Houghtongate Bites Booker

Well after Piers Akermangate went down into the quote mine to try and get out of apologizing for making up quoting from thinking he may have quoted from Benny Peiser a fabrication that Akerman attributed to Sir John Houghton, we get Christopher Booker plagiarizing Piers, and claiming that, the made up line they quoted was "just like" something else that Houghton said in an interview with the Times. Eli has gone over this ground before, and, as the Policy Lass points out one of these is nothing like the other,

Let’s play “One of these things is not like the other”

“Unless we announce disasters no one will listen”.

“If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster. It’s like safety on public transport. The only way humans will act is if there’s been an accident.” [edited to add the rest of the quote in so that denialists the hard of reading comprehension won't lie misunderstand]

The two are not the same.

The first one — a false one — has been used by deniers to charge that the IPCC knowingly exaggerates the risks of global warming in order to hype the issue and get attention. The second states that its human nature to ignore problems until they reach critical mass.

but Booker has an interesting addition

It was also asked, through this paper, that I publish a correction, because I quoted the sentence in my recent book The Real Global Warming Disaster – although I have never done so in these pages. Like many others, I was misled by the internet into assuming the quote, attributed to a book written by Sir John in 1994, was genuine, and that it must have been removed from the later edition I used when compiling my own account of the global warming story. Naturally, in the face of Sir John's insistence that he never said it, we shall all in due course take steps to correct the record, as I shall do in the next edition of my book.

Letters have been sent, it just takes longer to get to the end of the Earth. Ely had dearly awaited hearing the mush of books being pulped, but perhaps not, still hope springs eternal, the buds are swelling and the birdies singing.

Comments?

UPDATE: From the Hank Robert's Blog and interpretation:

> in the face of Sir John's insistence that he never said it,
[I haven't checked personally, but I've been forced to admit that he now claims he never wrote what we published and attributed to him]

> we shall all in due course
[We will not change the falsehood that we've printed and distributed]

> take steps to correct the record
[each step we take covers half the remaining distance toward getting it right. Please be infinitely patient with our progress]