Humour certainly stays in the mind. In a cartoon by Joel Pett a presenter stands by a screen bearing the words 'Green jobs, energy independence and rainforests’, when a member of the audience cries out: What if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing? In another, on the Alliance of World Scientists’ website, a lecturer stands at a board with the words: ‘Research concludes WE ARE DESTROYING THE EARTH’. An onlooker representing government asks: Could you rephrase that in equivocal, inaccurate, vague, self-serving and roundabout terms that we can all understand?
Bill, I admire your courage in appearing on Climate Science Translated. However:
1. As an exercise in public education the swearing presumably excludes it from schools, and the scientists give a didactic delivery that plays into the stereotype that they are remote and perhaps unduly earnest (Rollie Williams of Climate Town avoids that).
2. The theme isn’t good. Governments can be exhorted to do more, but as I understand it the contribution of renewables has hardly done more than keep pace with the absolute increase in the demand for energy (15% in 2020 vs. 13% at the start of this century), so the better theme would concern growth.
3. The exercise raises awareness, and even ridicule against named politicians, as when Will Ferrell mocked George W. Bush [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1gC8qWh2Hs], seems to have that kind of general effect. It would be a different matter if those individuals or institutions whose public duty it is to respect evidence were ridiculed. So Bill, what about doing another one on the false balance and related devices of BBC reportage since 2011 (when Steve Jones did his excellent review), or the logical weakness incorporated into the Sustainable Development Goals that is the source of so much greenwash?!
Humour certainly stays in the mind. In a cartoon by Joel Pett a presenter stands by a screen bearing the words 'Green jobs, energy independence and rainforests’, when a member of the audience cries out: What if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing? In another, on the Alliance of World Scientists’ website, a lecturer stands at a board with the words: ‘Research concludes WE ARE DESTROYING THE EARTH’. An onlooker representing government asks: Could you rephrase that in equivocal, inaccurate, vague, self-serving and roundabout terms that we can all understand?
Bill, I admire your courage in appearing on Climate Science Translated. However:
1. As an exercise in public education the swearing presumably excludes it from schools, and the scientists give a didactic delivery that plays into the stereotype that they are remote and perhaps unduly earnest (Rollie Williams of Climate Town avoids that).
2. The theme isn’t good. Governments can be exhorted to do more, but as I understand it the contribution of renewables has hardly done more than keep pace with the absolute increase in the demand for energy (15% in 2020 vs. 13% at the start of this century), so the better theme would concern growth.
3. The exercise raises awareness, and even ridicule against named politicians, as when Will Ferrell mocked George W. Bush [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1gC8qWh2Hs], seems to have that kind of general effect. It would be a different matter if those individuals or institutions whose public duty it is to respect evidence were ridiculed. So Bill, what about doing another one on the false balance and related devices of BBC reportage since 2011 (when Steve Jones did his excellent review), or the logical weakness incorporated into the Sustainable Development Goals that is the source of so much greenwash?!