate science as it stands is a massive headache for governments - it means taxing/regulating things that people like, in really unpopular areas. There's a massive incentive for governments to fund any science that would question the IPCC conclusions - making it all go away would solve a whole load of political problems. Unfortunately, science doesn't work like that - you can't just get the answers you want because if you do other people are going to point out what you've done and it's easy* for other groups to check)
*in most areas. Far less so in my field of epidemiology where we cannot share or publish the patient-level data for others to verify, due to entirely legitimate data protection concerns. Other groups could request the same data, but I'm not sure you'd get that far on public interest grounds to simply verify pre-existing research. We need more like openSAFELY where anyone can run their own code to check conclusions. This would be possible if e.g. NHS Digital had a service to hold copies of supplied data and run, on demand (at low fee) code on it and provide the results (there would still be a need to ensure no sensitive disclosure in analysis results, which is probably why this hasn't happened).
"Points" from someone whose head is obviously completely up the system.
The points about funding are definetely valid, even if they don't resolve the 'groupthink amongst academics' problem.
Yep, there's definite scope for problems there. One thing becomes accepted and everyone else takes it as read. We've seen that often enough - but we've seen that often enough because eventually someone shows that's not how things work afterall.
Again, I'm long out of this field and wasn't that closely involved to start with, but I saw a lot of disagreement among climate scientists on how the feedbacks worked and interacted. Plenty of 'out there' ideas being presented where if thing A works differently to the general perception then thing B will happen and we can test that witthin 5-10 years etc. I think there are enough people with different backgrounds in different centres studying data from different sources with different designs to reduce the risk of too much groupthink here.
I may be wrong, of course and maybe there are more people training in 'climate science' at a lower level and being taught 'truths'. The nice thing 15 years ago, which may or may not still be the case, was that climate research was brining together people from a lot of disparate disciplines with different ideas and, in most cases, not a great deal of formal training in any accepted truth of the field. The main danger was that most people on the modelling side were working on a limited number of base models, so a fundamental error in one base model could lead to errors in many people's research. But, if so, there would be a whole lot of research that quickly diverged from new observations, unless you were really unlucky. There are also, of course, a lot of people not working on models at all, but working on comparing model predictions, forwards or backwards with observations on the ground and finding better ways of doing those observations.
My concern with it all is that right now, dissent is not allowed. We are at a stage whereby no one would put their heads above the parapet. Well that means that the overwhelming majority - thousands upon thousands - of climate scientists agree hence it is settled. But without going all Galileo about it is that we are in a period of absolute orthodoxy whereby dissenting views are simply not entertained.
No one disputes that the temperatures are rising but it is modelling that is telling us what happens next. Is it like cigarettes where a link has been shown to exist? Not being a climate scientist I have no idea.
I just feel uncomfortable that there is no Jeremy Paxman ("why is this lying bastard lying to me") to question it all. Are all those on here, for example, comfortable not wanting to question what is, in the end, a prediction based upon modelling and hence originates in the human mind.
The basic link (CO2 and other gases leading to warming) is very well understood and demonstrable in a lab (or classroom). We know the incident EM radiation from the sun. We know the temperature of Earth and so we know the frequencies at which energy is radiated from Earth back out into space. We know that CO2 (and others) are good absorbers and re-emitters of this energy (in random directions, including back towards the surface) and can therefore explain how greater CO2 concentration in the atmosphere causes less of the incident energy from the sun to be, ultimately, radiated off into space. All of that is not really disputable.
So, anyone who want to claim that this will not lead to warming needs to explain the feedback loops that will prevent that. They may exist*. But the deniers refuse to engage with the simple facts at the centre of the science.
*it's seriously complicated - does warming lead to more evaporation and more cloud cover, reflecting more incident energy from the sun back into space? maybe. does warming kill vegetation and increase desertification, which is also a better reflector of incident energy back into space than plants are? maybe, probably in fact, but then you also have to take account of reducing ice extent (another good reflector) with replacement by darker vegetation. And that is, excuse the pun, the tip of the iceberg. That's where true sceptical debate would lie (and there is a lot of research and debate on these feedbacks)
I think your asterisked paragraph sums it up. Not that is complicated - no shit sherlock - just that you have casually reeled off several elements to which we don't know the answer and yet you are saying that the central premise, also elegantly articulated by you, is overriding. You answer "maybe" to several parts of the puzzle and yet that doesn't shake the central belief.
Have such issues been developed to the point whereby we can replace your maybes with your former paragraphs' certainties and can you see how seemingly unscientific that sounds.
As is often said, we know more about outer space than we do about our own planet.
They are my 'maybes'. Because my knowledge of this is 15 years out of date and even then was mostly from reading some papers, working with people more involved and attending seminars/conferences - 'maybe' is much quicker than providing an well out of date summary of the understanding. But no, there was no identified feeback at that point that would counteract warming sufficiently before things got very nasty for us (whether feedbacks after mass extinctions would eventually, over thousands of years, cool things back down again was debated at that point - some saw that and some saw a spiral to ever increasing temperatures, I don't know whether it's more settled now) And even then, taking everything into account the range of esimates ran from if 'we commit to doing this by date X, we can limit the damage' to 'we're already totally fucked'. But there is uncertainty within those ranges and it's quite important to debate where we are - are the targets in any way meaninful, are they not ambitious enough or does it not matter at this point anyway and we should focus more on mitigation (in countries rich enough to do that).
Those are the 'other sides' that should have been in the debate. Instead, we got people wibbling on about a cold winter or rain in July and others wibbling on about variations in solar activitiy (which is included in the models).
But, seriously, if you want to know where we're up to, read an IPCC report. Just keep in mind that many climate scientists think those reports paint altogether too rosy a picture - they report what enough people can agree to, which tends to be a little towards the less extreme range of predictions.
ETA: Anyway, enough from me. There surely must be someone posting on PB with better and more up to date knowledge than me on this - some oceanographer or earth scientist or someone at the Hadley Centre? If not we need to do some recruitment!
It really wouldn't matter if you had a Hadley Centre scientist posting here, because most people wouldn't accept the person was who they said they were, another portion would dismiss them as being biased due to having a vested interest, and the rest would dismiss anything they said on the basis that all climate scientists were mistaken due to a fundamental mistake made in the radiation transfer code of global circulation models.
Trust me, that's an experiment that's been repeated many times.
My concern with it all is that right now, dissent is not allowed. We are at a stage whereby no one would put their heads above the parapet. Well that means that the overwhelming majority - thousands upon thousands - of climate scientists agree hence it is settled. But without going all Galileo about it is that we are in a period of absolute orthodoxy whereby dissenting views are simply not entertained.
No one disputes that the temperatures are rising but it is modelling that is telling us what happens next. Is it like cigarettes where a link has been shown to exist? Not being a climate scientist I have no idea.
I just feel uncomfortable that there is no Jeremy Paxman ("why is this lying bastard lying to me") to question it all. Are all those on here, for example, comfortable not wanting to question what is, in the end, a prediction based upon modelling and hence originates in the human mind.
Okay - what questions should Paxman be asking? There is plenty of scientific evidence not only that land and sea temperatures are rising but the rate of increase is unprecedented and it's the second bit which worries me most.
It's also the aspect which defies the modelling - some things are happening in some places at an alarming rate - what will this mean for the rest of the planet? Europe is warming very fast - I get less excited about 40c in Spain, Italy and Greece but 50c would be very different.
It's the unknown which I suspect is worrying the scientific community - yes, it might all just plateau and we might have decades of a new "normal" (I don't know) but the suspicion is we have set in train a series of events whose consequences might be far reaching and not all together optimal. To imagine, as some seem to, that none of this is happening and it's nothing to worry about or to contend our way of life in all its facets is to be defended at all costs and there can be no mitigation to the way we live, are equally flawed and dangerous.
Nor am I suggesting the radical authoritarianism of some on the Green fringe - I'm an optimist inasmuch as I believe human ingenuity and technological innovation can find resolutions but my fear is a lot of damage has been done and the consequences of our lack of action in the past 30 years will be illustrated in the next 30.
The problem is communication and action. The physics of nuclear weapons is no doubt difficult; but the prospect of the outcome of their mass use is unambiguous requiring no experts to tell us why they should not be used. Obvs this may or may not work in the long run.
The physics of climate change - the effects of human planetary action on the atmosphere - is perhaps less complicated. We all understand the greenhouse analogy.
But the outcomes are, unlike mass nuclear attack, complicated. Certainty of the general physics is one thing. Certainty about outcomes feels like intellectual superstition. Secondly, the world neatly divides between those who think the answer is much more technology and those who think the answer is much less of it.
Plus, there is the innocent torturer problem (h/t Derek Parfit). If one person runs 1000 volts through a victim, they are a torturer. If 1000 people are responsible for one volt each, they arguably are not. We see this all the time - "Activity/nation/individual X is only responsible for n trillionth% of carbon output therefore....."
Also, nuclear war (certainly) and AI (mostly) don't interact with our standard of living. They don't require us to change the way we live our lives. Carbon dioxide does, and the more we faff and delay the more painful the adjustment is likely to be.
Climate scientists and politicians are like the bank manager saying that your overdraft is unsustainable and of course it will be splendid once you are earning a fortune but in the meantime we must discuss your outgoings... Such people are never loved, even when they are right.
For the astronomers out there in PB land people are starting to get interested in Betelgeuse again and when it will go supernova because of a recent paper.
It appears the star is further along its burning cycle than previously thought. Now in late stage carbon burning. The burning cycle shortens as you move further along the periodic table.
Thankfully it is far enough away (anything less than 150 light years from us is considered bad news) that it should just be pretty rather than deadly.
IK Pegasi is the only one within 150 light years which could do us some harm if it went, however by the time it does go it will be far further out than that, we will be long gone too.
Given how far away Betelgeuse is it may well already have gone Supernova.
The last visible Supernova was in the middle ages and it is estimated that there are 2 supernova per century in the milky way so we will be very very privileged to see it if it does.
I would love to see it. There has been a proliferation of "Betelgeuse is about to explode" videos on youtube, Although these are usually short on substance and are just youtube clickbait this seems alot more substantive.
Actually the last visible Supernova by amateur telescope is ongoing right now. It is in M101 - the Pinwheel Galaxy.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
The BBC largely does it's job as a neutral platform. As the literal voice of the establishment it pisses off the left. And as a den of leftie woke liberals it pisses off the right.
As an example, Laura K seems to wind up a lot of people with her "bias" but so many of the accusations don't stand up to scrutiny. People call others biased when they don't say what they think.
Where the been has crossed the line has been the imposition of direct Tory party plants to head BBC News, be DG and Chair. Though their malign influence the left alleges is so subtle as to hardly be an issue. Not compared to right wing tabloids anyway.
There was a very famous media study done by Ben Gurion University in Israel. They took footage of the Gaza strip and a team of students, half Israeli half Palestinian, spend some time crafting an incredibly neutral - solely fact based - story that they claimed was played on television. They asked both Israeli and Palestinian students to opine on which TV channel it was shown, whether it was biased, how it was biased, etc.
Everyone thought the story was biased. Israelis thought it pro-Palestinian. Palestinians thought it pro-Israeli. Because it didn't show the narrative they wanted (their side good, the other bad), it was inherently considered to be the work of political opponents.
It turns out humans don't really want impartiality; what they want is their existing preconceptions to be reinforced.
If you were wanting to do a study on how attempts at factual unbiased reporting is perceived by different groups it would be hard to imagine a worse or less representative way of doing it than in Israel dealing with issues in Gaza.
Two more things; is there really such a thing as a 'fact' as opposed to value laden facts in any sort of reporting.
Secondly, what would unbiased reporting of the Ukraine/Russia war be like, and does anyone try?
There certainly are historical facts. Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808. The Holocaust happened. The UK decalared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939.
There are of course, any number of historical opinions, for which better or worse arguments can be put forward.
My understanding that scientists will say that relatively few things are facts, and that what laymen would call facts are are usually described as theories by scientists. Theory, being something that is almost certainly true.
There can always be arguments even about facts. Some of them based on better grounds than others.
For example, did Napoleon invade Spain in 1808, when he arrived in person to try and sort out the mess, or in 1807 when French armies began campaigning there on his orders?
On September 3rd, did Britain declare war or did it accept a state of war? Given Neville Chamberlain's rather strange broadcast on the subject you could argue it just sort of happened.
Even with the Holocaust, you can find endless arguments about whether it the victims of (say) Aktion T4 should be included in it or not.
Similarly, Richard III. He usurped the throne in July 1483, and later that same summer had his nephews (the rightful king and his heir) murdered. But you will always find people who say maybe he didn't really usurp the throne because it's possible Edward IV was married to somebody else and therefore Edward V wasn't really the king, and perhaps somebody else killed Edward V and the Duke of York.
There is a wonderful recent pic of King Charles in Scotland, with a load of banners behind him saying "Not Our King". I am a monarchist and I like living in a country where you can say "Not Our King" to him.
But an attempted factual statement of an obvious and simple sort like "Charles III is the king of GB and NI" conceals a vast array of social construct. Within the coherent web of law and constitution this is a fact, but if you ask: Does he have the powers associated with the idea of kingship the answer is NO, and if you ask is his claim to kinship legitimate, a chorus of confusion arises.
So in tiny way the factual statement I began with belongs in the same box as: Kim Jong Un is the legitimate leader of DRK; or Netanyahu is the legitimate PM of Israel. To say it is to take a side.
What they're actually saying is "ought not to be our king,"
That he is their king is indisputable.
Yes it is. It's highly disputable. Kingship is a social construct and an abstract noun not a verifiable fact about the empirical nature of the universe. The description ascribes to him a legitimacy which is disputable once you stand outside the elaborate structure of the state. It's like saying that Jesus is the Messiah just because some societies purport to compel assent to that concept.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
The BBC largely does it's job as a neutral platform. As the literal voice of the establishment it pisses off the left. And as a den of leftie woke liberals it pisses off the right.
As an example, Laura K seems to wind up a lot of people with her "bias" but so many of the accusations don't stand up to scrutiny. People call others biased when they don't say what they think.
Where the been has crossed the line has been the imposition of direct Tory party plants to head BBC News, be DG and Chair. Though their malign influence the left alleges is so subtle as to hardly be an issue. Not compared to right wing tabloids anyway.
There was a very famous media study done by Ben Gurion University in Israel. They took footage of the Gaza strip and a team of students, half Israeli half Palestinian, spend some time crafting an incredibly neutral - solely fact based - story that they claimed was played on television. They asked both Israeli and Palestinian students to opine on which TV channel it was shown, whether it was biased, how it was biased, etc.
Everyone thought the story was biased. Israelis thought it pro-Palestinian. Palestinians thought it pro-Israeli. Because it didn't show the narrative they wanted (their side good, the other bad), it was inherently considered to be the work of political opponents.
It turns out humans don't really want impartiality; what they want is their existing preconceptions to be reinforced.
If you were wanting to do a study on how attempts at factual unbiased reporting is perceived by different groups it would be hard to imagine a worse or less representative way of doing it than in Israel dealing with issues in Gaza.
Two more things; is there really such a thing as a 'fact' as opposed to value laden facts in any sort of reporting.
Secondly, what would unbiased reporting of the Ukraine/Russia war be like, and does anyone try?
There certainly are historical facts. Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808. The Holocaust happened. The UK decalared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939.
There are of course, any number of historical opinions, for which better or worse arguments can be put forward.
My understanding that scientists will say that relatively few things are facts, and that what laymen would call facts are are usually described as theories by scientists. Theory, being something that is almost certainly true.
There can always be arguments even about facts. Some of them based on better grounds than others.
For example, did Napoleon invade Spain in 1808, when he arrived in person to try and sort out the mess, or in 1807 when French armies began campaigning there on his orders?
On September 3rd, did Britain declare war or did it accept a state of war? Given Neville Chamberlain's rather strange broadcast on the subject you could argue it just sort of happened.
Even with the Holocaust, you can find endless arguments about whether it the victims of (say) Aktion T4 should be included in it or not.
Similarly, Richard III. He usurped the throne in July 1483, and later that same summer had his nephews (the rightful king and his heir) murdered. But you will always find people who say maybe he didn't really usurp the throne because it's possible Edward IV was married to somebody else and therefore Edward V wasn't really the king, and perhaps somebody else killed Edward V and the Duke of York.
There is a wonderful recent pic of King Charles in Scotland, with a load of banners behind him saying "Not Our King". I am a monarchist and I like living in a country where you can say "Not Our King" to him.
But an attempted factual statement of an obvious and simple sort like "Charles III is the king of GB and NI" conceals a vast array of social construct. Within the coherent web of law and constitution this is a fact, but if you ask: Does he have the powers associated with the idea of kingship the answer is NO, and if you ask is his claim to kinship legitimate, a chorus of confusion arises.
So in tiny way the factual statement I began with belongs in the same box as: Kim Jong Un is the legitimate leader of DRK; or Netanyahu is the legitimate PM of Israel. To say it is to take a side.
What they're actually saying is "ought not to be our king,"
That he is their king is indisputable.
Yes it is. It's highly disputable. Kingship is a social construct and an abstract noun not a verifiable fact about the empirical nature of the universe. The description ascribes to him a legitimacy which is disputable once you stand outside the elaborate structure of the state. It's like saying that Jesus is the Messiah just because some societies purport to compel assent to that concept.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
The BBC largely does it's job as a neutral platform. As the literal voice of the establishment it pisses off the left. And as a den of leftie woke liberals it pisses off the right.
As an example, Laura K seems to wind up a lot of people with her "bias" but so many of the accusations don't stand up to scrutiny. People call others biased when they don't say what they think.
Where the been has crossed the line has been the imposition of direct Tory party plants to head BBC News, be DG and Chair. Though their malign influence the left alleges is so subtle as to hardly be an issue. Not compared to right wing tabloids anyway.
There was a very famous media study done by Ben Gurion University in Israel. They took footage of the Gaza strip and a team of students, half Israeli half Palestinian, spend some time crafting an incredibly neutral - solely fact based - story that they claimed was played on television. They asked both Israeli and Palestinian students to opine on which TV channel it was shown, whether it was biased, how it was biased, etc.
Everyone thought the story was biased. Israelis thought it pro-Palestinian. Palestinians thought it pro-Israeli. Because it didn't show the narrative they wanted (their side good, the other bad), it was inherently considered to be the work of political opponents.
It turns out humans don't really want impartiality; what they want is their existing preconceptions to be reinforced.
If you were wanting to do a study on how attempts at factual unbiased reporting is perceived by different groups it would be hard to imagine a worse or less representative way of doing it than in Israel dealing with issues in Gaza.
Two more things; is there really such a thing as a 'fact' as opposed to value laden facts in any sort of reporting.
Secondly, what would unbiased reporting of the Ukraine/Russia war be like, and does anyone try?
There certainly are historical facts. Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808. The Holocaust happened. The UK decalared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939.
There are of course, any number of historical opinions, for which better or worse arguments can be put forward.
My understanding that scientists will say that relatively few things are facts, and that what laymen would call facts are are usually described as theories by scientists. Theory, being something that is almost certainly true.
There can always be arguments even about facts. Some of them based on better grounds than others.
For example, did Napoleon invade Spain in 1808, when he arrived in person to try and sort out the mess, or in 1807 when French armies began campaigning there on his orders?
On September 3rd, did Britain declare war or did it accept a state of war? Given Neville Chamberlain's rather strange broadcast on the subject you could argue it just sort of happened.
Even with the Holocaust, you can find endless arguments about whether it the victims of (say) Aktion T4 should be included in it or not.
Similarly, Richard III. He usurped the throne in July 1483, and later that same summer had his nephews (the rightful king and his heir) murdered. But you will always find people who say maybe he didn't really usurp the throne because it's possible Edward IV was married to somebody else and therefore Edward V wasn't really the king, and perhaps somebody else killed Edward V and the Duke of York.
There is a wonderful recent pic of King Charles in Scotland, with a load of banners behind him saying "Not Our King". I am a monarchist and I like living in a country where you can say "Not Our King" to him.
But an attempted factual statement of an obvious and simple sort like "Charles III is the king of GB and NI" conceals a vast array of social construct. Within the coherent web of law and constitution this is a fact, but if you ask: Does he have the powers associated with the idea of kingship the answer is NO, and if you ask is his claim to kinship legitimate, a chorus of confusion arises.
So in tiny way the factual statement I began with belongs in the same box as: Kim Jong Un is the legitimate leader of DRK; or Netanyahu is the legitimate PM of Israel. To say it is to take a side.
What they're actually saying is "ought not to be our king,"
That he is their king is indisputable.
Yes it is. It's highly disputable. Kingship is a social construct and an abstract noun not a verifiable fact about the empirical nature of the universe. The description ascribes to him a legitimacy which is disputable once you stand outside the elaborate structure of the state. It's like saying that Jesus is the Messiah just because some societies purport to compel assent to that concept.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
The BBC largely does it's job as a neutral platform. As the literal voice of the establishment it pisses off the left. And as a den of leftie woke liberals it pisses off the right.
As an example, Laura K seems to wind up a lot of people with her "bias" but so many of the accusations don't stand up to scrutiny. People call others biased when they don't say what they think.
Where the been has crossed the line has been the imposition of direct Tory party plants to head BBC News, be DG and Chair. Though their malign influence the left alleges is so subtle as to hardly be an issue. Not compared to right wing tabloids anyway.
There was a very famous media study done by Ben Gurion University in Israel. They took footage of the Gaza strip and a team of students, half Israeli half Palestinian, spend some time crafting an incredibly neutral - solely fact based - story that they claimed was played on television. They asked both Israeli and Palestinian students to opine on which TV channel it was shown, whether it was biased, how it was biased, etc.
Everyone thought the story was biased. Israelis thought it pro-Palestinian. Palestinians thought it pro-Israeli. Because it didn't show the narrative they wanted (their side good, the other bad), it was inherently considered to be the work of political opponents.
It turns out humans don't really want impartiality; what they want is their existing preconceptions to be reinforced.
If you were wanting to do a study on how attempts at factual unbiased reporting is perceived by different groups it would be hard to imagine a worse or less representative way of doing it than in Israel dealing with issues in Gaza.
Two more things; is there really such a thing as a 'fact' as opposed to value laden facts in any sort of reporting.
Secondly, what would unbiased reporting of the Ukraine/Russia war be like, and does anyone try?
There certainly are historical facts. Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808. The Holocaust happened. The UK decalared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939.
There are of course, any number of historical opinions, for which better or worse arguments can be put forward.
My understanding that scientists will say that relatively few things are facts, and that what laymen would call facts are are usually described as theories by scientists. Theory, being something that is almost certainly true.
There can always be arguments even about facts. Some of them based on better grounds than others.
For example, did Napoleon invade Spain in 1808, when he arrived in person to try and sort out the mess, or in 1807 when French armies began campaigning there on his orders?
On September 3rd, did Britain declare war or did it accept a state of war? Given Neville Chamberlain's rather strange broadcast on the subject you could argue it just sort of happened.
Even with the Holocaust, you can find endless arguments about whether it the victims of (say) Aktion T4 should be included in it or not.
Similarly, Richard III. He usurped the throne in July 1483, and later that same summer had his nephews (the rightful king and his heir) murdered. But you will always find people who say maybe he didn't really usurp the throne because it's possible Edward IV was married to somebody else and therefore Edward V wasn't really the king, and perhaps somebody else killed Edward V and the Duke of York.
There is a wonderful recent pic of King Charles in Scotland, with a load of banners behind him saying "Not Our King". I am a monarchist and I like living in a country where you can say "Not Our King" to him.
But an attempted factual statement of an obvious and simple sort like "Charles III is the king of GB and NI" conceals a vast array of social construct. Within the coherent web of law and constitution this is a fact, but if you ask: Does he have the powers associated with the idea of kingship the answer is NO, and if you ask is his claim to kinship legitimate, a chorus of confusion arises.
So in tiny way the factual statement I began with belongs in the same box as: Kim Jong Un is the legitimate leader of DRK; or Netanyahu is the legitimate PM of Israel. To say it is to take a side.
What they're actually saying is "ought not to be our king,"
That he is their king is indisputable.
Yes it is. It's highly disputable. Kingship is a social construct and an abstract noun not a verifiable fact about the empirical nature of the universe. The description ascribes to him a legitimacy which is disputable once you stand outside the elaborate structure of the state. It's like saying that Jesus is the Messiah just because some societies purport to compel assent to that concept.
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
'PIN number' really bugs me. Along with 'ATM machine'. I know it shouldn't, but it does
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
The BBC largely does it's job as a neutral platform. As the literal voice of the establishment it pisses off the left. And as a den of leftie woke liberals it pisses off the right.
As an example, Laura K seems to wind up a lot of people with her "bias" but so many of the accusations don't stand up to scrutiny. People call others biased when they don't say what they think.
Where the been has crossed the line has been the imposition of direct Tory party plants to head BBC News, be DG and Chair. Though their malign influence the left alleges is so subtle as to hardly be an issue. Not compared to right wing tabloids anyway.
There was a very famous media study done by Ben Gurion University in Israel. They took footage of the Gaza strip and a team of students, half Israeli half Palestinian, spend some time crafting an incredibly neutral - solely fact based - story that they claimed was played on television. They asked both Israeli and Palestinian students to opine on which TV channel it was shown, whether it was biased, how it was biased, etc.
Everyone thought the story was biased. Israelis thought it pro-Palestinian. Palestinians thought it pro-Israeli. Because it didn't show the narrative they wanted (their side good, the other bad), it was inherently considered to be the work of political opponents.
It turns out humans don't really want impartiality; what they want is their existing preconceptions to be reinforced.
If you were wanting to do a study on how attempts at factual unbiased reporting is perceived by different groups it would be hard to imagine a worse or less representative way of doing it than in Israel dealing with issues in Gaza.
Two more things; is there really such a thing as a 'fact' as opposed to value laden facts in any sort of reporting.
Secondly, what would unbiased reporting of the Ukraine/Russia war be like, and does anyone try?
There certainly are historical facts. Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808. The Holocaust happened. The UK decalared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939.
There are of course, any number of historical opinions, for which better or worse arguments can be put forward.
My understanding that scientists will say that relatively few things are facts, and that what laymen would call facts are are usually described as theories by scientists. Theory, being something that is almost certainly true.
There can always be arguments even about facts. Some of them based on better grounds than others.
For example, did Napoleon invade Spain in 1808, when he arrived in person to try and sort out the mess, or in 1807 when French armies began campaigning there on his orders?
On September 3rd, did Britain declare war or did it accept a state of war? Given Neville Chamberlain's rather strange broadcast on the subject you could argue it just sort of happened.
Even with the Holocaust, you can find endless arguments about whether it the victims of (say) Aktion T4 should be included in it or not.
Similarly, Richard III. He usurped the throne in July 1483, and later that same summer had his nephews (the rightful king and his heir) murdered. But you will always find people who say maybe he didn't really usurp the throne because it's possible Edward IV was married to somebody else and therefore Edward V wasn't really the king, and perhaps somebody else killed Edward V and the Duke of York.
There is a wonderful recent pic of King Charles in Scotland, with a load of banners behind him saying "Not Our King". I am a monarchist and I like living in a country where you can say "Not Our King" to him.
But an attempted factual statement of an obvious and simple sort like "Charles III is the king of GB and NI" conceals a vast array of social construct. Within the coherent web of law and constitution this is a fact, but if you ask: Does he have the powers associated with the idea of kingship the answer is NO, and if you ask is his claim to kinship legitimate, a chorus of confusion arises.
So in tiny way the factual statement I began with belongs in the same box as: Kim Jong Un is the legitimate leader of DRK; or Netanyahu is the legitimate PM of Israel. To say it is to take a side.
What they're actually saying is "ought not to be our king,"
That he is their king is indisputable.
Yes it is. It's highly disputable. Kingship is a social construct and an abstract noun not a verifiable fact about the empirical nature of the universe. The description ascribes to him a legitimacy which is disputable once you stand outside the elaborate structure of the state. It's like saying that Jesus is the Messiah just because some societies purport to compel assent to that concept.
My concern with it all is that right now, dissent is not allowed. We are at a stage whereby no one would put their heads above the parapet. Well that means that the overwhelming majority - thousands upon thousands - of climate scientists agree hence it is settled. But without going all Galileo about it is that we are in a period of absolute orthodoxy whereby dissenting views are simply not entertained.
No one disputes that the temperatures are rising but it is modelling that is telling us what happens next. Is it like cigarettes where a link has been shown to exist? Not being a climate scientist I have no idea.
I just feel uncomfortable that there is no Jeremy Paxman ("why is this lying bastard lying to me") to question it all. Are all those on here, for example, comfortable not wanting to question what is, in the end, a prediction based upon modelling and hence originates in the human mind.
Okay - what questions should Paxman be asking? There is plenty of scientific evidence not only that land and sea temperatures are rising but the rate of increase is unprecedented and it's the second bit which worries me most.
It's also the aspect which defies the modelling - some things are happening in some places at an alarming rate - what will this mean for the rest of the planet? Europe is warming very fast - I get less excited about 40c in Spain, Italy and Greece but 50c would be very different.
It's the unknown which I suspect is worrying the scientific community - yes, it might all just plateau and we might have decades of a new "normal" (I don't know) but the suspicion is we have set in train a series of events whose consequences might be far reaching and not all together optimal. To imagine, as some seem to, that none of this is happening and it's nothing to worry about or to contend our way of life in all its facets is to be defended at all costs and there can be no mitigation to the way we live, are equally flawed and dangerous.
Nor am I suggesting the radical authoritarianism of some on the Green fringe - I'm an optimist inasmuch as I believe human ingenuity and technological innovation can find resolutions but my fear is a lot of damage has been done and the consequences of our lack of action in the past 30 years will be illustrated in the next 30.
Haven't the seven warmest days recorded on earth (no idea how they work out the global average) all been this month?
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
The BBC largely does it's job as a neutral platform. As the literal voice of the establishment it pisses off the left. And as a den of leftie woke liberals it pisses off the right.
As an example, Laura K seems to wind up a lot of people with her "bias" but so many of the accusations don't stand up to scrutiny. People call others biased when they don't say what they think.
Where the been has crossed the line has been the imposition of direct Tory party plants to head BBC News, be DG and Chair. Though their malign influence the left alleges is so subtle as to hardly be an issue. Not compared to right wing tabloids anyway.
There was a very famous media study done by Ben Gurion University in Israel. They took footage of the Gaza strip and a team of students, half Israeli half Palestinian, spend some time crafting an incredibly neutral - solely fact based - story that they claimed was played on television. They asked both Israeli and Palestinian students to opine on which TV channel it was shown, whether it was biased, how it was biased, etc.
Everyone thought the story was biased. Israelis thought it pro-Palestinian. Palestinians thought it pro-Israeli. Because it didn't show the narrative they wanted (their side good, the other bad), it was inherently considered to be the work of political opponents.
It turns out humans don't really want impartiality; what they want is their existing preconceptions to be reinforced.
If you were wanting to do a study on how attempts at factual unbiased reporting is perceived by different groups it would be hard to imagine a worse or less representative way of doing it than in Israel dealing with issues in Gaza.
Two more things; is there really such a thing as a 'fact' as opposed to value laden facts in any sort of reporting.
Secondly, what would unbiased reporting of the Ukraine/Russia war be like, and does anyone try?
There certainly are historical facts. Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808. The Holocaust happened. The UK decalared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939.
There are of course, any number of historical opinions, for which better or worse arguments can be put forward.
My understanding that scientists will say that relatively few things are facts, and that what laymen would call facts are are usually described as theories by scientists. Theory, being something that is almost certainly true.
There can always be arguments even about facts. Some of them based on better grounds than others.
For example, did Napoleon invade Spain in 1808, when he arrived in person to try and sort out the mess, or in 1807 when French armies began campaigning there on his orders?
On September 3rd, did Britain declare war or did it accept a state of war? Given Neville Chamberlain's rather strange broadcast on the subject you could argue it just sort of happened.
Even with the Holocaust, you can find endless arguments about whether it the victims of (say) Aktion T4 should be included in it or not.
Similarly, Richard III. He usurped the throne in July 1483, and later that same summer had his nephews (the rightful king and his heir) murdered. But you will always find people who say maybe he didn't really usurp the throne because it's possible Edward IV was married to somebody else and therefore Edward V wasn't really the king, and perhaps somebody else killed Edward V and the Duke of York.
There is a wonderful recent pic of King Charles in Scotland, with a load of banners behind him saying "Not Our King". I am a monarchist and I like living in a country where you can say "Not Our King" to him.
But an attempted factual statement of an obvious and simple sort like "Charles III is the king of GB and NI" conceals a vast array of social construct. Within the coherent web of law and constitution this is a fact, but if you ask: Does he have the powers associated with the idea of kingship the answer is NO, and if you ask is his claim to kinship legitimate, a chorus of confusion arises.
So in tiny way the factual statement I began with belongs in the same box as: Kim Jong Un is the legitimate leader of DRK; or Netanyahu is the legitimate PM of Israel. To say it is to take a side.
What they're actually saying is "ought not to be our king,"
That he is their king is indisputable.
Yes it is. It's highly disputable. Kingship is a social construct and an abstract noun not a verifiable fact about the empirical nature of the universe. The description ascribes to him a legitimacy which is disputable once you stand outside the elaborate structure of the state. It's like saying that Jesus is the Messiah just because some societies purport to compel assent to that concept.
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
All those claiming Boris Johnson to be a risk to national security wash your mouths out.
After 24 hours of waterboarding, the f***** wouldn't divulge his mobile phone PIN. Not least because he couldn't. Make him Foreign Secretary, and now!
Conversely he may just be lying. I know. 'Mazing. Who knew?
He is probably lying but as a lie it is so compellingly likely to be true. Quite the dilemma.
For the astronomers out there in PB land people are starting to get interested in Betelgeuse again and when it will go supernova because of a recent paper.
It appears the star is further along its burning cycle than previously thought. Now in late stage carbon burning. The burning cycle shortens as you move further along the periodic table.
Thankfully it is far enough away (anything less than 150 light years from us is considered bad news) that it should just be pretty rather than deadly.
IK Pegasi is the only one within 150 light years which could do us some harm if it went, however by the time it does go it will be far further out than that, we will be long gone too.
Given how far away Betelgeuse is it may well already have gone Supernova.
The last visible Supernova was in the middle ages and it is estimated that there are 2 supernova per century in the milky way so we will be very very privileged to see it if it does.
I would love to see it. There has been a proliferation of "Betelgeuse is about to explode" videos on youtube, Although these are usually short on substance and are just youtube clickbait this seems alot more substantive.
Actually the last visible Supernova by amateur telescope is ongoing right now. It is in M101 - the Pinwheel Galaxy.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
The BBC largely does it's job as a neutral platform. As the literal voice of the establishment it pisses off the left. And as a den of leftie woke liberals it pisses off the right.
As an example, Laura K seems to wind up a lot of people with her "bias" but so many of the accusations don't stand up to scrutiny. People call others biased when they don't say what they think.
Where the been has crossed the line has been the imposition of direct Tory party plants to head BBC News, be DG and Chair. Though their malign influence the left alleges is so subtle as to hardly be an issue. Not compared to right wing tabloids anyway.
There was a very famous media study done by Ben Gurion University in Israel. They took footage of the Gaza strip and a team of students, half Israeli half Palestinian, spend some time crafting an incredibly neutral - solely fact based - story that they claimed was played on television. They asked both Israeli and Palestinian students to opine on which TV channel it was shown, whether it was biased, how it was biased, etc.
Everyone thought the story was biased. Israelis thought it pro-Palestinian. Palestinians thought it pro-Israeli. Because it didn't show the narrative they wanted (their side good, the other bad), it was inherently considered to be the work of political opponents.
It turns out humans don't really want impartiality; what they want is their existing preconceptions to be reinforced.
If you were wanting to do a study on how attempts at factual unbiased reporting is perceived by different groups it would be hard to imagine a worse or less representative way of doing it than in Israel dealing with issues in Gaza.
Two more things; is there really such a thing as a 'fact' as opposed to value laden facts in any sort of reporting.
Secondly, what would unbiased reporting of the Ukraine/Russia war be like, and does anyone try?
There certainly are historical facts. Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808. The Holocaust happened. The UK decalared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939.
There are of course, any number of historical opinions, for which better or worse arguments can be put forward.
My understanding that scientists will say that relatively few things are facts, and that what laymen would call facts are are usually described as theories by scientists. Theory, being something that is almost certainly true.
There can always be arguments even about facts. Some of them based on better grounds than others.
For example, did Napoleon invade Spain in 1808, when he arrived in person to try and sort out the mess, or in 1807 when French armies began campaigning there on his orders?
On September 3rd, did Britain declare war or did it accept a state of war? Given Neville Chamberlain's rather strange broadcast on the subject you could argue it just sort of happened.
Even with the Holocaust, you can find endless arguments about whether it the victims of (say) Aktion T4 should be included in it or not.
Similarly, Richard III. He usurped the throne in July 1483, and later that same summer had his nephews (the rightful king and his heir) murdered. But you will always find people who say maybe he didn't really usurp the throne because it's possible Edward IV was married to somebody else and therefore Edward V wasn't really the king, and perhaps somebody else killed Edward V and the Duke of York.
There is a wonderful recent pic of King Charles in Scotland, with a load of banners behind him saying "Not Our King". I am a monarchist and I like living in a country where you can say "Not Our King" to him.
But an attempted factual statement of an obvious and simple sort like "Charles III is the king of GB and NI" conceals a vast array of social construct. Within the coherent web of law and constitution this is a fact, but if you ask: Does he have the powers associated with the idea of kingship the answer is NO, and if you ask is his claim to kinship legitimate, a chorus of confusion arises.
So in tiny way the factual statement I began with belongs in the same box as: Kim Jong Un is the legitimate leader of DRK; or Netanyahu is the legitimate PM of Israel. To say it is to take a side.
What they're actually saying is "ought not to be our king,"
That he is their king is indisputable.
Yes it is. It's highly disputable. Kingship is a social construct and an abstract noun not a verifiable fact about the empirical nature of the universe. The description ascribes to him a legitimacy which is disputable once you stand outside the elaborate structure of the state. It's like saying that Jesus is the Messiah just because some societies purport to compel assent to that concept.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
Balderdash. There’s research funding on the phenomenon, there’s also money for how to reduce CO2 production (either through technology and more efficiency, or through behaviour change), then there’s some on other approaches like carbon capture, and there’s some on how to mitigate the effects of climate change. So, all sorts of different positions on climate change are represented.
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
All those claiming Boris Johnson to be a risk to national security wash your mouths out.
After 24 hours of waterboarding, the f***** wouldn't divulge his mobile phone PIN. Not least because he couldn't. Make him Foreign Secretary, and now!
Conversely he may just be lying. I know. 'Mazing. Who knew?
He is probably lying but as a lie it is so compellingly likely to be true. Quite the dilemma.
There's someone famous and dead (I think Robert Maxwell) of whom it was said that they lied so compulsively that they were actually pretty easy to navigate. Just ask them something and believe the exact opposite. (Like the character in those logic puzzles where the answer is to say "what would the other guard say if I asked them...")
Johnson manages the tick of lying in such a baroque way, including telling the truth if he thinks this will make you want to sleep with him, that you can't even do that.
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
'PIN number' really bugs me. Along with 'ATM machine'. I know it shouldn't, but it does
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
Balderdash. There’s research funding on the phenomenon, there’s also money for how to reduce CO2 production (either through technology and more efficiency, or through behaviour change), then there’s some on other approaches like carbon capture, and there’s some on how to mitigate the effects of climate change. So, all sorts of different positions on climate change are represented.
Yep. It's either going to be really bad or it's going to be catastrophic.
So. Is the BBC biased politically (forget Huw Edwards) or not and if it is, which way?
I saw an old mate of mine last night. To the left, shall we say, and he was fuming that eg The Today Programme might as well be an arm of government.
Whereas from my right-leaning, civilised, thoughtful perspective I think the BBC leans left.
I dislike the fact that they always have to so maniacally strive for "balance" and "inclusivity" but I understand it also.
As they say if we're both convinced of our view then perhaps it is therefore doing something right.
Although annoying both left and right does not mean that the BBC is balanced.
FWIW I think the BBC tries very hard to be balanced on most things (not all - there is now no hint of skepticism left when reporting climate science, for instance, when some of the more out there claims/predictions ought to be at best queried). It does, however, tend to skew urban, metropolitan. I don't think it has a clue about the countryside and rural affairs, as shown by Countryfile, which is a programme about the countryside made by city dwellers, for city dwellers.
Yes there's plenty wrong with it.
And as for climate, my point to my friend was that they would never dare have someone from "the other side" to argue a different position on climate change.
When they ever did get someone from ‘the other side’, it would be a flat Earth fanatic rather than another scientist.
That may have been only partly their fault. FEFs so not have careers which they would endanger by voicing private doubts.
Which is actually a large part of the problem, that all the scientific research funding is on one side.
The scientific research funding follows the scientific evidence.
The vested interest funding, well there's been plenty of that for climate 'sceptics'. And probably much more lucrative for those involved.
(I do find the idea of funding bias bizarre. It's in no government's interest to fund only one side of climate science, if there were really two sides. Climate science as it stands is a massive headache for governments - it means taxing/regulating things that people like, in really unpopular areas. There's a massive incentive for governments to fund any science that would question the IPCC conclusions - making it all go away would solve a whole load of political problems. Unfortunately, science doesn't work like that - you can't just get the answers you want because if you do other people are going to point out what you've done and it's easy* for other groups to check)
*in most areas. Far less so in my field of epidemiology where we cannot share or publish the patient-level data for others to verify, due to entirely legitimate data protection concerns. Other groups could request the same data, but I'm not sure you'd get that far on public interest grounds to simply verify pre-existing research. We need more like openSAFELY where anyone can run their own code to check conclusions. This would be possible if e.g. NHS Digital had a service to hold copies of supplied data and run, on demand (at low fee) code on it and provide the results (there would still be a need to ensure no sensitive disclosure in analysis results, which is probably why this hasn't happened).
"Points" from someone whose head is obviously completely up the system.
The points about funding are definetely valid, even if they don't resolve the 'groupthink amongst academics' problem.
Yep, there's definite scope for problems there. One thing becomes accepted and everyone else takes it as read. We've seen that often enough - but we've seen that often enough because eventually someone shows that's not how things work afterall.
Again, I'm long out of this field and wasn't that closely involved to start with, but I saw a lot of disagreement among climate scientists on how the feedbacks worked and interacted. Plenty of 'out there' ideas being presented where if thing A works differently to the general perception then thing B will happen and we can test that witthin 5-10 years etc. I think there are enough people with different backgrounds in different centres studying data from different sources with different designs to reduce the risk of too much groupthink here.
I may be wrong, of course and maybe there are more people training in 'climate science' at a lower level and being taught 'truths'. The nice thing 15 years ago, which may or may not still be the case, was that climate research was brining together people from a lot of disparate disciplines with different ideas and, in most cases, not a great deal of formal training in any accepted truth of the field. The main danger was that most people on the modelling side were working on a limited number of base models, so a fundamental error in one base model could lead to errors in many people's research. But, if so, there would be a whole lot of research that quickly diverged from new observations, unless you were really unlucky. There are also, of course, a lot of people not working on models at all, but working on comparing model predictions, forwards or backwards with observations on the ground and finding better ways of doing those observations.
My concern with it all is that right now, dissent is not allowed. We are at a stage whereby no one would put their heads above the parapet. Well that means that the overwhelming majority - thousands upon thousands - of climate scientists agree hence it is settled. But without going all Galileo about it is that we are in a period of absolute orthodoxy whereby dissenting views are simply not entertained.
No one disputes that the temperatures are rising but it is modelling that is telling us what happens next. Is it like cigarettes where a link has been shown to exist? Not being a climate scientist I have no idea.
I just feel uncomfortable that there is no Jeremy Paxman ("why is this lying bastard lying to me") to question it all. Are all those on here, for example, comfortable not wanting to question what is, in the end, a prediction based upon modelling and hence originates in the human mind.
The basic link (CO2 and other gases leading to warming) is very well understood and demonstrable in a lab (or classroom). We know the incident EM radiation from the sun. We know the temperature of Earth and so we know the frequencies at which energy is radiated from Earth back out into space. We know that CO2 (and others) are good absorbers and re-emitters of this energy (in random directions, including back towards the surface) and can therefore explain how greater CO2 concentration in the atmosphere causes less of the incident energy from the sun to be, ultimately, radiated off into space. All of that is not really disputable.
So, anyone who want to claim that this will not lead to warming needs to explain the feedback loops that will prevent that. They may exist*. But the deniers refuse to engage with the simple facts at the centre of the science.
*it's seriously complicated - does warming lead to more evaporation and more cloud cover, reflecting more incident energy from the sun back into space? maybe. does warming kill vegetation and increase desertification, which is also a better reflector of incident energy back into space than plants are? maybe, probably in fact, but then you also have to take account of reducing ice extent (another good reflector) with replacement by darker vegetation. And that is, excuse the pun, the tip of the iceberg. That's where true sceptical debate would lie (and there is a lot of research and debate on these feedbacks)
I think your asterisked paragraph sums it up. Not that is complicated - no shit sherlock - just that you have casually reeled off several elements to which we don't know the answer and yet you are saying that the central premise, also elegantly articulated by you, is overriding. You answer "maybe" to several parts of the puzzle and yet that doesn't shake the central belief.
Have such issues been developed to the point whereby we can replace your maybes with your former paragraphs' certainties and can you see how seemingly unscientific that sounds.
As is often said, we know more about outer space than we do about our own planet.
Quite a bit of climate science began in working out what was going on Venus and Mars, incidentally.
Another space program benefit.
And, talking of outer space ;
https://twitter.com/MvonRen/status/1679726473870213121 A key national security-focused moderate Republican just responded to a question about explosive UAP claims by saying “they should be taken seriously” - and reiterating Grusch’s credibility.
Comments
MIrza and his group broke with Labour in a particularly nasty internal spat in the post-Corbyn era. The Newham Mayor, Roksana Fiaz, had used the Corbynites to depose veteran Mayor and staunch Blairite Sir Robin Wales and they had delivered her the Mayoralty in 2018 and a clean sweep of the Borough.
However, the coming of Starmer has changed the internal Labour landscape and Fiaz quickly saw which way the wind was blowing and pledged her allegience to Starmer and to his anti-Corbyn activities which led to a huge row within Newham Labour and the departure of Mirza and his cohorts who I thought were going to form their own group but in 2022 stood as Independents.
Mirza stood as Mayor but finished fourth - he's had some form of redemption with this success. I know from Wall End he had quite a group of activists and followers so presumably they worked Boleyn very hard and have got a tremendous result.
Were Labour complacent? Perhaps - they were working the wrong Ward yesterday but the margin of Mirza's win was notable and he joins the two Green councillors on the Opposition benches at the Town Hall.
The Greens badly under-performed - I thought they would run Labour close but this was a disappointing performance while the Conservative vote disintegrated as the Party abandoned the seat - in 2022 the top Conservative in Boleyn polled 538 votes, last night the candidate got 69 votes so where did all the Tories go? Perhaps they weren't Conservatives at all but simply anti-Labour. I wonder whether Mirza will stand in East Ham next year - my information is Sir Stephen Timms will run again for the seat.
As for the others, the LDs had the ignominy of finishing one vote behind Reform but with both polling 45 votes between him it's of the slightest significance.
Mirza's group now has a foothold and I could see him picking up the other Boleyn seat in 2026 especially if they are standing on a radical socialist anti-Starmer platform.
I'm perfectly willing to accept that 'podule' came from Not the Nine O'Clock News; it's just that I always heard of it used as 'Peripheral Module'.
British Library uses new technique to uncover passages of Camden’s Annals, the first official account of Elizabeth’s reign
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jul/14/heart-stopping-censored-pages-of-history-of-elizabeth-i-reappear-after-400-years
I got that wrong of course, North Anston is not lumped in with Dinnington, but Firbeck and Slade Hooton are.
It isn't a ward that typically looks like the 'outsiders' view of Rotherham, in any case.
[I had a wander around the Earl of Scarbrough's land recently]
But if what they've quoted is typical (given the extent of what they are uncovering it may not be) perhaps most interesting for confirming what was already thought - it was Cecil who arranged the succession of James without a formal nomination, and that the Pope and Elizabeth didn't like each other?
There was something similar when Domenic Mancini's Occupatione was found - the main thing it did was make all admirers of Clements Markham's theories look like idiots.
It's my recollection from the mid-90s the Conservatives certainly didn't lose every council by-election. Indeed, as we got nearer the 1997 GE there was some evidence of a turn round particularly when seats which had been contests in 1994 and 1995 came up.
The Conservative recovery began on May 1st 1997 - while the Westminster elections were a bloodbath, the local elections fought the same time saw much better results for the party than had been the case in 1993.
Even in the darkest of times, the strongholds remained such and to assume Starmer is doing badly because he isn't winning every local contest is partisan wibbling at best.
And as it happens, Sunak is doing so badly that a pre-election challenge seems legitimate whether it comes from Johnson, Mordaunt, or the Downing Street cat frankly.
Ben Elton on 'The great railway disaster' (AKA another Tory balls up.....)
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/ben-elton-the-great-railway-disaster/on-demand/75146-001
I think he's the chief landlord in Maltby, his tenant's (White city, Maltby) and his own places are quite the contrast. Bit of a shame he doesn't ever open his house/grounds to the public tbh.
"The circumstances of this by-election don’t give the Conservatives much encouragement to start with. It has been provoked by the disqualification of their councillor Charlie Wooding, who failed to turn up to any Rotherham council meetings in six months. With this being a traditionally-Labour ward in a parliamentary seat on the Labour target list, the result should be watched closely."
Just skimming the Techne tables, 2016 LEAVE voters vote Conservative 44%, Labour 29%, Reform 11% - this was the group which delivered the Conservative majority in 2019 when they split 73-15 for Boris Johnson.
Now, if you add the Reform numbers to the Conservative numbers the split becomes 55-29 which is a 16% swing and matches the swing in the top line figures.
Apart from
1. Heads have other things to do ...
2. You need witnesses/chaperones to come along as well ... and theyt have other things to do ...
obviously. But is there some other child guarding thing too?
This is not to trivialise climate change, but AI and nuclear holocaust are higher up my list of existential concerns.
Those two concerns shouldn't go together at all. But that's not the impression given by the news coverage.
Xinjiang is a place to watch for anyone who's interested in what's going on in the world. OCPD-afflicted experts on legal process and 1970s by-elections haven't latched on to it yet.
To take one example, the grid-based surveillance of internet use that has operated for some time in Urumqi and Kashgar is about to be installed in Sao Paulo in Brazil.
Volkswagen has a plant in Xinjiang and the company has been accused of using forced Uighur labour. There's also a Porsche showroom in Urumqi. Germany has far less stringent rules than the USA on importing products made in Xinjiang.
But apparently the weather's getting a bit hotter and we're all going to parch to death if governments globally don't say x% rather than y%, or is it x degrees Celsius, or maybe it's stop the proles driving cars without an "organic" licence by year X. FFS! This is how the distraction works. Genuine exposure of crimes against humanity committed by the Chinese authorities (an obviously leftwing issue, because when has the right wing ever given a toss about such stuff) gets bundled together with green bullsh*t. How the Porsche family must be laughing.
https://www.ft.com/content/688470e9-d335-4c85-83d3-67ea64891035
the government has now found a record of his PIN number, paving the way for it to be accessed
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66199658
Writing down you passcode, top level security.....the Chinese & Russians must piss themselves how moronic our officials are when it comes to basic op-sec.
Maltby definitely is Red Wall (and somehow also Tory?). That might have been a better political test.
Still Alex Stafford and Brendan Clarke Smith have their tails up about the result though.
https://www.itv.com/news/2023-07-13/johnson-ally-says-government-has-found-a-version-of-pin-for-old-phone
How about hypnotising the f*cker?
After 24 hours of waterboarding, the f***** wouldn't divulge his mobile phone PIN. Not least because he couldn't. Make him Foreign Secretary, and now!
The roll out of dystopian surveillance in Brazil is worrying but just isn't really our business. Given their problems with crime it will probably be quite popular.
Again, I'm long out of this field and wasn't that closely involved to start with, but I saw a lot of disagreement among climate scientists on how the feedbacks worked and interacted. Plenty of 'out there' ideas being presented where if thing A works differently to the general perception then thing B will happen and we can test that witthin 5-10 years etc. I think there are enough people with different backgrounds in different centres studying data from different sources with different designs to reduce the risk of too much groupthink here.
I may be wrong, of course and maybe there are more people training in 'climate science' at a lower level and being taught 'truths'. The nice thing 15 years ago, which may or may not still be the case, was that climate research was brining together people from a lot of disparate disciplines with different ideas and, in most cases, not a great deal of formal training in any accepted truth of the field. The main danger was that most people on the modelling side were working on a limited number of base models, so a fundamental error in one base model could lead to errors in many people's research. But, if so, there would be a whole lot of research that quickly diverged from new observations, unless you were really unlucky. There are also, of course, a lot of people not working on models at all, but working on comparing model predictions, forwards or backwards with observations on the ground and finding better ways of doing those observations.
But an attempted factual statement of an obvious and simple sort like "Charles III is the king of GB and NI" conceals a vast array of social construct. Within the coherent web of law and constitution this is a fact, but if you ask: Does he have the powers associated with the idea of kingship the answer is NO, and if you ask is his claim to kinship legitimate, a chorus of confusion arises.
So in tiny way the factual statement I began with belongs in the same box as: Kim Jong Un is the legitimate leader of DRK; or Netanyahu is the legitimate PM of Israel. To say it is to take a side.
Did the PM literally buy the phone from a shop and set it up himself as a personal device, but with enough knowledge to switch off all the cloud functionality and never back it up to a computer? Because that’s about all that makes sense.
Either the Party, the Commons authorities, or the Cabinet Office, need to be in charge of issuing and managing phones. It’s a massive security loophole.
(I actually have a lot of sympathy with people being asked to turn over phones, a lot of the communication is going to look really bad with no context and the benefit of hindsight. They wouldn’t have expected at the time, that the messages were not considered private).
Got to wonder where the Johnson story will go next. Thoughts of his running in a near-future by-election are nuts IMO, but the story's clearly not at an end yet.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.00287
It appears the star is further along its burning cycle than previously thought. Now in late stage carbon burning. The burning cycle shortens as you move further along the periodic table.
Layman's version.
https://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/betelgeuse-will-explode-someday/
Thankfully it is far enough away (anything less than 150 light years from us is considered bad news) that it should just be pretty rather than deadly.
Development, according to a NASA investigation of development process, was a billion or 2.
Big And Expensive always like to quote £25 Billion+ to develop a medium lift rocket - whenever the politicians want an independent space program.
No one disputes that the temperatures are rising but it is modelling that is telling us what happens next. Is it like cigarettes where a link has been shown to exist? Not being a climate scientist I have no idea.
I just feel uncomfortable that there is no Jeremy Paxman ("why is this lying bastard lying to me") to question it all. Are all those on here, for example, comfortable not wanting to question what is, in the end, a prediction based upon modelling and hence originates in the human mind.
* the emperor Augustus (probably genuinely)
* Jean Monnet (only so he can seem to be bright enough to recognise skills of his opponents?)
* Winston Churchill (when Tory bores are around?)
Ancient Greece or Rome likely. Rome more so.
Could be 656565 <- FEFEFE <- Floreat Etona
I know a bunch of people who haven’t bothered/find that a bit “techy”/have no idea what that is
And they wonder why a fresh startup run by a mad guy, is eating their lunch and then some.
Doncha love this iteration of Conservatism?
Some time back, the US Airforce wanted a demo of rapid availability space launch. Hilariously, they gave the contract to Boeing, who bid…. A spaceplane first stage, with an RS-25 as the engine. Stop laughing in the back, there.
After spending several hundred million dollars, Boeing announced it was too difficult and cancelled the contract. Literally nothing for the money.
A daytime star would be quite something.
Like Labour's VAT on private schools thing, it presumably brings in less than hoped and has consequential costs that haven't been factored in for.
When all your components are outsourced to an outsourcer who outsourced…. After 10 steps of this and 20% profit on each one, a door latch costs $1k
Scientifically valid criticism is not merely allowed, it is actively encouraged.
Aggressive questioning by a scientifically and numerically illiterate TV presenter is not likely to be constructive.
Excuse me- the doorbell has just rung; I believe William of Ockham is at the door. Must go and see what he wants.
So, anyone who want to claim that this will not lead to warming needs to explain the feedback loops that will prevent that. They may exist*. But the deniers refuse to engage with the simple facts at the centre of the science.
*it's seriously complicated - does warming lead to more evaporation and more cloud cover, reflecting more incident energy from the sun back into space? maybe. does warming kill vegetation and increase desertification, which is also a better reflector of incident energy back into space than plants are? maybe, probably in fact, but then you also have to take account of reducing ice extent (another good reflector) with replacement by darker vegetation. And that is, excuse the pun, the tip of the iceberg. That's where true sceptical debate would lie (and there is a lot of research and debate on these feedbacks)
The major reason is that there won't be a challenge unless at least one well supported challenger thinks it is a clear and distinct advantage to become leader pre election and lose the GE, over losing the GE and then challenging. There is no such advantage.
They will calculate and note that if they become leader and lose the 2024 GE (overwhelmingly probable) they probably won't survive.
Challenging and winning in not in the Tory's hands. Only Labour can win the election for the Tories.
It's also the aspect which defies the modelling - some things are happening in some places at an alarming rate - what will this mean for the rest of the planet? Europe is warming very fast - I get less excited about 40c in Spain, Italy and Greece but 50c would be very different.
It's the unknown which I suspect is worrying the scientific community - yes, it might all just plateau and we might have decades of a new "normal" (I don't know) but the suspicion is we have set in train a series of events whose consequences might be far reaching and not all together optimal. To imagine, as some seem to, that none of this is happening and it's nothing to worry about or to contend our way of life in all its facets is to be defended at all costs and there can be no mitigation to the way we live, are equally flawed and dangerous.
Nor am I suggesting the radical authoritarianism of some on the Green fringe - I'm an optimist inasmuch as I believe human ingenuity and technological innovation can find resolutions but my fear is a lot of damage has been done and the consequences of our lack of action in the past 30 years will be illustrated in the next 30.
Green- 663
Con - 582
Lib Dem - 409
Ind - 405
Lab - 228
So all this million tree planting lark is a bit of a waste of time, unless of course you like trees.
Sphagnum on the other hand...
Have such issues been developed to the point whereby we can replace your maybes with your former paragraphs' certainties and can you see how seemingly unscientific that sounds.
As is often said, we know more about outer space than we do about our own planet.
Another space program benefit.
Those are the 'other sides' that should have been in the debate. Instead, we got people wibbling on about a cold winter or rain in July and others wibbling on about variations in solar activitiy (which is included in the models).
But, seriously, if you want to know where we're up to, read an IPCC report. Just keep in mind that many climate scientists think those reports paint altogether too rosy a picture - they report what enough people can agree to, which tends to be a little towards the less extreme range of predictions.
ETA: Anyway, enough from me. There surely must be someone posting on PB with better and more up to date knowledge than me on this - some oceanographer or earth scientist or someone at the Hadley Centre? If not we need to do some recruitment!
That he is their king is indisputable.
The physics of climate change - the effects of human planetary action on the atmosphere - is perhaps less complicated. We all understand the greenhouse analogy.
But the outcomes are, unlike mass nuclear attack, complicated. Certainty of the general physics is one thing. Certainty about outcomes feels like intellectual superstition. Secondly, the world neatly divides between those who think the answer is much more technology and those who think the answer is much less of it.
Plus, there is the innocent torturer problem (h/t Derek Parfit). If one person runs 1000 volts through a victim, they are a torturer. If 1000 people are responsible for one volt each, they arguably are not. We see this all the time - "Activity/nation/individual X is only responsible for n trillionth% of carbon output therefore....."
Given how far away Betelgeuse is it may well already have gone Supernova.
The last visible Supernova was in the middle ages and it is estimated that there are 2 supernova per century in the milky way so we will be very very privileged to see it if it does.
I would love to see it. There has been a proliferation of "Betelgeuse is about to explode" videos on youtube, Although these are usually short on substance and are just youtube clickbait this seems alot more substantive.
This has serious and quite worying implications for the long-term future of the Part (the Conservaitve one, that is.)
Trust me, that's an experiment that's been repeated many times.
Climate scientists and politicians are like the bank manager saying that your overdraft is unsustainable and of course it will be splendid once you are earning a fortune but in the meantime we must discuss your outgoings... Such people are never loved, even when they are right.
Especially when they are right.
https://www.space.com/supernova-closest-earth-m101-galaxy
I should have clarified I meant to the naked eye.
Johnson manages the tick of lying in such a baroque way, including telling the truth if he thinks this will make you want to sleep with him, that you can't even do that.
https://twitter.com/MvonRen/status/1679726473870213121
A key national security-focused moderate Republican just responded to a question about explosive UAP claims by saying “they should be taken seriously” - and reiterating Grusch’s credibility.
@MattLaslo