Blog taking a break while more important things take precedence. Back when we are back. Thanks for your patience!
In the meantime ABC news being regularly scrutinised by BOLT, BLAIR, HENDERSON, QUADRANT AND CATALLAXY.
Cheers
Marc
An eye on ABC NEWS: Keeping the bastards who keep the bastards honest - honest.
Friday, May 16, 2014
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
ABC failing on fat facts
From The Australian...
ABC admits Catalyst health show erred on fat facts.
A BELATED admission by the ABC that popular television science program Catalyst had demonstrated bias against mainstream medicine has been welcomed by health groups.
Catalyst sparked controversy seven months ago with a two-part special that described the link between saturated fats, cholesterol and heart disease as “the biggest myth in medical history’’ and downplayed the benefits of anti-cholesterol drugs known as statins.
Thursday, May 8, 2014
/sarc on...thanks for another balanced climate change report.../sarc off
That much of the media accepted the NCA without questioning its findings and conclusions either indicates they are naive or they have chosen to promote a particular agenda and this report fits their goal.
Prof. Roger Pielke Snr
Chris Uhlmann is now hosting AM. Instead of offering a fresh start on ABC's climate change coverage it seems we are getting more of the same pandering to alarmism and ignorance of the basic science that characterised Tony Eastley's time as AM host. Eastley recall was an MC for the Climate Commission but never declared this conflict of interest when interviewing commission representatives.
Take yesterday's morning's report: US climate assessment gets personal
ABC once again focus on highly uncertain, potential effects of possible change in the US without once exploring the science and seeking broader scientific input.
ABC broadcast the following claim:
But having a look briefly through the report, they're really trying to make this personal, make Americans realise that it's more than catastrophic headlines; it's sometimes a little more subtle, even looking at the growth in allergies that people might suffer from.
And immediately followed with this...(odd the canned laughter was missing as all this represents are more unsubstantiated catastrophic headlines and a total absence of subtlety).
Prof. Roger Pielke Snr
Chris Uhlmann is now hosting AM. Instead of offering a fresh start on ABC's climate change coverage it seems we are getting more of the same pandering to alarmism and ignorance of the basic science that characterised Tony Eastley's time as AM host. Eastley recall was an MC for the Climate Commission but never declared this conflict of interest when interviewing commission representatives.
Take yesterday's morning's report: US climate assessment gets personal
ABC once again focus on highly uncertain, potential effects of possible change in the US without once exploring the science and seeking broader scientific input.
ABC broadcast the following claim:
But having a look briefly through the report, they're really trying to make this personal, make Americans realise that it's more than catastrophic headlines; it's sometimes a little more subtle, even looking at the growth in allergies that people might suffer from.
And immediately followed with this...(odd the canned laughter was missing as all this represents are more unsubstantiated catastrophic headlines and a total absence of subtlety).
Let's have a listen to some of the scientists.
KIM KNOWLTON: Now heat - it's not just an inconvenience; it can be lethal. It can send thousands of people to emergency rooms, as it has done in the past. There's been a two to three week increase in the length of rag weed pollen production season. Now that matters to people who have asthma.
TOM KARL: The bottom line, the current path we're on, will result in a climate that is far different than anything that this nation has experienced.
Perhap's Chris could have sought an interview with other scientists...the authors of the piece below for instance...and comments from other climate scientists (eg. Pielke Snr, Judy Curry) but seems that's against the ABC climate creedo Chris appears following.
ABC's sign off quite amusing...
LISA MILLAR: We've already heard from Republicans who say that no doubt he'll get loud cheers from the liberal elites, the kind of people who leave a giant carbon footprint and lecture everyone else about low-flush toilets. They're not convinced that there is an urgency and the economy is far more important.
Hmmm ...people who leave a giant carbon footprint ... the ABC perhaps??
Hmmm...lecture everyone else about low-flush toilets ... the ABC perhaps??
What the National Climate Assessment Doesn’t Tell You
Judy Curry:
KIM KNOWLTON: Now heat - it's not just an inconvenience; it can be lethal. It can send thousands of people to emergency rooms, as it has done in the past. There's been a two to three week increase in the length of rag weed pollen production season. Now that matters to people who have asthma.
TOM KARL: The bottom line, the current path we're on, will result in a climate that is far different than anything that this nation has experienced.
Perhap's Chris could have sought an interview with other scientists...the authors of the piece below for instance...and comments from other climate scientists (eg. Pielke Snr, Judy Curry) but seems that's against the ABC climate creedo Chris appears following.
ABC's sign off quite amusing...
LISA MILLAR: We've already heard from Republicans who say that no doubt he'll get loud cheers from the liberal elites, the kind of people who leave a giant carbon footprint and lecture everyone else about low-flush toilets. They're not convinced that there is an urgency and the economy is far more important.
Hmmm ...people who leave a giant carbon footprint ... the ABC perhaps??
Hmmm...lecture everyone else about low-flush toilets ... the ABC perhaps??
What the National Climate Assessment Doesn’t Tell You
The Obama Administration this week is set to release the latest version of the National Climate Assessment—a report which is supposed to detail the potential impacts that climate change will have on the United States. The report overly focuses on the supposed negative impacts from climate change while largely dismissing or ignoring the positives from climate change.
The bias in the National Climate Assessment (NCA) towards pessimism (which we have previously detailed here) has implications throughout the federal regulatory process because the NCA is cited (either directly or indirectly) as a primary source for the science of climate change for justifying federal regulation aimed towards mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Since the NCA gets it wrong, so does everyone else.
A good example of this can be found in how climate change is effecting the human response during heat waves. The NCA foresees an increasing frequency and magnitude of heat waves leading to growing numbers of heat-related deaths. The leading science suggests just the opposite.
Case and point. Last week, we had an article published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Climate Change that showed how the impacts of extreme heat are often overplayed while the impacts of adaptation to the heat are underplayed. And a new paper has just been published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives that finds that the risk of dying from heat waves in the U.S. has been on the decline for the past several decades.
By now, this should be rather unsurprising as it has been demonstrated over and over again. Not only in the U.S. but in Europe (and yes, Stockholm) and other major global cities as well.
The idea that human-caused global warming is going to increase heat-related mortality is simply outdated and wrong. In fact, the opposite is more likely the case—that is, a warming climate will decrease the population’s sensitivity to heat events as it induces adaptation. We described it this way in our Nature Climate Change piece:
Some portion of this response [the decline in the risk of dying from heat waves] probably reflects the temporal increase in the frequency of extreme-heat events, an increase that elevates public consciousness and spurs adaptive response. In this manner, climate change itself leads to adaptation.…Our analysis highlights one of the many often overlooked intricacies of the human response to climate change.
But this information often falls on deaf ears—especially those ears responsible for developing the NCA.
Judy Curry:
My main conclusion from reading the report is this: the phrase ‘climate change’ is now officially meaningless. The report effectively implies that there is no climate change other than what is caused by humans, and that extreme weather events are equivalent to climate change. Any increase in adverse impacts from extreme weather events or sea level rise is caused by humans. Possible scenarios of future climate change depend only on emissions scenarios that are translated into warming by climate models that produce far more warming than has recently been observed.
Monday, April 28, 2014
ABC and the case of the missing ass
It's been a quiet month here with many more important things on. This post by Tim Blair taking the ABC's fact checking unit to task caught our attention...
A quick search through the NLA's trove archive revealed the following. This was the earliest report we could locate that mentioned Simpson and his donkeyS:
Kalgoorlie Miner Tuesday 20 July 1915
GALLIPOLI OPERATIONS. STRETCHER-BEARERS THEIR MAGNIFICENT WORK
Some, of us were sitting yarning that evening, whilst the sun set over the sea turning the craters of Imbros into the dull grey of an elephant's hide set against a back ground of the most delicate rose— - when someone passing said: 'I suppose you've heard that the man with the donkeys is dead?" It came as a real shock. Every body knew the man with the donkeys, and everybody knew that ifa man deserved honour in this war, it was he.He was a stretcher-bearer. Few people knew his name. , To most he was 'Scotty' or 'Murphy'—those who called him the one called his donkey the other. He was really Private Simpson, of the 3rd Field Ambulance.
DONKEY DOLLARS
One of Julia Gillard’s final acts as Prime Minister was to give an extra $10 million to the ABC, a local community-based broadcasting outfit struggling to get by on a mere $1.2 billion every year.
That additional cash helped the ABC to fund an elite fact-checking unit ahead of last year’s election. Sadly, the ABC’s fact-checkers have since made little public impact. Their biggest success may have been crowding another truth-seeking bunch, the privately-funded PolitiFact Australia, out of the market.
But over the Anzac Day weekend the ABC’s fact-checkers finally hit their stride.
Kalgoorlie Miner Tuesday 20 July 1915
GALLIPOLI OPERATIONS. STRETCHER-BEARERS THEIR MAGNIFICENT WORK
Some, of us were sitting yarning that evening, whilst the sun set over the sea turning the craters of Imbros into the dull grey of an elephant's hide set against a back ground of the most delicate rose— - when someone passing said: 'I suppose you've heard that the man with the donkeys is dead?" It came as a real shock. Every body knew the man with the donkeys, and everybody knew that ifa man deserved honour in this war, it was he.He was a stretcher-bearer. Few people knew his name. , To most he was 'Scotty' or 'Murphy'—those who called him the one called his donkey the other. He was really Private Simpson, of the 3rd Field Ambulance.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Lies of the Climate Commission/Council: Part 18
ABC covered the Climate Council's latest beat up.
It included this summary:
Included in the "records" is reference to "20 days above 35C in Canberra".
The report did not mention that in 1939 the BOM station at ACTON (70099-one we have taken an interest in) recorded 23 days above 35C! There were also 5 more days above 30 in 1939.
See comparison below:
![]()
It included this summary:
2013-14 summer records included:
- 11 days above 42C in Adelaide
- Driest summer for 45 spots in Qld & 38 in NSW
- Sydney's driest summer in 27 years
- 20 days above 35C in Canberra
Included in the "records" is reference to "20 days above 35C in Canberra".
The report did not mention that in 1939 the BOM station at ACTON (70099-one we have taken an interest in) recorded 23 days above 35C! There were also 5 more days above 30 in 1939.
See comparison below:
Summer 1939-ACTON 70099
Summer 2014-Canberra Airport 70351
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Missing News: Climate sensitivity
A new GWPF report on climate sensitivity by Nic Lewis and Marcel Crok with introduction by Judy Curry.
Take home message:
"Only in recent years has it become possible to make good empirical estimates of climate sensitivity from observational data such as temperature and ocean heat records. These estimates, published in leading scientific journals, point to climate sensitivity per doubling most likely being under 2◦C for long-term warming, and under 1.5◦C over a seventy-year period. This strongly suggests that climate models display too much sensitivity to carbon dioxide concentrations and in almost all cases exaggerate the likely path of global warming."
"The new information on climate sensitivity suggests that even with relatively high emissions the government’s two-degree limit for global warming is likely to be reached only towards the end of the century."
Once again the tumbleweeds roll around ABC's news room as yet another good news story fails to breach its walls of groupthink.
Take home message:
"Only in recent years has it become possible to make good empirical estimates of climate sensitivity from observational data such as temperature and ocean heat records. These estimates, published in leading scientific journals, point to climate sensitivity per doubling most likely being under 2◦C for long-term warming, and under 1.5◦C over a seventy-year period. This strongly suggests that climate models display too much sensitivity to carbon dioxide concentrations and in almost all cases exaggerate the likely path of global warming."
"The new information on climate sensitivity suggests that even with relatively high emissions the government’s two-degree limit for global warming is likely to be reached only towards the end of the century."
Once again the tumbleweeds roll around ABC's news room as yet another good news story fails to breach its walls of groupthink.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
ABC's errors worse and worse!
Response to ABC’s 730 report on the Defence Abuse Response Taskforce, 27 February 2014
The story titled Navy gang rape victim breaks silence in search for treatment that aired on the ABC’s 7.30 program on 27 February 2014 and appears on the program’s website, contains significant factual errors.
Rest here
Rest here
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