Posted by jo abbess
on November 4, 2009, 12:41 am
Established science is excluded from account
It appears to me from the following blog post :-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2009/10/climates_magnetic_attraction.html
that Richard Black is either (a) entirely ignorant of the relevant science or is (b) deliberately not including the relevant science.
He does not include the well-known counterpoints to Piers Corbyn's theories on Global Warming.
He poses a challenge to Climate Change scientists that has already been answered in the literature.
In order to restore accuracy to the piece, people would need to contribute comments that informed Richard Black of the relevant science, that he should know about anyway, and should have cited.
Richard Black is thus wasting peoples' time in my view, either intentionally or accidentally.
He has a position as a senior environmental writer for the BBC Online team, and so in my view, he should have at least some understanding of why Piers Corbyn's theories are not mainstream science, and how they have been already discredited.
If he does not know this kind of information, he should at least be conscious that it might exist, and he should at least make an attempt to find out, and report his findings.
I remain perplexed that people without any relevant scientific training are writing for the environmental reporting section of BBC Online.
They are good writers, but they appear to lack a depth and range in their knowledge of the state of the science.
I am surprised that Richard Black bothered to attend the presentation by Piers Corbyn, as he should have easily been able to find out why it could be counted as pseudo-science.
My demand is that environmental writers for the BBC Online should undertake a course in Climate Change science, so that it is clear that they understand what they are reporting on, and recognise which views are non-science.
The section I am concerned about is this :-
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...Now, doubtless many of you will have views on the science and everything else in this post, and I look forward to reading them.
But the responses I would particularly invite are from working scientists - physicists, climatologists, and those in related fields.
At the beginning of this post, I suggested working scientists might like to read to the end - and here's why.
Piers Corbyn hasn't given you a scientific paper here but I hope I have relayed the main elements, and you can see his presentation for more details.
So please - have a look around. Some of you know about this stuff - orbital precession, solar cycles, Fourier transforms, magnetic dipoles - far, far better than I do. When you have a free moment or two, don't turn to Tetris, but have a play with this box of toys.
The datasets Mr Corbyn used are publically available, as is information on cycles of lunar nodes and such like.
Do the numbers and mechanisms stack up? Is the theory plausible? Compelling? Completely nuts? What do you think?
As of now, does it even qualify as a theory?
I'm certainly not qualified to pronounce judgement - but some of you may be.
I look forward to seeing what you come up with... and so, I'm sure, will everyone anxious to make sure that negotiators in Copenhagen are armed only with the best scientific evidence.
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Although Richard Black asserts that he is not qualified to pronounce judgement, which appears unbiased, he has not made an attempt to explain alternative viewpoints or report them.
He is also laying out for the reader the position of Piers Corbyn, and asking the reader to put some effort in to either confirm or deny this.
However, a simple perusal of the literature would show that Piers Corbyn's views on Global Warming are easily challenged, and have been done so quite regularly and successfully.
Thus, this blog post for me is biased, unreasonable and provocative and I would call it unacceptable.
http://www.joabbess.com
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