On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 8:36:38 PM UTC+12, Graham Easterling wrote:
On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 9:48:44 PM UTC+1, Keith Harris wrote:
On Saturday, 3 August 2019 21:38:42 UTC+1, Alastair B. McDonald wrote:
On Saturday, 3 August 2019 17:32:29 UTC+1, Keith Harris wrote:
On Saturday, 3 August 2019 16:00:56 UTC+1, Alastair B. McDonald wrote:
On Saturday, 3 August 2019 14:37:56 UTC+1, newshound wrote:
On 03/08/2019 11:49, Graham P Davis wrote:
On 03/08/2019 11:03, Spike wrote:
This is the full version, HTH:

https://www.apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0

Ah, a media story. My personal experience with these is that they often
bear little relationship to what the interviewee actually said. Fifty
years ago I was incensed on seeing an article in the Daily Fail about an
impending "Little Ice Age" which was a load of ******** from beginning
to end. I'd worked with the interviewees and could not believe what
they'd said. When I got to work I was going to ring them but,
considering they were a few grades above me, I delayed a bit. However,
one rang me first to apologise about the article, saying it was
nonsense, and that none of the quotes attributed to them were what
they'd said.

A few years ago, I was speaking to someone who'd also fallen foul of
such misreporting and so, on his next interview, asked the interviewers
whether they minded whether he recorded it. They agreed. Of course, when
the story appeared, he'd been totally misquoted. He got another meeting
with them and went over the recording.They found all the words on the
recording that had appeared in the quotes but none of the phrases or
sentences. They had resorted, in effect, to the Eric Morecambe defence
where they'd used the right words but not necessarily in the right order!


I don't doubt that there is some selective quotation here, but I am
pretty confident that the basic theme of the UN prediction was that
there would be problems if something wasn't done. People being human,
they might well have sexed it up a bit, and of course journalists write
it up for the most dramatic spin, that is what journalists do.

Like Graham, I have had the unsettling experience of seeing highly
selective quotation from nuclear power professionals turned into a
series of dire warnings.

Skipping back to when I was passionate and impressionable, I worried
about the now-classic Paul Ehrlich quote from 1968:

"The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of
millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs
embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial
increase in the world death rate". Which of course didn't happen.