From the vault - Moby Dave, not Moby Dick

7.00pm Television News 21 October 2006
The complaint
Five viewers complained that a photograph of a whale shark, which is not in fact a whale, was
used in the introduction to a report about research into whale songs.
Findings
The ABC acknowledged the error. The stock image was more obviously labelled to avoid any
recurrence of this error in future.


http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/documents/public_report_oct_dec_2006.pdf


"From the Vault" - digging up past corrections and clarifications from the ABC archives

Before bluebird...The Atlantic Jetty

COMMENT:With BLUEBIRD AR ABC is running full steam ahead in its campaign to indoctrinate its audience with the scourge of alarm and pessimism about potential future climate states. It seems the ABC is having such a hard time dealing with the real world (where recent scientific evidence shows the climate has a much lower sensitivity to CO2 than the IPCC would have us believe)  that it has developed its own Alternate Reality where it can play out and sell its alarmist vision of Climate Armageddon: Bluebird centres on the science of geo-engineering "it is all about the need for a plan B - we need to be ready for the worst possible climate scenario."

Of course it's not the first time man has considered using engineering to improve the climate as the report below from early last century demonstrates. We wonder what the world would have been like if the Atlantic Jetty had been constructed. 

The Mercury (Hobart, Tas.) 2/1/1913

ATLANTIC JETTY TO SHIFT ARCTIC CURRENT AND MELT NORTH POLE.

AMERICAN SCIENTIST'S IDEA.

If we may credit a deep-sea scientist, it will cost less than £38,000,000 to make Siberia a summer resort, start ice famines in Labrador, give Scotland an all-day summer with a temperature like Japan's, change the climate of the Atlantic coast to one like that of Southern California, molt all the ice on and around the North Pole, and open it to track gardening. To do so will be cheaper, much easier, and twice as quickly done as to build the Panama Canal.

All that is necessary to accomplish these results, some of which would result from tipping the old earth sideways, is to build a rip-rap jetty about 200 miles long; across the shoals extending eastwards, from Newfoundland, near Cape Race, says the ''New York Herald."

That would stop the Labrador Current, whoso cold is capable of making 2,000,000 tons of ice every second, from running right into the Gulf Stream, whose heat is equal to the burning of 2,000,000 tons of coal every minute. They meet now on the Grand Banks, where the water is only about 25l feet deep. The Gulf Stream is split up, and spreads out over millions of square leagues of the Atlantic.

If such a jetty were built, the Labrador Current coming down from the Arctic would be turned eastward, and would be sunk so far when the Gulf Stream met it that the latter warm, blue river of the ocean would pass over the great cold river from the North Pole. The warm Gulf Stream would continue in almost undiminished volume to the northward, and the Labrador Current would run a mile deep through the great depths of the Atlantic, making the torrid zone about the equator cooler, while the Gulf Stream would require only three months to melt every inch of ice around the pole.

Fantastic though this may appear, it has received the closest interest from the foremost men of practical science in the United States and other countries. Every detail of the astounding enterprise has been worked out by Mr. Carroll Livingston Riker, of Brooklyn, who has made critics swallow their scornful prophecies in other enterprises. He built the first mechanical refrigerating warehouse ever constructed, and devised and constructed the refrigerating plant on board the  steamship Celtic, which carried to Liverpool the first cargo of American dressed meats ever landed there.

In the book "Power and Control of the Gulf Stream," just published by Mr. Riker, he discusses the problem of preserving to the universe the benevolent warmth of the Gulf Stream for the destruction of the sterilising cold of the Arctic.

Ocean currents, he recites control the distribution of tropical solar heat the waters  heated about the equator bearing away toward the poles the heat there absorbed and modifying lands near which they run. The great warm flood of the Gulf Stream 40 miles in width and 1 200ft deep, with a temperature above 73 degrees Fahrenheit, is like a hot water pipe warming the Atlantic coast and adjoining legions as it flow northward.

The Labrador Current, 250 miles wide and 200ft deep, sweeps down from the Arctic with a temperature below zero Cent. (32deg. Fahr.). It meets and robs the Gulf Stream of its heat in the meeting on the Grand Bank.  The shoal on the Great Bank where the cold and warm world arteries meet is a principal cause of their neutralisation of each others effects.

Mr Riker declares that the jetty would divert this meeting at great depths to the eastward of the Grand Bank, and by the time the Labrador Current was running there it would be taking a course with its heavy saline a file (mile?) below the surface permitting the warmer lighter and less saline Gulf Stream to sweep above it carrying a message of warmth and sunlight and fertility  to the snow-.bound, ice-clad acres of the Polar Circle.

Even after its destructive conflict on the Grand Bank with the Labrador Current the Gulf Stream now survives and rolls onward giving to the British Isles mid Northern Europe the warmth

without which Scandinavia would be uninhabitable and England as sterile Labrador.

No more icebergs in the steamship lanes, no more of such fogs as now prevail about the meeting of the cold and warm currents, storms reduced to a minimum, and the whole of eastern North America a garden of paradise with no great cold or heat are some of the results Mr Riker foresees from building the jetty.

The melting of the Arctic ice cap, he estimates, would shift the equalizing balance of the globe, and the then preponderating weight of the Antarctic ice cap would make what I now the North Pole shift toward Northern Europe, with the result producing a night-less summer in the area of Scotland without a day-less winter.

Missing News on Polar Bears

COMMENT: ABC missing further news on Polar Bears...from Canada's National Public Broadcaster
Polar bears not at risk: Nunavut

The Nunavut government does not think the polar bear should be classified as a species of special concern under the federal Species at Risk Act, says territorial Environment Minister Daniel Shewchuk.

Shewchuk said there is no clear evidence to support assigning that status to the polar bear despite recommendations to the contrary by Environment Canada and a federal scientific panel.

"We live in polar bear country," Shewchuk told reporters in Iqaluit on Friday afternoon. "We understand the polar bears, and we do actually think our polar bear population is very very healthy, with the exception of a couple of populations that we are taking action on."

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2010/05/28/nunavut-polar-bear-status.html

Update: Malaria-climate link de-bunked-Auntie responds

ABC Audience and consumer affairs have provided a quicker than usual response to a complaint about balance in ABC's report on debunked Malaria-climate change links. For ABC's future reference here's an example from the BBC of a balanced report...Climate change is 'distraction' on malaria spread

Here's the response from ABC Audience and Consumer Affairs (received 28/5/2010):

Thank you for your email regarding the ABC Science story 'Climate change impact on malaria questioned'.

Your concerns about this story have been investigated by Audience & Consumer Affairs. The story has been assessed against the applicable editorial standard, section 5.2.2(e) of the ABC's Editorial Policies (http://abc.net.au/corp/pubs/edpols.htm), which states as follows:

"Be balanced. Balance will be sought but may not always be achieved within a single program or publication; it will be achieved as soon as reasonably practicable and in an appropriate manner. It is not essential to give all sides equal time. As far as possible, present principal relevant views on matters of importance."

The story reported on Professor Tony McMichael's criticisms of the recent Nature study 'Climate change and the global malaria recession'. In addition to the providing the views of Professor McMichael, the story summarised the study's findings and included the views of two of its authors, Dr Pete Gething and Dr Simon Hay.

While your references to the number of words in the story are noted, it is important to recognise that the editorial standard for balance does not require that an equal number of words be devoted to the views of each side in written stories. Instead, if possible, journalists are required to present the principal relevant views on matters of importance. In this case, the story presented the views of the authors of the study as well as the different views of a prominent Australian expert.

On review, Audience & Consumer Affairs is satisfied that the story adhered to section 5.2.2(e) of the Editorial Policies. Nonetheless, please be assured that your comments have been noted and conveyed to relevant staff in ABC Innovation.

I note your reference to a 2009 post on the blog 'Prometheus'. Audience & Consumer Affairs does not believe that criticism of Professor McMichael in a blog should preclude ABC journalists from reporting his expert views.

I also note your query regarding balance in a several recent ABC Science, ABC Environment and ABC News articles. Should have specific concerns about the adherence of one or more of these articles with the ABC's editorial standards, please outline them in further detail and we will be happy to consider them.

Thank you for taking the time to write.
Yours sincerely
ABC Audience & Consumer Affairs

Missing News - Royal Society to revise climate message

COMMENT: Nothing on Auntie's news wire thus far about this BBC report that the Royal Society is to review its climate message...
Society to review climate message
The UK's Royal Society is reviewing its public statements on climate change after 43 Fellows complained that it had oversimplified its messages... follow the kink for the rest

Update: Malaria-climate link de-bunked: Auntie provides a "balanced" report

Update 28/5/2010: ABC responds-see comment HERE and below.


Update 27/5/2010:  Authors of the Nature paper debunking the link between climate change and increased Malaria incidence provide commentary on New York Times Dot Earth blog "On the whole, the academic publications about climate and malaria are a perfect example of hype. Peer reviewed publications on warming and malaraia [sic] have almost universally argued that warming will increase the burden and extend future range of malaria."


COMMENT: ABC Science takes our advice and finally gets around to providing some coverage of week old revelations that future incidence of Malaria will not be as severe as suggested by alarming IPCC reports. 
Note the "balanced" reporting in this piece titled 'Climate change impact on malaria questioned' that actually provides readers with an indication there are dissenting views. However ABC's reporter Dani Cooper can only muster 236 words to cover the good news about Malaria as published in a peer reviewed journal, then gives almost 300 (298) to cover un-peer reviewed comments from a member of the team (Tony McMichael)  that got it all so wrong! That's balance for ya. 
Roger Pielke Jnr's comments on McMichael's work on Malaria makes for interesting reading, strangely not covered by Dani Cooper: "It is not science. It might charitably be called educated guesswork or less charitably by a few other terms." Next time ABC strives for "balance" perhaps they'' find someone who's opinions don't amount to "educated guesswork".


Pity that pro-alarmist climate stories are not given the same treatment. For example where are the dissenting voices for these stories?
The Mammoth poop scoop, 
Recent Climate Institute report
Warmer planet to stress humans: study
Climate works report
Sea ice loss key to Arctic warming, study

Salty seas

Coral reefs

State of the Climate

ABC reply received 28/5/2010:
Thank you for your email regarding the ABC Science story 'Climate change impact on malaria questioned'.
Your concerns about this story have been investigated by Audience & Consumer Affairs. The story has been assessed against the applicable editorial standard, section 5.2.2(e) of the ABC's Editorial Policies (http://abc.net.au/corp/pubs/edpols.htm), which states as follows.
"Be balanced. Balance will be sought but may not always be achieved within a single program or publication; it will be achieved as soon as reasonably practicable and in an appropriate manner. It is not essential to give all sides equal time. As far as possible, present principal relevant views on matters of importance."
The story reported on Professor Tony McMichael's criticisms of the recent Nature study 'Climate change and the global malaria recession'. In addition to the providing the views of Professor McMichael, the story summarised the study's findings and included the views of two of its authors, Dr Pete Gething and Dr Simon Hay.
While your references to the number of words in the story are noted, it is important to recognise that the editorial standard for balance does not require that an equal number of words be devoted to the views of each side in written stories. Instead, if possible, journalists are required to present the principal relevant views on matters of importance. In this case, the story presented the views of the authors of the study as well as the different views of a prominent Australian expert.
On review, Audience & Consumer Affairs is satisfied that the story adhered to section 5.2.2(e) of the Editorial Policies. Nonetheless, please be assured that your comments have been noted and conveyed to relevant staff in ABC Innovation.
I note your reference to a 2009 post on the blog 'Prometheus'. Audience & Consumer Affairs does not believe that criticism of Professor McMichael in a blog should preclude ABC journalists from reporting his expert views.
I also note your query regarding balance in a several recent ABC Science, ABC Environment and ABC News articles. Should have specific concerns about the adherence of one or more of these articles with the ABC's editorial standards, please outline them in further detail and we will be happy to consider them.

Thank you for taking the time to write.

Yours sincerely
ABC Audience & Consumer Affairs

Missing news: GLOBAL WARMING ADVOCACY SCIENCE: A CROSS EXAMINATION

COMMENT: What would happen if IPCC claims were put on trial? Jason Scott Johnston, who is the Robert G. Fuller, Jr. Professor of Law and Director, Program on Law, Environment and Economy of the University of Pennsylvania – Law School, finds out in his essay titled  Global Warming Advocacy Science: A Cross Examination.

From the abstract:

" A review of the peer-edited literature reveals a systematic tendency of the climate establishment to engage in a variety of stylized rhetorical techniques that seem to oversell what is actually known about climate change while concealing fundamental uncertainties and open questions regarding many of the key processes involved in climate change. Fundamental open questions include not only the size but the direction of feedback effects that are responsible for the bulk of the temperature increase predicted to result from atmospheric greenhouse gas increases: while climate models all presume that such feedback effects are on balance strongly positive, more and more peer-edited scientific papers seem to suggest that feedback effects may be small or even negative. The cross-examination conducted in this paper reveals many additional areas where the peer-edited literature seems to conflict with the picture painted by establishment climate science, ranging from the magnitude of 20th century surface temperature increases and their relation to past temperatures; the possibility that inherent variability in the earth’s non-linear climate system, and not increases in CO2, may explain observed late 20th century warming; the ability of climate models to actually explain past temperatures; and, finally, substantial doubt about the methodological validity of models used to make highly publicized predictions of global warming impacts such as species loss. "

Another lie by omission from Auntie.