The Deniers have rustled up their own TV station, an offshoot of the right-wingy Corbett Report called ClimateGate TV. The site has everything you could possibly want in terms of hyperventilating and belligerent commentary about the emails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. The only thing missing is even the tiniest hint about who’s paying the the bills for the new “service.”
Featuring video podcasts from a host of non-experts – from Christopher Monckton to Tim Ball – the site is cleaner, snappier and much more professional-looking than interviewer James Corbett’s original website. It also offers the full variety of denier coverage at the Copenhagen climate summit, including some tape of the weekend “alternative conference.”
More embarrassing, perhaps, is a series of commentaries from the dean of discredited Canadian deniers Tim Ball. In the interview featured above, he renews old complaints about what he has described repeatedly as a scientific conspiracy to keep people like him from publishing his research. (His lifetime publication record amounts to a disappointing total of four peer-reviewed articles.) While Ball claims censorship here, he has acknowledged in the past that he never personally submitted an article for publication that was rejected by a peer-reviewed journal. It turns out the reason he didn’t publish more wasn’t censorship; it was that he hasn’t done the work.
The snappy new TV station demonstrates again the energy and dollars behind the stolen email story – which continues to dominate the conversations in Copenhagen and news coverage arising from the event. Part of the reason for media enthusiasm about the story is the unceasing promotion from the denier community. And part is the lack of a clear alternative story out of Copenhagen. There have been dustups over a leaked early text, drafted and ill-advisedly circulated by the Danes. There was a compelling demonstration organized all but instantly by TckTckTck after the threatened Island State of Tuvalu walked out of negotiations. But for the most part, the negotiating action is occurring in closed sessions among subject area experts tidying up all the fine details possible before the high-level delegates show up for the show down over actual targets and commitments.
So, media is left with a gap, and the deniers continue, tirelessly and with a steady flow of resources, to fill that gap with Tim Ball’s casual email-oriented slander of the entire scientific community. Expect more in the week to come.
