ABC: Confusing activism for journalism

ABC's environment reporter Sara Phillips struggles to work out the difference between journalism and activism in this opinion piece paid for by the tax payer. Working hard to link the current weather to those nasty coal overlords Sara concludes "With predictions of increased devastating weather events, climate change will never be far from the national conversation." Especially if ABC reporters continue to confuse activism for journalism.

In contrast real journalists Graham Lloyd and Andrew  Fraser provide key background information in this article for The Australian, titled "Queensland's cycles of havoc". The Nature paper referred to in the article is titled "High frequency of 'super-cyclones' along the Great Barrier Reef over the past 5,000 years"
Prior to the Groupthink takeover ABC's Catalyst covered the release of this paper in an piece titled "Super Cyclone".

With Auntie's activists ruling the roost at ABC NEWS it's little wonder that ABC chairman, Maurice Newman's call to end the Groupthink on climate has been ignored.
Sadly for some, with no appreciation of history, the sky always appears to be falling.

Before the ABC: 1927-First the floods then the cyclones

Some headlines from January and February 1927 that might be of interest before the word "unprecedented" rears its head again on  ABC News...

Floods in Queensland Enormous Damage Sydney Morning Herald January 26, 1927

Weather chart The Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday 10 February 1927, page 13

Cyclone, Queensland Worst on Record Sydney Sydney Morning Herald February 12, 1927
"The cyclone is considered to be much more severe than that of 1918."


Update: 1893,1934,1967,1974 also notable for floods and cyclones in close succession:
See BOM's KNOWN FLOODS IN THE BRISBANE & BREMER RIVER BASIN and
Historical Impacts Along The East Coast

UPDATE 2 Jo Nova links to a 2001 study published in Nature that captures the longer term perspective.

On holiday, wish you were here

School's back next week in NSW, meanwhile some holidays just seem to go on forever...

Program	Date Off Air	Return Date	Days Off
Media Watch	8/11/2010	7/2/2011	91 days
Q and A	8/11/2010	7/2/2011	91 days
Insiders	5/12/2010	6/2/2011	63 days
NSW School Holidays	15/12/2010	28/1/2011	43 days

Update 31/1/2011 The Australian's Media Diary pick up the theme...

Planning something

NOW, it’s true that this is the first Diary column for 50 days, but get a load of this handy table, which we got from ABC watcher Marc Hendrickx, which we’ve decided to call: “Your Taxes at Work.” Incredible, no? Especially since not being on air doesn’t mean not being at work: very many of the staff are in the office. Diary sought out some of them, to ask what they did, exactly, when the shows weren’t on air. “I dunno,” one said, while chomping a carrot. “Planning?”

Missing news:2010 cyclone activity

No ABC news thus far about 2010 cyclone activity from Florida State University's Ryan Maue
For the calendar-year 2010: 

**66-tropical cyclones globally, the fewest in the reliable record (since at least 1970) 
**46-tropical cyclones in the Northern Hemisphere, fewest since 1977 
**Global calendar year ACE total of 529 was the lowest since 1977. 
**The Northern Hemisphere ACE total of 373 was the lowest since 1977. 
**Combined North Eastern and Western Pacific ACE total of 171 lowest since at least 1970. 
**Western North Pacific had 8 Typhoons fewest in at least 65-years of records. 
**Eastern North Pacific had 8 TCs: 3 were hurricanes, the fewest since at least 1970. 
**North Atlantic ACE for 2010 was 170, the 11th most since 1950, and most since 2005.

Overall, since 1979: 
**Global Tropical Cyclone ACE shows no upward trend. 
**Northern Hemisphere TC ACE shows no upward trend. 
**Southern Hemisphere TC ACE shows no upward trend. 
**North Atlantic TC ACE has doubled since 1995, exactly compensated by a halving of Eastern Pacific ACE. It appears that in the context of global and NH ACE, the NATL increases are at the expense of the other basins, or simply within the common climate framework. 
**Global TCs of Tropical Storm force show no upward trend in frequency. 
**Global TCs of Hurricane Force + show no upward trend in frequency.

Some holiday reading for Quentin

ABC's Quentin Dempster recounts lessons learned from his holiday reading but gets a few facts wrong in the process.
Quentin writes: "Two years ago 200 people in drought-stricken Victoria perished in the wildfires which swept that state. The Climate Institute, backed by the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO, declared the phenomenon to be 'the fires of climate change'. "


A paper by Crompton et al indicates otherwise: "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.
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


Quentin provides a long quote from a Bill McKibbon book about Atlantic Hurricanes suggesting things are getting "stronger and stranger". In fact according to Florida State University's Dr Ryan Maue
"2010 is in the books: Global Tropical Cyclone Accumulated Cyclone Energy [ACE] remains lowest in at least three decades, and expected to decrease even further." 

Perhaps next holiday Quentin can read some books that get the facts straight. Here are a few suggestions:

Missing News List Updated

Our list of ABC's missing news items updated, now stands at 50. This documentary evidence now presents a very strong case for systematic bias in ABC's coverage of climate change.

Groupthink where?

ABC's Media Watcher Jonathan Holmes sees something amiss in The Australian's coverage of a recent WMO news release regarding Global Average Temperatures. Meanwhile the tax payer funded ABC missed these stories. If Jonathan is looking for Groupthink he's looking in the wrong place.

To view a list of missing news click the page to top right.

Update: Simon at ACM provides some in depth commentary see HERE.