Chris Uhlmann on Rudd's ETS about-turn

14 May, 2010 by

Refreshing

Chris Uhlmann is a rarity in ABC circles – a journalist who isn’t a global warming ecotard with an axe to grind. So it is refreshing to read his critique of Kevin Rudd’s volte face on climate change:

The nude ball is well known in cricket circles.

It’s a derogatory term applied to deliveries that don’t spin, swing or seam. With the bowler doing nothing to defeat the batsman nude balls usually disappear over the boundary and the fielding captain is forced to change the attack.

The Government’s defence for its new position on climate change is the nude ball of politics. After campaigning for three years on the urgent need for an emissions trading scheme as the central weapon for reducing Australia’s carbon footprint it abruptly shelved the idea because it all got too hard.

The argument for delay is that it couldn’t get agreement in the Senate, and that international progress is too slow.

The Prime Minister summed up the case for delay in his recent exchange with The 7:30 Report’s Kerry O’Brien. [See ACM’s comment on this here – Ed]

“We believe that an emissions trading scheme is the most effective and cheapest way of getting there, [Tony Abbott] has rejected that position despite the Liberal Party having formally embraced it,” Kevin Rudd said.

“I now have to confront the reality of that is what he’s done… the progress on global action has been slower than any of us would like. That is why we’ve announced a decision that we would not seek to reintroduce this legislation until the end of the Kyoto commitment period and on the basis that global action has been adequate.”

Abandoning the idea because of Senate obstructionism ignores the fact that the Prime Minister could seek to have both houses of Parliament dissolved and then put the matter to the people at an election. If he won that election he could then put his Carbon Pollution Reduction bill to the vote at a joint sitting.

It’s not something anyone would do lightly but it is something you would do if you believed that climate change was the great moral and economic challenge of our age.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

ABC's Catalyst: increased CO2 is bad for plants

6 May, 2010 by

Cassava, soon to be cyanide if we keep driving SUVs

Another week, another “climate” scare story from Catalyst. The ETS is dead and nobody’s interested in reducing CO2 to “tackle climate change” any more, so the ABC goes looking for another reason to cripple Western economies and send our standards of living back to the Dark Ages.

And they find a corker. You thought increasing CO2 in the atmosphere would be good for plants? Wrong. It’s bad, and the ABC’s “science” programme jumps on this research without pausing for breath. Brilliant. Forget global warming, forget how the majority of plants would benefit from increased CO2, forget how we are actually living in a CO2 starved atmosphere. Now it’s “food security” that everyone’s worrying about, thanks to reduced nutrition and increased toxins:

Dr Graham Phillips
The next big food issue could be how rising levels of carbon dioxide are affecting our fruit and vegies. Now we know that plants love CO2 so rising levels of it will affect their metabolisms and it seems almost certain that for many foods the levels of nutrition will go down and for some toxin levels will go up. Both serious issues when you are trying to feed a world with an increasing population.

Dr Ros Gleadow
We’re tracking worst case scenario with carbon dioxide at the moment [what? – Ed] and we need to predict what sort of things are going to happen in the future.

Maybe they could predict the future with some dodgy second-hand climate models bought off the back of a truck from Michael Mann. That should do the trick. Or Madame Za Za’s crystal ball, perhaps? Just like last week: more scary music, more alarmism. And they’ve found a plant, cassava, that links rising CO2 levels with increased levels of cyanide. Almost a Holy Grail for the ABC’s alarmism department – cut CO2 or you’ll die of cyanide poisoning:

NARRATION
Back in the lab Ros’s group have been looking at how rising CO2 will affect the cyanide levels of cassava.

Dr Ros Gleadow
We grew cassava at three different concentrations of carbon dioxide. Today’s air, one and a half times the amount of carbon dioxide and twice the carbon dioxide of today. And we found that cyanogen concentration in the leaves increased.

Dr Graham Phillips
So as we get more Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere these will contain more cyanide?

Emeritus Prof. Howard Bradbury
More cyanide yes. The yield from the roots which is the main thing, will go down. So that is the most worrying aspect.

And the last word to Dr Gleadow:

Dr Ros Gleadow
I don’t want to be a gloom and doom person. I want to think okay clover’s going to become more toxic, let’s develop other cultivars. If cassava’s going to become more toxic, let’s look at some other cultivars. Let’s look at other ways we can deal with this problem.

Don’t say that! It’ll spoil the story!

Read/watch it here.

Filed Under: ABC Bias, Climate Tagged With: ,

ABC: quotes "residents" in climate change article

6 May, 2010 by

Victim of climate change?

The ABC just can’t stop, can they? Any authority, no matter how worthless, will do in advancing their pre-conceived agenda of climate alarmism. In another bleeding heart article on the same government report discussed here, the ABC quotes the opinion of local residents as somehow worthy of reporting. Not only that but throwing in “Kakadu” is a cheap shot to grab the punters’ attention, with the breathless headline “Climate change could hit Kakadu food sources”:

[The report] says a projected sea level rise of 20 centimetres would irreversibly change the shape of rivers like the South Alligator and alter tidal flows and vegetation cover.

Rising sea levels would also reduce the availability of traditional food sources for Indigenous communities, like magpie geese, barramundi and freshwater turtles.

The report did not discuss the impact of climate change on mining projects, but residents raised concerns about how the Ranger uranium mine, near Jabiru, would cope with more intense cyclones and heavier rainfall.

So the report didn’t even mention mining, but the residents have raised concerns, and those concerns conveniently happen to fit the alarmist agenda of the ABC, so they get published uncritically! Forget the fact that more intense cyclones and heavier rainfall are chestnuts that has been debunked over and over again. And anyway, I thought climate change caused drought? Who cares. It’s just whatever fits the requirement at the time.

And what about the concerns of other residents that climate change is a crock and a complete waste of taxpayers money? No, they won’t get published, because according to the biased ABC, people who hold those views are just dumb bogans.

Read it here.

Filed Under: ABC Bias, Climate Tagged With: ,

ABC: yet more scaremongering

5 May, 2010 by

More like science fiction

Another day, another hysterical climate piece from your publicly funded national broadcaster. This time, researchers claim that when wet bulb temperatures (dew point, in other words) reach 35 degrees, it will become “uncomfortable” for humans. They have used climate models to predict when this will occur, and we all know how reliable and accurate they are. The ABC uncritically publishes it all in its science pages, under the headline “Warmer planet to stress humans: study”:

Professor Steven Sherwood of University of New South Wales and Associate Professor Matthew Huber of Purdue University in Illinois, used climate models to predict where and when temperatures will increase to uncomfortable levels.

They found a global temperature increase of 7°C above pre-industrial levels would push temperatures in some regions above 35°C for extended periods, resulting in heat stress across the whole population.

Sherwood says while heat-related deaths among the elderly and young already occur, global warming will result in more of the population suffering.

“What we’re talking about here is something a bit different – these limits apply to a healthy person,” he says.

But the final paragraphs tell the real story:

Sherwood says a 7°C increase isn’t likely to happen until next century, but he says it’s important to understand the impact should it occur.

“When you’re planning sensibly for anything you plan for the worst case scenario,” he says. [In other words, take the precautionary principle to its logical conclusion – Ed]

“We’re saying this is the worst scenario, we’re not saying it’s going to happen soon, but to ignore it seems foolhardy.”

The researchers conclude further warming would have a more drastic impact.

“If warmings of 10°C were really to occur in [the] next three centuries, the area of land likely rendered uninhabitable by heat stress would dwarf that affects by rising sea level,” they write.

The average global temperature has increased by 0.8°C since pre-industrial times. Some scientists and environmental groups are pushing for limits on human-produced greenhouse gas emissions to limit the increase to no more than 2°C.

In other words, this is a worst-case, precautionary-principle-gone-mad study, which somehow makes it onto the ABC as mainstream science.

Read it here.

Filed Under: ABC Bias, Climate Tagged With: ,

ABC: alarmist business as usual

30 April, 2010 by

Not science, but alarmism

I suppose we should have expected the green-left brigade at the ABC to go into alarmist overdrive in response to the government’s dropping of the ETS, but I didn’t expect it to be so soon. The flagship TV science programme, Catalyst, opened last night with a hysterical piece on the melting Antarctic. Yes, the Antarctic. Note how, without dropping a beat, the ABC switches its attention to the South pole, since as we all know, ice levels in the Arctic are the highest they have been for years.

The segment played out like a disaster movie: scary voiceovers, scary music, dramatic footage of, er, melting ice, scary “what ifs”, and, to suck away any last vestige of credibility, quotes from James Hansen. Here are a few choice extracts, starting with the creepy opening:

NARRATION: The seas are rising [Yes, at the same rate they have been for thousands of years – Ed]. How fast and how high they will go is the big unknown. But one thing is certain. What happens in Antarctica will be critical. Around 90 percent of the planet’s snow and ice is found here. Is the sleeping giant stirring?

…

NARRATION: The Wilkins Ice shelf is the latest of seven ice shelves on the Peninsula to start collapsing, and it’s the furthest south. Ice shelves are already floating, so they can’t contribute to sea level rise. It’s what’s behind them that’s the big concern. But now it is all too familiar. Seven shelves on the Antarctic peninsula have collapsed in the past two decades. This is a region of the huge Wilkins ice shelf which collapsed in 2008.

Dr Ian Allison: If you take that barrier away, the big glaciers behind it will flow more quickly.

NARRATION: Glaciers that drained into the Larsen B ice shelf have sped up by a factor of seven.

Neal Young: That does contribute to sea level rise. The quantity of ice in the Antarctic Peninsula region though is small. The key message is what would happen in the east and to the major glaciers in the West Antarctic if such changes were to occur there? That would be a consistent, persistent and very ominous I think change in the scenario.

NARRATION: And there’s strong evidence that change is already occurring. In the Amundsen Sea region, glaciologists have found the major glaciers are speeding up and losing mass, thinning by up to nine metres a year. What’s remarkable is the thinning extends hundreds of kilometres into the grounded ice sheet.

…

Mark Horstman: It’s the middle of summer here in East Antarctica, and right now the air temperature is minus four degrees and dropping. There’s no way that air temperatures like this are going to melt any ice. And In fact, until just recently, it was thought that the ice sheet on this side of the continent was actually growing in size.

NARRATION: But alarming new evidence indicates this trend has reversed.

…

Mark Horstman: What we’ve revealed here is a complex story about Antarctica under changing climates. And the take home message, like the continent itself, comes in two parts. Here in the East, it appears that it’s a warming ocean that;s driving the changes in the ice sheet.

Dr Paul Willis: Whereas here in the West the ice is melting from above and below. When it comes to sea level rise, Antarctica the sleeping giant is waking up.

Business as usual at Their Alarmist Broadcasting Corporation.

Read it (and watch it) here.

Filed Under: ABC Bias, Climate Tagged With: , ,

ABC: presumption of bias

27 March, 2010 by

Biased unless proven otherwise

It has now reached the stage with the ABC that there must be a presumption of bias, towards Labor and climate alarmism. And, as in its legal analogue, where there is a presumption, that presumption must be rebutted on each and every occasion. That is the position from we have to view the ABC today. So when we read an alarmist article on climate change, we presume bias unless it can be rebutted. When we read an article critical of the Opposition, we must again presume bias, unless it can be rebutted. Unfortunately, since that rebuttal is almost never there, this means that our nationally funded broadcaster has ceased to be a serious media organisation, and is now nothing but a cheap shill for Labor and environmental pressure groups.

So it is no surprise that the ABC is still quite happy to use the derogative term “denier” in an article on climate sceptics published this morning (five times, no less). The story relates to a paper by John McLean, Chris DeFreitas and Bob Carter, originally published in July 2009 in Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR), challenging the theory of human-induced global warming. This is a peer reviewed journal, and the article was accepted for publication at that time, following the peer review process. In January 2010, a critical response was prepared by a team of consensus scientists, which was also published in JGR. The original authors put together a response to those criticisms, which … JGR refused to publish. Understandably, the original authors were furious not to have the right to respond to criticisms of a previously published paper. They have subsequently published on SPPI a paper claiming censorship:

“The practice of editorial rejection of the authors’ response to criticism is unprecedented in our experience. It is surprising because it amounts to the editorial usurping of the right of authors to defend their paper and deprives readers from hearing all sides of a scientific discussion before they make up their own minds on an issue. It is declaring that the journal editor – or the reviewers to whom he defers – will decide if authors can defend papers that have already been positively reviewed and been published by that same journal. Such an attitude is the antithesis of productive scientific discussion.”

You can read the full SPPI paper here. This is how ABC’s reporting of this story begins:

The latest debate on climate science to emerge centres on a paper that suggests humans played no role in the recent warming trend and that El Nino activity is mostly to blame.

But a group of climate scientists say that is false, misleading and that the data has been manipulated by climate deniers. [Well, they should know. Alarmist climate scientists are experts in manipulation of data – Ed]

Central to the paper, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research last July, was that the southern oscillation index, which is a measure of El Nino activity, was the most likely influence on global temperatures changing.

The senior author of the report, IT analyst [just thrown in to remind you he’s not a climate scientist – Ed] John Mclean, says man has had little impact on global warming.

“The major force seems to be probably the southern oscillation, though you’ve also got to think that maybe that is just an indicator of something else. Whatever’s driving the southern oscillation therefore drives temperature,” he said. (source)

They give McLean a quote of just 83 words to explain the paper’s position. They then proceed to give Kevin Trenberth (of Climategate fame), a quote of 237 words, nearly three times as much, criticising it (did I mention anything about bias earlier?), and in total there are 369 words critical of the paper compared to just 164 words explaining it. You can read all that in the source article if you wish.

The ABC article then deals with the censorship claim, but fails to identify the key point, that this was a response to a criticism of an originally peer-reviewed, and published, article in JGR. To not give authors the opportunity to respond to criticism sure sounds like censorship to me.

Presumption of bias? Tick. Rebuttal? None.

Filed Under: ABC Bias, Climate Tagged With: , ,

Richard Glover spouts climate nonsense

20 March, 2010 by

Tedious sceptic bashing (and not funny either)

I’ve waited a long time for this – an opportunity to sink my teeth into Richard Glover, another ABC lefty who presents the Drive programme on ABC local radio in Sydney. Unfortunately, living in Sydney I often have the misfortune to listen to Glover, and whilst most of his stuff is harmless enough, his comedy-based Thank god it’s Friday section from 5 – 6 every Friday is toe-curling in the extreme. The trouble with Glover is that he thinks he’s a natural comedian, but in reality, he’s about as funny as haemorrhoids, as will be evidenced shortly.

So it gives me enormous pleasure to relate that he’s also a climate alarmist, or at least someone completely unsympathetic to any sceptical viewpoint [What a surprise. Yet another ABC lefty who’s a climate alarmist to boot. Knock me down with a feather. Add them to the list – Ed], writing a tedious piece in the Sydney Moonbat Herald dissing sceptics, entitled The Lara Bingle of Climate Change. If you don’t immediately get the reference (I certainly didn’t), he’s referring to the IPCC’s Himalayan glaciers error, which, as he puts it, “gets more attention than it deserves”. Right.

Do climate-change sceptics have the same attitude to other pieces of expert advice? When their car develops a fault and the local mechanic says the brake pads are shot, do they seek a second opinion? And having been told by the second mechanic that, yes, the brake pads are shot, do they then trawl around town until on the 99th visit, they strike a mechanic who says “no, the brake pads are fine”? And then driving at high speed up the F3, do they entrust their lives to this last opinion?

No. Because it would be mental.

What happens when Maurice Newman, climate agnostic and ABC chairman, goes to the doctor? Does he storm from the office when they diagnose chickenpox and seek second, third and 99th opinions until he finds a doctor who will give him the all clear? And does he then decry the first 98 doctors as victims of “group-think”?

No. Because it would be mental.

This kind of reasoning is so childish as to be laughable. Because the science of climate is obviously completely equivalent to checking whether your brake pads are worn down, or whether you have spots and a temperature, isn’t it? And then having bowled us over with the power of his logic, the ad homs begin:

As a non-scientist, I cannot directly evaluate the evidence for anthropomorphic [can’t even get the word right – Ed] global warming; I cannot clamber up a glacier and take readings, just as, when I visit the doctor, I can’t check my own prostate (even though, according to some readers, I’ve spent a lifetime with my head stuck up there [and those, dear reader, are the only true words spoken in this entire article – Ed]).

I can, however, evaluate the debating techniques used by both sides. And here, the global-warming sceptics are very, very annoying.

I’m sorry, I can’t go on. As I’m writing this, I can feel the very will to live draining away, so if you really want to read it, go here. I’d rather spend my time doing something more pleasant, like have my wisdom teeth extracted without anaesthetic.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Quotes of the Day: Stephen Conroy on Lateline

18 March, 2010 by

Quote of the Day

I woke up this morning to hear Stephen Conroy’s lamentable, blustering performance on Lateline last night, repeated on News Radio. Now there’s a fine way to start the day … There was all the usual spin and hot air, but the funniest bit came when Tony Jones (who is one of the ABC’s most vocal climate change alarmists) held up his hands in horror at Maurice Newman’s accusation that the ABC was less than balanced on the issue of climate change. It was a classic “What, me?” moment. And then he successfully bullied Conroy into saying “No, no, it’s all fine you’re doing a great job”, and Conroy didn’t have the balls to resist:

TONY JONES: Alright, a final question. You’ve refused to comment in any detail on the claims by the ABC’s chairman Morris Newman that coverage of the global warming climate change issue is an example of “group think” where contrary views have not been tolerated.

Do you see any evidence of that?

STEPHEN CONROY: Well, look, the chairman… The ABC is an independent statutory authority. The chairman is entitled to his views and I understand from discussions that I’ve had over the last 24 hours it was a very robust discussion that followed that, uh, that speech and I think that is a healthy thing for all involved.

TONY JONES: Do you see any evidence? I am asking for your opinion. Whether you see- because it is a serious accusation he’s making: “Should there be a view that the ABC was sheltering particular beliefs from scrutiny or failing to question the consensus, I would consider it to be a dangerous perception that could lead to the public’s trust in us being undermined”.

That is the suggestion. Do you see any evidence that that has been happening?

STEPHEN CONROY: Well, I do remember that the ABC screened the documentary the Global Warming Scandal, I think last year.

TONY JONES: Swindle.

STEPHEN CONROY: Swindle, sorry, yes. So I think the ABC can point to a whole range of areas where it has given all sides of the debate a fair run.

TONY JONES: So you don’t see any examples or signs of “group think” in the ABC?

STEPHEN CONROY: Well, I am not sure that Mr Newman pointed his finger at any particular area. I don’t think he was speaking in a general sense but on an issue that you’ve mentioned like climate change, I think you’ve got a proud record where you can point to the screening of that documentary and there’s been plenty of debate over the last 12 months on this topic on the ABC. (source)

Ah, so showing the Great Global Warming Swindle is balance is it? Let’s remember what happened there, shall we? Firstly, Tony Jones himself, who was presenting the film, proclaimed before it was shown:

I am bound to say The Great Global Warming Swindle does not represent the views of the ABC.

Which means that the public service broadcaster has “views” on climate change – and I don’t need to tell you what they are. Hardly balance there. And following the screening, there was a round table debate in which TGGWS was thoroughly ripped to shreds by a typical ABC left-leaning audience. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. Why did the ABC take TGGWS apart, and yet never raise a finger to the partisan, innaccurate propaganda film An Inconvenient Truth? Where were the round table discussions picking that apart, Tony? No, wait. You’ve already explained. TGGWS doesn’t represent the views of the ABC, because AIT does, right?

If you want to see ABC bias at work for yourself, just go to the ABC’s Great Global Warming Swindle pages here and especially the nauseating article by Bernie Hobbs (ABC science broadcaster) here – it’s all there in black and white.

ABC balance on climate change? Don’t make me laugh.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , , ,

Butterfly study hijacked by AGW

17 March, 2010 by

Ever felt used?

Here’s an innocent little story about butterflies [which is now plastered all over the ABC and will no doubt be on the 7 o’clock News and 7.30 Report and Lateline and every ABC web site under the sun – Ed]. Apparently they are getting impatient and are now emerging from their cocoons ten days earlier than 65 years ago. But who does the ABC choose to interview on The World Today? Firstly Michael Kearney, biologist from Melbourne University, but then, oddly, David “Asteroid” Karoly, who is a fully paid up climate alarmist (link to audio and transcript here):

Professor David Karoly of the University of Melbourne, says the study breaks new ground on the impact climate change has on the natural environment.

“Butterflies and many other natural systems are responding to warming both in Australia and around the world,” he said.

“This is the first time we’ve been able to link the change in a natural system, like a butterfly, to regional warming and then link that regional warming to increase in green house gases as a result of human activity.”

Why would they interview Karoly? So I did a bit of research, and tracked down the original home page at Monash for the study here. Firstly, it should be noted that this is a research project within the school of Biosciences (not Earth Sciences or Climate Change) and there is no mention of Karoly as part of the project. Here is the project summary from a project update dated August 2008 :

Climate change and habitat fragmentation are together a major threat to the continued survival of a vast number of species. Correlative bioclimatic models are often used for predicting future suitable habitats, but currently do not take into account whether species are able to colonise new regions, nor the mechanisms by which they interact with and adapt to their environment. We will use a butterfly model species to investigate the relationship between genetic polymorphisms, physiological capacity for dispersal, and environmental constraints at the landscape scale. This will allow truly mechanistic and more accurate predictions of how novel climatic environments will affect species distributions. (source – PDF)

Again, no mention of anthropogenic climate change or greenhouse gases or carbon dioxide (or Karoly). They are simply looking at how butterflies react to increasing temperatures – you only need to read the PDF to see that. But wait, look what’s happened. Suddenly there is a “final step”, oddly not mentioned in any of the project’s earlier documentation, where Karoly steps in and neatly links the whole thing to human caused climate change:

The final step taken by the researchers was to link the regional temperature changes with human-induced global warming.

Team member [since when? – Ed] climatologist, Professor David Karoly applied global circulation models to the Melbourne region, taking into account local factors that influence climate.

This suggested that the regional temperature changes observed over the decade were unlikely to be observed without the influence of human greenhouse emissions, says Kearney. (source)

And hey presto, an avowed climate alarmist manages to show that Melbourne’s temperature rise can only be cause by human factors [because we don’t know what else could have caused it – brilliant – Ed]. What a surprise. So somebody, at present unknown, had the brilliant idea “if we can tie this butterfly study into AGW, we might get some air time from the ABC,” and that somebody was dead right, because it fits the ABC’s unashamedly alarmist agenda.

UPDATE: The Australian Research Council lists the grants made for this study (a total of $240,000 over three years), and it too mentions nothing about Karoly or the anthropogenic nature of the climate change in question. Here is the extract from the ARC’s PDF for funding grants made to Monash (not Melbourne) in 2006 for research commencing in 2007:

Extract from ARC's funding

So Karoly has simply been wheeled in to add the alarmist perspective. The difficult questions to ask would be:

  • When did Karoly become part of the project?
  • On whose instigation?
  • Were all the funding bodies notified of the change in emphasis of the study towards human-induced climate change?
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: , ,
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