Extreme weather misinformation at the ABC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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