Quote of the week

ABC's James Glenday:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a media outlet fighting for readers must be in want of a clickable headline quote."

Could not have described ABC News more succinctly. Its mediocrity is palpable.

Missing News: What temperatures are BOM recording?

The Australian have been covering and interesting and newsworthy story concerning problems BOM have in recording temperatures (eg Push for probe into weather stations failures). This is their basic role, you'd think by now they could get it right.
Given the importance of temperature in the land of droughts and flooding rains we are astounded that the ABC has failed to provide any coverage.

Jennifer Marohasy has an important series of articles on her blog that outline the problem. See...

Two Decades of Temperature Data from Australia – Not Fit for Purpose

Are Recordings from Electronic Devices Comparable – or Not?

Vindicated: Bureau acknowledges limits set on how cold temperatures can be recorded

Vindicated: Bureau not following WMO guidelines

Bureau Management Rewrites the Rules – Again

Dysfunctional RN Update

This From RN Listener enquiries regarding RN's short memory:

On August 5, Saturday Extra host Geraldine Doogue introduced Mr Bergmann as “a former senior advisor, also a speechwriter for John Kerry”.

At the end of the interview, Ms Doogue referred to Mr Bergmann as “until this year, a senior advisor at the State Department under John Kerry, now a senior fellow at the Centre for American Progress, a think tank in Washington”.

In response to this complaint, Saturday Extra has updated his title on its website to specify that his time as senior advisor at the State Department was under Barack Obama's Presidency.c

Ms Doogue also will make reference on air on Saturday August 26 to the Centre’s links to the Democratic Party.

Regards

Nerida

Radio National

Listener enquiries 

Score one for us.

Respecting the Elders

In recent weeks considerable angst has been expressed about our public monuments and the potential that we may inadvertently be honouring some figures with questionable morals. We have seen the statues of slave owning confederate generals torn down in the USA and questions raised about  our own statues by ABC's Stan Grant, including those of Captain James Cook and Governor Macquarie, and the names of certain rivers and roads. 

With this in mind, it is only fair to apply the same standards more generally. So what of the actions and morals of the Elders past and present that we raise on a pedestal at every government meeting? How do their actions compare?

I’d like to begin by acknowledging the Traditional Owners/Custodians of the land on which we meet today. I would also like to pay my respects to Elders past and present.

Here are a few stories about present elders we are paying respect to:

Aboriginal elder hears rape victim statements ABC 12 Jul 2007

The teenage victims of an Aboriginal elder who raped them in exchange for petrol to sniff have told the South Australian Supreme Court that they now suffer eating disorders and sleep deprivation in the wake of their sexual assaults.

Winkie Ingomar, 52, has pleaded guilty to raping three girls in their early teens in Yalata in the west of SA early last year.

Aboriginal elder pleads guilty to child sex charges SMH DECEMBER 7 2015

In the mid 1990s, aged in his late 30s, he'd become obsessed with a teenage girl and for five years subjected her to physical and sexual abuse.

His depraved actions resulted in the birth of two children – one when the teen was a day shy of her 16th birthday, and the second almost a year later.

A third pregnancy in quick succession ended abruptly with a miscarriage at 12 weeks.

Elder's rape sentence to be reviewed SMH September 28, 2005

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission plans to intervene in a case in which a judge gave a short jail term to an Aborigine who anally raped and bashed his 14-year-old "promised wife". In an unusual move, the commission will seek leave to appear before the Northern Territory Court of Criminal Appeal to intervene in the interests of the girl, who was promised to the 55-year-old man under Aboriginal customary law at the age of four.

Culture of Denial The Australian  March 2007

IN 2005 I spent several days in the Alice Springs hospital after falling ill while attending a friend's wedding. I shared a ward with a middle-aged Aboriginal man who was quite proud that he had raped a 13-year-old girl. As he said, "She wouldn't say yes, so I f---ed her hard."
It did not surprise me. A few years before, I was in Alice Springs talking to two Aboriginal men in their early 70s. They were preparing to go into town to buy plastic toy dinosaurs. This was to pay a 12-year-old girl for having sex with both of them at the same time.

To judge the actions of "respected" Elders of the Past, readers are referred to Tony Thomas’s excellent series on Quadrant that some time ago broke the "Great Australian Silence" Stan Grant seems so keen not to comment on:

Part I: Yabbered to death 

Part II: A Long Bloody History of Violence

Part III: A Blacked-Out Past

Part IV: When The Horrific Is Mundane

ABC wrong on Cook, Cox and Macquarie

The Australian have published a piece by Keith Windschuttle, that responds to a dispicable essay by Stan Grant that compares British Colonisation of the country with the US slave trade.

Let Cook and Macquarie stand: Grant and Taylor are wrong

Grant’s attempt to drag the legacy of the American civil war into Australian history does not fit in any way, and his attempt to promote a political campaign against the public statues of some of the great men of Australian history, especially Cook and Macquarie, is sheer journalistic opportunism.

Grant and others in the media are encouraging racial conflict for no good reason, except for the dramatic news reports they would like to see generated.

They should be ashamed of themselves for their wanton provocation.

Keith Windschuttle is the editor of Quadrant and the author of The Break-up of Australia: The Real Agenda Behind Aboriginal Recognition (Quadrant Books).

to read the rest you'll need a subscription.

Delusions of climate

ABC once again uncritically report on some BOM figures that show "record" temperatures for the NT.
Here's the script...

Duty forecaster at the BOM in Darwin, Peter Markworth, said during the weekend Borroloola and the Tiwi Islands both experienced their hottest recorded August days.

Borroloola reached 37.7 degrees Celsius, beating its previous record of 37.3C, Mr Markworth said.

Batchelor, about 70 kilometres south of Darwin, hit 37C on Friday, beating its previous record of 36.8C.

On Saturday it hit 37.2C, breaking the record again.

The article ends by claiming: 

Mr Browning (BOM regional manager of climate services) said the NT had experienced a different weather pattern to normal. "We seem to have been seeing more of the winds coming from the east than the south-east," Mr Browning said. "The south-easterlies really bring the cool temperatures from down south, but we're just not seeing that as much." He said the warmer-than-expected weather seen in July and so far this month were "consistent with global warming signals".

Now there are quite a number of definitions of climate. One used by the WMO is as follows:

What is Climate?

Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the "average weather," or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. The classical period is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). 

The "records" claimed for both Borroloola and Batchelor are from weather stations with less than 30 years of data!!!Unfortunately for the BOM these stations are unable to say anything about climate change as they have not measured more than one "Climate Cycle". Seriously bad science!

Missing News: An Inconvenient Deception: How Al Gore Distorts Climate Science and Energy Policy

ABC recently provided free marketing and uncritical coverage of Al Gore's latest alarmist tome. See for instance:

• Hack
• 7:30 Report
• Sydney Radio
• Brisbane Radio
• Perth Drive Radio
• Melbourne Radio
• One Plus One

Dr Roy Spencer the scientist responsible for developing and interpreting the NASA satellite measurements of global temperature has released an ebook available on Amazon that provides the critical coverage ABC's unquestioning reporters missed out on. The book is titled "An Inconvenient Deception: How Al Gore Distorts Climate Science and Energy Policy". Sadly somehow we doubt it will feature on the ABC.

Al Gore's new movie An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is reviewed for its accuracy in climate science and energy policy. As was the case with Gore's first movie (An Inconvenient Truth), the movie is bursting with bad science, bad policy and some outright falsehoods. The storm events Gore addresses occur naturally, and there is little or no evidence they are being made worse from human activities: sea level is rising at the same rate it was before humans started burning fossil fuels; in Miami Beach the natural rise is magnified because buildings and streets were constructed on reclaimed swampland that has been sinking; the 9/11 memorial was not flooded by sea level rise from melting ice sheets, but a storm surge at high tide, which would have happened anyway and was not predicted by Gore in his first movie, as he claims; the Greenland ice sheet undergoes melt every summer, which was large in 2012 but then unusually weak in 2017; glaciers advance and retreat naturally, as evidenced by 1,000 to 2,000 year old tree stumps being uncovered in Alaska; rain gauge measurements reveal the conflict in Syria was not caused by reduced rainfall hurting farming there, and in fact the Middle East is greening from increasing CO2 in the atmosphere; agricultural yields in China have been rising, not falling as claimed by Gore. The renewable energy sources touted by Gore (wind and solar), while a laudable goal for our future, are currently very expensive: their federal subsidies per kilowatt-hour of energy produced are huge compared to coal, natural gas, and nuclear power. These costs are hidden from the public in increased federal and state tax rates. Gore is correct that "it is right to save humanity", but what we might need saving from the most are bad decisions that reduce prosperity and hurt the poor.