The clue is in your post. The Telegraph, hardly know for its impartial political stance.

They also have yet to apologise to Prof Fairchild.

Still you wouldn't expect any better from the Torygraph.

No newspaper has an 'impartial political stance' so still sounds about right.

If Prof Fairchild (whoever he is) feels like he needs an apology and it is not getting one then he should sue their asses.

The Telegraph has a blatent climate change denial agenda and will print misleading articles to support it. A bit like this thread.

It wasn't the Telegraph as such - it was, IIRC, James Delingpole. He and Christopher Booker can provide a chuckle on this subject: they rant about the "unproven AGW" theory - and then quote all sorts of dubious and sometimes fraudulent sources.

It's good that they take an anti-stance - someone needs to have an opposite/contrary/unpopular view for real democracy to work. On the other hand you have outfits like The Guardian, who take a lefty, champagne socialist viewpoint on this subject, and they're squeaky clean eh?

Both are quality publications IMO.

From memory the Fairchild issue was about another great "scare", this time from the 1970s, the Nuclear Winter. It didnt happen.

If you think I have posted anything misleading please feel free to correct me....

That's the bloke - it was a funny read.

You are wrong.

Woooops, my memory was slipping for a moment. This was his rebuttal, which I think didnt get published. I was half right in that he did mention nuclear winter....


Sir,

Contrary to the headline about our scientific work that appeared last week on the Telegraph website, high levels of greenhouse gases did not trigger an ice age. In our paper in Science we provided independent evidence for a theory that a hot atmosphere rich in greenhouse gases could coexist with a cold, glacial Earth surface. A planet largely covered in ice and snow (a Snowball Earth) would allow carbon dioxide emitted from volcanoes to build up in the atmosphere over millions of years. We show that this actually happened at a time in the Earth’s history prior to the evolution of animals.

Perhaps it was the prolonged cold snap over Christmas that set the headline writer’s mind racing, but the contemporary relevance of our work is rather different. A Snowball Earth could be re-created, in spite of greenhouse warming. For example, a nuclear war would generate a pall of dust, reflecting sunlight away from the Earth. Also, a proposed technological fix to global warming – launching a mass of tiny sulphate aerosol particles in the atmosphere – could be overdone with the same result. Barring these horrors, we are left with the physical reality of greenhouse warming, despite the vagaries of our wonderfully capricious British weather.

best wishes,

Ian

Ian J. Fairchild
Professor of Physical Geography

Half right by getting it completely wrong? Nuclear winter? The 1970s? It was the Telegraph misleading the public, not Prof Fairchild.

You are not being very specific here old chap. Can you give me examples, and support your claims with some references or data.

"If you think I have posted anything misleading please feel free to correct me...."

You were wrong. I corrected you as requested.

I could just make up some random nonsense or post vague articles from the internet as you do?

The nuclear winter was a theory that developed in the 1970s, whereby dust lifted during a major nuclear conflict would shield the sun to the point where global cooling would occur.

This was the “For example, a nuclear war would generate a pall of dust, reflecting sunlight away from the Earth” that Fairchild referred to.

I mentioned 1970s because this is when it first became discussed, initially in 1974 when John Hampson suggested that a full-scale nuclear exchange could result in depletion of the ozone shield, possibly subjecting the earth to ultraviolet radiation for a year or more, and a year later when the United States National Research Council reported on ozone depletion following nuclear war, judging that the effect of dust would probably be slight climatic cooling.

You could google Nuclear Winter if you want to lean about it.

Edit,
I now see what you mean you Lordship. My aging memory let me down, and I thought the disagreement was about the effects of a Nuclear Winter. In fact Fairchild only referred to it as an aside, and it wasn’t the main thrust of his argument. I had no intention to mislead anyone, I simply relied upon my memory for an issue that was unimportant to me.

I am sure you will agree tho, that he did mention what most scientists would refer to as the Nuclear Winter theory.

I do however apologise. I was wrong about the main thrust of Fairchilds dispute with the newspaper.

I think James Hansen is going to be on Lateline at 10.30 AEST - any time now. Might be interesting!