The hypocritical Coral Whisperer

A recent post by Coral Whisperer Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg on his tax payer funded blog "Climate Shifts" reveals Physicist Professor Willie Soon of Harvard University's Center for Astrophysics has received funding from (shock-horror) companies involved in the fossil fuel industry (including "dirty" coal). However this is no secret, Prof. Soon's sources of funding are well known and have been disclosed as part of the normal publishing process. Other sources of funding have included: the US Government, USAF and NASA.
In comments Professor Hoegh-Guldberg reveals he has also received funding from (shock-horror) companies involved in fossil fuels (including "dirty" coal) - namely Rio Tinto who own Rio Tinto Alcan. (In 2008 Rio Tinto mined over 72Mt of "dirty" coal that helped power our economy, our hospitals, our schools, our theaters, our universities thereby saving and enriching millions of lives in the process). According to Rio Tinto's publicity: The Great Barrier Reef Research Foundation and Comalco Aluminium Limited (Comalco), a wholly owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto, have formed the Future Reef partnership to support research-based initiatives to protect the Great Barrier Reef.
According to The Great Barrier Reef Foundation. This major four year $1 million partnership between the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and Rio Tinto Alcan was specifically developed to foster understanding about the environmental impacts of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef.
Listed on Professor Hoegh-Guldberg's project page is this project:

2009 - 2014	Ensuring a Sustainable Queensland through the Science-Based Solutions to Climate Change on the Great Barrier Reef
Abstract:	Climate change poses a growing threat to the future of the GBR and the industries and people that depend on it (GBR 2006, > $6 billion revenue; 60,000 jobs). Our response to climate change requires the world's best practice science to underpin the development of effective management and policy. This Fellowship research program will bring about a quantum leap in our understanding of how to respond to climate change (including developing key management tools) by attacking core issues (global warming, ocean acidificiation) with significant resources and one of the largest networks of research, industry and management agencies focused on coral reefs.
Researchers:	Hoegh-Guldberg, I. O.
Funding Bodies:	Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority Great Barrier Reef Foundation
Total Funding:	$ 1,441,000

The total funding from fossil fuel sources cited on Professor Hoegh-Guldberg's blog for Professor Soon is $1,033,100 between 1994 and 2010. It seems that Professor Hoegh-Guldberg has eclipsed that amount in a single grant, worth over $1.4 Million from sources associated with fossil fuels. Not bad for a coral whisperer. Best not to mention Professor Hoegh-Guldberg's connections with Greenpeace.

The question now is: Will Professor Hoegh-Guldberg return the funds tainted by "dirty" coal or risk being branded a hypocrite? I'm sure Rio Tinto would be interested to know what the good Professor thinks of their product.

For the ABC, will they now provide coverage of where Professor Hoegh-Guldberg gets his funding from, including "dirty" coal. Didn't see that on Australian story.

Image problem continues

About our inquires about it's problem coordinating headlines and images on the ABC environment site ABC recently replied (on 13/5/2011)
"ABC Innovation has advised that stories from across the ABC that are filed with no image are randomly assigned an image on the Environment portal from a pool of images. I understand relevant ABC Innovation staff are aware of the discordant match-ups that this system has produced and have been working on a solution. The examples published on your website have been brought to the attention of ABC Innovation management."


We initially advised ABC of the issue on the 4th of April. It's now July and the problem is still not fixed!

ABC's collared dingos

ABC NEWS: June 2011 productivity report

Summary Report for Policy Makers: ABC NEWS - Continuing to do Less with More

Stories: Total stories posted in ABC News Archives for June 2011 was 5908. This is the lowest on record, 758 less stories than last year's poor performance, nearly 3000 less stories than 2008.

Year  Total Stories 
2003      7230 
2004      6920 
2005      6899 
2006      6995 
2007      7988 
2008      8894 
2009      7134 
2010      6666
2011      5908
Staffing: Staff numbers for ABC News for financial year 2010-2011 are not yet available. Using a model of ABC staff numbers we predict staff levels for June 2011 to be approximately 960.84 (note actual figures will be posted when released by ABC). Figures are based on ABC annual reports.

Year   Staff 
2003   766.24 
2004   735.04 
2005   756.6 
2006   770.68 
2007   842.37 
2008   865.59 
2009   913.14 
2010   947.36
2011   960.84*
Productivity: With stories at a record low and staff at record highs, it comes at no surprise that ABC news productivity is at a record low of just 6.1 stories per staff member for the month. 

Year  Stories per staff per month 
2003      9.4 
2004      9.4 
2005      9.1 
2006      9.1 
2007      9.5 
2008     10.3 
2009      7.8 
2010      7.1

2011      6.1

Missing News: Great Barrier Reef - no net decline between 1995 and 2009

Another story missing in action. This one about a paper published back in March in the journal PLoS One. The paper titled Disturbance and the Dynamics of Coral Cover on the Great Barrier Reef (1995–2009) by Kate Osborne, Andrew M. Dolman, Scott C. Burgess  and Kerryn A. Johns includes the following findings (below), that appear to contradict recent claims reported by the ABC made by a certain coral whisperer.

"Monitoring data collected annually from fixed sites at 47 reefs across 1300 km of the GBR indicate that overall regional coral cover was stable (averaging 29% and ranging from 23% to 33% cover across years) with no net decline between 1995 and 2009."


"Crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci) outbreaks and storm damage were responsible for more coral loss during this period than either bleaching or disease despite two mass bleaching events and an increase in the incidence of coral disease. "


"While the limited data for the GBR prior to the 1980's suggests that coral cover was higher than in our survey, we found no evidence of consistent, system-wide decline in coral cover since 1995." 


"This study indicates that at the scale of the whole GBR there was no net decline in live hard coral cover between 1995 and 2009."


"Surveys in 1998 and 2002 identified large areas of reef where coral was bleached. Our results indicate that mortality was not widespread or severe at depths of 6–9 meters. "


 "The impact of bleaching and coral disease, to date, was not severe on our sites."

ABC's war on Science

Australian Climate Madness start a new series of posts under the header ABC's war on Science. There is no end to the war stories (best of luck keeping up with the deluge Simon).  Here's a link to Part 1.

Readers here are invited to explore our missing news which captures just some of the stories of ABC's many victims in its on going campaign or unreason. See also our series of posts looking at ABC's handling of climate science in particular HERE.

Missing News: Hurricane activity all time low

Nothing thus  far on ABC News about a new paper published in the journal "Geophysical Research Letters" by Dr Ryan Maue of Florida State University titled Recent historically low global tropical cyclone activity,  (doi:10.1029/2011GL0477110 - in press), that finds that since Hurricane Katrina, global tropical cyclone frequency and energy have decreased dramatically, and are currently at near-historical record lows.

ABC have previously covered news on tropical storm activity:
Climate change to increase bushfires and cyclones

I guess the headline "Hurricane activity at all time low" doesn't really gel with the ABC's climate change sale pitch.

Media Watch Dog

Gerard Henderson sweeps a lovely cover drive to the boundary to chock up 100 posts on Media Watch Dog.
Congratulations Gerard!

To see the Issue 100 follow the link (HERE).