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

A wake up call at The Conversation

ABC affiliate The Conversation have posted an article by climate commissioner Lesley Hughes titled "Australians can’t ignore the health impacts of climate change".

I added the following comment...

In the climate commission's latest report I note that the section on mosquito borne diseases does not reference the work of epidemiologist Paul Reiter. Wonder why? Perhaps Lesley Hughes or co-author Tony McMichael would care to explain.

Here's Paul's background from wiki...
Paul Reiter is a professor of medical entomology at the Pasteur Institute in the city of Paris[citation needed], France. He is a member of the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Committee on Vector Biology and Control[citation needed]. He was an employee of the Center for Disease Control (Dengue Branch) for 22 years[citation needed]. He is a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society[citation needed]. He is a specialist in the natural history, epidemiology and control of mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever, West Nile Virus, and malaria.[1]

Lesley's co-author Tony McMichael had this to say about Paul in one of the recently released climategate emails dating from 2002. To Mike Hulme...

Mike,
You've probably already had colourful comment from Sari and Jonathan. Paul Reiter is, in my view, smart, confrontative and inflexible. He has been leading the charge of the (mostly US) professionally-affronted field epidemiologists, who think:
1. That if IPCC says that climate change is likely to affect VBD transmissibility, then it is also saying that this is happening already; and
2. That if climate is invoked as a causal influence, then it seems that the silly IPCC epidemiologists don't understand that there are a few other influences that are more important.
Paul's documentation that, historically, malaria was often more serious in Europe during relatively cooler times is very interesting - but is essentially irrelevant for the second reason above. Those historical times also coincided with other major shifts in social, economic, nutritional and political circumstances.
Well, it helps to keep us on our toes.
Tony

For the context see the rest of this email http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/4931.txt, and the civil email from Reiter to Hulme that prompted the response.
http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/3691.txt

Based on the omission of Paul Reiter's work from the commission's report it seems the so called consensus being promulgated by the climate commission has little to do with scientific evidence and more to do with maintaining Groupthinking networks, ego and undeserved reputations. Lesley Hughes suggests the report is a wake up call, I think Richard Feynman would have called it Cargo cult science.

The embedded journalist part 2.

Earlier in the year we reported that AM reporter Tony Eastley had taken up a role as MC for the Climate Commission's public forums. The Australian covered the matter in this story under the headline "ABC defends host's climate gig".

Today Eastley gave Climate Commissioner Lesley Hughes a very soft interview on AM (see Health imperilled by climate change: Report).

It would have been interesting to see how Lesley Hughes would have handled questions relating to the absence of references in the commission's report to the work of Paul Reiter on mosquito borne diseases that contradicts the climate commission's alarmist narrative. Also of interest the exchange between Hughes' co-author Tony McMichael and Mike Hulme in relation to Reiter as featured in recently released climategate emails.

ABC's new Editorial Guidelines no longer mention the phrase "conflict of interest". However section 1.3 of the new guidelines state:

1.3 Ensure that editorial decisions are not improperly influenced by political, sectional, commercial or personal interests.

On face value it appears Mr Eastley's interview puts him in breach of this clause. We have asked the ABC for an explanation.