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Look out, Australia might trim a tiny slice from the Tithe to the Gods of Weather (protest coming)
The Australian budget is in dire straits after the Rudd-Gillard years of promised surpluses but exploding arithmetic. The Commission of Audit is here to test public reaction to all the possible ways of paying off the Labor debt. Somehow, it missed the biggest cherry waiting to be plucked. We could save billions if the the Abbott Government become more rigorously scientific. Abbott should cut funding to any scientists who are using models that don’t work, and only fund ones that do.
“Abbott should cut funding to any scientists who are using models that don’t work, and only fund ones that do.”
I expect the Greens will join me in declaring that if the Abbott government cared about the environment it would immediately launch a royal commission, a real audit, or an independent investigation into the effect of carbon dioxide. Only the best science for the planet, right? All funding to environmental programs dependent on unverified research should be frozen until the audit is finished. Easy eh? Let me be PM for a day. :- )
But apparently the sacred carbon cow must […]
The bias is obvious in what they don’t say. Reporters are supposed to seek out and promote the most rational, well argued positions they can find. Instead they elevate themselves to defacto “science judges” and decide which scientists deserve to be heard. It could be called arrogance, or it could be called “lying by omission”.
COLD SHOULDER: ABC, CBS Exclude Scientists Critical of Global Warming for More Than 1,300 Days | NewsBusters
Like a simple parlor trick, the networks are able to make skeptical scientists vanish, at least from the eyes of their viewers.
In some cases, the broadcast networks have failed to include such scientists for years, while including alarmist scientists within the past six months. ABC, CBS and NBC’s lengthy omission of scientists critical of global warming alarmism propped up the myth of a scientific consensus, despite the fact that many scientists and thousands of peer-reviewed studies disagree.
Neither CBS nor ABC have included a skeptical scientist in their news shows within the past 1,300 days, but both networks included alarmists within the past 160 days — CBS as recently as 22 days ago. When the networks did include other viewpoints, the experts were dismissed as “out […]
This really has been a PR debacle of amazing proportions. The ship stuck in ice has captured something larger than I would have expected. Methinks the timing must be apropos.
Good scientists are distancing themselves from the publicity hungry climate lightweights and commentators on both sides of the fence are agreeing in their criticism.
A third effect we are barely starting to see may ripple on for months — that’s when mass-media victims realize that the “Russian Tourist ship” was really a boat load of Australian and New Zealander scientists, paid for mostly by taxpayers and loaded and advised by supposedly “expert” climate scientists. This misinformation was despite the boat having BBC, and Guardian media on board, and Fairfax press in one of the rescue icebreakers. Today I see evidence of the first two effects.
From Skynews. The French chief of polar science calls the Spirit of Mawson trip “pseudo-scientific” and laments the effect it is having on real research.
The head of France’s polar science institute has voiced fury at the misadventures of a Russian ship trapped in Antarctic ice, deriding what he called a tourists’ trip that had diverted resources from real science.
In an interview with AFP, […]
LATEST NEWS: Aurora Australis abandons attempt to save Akademik Shokalskiy in Antarctica. The SMH headline could’ve said “Another icebreaker abandons attempt to save climate scientist’s boat in Antarctica.” UPDATE: Russia says 54 of 74 passengers to be helicoptered off if weather permits. (h/ tPeter Miller) The Polar Star icebreaker has left from the US to come help. It will take 8 -9 days to arrive. (Guardian)
Welcome to Media-Sport, where we score points watching a part of the media dance around the hysterical folly of an Antarctic climate science expedition trapped in sea ice for six nights (and counting). The Art of Propaganda is not just in the telling of one-sided lines, but is crafted through parts left unsaid.
More global warming, it is everywhere you look. View from Akademik Shokalskiy
With three ice-breaker rescue ships trying to reach them, the latest news is that the scientists and media entourage may have to abandon ship and be helicoptered to safety (though right now even that is not possible due to the very rough weather). The ABC news home page at time of posting this has zero references to “Antarctica”, but does say there are cracks in ice around a […]
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As I keep saying, it’s not that the media has a problem, the truth is the media IS the problem.
If we had accurate and balanced reporting the global warming meme would have crashed and burned long ago, voters would have said “No thanks”; politicians would have wasted less money; scientists would be researching useful things; universities would have to fire professors who can’t reason, and we would all be richer.
So when the budget office says our ABC costs us $1 billion, I say No, the cost is measured in national GDP.
No wonder most of us have given up watching the old media.
Here’s a study, by the Media Research Centre, reported in the Wall St Journal. Hat tip to the HockeySchtick blog and Tom Nelson. It refers to US networks so “ABC” means the American variety. Curiously, the New York Times looks good in comparison to the network news. It told its readers about the global pause only six months after its foreign competitors did. It was only a few years behind the bloggers.
Networks Do 92 Climate Change Stories; Fail to Mention ‘Lull’ in Warming All 92 Times
ABC, CBS and NBC ignore ‘mystery’ […]
[See our one-page version of this whole issue.]
Finally two hours of entertainment unlike any you’ve seen on TV 🙂
The Media IS the Problem – Part I
When the Smith and Nasht came to our house (on behalf of the ABC) to take footage for the “I can change your mind” documentary, David and I asked fellow skeptic and camera-man Barry Corke if he could film them filming us, so we have our own copy of what happened. He agreed — it was obvious to all of us that we needed some insurance against biased edits. We all knew that petty chicanery was possible. James Delingpole had recently given the BBC three good hours of his time, only to find they trimmed all of his clever answers down, waited for him to have a hypoglycemic vague moment and then crowed about how the great James Delingpole was, can you believe, tongue tied (the failure!)
In the final version that went to air, not only did three of the four key sets of evidence that fuel our skepticism vanish, the editors split and diced sentences to make it appear that David said a sentence he never actually said. He doesn’t […]
Oh the irony. The BBC, supposedly the public owned broadcaster, had a meeting with 28 climate experts in Jan 2006 where it decided on its policies on climate coverage. It led to the extraordinary move of the BBC abandoning any semblance of impartiality (a principle that’s so important it’s written into its charter). In the meantime, the BBC did everything it could to hide those influential experts names. It’s been nearly seven years since the seminar, but now we know why their names were top secret. No one is even pretending this was about “the science”. The BBC has become a PR wing of Greenpeace.
In mid 2007 Tony Newbery of Harmless Sky started asking who was at the seminar, but the BBC wouldn’t give up the names. In fact the BBC thought the names were so significant that when Newbery sent them an FOI, they not only refused to hand over the list, but they used six lawyers against him (see The Secret 28 Who Made BBC ‘Green’ Will Not Be Named). The BBC, improbably, argued they weren’t “public” and even more improbably, they won the case. Who knew? The BBC could be considered a “private organisation”. Where are […]
Black thinks the BBC reported on ClimateGate, instead they rushed to report a “hacking” that may not even have been a hack…
Richard Black thinks the BBC was the first to “report” Climategate in the mainstream press.
@BBCRBlackvia TwitterTired old meme that BBC was slow to report “ClimateGate” is circulating again – for record we were 1st main news org http://t.co/c4sU6puy
But the BBC didn’t report ClimateGate in that story at all. What they reported was a hypothetical hacking of a university in the UK, one which (two years later) still remains a claim that has no evidence in support of. Was it was illegally hacked or legally leaked? Don’t tune in to the BBC for the answer. They don’t even ask the question.
If the BBC had reported on Climategate, we could tell, because they would have reported what the emails actually said, not just the opinions that said “they don’t matter”.
Let’s compare Black’s reporting of Climategate and FakeGate
On ClimateGate, Black waited until after he had a spokesman from the CRU to comment, and having confirmed the emails were from the CRU, Black quoted exactly none of them. On FakeGate, Black posted so quickly that he […]
Sorting real journalists from sock puppets is not too tricky: real investigators tell you what the story is about; PR writers tell you what to think.
Do they “discuss” ClimateGate emails … without quoting the emails?
Who digs for details, and who hides the evidence?
The PR writers for Big-Government were quick to come up with excuses for ClimateGate II. Which is all very well, but it’s blindingly obvious where their own personal prejudices lie if they won’t print the emails that they are supposedly discussing. It’s not so much cherry-picking, but cherry-denial. “Don’t mention the radioactive cherries, but lets discuss how cherry farmers have been victimized, talk about the history of cherry tree farming, and hear their excuses and assertions that the cherries are an essential part of our diets. Don’t mention the Geiger counter. OK?”
The top 10 excuses for PR writers who pose as “journalists” to ignore ClimateGate emails
This is standard issue damage control for ClimateGate — protect the cheats and liars, attack the whistleblower, and use excuses and padding-fillers to cover a story without actually giving the public any information on the […]
Then today Richard Black of the BBC finds out how ugly it can be when you make the mistake (the travesty!) of missing a chance to tell everyone that the Earth’s falling apart due to Man-made Global Warming.
It’s the first time Richard Black has been on the receiving end. He’s a bit put out.
It seems that something new, and not altogether welcome, may be happening in the politicking over climate change.
I have written before of the orchestrated villification that comes the way of climate scientists from some people and organisations who are unconvinced of the case for human-induced climate change – “sceptics”, “deniers”, as you wish.
This week, for the first time, I am seeing the same pattern from their opponents.
Joe Romm, the physicist-cum-government-advisor-cum-polemicist, posted a blog entry highly critical of the Arctic ice article I wrote last week.
Joe Romm took him to task for doing a story on the hottest year without “mentioning the primary cause of global warming” (according to climate models which are known to be wrong). Romm set lots of emailers onto Black. The original “dreadful” story is just reporting how arctic ice melted fast, but didn’t shrink as much as […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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