Morning Report is a breakfast fixture chez HT. As a way of keeping in touch with the news, it has no equal. By some strange whim of editorial decision-making(*), this morning they decided to give Bob “The Great Communicator” Carter a chance to trot out his “I am the balanced middle of this debate” line, and rubbish mainstream climate science (stream, podcast). Perhaps it was intended as some sort of balance to items on the G8 and carbon targets. Sean Plunket does his best to skewer Carter on his framing of the issue, but Bob smoothly denies what he’s just said (describing the IPCC as “extremist”), and then goes on to misrepresent the real science. Plunket doesn’t call him on that – which is not surprising, given that he’s a radio journalist rather than a climate specialist – and so Carter achieves his main aim: sowing seeds of doubt in the minds of the radio audience, creating the illusion of substantive scientific debate, and thus providing cover for those who want to do nothing.
But Morning Report’s biggest mistake was to fail to identify Carter as a leading member of the NZ Climate “Science” Coalition. He’s not in the balanced middle, he’s way out in crankdom, and that should have been pointed out.
[* I find that Bob gave a talk in Christchurch last night.]
I suppose it would be a long shot, lodging a complaint with the Broadcasting Standards Authority…
Not worth it – but an email to the programme might do some good. I’ve sent one…
Good idea, Gareth, I have done the same, gently pointing out that in the scientific community, Bob Carter is an extremist.
Thanks Gareth for keeping on top of this. It is so crazy that this s**t is still going on. Maybe the world should go to s**t and then possible humans will be wiped out. Better for the planet? Unfortunately we are taking so many other species with us.
Damn, if I’d known Bob was giving a talk here I wouldn’t have gone to it…
I’d have been tempted to go, just to see if I could wind him up a bit…
When the IPCC clearly uses ‘science’ that is at best on dodgy ground, and draw conclusions based on incomplete and unreliable data, from people who are self-serving and unable to make predictions that turn out to be nowhere near the truth (Hansen), don’t you think that they are indeed “extremists”?
The idea that carbon dioxide will warm the Earth has turned out to be false. It is no longer sustainable. It will be revealed as the biggest fraud ever perpetrated upon the world, and its gullible inhabitants – over half of which believe in a deity for crying out loud!
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” Albert Einstein.
Rewritten the laws of physics, have you Sid? Einstein did, and would be worth listening to. You haven’t, and aren’t.
Eh?
Of course you don’t understand Sid, just as you don’t understand climate science.
Let’s assume MMGW is real and happening: how does destroying our economy help save the planet? When large countries around the world do nothing, in fact expand their output of CO2, then the earth will still be destroyed in a fireball?
Cheers!
China did it, China did it, China did it, China did it, China did it, China did it, …
— bi, International Journal of Inactivism