CBC finally drops IPCC-nik Andrew Weaver’s fake Nobel laurel

[Please note UPDATE below -hro]

Canada’s National (taxpayer funded) Broadcaster, the CBC has rarely – if ever – missed an opportunity to unquestioningly promote the alarmist “cause” along with its made in Canada green activists and advocates.

Andrew Weaver is one of the CBC’s favourite idols. Weaver – who has never demonstrated any understanding of the phrases “truth in posting/advertising” or “conflict of interest” – was the CBC’s chosen go-to “expert” for an interpretation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s much awaited and carefully crafted Press Release on the “approval” of Working Group I (WGI)’s Summary for Policymakers (SPM).

Readers of this blog will recall that in his pre-passion-for-politics days, Weaver was known for declaring that the 2007 IPCC Assessment Report (AR4) would show climate change to be a “barrage of intergalactic ballistic missiles“. During and after this IPCC Lead Author’s election campaign, the CBC was absolutely fawning in its support of Weaver.

So when I saw their post-SPM-release interview of Weaver, I had a good chuckle when I saw that Weaver’s fake Nobel laurel had been silently ditched in favour of his far less prestigious** designation in 2008 as a Member of the “Order of British Columbia“:

** As an aside, even this award has lost considerable prestige in the last decade or so. To my mind, for example, the accomplishments of The Nizkor Project‘s Ken McVay far outweigh anything climate modeller Weaver has succeeded in doing with his computers.

Weaver was ready, willing and able to spout the IPCC’s new, improved “messages” – neatly compiled in their “Headline Statements” from the SPM. He seems to have backtracked on his 2007 “intergalactic ballistic missiles” imagery though, in favour of something along the lines of ‘Well, the IPCC has been saying the same thing for twenty years; and we’re just more certain now’.

Now, if only the CBC could get its research act together, and – instead of plucking a quote from a US skeptic source for Weaver to handwave away with a sneering “Who cares?!” – get in touch with (or at least acknowledge that you’ve read the critiques of) some home-grown commentators. Ross McKitrick and Donna Laframboise are two Canadian names that come to mind.

Come on CBC! Remember the days when you used to do real journalism? Instead of the superficial churnalism and blatant advocacy you now call “news“. Hell, you could even get really radical and <<gasp>> interview McKitrick and/or Laframboise. What a concept, eh?!

You can do this, I know you can! Or don’t your producers and/or researchers read the National Post?

P.S. If you must cross the border for your “challenge” to your favourite climate change “expert”, why didn’t you contact Dr. Judith Curry who, unlike Weaver, is not a modeller – or an IPCC-nik who cannot recognize the conflicts inherent in his many interests? Curry is a real climate scientist, and she has some very informed views on the “pause” that Weaver and the IPCC are desperately trying to bury in a fog of weasel-words – many of which, I suspect, were probably conveniently conjured up for them by that “jewel in the crown”, the U.K. Met Office.

UPDATE: 10/2/2013 Canada’s Financial Post continues to put CBC to shame. They have published Judith Curry’s right on the mark “diagnosis” as an op ed:

Kill the IPCC: After decades and billions spent, the climate body still fails to prove humans behind warming

The IPCC is in a state of permanent paradigm paralysis. It is the problem, not the solution

The IPCC has given us a diagnosis of a planetary fever and a prescription for planet Earth. In this article, I provide a diagnosis and prescription for the IPCC: paradigm paralysis, caused by motivated reasoning, oversimplification, and consensus seeking; worsened and made permanent by a vicious positive feedback effect at the climate science-policy interface.

[she concludes:]

The IPCC needs to get out of the way so that scientists and policy makers can better do their jobs.

The diagnosis of paradigm paralysis seems fatal in the case of the IPCC, given the widespread nature of the infection and intrinsic motivated reasoning. We need to put down the IPCC as soon as possible – not to protect the patient who seems to be thriving in its own little cocoon, but for the sake of the rest of us whom it is trying to infect with its disease. The precautionary principle demands that we not take any risks here.