Exclusive opinion?

ABC HEADLINE: Why I think Climate Change is real. Posted to the ABC Environment Blog under that heading "Exclusives" on 25 March 2011
ABC REPORTED: The article is a copy, under a different title, of an article published at The Conversation on the 24 March 2011.A note at the end of the ABC version notes it was reposted from The Conversation.
THE COMPLAINT: How does this article count as an "Exclusive"? How does this and other opinion pieces listed as "Exclusive" by ABC Environment count as "exclusive" when this term is generally used in journalism to refer to NEWS reporting and not opinion pieces? How many other articles has ABC Environment falsely claimed to be "Exclusive". Will ABC THE DRUM follow suite and also list its opinion pieces as "exclusives". Has ABC environment broke any actual NEWS stories in the past 12 months that might be considered as "exclusive"?
OUTCOME: Pending
COMMENT: A definition of exclusive: "a piece of news, or the reporting of a piece of news, obtained by a newspaper or other news organization, along with the privilege of using it first."

Missing News: Sea level rise-out by one or two orders of magnitude!

ABC misses yet another peer reviewed paper that highlights deficiencies with the status quo of the UNs IPCC. It is clear that the ABC's Groupthink position on climate change has thoroughly mislead its audience's understanding of the state of climate science.
This time ABC fail to cover an important new paper on sea level rise that concludes:
Our analyses do not indicate acceleration in sea level in U.S. tide gauge records during the 20th century. Instead, for each time period we consider, the records show small decelerations that are consistent with a number of earlier studies of worldwide-gauge records. The decelerations that we obtain are opposite in sign and one to two orders of magnitude less than the +0.07 to +0.28 mm/y accelerations that are required to reach sea levels predicted for 2100 by Vermeer and Rahmsdorf (2009), Jevrejeva, Moore, and Grinsted (2010), and Grinsted, Moore, and Jevrejeva (2010). Bindoff et al. (2007) note an increase in worldwide temperature from 1906 to 2005 of 0.74C. It is essential that investigations continue to address why this worldwide-temperature increase has not produced acceleration of global sea level over the past 100 years, and indeed why global sea level has possibly decelerated for at least the last 80 years.
From: Sea-Level Acceleration Based on U.S. Tide Gauges and Extensions of Previous Global-Gauge Analyses by Houston and Dean. Published in the Journal of Coastal Research

Lava Lamp

7:30 questions....
When will Chris Uhlmann stand down over his blatant conflict of interest?
Has anyone seen Leigh Sales and Julia Gillard together in the same room?
Does anyone else find 7:30's costly lava lamp set a distraction?

Stuffing up the basics

Jonathan Green, editor of The Drum, shows off his editing skills. 

Back in 5 minutes

The shop is closed for a week or so as more important things take precedence. We recommend Media Watch Dog for a weekly lesson in journalism.

A modest contribution to the IPCC

The IPCC have finally go around to listing corrections made to AR4, Working Group II Table 10.2. While we take credit for the corrections and the lines added to the errata (see below), it could not have happened without the lack of inquiry and curiosity shown by ABC News.
I guess the "thankyou" is in the mail!
For the full story see articles listed under the Himalaya/IPCC page.

475	Chapter 10	Table 10.2, lines 31-32 (Nepal entry). Replace "0.09°C per year in the Himalayas and 0.04°C in Teral region, more in winter" with "For 1977-94: 0.090°C per year in Trans-Himalaya and 0.057°C per year in the Himalaya, more in winter; 0.041°C per year in Terai region". Add "Shrestha et al., 1999" to References column.
475	Chapter 10	Table 10.2, lines 40-42 (Sri Lanka entry). Replace "0.016°C increase per year between 1961 to 90 over entire country, 2°C increase per year in central highlands" with " 0.016°C increase per year between 1961 to 90 over entire country, with regional increases ranging from 0.008 to 0.025°C per year."
504	Chapter 10	Add "Shrestha, A.B., C.P. Wake, P.A. Mayewski and J.E. Dibb, 1999: Maximum temperature trends in the Himalaya and its vicinity: an analysis based on temperature records from Nepal for the period 1971-94. J.Clim., 12, 2775-2786."

ABC NEWS 24: Spectacular failure

Media Diary looks at ABC NEWS 24 coverage of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami finding it ranks as a spectacular failure:  ABC News 24 fails big test

Tim Blair has also cast an eye over ABC NEWS 24 woeful coverage. Looking for news of the devastating earthquake in Japan but finding old news and repeats...SLOW NEWS DAY

UPDATE: Tim Blair provides more detail about how ABC has blown $20 million dollars of your money on a white elephant....Tsunami Minimised

Missing News: Russian heatwave due to natural factors

ABC were quick to attribute the Russian Heatwave in 2010 to increases in greenhouse gases. However Roger Pielke Jnr reports on a new paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (PDF) that finds otherwise:
The paper concludes:

Our analysis points to a primarily natural cause for the Russian heat wave. This event appears to be mainly due to internal atmospheric dynamical processes that produced and maintained an  intense and long-lived blocking event. Results from prior studies suggest that it is likely that the intensity of the heat wave was further increased by regional land surface feedbacks. The absence of long-term trends in regional mean temperatures and variability together with the model results indicate that it is very unlikely that warming attributable to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations contributed substantially to the magnitude of this heat wave.

Are ABC Environment closet racists?

ABC Environment continues to insult Asian Australians and our neighbours by juxtaposing this image and headline.

Your tax dollars at work. 

4 corners versus Topher

ABC's current affairs flagship the good ship "4 Corners" is looking at the Murray-Darling Basin in tonight's edition. With the Government promising to put a decision before Parliament in 12 months time, they must decide who gets the water and just how much. A pain-free solution is unlikely, so will the politicians have the ticker to make the tough decisions? Will the largest water reform plan in the nation's history deliver a healthy river system, or will it be stymied by political compromise?

Meanwhile at no cost to tax payers Chris"Topher" Field present the case against the plan in Topher's unpopular view number 5: The MDBA Debacle.
Topher takes on the Australian government in this scathing critique of the Murray Darling Basin Authorities 'Proposed Basin Plan'. In his usual 'take no prisoners' style Topher uncovers deep flaws in the MDBA's proposal and sends the water minister Tony Bourke back to the drawing board.
For more Topher go to http://www.youtube.com/user/TophersUnpopularView

Simple question: Which story best covered the issues?
Which provided the best value for money?

The ABC is facing irrelevancy as amateurs out perform the professionals.

Bias on QandA

Reader Nicholas runs an eye over Q and A transcripts for February finding some interesting results. We wonder if things will level out by the end of the season.(click images to enlarge)

Quadrant: ABC smothers complaints

At Quadrant Des Moore asks "When will the ABC become “Balanced”?
Perhaps when ABC is accountable to its share holders and exposed to the full brunt of FOI?