A climate time lie - saga continues

Cobalt. According to ABC the cause of Ocean Acidification

ABC have indicated they will not adjudicate on our complaint about the 30 additional errors in its presentation "A journey through climate history". They did indicate that the list was passed onto the editorial team whom we hope will be busy making corrections.

Received 9/9/2010

Audience & Consumer Affairs (A&CA) have reaffirmed that they will not accept your complaint for review, given:

-          the considerable resources already spent on dealing with your complaints about this item

-          the significant lapse of time since the item was researched, compiled and published; and

-          the nature of your most recent complaint does not merit further commitment of A&CA investigative resources.

However, your comments have been relayed to the relevant editorial team for their information.

Accordingly, in the absence of a new investigation by A&CA - a decision clearly based on the provisions of the ABC’s Editorial Policies and supported by the Complaints Review Executive (CRE) - there is no further reason for the CRE to respond.

To which we replied:
Thanks for your reply. As previously stated, given the seriousness of the errors and possibility that the presentation will mislead and misinform ABC's Audience, I will take the matter up with the relevant minister and opposition spokesperson. Again, I find it surprising that ABC will not take the opportunity to make the corrections. You may recall I pointed out in my first compliant that the presentation should be subject to an extensive review and it is disappointing that ABC have never taken the opportunity to carry one out. Of course had the necessary resources been expended conducting a proper review of the production prior to publication we would not be having this exchange.

We have sent a letter to the Minister for Communications. Here's an extract.
"Given the seriousness of the errors and possibility that the presentation will mislead and misinform ABC's Audience, including school students I find it surprising that ABC will not take the opportunity to make the corrections.

My simple request is that if ABC wish to continue to promote the presentation it make the simple corrections required. Can you as Minister please ensure ABC make the necessary changes."

Missing News: Arctic Ice Melt not unprecedented

Yet another story missing for over 2 years....

According to the Geological Survey of Norway.....

Less ice in the Arctic Ocean 6000-7000 years ago

Recent mapping of a number of raised beach ridges on the north coast of Greenland suggests that the ice cover in the Arctic Ocean was greatly reduced some 6000-7000 years ago. The Arctic Ocean may have been periodically ice free.

”The beach ridges which we have had dated to about 6000-7000 years ago were shaped by wave activity,” says Astrid Lyså. They are located at the mouth of Independence Fjord in North Greenland, on an open, flat plain facing directly onto the Arctic Ocean. Today, drift ice forms a continuous cover from the land here.
Astrid Lyså says that such old beach formations require that the sea all the way to the North Pole was periodically ice free for a long time.

Wonder if ABC Science will provide any coverage.

Missing News: Ice cap loss slashed

Waiting for ABC to run something on a study just published in Nature Geoscience...
From an AFP report Climate: New study slashes estimate of icecap loss

PARIS (AFP) - – Estimates of the rate of ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica, one of the most worrying questions in the global warming debate, should be halved, according to Dutch and US scientists.

In the last two years, several teams have estimated Greenland is shedding roughly 230 gigatonnes of ice, or 230 billion tonnes, per year and West Antarctica around 132 gigatonnes annually.

Together, that would account for more than half of the annual three-millimetre (0.2 inch) yearly rise in sea levels, a pace that compares dramatically with 1.8mm (0.07 inches) annually in the early 1960s.

But, according to the new study, published in the September issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, the ice estimates fail to correct for a phenomenon known as glacial isostatic adjustment.

This is the term for the rebounding of Earth's crust following the last Ice Age.

Read the rest at the link, you're unlikely to read it on the ABC

Missing News: Debunking civil war-climate links

Roger Pielke Jnr reports on a new paper by Halvard Buhung that thoroughly eviscerates an earlier paper by Burke et al which claimed that climate change resulting from greenhouse gas emissions was dramatically increasing civil wars in Africa, and this trend would continue in the near term. Nothing so far on the ABC.

It appears the only mention was by chronic climate alarmist Psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky who stated in an ABC Unleashed article "A recent peer-reviewed study showed that every extra degree temperature in a given year increases the likelihood of civil conflict in Africa by 50%. Scientists predict an additional human toll of 390,000 battle fatalities in Africa by 2030 because of climate change." We emailed Stephan to tell him the news.

Here's the conclusion from Roger's Post:

Just this week PNAS has published a new paper by Halvard Buhaug that thoroughly eviscerates Burke et al. Buhaug's conclusion is unambiguous (I do not see it at PNAS yet, but an early version is here in PDF):

The simple fact is this: climate characteristics and variability are unrelated to short-term variations in civil war risk in Sub-Saharan Africa. The primary causes of civil war are political, not environmental, and although environmental conditions may change with future warming, general correlates of conflicts and wars are likely to prevail. . . The challenges imposed by future global warming are too daunting to let the debate on social effects and required countermeasures be sidetracked by atypical, nonrobust scientific findings and actors with vested interests.

Burke has reacted strongly against Buhaug, accusing him of having cherry-picked his datasets (Note: Figure 2 in Buhaug is pretty convincing to me.).  While climate change may not be the cause of African civil wars, it does seem to be the cause of civil wars in academia.


Here's BBC's report: Climate shifts 'not to blame' for African civil wars

Before the ABC: Victorian floods

The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 8 August 1891, page 10

Inspired by: Hundreds evacuated in Victorian flood disaster

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

Update: Science literacy: ABC's Doh Doh Doh

Seems ABC agree that that confusing 3 out of 10 with 1 in 3 is an embarrassing mistake to make in a story about science literacy. (Our original post HERE).

Reply received 2 September 2010
I refer to your email of 30 July 2010 regarding a caption accompanying the News Online item ‘Science literacy at risk of extinction’, published the same day.

You are of course correct that the values ‘3 in 10’ and ‘one third’ are not equivalent.  ABC News have explained that picture captions, like headlines, try to capture the essence of a story in just a few words, and this is what occurred in this instance.  While we don’t believe it to be a significant error, in view of the story’s focus on scientific literacy, ABC News have decided to amend the caption to read ‘Nearly a third of people surveyed believed humans walked the Earth with dinosaurs’.

Yours sincerely,  
Head, Audience and Consumer Affairs    
Score +1

Before the ABC: Locust Plagues

The Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday 2 April 1890, page 8

The Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday 23 April 1890, page 8

The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 10 May 1890, page 12

The Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday 6 November 1890, page 5

The Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday 20 November 1890, page 5

The Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday 4 December 1890 Page 6

The Sydney Morning Herald, Friday 12 December 1890, page 5

Inspired by: Locusts hatch near Nyngan; Locust plagues could cost Australia billions

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