The Sun what done me in!

37 Responses to The Sun what done me in!

1. catweazle666 says:

   26 August 2015 at 14:30

   Yes, a very thought-provoking piece.
   It seems the worm is starting to turn.
   As an added bonus, the egregious Ken Rice is spitting feathers.
2. TinyCO2 says:

   26 August 2015 at 15:07

   It must be a worry for warmists that news papers are drifting from the always popular alarmist position to one of bored derision. This would have been less prevalent if they’d told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth from the start.
   Pandemic specialists and the WHO admit that they made a mistake with the H1N1, swine flu. Not in calling it a pandemic (it was) but in not down grading the publicised risk as soon as they knew that it was less deadly than seasonal flu. Scientists can’t ignore potential risks but they need to be absolutely transparent in passing on the facts. Too often specialists decide to pre filter what they present. I can see the lure of this but it breaks trust.
3. Scottish-Sceptic says:

   26 August 2015 at 15:09

   I am wondering what comes next. Should we line up on a metaphorical touch line and clap the climate extremists off the pitch.
   That doesn’t seem right to me.
   When I used to play Rugby there were really nasty teams who’d foul and curse … but none were anywhere near as shameful in their behaviour as the climate extremists have been.
   It was not an honourable game – but a criminal conspiracy.
4. Scottish-Sceptic says:

   26 August 2015 at 15:15

   If I were younger and without family, knowing what I know now about the way the British political system works and its corruption, I would learn a new language and move abroad.
   The Climategate inquiry should have been the end of this scam. It should not have required even one more week, let alone 6 years. The climate scam was bad enough, but that might just be excused if they had come clean. But far from coming clean there was a blatant cover up by certain officials during climategate. It is time the police investigated and prosecutions took place.
5. A C Osborn says:

   26 August 2015 at 16:36

   The only Police Investigation has been of the sceptic Bloggers like Rog Tallbloke, the whole system is corrupt.
   They are not supposed to be able to stand before Parliament and the US Congress and Lie, but they have been getting away with it for years.
6. Roy Hartwell says:

   26 August 2015 at 16:51

   The one error in that article is where he calls them ‘Green Idealists’. Surely he means ‘Green Idiots’
7. Scottish-Sceptic says:

   26 August 2015 at 16:54

   I think the offence that clearly applies is “misconduct in a public office”. It’s also very likely that those who personally gained have committed fraud. I believe Jone’s breaking of the FOI act has passed, but I think he and several others could be prosecuted for conspiracy to commit that crime. There’s probably also a crime of misleading parliament – it might require impeachment proceedings.
   There’s very good evidence, there are plenty of avenues to pursue them, so as you say the only possible thing preventing them is inherent corruption in the police service itself which fails to apply the law to those in the establishment.
8. Scottish-Sceptic says:

   26 August 2015 at 16:55

   Calling them idiots is giving them an excuse. There is no excuse for their behaviour.
9. oldbrew says:

   26 August 2015 at 17:11

   Let’s not get too carried away. This is the opinion piece of a 19-year old student, not a Sun editorial.
   On the other hand they have chosen to publish it 🙂
   ‘Al Bore’ won’t be amused.
10. Cedric Katesby says:

    26 August 2015 at 17:22

    I’ve been a full time unpaid climate sceptic since around 2007 when I first realised that the science was totally distorted and the public were being told lies about the climate.
    Well, if you’d ever read the Sun before, you’d have had a different opinion.
    That article is routine stuff for the Sun in terms of tone and for the caliber of the author of the piece.
    The Sun’s always been like that.
    2007 is very late in the game.
    Surveys are done of this kind of thing.
    “A study of the UK tabloid press (The Sun, Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror and their Sunday equivalents) covering the years 2000 to 2006 found that “UK tabloid coverage significantly diverged from the scientific consensus that humans contribute to climate change. Moreover, there was no consistent increase in the percentage of accurate coverage throughout the period of analysis and across all tabloid newspapers, and these findings are not consistent with recent trends documented in United States and UK ‘prestige press’ or broadsheet newspaper reporting. Findings from interviews indicate that inaccurate reporting may be linked to….”
11. Cedric Katesby says:

    26 August 2015 at 18:04

    Well he may be only 19 but let’s not forget that Alexander the Great got his start at only 16 or so.
    It’s a very thought provoking piece. He’s taking an approach that’s quite novel:
    “Al Bore.”
    ( A clear reference to Al Gore there.)
    “Inconvenient truth.”
    (Note the sly reference to the film by none other than Al Gore.)
    “Polar sea ice actually increased.”
    (That’s bound to start sending global shockwaves. Nobody’s said that before)
    This is what science reporting is all about. Keeping it fresh and cutting edge.
    Pithy phrasing that just screams originality.
    And the bit about an expedition getting caught up in ice?
    HA!
    Well, talk about irony. Clever of him to come up with that particular focus.
    Someone’s bound to copy him if it happens again later somehow with a ship or a plane or something.
    Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if people start borrowing his turns of phrase and using it for themselves. Before you know it, it will become the new standard for bloggers everywhere.
    A real feather for this young man’s cap.
    George Harrison: A name that people and scientists everywhere are going to remember.
    I see a TV interview and a book on the cards.
12. TinyCO2 says:

    26 August 2015 at 18:29

    And yet he and his tabloid buddies will have reached many, many more people than you in the years you’ve been typing ‘NASA’. Tough.
13. TinyCO2 says:

    26 August 2015 at 18:34

    It’s almost like they’re not worried about climate change.
14. Cedric Katesby says:

    26 August 2015 at 18:52

    It’s almost like they’re not worried about climate change.
    Exactly, they’ve never been worried about it. You can go way back well before 2007.
    Getting your science info from a tabloid is setting the bar very low.
    Same problem with vaccines, oddly enough.
    British children suddenly getting measles again doesn’t just happen all by itself.
    There are consequences to science denial.
15. Cedric Katesby says:

    26 August 2015 at 18:54

    Very.
    Wakefield too.
16. TinyCO2 says:

    26 August 2015 at 19:07

    And yet even at the peak of MMR scepticism 80% of British kids were vaccinated. Now it’s 92%. Your conspiracies aren’t very powerful. CAGW scepticism however has a much bigger following. Especially if you look at what people do, rather than what they say.
    Why are people ignoring NASA et al where they didn’t ignore the CDC and the BMA?
17. Scottish-Sceptic says:

    26 August 2015 at 19:28

    It both marks a change in editorial attitude but also it signals they are “dipping their toe” in the water. If their regular readers warm to the piece (as I fully suspect they will), then we can look forward to a lot more and perhaps given its the Sun, some quite cutting commentary.
18. TinyCO2 says:

    26 August 2015 at 19:29

    In the UK only 6% of people think the US or Israel planned 9/11. Not much of a conspiracy here.
    A feature of most conspiracies is that people are not betting their lives on the truth. Their fears are akin to gossip.
    MMR is slightly different but theirs is a gamble of one risk of death or injury over another. Parents were scared because a peer reviewed paper in a top journal gave them those fears. Had the Lancet done due dilligence Wakefield would never have been published. He could have bleated to the press all he liked but he’d have no credibility. Better science is what defeated his bad science.
    If CAGW is real, then those ignoring it are risking everything. Why would they do that? Why aren’t true believers changing their lives? How can global leaders mess about without making powerful decisions?
19. TinyCO2 says:

    26 August 2015 at 19:46

    But the MMR thing wasn’t science denial, it was science as science is done. Wakefield was properly published and the paper wasn’t withdrawn for 10 years and not until Wakefield had been struck off. The Lancet didn’t remove the paper on the science because peer review is not to determine if the science is wrong or not. It just looks for glaring errors and plagerism. One of the key problems then and now is that data doesn’t need to be included. Had everyone known that there were a mere 12 kids in his study then maybe nobody would have taken it seriously.
    Wakefield wasn’t struck off because he wrote a terrible paper, he was struck off for unconnected issues about ethics. We’d not know anything about it if it had been left to the BMA. They were happy for the issue to fade away. It took a journalist to winkle out the details.
    There was a conspiracy – to cover up how useless peer review is.
20. Scottish-Sceptic says:

    26 August 2015 at 20:26

    It’s not science info, it’s info on the public and press perception.
    One of the major newspapers has started to print sceptic material. They are in effect testing the water. If they find the readership is favourable to these articles, they will certainly print more.
    The global warming scam has had precious little tabloid attention and it is filled to the brim with scandal and outrageous behaviour.A good tabloid journalist might quickly realise it is a gold mine for scandalous stories.
    So, if these initial “toe in the water” articles prove their readership are interested in the scandal – then we can be absolutely sure the Sun will start delving deeper, exposing more and more of the scandal whereupon as other papers try to get a bit of the gossip – we may well get what I call a “feeding frenzy”.
    It will not be the most pleasant site watching the press tear academics limb from limb – but it will be entirely their own doing.
21. Scottish-Sceptic says:

    26 August 2015 at 20:34

    As NASA recruited a large number of NAZI academics and none were prosecuted for war crimes, why does it surprise anyone that NASA use the technique of “Goebbels big lie”.
    NASA never cared about global warming, but instead those like Hansen were just a way to spread the big lie and ensure nasa got more funding.
22. Scottish-Sceptic says:

    26 August 2015 at 20:37

    ” Why aren’t true believers changing their lives?” … you hit the nail on the head. Because the truth is that even they don’t care about CO2. Instead, CO2 is just a way to get at those nasty industrialists.
    Their aim was to attack industry, not to limit CO2.
23. TinyCO2 says:

    26 August 2015 at 20:55

    I’m more charitable. I think they do care, they’re just too close to their own science. You see the same in other sciences but they’ve had longer to learn the error of over confidence. I remember being made to feel very small by a virologist for asking the question ‘have we ever had a pandemic so mild nobody noticed?’ With 20:20 hindsight we now know it was a very good question and the answer is ‘yes’.
    Being caught up in something that could be a mass killer has the effect of making people err on the side of caution. Not necessarily a bad thing if done at the end point of research but if each rung of the investigatory process adds a little ‘caution’ then the end point is hopelessly biased in favour of fear.
24. Scottish-Sceptic says:

    26 August 2015 at 21:30

    When you work in a factory and every day if not every hour someone is jumping up and down as if it is the end of the world, you get used to it being the end of the world all the time.
    And what companies – and planets need, when people think it is the end of the world, is pretty much the same thing – people who calmly get up, go look at the problem, find out what the issue really is, replace the battery or whatever stupid fault caused the whole fuss. Calm everyone down, and then go back to reading the paper until its the next end of the world.
25. catweazle666 says:

    26 August 2015 at 23:50

    TinyCO2 says: “It’s almost like they’re not worried about climate change.”
    That is because they aren’t, of course. Here is the 2015 United Nations ‘My World’ Global survey of causes for concern now covering 8,098,498 respondents.
    Out of 16 causes for concern, Climate Change comes flat last.
    http://data.myworld2015.org/
    It appears that the World’s population isn’t as credulous and as easily conned as the Alarmist “scientists” and their shills would like us to believe.
    Oh dear, how sad. Never mind.
26. catweazle666 says:

    26 August 2015 at 23:59

    Still wittering about vaxxers, you boring litle troll?
    You know Cedric, if you set fire to a straw man as big as that, you probably could cause the climate to warm!
    As to science denial, as you know zero science, you are not in a position to make any comments on that either way.
    Oh, and for what it’s worth, my training in and application of science has served me conspicuously well throughout my career, ensuring that in my retirement – although not massively endowed with money to AlGore levels – I am very comfortably provided for. Considerably more so than you ever will be, I suspect.
    So take your “science denial” BS and stick it where the sun don’t shine, you sad, pathetic, utterly misguided creep.
27. Cedric Katesby says:

    27 August 2015 at 01:25

    But the MMR thing wasn’t science denial, it was science as science is done. Wakefield was properly published….
    Not Wakefield. He just got the ball rolling. The science denial hysteria followed in his wake. If you look at the various blogs and groups that sprang up like mushrooms, it’s a very clear case of science denial.
    Reaching these people is almost impossible.
28. Cedric Katesby says:

    27 August 2015 at 01:32

    One of the major newspapers has started to print sceptic material.
    No, they haven’t.
    Go back and read some of the past editions of the Sun or any daily tabloid you like.
    Read up on the surveys that monitor this kind of thing.
    The global warming scam has had precious little tabloid attention and…
    Where on Earth are you getting this from?
29. Cedric Katesby says:

    27 August 2015 at 01:36

    You know Cedric, if you set fire to a straw man…
    If you are going to claim someone is using a strawman argument, then you should at least know what it is first.
    Comparing one group to another is not building a strawman, not in anybody’s language.
    The “Straw Man” Fallacy
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5vzCmURh7o
30. Cedric Katesby says:

    27 August 2015 at 01:47

    And yet even at the peak of MMR scepticism 80% of British kids were vaccinated.
    You may want to check those numbers and look carefully at the outbreaks of diseases. It’s a horrible picture. The situation is even worse in the U.S.
    Your conspiracies aren’t very powerful.
    There’s no conspiracy. Science denial doesn’t need one.
    It’s just people being people. Spreading misinformation and getting locked into a manner of thinking. It was the anti-vaxxers that used conspiracy theories to rationalise their refusal to take medical advice.
    The Big Pharma thing.
    The media in the UK and the US served the public very poorly and children got sick because of it. Measles is not some harmless disease to be laughed off, for example. It can permanently main and in some cases, even kill.
31. Cedric Katesby says:

    27 August 2015 at 01:56

    In the UK only 6% of people think the US or Israel planned 9/11. Not much of a conspiracy here.
    How much conspiracy thinking is acceptable to you?
    It’s all the same.
    Strip away the labels and the rationalizations for 9/11 conspiracy thinking, the way they insulate themselves from criticism will sound very familiar.
    It doesn’t matter what the topic.
    9/11 conspiracy thinkers do what the moon landing deniers do. And the climate deniers. And the creationists. And the HIV deniers. And the anti-fluoride types. There are a wide variety of groups out there. The pattern is always the same with only minor variations on a theme.
    Project Steve didn’t just happen for no good reason.
32. Cedric Katesby says:

    27 August 2015 at 02:11

    If CAGW is real, then those ignoring it are risking everything. Why would they do that? Why aren’t true believers changing their lives? How can global leaders mess about without making powerful decisions?
    “If vaccines are safe, then those ignoring it are risking everything. Why would they do that? Why aren’t true believers changing their lives? How can global leaders mess about without making powerful decisions?”
    Tony Blair certainly showed no leadership on the issue.
    He could have spoken up but he played coy.
    Why would middle class parents in a first world country in the 21st Century put their own flesh and blood at risk of blindness or death?
    Well, that’s how denial works. It’s got nothing to do with dealing with reality or listening to what the doctors are trying to tell you.
    “If there is a link between AIDS and HIV, then those ignoring it are risking everything. Why would they do that? Why aren’t true believers changing their lives? How can global leaders mess about without making powerful decisions?”
    How indeed?
    Having survived apartheid, you’d have thought that the new South African government would have moved heaven and Earth to give their own people the medical treatment they needed in a time of crisis.
    Instead, they went to blogs.
    Imagine losing over 300,000 of your own people ust because you refused to listen to medical authorities who were screaming at you not to listen to the quacks you had found on the internet?
    “If there is a link between smoking and cancer, then those ignoring it are risking everything. Why would they do that? Why aren’t true believers changing their lives? How can global leaders mess about without making powerful decisions?”
    Well, yes. How indeed?
    DOUBT – The climate Reality Project
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjVjr-qOpNk
33. Cedric Katesby says:

    27 August 2015 at 02:18

    As NASA recruited a large number of NAZI academics and none were prosecuted for war crimes, why does it surprise anyone that NASA use the technique of “Goebbels big lie”.
    It’s not going to work as a scenario.
    You’d have to get Nazis in all the other scientific communities on the planet too. At the same time.
    There just aren’t enough Nazis to go around.
    Besides, they must be all pretty old by now.
    There’s no viable mechanism.
34. Mark Hodgson says:

    27 August 2015 at 08:15

    Cedric: “There’s no conspiracy. Science denial doesn’t need one.
    It’s just people being people. Spreading misinformation and getting locked into a manner of thinking.”
    Oh the irony, after everything else he’s said! he doesn’t see it either. I might stop laughing next week….
35. Cedric Katesby says:

    27 August 2015 at 11:43

    Oh the irony, after everything else he’s said! he doesn’t see it either.
    Well…unless you explain it, nobody else is going to either. Somebody else may indeed start laughing too but it could well be over something entirely different.
    “There’s no conspiracy. Science denial doesn’t need one.
    It’s just people being people. Spreading misinformation and getting locked into a manner of thinking.”
    Exactly. Conspiracy theories are rationalisations.
    They rationalize away the glaring problem of rejecting a scientific consensus on “X”.
    “Why don’t you accept the moonlandings?”
    “It’s a hoax”
    “Why won’t you vaccinate your child?”
    “Big Pharma”
    “Why don’t you accept that 9/11 was caused…”
    “Gubbiment. Bush. All about the oil.”
    All conspiracy theories have the same identification markers.
    One of those is a lack of a viable mechanism.
    It’s always the same.
36. Mark Hodgson says:

    27 August 2015 at 17:48

    And the response re-confirms the irony. Hilarious!
37. Mark Hodgson says:

    27 August 2015 at 18:00

    Well done to our host and other commenters. This piece and Cedric’s responses to it are the only occasions on which I have ever (and I’ve trawled the internet for his inane contributions, so curious am I as to his remarkable modus operandi) seen Cedric abandon his 12 rules from the Cedrick Katesby School of Debate, and actually try to engage in the debate instead of closing it down. And boy is he making a fool of himself, numerous self-contradictions, floundering way out of his depth.
    I think he’s learned his lesson though. His comments on the latest piece (“Why are climate-extremists so obsessed with conspiracy theory?”) have retreated back to the safety of the 12 rules – no attempt to debate intelligently at all, but then why would he when he’s had his fingers so badly burned on the one occasion when he tried?
    If I were him, I’d be so embarrassed at his utter failure, that I would now go away and lick my wounds, but not Cedric. He and his 12 rules of debate are back in full flow on the other piece. How sad.

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