ABC News Watch

Missing News: No Need to Panic About Global Warming

2012-01-27T20:17:00.002+11:00

ABC News have previously provided reports involving letters signed by scientists that make a political point (eg., Here, Here and Here).
Why is this one missing?

No Need to Panic About Global Warming
There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy.
A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming." Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.
Read the rest in the Wall Street Journal.

Update ABC get around to reporting something and include this outstanding but of hypocrisy from the Prince of Precaution, climate commissioner and Mammologist Tim Flannery:
TIM FLANNERY: They are not all scientists. There are some engineers, there are astronauts. It sort of a bit of mix actually as well as a lot of retired scientists in there so no, this sort of thing doesn't really surprise me.

Simon at ACM has more...

Geriatric wheat caused by climate change

What's Outback?

2012-01-26T08:39:00.002+11:00

Looking over ABC's News site I noticed the following headline "Great Barrier Reef put on ice in Outback"

When you think about the Outback do you picture:

A. The arid plains fringing Australia's desert centre

B. The large areas of land in Australia that are not used for growing crops and are far away from any city or town.

C. The vast open plains east of Yalgoo?

D. Anywhere west of Balmain?

E. Dubbo?

Missing Voices: Maurice Newman

2012-01-24T07:02:00.003+11:00

Former ABC Chairman Maurice Newman has an Op Ed in The Spectator about wind farms:
Against the wind: The pursuit of clean energy has relegated ordinary people to the status of ‘collateral damage’
It includes this paragraph:

"I am not a conspiracy theorist, but we have witnessed the birth of an extraordinary, universal and self-reinforcing movement among the political and executive arms of government, their academic consultants, the mainstream media and vested private sector interests (such as investment banks and the renewables industry), held together by the promise of unlimited government money. It may not be a conspiracy, but long-term, government-underwritten annuities have certainly created one gigantic and powerful oligopoly which must coerce taxpayers and penalise energy consumers to survive."

These opinions oddly not covered thus far by The Drum, or any other ABC news service. I would have thought the ABC would be interested in the views of its former chairman. Perhaps later today?

Missing News: Coral Reefs adaptable to climate change

2012-01-21T14:32:00.000+11:00

In 2008 ABC news reported on the award of a State Government research grant to a north Queensland university student to continue researching how rising sea temperatures affect coral (Reef researcher wins Smart State grant). Odd then that that when the researcher in question has something positive to say about the adaptability of the reef to climate change that ABC choose not to report anything.

Just as well The Australian are there to fill in the gap with a good news story...
Coral breakthrough offers climate hope.

CORAL reefs may be much better able to adapt to rising sea temperatures due to climate change than previously thought, according to a breakthrough Australian discovery revealed yesterday.

The research undertaken at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and published in the journal Nature Climate Change has overturned previously held assumptions about coral bleaching and which corals may survive in warmer waters.

According to PhD student Emily Howells, the findings demonstrate the potential for corals to adapt is more widespread than previously thought.

By Graham Lloyd, follow the link above to read the rest.

Lies of the climate commission Part 10

2012-01-20T21:42:00.000+11:00

To: DCCEE - ClimateCommision Secretariat

Dear Sir,

Climate Commissioner Prof. Tim Flannery appeared on ABC's Radio National today (see link below) discussing a new report issued by the Chinese Government (Title is: Second National Assessment Report on Climate Change, but I can't find a copy on the WWW-update-now have at Amazon China thanks to Reuters, but it's in Chinese).

Can the secretariat confirm that Prof. Flannery based his responses to questions in the radio national interview on media articles about the report, rather than the actual report itself?

If so, does the commission consider that relying on third hand information about the science of climate change, as revealed in media articles, meets the commission's aims "to provide a reliable and authoritative source of information on climate change"?

In the interview Prof Flannery stated "over 80% of their glaciers are now retreating" giving the impression that over 80% of glaciers in China are retreating. However a Reuters report (link below) indicates the figure refers to glaciers in Tibet only. Given the media report is accurate will the commission correct Prof. Flannery's misrepresentation of the facts?

Radio National Interview

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/2012-01-19/3782124

Reuters Report

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/18/us-china-climate-idUSTRE80H06J20120118

"Since the 1950s, over 82 percent of glaciers have been in a state of retreat, and the pace has accelerated since the 1990s," the report says of China's glaciers in Tibet and nearby areas that feed major rivers.

Regards

ABC NEWS WATCH

UPDATE: We asked Reuters if they could provide a link to the original report, here's what they said:
I'm sorry I don't have a link to an Internet version; only a hard copy of the report in Chinese. I heard there is an English-language summary available, although possibly not online yet -- I looked for it and couldn't find it. If you read Chinese, you can buy copies via Amazon's Chinese service.

Seems our climate commissioner must also have expertise in Mandarin, funny that I haven't heard it mentioned before!

History missing from sinking island piece

2012-01-16T16:02:00.002+11:00

A number of low lying islands in Torres Strait are prone to inundation during king tides and storms. No surprise, that's what happens when your front door is only a few feet above the high tide mark. In the late 1940s the islands of Saibai and Boigu near the PNG coast were evacuated following tidal erosion caused by summer storms. The islanders were resettled on Cape York.

The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Qld. : 1933 - 1954), Friday 2 April 1948, page 3

For some reason ABC chose not to include this critical historical information in a report broadcast by The World Today titled "Fears Islanders may soon be forced out of their homes". In their alarming report the ABC claimed:
"The rise in sea levels and an increase in extreme weather events in the region make the islands at this time of the year particularly vulnerable."
While we agree the islands are vulnerable to inundation, the historical information makes it clear that the vulnerability is not new, and does not arise as a consequence of any change in local or global climate, as ABC would have us believe.

These claims (of rising sea levels and increases in extreme weather events) are not substantiated. In regard to rising sea levels, there are few tide gauges in the area that could be used to support the contention that local sea level is rising. Looking at the tide chart below for Turtle Island (near Thursday Island) from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL). It appears that local sea level in this part of Torres Strait has been fluctuating since records began. But there is not much data to go on.

http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/1749.php

As ABC do not quote any authority for their claim that extreme weather events are increasing in the region we assume they just made that one up. Wouldn't be the first time!

We have requested ABC substantiate the claims made in their report, and to include mention of the historically significant inundation events in the online version.

PS. A related piece from last year titled Torres Strait pleads for climate change action, leads with the following sentence: Torres Strait Islanders have warned Prime Minister Julia Gillard they could become Australia's first climate change refugees if she continues to ignore the effects of rising sea levels in the area.
Amazing how much can be debunked with a little historical context and a little data!

Extreme weather misinformation at the ABC

2012-01-08T12:54:00.003+11:00

ABC NEWS WATCH enjoyed the new year from the comfort of a pool side lounge chair in a distant land positioned just above the equator, so we missed the "Extreme heat in southern Australia" that the ABC AM reported on the 3rd of January. Just as well as AM's Peter Cave reported the story in the following manner:

"South Australia is sweltering with the hottest start to the year in more than a century." Glad I was sipping cool beer elsewhere. That must have been some heatwave (though based on the evidence some would have just called it summer)!

So hottest since at least 1912? Let's test the validity of that claim (made by the ABC); mindful that just one observation is all that is needed to disprove the claim.

Start the clock:

1. open Google

2. type "Heatwaves in South Australia"

3. follow the first link to the Bureau of Meteorology page of the same heading.

4. Read the page (reprinted below)

5. Claim debunked.

Time taken: about 2 minutes.

Heatwaves in South Australia

Temperatures above 40°C are common in the north of South Australia
in summer, but rarely for such a prolonged period as in the first half
of January 1979. The heatwave began on 31 December, and up until
15 January, maximum temperatures of at least 45°C were a daily
occurrence in the north of the state, at places such as Marree and
Oodnadatta.

Further north, at Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, the temperature
exceeded 40°C on 12 days, but did not go higher than 42°C, in part
because of the town's elevation (546m). The extreme heat reached
further south on several days: at Port Augusta the mercury topped 44°C
on 6 days, and at Broken Hill in NSW on 7 days. Adelaide did not have
many days of extreme heat, but 42°C on 3 January was the highest
temperature for 11 years.

Livestock and wild animals suffered. Kangaroos were found dead, and
100 cattle died on a train at Marree, despite the efforts of railway staff
to offload them (Around 1979 it was usual for 10 to 20 animals to die during
transport in hot weather). Hundreds of dead birds, including crows and
parrots, were found. A goods train was derailed at Immarna on the trans-
continental line, probably because the rails buckled in the heat.

A similar heatwave in January 1960 was not so sustained, because cool
changes brought relief, but temperatures exceeded 45°C in the north of the
State from 31 December to 3 January. On 2 January, Oodnadatta reached
a state record - and arguably an Australian record - of 50.7°C. The
minimum that day was 34.6°C. The temperature again reached the low 40s on
6-8 January, and on the 10th.

There were several deaths in the 1960 heat wave: five babies and eight
dults died, including five found dead beside an outback road. Other victims
were admitted to hospital with heat exhaustion, including 18 in Broken Hill.
However hospitals would have provided little relief, because few were
air-conditioned at that time.

http://www.bom.gov.au/lam/climate/levelthree/c20thc/temp3.htm

The highest temperature recorded in the 2012 "heatwave" at Adelaide Airport (BOM station ID 23034):

31 December 2011: 34.6

1 January 2012: 39.8

2 January 2012: 39.7

3 January 2012: 31.5

That ABC claim again: "South Australia is sweltering with the hottest start to the year in more than a century." Seems there will be no halt to the climate mis-information this year.

See Also

Warwick Hughes looks at other weather mis-information being spruiked by our national news service in his post: Lies and misinformation on ABC news about heat waves

Ian Hill also covers the Adelaide "heatwave" at Jo Nova's site finding: There have only been 78 other heatwaves like that in Adelaide… and 51 were hotter

H/T to Warwick

In 2012

2012-01-08T11:58:00.002+11:00

A belated Happy New Year from ABC NEWS WATCH.

Last year, following a change in ABC's complaint handling process, we passed on a number of unsatisfactory responses onto ACMA but are still awaiting a response. Hopefully the slow wheels of the bureaucracy will turn over and we'll get a response.

This year will see us continue our focus on ABC's climate change and environment reporting that for some time has been marked by activism over sound journalism.

Missing this year will be pictures from ABC's environment news portal. ABC finally seem to have fixed the glitch that provided such a rewarding mismatch of images and headlines.

Wishing readers all the best for the coming year.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-13T18:53:00.001+11:00

ABC News Watch wishes all readers a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. More of the usual nonsense next year.

Our holiday reading this summer includes a triptych of Richard Feynman biographies and essays including this one:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0393316041/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

Climate bias at the BBC

2011-12-08T19:47:00.001+11:00

Christopher Booker has a piece in the UK's Daily Mail that looks at bias and lack of balance in the BBC's climate coverage:
It concludes:

All this is why I am far from alone in concluding that the BBC’s coverage has, on this key issue of our time, gone hopelessly off the rails. The Corporation has been guilty of three separate betrayals.

By making its coverage so flagrantly one-sided on the environment issue, it has betrayed its statutory duty to report on world events impartially.

Second, it has betrayed the basic principles of science by giving such unquestioning support to a theory which the evidence has increasingly called into doubt.

Above all, however, the BBC has betrayed the trust of its audience, by failing to give a fair and balanced picture.

This has become a national scandal. It is time we called this pampered, self-important organisation to account for having misinformed us for too long.

Seems this criticism fits another public broadcaster to a tee.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2071358/BBCs-bias-global-warming-An-inconvenient-truth-climate-change.html#ixzz1fvnGS8h4

Missing News; MWP, LIA found in Tibet

2011-12-08T07:17:00.001+11:00

Nothing thus far on ABC news, or Science about this paper published in the Chinese Science Bulletin. Figure 5 has some interesting historical trends and future forecasts that seem at odds with the official story being promoted by Auntie.

Amplitudes, rates, periodicities and causes of temperature variations in the past 2485 years and future trends over the central-eastern Tibetan Plateau.
LIU Yu, CAI QiuFang, SONG HuiMing, AN ZhiSheng & Hans W. LINDERHOLM
Chinese Science Bulletin
October 2011 Vol.56 No.28-29: 29862994
doi: 10.1007/s11434-011-4713-7
Abstract

Amplitudes, rates, periodicities, causes and future trends of temperature variations based on tree rings for the past 2485 years on the central-eastern Tibetan Plateau were analyzed. The results showed that extreme climatic events on the Plateau, such as the Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and 20th Century Warming appeared synchronously with those in other places worldwide. The largest amplitude and rate of temperature change occurred during the Eastern Jin Event (343–425 AD), and not in the late 20th century. There were significant cycles of 1324 a, 800 a, 199 a, 110 a and 2–3 a in the 2485-year temperature series. The 1324 a, 800 a, 199 a and 110 a cycles are associated with solar activity, which greatly affects the Earth surface temperature. The long-term trends (>1000 a) of temperature were controlled by the millennium-scale cycle, and amplitudes were dominated by multi-century cycles. Moreover, cold intervals corresponded to sunspot minimums. The prediction indicated that the temperature will decrease in the future until to 2068 AD and then increase again.

Aus network to ABC

2011-12-05T20:04:00.001+11:00

Australia Network goes permanently to ABC

THE government has abandoned any tender for the ill-starred $223 million Australia Network contract, instead bowing to Greens demands and awarding responsibility for the soft-diplomacy broadcaster to the ABC permanently.

Read the rest at the link above. More public funds wasted as tenderers seek compensation for an incompetently managed tender process.

Groupthink ending

2011-12-05T16:30:00.001+11:00

A persistent theme on ABC News Watch has been ABC's one sided coverage of climate change. This even commented on by ABC Chairman Maurice Newman.

Perhaps the following article signals an end to this era and a move to more balanced reporting? Only time will tell.

Leaked emails confirm climate change questions

A wake up call at The Conversation

2011-11-30T22:04:00.001+11:00

ABC affiliate The Conversation have posted an article by climate commissioner Lesley Hughes titled "Australians can’t ignore the health impacts of climate change".

I added the following comment...

In the climate commission's latest report I note that the section on mosquito borne diseases does not reference the work of epidemiologist Paul Reiter. Wonder why? Perhaps Lesley Hughes or co-author Tony McMichael would care to explain.

Here's Paul's background from wiki...
Paul Reiter is a professor of medical entomology at the Pasteur Institute in the city of Paris[citation needed], France. He is a member of the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Committee on Vector Biology and Control[citation needed]. He was an employee of the Center for Disease Control (Dengue Branch) for 22 years[citation needed]. He is a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society[citation needed]. He is a specialist in the natural history, epidemiology and control of mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever, West Nile Virus, and malaria.[1]

Lesley's co-author Tony McMichael had this to say about Paul in one of the recently released climategate emails dating from 2002. To Mike Hulme...

Mike,
You've probably already had colourful comment from Sari and Jonathan. Paul Reiter is, in my view, smart, confrontative and inflexible. He has been leading the charge of the (mostly US) professionally-affronted field epidemiologists, who think:
1. That if IPCC says that climate change is likely to affect VBD transmissibility, then it is also saying that this is happening already; and
2. That if climate is invoked as a causal influence, then it seems that the silly IPCC epidemiologists don't understand that there are a few other influences that are more important.
Paul's documentation that, historically, malaria was often more serious in Europe during relatively cooler times is very interesting - but is essentially irrelevant for the second reason above. Those historical times also coincided with other major shifts in social, economic, nutritional and political circumstances.
Well, it helps to keep us on our toes.
Tony

For the context see the rest of this email http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/4931.txt, and the civil email from Reiter to Hulme that prompted the response.
http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/3691.txt

Based on the omission of Paul Reiter's work from the commission's report it seems the so called consensus being promulgated by the climate commission has little to do with scientific evidence and more to do with maintaining Groupthinking networks, ego and undeserved reputations. Lesley Hughes suggests the report is a wake up call, I think Richard Feynman would have called it Cargo cult science.

The embedded journalist part 2.

2011-11-30T19:13:00.001+11:00

Earlier in the year we reported that AM reporter Tony Eastley had taken up a role as MC for the Climate Commission's public forums. The Australian covered the matter in this story under the headline "ABC defends host's climate gig".

Today Eastley gave Climate Commissioner Lesley Hughes a very soft interview on AM (see Health imperilled by climate change: Report).

It would have been interesting to see how Lesley Hughes would have handled questions relating to the absence of references in the commission's report to the work of Paul Reiter on mosquito borne diseases that contradicts the climate commission's alarmist narrative. Also of interest the exchange between Hughes' co-author Tony McMichael and Mike Hulme in relation to Reiter as featured in recently released climategate emails.

ABC's new Editorial Guidelines no longer mention the phrase "conflict of interest". However section 1.3 of the new guidelines state:

1.3 Ensure that editorial decisions are not improperly influenced by political, sectional, commercial or personal interests.

On face value it appears Mr Eastley's interview puts him in breach of this clause. We have asked the ABC for an explanation.

Lies of the Climate Commission part 9-the cargo cult continues

2011-11-30T06:27:00.001+11:00

The government's climate propaganda unit, its climate commission, has released a new report on the Health Impacts of Climate Change.
The report was written by Lesley Hughes and epidemiologist Tony McMichael and reviewed by the Commission's uncritical reviewers.

Tony McMichael features in a Climate gate email exchange (see below) with Mike Hulme commenting about the work of respected epidemiologist Paul Reiter. According to his Wikipedia entry Paul Reiter is a specialist in the natural history, epidemiology and control of mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever, West Nile Virus, and malaria. He has been critical of the IPCC process. In a 2005 statement to the UK Select Committee on Economic Affairs Reiter outlined problems with the IPCC health assessments and concluded: The natural history of mosquito-borne diseases is complex, and the interplay of climate, ecology, mosquito biology, and many other factors defies simplistic analysis. The recent resurgence of many of these diseases is a major cause for concern, but it is facile to attribute this resurgence to climate change, or to use models based on temperature to "predict" future prevalence. In my opinion, the IPCC has done a disservice to society by relying on "experts" who have little or no knowledge of the subject, and allowing them to make authoritative pronouncements that are not based on sound science. In truth, the principal determinants of transmission of malaria and many other mosquito-borne diseases are politics, economics and human activities. A creative and organized application of resources is urgently required to control these diseases, regardless of future climate change.
Despite his expertise, surprisingly no work by 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.

From the Climategate emails (note I have trimmed the email addresses and phone numbers)
http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/4931.txt

cc:
date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 04:23:10 +1000
from: "Tony McMichael"
subject: RIF: Paul Reiter
to: "Mike Hulme" , "Sari Kovats"

Mike,

You've probably already had colourful comment from Sari and Jonathan. Paul Reiter is, in my view, smart, confrontative and inflexible. He has been leading the charge of the (mostly US) professionally-affronted field epidemiologists, who think:

1. That if IPCC says that climate change is likely to affect VBD transmissibility, then it is also saying that this is happening already; and

2. That if climate is invoked as a causal influence, then it seems that the silly IPCC epidemiologists don't understand that there are a few other influences that are more important.

Paul's documentation that, historically, malaria was often more serious in Europe during relatively cooler times is very interesting - but is essentially irrelevant for the second reason above. Those historical times also coincided with other major shifts in social, economic, nutritional and political circumstances.

Well, it helps to keep us on our toes.

Tony
-----Messaggio originale----- Da: Mike Hulme [mailto:m.hulme@xxx.xx.xx]
Inviato: ven 21/06/2002 1.25
A: Tony McMichael; patz@xxx.xx.xx; Sari Kovats
Cc:
Oggetto: Paul Reiter
Tony, Jonathan, Sari, I engaged in robust conversation with Paul Reiter last night at an Institute of Ideas debate on climate change - he is clearly very unhappy about the IPCC health chapter and contributed to the public debate a rather dismissive comment about IPCC in general as a process of 'citizens science'. I've not come cross the guy before. Is there something I need to know? Mike
Hulme's inquiry followed this email from Paul Reiter that explains some issues related to human health and climate change (note the difference in tone from Reiter).

http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/3691.txt
date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 15:33:49 -0400
from: Paul Reiter
subject: Climate change and mosquitoborne disease
to: m.hulme@xxx.xx.xx
Dear Mike,Enjoyed meeting you last week.Attached are a couple of papers I mentioned. The review in Environmental Health Perspectives is the most comprehensive.As an example of the sort of thing I tried to explain to you, try the paper by Harvell in Science, June 21. I have never heard of any of the authors, yet they write with authority on dengue and malaria.I ran the bit on bird malaria past my Director, Duane Gubler. He worked on bird malaria in Hawaii in the 1960s. Even then it was a major cause of death in wild birds. He agreed: there is no reason to believe that climate change has been relevant in recent years.Then there is the bit in the Conclusions: The most detectable effects of directional climate warming on disease relate to geographic range expansion of pathogens such as Rift Valley fever, dengue ...I assure you, there is absolutely no evidence for either. RVF shows no change in range. Pandemics of dengue (and yellow fever) were once common in the USA and Europe. The first epidemic of dengue ever described was in Pennsylvania in 1780 (it was colder then!) and the disease occurred as far north as Boston. YF has been transmitted in Dublin and Swansea. Dengue has expanded in range since the 1950s-60s, when there was a major effort to eliminate the vector by DDT treatments. As the vector has returned, so has the virus.So, as I tried to explain, in my field there is a lamentable dissemination of unsubstantiated statements that are not supported by any observations.In answer to your questions re the IPCC: I dont make comments on the climatology, but if the statements are in any way of the same ilk as those in my field, then I think the situation is lamentable.Hope we get a chance to discuss some more.Best wishesPaulAttachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\Reiter_clim_chge_mos_dis.PDF"Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\Shakespeare.pdf"_________________________________Paul ReiterCDC West Nile ProjectHarvard School of Public Health_________________________________

McMichael reveals his political leanings as he responds to a request to lobby the Australian Government about the IPCC head.

http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/0453.txt

date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 18:37:24 +1000
from: "Tony McMichael" 
subject: RE: Bob Watson
to: "Mike Hulme" , "Andy Haines" 

Andy and Mike,

I plan to speak with Ian Noble about this this evening. Ian has good political connections here (but remember, ours is routinely the first government to endorse whatever Bush says/does on climate change!). 

I will be meeting with the Acting Director of the Australian Greenhouse Office next week, and will explore a bit further.

Tony 

Prof. A.J. McMichael
Director, National Centre for Epidemiology & Population Health
Australian National University
Canberra
ACT 0200
AUSTRALIA
Website: http://nceph.anu.edu.au/

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Hulme [mailto:m.hulme@xxx.xx.xx]
Sent: 08 April, 2002 6:33 PM
To: Andy Haines; Tony McMichael
Subject: Re: Bob Watson

Andy/Tony,

I have followed the news, and seen a copy of the February 2001 memo from 
Exxon to Bush that started this thing rolling.

I take a rather relaxed view of this.  Watson does not have an unalienable 
right to chair IPCC and a change may be good anyway.  Pauchari from TERI in 
India, anyway, seems unlikely to me to 'let USA off the hook'.  The 
upsetting thing of course is the lobbying by Exxon and the giving way to it 
by Bush, but we have known this all along is a problem with the Bush 
administration.

Susan Solomon who is likely to end up chairing WGI from the USA is a top 
quality scientist and will let the 'science speak loud and clear' I believe.

The outcome of all this should be known after the Geneva Plenary in 10 days 
time.

All the best,

Mike

At 19:56 05/04/02 +0100, Andy Haines wrote:
>Dear both,
>
>You will no doubt have seen the news about the intention of the Bush
>administration not to support Bob in his role as chair of IPCC
>apparently as a result of lobbying by Exxon Mobil. Tony , can you lobby
>the Australian govt and major scientific bodies in Australia to express
>their concern about and opposition to this action? Mike , I will contact
>Ian Gibson and Robert May but you may have other suggestions
>
>
>Regards
>
>Andy

ABC: activism not journalism

2011-11-28T07:36:00.001+11:00

ABC's refugee, climate crutches getting wobbly

The Australian's Chris Kenny looks at ABC's handling of climate and refugee news and finds activism rather than journalism. We reported similar findings in our series on ABC's climate coverage.

Some extracts below, read the rest via the link (Paywall protected).

To search for climate change references in the ABC archives is to drown in a rising tide of fear and loathing. To say the public broadcaster has campaigned on climate is now uncontroversial; even its outgoing chairman Maurice Newman spoke about the extent of its "groupthink".

With annual public funding of more than a billion dollars, it is incumbent upon our ABC to tackle significant national policy debates with an appropriate sense of objectivity and detachment and to play its part in encouraging sober, evidence-based discussion and analysis.

Missing News: Climategate 2.0

2011-11-23T02:09:00.001+11:00

We wonder if ABC will provide any substantive coverage this time around, they largely missed the first installment.
See
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/climategate-2-0/

Mainstream coverage via BBC:

'New release' of climate emails

Lies of the climate commission Part 8

2011-11-14T06:58:00.001+11:00

Another error from expert Climate Commissioner Will Steffen. On yesterday's Bolt Report he blamed recent flooding rains in southern Australia on "El Nino"...at 4:04 "The recent El Nino driven rain not withstanding..."

I guess he meant to say "La Nina".
"The term La Niña refers to the extensive cooling of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. In Australia (particularly eastern Australia), La Niña events are associated with increased probability of wetter conditions."

Once again the climate commission demonstrates it is not a reliable source of accurate information about climate change.

ABC's Man from Snowy River

2011-11-10T08:08:00.002+11:00

ABC Environment's impression of the Man from Snowy River

With this in mind Banjo Patterson's Man from Snowy River may have had a slightly different ending...

The man from Snowy River is a household word today,

And the stockmen tell the story of his rice.

Missing News: lower climate sensitivity

2011-11-10T07:01:00.000+11:00

WUWT reports on a paper reportedly "in press*" in the journal Science that finds climate sensitivity to increased CO2 is less than previously thought. Seems those predictions about extreme events our climate commission is so fond of may require some re-thinking. Let's see how long it takes for the ABC to cover this important result.

Schmittner, A., et al., 2011. Climate sensitivity estimated from temperature reconstructions of the Last Glacial Maximum, Science, in press*,http://www.princeton.edu/~nurban/pubs/lgm-cs-uvic.pdf

ABSTRACT
Assessing impacts of future anthropogenic carbon emissions is currently impeded by uncertainties in our knowledge of equilibrium climate sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxide doubling. Previous studies suggest 3 K as best estimate, 2–4.5 K as the 66% probability range, and non-zero probabilities for much higher values, the latter implying a small but significant chance of high-impact climate changes that would be difficult to avoid. Here, combining extensive sea and land surface temperature reconstructions from the Last Glacial Maximum with climate model simulations we estimate a lower median (2.3 K) and reduced uncertainty (1.7–2.6 K 66% probability). Assuming paleoclimatic constraints apply to the future as predicted by our model, these results imply lower probability of imminent extreme climatic change than previously thought.

*According to the authors

Alice Springs faces propaganda onslaught

2011-11-10T06:31:00.001+11:00

ABC breathlessly report on the climate commission's tax payer funded holiday to the red centre.
According the ABC, Klimate Kommissar Lesley Hughes has stated: "Alice Springs could have almost a month more of weather above 35 degrees."

No mention by the ABC or the Klimate Kommissars that climate models used to provide this prediction are hopeless at forecasting future climate states. No surprise given the ABC and the Government's climate propaganda unit, its climate commission, continues to ignore anything in the scientific literature that does not fit its world view.

According to the BOM Alice has about 90 days per year above 35. The graph below shows the current average (in green) compared to the period 1941-1970 (red). Not much there; a slight increase in winter temps, but nothing over the summer months that would suggest a dramatic increase in the number days above 35. On face value it appears there has been no significant climate change in Alice since records were established!

ABC NEWS: June 2011 productivity report-update

2011-11-08T19:28:00.001+11:00

ABC published their annual report for 2010-2011 back in October. The final staff figures for the news division allow us to finalise this year's productivity survey.
In July we predicted ABC News staff levels for 2010-2011 to be 961. The actual figures as reported in the annual report (p.231) were 963.14, so there is little change in final figures and none at the first decimal place. A dismal result!

One wonders how this justified performance pay for 282 ABC employees.
Appendix 13—Performance Pay (p.230)
The ABC paid bonuses to 161 executives totalling $749 666, an average of $4 656 per executive.
It paid bonuses to 121 non-executive employees totalling $298 387, an average of $2 466 per employee.

ABC NEWS PRODUCTIVITY SURVEY TO 2010-2011
Year  Total Stories
2003 7230
2004 6920
2005 6899
2006 6995
2007 7988
2008 8894
2009 7134
2010 6666
2011 5908

Staffing:  Figures are based on ABC annual reports.
Year Staff
2003   766.24
2004 735.04
2005 756.6
2006 770.68
2007 842.37
2008 865.59
2009   913.14
2010 947.36
2011 963.14

Productivity: With stories at a record low and staff at record highs, it comes at no surprise that ABC news productivity is at a record low of just 6.1 stories per staff member for the month.

Year  Stories per staff per month
2003 9.4
2004 9.4
2005 9.1
2006 9.1
2007 9.5
2008 10.3
2009 7.8
2010 7.1
2011 6.1

We're all going on a summer holiday

2011-11-07T06:52:00.004+11:00

ABC's annual summer break seems to be starting earlier and earlier:

John, Tony and Kerry start their summer holidays,

No more working for the next three months.

Fun and laughter on their summer holidays,

provides a break in the Groupthink in so many ways,

but only for the next ninety days.

They're going where the sun shines brightly

Perhaps attending a climate conference or two.

Watching repeats of Al Gores' Movie,

can't believe they think that crap is all true?!

Everybody wants an ABC summer holiday,

It's three months off thanks to their old Aunty.

They get three months break for their summer holidays,

it's same as long service leave for you and me.

But just another well earned break for John, Tony and Kerry.

Out of the taxes paid by you and me,

I'm sure they'll have a drink or three.

(Sorry Cliff)

4 Corners 7/11/2011: This is the final Four Corners for 2011. We will return in on Monday 6 February, 2012.

Media Watch 7/11/2011. Gerard Henderson finds the oh so high productivity perhaps behind the early on set of summer.

"Last Monday, Jonathan Holmes announced that next week’s edition of the ABC1 Media Watch program would be the last for 2011. Just how much the Media Watch staff deserve a well-earned break is evident from Andrew Murfett’s sympathetic piece titled “Watchdog has his day” which was published in The Age’s “Greenguide” on 27 October 2011. Holmes told Murfett:

We have six well-paid journalists working on 2000 words a week. We have three full-time researchers, a producer, a story editor and executive producer.

And then there is Jonathan Holmes himself – who is the seventh left-wing presenter (out of seven) to present Media Watch since it first went to air in May 1989. His predecessors are the lefties Stuart Littlemore, Richard Ackland, Paul Barry, David Marr, Liz Jackson and Monica Attard.

So Media Watch has seven full-time staff producing 2000 words a week to occupy 13 minutes on-air time for the nine months or so in which the program is shown each year. ABC management and staff are invariably whinging about not receiving enough taxpayer funds. Yet, according to Jonathan Holmes, seven well-paid full-time staff are flat out at Media Watch producing 2000 words between them each week – which works out to less than 60 words per working day."

Q and A 7/11/2011: For the final show of 2011, host Tony Jones is joined by Liberal MP, Malcolm Turnbull; Jessica Rudd; Ray Martin; Labor MP, Kate Ellis; and Former Howard Government Minister, Peter Reith.

Missing news: Problems with climate models

2011-10-29T11:45:00.003+11:00

Roger Pielke Snr has an interesting post that will no doubt never be covered by the ABC's Science unit. It's on continuing problems with the skill of climate models, and based on a discussion of the work of Demetris Koutoyiannis.

From Koutsoyiannis et al 2011

“….we tested whether the model outputs are consistent with reality (which reflects the entire variability, due to combined natural and anthropogenic effects). Our results extend Huard’s statements further. Specifically, we show that, climate models are not only unable to predict the variability of climate, but they are also unable to reproduce even the means of temperature and rainfall in the past. For example, as we stated in our paper, “In some [models], the annual mean temperature of the USA is overestimated by about 4–5◦C and the annual precipitation by about 300–400 mm”.

Roger comments:
This Comment/Reply illustrates, in my view, the continued pressure on Editors not to publish papers that conflict with the IPCC perspective of the climate system and the ability of global climate models to provide skillful predictions decades into the future. Instead of showing in a quantifiable manner any flaws in the work by Demetris Koutsoyiannis and colleages, Huard 2011 resorts to semantics and criticisms of the review process. Whenever authors resort to such arguments, it illustrates that they cannot refute the substance of the research study.

See the whole post HERE.

Who's Ho?

2011-10-26T06:15:00.000+11:00

Credit Ho New (Reuters)

Screen shot of the offending item taken from ABC Environment's Site 25/10/2011

We have had some fun with ABC environment's woeful attempt to automatically link news headlines to stock images (see this effort for instance), however this time the incompetence relates to attribution of a photo in an opinion piece on its website (shown above).

The correct attribution is shown below in an article from MSNBC. As to who "Ho New" is, we asked Reuters and they indicated the Ho refers to "Handout".

Attribution of MSNBC article reads "Dennis Sarrazin / ArcticNet/Centre d'Etudes Nordiques"

You can see more amazing photos by Dennis Sarrazin at his page at the Centre d'Etudes Nordiques. The photo ABC incorrectly credited to a "Handout" from Reuters was taken in on the 20/08/2008 and shows Disraeli fjord, Ellesmere Island, Northern Canada. In Dennis Sarrazin's slideshow it's about the 20th photo in.

In regard to the content of the op ed piece, if you look up "Alarmist" in the dictionary it now simply shows a Lissajous curve. In regard to its author, based on a recent critique by Roger Pielke Jnr, I believe the label "cherry picker" is appropriate.

Update from Reuters received 29/10/2011:
Thanks for the note, and sorry for the delay. The HO is actually an internal code which is added to a picture when its put into our archive. It most likely was a technical glitch.

No, just ABC incompetence.

Missing News: New book exposes UN climate Panel

2011-10-25T21:17:00.000+11:00

Donna Laframboise is the author of a new book that lifts the veil from the IPCC. Donna was interviewed on SunTV, we wonder when she will appear on our ABC, perhaps on Lateline, The Science Show or Q and A.

The book, The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert, an IPCC Exposé, is available from $5 via Amazon.

This review from the Tucson Citizen.
In this book, Canadian journalist Donna LaFramboise exposes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as a fraud. LaFramboise (see author profile here) spent two years investigating the IPCC. She says it acts like a spoiled teenager, hence the title of the book.

The IPCC has long been touted as the preeminent authority on climate science. But LaFramboise shows that the participants were picked by governments, not for their scientific expertise, but for their political connections and for “diversity.” Many of the scientists are in fact, very young graduate students. Many of the bureaucrats in the IPCC are from radical environmental groups. Real experts are often ignored. She says the IPCC is a purely political organization, not a scientific one, and she backs up her charges with copious references.

Read the rest via the link above.

Missing News: No increase in US flooding

2011-10-25T06:36:00.000+11:00

Roger Pielke Jnr reports Are US Floods Increasing? The Answer is Still No.
A new paper out today in the Hydrological Sciences Journal shows that flooding has not increased in the United States over records of 85 to 127 years. This adds to a pile of research that shows similar results around the world. This result is of course consistent with our work that shows that increasing damage related to weather extremes can be entirely explained by societal changes, such as more property in harm's way. In fact, in the US flood damage has decreased dramatically as a fraction of GDP, which is exactly whet you get if GDP goes up and flooding does not.
I do not expect research to change anyone's views on the topic or alter the debate over climate change and extreme events. The debate has moved well beyond that which can be resolved empirically.

From the abstract

Has the magnitude of floods across the USA changed with global CO2levels?
R. M. Hirsch & K. R. Ryberg

Hydrological Sciences Journal

DOI: 10.1080/02626667.2011.621895

In none of the four regions defined in this study is there strong statistical evidence for flood magnitudes increasing with increasing GMCO2. One region, the southwest, showed a statistically significant negative relationship between GMCO2 and flood magnitudes.

ABC's coverage has generally taken a different view on weather related disasters and climate change:
Australia's future forecast: hot, dry and more floods May 1, 2001

Climate change boosting flood and drought: experts March 3, 2003
Study links extreme weather to climate change February 17, 2011
Cyclones, floods to get worse as warming increases: Garnaut February 4, 2011

Missing News: No increase in hurricane frequency
Missing News: Hurricane activity all time low
Missing News - Bushfire Slap Down
Missing News: Russian heatwave due to natural factors

Some links

2011-10-22T06:51:00.000+11:00

Links below to some recent articles discussing ABC's climate coverage:

Jo Nova: There is no saving the ABC — We want 60% of our billion back
"We want evidence, reason, and well informed opinions from all sides on important topics. Instead we’re coerced into paying for propaganda, character assassination, and the personal views of journalists."

Bob Fernley-Jones: Remember the infamous Bob Ward interview, from a year ago?

"So, has the ABC attitude towards CAGW scepticism changed over the past year?"

ABC shrinks quality of science reporting

2011-10-18T17:39:00.000+11:00

mini ABC

In a story headlined "Climate change downsizing fauna, flora" ABC Science reported on the results of a new study published in Nature Climate Change (Shrinking body size as an ecological response to climate change)
that suggested (according to the ABC) that "Climate change is reducing the size of many animal and plant species". The remainder of the story reads like a press release, with no critical input from ABC's groupthinkers.

The Australian covered the same story with a report from AP under the headline "Warming blamed for shrinking animals" that included this helpful caveat missing from ABC's typically one sided report:
But Yoram Yom-Tov, a zoologist at Tel Aviv University whose studies Dr Sheridan used in her research, said many species were shrinking, and global warming was not the sole reason.
"Changes in body size are a normal phenomenon," he said.
"Besides, most species will adapt to climate change."

The Sydney Morning Herald reported a day earlier with "Global warming blamed for shrinking species" by Seth Borenstein included a similar cautionary statement:

But Yoram Yom-Tov, a zoologist at Tel Aviv University whose studies Sheridan used in her research, said many species are shrinking, and you can't blame global warming exclusively.
"Changes in body size are a normal phenomenon," Yom-Tov wrote in an email. "When conditions are favourable, they increase in size or reproduce at higher rates, and when conditions are deteriorating, they do the opposite. I think that most species will adapt to climate change and survive. No need for alarm."

And Stanford biologist Terry Root, an expert in climate change, said the study's conclusions "seem kind of far-fetched".

ABC's uncritical report states "Fossil records, they found, were unambiguous: past periods of rising temperatures had led both marine and land organisms to become progressively smaller." (ed I guess that would account for the size of the Dinosaurs).

Oddly just last week ABC were suggesting that cooling, not warming was responsible for shrinking things: from "Climate change 'shrank people and economy'"
"The Little Ice Age shrank people and the economy, leading to a general crisis in the 17th Century, say researchers."

ABC News: shrinking the quality of science reporting (at least they're consistent!).

ABC Environment mutilate wallabies

2011-10-17T22:09:00.000+11:00

Update Nothing abnormal about NT fires

2011-10-13T20:55:00.000+11:00

ABC provide the reply below to our complaint regarding their claims CO2 releases from NT fires are abnormal. Tainted as it is by a groupthink mentality, lack of balance and failure to live up to normal journalistic standards on environmental reporting, ABC's exceptionally low standards are fast becoming the norm. (To see how totally normal this year's fire season is, skip to the links below ABC's response-title in red).

Here's their response (in italics) received October 11, our comments in bold:
Thank you for your email of October 7 concerning the story "Science counts carbon cost of Red Centre fires".
As your correspondence raised concerns of a lack of accuracy, your email was referred to Audience and Consumer Affairs for consideration and response. The unit is separate and independent from ABC program areas (as separate as Chang and Eng) and is responsible for investigating complaints alleging a broadcast or publication was in contravention of the ABC's editorial standards (by providing a big rubber stamp for ABC's errors and misleading reports). In light of your concerns, we have reviewed the story and assessed it against the ABC’s editorial requirements for accuracy, as outlined in section 2 of the ABC’s Editorial Policies:http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/edpols.htm. In the interests of procedural fairness, we have also sought and considered material from ABC News.

Your complaint is that the use of the “abnormal” in relation to the fires is a “gross distortion” of the facts. The story carefully and accurately described the fact that these fires are part of the natural cycle in the Northern Territory but are, none the less, far from common. (In the story Dr Ashley Sparrow indicates it is "an example of the boom-and-bust ecosystem in the Red Centre at work". Only activist reporters at the ABC could construe this as abnormal. It is clearly part of a well known common natural cycle.)
That you had to go back 60 years to find reports of equivalent fires, demonstrates this.
(This is a demonstration of the ignorance and laziness of ABCs respondent. I found the news articles on the National Library Newspaper site in about 2 minutes. The Archive ends in the 1950s. A fuller account of bushfires activity in the NT is provided below, this located in about 2 mintues. It seems that large fires in the NT are quite common.)
Describing such events as “abnormal” is only intended to indicate their infrequency, which is quite clear when read in context. The story is not misleading.

(Based on the evidence of fire activity in the NT use of the term "abnormal" is indeed misleading, sensationalist and inaccurate).

Accordingly, while noting your concerns, Audience and Consumer Affairs are satisfied the story was in keeping with the ABC’s editorial standards for accuracy (In other words it as woeful and as tainted by Groupthink as the rest of ABC's environmental reporting). Nonetheless, please be assured that your comments have been noted and conveyed to ABC News management (As the same mistakes keep on occurring in ABC's echo chamber one doubts that much notice is paid to any criticism).
Thank you for taking the time to write; your feedback is appreciated (I'm sure it is).
End Response

Some further information on NT Bush fires
from Understanding bushfire: trends in deliberate vegetation fires in Australia-Northern Territory

Few people are aware of the role, the process or the scale of burning (controlled and uncontrolled) that occurs in the tropical savannas of northern Australia. Bushfires are a ubiquitous feature of the Northern Territory dry season, with the territory having the most frequent, largest and more poorly documented vegetation fires of any part of the continent. When considering Northern Territory bushfires it is necessary to discard all preconceptions of size, frequency and even harm, based on southern vegetation fire regimes, as they are simply not translatable to the savannas that dominate Australia’s north.

Area burned: The frequency and area burned in any one year varies considerably. Nevertheless, by
southern standards the total and the proportion of land burned in any given year is extraordinarily large. In the higher rainfall savanna woodlands of the northern Kimberley, the Top End and Cape York up to half of the total area may be burned either every year or every second year (Anderson 1996, Dyer et al. 2001, Press 1998, Russell-Smith et al. 1997). Many of these fires are intense and therefore pose the most danger in terms of their capacity to devastate populations of fire-sensitive native plants and animals, to be costly and disruptive to pastoral operations, and to pose a threat to communities and property. The frequency of fires tends to decrease further south for a number of reasons. They include reduced rainfall and therefore vegetation density, reduced grass reserves due to intensive use of these savannas for grazing, and greater efforts to suppress fires to prevent destruction of valuable fodder resources.

Intense fires commonly started by lightning strikes during particularly dry seasons have occurred
throughout the Northern Territory’s modern history. The amounts of land burned in these events are extraordinary. The Council of Australian Governments report (Ellis, Kanowski & Whelan 2004) lists four major bushfire seasons in the territory since the late 1960s that collectively burned 168,000,000 ha. In 2002, approximately 38,000,000 ha burned in planned and unplanned fires. This represents 29 percent of the Northern Territory. In comparison, the January 2003 fires burned ‘only’ 226,000 ha in the Australian Capital Territory and 1,000,000 ha in Victoria. See Table 1 above.

So nothing "abnormal" about large bush fires in the NT!

See also this animation of fires around Central Australia for the period May 1999 to April 2004:
http://www.nt.gov.au/nreta/natres/bushfires/research/desertfire.html

NASA image from 2007...Below Huge fires scorched grassland and savanna in the Barkly Tableland region of Australia’s Northern Territory in October 2007.

Based on ABC's story one wonders where Fred Williams got the inspiration for this series of paintings?...

Bushfire in Northern Territory 12) (1976)

How much of Kakadu Burnt each year? Did I hear an average of 46%? And that's abnormal?

Abnormal? According to the paper...Fire frequency and biodiversity conservation in Australian tropical savannas: implications from the Kapalga fire experiment

Every year large proportions of northern Australia's tropical savanna landscapes are burnt, resulting in high fire frequencies and short intervals between fires.

Austral Ecology

Volume 30, Issue 2, pages 155–167, April 2005

From...Fire and Sustainable Agricultural and Forestry Development in Eastern Indonesia and Northern Australia Proceedings of an international workshop held at Northern Territory University, Darwin, Australia, 13–15 April 1999. (Link Here) From Russell-Smith et al, on page 95... In northwestern and northern Australia, and possibly also on parts of Cape York in the northeast, intense wild fires typically late in the dry season burn vast tracts annually.

Vast Tracts! And to the ABC this year's fires are somehow "abnormal"!

Update Comma Butterfly

2011-10-12T18:47:00.000+11:00

We received the reply below from ABC Audience & Consumer Affairs in regard to our complaint about ABC reporting that indicated "the comma butterfly was able to make the leap from central England to Edinburgh, a distance of about 220 kilometres, in two decades."
The report did not clarify that the Comma Butterfly was previously common in Scotland, for instance:

The Comma is known to have a very dynamic range in the UK. It was known in eastern Scotland in the early-19th century being found as far north as Fife and Alloa, Clackmannanshire in the east but it was absent in western Scotland. After 1850, the Comma was in decline with the last 19th century record being for Denholm, the Borders in 1868.

http://www.southwestscotland-butterflies.org.uk/species/butterflies/comma.shtml

Seems ABC do not understand the concept of "context"..from its editorial policy...
2.1 Make reasonable efforts to ensure that material facts are accurate and presented in context.
2.2 Do not present factual content in a way that will materially mislead the audience. In some cases, this may require appropriate labels or other explanatory information."

Here's the reply received today.let you be the judge. One wonders why the original report did not attempt to get in touch with the authors of the study for clarification. ABC-Cargo cult journalism in action...

Thank you for your email regarding the ABC Science story 'Wildlife responding fast to climate change'. I am sorry for the delay in responding to you.

I understand you believe the statement in the story "But the comma butterfly was able to make the leap from central England to Edinburgh, a distance of about 220 kilometres, in two decades" misrepresented factual information because the story did not mention that the range of the comma butterfly has previously included Scotland.

In light of your concerns, Audience & Consumer Affairs has reviewed this statement, within the context of the story, and assessed its adherence to standards 2.1 and 2.2 in the ABC Editorial Policies. These standards state as follows:

"2.1 Make reasonable efforts to ensure that material facts are accurate and presented in context.
2.2 Do not present factual content in a way that will materially mislead the audience. In some cases, this may require appropriate labels or other explanatory information."

I understand the story was sourced from Reuters. ABC Innovation has advised that the statement to which you refer was based on a quote from Dr David Roy, head of the Biological Records Centre in the UK and co-author of the paper the story reported on. The quote appeared in a press release about the paper. I am advised that ABC Innovation verified the accuracy of the statement by checking it against the press release and the paper itself, although there was no direct reference to the comma butterfly in the paper or supplementary material. Additionally, I understand ABC Innovation relied on Dr Roy's relevant expertise in this area.

Following receipt of your complaint, ABC Innovation contacted Dr Roy about the issue you raised. According to Dr Roy, the statement was about the recent expansion of the distribution of the comma butterfly in recent decades, and not the historical distribution of the species. Dr Roy has advised that while it is true that the comma butterfly covered much of England and Wales, plus scattered localities in Scotland (as far north as Fife) in the early nineteenth century, it was absent from Scotland for more than a century (estimated to be since c.1870). I understand Dr Roy's quote in the press release, which formed the basis of the statement, reported the re-expansion of the species since the ~1980s.

On review, having regard to the steps taken by ABC Innovation and the relatively incidental nature of the statement within the context of the story, Audience & Consumer Affairs is satisfied that reasonable efforts were made to ensure that it was accurate and presented in context. Furthermore, given the information subsequently provided by Dr Roy, we are satisfied that the content was not presented in a way that was likely to materially mislead the audience. Accordingly, the requirements of standards 2.1 and 2.2 were met.

Nonetheless, please be assured that your comments have been noted and conveyed to ABC Innovation management so that relevant staff are aware of your concerns. Thank you for taking the time to write.

Yours sincerely
SM
ABC Audience & Consumer Affairs

ABC snowball Alpine report

2011-10-10T17:53:00.002+11:00

ACM have some questions for ABC news....

ABC's spin on Alpine catchment report

Following on from the “no snow by 2050″ story earlier today, the ABC gleefully reports more doom and gloom on the state of the alpine catchments. Perhaps they thought nobody would check:

SIMON SANTOW (ABC World Today): Sixty per cent of the 235 catchments are rated poor to moderate – most are declining.(source)

See the real picture at ACM.

Looking over the report it seems ABC did not question the dodgy method that was used to come up with the assessment. The summary report states:

“The assessment was based on judgments from individuals and not by quantitative data and systematic survey and this was an important limitation. In addition, no field survey or ground truthing was completed.” (from p.21) Source is here (9MB PDF).
Best not to let the facts get in the way of a good scare story.

Nothing abnormal about NT fires

2011-10-09T16:39:00.002+11:00

ABC claim that "An abnormal amount of carbon is being released into the atmosphere from wildfires raging across Central Australia." (I'm guessing they are referring to Carbon dioxide).

This is a gross distortion of the facts. Firstly the scientist interviewed for the story clearly indicates the current bushfires are part of a natural cycle.

"Dr Ashley Sparrow from the CSIRO laboratory in Alice Springs says it is an example of the boom-and-bust ecosystem in the Red Centre at work.

He says spectacular wet years are always followed by a growth spurt of grasses and scrubs, then a significant bushfire season and the release of massive quantities of carbon dioxide."

So it seems that there is nothing "abnormal" about the amount of carbon dioxide being released.

Secondly the briefest check of historical newspaper archives reveals numerous instances of significant fires in the past.

For instance:
State bushfires checked: Huge NT blaze. The Sydney Morning Herald Thursday 25 October 1951

Bushfire Havoc in two states and NT. The West Australian Thursday 25 October 1951

Huge Bushfires in the NT. Advocate Wednesday 12 May 1948

So nothing "abnormal" about large bush fires in the NT.

It seems the only thing "abnormal" is ABC's distortion of the facts.

Challenge to Marius Benson

2011-10-06T17:34:00.000+11:00

In an opinion piece on ABC's The Drum ABC journalist Marius Benson (who apparently has interviewed quite a number of Australian Prime Ministers) makes the following claim:

"There is an overwhelming consensus among scientists working in the field of climate that the planet is warming and that the human-generated increase in concentration of C02 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is contributing to that warming. There is no major national scientific body which dissents from that view. All major scientific bodies - the CSIRO here, Britain's Royal Society, the AAAS in the United States and others - share the view.

Dissent comes from a small minority of scientists working on climate..."

I don't know of a single scientist, not one, who would argue against the statement: "...the planet is warming and that the human-generated increase in concentration of C02 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is contributing to that warming."

The loose statement Benson uses to define the consensus for climate change includes all the scientists I know of that are often derided on the ABC as "sceptics" or "deniers". The debate on the science is much more sophisticated than this. Marius may have interviewed a lot of PM's but it is clear from this cliche ridden article he knows little of the current scientific debate in climate science.

So here's a challenge to Marius Benson. Name one of those scientists (and provide a link to the evidence). Just one!

Further into his piece Marius quotes the great Richard Feynman: "In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong... That's all there is to it."

As an exercise in science we suggest Marius compare IPCC model projections for global temperature with current measured temperature trends and put the result to the Feynman test. He might be surprised at the outcome.

Errors in the Oh zone

2011-10-03T12:16:00.000+11:00

Updated below

The first sentence of ABC's alarming report on a hole in the ozone layer above the Arctic reads:
"A hole formed in the ozone layer above the Arctic in the 2010-11 northern winter, for the first time on record."

AM's Climate Commission Groupie TONY EASTLEY states: Scientists have uncovered the first hole to form in the ozone layer above the Arctic.

AM's LEXI METHERELL: In the stratosphere above the Antarctic, a hole has developed in the ozone layer every winter since the 1980s and this year, for the first time on record, one has formed above the Arctic.

While the "hole" certainly appears to be the largest and perhaps "deepest" in recent records, it is plainly not the "First" as the following articles reveal:
Arctic Ozone Hole Is Confirmed But Less Severe Than Antarctic's‎ March 17 1990 Deseret News

"Scientists have confirmed suspicions that an ozone hole recently developed over the north pole that was similar to but less severe that a previously detected hole over the South Pole."

Ozone Hole easing August 19. 1987 The Pittsburgh Press

"A Norwegian scientist who detected an ozone "hole" last year over this remote Arctic region says the atmosphere apparently has recovered."

Studies confirm 2nd ozone `hole' December 25. 1987 Chicago Sun Times

"BREMERHAVEN, West Germany Scientists here have found evidence that confirms fears of a second hole developing in the Earth's ozone layer, this time over the arctic."

And from the ABC's 2003 story "Earth's Ozone layer begins to repair itself", the following:

"In the 1980s, scientists detected for the first time an ozone hole forming over Antarctica each August, eventually breaking up by December or January. Another hole was discovered over the Arctic - both regions vulnerable to ozone damage."

We have requested the ABC correct their factual error.

UPDATE 27/10/2011
ABC's reply, received October 27:

Thank you for your email of October 3 concerning the story “Hole in ozone forms above Arctic”

As your correspondence raised concerns of a lack of accuracy, your email was referred to Audience and Consumer Affairs for consideration and response. The unit is separate and independent from ABC program areas and is responsible for investigating complaints alleging a broadcast or publication was in contravention of the ABC's editorial standards. In light of your concerns, we have reviewed the story and assessed it against the ABC’s editorial requirements for accuracy, as outlined in section 2.1 of the ABC’s Editorial Policies: http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/edpols.htm. In the interests of procedural fairness, we have also sought and considered material from ABC News.

The story stated that the hole in the ozone layer formed recently over the Arctic was the first to be formed. This was incorrect; the story should have reported that it was the first hole in the ozone layer above the Arctic that is comparable in size to those that have formed over the Antarctic.

ABC News apologises for the error. It has been corrected on both the online news site and on the AM site. Editor’s notes have also been published.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-03/hole-in-ozone-forms-above-arctic/3206356

http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2011/s3330625.htm

Thank you for taking the time to write; your feedback is appreciated.

SCORE +1

Missing News: Malaria Climate links

2011-10-01T10:03:00.001+10:00

ABC's reporting on purported links between climate change and malaria appear skewed in one direction:
Here's their last three headlines that link Malaria and Climate change.
Climate change impact on malaria questioned May 26, 2010
Study finds climate change, malaria spread link February 16, 2009
Temperature spikes key to malaria spread 18 February 2009

The emphasis in these cases is in supporting the alarmist side of the debate. Just as well other news services are present to provide balance to ABC's skewed climate coverage.

Now a new paper the ABC have not reported on, finds that "This research suggests that, while climate change is expected to have many serious impacts, other factors including medical interventions appear to be more important in determining the incidence of malaria."

peer review alive and well despite the best efforts of a few.

2011-09-21T18:27:00.000+10:00

ABC News have yet to provide any coverage of the resignation of the editor in chief from the journal Remote Sensing, they did however publish my take on the issue at The Drum. You'll need to read to the end in order to appreciate the meaning of title that reads "Peer review is dead, long live blog review". Part of the argument can be summed up by the comics below.

IPCC ROUTE THROUGH PEER REVIEW (ABOVE)

SCEPTICS ROUTE THROUGH PEER REVIEW (BELOW)

apologies to original artist "NICK"

Here's the opening salvo of the article...
In January 2009, Nature splashed its front cover with the results of a new study titled 'Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year'.
The article was accompanied by a glowing editorial from Nature and was widely reported on in the media.
A very short time after the paper was published, a number of factual errors were found in the paper, along with significant issues with the methodology used to obtain the surprising results. The errors and the methodological problems were reported and discussed by climate change blogs Watts Up With That, The Air Vent, Climate Audit and Real Climate.
Imagine if at this stage Nature's editor in chief looked at the reported blog commentary and decided the journal had published a paper, which while it had gone through the normal peer review processes, based on some of the blog commentary, was basically fundamentally flawed and should not have been published.
Furthermore, the original reviewers may have shared some of the climate alarm notions of the authors, bringing the veracity of the original review into question. Media coverage alsosensationalised aspects of the results. The editor in chief is so embarrassed by the publication of the erroneous paper, he decides to resign.
Update 22/9 Jeff at The Air Vent has some great graphics that contrast Steig et al 2009 Antarctic temps with the corrected temps of O'Donnell et al 2010, quite startling! See HERE

Update 28/9 Roger Pielke Jnr reports on more irregularities with the peer review process at GRL.

Image mix up - Animal Special

2011-09-19T20:33:00.000+10:00

Slow posting this month, so here's a selection of recent mixed messages from ABC Environment to make up for it. Add your own commentary!

New Dolphin Species!

2011-09-18T06:07:00.001+10:00

ABC Environment report on the discovery of a new species of dolphin in Victoria...

Can anyone suggest a name for the new beastie? Yertle, perhaps?
I guess that image problem left in the too hard basket.

Backward briefing: a case of foot in mouth UPDATE

2011-09-09T07:39:00.003+10:00

(Beware, this is a fairly long post.) In July ABC's Wendy Carlisle made a number of factual errors in a report on Lord Christopher Monckton. We raised a complaint with the ABC over these. We also suggested that Ms Carlisle's objectivity was severely compromised due to her emotional entanglement with her subject, and as a result the report lacked balance. The following is a summary of our complaint and ABC's reply. Oddly it seems ABC's managing director has become directly involved and has chosen to employ "director's privilege" to avoid dealing with the factual errors in the broadcast. We are somewhat mystified that this matter required his attention, and it seems ABC have taken unusual steps to avoid admitting they are wrong. In owning up to their mistakes it seems ABC people will need to grow thicker skins.
In the broadcast we hear two claims made by Lord Monckton about aspects of climate science, about polar bears and about sea level rise. In attempting to refute these claims Ms Carlisle misrepresents the facts in both cases. As the claims made by Ms Carlisle are incorrect we expect ABC will apologise for the following statement made by Ms Carlisle in the report: "And the show continued like this for another 50 minutes, with Lord Monckton repeatedly misconstruing the scientific evidence." Based on Ms Carlisle's errors it appears the opposite is true, and it is Ms Carlisle and the ABC who are guilty of misconstruing the scientific evidence.
ABC's editorial policy in regard to accuracy and factual information is quite clear, factual errors require correction.
In regard to accuracy ABC states:

2.1 Make reasonable efforts to ensure that material facts are accurate and presented in context.
2.2 Do not present factual content in a way that will materially mislead the audience. In some cases, this may require appropriate labels or other explanatory information.
In regard to making corrections:

A commitment to accuracy includes a willingness to correct errors and clarify ambiguous or otherwise misleading information. Swift correction can reduce harmful reliance on inaccurate information, especially given content can be quickly, widely and permanently disseminated.
Corrections and clarifications can contribute to achieving fairness and impartiality.
Standards
3.1 Acknowledge and correct or clarify, in an appropriate manner as soon as reasonably practicable:
a). significant material errors that are readily apparent or have been demonstrated; or
b). information that is likely to significantly and materially mislead.

We have now passed this on to the ACMA for further action.

The complaint (sent 18/7/2011)

Factual errors

#1 Four Polar Bears drowned due to Global Warming

In the program Wendy Carlisle states:
The scientific paper Lord Monckton cites does not say that the polar bears drowned because of a big storm. The paper suggests that the polar bears most likely drowned because there was less sea ice for them to seek refuge on because of climate change, and that the drowned polar bears could be statistically significant.

This is what the paper in question states about the polar bear deaths in relation to climate change:Monnett, C., and J. S. Gleason, 2006. Observations of mortality associated with extended open-water swimming by polar bears in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea. Polar Biology, 29, 681-687.
Although a number of published papers have discussed implications of climate change on polar bears (e.g., Stirling and Derocher 1993; Stirling et al. 1999;Norris et al. 2002; Stirling 2002; Derocher et al. 2004), to date, mortality due to swimming has not been identified as an associated risk. Evaluations of future population dynamics and the significance of sources of human-related and natural mortality in polar bears may need to consider this previously unidentified source of natural mortality which may be significant in some years (e.g., mild-ice or late-ice) and may become important in the future if Arctic pack ice continues to regress. from page 686.

While future deaths may be possible it is clear the paper does not claim the deaths in question were due to climate change but instead due to storms: Our observations suggest that polar bears swimming in open water near Kaktovik drowned during a period of high winds and correspondingly rough sea conditions between 10 and 13 September 2004. No other deleterious environmental conditions were present that might have led to the deaths of those polar bears. P.684

There is also the decision by a Justice of the UK High Court on this specific issue.
In a 2007 UK High Court case brought by Stuart Dimmock against the accuracy of Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, Justice Burton concluded, after examining the film and scientific literature, that Gore committed nine counts of scientific inaccuracy.
On Polar bears he concludes:
Justice Burton: Mr Gore says: "A new scientific study shows that for the first time they are finding polar bears that have actually drowned swimming long distances up to 60 miles to find the ice. They did not find that before.” The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm. That is not to say that there may not in the future be drowning-related deaths of polar bears if the trend continues.

Factual error #2 Melting Greenland raising sea levels
Lord Monckton: “As Al Gore says in his movie that because of the melting of two ice sheets Greenland and the West Antarctic, sea level will rise by 20 feet imminently. But in fact, the IPCC says that because of those two ice fields the amount of contribution to sea level rise will be over the whole of the next 100 years 6 cm which is 2.5 inches, not 610 cm which is 20 feet. So there is a 100 fold exaggeration.”
Then Ms Carlisle comments:
Ms Carlisle: “On this occasion, …..Lord Monckton’s assertion that the UN’s Climate Change panel that the sea will rise by 6 cm this century is pure fiction, According to Chapter 5 of its report on sea levels the sea is expected to rise by between 20 and 50 cm this century”.
The Facts:

Al Gore alleged a sea level rise of 7 meters due just to the melting of Greenland and West Antarctic sheet. Lord Monckton’s retorts that from IPCC data, the expected contribution of sea level rise from melting of Greenland and West Antarctic sheet alone, works out to be only 6cm, therefore a 100 fold exaggeration. Ms Carlisle claims the IPCC AR4 report states a much higher sea level rise of 20 to 50cm, yes, but this figure is from all causes of sea level rise, namely thermal expansion (17-28 cm), the melting of glaciers and ice caps (10-12 cm), in addition to the loss of ice from the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets.

Climatology at University of Winnipeg

In discussion with Tim Ball Reporter Wendy Carlisle states: No, Background Briefing received that information from the university itself. In email correspondence, which we'll post on our website, the university says, 'there is not and never has been a department of climatology'.'

In fact the correspondence spoke of a "program" rather than a department. Ms Carlisle has misrepresented what was stated in the correspondence, we repeat below.
"Wendy. Dr. Ball was a Professor in our Geography Department until 1996. We have never had a Climatology program. Any correspondence the University may have had with Dr. Ball is confidential.
I trust this responds to your query. "
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/documents/bbg_20110717_hurley_email.pdf
A search of the web archives reveals that U. Winnipeg Department of geography indeed offered the following "climatology" courses in 1999 which seems to contradict statements received from the University. Perhaps the ABC could have spent a little more time investigating this to clarify the facts to its audience.
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY COURSES
http://web.archive.org/web/19990209145331/http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~geograph/Courses/geog2.htm
2205/6 CLIMATOLOGY (Le3,La2) The course expands upon the information introduced in the climate half of Physical Geography 1200/6. The first half of the course will review and elaborate upon the global pattern and fundamental mechanisms of climate. The second half will examine meso- and microclimates, including topics such as bioclimatology, agroclimatology, urban climatology, and applied climatology. Students with standing in 2205/3 cannot receive credit for 2205/6. Prerequisite: 1200/6 or 1201/3 and 1202/3. Corequisite: Introductory Statistics advisable.
2206/3 WORLD CLIMATOLOGY (Le3) This course examines the fundamental mechanisms of macro-scale climates and surveys the distribution of climates across the surface of the Earth. Issues related to global climate change and modelling will be introduced. Prerequisite: 1200/6, or 23:1201/3 and 23:1202/3. Restrictions: Students with standing in 2205/6 cannot receive credit for 2206/3.
2207/3 PHYSICAL CLIMATOLOGY (Le3,La2) This course examines the micro-scale and meso-scale processes by which energy and mass are transferred between the Earth and the atmosphere. The spatio-temporal characteristics of these processes are used to study climates and climate variability. Applications in bioclimatology, agroclimatology, and urban climatology will be discussed. The labs provide an introduction to the use of computers in the analyses of climatological data and the modelling of climatic processes. Prerequisite: 23:2206/3. Restrictions: Students with standing in 2201/6 cannot receive credit for 2207/3
3206/3 SYNOPTIC CLIMATOLOGY (Le3) This course examines the relationship between atmospheric circulation systems (at the surface and in the upper atmosphere) and weather and climate at the surface. The nature of atmospheric circulation variability and teleconnections is discussed and used to explain climatic anomalies such as El Ninos, droughts, and floods. Prerequisite: 2210/3.

Balance

In the course of the program it was clear that reporter Wendy Carlisle felt she was being intimidated by crowds attending Lord Monckton's talks and protest rally's the resulting broadcast is hopelessly compromised as a result of Wendy Carlisle's emotional entanglement with her subject and as a result lacked balance and objectivity.

ABC's reply: 8/9/2011 (with some comments by me in bold )
Thank you for your emails regarding the edition of Background Briefing broadcast on Radio National on 17 and 19 July 2011. Please accept my apologies for the delay in responding to you.

Under section 2.2 of the ABC Complaints Handling Procedures the Managing Director, who is also Editor-in-Chief, can determine matters as he thinks fit (Ed. Why would the MD waste his time getting personally involved in a complaint???) . In the case of the Background Briefing program to which you refer, the Managing Director took the view that the program was not an occasion for detailed enquiry into the science of climate change. (Ed Ms Carlisle, who is not a climate scientist, makes some specific claims about the science that are shown to be false, clearly it forms an important part of the report, and reflects on the lack of scientific credibility Ms Carlisle implies of Lord Monckton.) It follows that it would be disproportionate for the handling of complaints received about the program to become such an occasion. (Ed there were two specific items raised, that ABC require to correct, hardly requires a "detailed enquiry".)

The program established that the current debate in Australia over a proposed carbon tax was the context for its look at the style of debating used by some opponents of the proposed tax. Lord Monckton's style was examined in conjunction with his then current speaking tour of Australia. Others whose approaches were referred to included the Galileo movement patron Alan Jones, David Archibald, Professor Timothy Ball, Dr Wes Allen and Professor Fred Singer. Criticisms by Lord Monckton of the film 'An Inconvenient Truth' by former US Vice President Al Gore were referred to in the course of examining Lord Monckton's technique (Ed. I can find only one very mild criticism of Al Gore made by the reporter " Yes, Al Gore did overstate his case"). The program was not an assessment of the science of climate change, and it would be inappropriate for this response to embark on one. Nor was it appropriate to assess the program by reference to what it had omitted from amongst the many reactions to Al Gore's film. Those reactions have generated a vast amount of material. The program had a more specific focus than climate change per se.
You have criticised the Background Briefing reporter, Wendy Carlisle. The Managing Director concluded that she had not been unduly aggressive or hostile towards Lord Monckton (Ed. this was not suggested in the complaint). Her questioning of him had been persistent and firm, but it had also been civil. She had not described Lord Monckton in terms as robust as his description of her to a crowd as an 'appalling woman'. (Ed. and being described as an 'appalling woman' would not have influenced her report and affected her objectivity???)
The Managing Director considered that some of the language used in the program would not have been understood by the audience as being literally applicable, much in the same way that Lord Monckton's presentation style employs techniques which a reasonable person would not take literally. For example, when Lord Monckton ridicules Al Gore's Tennessean accent Lord Monckton is not to be taken literally as suggesting that a person's accent affects the merit of what they are arguing. When Lord Monckton's asserts, as he did to at least one crowd, that the ABC now represents hallmarks of fascism exhibited in Germany in the 1930s, reasonable people do not take him literally. (It is noted, however, that the ABC reported this harsh criticism, both in its news coverage and in Background Briefing.) (Ed this is not relevant the complaint)
The ABC does not have concerns about the fact that Background Briefing applied scrutiny to the styles of debate of those examined in the program. As a seasoned media performer, Lord Monckton would reasonably expect media scrutiny. He also received opportunities to put his perspective on various ABC platforms during his recent Australian visit, as he did on his 2010 visit. On ABC television on 30 June Lateline covered the beginning of his tour. Lord Monckton's debate with Richard Dennis at the National Press Club was broadcast by ABC TV on 19 July. Lord Monckton appeared on ABC local radio in at least Sydney, Brisbane and in the Riverina, and there was considerable coverage online.(Ed this is not relevant the complaint)
In relation to the various references by Al Gore, Lord Monckton and Background Briefing to the issue of drowned polar bears, the Managing Director did not regard it as proportionate in the circumstances to go into the detail. Noting that specialist literature is open to varying interpretations by specialists and non-specialists, and that - both in public presentations such as Lord Monckton's and in journalism such as Background Briefing - specialist literature must necessarily be tightly compressed, the Managing Director concluded that the program did not breach the accuracy standard in the ABC Code of Practice (http://abc.net.au/corp/pubs/documents/codeofpractice2011.pdf). (Ed See above, the specific commentary by Ms Carlisle is demonstrably false-it appears ABC just can't stand admitting they are wrong!)
On the issue of sea level rise, the Managing Director concluded that the difference between Lord Monckton's account of Al Gore's treatment of the matter and the program's account was one of degree. Both thought Al Gore had overstated his case. Their different calculations of the degree to which he had done so were based on different readings of work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published in 2007. The Managing Director concluded that the program acted reasonably in citing the IPCC in the way it did. The program and responses to it were not the occasion for an enquiry into the detail of varying interpretations of predictions about sea level rises over the next 100 years and it would be disproportionate to embark on such an enquiry in this context. (Ed what utter rubbish. Ms Carlisle asserts that Lord Monckton's interpretation is "pure fiction", when the opposite is true. )
The Managing Director concluded that there was, in the context of this matter, little to be gained from attempting to distinguish shades of meaning between the terms climatology 'department' and climatology 'program' in relation to the uses of those terms by the program, Dr Timothy Ball and the University of Winnipeg. The program acted reasonably in checking directly with the University of Winnipeg. (Ed. The facts are that climatology was taught by Prof Bell at the University of Winnipeg, a fact that is not made clear in the ABC report, which then unduly discredits Prof. Ball's reputation. In this context there is little doubt he would have been regarded at least informally as the Professor of Climatology.)
Your related email of 23 July asks for an explanation as to why one of the comments you posted to the Background Briefing message board was not published. This matter has been considered by Audience and Consumer Affairs and in doing so we sought feedback from Radio.
I note that the comment in question was as follows:
'Jo Nova, deconstructs Wendy Carlisle amateur journalism...see http://joannenova.com.au/2011/07/this-is-not-journalism-wendy-carlisle/
"It's not reporting. It's disguised PR. When Carlisle had evidence the skeptics have no financial interest and that this is a genuine grassroots movement she withheld it. When she had the chance to add in spurious slurs against distantly connected people she took every opportunity. She could have written about the science, but chose not too. The devastating missing hot spot argument was put to her five times, and the list of peer reviewed papers was sent to her (at her request), but at the end of it all she said "you don't use much peer reviewed science".'
Radio advise that '...the moderator made a judgement on the run about repetition on a comments board that was swelling fast with submissions, as she's perfectly entitled to do'. In the words of the moderator: 'Four days after the program went to air, we had had many criticising Wendy along these lines (and many praising her) and they were starting to get repetitive'.
The ABC's Conditions of Use (http://www.abc.net.au/conditions.htm) state that a contribution may be rejected on this basis. They state:
'4.3 All material published on the ABC's interactive services is at the ABC's sole discretion.
4.4 Your contribution may be edited, removed or not published if the ABC considers it to be: [...]
4.4.5 inappropriate, off topic, repetitive or vexatious. For example the ABC reserves the right to reject contributions that have been widely canvassed in the forum. It also reserves the right to reject contributions from participants who seek to dominate the discussion;'
By way of background, the moderation of message boards must comply with the principles and standards for editorial practice set out in the ABC's Editorial Policies. Of particular relevance, Section 9 of the Policies covers public access and participation and it is outlined in the principles for this section that:
"The ABC may establish conditions for participation with which participants are expected to comply, such as the ABC's Conditions of Use relating to users' interactivity on abc.net.au. The ABC will exercise appropriate oversight over participants' contributions, for example through appropriate moderation of its interactive services."
On review of the message board, we note that there were a significant number of posts to the board prior to 20 July which were critical of the program and of the reporter, Wendy Carlisle's approach. A number of posts by that time had also been in support of Jo Nova and had included links to Jo Nova's website, albeit not to the particular page that you submitted. (Ed. So it was not a repetition, it was an important link to criticism of the program from someone featured on it. I would have thought ABC's audience would have benefited from such inside knowledge, and alternate viewpoints...apparently not).
In any event I am of the view that it was acceptable for the moderator to reject your post in this instance under the Conditions of Use for the reason she offered. (Ed. No fresh air allowed in ABC's Groupthink echo chamber)
Furthermore on review of the message board, and for the reasons outlined above, I am satisfied that the moderation complied with other relevant editorial requirements as follows.
"4.5 Do not unduly favour one perspective over another."
And
"9.2 Opportunities to participate must be administered fairly and respectfully."
Should you be dissatisfied with the ABC's response to those elements of your complaint which related to the broadcast of Background Briefing and its compliance with the ABC Code of Practice, you may be able to refer your complaint to the Australian Communications and Media Authority - www.acma.gov.au. (Ed and we have done so)
Yours sincerely,
KM
Head, Audience and Consumer Affairs

Peer review Part 1

2011-09-05T06:16:00.001+10:00

We wonder whether in its coverage of the resignation of Wolfgang Wagner from Remote Sensing the ABC will ask Roger Pielke Snr for input. Or will they just pursue one side of the story? Here's Roger's most recent blog post.
Hopefully have more on this in the next few days.

Hatchet Job On John Christy and Roy Spencer By Kevin Trenberth, John Abraham and Peter GleickThere is an opinion article at Daily Climate that perpetuates serious misunderstandings regarding the research of Roy Spencer and John Christy. It also is an inappropriate (and unwarranted) person attack on their professional integrity. Since I have first hand information on this issue, I am using my weblog to document the lack of professional decorum by Keven Trenberth, John Abraham and Peter Gleick.

Click the link to read the rest. We passed this on the the ABC.

Update 18.12 Simon at ACM reports on ABC's first mention of the story. It's not in the news section, it's on The Drum...Opinion first, news later!

Even warmists should be appalled

Silencing dissent

2011-09-04T09:48:00.002+10:00

Catallaxy Files has this on Glenn Milne's removal from the ABC...
Government owned media organisation bans government critic

Update: Gavin Atkins has more...

The ABC’s scandalous silencing of Glenn Milne

Adjust your predictions to match the facts

2011-08-30T19:17:00.003+10:00

The CONversation this morning posted an article by ABC's favourite Coral whisperer Ove Hoegh-Guldberg. The post is titled "Drowning out the truth about the Great Barrier Reef". It certainly lives up to the headline, for it seems the truth has been well and truly drowned.

I posted the following comment, that survived until about lunch time before being removed by the editors:

Doesn't help the media, Ove when you make ridiculously overblown statements about coral mortality. Your recent failed predictions made on your blog about coral armageddon on Ningaloo, following higher than normal water temps is a classic case in point. While bleaching occurred, mortality was no where near as severe as you predicted.

I suspect if you tone down the rhetoric and hyperbole and get some predictions correct you may find the media more inclined to listen

As to your claims of being a "humble" scientist-pull the other one mate, I believe it plays Narcissus.

My comments regarding failed predictions of coral mortality at Ningaloo were based on a dramatic prediction made by Ove in a post at his blog Climate Shifts titled Mass mortality of corals on West Australian reefs. The prediction was apparently made on May 6, 2011 (see screen shots below). There is an update on reef conditions at Ningaloo and based on this it seems that the predictions of coral mortality made by Ove are in error by a factor of 3!

The updated information (not dated) reads:

UPDATE-2: Looks like the Ningaloo reefs are likely to escape major mortality given they have remained just outside the main hot spot. These reefs are likely to lose about 10% of their corals. Things still remain serious in this analysis for the Houtman Abrolhos Islands (well inside the hotspot – see map and Tyler’s comments). We will have to wait for the results of the surveys to be completed and analysed.

Looking at the prediction as it reads today, and the update above, it seems that while the coral mortality predictions were way off the mark, (Ove predicted coral mortality of 30%, the update suggest actual figures of 10%), Ove may have been correct about one part of his "prediction": the effect of bleaching on the Houtman Abrolhos Islands. However when I downloaded the webpage containing this prediction in May this is how Ove's "Prediction" read:

PREDICTION: We will see large-scale mortality of reef-building corals (30% or more) and many other organisms on reefs from Exmouth to Shark Bay along the West Australian coastline (300 km or more). This will occur over the next 1-3 months. Reefs in this region will take more than 10 years to recover (see screen shot below).

Nothing about the Houtman Abrolhos Islands in this early version. Here's how the "Prediction" currently reads:

PREDICTION: We will see large-scale mortality of reef-building corals (30% or more) and many other organisms on reefs along parts of the West Australian coastline. This will occur over the next 1-3 months. Reefs in this region will take more than 10 years to recover. Coral reefs around the Houtman Abrolhos Islands look particularly vulnerable.

If only we could all change our predictions to match the facts! Ove is welcome to post an explanation.

To add to the insult at The CON, after my factually correct comment was removed by the editors, they let through this comment, without providing further explanation:

"It would seem our geologist friend who posted earlier this morning has deleted his comments."

As indicated above my comment was removed by the editors. Seems the truth has been drowned, then cremated!

In his book Future Babble journalist Dan Gardner takes a critical look at expert predictions and the psychology that explains why people believe them even though they consistently fail. Based on the failed predictions at Ningaloo, and the apparent attempt to later change the prediction to match the outcome, it seems ABC's coral whisperer is in fact a coral babbler.

Here's what Ningaloo Atlas says about the bleaching event...(seems 10% will probably be incorrect as well)
http://ningalooatlas.org/2011/05/23/ningaloo-coral-bleaching-update/

Screen shots from Climate shifts,click to enlarge:

1. Downloaded May 18,2011

2. Downloaded today, August 30,2011

Missing News: CERN vindicates Svensmark

2011-08-25T10:51:00.004+10:00

There are a couple of climate science related papers in the most recent issue of Nature (Volume 476 Number 7361 pp371-482),.
One speculates on the relation between climate and civil conflicts (HERE), and the other presents experimental results that provide support to the notion put forward by Solar Physicist Henrik Svensmark that Cosmic rays play an important role in cloud formation (HERE) and hence affect global climate.

Which one will the ABC report on? I'm guessing the former will receive more favourable treatment than the later.
Update: My they are predictable! Nothing on the CERN results, but there's this article on the climate-conflict link...Study proves climate a trigger for conflict

UPDATE 2: ABC finally get on board...Mystery factor clouds climate science

Nigel Calder, a former New Scientist editor, provides a run down on the CERN result HERE.
Here's some coverage from the Institute of Physics
"Svensmark welcomes the new results, claiming that they confirm research carried out by his own group, including a study published earlier this year showing how an electron beam enhanced production of clusters inside a cloud chamber. He acknowledges that the link between cosmic rays and cloud formation will not be proved until aerosols that are large enough to act as condensation surfaces are studied in the lab, but believes that his group has already found strong evidence for the link in the form of significant negative correlations between cloud cover and solar storms (which reduce atmospheric ionization). "Of course, there are many things to explore," he says, "but I think that the cosmic-ray/cloud-seeding hypothesis is converging with reality.""

UPDATE: Seems ABC's scare mongering affiliate "The Conversation" have got around to opening their latest copy of Nature. No guesses as to what they have reported on. See...The El Niño effect: how the weather makes wars

Comma butterfly

2011-08-22T22:39:00.002+10:00

ABC Science goes gaga over reports Britain's Comma Butterfly has migrated about 220km over the last 20 years; from central England to Edinburgh, Scotland. Pity they, and the researchers responsible for the study, didn't bother to look at past reports of the migratory habits of this remarkable insect. If they had, they would have discovered that current movements are in fact, not unprecedented in recent history and the Comma Butterfly has previously been abundant in Scotland. Still, when your mandate calls for doom and gloom, I guess ignoring history becomes mandatory.

Here's some interesting reading from the Glasgow and SW Scotland Branch of Butterfly Conservation:
http://www.southwestscotland-butterflies.org.uk/species/butterflies/comma.shtml

By the 1920s, the Comma's distribution in England had retreated to the west Midlands and then exapnded again in the 1930s reaching Lancashire & South Yorkshire by 1950; Durham by 1976. By 1995-1999, the Comma had reached the Scottish borders with a few scattered records in Dumfries & Galloway. Since then, the Comma has spread north and west into Ayrshire, Lanarkshire and the Lothians. The above photos were taken in a Motherwell garden in 2008.

ABC source the photo from "Butterfly Conversation" but fail to mention the Comma's habitat has previously included Scotland. ABC Science pick and choose the facts to suit their alarmist agenda. Something Richard Feynman would have described as: cargo cult science!

Change FOI to govern ABC

2011-08-18T07:39:00.003+10:00

Former ABC board member Judith Sloan writes in today's Australian:

Their ABC is just ungovernable
"Short of some broad-based and hard-nosed external review and significant cuts to taxpayer funding of the organisation, it is hard to see how the ABC will fundamentally change -- and, of course, that suits the Friends of the ABC and other devotees just fine."
Follow the link to read the rest.

A simple method to make the ABC more accountable is to expose the organisation to the full force of FOI. The ABC currently enjoys wide ranging exemptions from FOI for "documents that relate to program material". The exemptions provide a means to shelter the ABC from public scrutiny. As we have found HERE this exemption is widely applied by the ABC to the detriment of the public's right to know. As FOI lawyer Peter Timmins documents in an article on his blog, titled FOI front in the News v ABC battle, ABC's use of the exemption has been extended to cover information relating to audience data and employee salaries. These subjects are not related to program content, but ABC has successfully argued the exemption still applies. It seems that as the ABC's role is "programming" it can argue virtually everything it does should be covered by the exemption.

ABC programming is paid for by tax payer's funds and should be as open to scrutiny and audit as much as the rest of government. Why is the ABC provided with a "chamber of secrets" in which to hide its dirty laundry?
I guess ABC's membership of the "Right to Know" coalition is for publicity purposes only.

UPDATE 19/8/2011 Letters page in today's Oz contains some comments on Judith's article (including ours) HERE.

mistaking weather for climate

2011-08-15T20:56:00.001+10:00

Note the tags below this story on cold weather in NZ...

Climate change: now any weather event out of the ordinary.

Here are a few past climate change events to hit our eastern neighbours...

FIERCE BLIZZARD. HEAVY SNOW IN NEW ZEALAND Transport Disorganised.

The West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 - 1954) Monday 2 July 1934 p 9 Article

FIVE KILLED. In Terrific Blizzard. New Zealand Catastrophe AUCKLAND, January 20.

Townsville Daily Bulletin (Qld. : 1885 - 1954) Tuesday 21 January 1930 p 6 Article

SNOW, STORM, AND FLOOD DAMAGE DONE IN NEW ZEALAND. Wellington, July 16.

The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1889 - 1931) Wednesday 17 July 1912 p 10 Article

SNOW AND RAIN. Heavy Storm in New Zealand. WELLINGTON (N.Z.), Sunday.

The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954) Monday 27 August 1934 p 10 Article

Terrible Blizzard STORM IN NEW ZEALAND SOUTHERN PORTION SWEPT HEAVY FALLS OF SNOW Wellington, July 1. [coming soon]

Geraldton Guardian and Express (WA : 1929 - 1947) Tuesday 3 July 1934 p 1 Article

Midsummer Freeze Hits New Zealand

The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1956) Monday 17 February 1947 p 3 Article

working on a solution

2011-08-15T19:59:00.002+10:00

Seems ABC innovation are still working hard, battling those image problems on the ABC's environment news page...

We initially advised ABC of the issue on the 4th of April. According to those in the know..."ABC Innovation has advised that stories from across the ABC that are filed with no image are randomly assigned an image on the Environment portal from a pool of images. I understand relevant ABC Innovation staff are aware of the discordant match-ups that this system has produced and have been working on a solution. The examples published on your website have been brought to the attention of ABC Innovation management."

Before the ABC: When weather equals climate change

2011-08-12T22:59:00.000+10:00

Earlier this month ABC reported on warmer than average August temperatures in South Australia and managed to drag the specter of global warming into the story.
Looking over a few past headlines from an era prior to the ABC at the National Library's newspaper archive, it seems they have confused the weather and the climate.

The Advertiser - 29 August 1928: A hot day, record August Temperatures.
Kalgoorlie Western Argus -15 August 1911: Hot Weather in Adelaide.
The Advertiser - 27 August 1914: Breaking Records, Exceptionally dry August

Before the ABC: an occasional snapshot of news in the days BABC

Claims left unchallenged

2011-08-12T17:57:00.000+10:00

ABC provide this report that claims a study by the ACTU and the Australian Conservation Foundation has found strong action on climate change will lead to job growth on the New South Wales mid-north coast.

At the end of the report Don Henry, Executive Director of the Australian Conservation Foundation, claims "But the bottom line is when you look at independent research, it shows, for example, for the mid-north coast, that we'll see strong job growth over the next 20 years and that makes sense because as you cut pollution and have a cleaner economy, it creates job opportunities."

This claim is left unchallenged by the ABC. Since when did a woeful report by the ACTU and ACF constitute "independent" research? To cap it off the "study" is actually old news based on a May 2010 study by the ACTU and ACF announced HERE.

And somehow ABC regard this lack of inquiry and recycling of old news as journalism!

Media Watcher

2011-08-08T18:59:00.000+10:00

Professor Bunyip casts an eye over Jonathan Holmes to do list. Perhaps some of these will be put to rest tonight?

Missing News: Arctic Sea Ice

2011-08-08T07:35:00.000+10:00

According to a BBC report: Scientists say current concerns over a tipping point in the disappearance of Arctic sea ice may be misplaced. See the rest of the story, missing from the ABC at the BBC. ABC's most recent report on Arctic Sea predictably promotes the opposite view: Arctic ice melting fast.

Missing News: Climate models wrong

2011-07-27T06:12:00.000+10:00

Quick item of missing News (via Roger Pielke Snr):There is a new paper published which raises further questions on the robustness of multi-decadal global climate predictions. It is:
Spencer, R.W.; Braswell, W.D. On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance. Remote Sens.2011, 3, 1603-1613.
The University of Alabama has issues a news release on it which reads:
Climate models get energy balance wrong, make too hot forecasts of global warming

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (July 26, 2011) — Data from NASA’s Terra satellite shows that when the climate warms, Earth’s atmosphere is apparently more efficient at releasing energy to space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to “believe.”
The result is climate forecasts that are warming substantially faster than the atmosphere, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Read the rest at Roger's Blog

WEB

2011-07-26T19:09:00.002+10:00

In ABC parlance the blog is on a well earned break. Back in few weeks time.

Missing News: Sea level rise on the wane

2011-07-22T07:36:00.005+10:00

Simon at ACM has post describing a new paper that concludes that rises in sea levels are "decelerating".
See ACM for the details.
The Australian has this REPORT.

ABC NEWS HAS NOTHING, NADDA, ZIP.

UPDATE (thanks to Anon): ABC catch up with the rest of the planet...Sea rise slow down raises questions
(oddly this report does not appear to have made it as a news item in ABC's News Archive). Note the tone at the end of the ABC article...

Dr Howard Brady, a former geologist and now honorary associate at the School of Biology at Sydney's Macquarie University, says the study highlights the gap between models and historical data.

"Modelling is very important because it can give us some idea of how things interact, but it doesn't necessarily give us an accurate projection of the future," says Brady. "The idea that the science is settled ... that's not true."

Dr Kathleen McInnes, a climate researcher at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric research, says a range of sources are used to analyse sea levels, including tide gauges, satellites and geological records.

She dismisses claims that sea levels will only rise by 15 centimetres this century.

"The Watson paper is not about future projections, it is about past observations. Drawing any connection is misleading," says McInnes. (Ed. what a ridiculously, uninformed statement, the past is the key to the present)
She says the most recent IPCC report predicts sea levels will rise between 20 and 80 centimetres by the end of this century. (Ed. Like IPCC projections are proving reliable)

"There is a much bigger body of evidence supporting the IPCC projections (Ed. yeah, those debunked climate models) than there is from single papers in the scientific literature. You have to be very careful when a single paper is cited as though this is the state of the science."

Backward briefing: a case of foot in mouth

2011-07-21T08:47:00.001+10:00

ABC's Wendy Carlisle attempts to find holes in the sceptic's case that the effects of man made global warming are exaggerated and ends up with her foot in her mouth. She spends a lot of time attacking individuals and ignores the science. Amateur hour at its best. Her misconceptions on polar bears and sea level rise will go down in ABC factual error history. We look forward to ABC providing similar reports on Tim Flannery, Al Gore and Ross Garnaut.

Jo Nova, whose highly edited interview appears in the broadcast, thoroughly debunks the report...
This is not journalism, Wendy Carlisle
I’m sure Wendy Carlisle thinks she’s helping Australia. The awarded writer who calls herself a science journalist breaks laws of reason, makes a litany of careless errors, ambushes interviewees with false claims, and devoutly stares past hundreds of peer reviewed references as if they don’t exist. Yes, Anything but the evidence!
She thinks hunting through resumes of retired scientists is a good way to inform us about the need for a Carbon (sic) Tax.
It’s a wake up call ladies and gentlemen. This is the state of “science” at your ABCwhere polite discussion and meaningful research has been replaced with tabloid guttertalk.
The ABC is not part of the problem, it IS the problem.

Nano nano

2011-07-20T22:14:00.001+10:00

The Green ABC have found a new scare campaign to champion. This one concerns nano-particles in sunscreens. Oddly enough on this subject the ABC find plenty of time to air the views of non-experts.

Here's the current consensus from the Australian Cancer Council:

Nanoparticles and sunscreen

Nanotechnology has been used in sunscreens for many years. To date, our assessment, drawing on the best available evidence, is that nanoparticulates used in sunscreens do not pose a risk. However, we continue to monitor research and welcome any new research that sheds more light on this topic.

Sunscreen formulas and their components are regulated through the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). In early 2009, the TGA conducted an updated review of the scientific literature in relation to the use of nanoparticulate zinc oxide and titanium dioxide in sunscreens.

The TGA review concluded that:

The potential for titanium dioxide and zinc oxide nanoparticles in sunscreens to cause adverse effects depends primarily upon the ability of the nanoparticles to reach viable skin cells; and
To date, the current weight of evidence suggests that titanium dioxide and zinc oxide nanoparticles do not reach viable skin cells; rather, they remain on the surface of the skin and in the outer layer of the skin that is composed of non-viable cells.

The TGA's report concerning the safety of sunscreens can be found at:www.tga.health.gov.au/alerts/sunscreens.htm

Coral Whisperer not listening

2011-07-15T19:27:00.000+10:00

ABC has thus far not provided any news of some recent peer reviewed science that shows things aren't so bad on the Great Barrier Reef.
Firstly there's this one that went unreported in June - Disturbance and the Dynamics of Coral Cover on the Great Barrier Reef (1995–2009) by Kate Osborne, Andrew M. Dolman, Scott C. Burgess and Kerryn A. Johns published in PLOS that found: "This study indicates that at the scale of the whole GBR there was no net decline in live hard coral cover between 1995 and 2009."
They also did not provide any news of this paper recently published in the journal Coral Reefs, titled Assessing loss of coral cover on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef over two decades, with implications for longer-term trends by Hugh Sweatman, S. Delean and C. Syms of the Australian Institute of Marine Science that indicates: "The GBR has clearly been changed by human activities and live coral cover has declined overall, but losses of coral in the past 40–50 years have probably been overestimated."
Between them, these papers go a long way to falsify the alarming picture about the state of the reef made by Coral Whisperer Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, including this picture of 2050 painted on The Science Show in 2005: "The waters of the Great Barrier Reef are also 1.5 degrees warmer destroying the conditions for coral growth and leading to annual bleaching events by 2010 and seeing the almost total loss of coral communities by 2030 as huge mortality events role through the system. The reef is unrecognisable. Many of the beautiful fish have gone, coral has been replaced by seaweeds and less appealing organisms."

Seems the corals are speaking, but the Coral Whisperer only hears what he wants to hear. "Selective hearing" is one of the sure signs of confirmation bias, a symptom of Cargo cult science. Censoring alternate viewpoints another one.

Lies of the climate commission: Part 7 manufacturing certainty

2011-07-14T15:31:00.000+10:00

One of my favourite quotes is by the late great Physicist Richard Feynman who described Cargo Cult Science thus:

"But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school--we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another."

Consider now the following slide from a presentation by the government's Climate commissar, Prof. Will Steffen, titled Climate Change 2009: Faster Change and More Serious Risks. Notice anything missing?

This is IPCC AR4 WG1 FAQ 2.1, Figure 2 -see page 136 of AR4 WG1 Chapter 2. A more complete version of this figure is published in the summary for policy makers (reproduced below from Summary for Policy Makers Figure SPM2 - see page 4). This includes important information about the error range of various forcing components along with an assessment of the level of scientific understanding (LOSU) for various forcings. Note the LOSU of a number of forcings, important in determining the amount of any future warming (or cooling) are described as Low, or Medium to Low.

The errors for direct aerosols are a whopping 80%, with errors in cloud cover effects even greater.

In a presentation to policy makers and the Australian public why would Commissar Steffen prefer the incomplete version? Why does he prefer to hide the errors and uncertainties?

Australia's Climate Commission provides a great example of cargo cult science in action. The ABC does the same for journalism.

Cack Handed report from The World Today

2011-07-13T21:30:00.004+10:00

No Surprise that ABC's lunch time current affairs program "The World Today" covered "Climate Alarmfest 2011". No surprise either that they forgot to ask the tough questions, lets go to the transcript...

SIMON LAUDER: He was asked to explain why there's a reluctance in the public debate to acknowledge the influence of climate change on the Queensland floods.
KARL BRAGANZA: If you understand that the climate system is changing based on other indicators, then that's a really consistent picture and so yeah, your take on that's quite fair. As to why there's a disconnect, I'm just a climate scientist I guess. (Laughter) I can't, you know, why is salient parts of the science unaccepted in the public discourse? I couldn't answer that I guess, well I could but probably not here. (Laughter)
SIMON LAUDER: Dr Braganza told the conference this years' widespread flooding and the 2009 Victorian bushfires are the type of disasters we'll see more of as global warming takes hold of the weather.
And he says that's a case for cutting carbon emissions.

It seems the public can read graphs and appreciate history better than one of our leading scientific institutions? (Recent Brisbane floods peaked at 4.46m -about the 7th highest in the city's history.)

(Note BOM seem so embarrassed by the lack of precedence of the 2011 floods that they haven't yet bothered to update this graph, or the accompanying report-last updated Nov. 2010)

The World Today a great example of cack handed journalism.

Missing News: More IPCC exaggerations

2011-07-11T07:15:00.000+10:00

Here's the Abstract of a new peer reviewed paper yet to be reported upon by Australia's state run media:
“IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) AR4 (Fourth Assessment Report) GCMs (General Circulation Models) predict a tropical tropospheric warming that increases with height, reaches its maximum at ~200 hPa, andeases near the tropical tropopause. This study examines the GCM-predicted maximum warming in the tropical upper troposphere using satellite MSU (microwave sounding unit)-derived deep-layer temperatures in the tropical upper- and lower-middle troposphere for 1979-2010. While satellite MSU/AMSU observations generally support GCM results with tropical deep-layer tropospheric warming faster than surface, it is evident that the AR4 GCMs may exaggerate the increase in static stability between tropical middle and upper troposphere during the last three decades.”

Fu, Q., S. Manabe, and C. Johanson (2011), On the warming in the tropical upper troposphere: Models versus observations, Geophys. Res. Lett., doi:10.1029/2011GL048101, in press. (accepted 24 June 2011)

Best not to let inconvenient facts get in the way of the Government's Carbon Tax advertising campaign .

Before the ABC: Getting rid of the carbon tax

2011-07-11T00:11:00.000+10:00

From a time before the ABC, when reference to carbon actually meant carbon, and not CO2, The Mail explains how to get rid of that taxing carbon.

ANNUAL CARBON TAX MONEY CAN BE SAVED

"The meaning of this to the motoring public is significant, according to engineers, for it shows an immediate way in which to get rid of one of the greatest taxes the motoring public has to bear, the tax imposed by carbon."

Another biased report

2011-07-06T18:58:00.000+10:00

ABC Science are running this Reuters report about a recent PNAS paper titled "Reconciling anthropogenic climate change with observed temperature 1998–2008" that finds there has been no global warming since 1998. Seems Geologists Ian Plimer and Bob Carter have been vindicated in their assessment of recent global temperature trends. Here's link to an article by Bob Carter from 2006.

"There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998" 12:01AM BST 09 Apr 2006.

"Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero)."

And Ian Plimer's conversation with ABC's Tony Jones in 2008:
TONY JONES: OK, let's look at some of the information. We don't have time to go through the whole book. Let's focus on one critical aspect of your thesis. In your book you state many, many times, that the planet has been cooling, not warming, in recent years, since 1998. I counted a dozen references in one chapter, they're arguably dozens throughout the book. This is fundamental to your whole argument, isn't it?

IAN PLIMER: No, it isn't. What is fundament to the argument - if we just take the last 2000 years. The planet was hot in Roman and Greek times. Then it cooled in the dark ages, then it warmed in the medieval warmth. Then it cooled in the little ice ages, and we are now, we've just come out of the little ice age. Is it any wonder that the planet has warmed up?

Climate Scientist Judy Curry provides the following critique on the paper on her blog Climate Etc...pity ABC did not seek to balance their report.

Science News is writing an article on this paper (haven’t spotted it yet-ED it's HERE). Here is the complete comments I provided to the reporter via email:

This paper points out that global coal consumption (primarily from China) has increased significantly, although the dataset referred to shows an increase only since 2004-2007 (the period 1985-2003 was pretty stable). The authors argue that the sulfates associated with this coal consumption have been sufficient to counter the greenhouse gas warming during the period 1998-2008, which is similar to the mechanism that has been invoked to explain the cooling during the period 1940-1970.

I don’t find this explanation to be convincing because the increase in sulfates occurs only since 2004 (the solar signal is too small to make much difference). Further, translating regional sulfate emission into global forcing isnt really appropriate, since atmospheric sulfate has too short of an atmospheric lifetime (owing to cloud and rain processes) to influence the global radiation balance.

The alternative explanation is natural internal variability associated with the ocean oscillations. Since 1999, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation has been shifting from the warm phase (warm phase since 1976) to the cool phase, and has been mostly in the cool phase since 2007. A cool PDO is associated with more frequent La Nina events, which are associated with globally cooler temperatures. The climate model studies cited by the authors do not do a convincing job of ruling out natural internal variability as an explanation, either for the cool period since 1998, and the earlier cool period during 1940-1970.

In summary, the authors have put forward one possible explanation for the lack of warming, but an explanation associated with natural internal variability associated with the ocean oscillations is at least as plausible as the explanation put forward by the authors.

Missing News: No increase in hurricane frequency

2011-07-06T07:49:00.000+10:00

"These results do not support the hypothesis that the warming of the tropical North Atlantic due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions has caused Atlantic hurricane frequency to increase."

So concludes the abstract of a new paper: Vecchi, Gabriel A., and Thomas R Knutson, March 2011: Estimating annual numbers of Atlantic hurricanes missing from the HURDAT database (1878-1965) using ship track density. Journal of Climate, 24(6), doi:10.1175/2010JCLI3810.1.

Doesn't gel with ABC's Groupthink perspective: Climate change to increase bushfires and cyclones

See also

Missing News: Hurricane activity all time low

Missing News: North Atlantic storm frequency spurious

Missing News: More problems with IPCC AR4

2011-07-06T07:30:00.000+10:00

Judy Curry has an interesting post on her blog Climate Etc by Nic Lewis, titled "The IPCC’s alteration of Forster & Gregory’s model-independent climate sensitivity results", that provides an in depth examination of the manner the IPCC manipulated results in a peer reviewed paper to bias the result.

"Here I demonstrate an error in the core scientific report (WGI) that came about through the IPCC’s alteration of a peer-reviewed result. This error is highly consequential, since it involves the only instrumental evidence that is climate-model independent cited by the IPCC as to the probability distribution of climate sensitivity, and it substantially increases the apparent risk of high warming from increases in CO₂ concentration."

Nic Lewis co-authored an important study missing from ABC's news archive. We covered this missing news in January. Still no mention of this work in ABC's parallel universe.

Slurred by a coral whisperer

2011-07-04T18:56:00.002+10:00

Coral Whisperer Prof. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg currently has a post on his Climate Shifts blog that slurs the reputation of Prof. Willie Soon, an Astrophysicist Harvard University's Center for Astrophysics. In comments Prof. Hoegh-Guldberg attempts to slur my reputation as well. For the record here's a copy of the conversation from Climate Shifts.

MarcH says:

July 1, 2011 at 11:23 pm

Ove, Care to comment on this tweet from George Monbiot?

http://twitter.com/#!/georgemonbiot

GeorgeMonbiot GeorgeMonbiot
I got something wrong abt Willie Soon. I suggested he’d never declared his fossil fuel funding. Unlike many, it turns out he has. Apologies.

Ove, How much funding do you receive from Greenpeace?

OveHG says:
July 2, 2011 at 7:55 am
Well, I have publically declared that I have worked for Greenpeace, Rio Tinto and many others. Mostly being paid to provide peer reviewed science which was paid to the University and not to me. And all peer reviewed pieces of work. Question is whether you and the research group you are associated with have declared all your potential conflicts Marc. Isn’t there a little coal money you should tell us about Marc?
REPLY

Marc Hendrickx says:

July 2, 2011 at 8:05 am

Ove,
Perhaps you could clarify your relationship with fossil fuel giant Rio Tinto who are involved in the The Future Reef partnership with the Great Barrier Reef Research Foundation through their subsidiary Rio Tinto Aluminium. According to the publicity this is a unique example of industry and science working together on an area of mutual and national concern. Comalco has committed more than A$1 million over four years to two Reef research programmes that will be overseen by the Foundation. Comalco of course are now Rio Tinto Aluminium.
In 2008 Rio Tinto produced over 150 Mt of coal.
Please don’t tell me you are the recipient of funds linked to the fossil fuel industry? Given your post on Willie Soon will you now return the funds, or will you accept that you are a hypocrite?
It appears that you are in receipt of over $1.4 MILLION dollars from this arrangement. This is more than Willie Soon has received.

Marc Hendrickx says:

July 2, 2011 at 8:17 am

Coal money for me, I wish? What are you implying Ove? Please be clear so my lawyers don’t misquote you.
Are you saying or implying:
A). I am being directly paid by the coal industry as part of some conspiracy to draw attention to your questionable record on climate science?
B). I am indirectly paid by the coal industry via superannuation or small share ownership in a resources company (BHP).

Clearly you are a misguided conspiracy theorist who believes anyone who dares question the great Oz is in someone’s pocket.

OveHG says:
July 3, 2011 at 10:10 pm
Marc,
You are a member of Dr Steven Fityus’s research group at the University of Newcastle, right? He receives funding for his group from the Australian Coal Association Research Program (ACARP). About $500k most recently. Interesting observation in the light of accusations of bias by you aimed at me with respect to my work for Greenpeace in the 1990s.
With respect to your question regarding Rio Tinto – a company that recognizes the challenge of climate change and wants to move rapidly on the solutions (like all responsible businesses) – there is nothing to ponder too deeply about with respect to my groups involvement. In this case, we undertook research on the impacts of ocean acidification on coral reef organisms, and helped run a highly successful employee program. The later was designed to help employees understand the problems of climate change and the urgency of moving toward solutions. A worthy program which had some great outcomes.
As long as the science is evidence-based and is not interfered with (which it hasn’t been – otherwise I would exited the project immediately), I have worked on science based projects with a wide range of organizations (as I have repeatedly stated). We must get the best answers to the important questions that lie at the heart of this massive problem. Involving all players makes perfect sense.
By the way, Marc, I see that you are systematically contacting my research colleagues and students with respect to my professionalism. Could you please tell what your intention or hopes are with respect to this? Is it all for the ABC News Watch cause? I note that you have already slurred me on that site. I am not sure that there is much to be gained from engaging in further discussion with you.
Ove
REPLY
- Marc Hendrickx says:
  Your comment is awaiting moderation.
  July 4, 2011 at 8:05 am
  Ove,
  You appear to be in forever need of correction. Prof Fityus is my supervisor, however my project which involves looking at historical rockfalls around Sydney, is not externally funded. The project is being done part time and currently relies on minor funding from the within the department. So you are completely in error on this point and an apology for the smear to both myself and Stephen would be appropriate, (that is if you have any honour).
  As to your contention that I am contacting your research colleagues and students with respect to my professionalism. This is again a falsehood. For the public record I requested Oren Levy a co-author with Ove to explain Ove’s contribution to a paper published in Science. Here is my email to Oren, copied to Ove and Bruce Alberts – Chief editor of Science:
  Dear Dr Levy,
  I am seeking clarification on the authorship of one of your papers. Can you please clarify the contribution made by Prof. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg to your paper “Complex Diel Cycles of Gene Expression in Coral-Algal Symbiosis” Science 14 January 2011: Vol. 331 no. 6014 p. 175 DOI: 10.1126/science.1196419
  I ask this as Science Journal’s authorship policy states:
  Science’s policy is specifically designed to support the authorship requirements presented in On Being a Scientist: Third Edition, published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.† That report emphasizes the importance of an intellectual contribution for authorship and states that “Just providing the laboratory space for a project or furnishing a sample used in the research is not sufficient to be included as an author.”
  http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5961/12.full
  Prof. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg has recently intimated his position as last author on papers he claims is due to his position as head of the department and recognises the funding, experience, and infrastructure that invariably goes into a project.
  For publication – Was the credit to Prof. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg in the paper due to his provision for funding and laboratory space, or due to his scientific contribution?
  Regards
  Marc Hendrickx
  ABC NEWS WATCH
  Despite the fact that I made it clear that any response to this email would be for publication both Ove and Oren have requested that their numerous replies be kept private. A request I will respect. Perhaps Ove can take the time to clear the air on this matter on his own blog.
  Thanks by the way for the plug for ABC NEWS WATCH, I recommend visitors start with the Missing News page. They will also find a copy of the comments above and this reply on that site. In regard to so called “slurring”, coming from you in light of your post above and others on Climate Shifts, that would be a case of pot-kettle black.

That was the extent of the systematic contact. You will note the final comment is still in moderation. We will update when and if the great Oz replies. To the question posed concerning authorship we still await a concise response. Perhaps a mainstream journalist can take up where I left off? A job for ABC Environmental ~~reporter~~ activist Sara Phillips perhaps?