“…So even if – as I do – you think he’s a bit irritating, it does really matter what he says about scientific issues because he has a wide, loyal audience who not only worship him as if he were a member One Direction but who revere him as a serious intellect with his proper actual doctorate in high energy particle physics and his associations with the CERN project in Geneva.
That’s why it’s important we take a look at his recent appearance on Q & A – Australia’s answer to Question Time – and examine how well he comported himself when speaking out on science’s most fraught, contested and expensive issue: climate change. Prof Brian Cox: Gorgeous Lips; Lovely Smile; Crap Scientist
Australia’s ABC is so nakedly biased it makes the BBC look like Fox News. Presenter Tony Jones doesn’t even pretend to be neutral, as he showed in his handling of a question on climate change, which had clearly been set up in advance in order to make a fool of the only climate sceptic on the panel – Federal Senator Malcolm Roberts. We know it was a set up because Brian Cox had come armed with a sheaf of relevant papers – graphs and data – which he could pull out with a flourish at the appropriate moment to create a “gotcha!” scenario for Roberts. Roberts clearly hadn’t been expecting this underhand trick (I’ll explain why it is underhand in a moment) but recovered well and did about as well as you could possibly do in a situation where the presenter, all four of fellow panelists and the entire audience have drunk the Kool-Aid….”