The trial PCC complaint showed that the advice I had been given by Climate Brief, on the Skeptical Science website and via Bob Ward over the phone was sound. The PCC are very unlikely to rule in favour of a complaint against reporting on climate science, unless someone or something is directly mis-quoted. If there is any degree of interpretation needed, the papers win, even if the science is conclusive.
It also takes a long time to go through the process of a PCC complaint, and a reasonable amount of effort. I first contacted the Telegraph on about 15 September, raised the complaint with the PCC on 10 October and received a verdict on 18 December.
Raising a lot of complaints would cause a stir, but could backfire if a large proportion were not upheld. Maybe it would be better to provide a platform to enable people to complain to editors directly, with a centrally created set of article specific facts available to help? Or maybe that could be expanded into a people-driven press complaints organisation, with greater transparency and more independence?
With the Daily Mail in the UK being granted the award for Climate Change Misinformer of the Year by the US website Media Matters, we are in the right place to make a difference. It is worth skimming the damning evidence against the Daily Mail as compiled by Media Matters.
So, what do you think? Poll follows, plus please do comment below.
Thank you to all of you who participated in the survey a few weeks ago. I’ll be revealing the results over the next few weeks, looking at each individual question and how the results correlate.
The main lesson I have learnt is that you lot quite like to interact, but not always publicly. I got a much higher response to the survey than I was expecting. It means that the survey results are a pretty good representation of the people who read this blog.
The first question was whether you believe that climate change is man-made. I would expect that most people reading this blog are of that mind, and the results of the survey bore that out, although you are less certain than the scientists. 85% of you put the chance that changes since 1950 are predominantly man-made at 60% or greater. The IPCC put the chance that warming since 1950 is man-made at 95%; and 97% of scientific papers on the climate endorse the same hypothesis.
An interesting point to note is that no-one who responded thinks that global warming is probably not human-caused. Those that think it is purely natural are 100% certain. That would indicate to me that the thinking is a little emotional rather than rational, as we don’t have perfect information. Unless there is some proof out there that I’ve completely missed?
At the start of 2013 I was into the 16th year of full-time employment in UK rail software. I’m now fully established as my own boss and have kicked the rat race into submission. I won’t be going back there again in a hurry.
In a few days we’ll all have our hands tucked under our elbows, holding hands with the people on either side of us, singing Auld Lang Syne. Or at least a couple of lines of it; whatever we can remember. I’ll be thinking fondly of a close friend with Scottish roots, who was swept away in a bloated river while enjoying her beloved canoeing. I’ll be thinking of you, Jane Halliday (1977-2010).
A lot of us will give a few moments thought to a New Year’s resolution. Most of them will be forgotten before January is out. I wonder what you are thinking of. How about forgetting the traditional diets and the like and going for something a bit different this year? How about choosing to have more time?
We are all rushed off our feet trying to fit modern life into the 24 hours we have available. This at a time of such plenty, where there is easily enough food produced around the world to feed everyone, and only a fraction of our time spent producing it. What on earth are we doing? What are we doing in those busy 24 hours? Many people are speeding around trying to make ends meet. If we are lucky enough to have more money than we need, we carefully re-arrange the ends so we are struggling again, by buying a bigger car, a more advanced phone, going on holiday further afield or extending the house.
How about instead taking the gift of time and just keeping it. What are we gaining from this extra material wealth. We could instead read more, learn a new skill or language, spend more time with friends and family or help others.
This may seem a pipe dream. Surely it is not possible for you?
I didn’t think it was for me. Then I realised that it was just a choice I was making.
The first step is to reduce your outgoings, by using things until they can’t be fixed again and not relenting to the pressure of the adverts on the telly. A typical household could save thousands by not buying a new car until the old one is a goner, holidaying in your country, taking care with the energy bills, only buying the food needed. Once into the habit of spending less, the step to a more part time working life will seem that much more possible.
As for me, I’ll be doing the same. That means focussing on the important jobs I have taken on and doing what I can to get more people involved to spread the load.
This will start with the promotion of the second Ashlyns Lecture on 22 January, to be held at Ashlyns School in Berkhamsted. The incredible Polly Higgins will be talking about daring to be great in her talk, erm, “Dare to be Great”. Another possible new year’s resolution? Book your tickets now – it will be an inspiring evening.
Many of you will have followed the saga of my complaint via the UK Press Complaints Commission against the Telegraph. After lots of toingandfroing, the PCC verdict is finally here. Drum roll, drum roll, drum roll…
And of course I lost. This backs up the advice I received from a number of different people who’d made complaints via the PCC in the past. If there is any level of interpretation needed in the complaint, the PCC appear to have a policy of ruling against the complainant.
I’d be very interested in whether you think the PCC are right.
For me, there are two meanings of “significant” in the context of whether the Telegraph article was “significantly misleading”.
Firstly, there is statistic significance. Is it right to say that an original estimate is wrong if a new estimate is made at a later date, with more information available, and the confidence intervals of both estimates overlap significantly?
Secondly, there is the significance of the effect that it will have on readers. Some will take it at face value and decide not to trust climate models.
Further to our previous correspondence, the Commission has now made its assessment of your complaint under the Editors’ Code of Practice.
The Commission members have asked me to thank you for giving them the opportunity to consider the points you raised. However, their decision is that there has been no breach of the Code in this case. A full explanation of the Commission’s decision is below.
If you are dissatisfied with the way in which your complaint has been handled – as opposed to the Commission’s decision itself – you should write within one month to the Independent Reviewer, whose details can be found in our How to Complain leaflet or on the PCC website at the following link:
And the verdict itself. I think it is interesting that they refer to climate change as being a politically sensitive subject:
Commission’s decision in the case of
Bell v The Daily Telegraph
The complainant expressed concern about the publication of an article which was, in his view, inaccurate and misleading in breach of Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice. The article reported that the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report had found that ‘the world [had been] warming at a rate of 0.12C per decade since 1951, compared to a prediction of 0.13C per decade’ in the IPCC’s 2007 report. The complainant believed that the difference between the 2007 forecast and the 2013 revised number didn’t justify the claim that climate scientists had previously been ‘wrong’.
Under the Clause 1 (i) of the Code, newspapers must take care not to publish inaccurate information, and Clause 1 (ii) makes clear that a significantly misleading statement must be corrected promptly, and with ‘due prominence’.
Anthropogenic climate change is a politically contentious subject. It is not the Commission’s role to stifle, or in any way to hinder the free exchange of opinions and information, which serves to enrich the quality of the debate on this topic. Newspapers are entitled to report on, and to interpret the findings of the numerous scientific studies which have been published in this complex area as long as, in doing so, they have not misled readers.
In the ‘summary for policymakers’ section of the 2007 IPCC report on climate change, it was stated that ‘the linear warming trend over the last 50 years (0.13C [0.10C to 0.16C] per decade) [was] nearly twice that for the last 100 years’. The 2013 report noted that the calculated rate of warming since 1951 was ‘0.12C [0.08 to 0.14]’. The newspaper was entitled to interpret this calculation as a downward revision in the pace of observed climate change, even where the IPCC had not explicitly acknowledged that this was the case in the report. Indeed, the margin of error in the 2013 report had also been revised downward. In this context the claim that the 2007 calculation was ‘wrong’ was not significantly misleading. This was especially the case where the extent – and significance – of the revision was clearly stated in the article. While the Commission welcomed the newspaper’s attempt to obtain comment from the IPCC before the publication of the article, there was no breach of the Code.
What would the world look like if we fairly distributed the land to where the people live? Or if the more well off could buy land abroad and move it home? Well, you can!
I was going to write about the results of the survey, but it has proved to be quite popular, and so I will allow more results to come in beforehand.
Instead, I’ll introduce you to a website, the Carbon Map, I came across that allows you to resize the countries by population and wealth.
Of course, if I’m writing about it, there is more to it than that. You can also size countries by the amount of fossil fuels they extract, or the emissions for which they are responsible, both now and historically.
I think the picture below illustrates my point that the poorest countries, less able to cope with the scourge of a changing climate, have hardly any emissions, compared with the highest emitting countries, which are also the richest.
If emissions are going to come down quickly enough, we need to address that inequity. The richer countries, and the people in the richest countries, need to reduce our emissions. The only way we can do that quickly enough is if we reduce our energy use.
On a related note, here’s a little video showing other information about the decades to come on a revolving globe:
Greenpeace, you stole my thunder! I had it all planned out. Father Christmas lives at the North Pole, the ice cap is melting: great idea for a blog post I thought. And then I get a video from Santa via Greenpeace complaining about the rising damp, and the sodden rug is pulled from under my feet.
So, I’m reduced to adding a little context and my own spin on the idea.
There are a few seemingly wildly different estimates as to when the Arctic will be ice-free and Santa will need to find somewhere else to live. The 2007 report from the IPCC put the year at 2070, whereas studies are now indicating it could be 20-30 years from now, and some are saying it could be around the time of the next UK general election. The rate of decrease of Arctic ice has been quicker than had been predicted, some due to the albedo effect, others due to soot.
This dramatic reduction in Arctic ice has led to the heavy rains and heatwaves we’ve seen in the northern hemisphere. But things are altogether more serious for Santa.
So, what are we going to say to those kids who have been brought up thinking Santa lives in the North Pole? We’d have to make a choice between telling them he’s not real, or saying he’s moved. Apparently the North Pole was his traditional hang-out from around the latter half of the 19th century. But he also had reindeer at that time, which can’t graze at the North Pole, so he moved to Finnish Lapland in 1925.
So, I guess we’ll just be saying he lives in Lapland. Not so bad after all.
Although I’m sure he’d be disappointed to see his old home melt away. “When I was a lad, all this used to be ice”, he’ll be saying.
Well, I have a message for you, Mr Claus. If you don’t want your old home to melt, I suggest 1) you stop buying masses of plastic rubbish for a load of spoiled kids, including my own, and 2) you share the secret of your faster-than-light travel so we can get around without the pollution – assuming all that glitter and the tinkling bells are low carbon.
I’ll leave you with Jim Carter looking scary in a basement.
John Bell,
Ordinary bloke
PS – thank you for all the survey responses. Still time to let me know what you think. I’ll collate it all for a future post or two.
I’d like to ask a favour of you. I need two minutes of your time. I feel I have a decent idea of the sort of people who read this blog. But I’m not really sure what you think.
So, I’ve created a simply survey, with a handful of questions, for you to tell me. It works from a mobile or a computer, and takes only a couple of minutes to complete. Will you complete it for me please?
I’m not going to draw wild conclusions from the results about the state of the world. The sample won’t be representative of the population. I hope it will give me an idea of where you are with your thinking about the subjects of my blog.
Thank you very much indeed in advance. I look forward to seeing the results flooding in.
We’ve got too much. Our children are being brought up in a world of plenty. It’s really difficult to stop the house getting piled up with mounds of plastic toys and games. They’re getting spoilt; we’re getting spoilt. I’m just as guilty of this as anyone else.
All of this convenience is false. It is by using the energy trapped in fossil fuels, built up over millions of years, and on the backs of the poorest, most destitute people in the world that our luxurious, care-free lives are built. We’re merely using up our natural reserves, not really generating much that is new.
It is bad for us now; it is sickening for the poor and terrible for the future of the planet. We have to stop.
And as we get more unused to the real effort of staying alive, we will find it more and more difficult to be able to cope if we stop using this natural capital and the poor of the world stop doing our dirty work.
To really understand what we are doing to ourselves and our children, I looked up the medical definition of what it is to be spoilt. Spoiled Child Syndrome means indulging in excessive, self-centred and immature behaviour.
This can be a problem into adulthood. People might have trouble waiting for that thing that they want now, such as a snack, new gadget or clothes. They might have trouble coping with criticism, controlling their temper, maintaining professionalism and personal relationships.
I find it difficult to stop myself gorging on all of the biscuits in the tin. It is always tempting to just sit in front of the telly and eat. People complain at the price of food, but it’s never been lower. We do everything we can to avoid expending any effort, such as by driving round the corner for a pizza or ordering one in. We can get any thrill at the touch of a button. It takes more and more to get us excited, which leads us to create and watch sickening violence in films such as Saw just to keep an inane smile on our faces.
To get out of this cycle has to start with number one. I’ve got to train myself to recognise the indulgent cravings and lead by example, particularly for the sake of my children who copy everything I do. I can spot the greed in the small things, when I quicken slightly and fumble when making a cup of tea, with the biscuit tin in the back of my mind. It’s at these points that I need to intervene in my curtailed freedom of will, and deliberately slow myself down and ration myself. I can slowly start to gain control of my life.
I’ll need to put more effort into really growing my own food and getting connected with where it comes from. I’ll continue to get around by using my body walking and cycling, rather than driving, where I can.
As I persevere I hope it will rub off on my children, and allow them to be free and balanced. If I am successful at it, maybe others watching on will be able to break free as well.
Does this strike a chord? Or does it not make sense to you? What are you going to do about it?
Energy prices are high, it’s a nuisance. They’re not going to come down. But, if you want to reduce your gas & electricity bill, there is way. I’ll show you how, after I’ve let off some steam.
The other day I was hearing some MP or other going on about how people have no control over their energy bills. Any changes to prices mean people have to find the money to pay up, from another part of their budget. Rubbish – we have direct control over our gas & electricity bills. Who is switching on the lights or the telly?
That is not to say that there are no people who have the lights off most of the time and are wrapped up in duvets or jumpers all winter so they can afford to eat. People in that situation need proactive help to insulate their homes and reduce their costs.
People who are not in such dire straits do have control. It is very tempting to blame the energy companies or the government, and they probably do deserve a bit of a verbal kicking, but that doesn’t mean you are helpless. I saved 30-40% on my gas and electricity bills just by changing my habits.
I’ve listed here a few things you could do. It’s not comprehensive – I challenge everyone reading this to add their own idea as a comment at the bottom, so we build up a fantastic list of energy and money-saving ideas.
Put some foil behind your radiators.
Close the curtains, and tuck them onto the windowsill so the heat ends up on the inside.
Re-use drained water from pasta or rice to cook the veg or make the gravy. It’s already hot.
Only boil as much water as you need in the kettle.
Use a lid on pots and pans so you can turn down the heat.
Switch the oven off before everything is cooked, to use up the latent heat.
Heat plates in the cooling oven or in the grill above the oven rather than heating them up separately.
Look at the timer on your boiler, and make sure it is only on when you need it, especially when you are away or in the summer.
If you have single-glazed windows and can’t afford to get them double-glazed, try double-glazing film, fixed to the window using a hairdryer.
Be aware of the heat escaping the house when you open a window or door, and shut them as soon as you can.
Put on a few layers and turn down the thermostat.
Decide what you want from the fridge before opening it, and shut the door straight away.
Switch suppliers to a small firm such as Good Energy or Ecotricity, where much less of the energy comes from fossil fuels (zero from Good Energy) and the prices are lower than the “Big Six” (guaranteed from Ecotricity and they froze their prices before the recent price increases).
Switch off your computer / telly / phone when not in use.
Fix dripping hot water taps.
Shower rather than bath.
Wait for the dishwasher to be full before switching it on.
Shut the interior doors.
Make sure the water temperature of the boiler to 60 deg C.
Use individual radiator heater controls if you have them.
Generally be aware of the energy you use. Get into good habits.
If you have a little cash to spare, for example if you budgeted for the yearly energy bill and have some of that money available:
Get those low energy light-bulbs or LED bulbs. They pay for themselves in no time, and you can get decent lights for any fitting these days.
Insulate your walls and loft. This is worth it if you need to pay yourself, and you can often get a grant to help out.
With a bit more cash, replace an aging boiler or get double- or secondary-glazing fitted.
Get individual heating controls fitted so you can only heat the parts of the house you are using.
If you need some advice, get in touch with your local Transition Town, who are very likely to be able to help. They may have or know of people trained to give advice. They may have access to a thermal imaging camera to find out where you are leaking heat, or to a device to check how air tight your house is.
No, I’m not talking about us running out of time before the climate goes boom. Although we are. I’m reckon that our outlook on time is the fundamental reason for us being in the state we are in.
What is the underlying cause of the apathy or inaction we face when it comes to meaningfully dealing with climate change? A lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to work that out. Is it fear? Ignorance? Greed? Vested interest?
I think it might just be time. We are used to having little of it, feeling as though we need to run about to get things done. We don’t have the time to cycle when the car beckons. Or to cook when there is a ready meal waiting. Or time to really explore the reality behind what we read, hear, feel, see, touch or taste.
Why are we all in such a hurry in any case? What is so urgent that we can’t stop running of the cliff?
I’d like to explore this a little more, but sorry, I’ve got to rush.
John Bell vs Climate Change (currently 15,148-155 to Climate Change) 