Last night BBC radio 4 had an half hour feature which you can listen to here. There is a selection of statements from the likes of Michael Mann, Steve McIntyre, Andrew Montford, Bob Ward, Fiona Harvey, Mike Hulme, among others. Interesting is the opinion voiced by some that there was a period of openness in the climate science community following in the months after Climategate, but that this period is over--it has given way to a retrenchment. However, published research in the climate sciences emphasizes uncertainties more than before, as Mike Hulme observes. Finally, the detective superintendent police officer investigating the case concludes that we do not know if the data was hacked or leaked. In a few weeks the legal powers to prosecute will cease so maybe the real email hacker/leaker will step forward.
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6 comments:
I just remembered that Julian Assange claimed Wikileaks hacked the servers at CRU. I wonder if he was ever interviewed about this. Surely if you have a public confession this should interest the police?
thanks Reiner!
Sounds like a balanced program for an audience who knows that it was (no) fraud;) My grandmother used to say: Der Klügere gibt nach.
Reiner,
You remembered incorrectly. In the video Assange does not claim Wikileaks hacked the servers. He claims Wikileaks released the e-mails given to them by a third party. Several others received the same batch of e-mails, so Assange was perhaps hyping their contribution a bit.
The sceptic blogs (Climate Audit and Bishop Hill) were surprised that sceptics were given such a fair hearing by the programme.
Many of them regard the BBC as infiltrated by biased, left-wing green activists - in fact two of them, Montford and Lawson, said something like this in the programme. It will be interesting to see whether the attitude of the BBC changes, or if the attitude of sceptics towards the BBC does.
Reiner,
I cannot see a retrenchment in the science community, quite the contrary. There is a not a much vigorous flow of information, data and opinions. Whether that is die to Climategate it is difficult to say
I was telephoned by the presenter, Chris a week before the programme aired. He wanted bckground information
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/10/20/seminars-and-interview-a-busy-week-behind-the-scenes/
The most important comment on the programme was, in my opinion, that made by University of East Anglia Geochemist Paul Dennis:
"The key problem is that it’s often presented as a majority of scientists and then the minority are whackos or deniers or something else. They’re not. They’re intelligent people who are coming to a different conclusion from the same sets of data. I’ve seen horrific language on both sides of the debate. It’s not very pleasant if it’s directed against you as somebody who’s active in climate science. It’s not very nice if it’s directed against you as somebody who is on the sceptic side of the debate as well.
However the BBC just won its court case against the blogger who requested the names of the people who attended the 2006 'seminar' where it was decided to stop presenting sceptical views on the BBC, so it seems this was a temporary lapse of (into) reason on the part of the BBC
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