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