Ministers' collective dummy spit on Senate

12 March, 2010 by

On the count of three, spit those dummies!

What a hilarious sight it was to see five Cabinet ministers (including Penny Wong holding the CPRS flag), solemnly arrayed before the media, bleating about how the nasty Coalition has blocked all their legislation. They claim that the current Senate is the most obstructionist in history, blocking 40-odd pieces of legislation and blaming it all on the Coalition.

As usual, the arrogance of the Rudd government in expecting its legislation to be just rubber stamped is breathtaking. But that’s just par for the course – and we have come to expect it. The real point is that Rudd himself is to blame – he has refused to negotiate with any of the opposition parties, be it Coalition or cross-bench. The Greens and Family first have said the same. And that refusal to negotiate has left them only one option: to block the legislation.

John Howard was in a similar position, lacking a majority in the Senate, but you didn’t see him humiliate himself by whining to the media. He negotiated, and got his policies through.

And if Rudd is really concerned about not being able to get legislation passed, then he has a solution: a double dissolution. But there’s no sign of that happening. For this is nothing more than a cheap attack on Abbott, and unfortunately for him, even the media aren’t stupid enough to fall for it.

As the saying goes, it’s time for Rudd and his cronies to STFU.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

ABC: Let's have a debate

12 March, 2010 by

Group think on climate

Geoff Elliott, writing in The Australian, analyses the effect of ABC chairman Maurice Newman’s speech (see here):

The responses to Newman’s speech have been predictable. Some see it as management interference in the ABC editorial processes, others as a case of Newman expressing some hard truths.

Perhaps not surprisingly, first to express outrage was Jonathan Holmes, the presenter of ABC1’s Media Watch.

After Newman spoke, Scott followed with his own speech but, according to those present, did not directly address the chairman’s comments. He then opened the forum for questions in which Holmes rose to his feet and, according to those present, said: “It was an excellent speech, Mark, but I found it difficult to concentrate because I’m so angry about what the chairman just said”, or words to that effect.

Holmes’s view is that it was an inappropriate forum for the remarks. An ABC spokesman says it was an internal discussion, though a speech to 250 people at the ABC was unlikely to remain internal for long and Newman reiterated his remarks in a lengthy interview on ABC radio’s PM that night.

The Friends of the ABC says Newman’s criticism of the coverage of global warming was “extraordinary and inappropriate”.

Spokesperson Glenys Stradijot says Newman “is entitled to his personal views on controversial matters. But his expression of them while he remains head of the ABC damages public confidence in the national broadcaster’s independence”. She goes on: “Just as worrying, Mr Newman’s comments look to be an attempt to influence ABC programming to be more favourable to global warming scepticism.”

But others wonder if this argument holds, as the ABC board, as a taxpayer-funded entity, is responsible under the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act to “ensure that the gathering and presentation by the corporation of news and information is accurate and impartial according to the recognised standards of objective journalism”.

The ABC has been under heavy fire in the past few months for its reporting on climate change, partly with reference to the climategate emails, and as public opinion shifts on the issue, particularly after the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit. (source)

But just when you think it can’t get worse, we find the ABC spinning the recent story from China (also discussed here) regarding a senior official branding climate “denialism” an extreme viewpoint, as ABC News Watch points out:

In the AM report Xie Zhenhua is reported as saying the following in answer to McDonell (translated – by the ABC or Chinese officials?):“Climate change is a fact based on long-time observations by countries around the world. The mainstream view is that climate change is caused by burning of fossil fuel in the course of industrialisation. And there’s a more extreme view which holds that human activity has only an imperceptible impact on the natural system.”

The Reuters report however attributes the following statement to Xie Zhenhua (translated – by Reuters or other Chinese officials?): “There are still two different viewpoints in the scientific field about the cause of warming,” Xie told a news conference on the sidelines of the annual session of China’s largely rubber-stamp parliament. “At present, many people, or the most mainstream view, is that the combustion of large amounts of fossil fuel over the process of industrialisation caused an increase in greenhouse gases, which caused climate warming.” “Another point of view holds that the main reason is changes in sunspots, or natural changes in the environment. There is an even more extreme point of view, that human influence on changes in nature can only be miniscule,” he added.””

And as Marc concludes:

If this complaint is upheld we believe a deeper investigation, perhaps a Parliamentary Inquiry, into ABC news coverage on climate change is more than warranted. If readers can get more accurate coverage of news for free on the internet why do we need the ABC’s news service?

So true, so true.

Read Marc’s entire report here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Daily Bayonet GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

12 March, 2010 by

Skewering the clueless

As always, a great read!

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With:

Roger Pielke Jr on ABC's The Drum

11 March, 2010 by

Climate sense

Roger Pielke Jr writes at The Drum on why the ETS as a means to reduce emissions will achieve nothing (this is one of the few “token sceptic” articles, fairly balanced against about a thousand alarmist ones):

Policy makers truly want to reduce emissions, but they have no idea how they are going to achieve those reductions in practice.

Emissions reductions targets are offered up with little understanding of the implications for energy supply or the economy. Complex legislation is proposed that obscures the simple math of decarbonisation.

When push comes to shove no politician wants to impose economic discomfort on his or her constituents, so they look desperately for magical solutions. Emissions trading has provided that illusion up to now.

Australia, the United States and Japan, in particular are at a crossroads in climate policy. The decisions that they make at this juncture will shape climate policy around the world, leading up to the summit in Mexico at the end of the year and beyond.

Will they continue in pursuit of magical solutions? Or will they start fresh, with an approach grounded in the realities of the simple math of decarbonisation?

The success or failure of emissions reductions efforts depends on their answers.

Read it here.

What do you think of this comment, however?

Bob :

11 Mar 2010 12:08:31pm

Nothing will be done to combat Climate Change until the people are prepared to take up arms and compel their governments to act.

Or how about this one:

Harpo:

11 Mar 2010 12:36:44pm

And to take serious steps to silence and re-educate the charlatans useful idiots [sic] who spew their denialist venom against the unyielding wall of indisputable scientific consensus.

So when democracy doesn’t give them what they want, they “take up arms”. Some ABC readers really are sore losers.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

ABC chairman: media displays "group think" on climate

11 March, 2010 by

Group think on climate

The sound of lefty journalistic heads popping at the ABC can be heard for miles around. Their chairman,  Maurice Newman, has pilloried the media for its one-eyed stance on climate change:

Describing himself as an agnostic on climate change, Mr Newman said climate change was an example “of group-think where contrary views have not been tolerated, and where those who express them have been labelled and mocked”.

He warned ABC staffers that he would not tolerate anyone suppressing information, citing the fact that a BBC science correspondent knew for a month before the scandal broke of damaging emails at the University of East Anglia in Britain highlighting the politicised nature of climate science but did not report them.

Mr Newman said the Guardian newspaper had noted that the moment climatology is sheltered from dispute, its force begins to wane.

“Which raises an important question for a media organisation,” Mr Newman said in the speech obtained by The Australian. “Who, if anyone, decides what to shelter from dispute? And when?

“Should there be a view that the ABC was sheltering particular beliefs from scrutiny, or failing to question a consensus, I would consider it to be a dangerous perception that could lead to the public’s trust in us being undermined.”

The first of the lefty heads to pop were those of two committed global warming advocates (notice I don’t use the word “journalist”), Media Watch presenter Jonathan Holmes, and batty science reporter Bernie Hobbs (see here for an example of Bernie’s form). And then managing director Mark Scott “played down” his comments, using the offensive “D-word” as usual:

Sources said Holmes had told Mr Newman he was wrong to assert that sceptics were silenced on the ABC. Holmes declined to comment when contacted by The Australian. [Gee, I wonder why? – Ed]

ABC science journalist Bernie Hobbs also spoke, supporting Holmes’s view and saying the ABC could not give undue weight to the sceptics and thereby push a sceptics’ agenda.

Mr Scott is said to have tried to make the peace by playing down the importance of Mr Newman’s remarks.

Sources said while Mr Newman claimed publicly he was agnostic on the issue, he was a passionate climate-change denialist in private. Mr Newman has told journalists he doesn’t believe in the science of man-made climate change. (source)

All smoke and mirrors. And it won’t make the slightest bit of difference when you have people like Holmes, Hobbs, Robyn Williams in the frame. And the ABC is on good form this morning, plastering its broadcasts with a story about a Chinese official who claims climate sceptics are a bunch of crazy extremists (again, throwing in the “D-word” again just for good measure):

A deputy director of China’s most powerful economic ministry has come out swinging against climate change denial.

Senior Chinese government figures have described the view that climate change is not man-made as an “extreme” stance which is out of step with mainstream thought. (source)

Slightly at odds withChina’s policy of doing absolutely nothing to reduce its emissions, perhaps? The journalist hasn’t considered the possibility that if climate change were not manmade, then billions of dollars in climate debt would not have to flow from the West to developing countries any more… duh.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Climate scientists bleating over "attacks from sceptics"

10 March, 2010 by

Out of order

You couldn’t make this stuff up. It’s always those filthy sceptics, flat-earthers, deniers. Here we are, just ordinary climate scientists going about our daily lives, fudging data, deleting emails when we get FOI requests, and threatening journals that dare to publish papers that challenge the consensus, and you nasty mean sceptics somehow find that objectionable. If only we could just get on with our skulduggery without your annoying interference:

CSIRO scientists say they are coming under political attack as part of an orchestrated campaign by climate change sceptics.

A delegation of scientists is in Canberra this week to push for bipartisan political support for open debate and diversity in government science. [Open debate? That’ll be the day – Ed]

CSIRO Staff Association president Michael Borgas says scientific integrity is under threat. [Yes, it certainly is, but not from the sceptics, it’s from the climate scientists who have forgotten what being a scientist is all about – Ed]

“It’s a very large concern both internal but in particular externally,” he said.

“Now we’re seeing some quite unprecedented attacks on the integrity of science in the CSIRO, that was in senate estimates recently.”

Dr Borgas says scientists need more support from management.

“We frankly think that the management does make matters worse by appearing to gag comment and exert too much control of the scientists,” he said.

“But we can see that they are attempting to manage the risk that they see from these attacks which are coming from the outside.”

Whose fault is all this? Get your own ship in order before looking for excuses elsewhere.

Read it where? You guessed it. In the ever-impartial ABC.

UPDATE: And Stephen Schneider gets in on the victim act, with this outlandish claim:

”I have hundreds” of threatening emails, Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University in California, told Tierramérica.

He believes scientists will be killed over this. ”I’m not going to let it worry me… but you know it’s going to happen,” said Schneider, one of the most respected climate scientists in the world. ”They shoot abortion doctors here.” (source)

Schneider, like all the others, was strangely silent when threats of “Nuremburg Trials”, jail or execution for climate sceptics were being made. Funny that.

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ABC: Facebook comments passed off as "journalism"

9 March, 2010 by

ABC loves Labor, hates Liberals

More outright bias from the ABC, as it slams Tony Abbott’s maternity leave policy based on nothing more than random comments posted on its web site, and – wait for it – Facebook. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, our public service broadcaster now gets ammunition to beat the Coalition from Facebook:

Parental plan a ‘cheap ploy’ to win votes

Reaction from ABC readers suggests many Australians are sceptical about the Federal Opposition Leader’s ambitious parental leave plan.

Yesterday at a lunch as part of International Women’s Day, Tony Abbott announced a plan to offer six months’ paid paternal leave if the Coalition wins the next election.

Mr Abbott says the Coalition will offer the pay for parents at their current salary, up to a ceiling of $150,000, rather than the Government’s scheme of 18 weeks paid at the minimum wage.

The plan would be funded by a new levy on big business, which has been quick to voice its opposition to the scheme.

ABC readers were today non-committal in their reaction to the plan, with some saying that although it sounds good, it will never happen.

“It won’t affect me at all because it will never be implemented by Tony Abbott, the Liberals or Labor in this current form and funding method,” Budovski commented on ABC News Online.

“It is a good idea, no doubt about that, but it is a totally disingenuous promise to woo voters.

…

On Facebook, some said the plan was a cheap ploy to win votes and that it would never be delivered.

“I will not be polite about it, he is hunting votes. If he thinks giving mums on that salary a break is fair then he has rocks in his head,” one commenter said.

Another said: “Simply put, Tony Abbott’s plan is just a con job for morons to soak up. It’s an empty promise that would never be delivered and he knows this. (source)

Ignoring the obvious fact that the ABC would never reprint such comments critical of His Royal Kruddness or his tawdry government, you have to hand it to the ABC – you know their standards have reached rock bottom when they simply reprint uninformed, anonymous comments from the public and Facebook!

This is a pitiful and frankly disgraceful excuse for journalism.

Their ABC – banging the Drum for the Left, Labor and Rudd.

Filed Under: ABC Bias

ABC: Platform for Alarmists 2

8 March, 2010 by

Sore loser

David Karoly and Robyn “100 metres” Williams on the same day. It’s just too much:

There has been an unrelenting campaign to destroy trust in the IPCC and mainstream climate science. Find a fault – and there is always something a nitpicker or Jesuitical actuary can find – and use it to demolish the entire edifice of scientific research going back decades.

Accept no counter arguments. Reject authority. Professors are suspect, willing to utter any catechism for a grant. And if massive evidence is offered dismissing your arguments about the Earth cooling – then ignore it, and just retort with the same old denial, only more loudly.

And it’s working. Public acceptance of climate science and legislation to control gases has plummeted in the last few months. As the Economist magazine wrote in December, “It is all about politics. Climate change is the hardest political problem the world has ever had to deal with. It is a prisoner’s dilemma, a free-rider problem and the tragedy of the commons all rolled into one.”

The reality is that the IPCC and “mainstream climate science” has destroyed itself, by fudging data, destroying emails and threatening journals that dare publish papers that challenge the consensus. And this guy presents The Science Show on ABC? There is no hope. Always remember the mantra:

“Their ABC, banging the Drum for the Left, and full-blown climate hysteria.”

Read it here (trust me, it will spoil your day).

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

ABC: a platform for alarmists

8 March, 2010 by

Specialised subject: Alarmism

Thanks to Their ABC, Australia’s most famous alarmist, David Karoly, is given a free ride on Radio Australia, telling us the old story that it’s all much worse than we thought. There are no details of the report, or those responsible for it, just the inevitable alarmist hysteria. And you can tell Karoly is on another planet by some of his responses:

DI BAIN: What does this report do to debunk the growing scepticism about climate change?

DAVID KAROLY: Well, what this paper does is show that the evidence of human caused climate change is even stronger than it was in the IPCC assessment and it was already very strong in the IPCC assessment because the IPCC concluded that most of the warming in global average temperatures over the last 50 years, essentially the 50 years leading up to 2007 was very likely more than 90 per cent certain due to human activity.

And what our study has found is it is even more confident in terms of a human influence on global mean temperatures and we can also see a significant human influence from increases in greenhouse gases in warming in temperatures in all continents, at a regional scale in many different regions, in warming in the oceans, in reductions in arctic sea ice and in changes in rainfall patterns.

DI BAIN: How does the person who isn’t adept in the science know what figures to trust, especially after the recent IPCC errors and the climate change email scandal last year?

DAVID KAROLY: As far as I’m aware, there is only one error of substance in the IPCC assessments which was a mistake and has been admitted to in terms of the timing for the Asian glaciers, or Himalayan glaciers to disappear. [Conveniently forgetting all the others… – Ed]

That’s been acknowledged as a mistake but that was not a key conclusion of the IPCC and there is still conclusive evidence that glaciers are retreating and have retreated over the last 100 years all around the world and there is clear evidence that human caused increases in temperatures regionally have contributed to that decline in glacier extent, or retreat of glaciers, all around the world.

So, I think there is still, well, no, I think, I know there is still convincing evidence that human activity is causing both global and regional warming in most parts of the world over the last 100 years.

DI BAIN: The climate change debate doesn’t appear to be the number one priority for Kevin Rudd anymore, are the sceptics winning the public debate in Australia?

DAVID KAROLY: Well, I think that there has been a range of misinformation being spread by media outlets because the climate change sceptics are spreading that misinformation. I think that a range of scientific studies, such as this one, on the relationship between observed climate change and its causes, reaffirm the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

They will literally say anything, won’t they? As if the media isn’t in the alarmists pocket? Per-lease. Oh, and let me know when a sceptic is given a similar easy ride. I won’t wait up.

Read it here.

P.S. Here again, for your enjoyment is Karoly’s famous Lateline quote:

The only way that I could see the climate system in 50 years time or 100 years time being cooler than at present is if the earth got hit by an asteroid and basically human civilisation was destroyed. (source)

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Climate change and ETS vanish from the media

8 March, 2010 by

Unfortunately, Kevin Rudd’s tactic of focussing on other issues, such as health, in order to divert attention from his climate policy, appears to be working. That, together with the Garrett insulation debacle, has ensured that the media this morning is almost bereft of any mention of climate change, or the ETS or Penny Wong. Which is a pleasant change.

But it does mean that the Coalition no longer has that huge ETS-shaped stick with which to beat the government. And that is a great pity. The Coalition should, however, continue to remind the electorate that climate change was, until a short time ago, “the greatest moral challenge of our generation” (or something), and that if Rudd had any principles (which he doesn’t), he would be focussing on getting his ETS through as soon as possible. But Rudd is political weathervane, twisting here and twisting there, helplessly following the winds of public opinion, because his only desire is to remain popular and, more importantly, remain in power. Now that the ETS is losing support, he abandons it.

However, Kevin Rudd has said that climate change will be at the “front and centre” of policy moving towards the Federal election, so it is only delaying the inevitable. The ETS will be back in the news in May as Rudd tries to force it through the Senate for the third time. And it will be back in the news in the election campaign later in the year.

Until then, it looks like climate change is off the Australian media agenda.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,
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