Climate change

BBC self censoring Frozen Planet for the American market?

BBC Bias, Climate change
Published on Leave a comment on BBC self censoring Frozen Planet for the American market?

Remember back in 2007, when it turned out the Dutch broadcaster which put out David Attenborough’s Life of Mammals had removed all traces of evolution from the series? That at least had been done behind the BBC’s back, without their or Attenborough’s consent. Not so for Attenborough’s latest series, Frozen Planet, where the BBC allegedly has started to self censor by selling it abroad without the episode on climate change:

British viewers will see seven episodes, the last of which deals with global warming and the threat to the natural world posed by man.

However, viewers in other countries, including the United States, will only see six episodes.

The environmental programme has been relegated by the BBC to an “optional extra” alongside a behind-the-scenes documentary which foreign networks can ignore.

[…]

Over 30 networks across the world have bought the series but a third of them have rejected the choice of the additional two episodes, including the one on climate change.

[…]

Viewers in the United States, where climate change sceptics are particularly strong group, will not see the full episode.

Instead, the BBC said that Discovery, which shows the series in the US, had a “scheduling issue so only had slots for six episodes”, so “elements” of the climate change episode would be incorporated into their final show, with editorial assistance from the Corporation.

Shocking though not surprising to see such cowardice from the BBC. Money is again more important than truth.

Confirmed: Americans are still humourless gits

Activism, Climate change, Funny, Video
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So the British 10:10 campaign (aiming at cutting carbon emissions ten percent in 2010) put out the satirical video above which, to be fair is a bit heavy handedly ironic and of course the usual numbnuts who still think a wet summer refutes climate change take it seriously and scream about intended genocide. They have to, it’s in their job description (I refuse to believe anybody believes this nonsense without a paycheck being involved somewhere). As everybody who does have a brain should understand by now, these people should be mocked, not argued with.

Unfortunately, climate change deniers are not the onlyones whose sense of humour has been surgically been removed; the same goes for most American environmentalists, who have had their panties in a bunch about this video as well. Case in point:

There were emails from people all saying the same thing: Have you seen this? This was a gross video making its way around Youtube, purporting to show people being blown up for not believing in climate change. It’s been “pulled” from Youtube by its creators, the British climate group 10:10, but of course nothing is ever really “pulled” from Youtube. If you want to watch it bad enough, I’m pretty sure you can find it. Or you can look at the stories by climate deniers assailing it as the latest example of eco-fascism.
The climate skeptics can crow. It’s the kind of stupidity that hurts our side, reinforcing in people’s minds a series of preconceived notions, not the least of which is that we’re out-of-control and out of touch — not to mention off the wall, and also with completely misplaced sense of humor.

[…]

JR: The video is beyond tasteless and should be widely condemned. […]

Dear oh dear.

Worrying how the deniers will spin anything is useless. No matter how inoffensive a campaign they will object: that’s what they’re paid for. In fact, all this worrying about how this video sends the wrong message about how authoritarian environmentalists are (percieved to be) is actually reinforcing the deniers’ message. Anybody who thinks this video shows the reality behind the environmental movement or whatever is a loon. Anybody with a functional brain knows that. Complaining about it only validates the loons.

Fisking Steve Levitt — you r doin it rite

Blinded by Science, Climate change
Published on

Economists, like engineers, have the annoying habit of assuming that the mastery of their particular subject makes them ideally suited to comment on other fields, using the assumptions they brought along with them from their own. In engineers this delusion often leads to engineer’s disease, where the common wisdom of entire fields of science is rejected in favour of whatever homebrew explenation the engineer in question has thought up. With economists, it leads to attempts to re-examine other disciplines through purely econometric methods to discover what they’re “really” about. This is bad enough already, but gets worse when applied to the realm of politics, where economists eternally promise that using their “science” will lead to rational policy decisions. A case in point is Steve Levitt’s new book Superfreakonomics, a sequel to his earlier quirky economics book Freakonomics. Where in the earlier book he was just annoying with his relentless contrarianism, this book he could do more harm, as it’s all about global warming and climate change and how worry about it as the experts say.

This of course mightly pisses off said experts, leading to the following evisceration by Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, Louis Block Professor in the Geophysical Sciences, The University of Chicago (and hence a colleague of Levitt’s), where he takes apart the silly claim that solar panels contribute more to global warming through waste heat than they save by replacing coalpower:

As quoted by you, Mr. Myhrvold claimed, in effect, that it was pointless to try to solve global warming by building solar cells, because they are black and absorb all the solar energy that hits them, but convert only some 12% to electricity while radiating the rest as heat, warming the planet. Now, maybe you were dazzled by Mr Myhrvold’s brilliance, but don’t we try to teach our students to think for themselves? Let’s go through the arithmetic step by step and see how it comes out. It’s not hard.

[…]

A more substantive (though in the end almost equally trivial) issue is the carbon emitted in the course of manufacturing solar cells, but that is not the matter at hand here. The point here is that really simple arithmetic, which you could not be bothered to do, would have been enough to tell you that the claim that the blackness of solar cells makes solar energy pointless is complete and utter nonsense. I don’t think you would have accepted such laziness and sloppiness in a term paper from one of your students, so why do you accept it from yourself? What does the failure to do such basic thinking with numbers say about the extent to which anything you write can be trusted? How do you think it reflects on the profession of economics when a member of that profession — somebody who that profession seems to esteem highly — publicly and noisily shows that he cannot be bothered to do simple arithmetic and elementary background reading. Not even for a subject of such paramount importance as global warming.

10:10 challenge – sorted

Climate change
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The Guardian has launched a new environmental campaign the 10:10 campaign, in which you can sign up to cut down your CO2 output by ten percent by 2010. Alex was annoyed by its smugness and woollyheadedness, while Charlie showed the practical difficulties in complying with the suggestions made on how to cut down, as quite a few of them are only partially under your own control. If you live in a listed building e.g. you can’t put up solar panels, though even if it was allowed it won’t make much difference in Edinburgh.

If I look at my own situation, things are much easier. Take a look at the list of suggested cuts. If we can assume that Dutch CO2 admission is equal to the UK average, i.e. 14 tonnes annually, then I’ve already reached the goal of ten percent reduction, through two simple facts: I don’t drive (1.5 tonnes) and I don’t fly (1.2 tonnes). Together, that’s a reduction of a whopping 19 percent on the average person’s CO2 output. They’re also the two biggest reductions you can make.

But I can do this because I live in a public transport friendly city in a public transport friendly country, and I don’t need to travel abroad for my work. Many people are less lucky. You can try to live without a car, but if you can’t get to your job any other way because there isn’t any public transport that goes near it, you’re screwed. And that’s the weakness of this campaign, as anything other than a publicity stunt, a way of showing that there is an electorate that’s serious issues, even if smug with it sometimes. Real change needs more, as you can’t expect people to make environmentally friendly decisions in their day to day lives without changing the system to make those decisions possible. The Dutch Socialist Party has always had the principle that it should not be the workers, but the capitalists who have to pay for the pollution caused by capitalism; the idea that we are all to blame for climate change because we’re all consumers diffuses responsibility too much and overestimates the power we have as individual consumers.

Still Sure It Can’t Happen To You – Or Your Kids?

Capitalism, Civil liberties, Climate change, creative direct action, Life under Capitalism, Manufacturing consent, New Labour, Parenting, Policing, Uh? WTF?, UK politics, War on Terror
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policestateuk

Anyone actively political in a way that’s embarassing or inconvenient to the Labour government is now, officially, a terrorist.

Happening in my home town now: some students in a shared house smoked dope, had some replica weapons, started getting interested in anticapitalism and antiracism/fascism, and engaged in a little light graffiti. They got raided for the dope and they’re now all in prison under the Terrorist Act.

Why are nonviolent potential student protestors and a 16 year-old schoolboy, who’ve yet (other than the graffiti artist) to even protest, let alone commit a known offence, being held as terrorists?

Apparently Devon and Cornwall police found “literature relating to political ideology” in the house. Oh, and knives.

If this is terrorism, we’re all fucked. I certainly would be if having “literature relating to political ideology” is what the police now characterise as terrorism.

Do I have to tell my children, quick, burn your copies of Naomi Klein and Malcolm X for fear of a knock by the plod? Were I in the UK and not on dialysis I would undoubtedly have been on my way to the G20 today to protest by any means necessary. It certainly could’ve been me or many people I know (none of whom are terrorists by any stretch of the imagination) arrested, our homes raided and lives deliberately ruined by politically motivated police, if that’s what makes you a terrorist.

These are trumped-up arrests on trumped-up evidence meant to politically intimidate legitimate protestors who do not agree with the government and to permanently label them (and anyone they know or associate with) as terrorists. It doesn’t matter that the students will probably be quietly released with no charges after the G20. Just the fact you’ve been arrested under the Act is enough to label you forever. You’re in the database now.

“Computers have also been seized for examination.” say Plymouth police. Yes, multiple computers with multiple users, not to mention multiple mobile phones, in 2 shared student houses. Since when have students been guilty of what their housemates read online or text to their mates?

But how very handy for the police to be able to hoover up who knows how many innocent yet politically inconvenient email or facebook friends or bloggers or LJ readers for Jacqui Smith’s handy little database of dissidents (if her husband hasn’t left the USB stick at Spearmint Rhino already).

I don’t know as yet whether any activists I know personally have been swept into the Terrorist Act’s net as a result of this blatant act of deliberate political intimidation – because the arrestees have yet to be charged, let alone named – but that’s hardly the point.

This is happening now, today, to mere schoolboys and student activists, and no-one who speaks out against the current form of government is safe from unjustified, politically motivated intimidation and imprisonment.