Marshall islands: ABC provide half the story

ABC News claim to be "Australia's most trusted, independent source of news." A marketing ploy is to make a claim and repeat it. If you say something often enough people believe it, even when its false. ABC claim their news service is world class, but as we have demonstrated here time and time again this claim is a load of bollocks.

Another example is demonstrated by this ABC/Reuters report broadcast by ABC's Australia News Network. The headline reads:  Climate change disturbing Pacific war graves, warns Marshall Islands minister. Like many ABC reports on climate change only half the story is reported, even the photo is misleading!
The UK's Telegraph shows how real journalists might have covered the story and includes a photo of the actual graves. Their headline:
World War Two skeletons washed from Marshall Islands graves 'by rising seas'

includes the following information ABC/Reuters considered unimportant:

However, despite extensive damage to parts of the Marshall Islands' coast, researchers have begun to cast doubt on claims that the Pacific islands have already begun to disappear or that the damage is due to rises in sea levels that have occurred in recent decades. Indeed, while experts say the nation does face a long-term threat, new findings show that many of the islands are largely either remaining stable or growing.

Dr Murray Ford, from the University of Auckland, has been comparing aerial photographs of the islands taken by the United States military during World War II with photographs taken in the 1970s and in recent years. He found that many islands are getting larger and that the shrinking shoreline along coastal villages has largely been caused by commercial development, building of seawalls and land reclamation.

“It is a much more complicated story than the island being washed away,” he said.

“What the people are seeing is real – there are graves and houses falling into the water – but often it is a result of engineering and sea walls being built inappropriately. Some parts of some islands are eroding as sand has moved around but some islands are growing in size.”

A newly-published study showed a southern atoll which was devastated by a 1905 typhoon has grown back to a stable state, with its vegetated area expanding by about a quarter since 1945; other smaller islands joined together to form a single landmass.

Dr Ford said climate change is causing sea levels to rise at an increasing rate and the phenomenon poses a serious threat to the islands. But, he said, the damage that has occurred so far has been due to “inappropriate” construction, while some islands have grown due to natural accretion and endlessly shifting shorelines.

“The sea level is rising and will accelerate and on the ground the response will not be pretty,” Dr Ford said.

“But the islands have shown a wide range of change and not all of that is erosion… The story in Majuro is very much a human-driven impact on the island. In the outer islands, it is driven much more by waves, currents and movements of the sands.”

The scientists are still trying to understand the changes in the islands, which can shift shape over time periods ranging from hours to centuries and can sometimes erode during winter and grow back in the summer.

An expert on coastal changes, Professor Colin Woodroffe, from the University of Wollongong, said population increases and inhabitation of low-lying lands are probably playing a part in the increasing signs of damage.

“To say the little bit of rise has led to the erosion is too simple,” he said. “The islands are already quite vulnerable to erosion - human settlement is the most important factor.”

ABC environment-a good yarn

ABC pump up the alarm with this piece by "free lancer" and non climate expert Sue White:

7 of your favourite foods affected by climate change
Climate change could be coming to a supermarket near you, with a shocking list of your top seven favourite foods affected.

In her description about herself Sue says she "can compile a good yarn on almost any topic, but she mostly focuses on health/wellbeing, environment, travel, careers and productivity."

Definition of yarn:
yarn

yärn/

noun

1. 1.

   spun thread used for knitting, weaving, or sewing.

   synonyms:

   thread, cotton, wool, fiber, filament; More

2. 2.

   informal

   a long or rambling story, especially one that is implausible.

   synonyms:

   story, tale, anecdote, saga, narrative; More

verb

informal

1. 1.

   tell a long or implausible story.

   "they were yarning about local legends and superstitions

Seems that definition spot on! Your tax dollars at work.

/sarc on...thanks for another balanced climate change report.../sarc off

That much of the media accepted the NCA without questioning its findings and conclusions either indicates they are naive or they have chosen to promote a particular agenda and this report fits their goal. 
Prof. Roger Pielke Snr

Chris Uhlmann is now hosting AM. Instead of offering a fresh start on ABC's climate change coverage it seems we are getting more of the same pandering to alarmism and ignorance of the basic science that characterised Tony Eastley's time as AM host. Eastley recall was an MC for the Climate Commission but never declared this conflict of interest when interviewing commission representatives.

Take yesterday's morning's report: US climate assessment gets personal

ABC once again focus on highly uncertain, potential effects of possible change in the US without once exploring the science and seeking broader scientific input.

ABC broadcast the following claim:
But having a look briefly through the report, they're really trying to make this personal, make Americans realise that it's more than catastrophic headlines; it's sometimes a little more subtle, even looking at the growth in allergies that people might suffer from.

And immediately followed with this...(odd the canned laughter was missing as all this represents are more unsubstantiated catastrophic headlines and a total absence of subtlety).

Let's have a listen to some of the scientists.

KIM KNOWLTON: Now heat - it's not just an inconvenience; it can be lethal. It can send thousands of people to emergency rooms, as it has done in the past. There's been a two to three week increase in the length of rag weed pollen production season. Now that matters to people who have asthma.

TOM KARL: The bottom line, the current path we're on, will result in a climate that is far different than anything that this nation has experienced.

Perhap's Chris could have sought an interview with other scientists...the authors of the piece below for instance...and comments from other climate scientists (eg. Pielke Snr, Judy Curry) but seems that's against the ABC climate creedo Chris appears following.

ABC's sign off quite amusing...

LISA MILLAR: We've already heard from Republicans who say that no doubt he'll get loud cheers from the liberal elites, the kind of people who leave a giant carbon footprint and lecture everyone else about low-flush toilets. They're not convinced that there is an urgency and the economy is far more important.

Hmmm ...people who leave a giant carbon footprint ... the ABC perhaps??
Hmmm...lecture everyone else about low-flush toilets ... the ABC perhaps??

What the National Climate Assessment Doesn’t Tell You

The Obama Administration this week is set to release the latest version of the National Climate Assessment—a report which is supposed to detail the potential impacts that climate change will have on the United States.  The report overly focuses on the supposed negative impacts from climate change while largely dismissing or ignoring the positives from climate change.

The bias in the National Climate Assessment (NCA) towards pessimism (which we have previously detailed here) has implications throughout the federal regulatory process because the NCA is cited (either directly or indirectly) as a primary source for the science of climate change for justifying federal regulation aimed towards mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Since the NCA gets it wrong, so does everyone else.

A good example of this can be found in how climate change is effecting  the human response during heat waves.  The NCA foresees an increasing frequency and magnitude of heat waves leading to growing numbers of heat-related deaths. The leading science suggests just the opposite.

Case and point. Last week, we had an article published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Climate Change that showed how the impacts of extreme heat are often overplayed while the impacts of adaptation to the heat are underplayed.  And a new paper has just been published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives that finds that the risk of dying from heat waves in the U.S. has been on the decline for the past several decades.

By now, this should be rather unsurprising as it has been demonstrated over and over again. Not only in the U.S. but in Europe (and yes, Stockholm) and other major global cities as well. 

The idea that human-caused global warming is going to increase heat-related mortality is simply outdated and wrong. In fact, the opposite is more likely the case—that is, a warming climate will decrease the population’s sensitivity to heat events as it induces adaptation.  We described it this way in our Nature Climate Change piece:

Some portion of this response [the decline in the risk of dying from heat waves] probably reflects the temporal increase in the frequency of extreme-heat events, an increase that elevates public consciousness and spurs adaptive response. In this manner, climate change itself leads to adaptation.

 …Our analysis highlights one of the many often overlooked intricacies of the human response to climate change.

But this information often falls on deaf ears—especially those ears responsible for developing the NCA.

Judy Curry:

My main conclusion from reading the report is this:  the phrase ‘climate change’ is now officially meaningless.  The report effectively implies that there is no climate change other than what is caused by humans, and that extreme weather events are equivalent to climate change.  Any increase in adverse impacts from extreme weather events or sea level rise is caused by humans. Possible scenarios of future climate change depend only on emissions scenarios that are translated into warming by climate models that produce far more warming than has recently been observed.

Extreme extrapolations more common

ABC did not find the time to report on recent news revealing problems with climate models. Instead they have covered a paper that uses climate models to provide a taste of future heat waves. Not surprisingly defective models highly geared to an exaggerated climate sensitivity produce extreme outcomes.

Extreme heat waves to become more common

In their study, Dim Coumou, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and Alexander Robinson, from Universidad Complutense de Madrid used climate modelling to project extreme heat waves like those that hit Australia in 2009.

They found that extreme heatwaves will by 2020 affect about 10 per cent of total land area -- double today's figure. By 2040, it would have quadrupled.

And just one indication of the reliability of those models?

In contrast to earlier analyses for a ten-year period that indicated consistency between models and observations at the 5% confidence level, we find that the continued warming stagnation over fifteen years, from 1998 -2012, is no longer consistent with model projections even at the 2% confidence level.

In odd contravention of the normal rules of journalism ABC allow this "press release" to be published without question.

Naive journalism: the new standard in news from our public broadcaster.

Update: Some further comments at Judy Curry's Climate Etc blog. Curry one of ABC's missing climate commentators.

from The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation in twentieth century climate simulations: uneven progress from CMIP3 to CMIP5

Variability of the AMO in the 10–20/70–80 year ranges is overestimated/underestimated in the models and the variability in the 10–20 year range increases in three of the models from the CMIP3 to the CMIP5 versions. 

Hailstones in Armenia

ABC have a piece on its Environment page from The Climate News Network (PS  I think that the CNN moniker is taken) titled: Caucasus farmers a picture of climate change. The CNN are convinced that:

• climate change is one of the most serious threats to human wellbeing
• it is caused in large part by human activities
• the decisions we take in the next few years will decide how severe it is
• it is not too late to act; but…
• …we need to make very radical changes – fast

Sounds like your typical activist creedo no wonder ABC found the item of interest.

The story ABC re-printed includes this mention of hailstorms:

There are often hailstorms in Armenia and throughout the rugged and mountainous Caucasus region but the ferocity of this one — happening in mid May when crops were just coming to life — was highly unusual.

We turned to the trove newspaper database and conducted a quick search. To our amazement the following article popped up from the SMH of Monday 10 September 1877. It makes for an interesting read, click to enlarge or follow the link to the source:

Lateline takedown

I enjoyed this post by Jo Nova on Lateline'climate scare piece during the week. What do expect from journos who appear to have got their degrees from a box of Weeties!

Tony Jones lets Bill McKibben get away with barking nonsense “Really one degree is utter catastrophe”

ABC shrinks quality of science reporting

mini ABC

In a story headlined "Climate change downsizing fauna, flora" ABC Science reported on the results of a new study published in Nature Climate Change (Shrinking body size as an ecological response to climate change)
that suggested (according to the ABC) that "Climate change is reducing the size of many animal and plant species". The remainder of the story reads like a press release, with no critical input from ABC's groupthinkers.


The Australian covered the same story with a report from AP under the headline "Warming blamed for shrinking animals" that included this helpful caveat missing from ABC's typically one sided report:
But Yoram Yom-Tov, a zoologist at Tel Aviv University whose studies Dr Sheridan used in her research, said many species were shrinking, and global warming was not the sole reason.
"Changes in body size are a normal phenomenon," he said.
"Besides, most species will adapt to climate change."

The Sydney Morning Herald reported a day earlier with "Global warming blamed for shrinking species" by Seth Borenstein included a similar cautionary statement:

But Yoram Yom-Tov, a zoologist at Tel Aviv University whose studies Sheridan used in her research, said many species are shrinking, and you can't blame global warming exclusively.
"Changes in body size are a normal phenomenon," Yom-Tov wrote in an email. "When conditions are favourable, they increase in size or reproduce at higher rates, and when conditions are deteriorating, they do the opposite. I think that most species will adapt to climate change and survive. No need for alarm."

And Stanford biologist Terry Root, an expert in climate change, said the study's conclusions "seem kind of far-fetched".

ABC's uncritical report states "Fossil records, they found, were unambiguous: past periods of rising temperatures had led both marine and land organisms to become progressively smaller." (ed I guess that would account for the size of the Dinosaurs). 

Oddly just last week ABC were suggesting that cooling, not warming was responsible for shrinking things: from "Climate change 'shrank people and economy'"
"The Little Ice Age shrank people and the economy, leading to a general crisis in the 17th Century, say researchers."

ABC News: shrinking the quality of science reporting (at least they're consistent!).

Lies of the Climate Commission: Part 3

Roger Peilke jnr has a guest post by Ryan Crompton of Macquarie University's Risk Frontiers dealing with the Climate Commissions treatment of Bushfires. It's titled Treatment of Bushfires by the Australian Climate Commission.

On  page 40 of its report (The Critical Decade) the climate commission, states that 'The intensity and seasonality of large bushfires in southeast Australia appears to be changing, with climate change a possible contributing factor (Cai et al. 2009c)."

Crompton is joint author of an important study the ABC did not feel newsworthy. This study, omitted from the report by the Climate Commission (whose commissioners can not be relied upon for accurate information about climate science-see Part 1.), found that "that there is no discernable evidence that normalized building damage is being influenced by climate change due to the emission of greenhouse gases". The study remains unreported by the ABC. Its authors recently comprehensively smacked down critics of the study in the peer reviewed press. 

Crompton's post deals with the use of (Cai et al, 2009) as a supporting reference for the statement made by our climate commission: 

My main issue is the report’s use of a key reference, the study by Cai et al. (2009c) entitled “Positive Indian Ocean dipole events precondition southeast Australia bushfires”, to support the statement that 

“the intensity and seasonality of large bushfires in southeast Australia appears to be changing, with climate change a possible contributing factor”

While I have no issue with the Cai et al. study itself (we cited this in our recent bushfire paper), at best, the use of it in the Commission’s report is clumsy, and at worst, misleading.

Crompton goes on to state:

If instead the statement in the report was referring to impacts, then why was the conclusion from our research not cited here – that there is "no discernable evidence that the normalized Australian bushfire building damage (1925-2009) is being influenced by climate change due to the emission of greenhouse gases"(PDF)? 

Concluding:

In sum, as far as the bushfire sub-section of the Climate Commission’s report is concerned, it seems that both accuracy and clarity have been sacrificed for economy. And that, unfortunately, will always do far more harm than good. 

Read the whole post at Roger' blog. This seems newsworthy, will ABC report it?

Extreme drought predictions little more than hot air

ABC once again push all the alarmist buttons with this headline "Earth could see extreme drought in 30 years" covering a study that reports on the findings of a new paper titled Drought under global warming: a review by National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Aiguo Dai. Pity ABC did not spend the time to investigate past the press release. Roger Pielke Snr points out some items missing from ABC's coverage: 

The National Science Foundation Funds Multi-Decadal Climate Predictions Without An Ability To Verify Their Skill

"This UCAR press release and the article itself are not scientifically robust. Buried within this material are the significant cavaets:
1. “Dai cautioned that the findings are based on the best current projections of greenhouse gas emissions. What actually happens in coming decades will depend on many factors, including actual future emissions of greenhouse gases as well as natural climate cycles such as El Niño.”
2. “Future efforts to predict drought will depend on models’ ability to predict tropical SSTs.”

In other words, there is NO way to assess the skill of these models are predicting drought as they have not yet shown any skill in SST predictions on time scales longer than a season, nor natural climate cycles such as El Niño [or the PDO, the NAO, ect].

Funding of multi-decadal regional climate predictions by the National Science Foundation which cannot be verified in terms of accuracy is not only a poor use of tax payer funds, but is misleading policymakers and others on the actual skill that exists in predicting changes in the frequency of drought in the future."

Once again ABC miss the real story.

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

Big Tim and Mrs Pailing beat Academy to the punch

In a report titled "Scientists unite in fresh warming warning" ABC's PM interview ANU's Prof. Kurt Lambeck about a new pamphlet from the Australian Academy of Science (AAS) spruiking climate alarmism. Professor Lambeck sees the "quality of the science improving with time" and with the publication of papers such as:
"A statistical analysis of Multiple Temperature proxies: Are reconstructions of surface temperatures over the last 1000 years reliable" by McShane and Wyner recently published in the Annals of Applied Statistics; and
"On the Diagnosis of Radiative Feedback in the Presence of Unknown Radiative Forcing" by
Spencer, R. W., and W. D. Braswell in press at the Journal of Geophysical Research,
"A Critical Review of Global Surface Temperature Data Products" by Ross McKitrick SRN working paper,
"Panel and Multivariate Methods for Tests of Trend Equivalence in Climate Data Series" by Ross McKitrick, Stephen McIntyre and Chad Herman in press at Atmospheric Science Letter, 
"Reconstruction of regional mean sea level anomalies from tide gauges using neural networks" by Manfred Wenzel and Jens Schröter published in the JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 115, C08013, 15 PP., 2010
doi:10.1029/2009JC005630, 

we can only agree. It is surprising however that the AAS and ABC have chosen to ignore the results of all these and other publications that challenge the IPCC's position.

The AAS rest their case on four principals:
1. The physical principal of the greenhouse effect  - that shows temperatures will rise with increased concentrations of greenhouse gases. However for CO2 this means a rise of about 1 degree for each doubling of CO2, hardly alarming.
2. The record of the distant past - which includes the surprising finding passed over by the AAS that temperature and CO2 are disconnected. For instance a major glaciation occurred during the Ordovician at a time when CO2 concentrations were about 5-10 times current levels.
3. Measurements of the recent past (the last 100 years)  - which are currently no higher than the well documented medieval warm period about 1000 years ago, and are tainted by Urban Heat Island effects; and
4. Climate models that erroneously assume high climate sensitivity to CO2 increases.

According to Prof Lambeck it took the AAS 8 months to put its pamphlet together. Surely a waste of AAS money given its alarming claims were put to bed by a series of mere cartoons published over a year ago. Firstly, on the science by  "We're not scared anymore Mr Gore" featuring Mrs Pailing, and secondly on the policy response to climate change by "The Prince of Precaution" featuring Big Tim's little monster. Surprisingly ABC have assisted somewhat in their publication. Limited hard copies of both remain available through Little Skeptics Press.

No sense of History

Something odd has happened at the ABC, it appears Auntie has forgotten about history. Perhaps of sign of Goldfish Syndrome? How else to explain this woeful opinion piece by one of ABC's resident dangerous man made global warming criers: Sarah Phillips. In her piece "One swallow does not a summer make" Sara sees the signs of climate disaster in this years weather events, linking 7 weather events with dangerous man made climate doom. Her piece is self contradictory though, as she goes on to conclude: "Weird weather will continue to be a fact of life. Those who both believe the climate is changing and those who doubt it will always point to a day or run of strange weather and use it as an example to illustrate their point of view. But this is a temptation that must be resisted by both sides of the climate change argument. It is only the long term careful measurement of indicators that can reliably show whether or not the climate is changing." Pity that Sara didn't resist the temptation.

Here are Sara's portents of climate doom for 2010:

1. In March, Perth experienced a thumping hailstorm

2. Mini Cyclone on Melbourne in March

3. Flooding in QLD

4.our coldest winter night for more than 30 years.

5.Lennox Head has experienced a tornado

6. Alice Springs has had its coldest day on record

7. Melbourne basked in an unprecedented run of 123 consecutive days over 20°C.

With no sense of history is it any wonder that every storm, every drought, every hailstone gets hailed as "unprecedented", a sign of worse to come. Let's compare  the portents of climate doom of 2010 with another random year, lets take 1953,  before modern warming-surely things were much calmer back then.

1.Freak wind storm lashes Perth! 

"The blast, accompanied by hail, was brief but devastating and was followed by heavy rain"

2.Hail fury rips £1½m. havoc as city wilts in storm

"THE fiercest hailstorm in Melbourne's history yesterday damaged more than half the homes, Shops and buildings in the metropolitan area. Destruction is estimated at£1,500,000."

3. Flooding in Queensland

"Flooding rivers and creeks marooned at least, 175 motorists during the week-end."

4.Equalled Coldest July Day 

"A heavy blanket of fog yesterday prevented the temperature in Canberra rising above 40.3 degrees, thus equalling the coldest July day on record."

5.Tornado Damages Brisbane Suburbs

"BRISBANE, Tuesday. A tornado caused more than £3,000 damage in less than two square miles in the Milchclton-Gaylhorne area near Brisbane to-day."

6.SNOW IN VIC.(in February!)

"MELBOURNE, Monday.-Snow was falling on the loftier peaks of the Victorian Alps to-night when a burst of wintry weather swept through the State."

7. COOL SWIM AFTER HEAT-WAVE 

"Betty McNamara, of Ultimo, and Len Williams, of Redfern, took their cocker spaniel for a swim at Bondi last night. They were cooling off after Sydney's record day of heat."
A pretty close match. But wait there's more...

VIOLENT STORM IN MELBOURNE 

Farmer dies in storm

LIGHTNING ROCKS SUBURBS

WORST EVER KNOWN

Cyclones Bring Flood Danger To East Australian Coast

Worst fog in years "stopped" city for a night

FOOD DROPPED TO FLOOD VICTIMS

You want steak knives with that?...

'Flu Worst Since 1918

VICTORIA FACES BIG FLOOD THREAT

Heavy Flood Damage In Victoria

"WORST" POLIO OUTBREAK

Four Injured By Huge Hailstones

Hail havoc in North

Grasshopper Plague May Be One of Worst

But wait there's more...

Threat Of "Worst Potato Famine For Years"

Gales lash Tasmania Seasickness — on Hobarts ferry! 

RICHMOND RIVER FLOODS MAKE MANY HOMELESS IN LISMORE

Storm Lashes W.A. Coastal Areas

FIVE TONS OF DEAD MICE

Hail havoc in North

Rain Damage At Nubeena

We'll even throw in the table!

The 'cool change' made a mess of Melbourne's summer frocks

CORANGAMITE FLOOD AREAS "BECOMING WORSE"

Dust Storms Ruin Wheat

Year of crazy weather

Violent Hail Storm At St. Marys

Flood kills 10,000 Qld. sheep 

BUSHFIRE ON MOUNTAINS

And the chairs...

Bushfire Peril In Q'land

STORM DAMAGE £50,000

SUDDEN STORM IN CITY

STORM DISRUPTS STRAIT SHIPPING

Storm Lashes W.A. Coastal Areas

Farmer dies in storm

Drought Warning

Hey take the whole dining room!

FARMERS FACING DROUGHT RUIN

Drought Hits Coastal Farms

Drought Plight In Tablelands

DROUGHT DECIMATES CATTLE

Drought In The Suburbs

DROUGHT HITS NORTH COAST FARMS

Wheat Men Fear Drought

These are but a handful of the weird weather calamities to make the news in 1953. It seems like the swallows fly every year if you take the time to look out of the fishbowl.

                           

More local, regional and international weather calamities from 1953 or other years can be found at the National Library's collection of Australian Newspapers http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/