James from Perth or NEW South Wales. ABC don't give a stuff

In October we noted some conflicting ABC reports about where the new climate council's first donation originated from. At the time ABC reported the following:

James in Perth?
'We had our first donation in last night from James in Perth - $15,' Dr Flannery told Breakfast this morning.

or James in New South Wales?
"We had our first donation from James in New South Wales for $15 at midnight," he said at the time.Tim Flannery suggested

We requested ABC follow this disparity up and yesterday we received this report from the Head of Audience and Consumer Affairs, Kirstin McLiesh:

Thank you for your email.  I regret the delay in responding to you.

The ABC accurately reported Dr Flannery’s statements on both occasions, as demonstrated by the video and audio footage accessible on the webpages to which you refer.  Whether the $15 donation was made by James in Perth or in New South Wales was not a material fact for the purposes of either of these reports and the ABC will not pursue this matter further.

ABC provided the climate council with free advertising and they can't even bother asking simple questions about un-important things like, um... facts!

Climate Council's first donation?

Some conflicting reports about where the new Climate Council's first donation came form...

According to the ABC, contenders are as follows....

James in Perth?
'We had our first donation in last night from James in Perth - $15,' Dr Flannery told Breakfast this morning.

or James in New South Wales?
"We had our first donation from James in New South Wales for $15 at midnight," he said at the time.

Climate Commission: The Prince of Precaution: last part

To mark the end of the Climate Commission we have published the serial version of The Prince of Precaution. Here's the ending and links to parts 1 to 4. Click to enlarge.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Climate Commission: The Prince of Precaution: Part 4

To mark the end of the Climate Commission we are publishing the serial version of The Prince of Precaution. Here's Part 4. Final part tomorrow. Click to enlarge.

Climate Commission: The Prince of Precaution: Part 3

To mark the end of the Climate Commission we are publishing the serial version of The Prince of Precaution over the next 2 days. Here's Part 3. Click to enlarge.

Climate Commission: The Prince of Precaution: Part 2

To mark the end of the Climate Commission we are publishing the serial version of The Prince of Precaution over the next 4 days. Here's Part 2. Click to enlarge.

Climate Commission: The Prince of Precaution

To mark the end of the Climate Commission we are publishing the serial version of The Prince of Precaution over the next 5 days. Here's Part 1. Click to enlarge.

ABC in the News Round up 4

This week ABC provides adoration to Tm Flannery rather than tough questions, Greece throws its ABC under a bus-why can't we follow suit, there's still no one yet to accompany Amanda, and more...

Part 1: Journalism 101 - Asking the difficult questions.
Australia's expert on Tree-Kangaroos, Possums, and Penis Gourds Tim Flannery (who also doubles as a self proclaimed climate guru) has been telling us for a quite some time that we are all going to dry up and fry. ABC even paid for a woeful TV series featuring Tim and fellow alarmist John Doyle taking their Tinnie down the Murray Darling to promote flights of fancy. This week ABC's World today interviewed Tinnie Tim who said: "We'll see an increase in flooding frequency, we'll see the number of people exposed to flooding go up somewhere between four-fold and 17-fold. So there's just a lot more people are going to be exposed to the dangers of flooding." Of course a few years back Tim was heard to expose a different opinion to Maxine McKew:

TIM FLANNERY: Well, you can't predict the future; that's one of the things that you learn fairly early on, but if I could just say, the general patterns that we're seeing in the global circulation models - and these are very sophisticated computer tools, really, for looking at climate shift - are saying the same sort of thing that we're actually seeing on the ground. So when the models start confirming what you're observing on the ground, then there's some fairly strong basis for believing that we're understanding what's causing these weather shifts and these rainfall declines, and they do seem to be of a permanent nature. I don't think it's just a cycle. I'd love to be wrong, but I think the science is pointing in the other direction.

MAXINE McKEW: So does that mean, really, we're faced with - if that's right - back-to-back droughts and continuing thirsty cities? 

TIM FLANNERY: That's right. That looks to be the case. We'll know probably within two or three years, I suppose, how this is going to play out, particularly for Sydney, because its water supply is limited to that sort of scale, but it is my fear that the new weather regime is going to be a much drier one, and while we may get the odd good rainfall event, they're going to be much less frequent than in the past, and we'll just be in a different climatic regime.

Tim would love to be wrong and based on these very sophisticated computer tools. Well he is!Tim lives up to his trademark line. Let's review...Hurricanes can be tied to climate change

TONY JONES: Now, with America still reeling from these hurricanes, Rita and Katrina, to what extent do you believe these extreme events could be linked to global warming? 

DR TIM FLANNERY: Look, I think that there is a clear link.

Well the IPCC says there ain't: from Chapter 4 of IPCC Special Report on Extremes

• "There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change"
• "The statement about the absence of trends in impacts attributable to natural or anthropogenic climate change holds for tropical and extratropical storms and tornados"
• "The absence of an attributable climate change signal in losses also holds for flood losses"

When will a journalist (ed-what they have them?) at the ABC think to look over Flannery's record and ask some tough questions?

Part 2: Spot the conservative presenter. No change from last week.
1. Amanda Vanstone on Counterpoint

Part 3: Environmental beat ups for the week. No beat ups just excessive cheer leading. Seems ABC has got the hots for US environmental activist and alarmist preacher Bill McKibben. Here are just a few of the ABC's articles Bill appeared on or garnered a mention, all at your expense and without critical comment (and some of these people consider themselves journalist, others are activists-yes that's you Fran and Sara):

ABC Environment Blog 1: Profiting from the wreckage of our planetl

ABC Environment Blog 2: How climate campaigners are protecting the economy

ABC Environment Blog 3: Preventing a carbon bubble crash
ABC Environment Blog 4!!!: Who is the ugliest in the beauty contest?

RN Breakfast

PM

Radio National

Lateline1

Lateline 2

Lateline 3

The World Today

Q and A

National Press Club Broadcast

That's just recently. A search of Google for "Bill McKibben" at site  www.abc.net.au yields 85,900 results. By comparison a search for a real expert an the ABC, let's say "Richard Lindzen" yields 35,500 items and most of these ain't long winded cheer leading posts. Seems ABC has some catch up to do. Does the word diversity appear in that charter?

Part 4: What to do with your National broadcaster?

Greece leads the way!  Greek government to close ‘wasteful’ state broadcaster to save money, axing 2,500 jobs. We could axe 5000!

Part 5: Missing News: Some good news for corals published in a recent edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences missed by ABC Science. I guess a science journalist would have covered these interesting results. Global warming activists on the other hand...well you know the story.

Part 6: Sucker of the week. See Part 1. For reporting that should make them blush with embarrassment this week's Gullibull goes to The World Todays' ELEANOR HALL and ALISON CALDWELL. Congrats ladies.

Eleanor with friend. 

Apologies - no photo of Alison as all the photos we could find on the net are just too boring.

Lies of the climate commission: Part 6 no islands evacuated

Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery (who has not published any peer reviewed papers on climate change*), recently stated:
Prof Flannery said while climate change would be a significant issue for the region over the next century, its effects were being felt in other parts of the country today.
“There are islands in the Torres Strait that are already being evacuated and are feeling the impacts."

There are in fact no islands in the Torres Strait that are being evacuated. Another falsehood from the climate commissioner, that has slipped under the ABC's news radar.

We put the following question to the climate commission:

Climate commissioner Tim Flannery is quoted as saying: 
“There are islands in the Torres Strait that are already being evacuated and are feeling the impacts."
LINK: http://manly-daily.whereilive.com.au/news/story/tims-grim-sea-warning/
There are no islands in Torres Strait that are being evacuated due to climate change. Can the commission clarify what the commissioner means by this false statement? Given the commission is supposed to "Explain the science of climate change and the impacts on Australia"; will the commission issue a correction to the commissioner's false and misleading statement? 


*Let us go and explore the Gold standard for collecting and collating peer-reviewed scientific information,Thomson Reuters Institute for Scientific Information, and see how many times that this climate science  ‘expert’ has published on climate change in the expert literature since 1956.  If he were a bone fide expert then he would be listed in the ISI Web of Knowledge many times under papers in which he has tested his ideas with the expert scientific community. Search term author "Flannery T"  and topic  "climate change" reveals one entry, just one! -  A book review! (That misrepresents the book!) So no peer reviewed publications in climate change! Little wonder he keeps telling untruths.

Title: The real environmental crisis: Why poverty, not affluence, is the environment's number one enemy End Game Author(s): Flannery, T Source: NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS   Volume: 52   Issue: 13   Pages: 26-29   Published: AUG 11 2005 Times Cited: 0 Document Type: Book Review

Cut and Pasted

After years of blitzkrieg, is Tim Flannery's mega-idea going the way of the giant wombat?

Tim Flannery: climate change denier?

An open letter to our Climate Commissar.

Dear Prof. Flannery,
Is your continued support of the Blitzkrieg theory for the extinction of Australia's megafauna* and apparent ignorance of the overwhelming evidence supporting the long term role played by changing climate in the decline of the megafauna a sign that you are a climate change denier?
(*an increasingly marginal theory lying outside the current consensus of mainstream science that claims humans were solely responsible for the extinction of Australia's megafauna)
Looking Forward to Your Response.
ABC NEWS WATCH

PS. We note that ABC still host your Future Eaters site. Do you think it is fair that tax payers continue to support debunked theories?

Missing News: Flannery's future eaters fictitious

 EXCLUSIVE
Australia's Climate Commissar Tim Flannery is a big believer in the theory that Australia's megafauna were driven to extinction by a human-induced culinary blitzkrieg. The notion that human's were to blame for our missing mega-fauna was explored at length in Flannery's best selling book "The Future Eaters". Flannery has stated that he believes "that in the absence of humans, the giant marsupials would still be in Australia today".  That "the megafauna went out with a bang and not a whimper." 
The notion that man has had such a drammatic impact on the environment in the distant past obviously accords well with the current paradigm of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming in which Flannery is also true believer. However it appears to be wrong.

Flannery's pet theory has been blown away (again!) by new research published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.  Under the title "Dating megafaunal extinction on the Pleistocene Darling Downs, eastern Australia: the promise and pitfalls of dating as a test of extinction hypotheses" researchers based at the University of Queensland used a suite of sophisticated dating methods to show "that the progressive loss of local megafauna was initiated well before the accepted period of human continental colonisation. Hence, the data suggest that humans were unlikely to have played any role in the extirpation of the affected local megafauna during that interval."

"... the new dates suggest that that the loss of at least some local megafauna occurred over an extended interval of time through the late Pleistocene and was not a geologically-instantaneous event. Hence, data from these controlled excavations do not support the blitzkrieg or attritional overkill hypotheses, which suggest that the losses should have occurred over short timescales of only 500 -1500 years."

Researchers point to drammatic natural changes in the environemnt as the main causeof the decline in the megafauna. These include:1) decreasing temperatures as climate shifted into a glacial interval; 2) falling sea levels (>60 m); 3) step-wise increases in aridity, including widespread megadroughts; and 4) significant changes in vegetation consistent with contraction of wet-forests and spread of sclerophyllus vegetation and grassland.

From the abstract: "Importantly, the dates suggest that the local decline in biological diversity was initiated 75,000 years before the colonisation of humans on the continent. Collectively, the data are most parsimoniously consistent with a pre-human climate change model for local habitat change and megafauna extinction, but not with a nearly simultaneous extinction of megafauna as required by the human-induced blitzkrieg extinction hypothesis. This study demonstrates the problems inherent in dating deposits that lie near the chronological limits of the radiocarbon dating technique, and highlights the need to cross-check previously-dated archaeological and megafauna deposits within the timeframe of earliest human colonisation and latest megafaunal survival."

The site of Flannery's dating (Ned's Gully) is now under further investigation. More careful dating may reveal the earlier dates were erroneous. Regardless, the new research indicates Australia's Future Eaters are but a figment of an overactive imagination.

We await ABC's coverage of this important revelation.

Update: Minister's Wrong Figures-a missed opportunity

COMMENT: We have received a reply concerning our complaint about Minister Wong's wrong figures. It appears ABC are happy to leave these factual errors un-corrected, as  "For the purposes of section 5 of the Editorial Policies, the comments of contributors are not considered factual content."


Are they making things up on the run now? We asked them and will post what they say.


Here's the reply in full, also posted with the original complaint HERE

Thank you for your email regarding The World Today report Head of UN climate change team calls it quits.

Your concerns have been investigated by Audience and Consumer Affairs, a unit which is separate to and independent of program making areas within the ABC.  We have reviewed the broadcast, assessed it against the ABC’s editorial standards and sought and considered material provided by ABC News.

There are no ABC reporters named Nance Saxton.  The ABC reporter who filed this report is named Nance Haxton.

The views of Senator Wong and Tim Flannery are their own, they are not the views of the ABC.  For the purposes of section 5 of the Editorial Policies, the comments of contributors are not considered factual content.

Audience and Consumer Affairs believe the interviews were suitably questioning, on the issue that was the focus of the report; the continuity of negotiations over a global climate treaty following the departure of the top UN official on climate change.

Audience and Consumer Affairs believe the report is in keeping with section 5 of the ABC Editorial Policies, which are available online at; http://abc.net.au/corp/pubs/edpols.htm

Nevertheless, you can be assured that your comments have been brought to the attention of ABC News management.

Minister's Wrong Figures-a missed opportunity

Updated 24 April, 2010 see post "Update: CRE respond to Minister's Wrong Figures"
Updated 29 March 2010-see outcome below
ABC HEADLINE: "Head of UN Climate Change team call its quits" broadcast on The World Today February 19, 2010.


ABC REPORTED:Shane Mcleod introduced a report by ABC reporter Nance Saxton (Actually Nance Haxton) on the resignation of Yvo de Boer, head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The report included brief interviews with Federal Minister for Climate Change Penny Wong, and  chair of the Coasts and Climate Change Council Professor Tim Flannery. The report transcript includes the following statement from Minister Penny Wong: 


"We've got around 85 per cent of the world's economies signed up to the Copenhagen Accord."


and the following statement from Professor Flannery: 


"I think he's done a pretty good job overall and the Copenhagen Accord shows that.
We've got something like 80 countries now signed up to that."


THE COMPLAINT: The UNFCC indicate that currently 40 Annex I countries and 30 non-Annex I countries have provided targets under the Copenhagen Accord (see UNFCC website HERE). 
In light of this both Minister Wong and Prof Tim Flannery's statements are in-correct. Although Prof Flannery's estimate is acceptable in context. The ABC reporter should have had these facts at hand and questioned Minister Wong on her stated  figures. Instead factual errors were allowed to be reported.


Number of countries in the UN: 192
Number of countries listed by UNFCC as providing emission targets under the Copenhagen Accord: 70: or 36%


Can the ABC append a statement indicating the number of countries that have provided targets under the Copenhagen Accord to this report to clarify Minister Wong's apparently misleading statement.

OUTCOME:  Received 29 March 2010. 
Thank you for your email regarding The World Today report Head of UN climate change team calls it quits.

Your concerns have been investigated by Audience and Consumer Affairs, a unit which is separate to and independent of program making areas within the ABC.  We have reviewed the broadcast, assessed it against the ABC’s editorial standards and sought and considered material provided by ABC News.

There are no ABC reporters named Nance Saxton.  The ABC reporter who filed this report is named Nance Haxton.

The views of Senator Wong and Tim Flannery are their own, they are not the views of the ABC.  For the purposes of section 5 of the Editorial Policies, the comments of contributors are not considered factual content.

Audience and Consumer Affairs believe the interviews were suitably questioning, on the issue that was the focus of the report; the continuity of negotiations over a global climate treaty following the departure of the top UN official on climate change.

Audience and Consumer Affairs believe the report is in keeping with section 5 of the ABC Editorial Policies, which are available online at; http://abc.net.au/corp/pubs/edpols.htm

Nevertheless, you can be assured that your comments have been brought to the attention of ABC News management.

COMMENT:  The ABC reporter should have made a reasonable effort to prepare for the interviews. Knowledge of the number of countries that provided emission targets would have allowed the reporter to pick up errors made by the interviewees.


Editorial policy 5.2.2 
(c) Be accurate.
(i) Every reasonable effort, in the circumstances, must be made to ensure that the factual content of news and current affairs is accurate and in context.
(ii) The ABC will not hesitate to admit and correct a significant error when it is established that one has been made. When a correction is necessary, it will be made in an appropriate manner as soon as reasonably practicable.



(f) Be questioning. Serve the public interest by investigating issues affecting
society and individuals.