Thursday 7 January 2010

Andrew Neil Turns Up Heat On Hirst

Andrew Neil, who has recently come out on his blog on the side of reason, gave John Hirst an absolute grilling on the Daily Politics this morning. More please! Hat tip to Climategate.com, which provided the clip and comments:

Oh this is good, really good. We did a story two days ago, UK Met Office’s enormously wrong weather predictions earn department big pay increases, and it turns out now even the BBC is questioning The Met Office’s weather forecasting record, and record salaries. And questioning surprisingly hard.

In this clip, Andrew Neal grills Met Office chief John Hirst.

The best line (4:08) of the video and perhaps of the year: “Since you can’t the summer or the winter right in your forecasts, why should we give any credence to your forecast to what the temperature will be in the 2050 or 2020, which is what you do.”

This is the BBC? Sound more like Fox News, and we love it!

It's good that finally - finally - these guys are starting to be held to account for their lies. No sign of Hirst's bonus being taken away from him, though. And how long, I wonder, before Neil is silenced by the warmists at the BBC? It's possible.

Incidentally, Climategate.com is an American blog, in case you were wondering (no reason why you should be, of course).

Anyway, here's the vid.:



Marvellous.

[By the way, you'll have noticed Hirst's slip at 3.56-9. He says the science of meteorology (and therefore, presumably, climatology) is still a 'developmental science'. Oh really? Then we can take it that the science is far from 'settled' then. Curious.]

15 comments:

  1. Actually, he clearly explained that long and short term forecasts are the most accurate (and the ones they do get right), while mid-term forecasts are still a developing science, and much less reliable.

    How hard is it to understand that really?

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  2. "He says the science of meteorology (and therefore, presumably, climatology) is still a 'developmental science'."

    No he does not. He says that MID-TERM forecasting is. But he says that SHORT and LONG-TERM forecasting is reliable.

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  3. Yes, yes, anon. Go back to sleep.

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  4. Yes, yes, just ignore what he actually says so you can construct straw men in order to protect your sacred ideology from being challenged by facts.

    Anyone who reads this blog (probably no one) and who actually bothers to watch the video will see that your description is clearly wrong.

    It takes an honest person to admit a mistake. Will you admit your mistake?

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  5. It takes an honest person not to lie about the science when the data happens not to fit the theory.

    You carry on clutching at straws - and setting up straw men - in your little fantasy world of man made Hollywood climate catastrophes. We'll get on with debunking your bullshit.

    The only 'sacred ideology' around here is AGW. Now take a hike, numbskull.

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  6. Whether he lies or not is besides the point. The point is that you are misrepresenting what he said.

    He didn't say that all of climatology is equally "developmental". He clearly explained which parts were and which parts weren't.

    If you don't believe him, that's one thing. But what you did was to ignore what he actually said. Instead, you decided to lie about it and claim that he talked about all of climatology.

    By the way, science is never "settled". But even so, it works great. Gravity is not settled, and yet we rely on the theory of gravity, for example.

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  7. I take your point about science - at least you seem to understand how the process (inductive reasoning) should work. Now apply it to climate science and then change your mind about AGW.

    As for what this dissembler said, I have listened to it again and don't see that I have "lied" about anything at all. If anything, you are misrepresenting what this guy said - because your mind is mad up. If some parts of climate science are still 'developmental' (a common enough euphemism for 'we haven't a clue how huge chunks of this thing works'), how on earth can the science about AGW be 'settled'.

    Now do you get it?

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  8. Oh, and no 'anon' because I was hoping you were a blogger. I'd have liked to see the sorts of things you say about subjects other than this one.

    It didn't work ;)

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  9. Your claim: "He says the science of meteorology (and therefore, presumably, climatology) is still a 'developmental science'."

    The fact: He mentions specifically which parts are developmental. That doesn't mean that all of it is equally uncertain. And indeed, when there is uncertainty they clearly express that.

    I never used the word "settled". I merely pointed out your misrepresentation of his comments. You are the one who thinks that just because science is never about 100% certainty, that must mean it's nonsense.

    Also, you are mistaking intellectual honesty for "we don't know how this works". Scientists will actually find it important to highlight weaknesses and doubts in their research.

    People take this as a sign of weakness. Such people often don't understand the concept of intellectual honesty.

    The fact that they are aware of the weaknesses and probabilities involved means that they can make useful statements regarding the things they are researching.

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  10. You must be some sort of amateur philosopher - or something. But I detect you are wriggling somewhat here. In between the jibes and vacuous platitudes, you are hedging. Interesting.

    And for you to bag on about 'intellectual honesty' in the context of climate science after the CRU debacle, the Hockey Stick and 'hiding the decline' is just plain laughable.

    I can't wait for the next thrilling instalment.

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  11. You keep dodging the core issue here. You misrepresented his comments, and used that as the foundation of an attack against science in general and climatology in particular.

    Since you insist on trying to change the subject, I'll address your red herrings:

    Hockey stick? Seems that you are as misinformed as you are dishonest. You can educate yourself here:

    http://skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm

    "Hide the decline" doesn't mean what you think it does. You can educate yourself here:

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climategate-CRU-emails-hacked.htm

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  12. Right, right. I think you've lost this one, buddy. Know when to quit.

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  13. Yeah, I "lost" just because you say so? That sure has a lot of credibility coming from the guy who lied about what the guy in the video said...

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  14. By the way, you may be wondering what's up with the cold weather these days? Wonder no more:

    "Such weather doesn't seem to fit with warnings from scientists that the Earth is warming because of greenhouse gases. But experts say the cold snap doesn't disprove global warming at all - it's just a blip in the long-term heating trend."

    -snip-

    "In the atmosphere, large rivers of air travel roughly west to east around the globe between the Arctic and the tropics. This air flow acts like a fence to keep Arctic air confined.

    But recently, this air flow has become bent into a pronounced zigzag pattern, meandering north and south. If you live in a place where it brings air up from the south, you get warm weather. In fact, record highs were reported this week in Washington state and Alaska."


    And another source, your own favorite UK Met Office:

    "They explain that unlike the usual weather pattern of the last 20 years, “over the past three weeks the Atlantic air has been ‘blocked’ and cold air has been flowing down from the Arctic or the cold winter landmass of Europe.” They also note that December wasn’t record-breaking in terms of cold, but merely “the coldest for 14 years and colder than the long-term average.”"

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  15. Oh dear. Go away, you silly little troll. Either you're lonely or just barking (probably both).

    ReplyDelete

Any thoughts?