From the vault - elementary counting

702 ABC Sydney – Afternoons – 6 September 2007
The complaint
A listener complained that reports of the numbers present at a student demonstration were
exaggerated and inconsistent with reports on other news services.
Findings
While it was made clear in the report that the figure of a thousand demonstrators was an
estimate, the ABC acknowledged that the figure cited was inaccurate and subsequent reports
had put the figure at around 200-300 demonstrators.
"From the Vault" - digging up past corrections and clarifications from the ABC archives.

Before the ABC: Labor Routed

The Argus Monday 21 December 1931, page 7

Inspired by: Voters owe Labor nothing, says Abbott

see also "A crushing defeat"

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

NEWSFLASH-ICRP findings -A Journey through climate history

Screen shots from ABC's A journey through climate history. Note the different treatment given to Al Gore's Film as opposed to the documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle". No mention of the British court case that found errors in Al Gore's movie. This formed one of our complaints of bias.

NEWSFLASH. ABC will shortly be posting a media release about the results of the Independent Complaints Review Panel's deliberations on our complaint of bias in ABC's A Journey through climate history (or the climate time lie). ABC require confirmation that complainants have received a copy of the complaint prior to its formal release of the report on the ABC website. Here's a copy of a letter sent to Mark Scott ABC Managing Director. The complaint was not upheld, we assume the full report will be available soon and we will post further when ABC make it available. It certainly makes for an interesting insight into ABC's bureaucracy. UPDATE-scanned copy reproduced below.

RE: ICRP Report: A journey through climate history.

Dear Mr Scott,

Just a short note to inform you I have received your letter of the 16 August relating to the ICRP report about ABC Online’s “A journey through climate history”.

I note that the report supports my contention that “A journey through climate history” provides a biased view of climate change events, and had the complaint been weighed under ABC editorial policies Section 5, it appears the complaint would have been upheld.

The ICRP report contends the biased view in “A journey through climate history” is balanced by other coverage provided by the ABC and as such, under section 7, lack of balance in this case is provided for under the pretext that ABC maintains “balance” from a network perspective. However given ABC’s Chairman Maurice Newman’s recent comments that ABC’s coverage of climate change amounted to “Groupthink” and based on my own investigations (ABC New Watch) I see little to indicate ABC has provided balanced coverage on this issue. “A Journey through climate history” merely serves to confirm ABC’s Groupthink position on climate change.

As an example of continued Groupthink I note ABC comments to the panel to specific omissions from the timeline on page 5 of the report. In relation to the Ordovician Glaciations (which ABC omitted from the Timeline) ABC claim “that scientists no longer consider there to be any inconsistency between the carbon dioxide record and the timing of the Ordovician ice age.” ABC quote a New Scientist article in support. I attach a recent paper published in the peer reviewed journal Geology that clearly shows, contrary to ABC opinion, there remains considerable debate on this point. We find it troubling, but not surprising, that the ABC have sought to mislead the panel on this point.

ABC’s latest promotion invites Australian’s to join the conversation. I’m not sure Australian’s want to be part of such a one sided conversation. As Maurice Newman stated:

“At the ABC, I believe we must re-energise the spirit of enquiry.  Be dynamic and challenging – to look for contrary points of view, to ensure that the maverick voice will not be silenced.  There should be no public perception that there is such a thing as an “ABC view” – we must be neither believers nor atheists but agnostics who acknowledge people have a right to make up their own minds.”

(The attached report is: Did intense volcanism trigger the first Late Ordovician icehouse? Geology; April 2010; v. 38; no. 4; p. 327-330; DOI: 10.1130/G30577.1)


Scanned ICRP report below:

The report was written by "team" member Susan Brooks.

Missing news: Link between Vic Bushfires and dangerous anthropogenic global warming busted

Nothing on ABC thus far about a new study that busts the widely promulgated myth that the disastrous 2009 Victorian Bushfires were caused by man made global warming. This one however will be hard to ignore the Abstract states:

This study re-evaluates the history of building damage and loss of life due to bushfire (wildfire) in Australia since 1925 in light of the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Victoria in which 173 people lost their lives and 2,298 homes were destroyed along with many other structures. Historical records are normalised in order to estimate building damage and fatalities had events occurred under the societal conditions of 2008/09. There are relationships between normalised building damage and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation and Indian Ocean Dipole phenomena, but there is no discernable evidence that the normalised data is being influenced by climate change due to the emission of greenhouse gases. The 2009 Black Saturday fires rank second in terms of normalised fatalities and fourth in terms of normalised building damage. The public safety concern is that of the 10 years with the highest normalised building damage the 2008/09 bushfire season ranks third, to the 1925/26 and 1938/39 seasons, in terms of the ratio of normalised fatalities to building damage. A feature of the building damage in the 2009 Black Saturday fires in some of the most affected towns – Marysville and Kinglake – is the large proportion of buildings destroyed either within bushland or at very small distances from it (<10 m). Land use planning policies in bushfire-prone parts of this country that allow such development increase the risk that bushfires pose to the public and the built environment.

Crompton, R. P., K. J. McAneney, K. Chen, R. A. Pielke Jr., and K. Haynes, 2010 (in press): Influence of Location, Population and Climate on Building Damage and Fatalities due to Australian Bushfire: 1925-2009. Weather, Climate, and Society.More at Roger Pielke Jnr

Instead of reporting on this important study ABC promote alarm with this misleading headline"UN climate scientists link Russia, Pakistan calamities". The necessary studies have not even been undertaken. Talk about jumping the gun

From the vault - an expert afterall

702 ABC Sydney – Breakfast – 21 September 2007
The complaint
A complaint was received regarding a Dr Karl segment about global warming science. The segment focussed on the work of Professor J Scott Armstrong, and in particular his assertion that poor forecasts have been made by global warming experts. The complainant’s two primary concerns with the segment were that:
(i) Professor Armstrong’s scientific credentials were questioned on the grounds that he is a professor of marketing, and
(ii) his argument that “forecasts by experts have no value”, criticised at some length by Dr Karl, was taken out of context.
Findings
The ABC agreed that there is evidence to indicate that Professor Armstrong is a recognised expert in forecasting, and this should have been mentioned during the segment. The complaint was therefore upheld on the grounds of unfair treatment. The ABC also agreed that the statement “forecasts by experts have no value” was taken out of context. Professor Armstrong’s thesis was, rather, that an estimate made by an expert was still only an estimate, and not to be confused with a formal forecast. The complaint was therefore upheld on a
second count on the basis of factual inaccuracy. An apology was sent to the complainant.
"From the Vault" - digging up past corrections and clarifications from the ABC archives.

ABC Science: a case of blind leading the blind

In a week that saw publication of a paper that demolished the statistical methodology of  tree ring based palaeo-temperature reconstructions once and for all, shredding the infamous Hockey Stick like a straw in the process; a week that saw publication of a paper pouring ice cold water on IPCC predictions of alarming sea level rise ; a week that saw publication of a paper that sends IPCC climate models back to the chalk board, ABC Science ignore choose these highly newsworthy papers that falsify elements of the IPCC hypothesis in favor of those spruiking alarm. Firstly promoting deeply flawed work on Antarctic Sea Ice (currently at record levels) and secondly promoting an opinion piece by a non-scientist that warps the scientific method "placing science in a social, political and cultural context (ed. - what a load of post modern drivel)".
This week surely breaks the back of any claims ABC had for balance and lack of bias in its coverage of climate change science.
This quote by Karl Popper aptly describes ABC's myopia:
"Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve."

Update you can add a new paper to the list: "Influence of Location, Population and Climate on Building Damage and Fatalities due to Australian Bushfire: 1925-2009" "there is no discernable evidence that the normalised data is being influenced by climate change due to the emission of greenhouse gases."

Big Tim and Mrs Pailing beat Academy to the punch

In a report titled "Scientists unite in fresh warming warning" ABC's PM interview ANU's Prof. Kurt Lambeck about a new pamphlet from the Australian Academy of Science (AAS) spruiking climate alarmism. Professor Lambeck sees the "quality of the science improving with time" and with the publication of papers such as:
"A statistical analysis of Multiple Temperature proxies: Are reconstructions of surface temperatures over the last 1000 years reliable" by McShane and Wyner recently published in the Annals of Applied Statistics; and
"On the Diagnosis of Radiative Feedback in the Presence of Unknown Radiative Forcing" by
Spencer, R. W., and W. D. Braswell in press at the Journal of Geophysical Research,
"A Critical Review of Global Surface Temperature Data Products" by Ross McKitrick SRN working paper,
"Panel and Multivariate Methods for Tests of Trend Equivalence in Climate Data Series" by Ross McKitrick, Stephen McIntyre and Chad Herman in press at Atmospheric Science Letter, 
"Reconstruction of regional mean sea level anomalies from tide gauges using neural networks" by Manfred Wenzel and Jens Schröter published in the JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 115, C08013, 15 PP., 2010
doi:10.1029/2009JC005630, 

we can only agree. It is surprising however that the AAS and ABC have chosen to ignore the results of all these and other publications that challenge the IPCC's position.

The AAS rest their case on four principals:
1. The physical principal of the greenhouse effect  - that shows temperatures will rise with increased concentrations of greenhouse gases. However for CO2 this means a rise of about 1 degree for each doubling of CO2, hardly alarming.
2. The record of the distant past - which includes the surprising finding passed over by the AAS that temperature and CO2 are disconnected. For instance a major glaciation occurred during the Ordovician at a time when CO2 concentrations were about 5-10 times current levels.
3. Measurements of the recent past (the last 100 years)  - which are currently no higher than the well documented medieval warm period about 1000 years ago, and are tainted by Urban Heat Island effects; and
4. Climate models that erroneously assume high climate sensitivity to CO2 increases.

According to Prof Lambeck it took the AAS 8 months to put its pamphlet together. Surely a waste of AAS money given its alarming claims were put to bed by a series of mere cartoons published over a year ago. Firstly, on the science by  "We're not scared anymore Mr Gore" featuring Mrs Pailing, and secondly on the policy response to climate change by "The Prince of Precaution" featuring Big Tim's little monster. Surprisingly ABC have assisted somewhat in their publication. Limited hard copies of both remain available through Little Skeptics Press.