ABC bias (yet again) and sea level alarmism

15 January, 2013 by

Climatically compromised

Climatically compromised

UPDATE 2 [17 Jan]: The Australian has removed the sea level story below and issued a correction. Whilst I have yet to read the paper in full (kindly provided by Dr John Church), the correction states: “[The paper] found that in the past two decades, the rate of sea level rise had been larger than in the 20th century.” More to come.

UPDATE: There is a bunch of static in the headbanger camps about the sea level paper referred to below, and how the sceptics have ‘misinterpreted’ it. If anyone has the full PDF of the Gregory et al 2012 paper, I would be grateful for a copy. TIA.

Two great stories from Graham Lloyd in The Australian today. Firstly, we have – shock horror – the ABC spinning its climate reporting by failing to mention stories, inconvenient to its alarmist editorial agenda, which have been around for weeks, and then choosing an unusual source for sea level information:

THE ABC’s flagship news programs have favoured advice from a non climate scientist based on speculation from a Byron Bay real estate agent over less alarming research from one of the world’s leading scientific organisations.

In the first of a week-long climate change special to coincide with a meeting of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientists in Hobart, the ABC did not mention the fact that Britain’s Met Office had reduced its forecasts for average global temperatures up to 2017. The ABC has not reported the issue despite widespread debate internationally.

Instead, the ABC, which is running the series on its main radio and television news programs, yesterday focused on the threat to coastal living from possible sea level rises without discussing the great uncertainties that exist in future sea level projections. Australia’s pre-eminent sea level expert, John Church, highlighted concerns about the melting Greenland ice sheet. And the report did mention a Climate Commission report that a 1m sea-level rise could potentially expose 250,000 homes to inundation.

But the ABC did not mention recent scientific findings that there was no firm link to sea-level rises and climate change in the 20th century. (source)

Is it any wonder there is such confusion in the mind of the public when our own national broadcaster is so hopelessly compromised?

And Lloyd has the sea level story as well:

THE latest science on sea level rises has found no link to global warming and no increase in the rate of glacier melt over the past 100 years.

A paper published last month in Journal of Climate highlights one of the great uncertainties in climate change research – will ocean levels rise by more than the current 3mm a year?

The peer-reviewed article, “20th-century global-mean sea-level rise: is the whole greater than the sum of the parts?” by JM Gregory, sought to explain the factors involved in sea-level rises during the last century. It found that sea-level rises had not accelerated “despite the increasing anthropogenic forcing” or human influence. (source)

If you’re waiting for the ABC to report this, you’ll be waiting a long, long time.

Filed Under: ABC Bias Tagged With: , ,

ABC: Mark Scott's response to bias charge "defies belief"

20 December, 2012 by

ALP Broadcasting Corporation

ALP Broadcasting Corporation

I have to admit I read Mark Scott’s piece in The Australian last week with increasing bewilderment. Comments such as this:

The panel [on Q&A] includes some of the most outstanding political correspondents in the nation: Phil Coorey, Annabel Crabb, George Megalogenis, Lenore Taylor, Mark Kenny, Malcolm Farr. They are employed by News Limited and Fairfax, broadsheets and tabloids, and by media outlets across the country. And their task is to provide analysis on the events of the week. Which they do, carrying no ideological badge and pushing no line

and this:

Not everyone will agree with all his remarks, but I believe [Barrie Cassidy – host of ABC’s Insiders] works in a way that embodies journalistic standards of fairness, balance and impartiality

left me utterly dumbfounded. Is Scott really that blinded by his own organisation’s groupthink, or is he just dense? It has to be one or the other.

Andrew McIntyre responds today:

THE response by the managing director of the Australian Broadcasting Corp, Mark Scott, to Janet Albrechtsen’s piece on ABC bias, almost defies belief. It is not the first time he has argued this case, even as he presented figures to a senate inquiry on the biased make-up of the panellists on Insiders.

Somehow, Scott trusts his “outstanding” commentators, by claiming that they are “carrying no ideological badge and pushing no line”. Well that settles it, doesn’t it?

…

If there is one lesson to be learned and many of us in Australia have been saying it for years it is about the selectivity of issues, the bias that is formed by the things that are not reported, and in interviews, by the people who are not interviewed.

This is an exquisitely refined technique on the ABC. Presenters tend to interview only those experts who agree with their own opinions, thus transforming news from factual content into a point of view without appearing to express the view of the presenter. On a panel on Insiders or Q&A, one simply gets the false impression that there is a consensus.

I guess if you stand on a platform that leans to the left for long enough, it begins to seem level again.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Equating climate sceptics with paedophiles is fine at the ABC

18 December, 2012 by

Offensive

Offensive: Williams

You will recall the story recently where ABC “science” presenter Robyn Williams opened a programme on climate “denial” with the following:

“What if I told you that paedophilia is good for children, or that asbestos is an excellent inhalant for those with asthma, or that smoking crack is a normal part, and healthy one, of teenage life, and to be encouraged? You’d rightly find it outrageous. But there have been similar statements coming out of inexpert mouths, again and again in recent times distorting the science.”

Lewandowsky got in on the act as well, naturally. I guess he’d be the go-to guy for people like Williams looking for an easy smear quote:

“I discovered that those people [sceptics] were not sceptical at all. They were rejecting the science, not on the basis of evidence but some other factor. We basically found that the driving motivating factor behind the rejection of climate science was people’s ideology or personal worldview.

[…]

Specifically what we find it that people who are endorsing an extreme view of market fundamentalism are likely to reject climate science.”

You forgot to mention that they also deny the moon landings took place, or that smoking is linked to cancer, or HIV linked to AIDS, or that the sun revolves around a (flat) earth – you’re slipping.

Former chairman of the ABC, Maurice Newman, like many of us, was incensed by these comments and lodged a formal complaint. Especially since an article he had written a while beforehand was referred to specifically in the segment.

And the result?

“ABC Audience and Consumer Affairs have carefully considered the complaint, reviewed the program and assessed it against the ABC’s editorial standards for harm and offence which state in part: 7.1 Content that is likely to cause harm or offence must be justified by the editorial context.

“ABC Audience and Consumer Affairs have also sought and considered a response from ABC Radio. Audience and Consumer Affairs have concluded that there has been no breach of the ABC’s editorial standards for harm and offence.“ (source)

What a surprise! No groupthink there, right? So the next time a filthy “denier” equates climate alarmists like Williams to paedophiles (not that “deniers” ever get invited on to ABC except to be ritually humiliated and ridiculed), and the complaints come flooding in, the ABC will dismiss them too?

Newman responds in an op-ed:

Ordinarily it should be unnecessary to object to such appalling commentary. It should have been automatically withdrawn. But no. An ABC response used sophistry to satisfy itself “that the presenter Robyn Williams did not equate climate change sceptics to pedophiles”. Tell that to his listeners.

Global warming is today more about politics than it is about science. If flawed evidence fails, coercion and character assassination is deployed. No slur is too vicious, nor, as we saw with the BBC’s 2006 seminar of the “best scientific experts”, which despite strenuous attempts to resist freedom of information requests were finally revealed to be mainly NGOs and journalists, no deceit is too great.

Lubos Motl, a climate commentator and string theory physicist, said about the ABC’s Science Show: “We used to hear some remotely similar (Czech) propaganda programs until 1989 … but the public radio and TV simply can’t produce programs that would be this dishonest, manipulative, hateful and insulting any more”.

This is not the first time I have provoked the public wrath of the ABC’s climate change clique, but it is the first time I have publicly responded to it. It is important that I do. (source)

One thing we can be absolutely sure of: nothing at the taxpayer-funded broadcaster will change an inch.

You can download PDFs of the two stories here and here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , ,

ABC: institutionalised bias

26 November, 2012 by

Faine and Williams

Two stories, taken together, demonstrate beyond any shadow of doubt, that the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) is a mouthpiece for Labor, the Left in general and the Green agenda. OK, you’re saying, tell me something I didn’t know. Yes, yes, true, but these two examples perfectly encapsulate the blatant and institutionalised bias of the ABC ,which flies in the face of its legal obligations as an impartial public broadcaster, but somehow it escapes any sanction for doing so.

Story Number 1 – Julia Gillard and the Australian Workers Union

Overseas readers will have to bear with me for a little while. This story concerns our (sub-) Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, in the days when she was a lefty lawyer in a lefty law firm in Melbourne in the 1990s. She helped to establish an incorporated association through the bank accounts of which a union official, who was also her boyfriend at the time, siphoned hundreds of thousands of dollars for his own personal benefit. Gillard managed to have two journalists who dared raise this issue sacked – Glenn Milne of The Australian and Michael Smith, a radio presenter who now blogs at Michael Smith News (and, I must add, is on a personal crusade to get to the very bottom of this shady period in Gillard’s past – add a bookmark).

There are plenty of questions for Gillard to answer, but at the moment, she’s using the stonewalling technique, alternating with the amnesia defence. The Opposition here is pushing Gillard hard for answers, as the issue goes to the heart of her credibility and integrity – and suitability for the high office of Prime Minister.

The ABC refused to even mention this story until this week, despite it having been rumbling on for several months. Emails of complaint were met with brick walls and a bizarre inability to accept that the story even existed! I personally thought journalists were supposed to ask tricky questions, but in the case of the ABC I assume that they should ask such questions only when it’s not something bad for Labor.

On Thursday of this week, Jon Faine, presenter on Melbourne’s Morning show, did his very best to defend Gillard and Labor against these charges. As the ABC blog notes:

Mornings host Jon Faine has had it with a long-running media campaign casting aspersions about Julia Gillard and her alleged role in establishing a union slush fund. He lays into the journalists who continue to push the story, and raises doubts about whether information from former unionist Ralph Blewitt is likely to produce any evidence.

Jon “has had it” – in other words, he cannot abide the fact that his beloved PM may have some awkward questions to answer, and instead pretends that there’s nothing to see and the main witness has no credibility. You have to listen to it to get the full picture. Following this tirade, Michael Smith contacted the show and asked for a right of reply. He got it the next day. Once again, you have to listen to it to fully appreciate the the contempt in Faine’s voice – he was formerly a lawyer at the same firm – no conflict of interest there, clearly – and thinks he knows something about the law.

So here we have an ABC presenter, paid by the public broadcaster, out of taxpayer funds, who has no interest in impartial reporting but simply defending Gillard and Labor. Faine is just beyond belief. The whole thing is breathtaking.

Story Number 2 – Robyn Williams links climate sceptics to paedophiles and crack dealers

Robyn Williams is the presenter of the Science Show on ABC Radio National and has a long list of form of defaming and smearing sceptics (see here). Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychology professor from the University of Western Australia, has similar form for smearing sceptics, most recently equating them with fruitcakes who believe the moon landings were faked. He also works closely with John Cook of Un-Skeptical Pseudo-Science so it’s hardly news that he and Williams are best mates.

“What if I told you that paedophilia is good for children, or that asbestos is an excellent inhalant for those with asthma, or that smoking crack is a normal part, and healthy one, of teenage life, and to be encouraged? You’d rightly find it outrageous. But there have been similar statements coming out of inexpert mouths, again and again in recent times distorting the science.

…

[Quoting The Economist magazine on the US election] It was a telling moment of denial. Much like the comforting myth that there is no such thing as climate change, or if there is, humans are not involved. Ensconced in a parallel world of conservative news sources and conservative arguments, all manner of comforting alternative visions of reality surfaced during the 2012 election. Many […] involved having to think about unwelcome things, often basic science or economics.”

Lewandowsky is then wheeled in:

“I discovered that those people [sceptics] were not sceptical at all. They were rejecting the science, not on the basis of evidence but some other factor. We basically found that the driving motivating factor behind the rejection of climate science was people’s ideology or personal worldview.

[…]

Specifically what we find it that people who are endorsing an extreme view of market fundamentalism are likely to reject climate science.”

I can’t bear to transcribe any more. It’s too painful. You can listen here (if you dare). This, of course, is the moon landing denier paper, rearing its ugly head again for the sympathetic Williams, who will accept it all as evidence of the fact that sceptics are bonkers – and of similar standing to crack dealers and paedophiles.

Once again, it is the same crude characterisation of sceptics as anti-science deniers that we have heard countless times by Williams and Lewandowsky.

All at the taxpayers expense.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , ,

ABC Environment on Muller and crumbling scepticism

17 August, 2012 by

Sara Phillips

This article, by ABC’s environment editor, Sara Phillips (pictured), encapsulates all that is wrong with the national broadcaster’s treatment of the climate debate. Written, as always, from a position of belief, and institutionally critical of any dissent, Phillips attempts to show that scepticism is crumbling in the face of ever-mounting evidence to the contrary:

American physicist Richard Muller is one climate sceptic who has recently changed his mind after reviewing the evidence.

Muller crunched a bunch of numbers to do with global temperatures and announced in the New York Times that he is a “converted sceptic”. It was this opinion piece in arguably the world’s most influential paper that set tongues wagging about climate change all over again.

Muller had previously been claimed by those unconvinced by the science as one of their own, because he questioned the validity of Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ graph, used by Al Gore in his film An Inconvenient Truth.

Muller was never a sceptic, and there are plenty of rusted on believers who have problems with both Mann’s hockey stick and AIT, which is nothing more than a propaganda film. Muller’s subsequent evidence-free claim of attribution to human causes has led to widespread ridicule from within the warmist community.

She then attempts to frame Bjorn Lomborg as a convert from scepticism, using some highly selective quotes from past newspaper interviews:

Bjorn Lomborg is another high-profile climate sceptic who changed his mind after reviewing the evidence. He now believes climate change is real, but that it won’t be the calamity predicted by some.

However, Lomborg directly addressed his alleged switch in a Guardian article cited indirectly:

He reiterates that he has never denied anthropogenic global warming, and insists that he long ago accepted the cost of damage would be between 2% and 3% of world wealth by the end of this century. This estimate is the same, he says, as that quoted by Lord Stern, whose report for the British government argued that the world should spend 1-2% of gross domestic product on tackling climate change to avoid future damage. (source)

He has never doubted the role of CO2, but has rightly questioned the cost-benefit analysis of the proposed solutions. Phillips then describes Alan Jones as “frothing” to David Karoly. Whether you agree with Jones or not, Phillips would never describe a consensus climate scientist as “frothing”, a highly inappropriate term to use. But it just helps to paint the picture of “deniers” as being deluded and crazy.

Of course there is a spectrum of views on climate – as she points out – which range from outright disbelief that temperatures are rising at all to acceptance of a measurable human signal in the global temperature record. However, she portrays this range of views in a very simplistic manner in an attempt to ridicule those who dare question the consensus.

Her conclusion appears to be that scepticism is on the wane and that “denial” is harder to sustain. But her view, distorted as it is by the prism of belief in AGW, fails to appreciate that the majority of sceptics accept the role of CO2 and that there is a human contribution to warming.

However, the reality is that there are problems with the surface temperature record, and there are problems with feedbacks in climate models, and there are serious questions to be answered regarding the proposed mitigation policies in response. Nothing in Muller’s alleged conversion changes any of those issues.

More importantly, she completely ignores the fact that, due in part to an endless barrage of scare stories which have failed to eventuate, scepticism of the alarmist claims of The Cause™ has increased substantially over the past decade, to the point where a significant proportion of the public are now highly suspicious of the pronouncements of climate scientists and government advisers such as Tim Flannery.

Unfortunately, the article is just the latest in a very long line of examples of ABC’s climate groupthink, where the utterances of climate scientists are beyond reproach and questioning of the consensus is frowned upon. That is not how science works: the motto, which the ABC, our taxpayer-funded and supposedly impartial national broadcaster, would do well to remember, is “question everything”.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

ABC: Climate change to "kill Australians"

30 November, 2011 by

We're all gonna die

That’s not the article title any more, but it is the title in the URL (see image here). Let’s scare people by saying they will die if we don’t “tackle climate change”… with a pointless carbon tax that will reduce global temperatures by seven ten thousandths of a degree.

The ABC, or Groupthink Central it it should be known, shamelessly and uncritically regurgitates an AAP/AFP article plugging a biased and one-sided report from the Climate Commission on the effects of climate change and health:

A new report is warning more Australians face dying in heatwaves and catching infectious diseases as a result of climate change.

A Climate Commission report out today, titled The Critical Decade, says climate change-related injury, disease and deaths will continue to grow in decades to come unless sustained action is taken.

The Climate Commission report says climbing temperatures will lead to more natural disasters and changing rainfall patterns, which will have an impact on people’s health as much as on the environment.

It includes a worst-case scenario where deaths from hotter temperatures in Queensland and the Northern Territory could multiply tenfold by 2100.

Alarmist tactic number 94, throw in a worst-case scenario and lo and behold, the news agency pick up on it! Brilliant.

Report co-author Professor Lesley Hughes says even a small rise in temperature can be detrimental to people’s health.

“A small rise in average temperature actually means a fairly large rise in the number of days, for example, over 35 degrees [Celsius] every year,” he said.

“So as average temperatures go up, the number of extremely hot days go up in a disproportionate way. So what we’re concerned about with climate change, amongst other impacts, is the impact on heat waves.” (source)

I seem to recall reading that the Little Ice age was pretty shit for humanity as well. Marc at ABC News Watch has more:

Despite his expertise, surprisingly no work by [Paul] Reiter was cited in the climate commission’s  report on Climate change and health. The commission has presented only one side of a complex argument.The lies of omission are the greatest lies of all. The commission’s report is another example of cargo cult science in action. It is clear that the commission has no intention of fulfilling its charter to Explain the science of climate change and the impacts on Australia. It is purely a political body. I have no doubt the ABC in its coverage of this report will once again fail in their duty to ask the hard questions.

And indeed they have. They regurgitate a press release from an alarmist news agency.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , ,

Climate sensitivity and Climategate 2.0

25 November, 2011 by

Climate sensitivity distribution. 3 C is the upper limit (click to enlarge)

Some break this is turning out to be! Climate stories are breaking every day, and they deserve some coverage here. Two articles in The Australian today are of particular interest.

Firstly, the publication of a paper in Science that questions the high-end climate sensitivity probabilities put forward by the IPCC. Remember, climate sensitivity is the KEY question. If the climate isn’t sensitive to CO2, then “man-made global warming” is a non-problem. It’s the fact that the climate models project that there is a real possibility of significant climate sensitivity, leading to substantial and dangerous warming, which is enough, the IPCC would argue, to justify drastic emissions cuts based on the precautionary principle. The problem is that it may not be true:

DRAMATIC forecasts of global warming resulting from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide have been exaggerated, according to a peer-reviewed study by a team of international researchers.

In the study, published today in the leading journal Science, the researchers found that while rising levels of CO2 would cause climate change, the most severe predictions – some of which were adopted by the UN’s peak climate body in its seminal 2007 report – had been significantly overstated.

The authors used a novel approach based on modelling the effects of reduced CO2 levels on climate, which they compared with proxy-records of conditions during the last glaciation, to infer the effects of doubling CO2 levels.

They concluded that current worst-case scenarios for global warming were exaggerated.

“Now these very large changes (predicted for the coming decades) can be ruled out, and we have some room to breathe and time to figure out solutions to the problem,” the study’s lead author, Andreas Schmittner, an associate professor at Oregon State University, said.

…

Professor Schmittner said taking his results literally, the IPCC’s average or “expected” value of a 3C average temperature increase for a doubling of CO2 ought to be regarded as an upper limit. (source)

Wait for the warmists to start the smear campaign on that poor guy. And at the same time, more explosive Climategate emails show the extent to which uncertainty was minimised within the climate science community in order to avoid any possible damage to “The Cause”.

In one 2009 email exchange between British government advisers and climate scientists, including Professor Phil Jones from the University of East Anglia who was a key figure in the first Climategate saga, one adviser writes: “I can’t overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a message that the government can give on climate change to help them tell their story. They want the story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made to look foolish.” The exchange concerns a project called Weather Generator that forecasts heatwaves and extreme rainfall events across Britain.

In a 2003 email to colleagues, the UEA’s Irene Lorenzoni writes: “I agree with the importance of extreme events as foci for public and governmental opinion.” (source)

Details have also emerged at the close relationship between those scientists and the BBC, confirming suspicions that the UK’s national broadcaster is acting as an environmental activist mouthpiece for climate alarmism:

Yes, glad you stopped this — I was sent it too, and decided to spike it without more ado as pure stream-of-consciousness rubbish. I can well understand your unhappiness at our running the other piece. But we  are constantly being savaged by the loonies for not giving them any coverage at all, especially as you say with the COP in the offing, and being the objective impartial (ho ho) BBC that we are, there is an expectation in some quarters that we will every now and then let them say something. I hope though that the weight of our coverage makes it clear that we think they are talking through their hats. (source)

“The objective impartial (ho ho) BBC”. Nudge nudge, wink wink. Ah, pity the poor Brits paying their TV licences for this kind of disgraceful bias. Little reason to doubt that the ABC is in a similar position – you only need to look at their output on climate matters to see that.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , ,

CSIRO scientist: zero emissions ain't enough

21 November, 2011 by

A synthetic tree...

Yet more climate nonsense to spoil my day. It won’t be sufficient to halt dangerous climate change “merely” to reduce CO2 emissions to zero, according to a report on ABC’s AM programme this morning. We need to go further (beyond zero, if you will excuse the pun), and start sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere (no, really):

MIKE RAUPACH: There is very little wiggle room left, perhaps none at this stage and the issue of course is that a large fraction of the CO2 that goes into the atmosphere stays there for a very long time and that means that what we do now has a long-term future shadow. 

SIMON LAUDER: Dr Raupach is part of an international team which used mathematical models to see what will happen to the climate in the long term under various scenarios. He says if emissions aren’t rapidly reduced to zero, future efforts will have to go further and remove CO2 from the atmosphere to prevent warming of more than two degrees. 

MIKE RAUPACH: If we do reduce emissions rapidly then zero emissions will do but even a small leakage in the long term like over a hundred years from now, of about 10 per cent of current emissions, is enough to keep temperatures slowly rising. (source)

“Zero emissions will do”!! Phew, that’s OK then. For as we all know, reducing emissions to zero is the easy bit. You only have to look at global energy consumption to see that we’re really, really close to a fully renewable energy budget (the renewables component of the chart is that wafer thin segment on the right, just in case you can’t quite see it):

Only 90-odd percent to go…

So once we’ve done that, and we’re all living in the cold and the dark, with no cars, buses, planes and electricity, we can then use whatever energy is left over (which won’t be much) to power synthetic trees (like those pictured above) to remove the CO2 out of the atmosphere. It will be an environmentalist’s dream – a landscape littered with useless windmills and fake trees, with no humanity and no prosperity. Just what Bob Brown wants for Australia. And the climate will continue to do exactly what the hell it wants, because that’s what the climate does.

And Lauder gets full marks for conducting, to the letter, the standard ABC interview of a climate alarmist, where the alarmist is allowed to talk as much nonsense as he/she likes completely unchallenged, and without having to account for any of the ridiculous assertions he/she makes. At no point does Lauder challenge the scientific basis of the UN’s 2 degree target, or the reliability of the “mathematical models” of which he is obviously so in awe, or whether adaptation strategies might provide better value for money than mitigation, or whether the release of this story is simply clever timing a few days before yet another pointless climate gab-fest in Durban.

But that would be asking too much of the “groupthink-infested” ABC, wouldn’t it?

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Environmental activism taints research

26 October, 2011 by

Environmental activism is tipping the balance

Environmental activist groups should not be allowed anywhere near scientific research. Such groups have a set of beliefs which will almost invariably skew any such research in which they are involved – whether intentionally or inadvertently.

WWF Australia’s web site sets out its policy with regard to climate change:

Today, because of greenhouse gas pollution, the planet is heating up at a much faster rate than ever before and our oceans are becoming more acidic. Temperature rises can appear small, but small increases translate into big changes for the world’s climate and natural environment.

Hotter days, more severe storms, floods, snowfalls, droughts, fire and higher sea levels are expected in the foreseeable future. These changes threaten jobs, agricultural production, water supplies, industries, human lives and, ultimately, the survival of species and entire ecosystems. Scientists predict that a global temperature rise of close to 2°C (above pre-industrial levels) could result in 25% of the Earth’s animals and plants disappearing because they can’t adapt fast enough. (source)

Leaving aside the obvious errors in those paragraphs, in the view of the WWF, there is no room for doubt. Humans are to blame for climate change and we must do something to stop it. The science is settled, and the debate is over. WWF Australia also strongly supports the “Say Yes” campaign for domestic action on climate change, with links on its home page. There is no ambiguity: WWF has a very rigid political and environmental agenda.

So how can you expect such an organisation to be impartial when assisting with or carrying out scientific research, which, by its very nature, should be impartial and apolitical? There will be little or no incentive to consider the possibility that man’s influence is less than they already “know” to be the case.

We have seen the close links between WWF and the IPCC exposed (see here), which severely damages the credibility and impartiality of the IPCC’s reports, and today we have another doom-laden report, liberally sprinkled with alarming imagery:

The Greenland ice sheet can experience extreme melting even when temperatures don’t hit record highs, according to a new analysis by Dr. Marco Tedesco, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at The City College of New York. His findings suggest that glaciers could undergo a self-amplifying cycle of melting and warming that would be difficult to halt.

…

Professor Tedesco likens the melting process to a speeding steam locomotive. Higher temperatures act like coal shoveled into the boiler, increasing the pace of melting. In this scenario, “lower albedo is a downhill slope,” he says. The darker surfaces collect more heat. In this situation, even without more coal shoveled into the boiler, as a train heads downhill, it gains speed. In other words, melting accelerates. (source)

Sounds pretty dramatic. But what do we read at the very end?

The World Wildlife Fund is acknowledged for supporting fieldwork activities.

I am not making any suggestion of wrongdoing, or that WWF’s contribution to this work was anything other than entirely proper. What I am suggesting, however, is that not only should science be impartial and apolitical, it should be seen to be impartial and apolitical. There must be a level playing field and consistent standards applied to the involvement of advocacy and activist groups in scientific research. If it’s OK for WWF to be involved in the preparation of an alarmist report about Greenland ice sheets, it should also be OK for an oil company to assist with a report that challenges the consensus position.

That is clearly not the situation we find ourselves in today, which is more like “WWF – good, Exxon – evil.”

So, here’s the deal. Either vested interests (whether consensus or sceptic) should exclude themselves from involvement in scientific research altogether, or both sides must be treated equally. It has to be one or the other.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , ,

Fair play at the Joint Select Committee?

11 October, 2011 by

Level playing field?

A number of commentators have reported that the number of submissions sent to the Joint Select Committee (JSC)  far exceeds the number published. Figures of 4,500 public submissions have been floating around the blogosphere for a while, but it is clear from the JSC’s web site that only 73 have been published. What happened to the other 4,427?

Some confusion has arisen because there were in fact two submission processes taking place almost simultaneously, one organised by the Department of Climate Change (DCC), and another by the JSC. The DCC was very happy to allow multiple standard form letters supporting the tax (see here), probably spoon-fed by GetUp! and Say Yes, but it is very possible that less strict rules were in place for that process.

However, the DCC states that only 326 submissions were “received”, so at this stage we must assume the majority were communicated to the JSC.

An article in Quadrant shows evidence of bias against those opposing the bills, taking examples from both the JSC and the DCC:

The Department of Climate Change published this:

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to express my support for the Government to legislate to put a price on Carbon. I urge the government to continue to move ahead with the Carbon tax.

Rob Feith

The Department of Climate Change published this:

To Whom It May Concern

Even with all the confusion surrounding the Carbon Tax, I would like to support the move the Government is making. In order to reduce our Carbon Pollution you have to place a monetary value on the air we breathe. I hope this is a step in the right direction and, I hope the Government sets a model and digs their heels in to become a world leader in this arena.

My support is with the Government at present.

 Kerrie Chandler

The Select Committee did not publish this:

Submission on theClean Energy Bill 2011

To the: Joint Select Committee on Australia’s Clean Energy Future

By: Peter Smith

Opening Comment and Summary View

My submission is as a private citizen of Australia. I am basing my submission on the “Explanatory Memorandum” (“EM”) to the Clean Energy Bill (“the Bill”) and on media reports of the contents and implication of various parts of the Bill. I have neither the time nor resources to study and consider all of the constituent parts of the Bill in detail.

I note that the time given for considering the Bill and providing a submission is extremely short given its complexity and import. It is not clear why the Government has allowed so little time for the public to consider a piece of legislation which is described as a “major reform” and which is designed to have far-reaching effects.

Though it does not reflect on the Bill per se, the political process surrounding its introduction is disquieting. The Government went to the election only a little over 12 months ago with an explicit undertaking by the Prime Minister “to develop a Citizens’ Assembly to examine climate change over 12 months, the evidence on climate change, the case for action and the possible consequences of introducing a market-based approach to limiting and reducing carbon emissions”. She went on to link any action with the views of the group comprising the Assembly: “if I am wrong, and that group of Australians is not persuaded of the case for change then that should be a clear warning bell that our community has not been persuaded as deeply as required about the need for transformational change”.

Making a transformational change – one so hard to unpick – contrary to the PM’s undertaking, brings our political processes into disrepute and calls into question the trust we should have in our democratic processes. To be clear, election promises are not always kept; that is not the issue. The issue arises from the circumstances of the about-face and its dimensions. The Bill is making changes of great moment and effective permanency under no pressure of circumstances, contrary to a clear and explicit commitment which may have been instrumental in winning a very narrow election. I doubt whether a similar instance could be found in Australia’s past.

My conclusion is that whatever its merits, the Bill should be withdrawn because of the process surrounding its introduction. My quite separate conclusion, based on my comments set out below, is that the Bill will damage Australia, for no measurable gain, and should be withdrawn also on that account.

[Editors note: this particular submission elaborates further, and is cogently argued – see original post here]

If these allegations of suppression of dissent are correct, it is a disgraceful affront to open democracy, of which Labor (as the sponsors of the Clean Energy bills) should be thoroughly ashamed. Therefore, in order to try to get to the bottom of this important story, I have today filed a request with the Clerk Assistant (Committees) at Parliament House in the following terms, to establish the proportion of submissions received that were rejected:

Please would you provide, by return of email, the following information regarding the communications received by the above Committee:
  1. Total number of communications received by the Committee (whether classified as formal submissions by the Committee or otherwise).
  2. Number of communications received by the Committee (whether classified as formal submissions by the Committee or otherwise) SUPPORTIVE of the Government’s Clean Energy legislation.
  3. Number of communications received by the Committee (whether classified as formal submissions by the Committee or otherwise) OPPOSING the Government’s Clean Energy legislation.
  4. Number of communications from question (2) above rejected for publication by the Committee (for whatever reason).
  5. Number of communications from question (3) above rejected for publication by the Committee (for whatever reason).

I will report any response I receive, although I won’t be holding my breath.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,
«Previous Page
Next Page»