(Above: more alarmist ranting from scientists. And they're giving it away for free here. Socialists. You can even order up a hard copy. Tree killers!)
Disturbing, shocking news, with confirmation that your Bureau of Meteorology and your CSIRO are part of the international collective dedicated to the dissemination of the global black helicopter conspiracy called by alarmists and hysterics "climate change".
Worse, but naturally, the best way to find out about this international conspiracy is by consulting your ABC.
Yep, there's Weather bureau backs climate change, as Sarah Clark reports the view of the Weather Bureau director's director Greg Ayers that a century's worth of climate records definitively shows that weather patterns are shifting and that the planet has been warming.
"When we look back over the last 50 years or so and look at the succeeding decade as we roll forward, what we see ... is a trend of increasing temperatures from decade to decade," Dr Ayers said.
"We also see shifts in patterns of rainfall with the drying in the east and the south and the west of the continent.
"There is an increase in temperature in the surface oceans around Australia as well that goes hand in hand with the ... surface temperature increases over the continent, and there's also ... a rise in sea level."
The man even has the cheek to suggest that Australians consult the bureau's data for themselves, boasting of 100 climate reference stations, and preening about how they're comparable with anywhere in the world, when any decent conspiracy theorist knows they're riddled with errors.
Worse still, the CSIRO has got into the act, and once again it's your ABC reporting the views of a mendacious set of scientists, as CSIRO chief defends climate science. It's exceptionally disturbing to have the views of scientists reported, when it's a well known fact that able scientists led by Piers Akerman, Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt have established the real science with extensive field observations, and detailed rigorous theories.
Climate change is a fact, says China, and naturally the story is in your ABC, yet another canard in print. What would the Chinese know about climate change? At least up against Rupert's minions.
No wonder ABC chairman Maurice Newman took his ABC to task for shoddy reporting of climate change. If the ABC keeps on reporting the views of scientists and the Chinese, who knows where it might all end. Oh that's right, you can read all about it in your ABC's coverage of Newman, starting with ABC chair criticises climate change coverage.
Now if you go looking for the news of the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO in the Murdoch press, it's a struggle. As it should be. A free press means the freedom to ignore dissenting scientific views after all. Nick Leys in the Herald Sun fronts up with Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO weight into climate change debate to counter sceptics such as Lord Christopher Monckton.
Sure using Monckton's name is a stretch - he left these shores awhile ago - but hey Monckton is a lord and much more full of gravitas and interest than actual dull boffins at the head of dull Australian organisations interested in black helicopters and climate change.
About the only insight you gather from The Australian - a haven for climate change deniers for years - is an editorial celebrating the Cool voice of reason on climate. It sensibly argues for Australia to do nothing, and welcomes informed sensible debate which proves that climate change hasn't amounted to much to date, and that therefore doing nothing before other nations do something is a brave first step .... Let's show the world we care by continuing on as if nothing is happening.
That's why it was so amusing and heartening and cheering to read our very own prattling Polonius asserting in Your ABC's growth strategy: take more of your money, that:
The ABC does not like hearing this. But there is more diversity on Rupert Murdoch's Fox News than can be found on most ABC programs.
Oh he's always good for a laugh is our muse when in Hamlet mode. Now for a truly balanced view what we need is Glenn Beck.
In a speech last year Mark Scott advocated an increased role for the public broadcaster as an agent for the delivery of Australia's ''soft power'' as a form of ''soft diplomacy''. According to Scott, it is the ABC which is capable of putting Australia's ''culture, values and policies on show''. But is it? After almost four years as managing director, Scott has still not found one conservative or right-of-centre personality to present any of the ABC's most influential programs.
Yes, where is Glenn Beck when we need him. Sssh, I think what Gerard's really saying is that the ABC hasn't found him a gig as a conservative or right of centre personality, to present one of the ABC's most influential programs. Say Media Watch.
But when he's not displaying the personality of a pompous prig, doesn't Henderson display the personality of a coconut? And what about Michael Duffy and Paul Comroy-Thomson on Counterpoint? Sssh, they're not personalities, and they appear on Radio National, which has an audience numbered in the hundreds, and anyway they've sold out because they appear on the ABC. It's a point of pride for right wing personalities not to appear on the ABC, which would involve sullying their integrity and show breath-taking hypocrisy for taking cash from put-upon taxpayers.
Especially when yearning for the good old days of Jonathan Shier:
The only program that consciously employs such commentators - ABC1's Insiders - was an initiative during Jonathan Shier's time as managing director.
Well there's more of the prattling Polonius, much more of it. How he was roused to scribble by thoughts of the ABC's annual soiree in Canberra tonight, as they seek to lull and beguile the politicians and demand more cash, led by the considered and reasonable Newman and his refusal to accept the word of scientists when able scholars like Tim Blair and Piers Akerman and Andrew Bolt are so much more to the point (not forgetting the Herald's able Miranda the Devine).
Completely unlike the vile, almost unmentionable Jonathan Holmes, who has set himself up as an arbiter of taste on matters media and whose program allows for no on-air debate. Which is strangely like Henderson's very own Media Watch Dog, which curiously allows no online debate at his very own Sydney Institute which prefers certain kinds of debates. Or at least certain outcomes and conclusions. Like how the ABC is stuffed ...
It's all about Holmes handing down his (unappealable) judgments each Monday night. In its two decades, Media Watch has had seven presenters, all of whom have been on the left.
Yep, 15 minutes a week for a socialist slacker season of much less than a year, in squillions of hours of broadcasting over a year on radio and television, and it sends the likes of Henderson into a frenzy. Not once with the valiant Henderson as presenter, or able to bore people silly by having endless arguments about the leftist elements presenting the program or turning it into the dull vicious stew you can find at the Media Watch Dog.
And he's so fey and flippant, that Jonathan Holmes, as he wrapped up the latest Media Watch (here):
Before we go, the punters among you may have laid money that I'd cover the thoughts of ABC Chairman Maurice Newman on the media's balance, or lack of it, on the climate change issue.
If so, you've done your dough. But if you're interested in my thoughts on that difficult topic, I've already expressed them, at some length, in the ABC's analysis and opinion portal, The Drum. (here)
There's a link to the piece, and to the Chairman's speech, on our website.
Leave your comments on that or any other topic there. Until next week, goodnight.
Asking for comments! How dare he!
But back to the prattling:
In an interview with PM, Newman said ''the ABC has probably been more balanced than most of the mainstream media'' in its handling of the climate change debate. Nevertheless, his implied criticism of the ABC was warranted.
The Australian media columnist Errol Simper is a long-time supporter of the public broadcaster. Yet he acknowledged yesterday ''it seemed, particularly in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit, that the bulk of ABC television and radio presenters were all in thrall to the weather alarmists''.
And now it seems that they're dangerously in the grip of the weather scientists. Who knows where it might all lead? Thank the lord that there's Rupert's minions out there beavering away.
Thoughtfully, Henderson saves one last deep chuckle, perhaps even a guffaw for the end as he celebrates the balance of Fox. I've added wiki links if you want to learn more about these American personalities:
Such left-of-centre commentators as Alan Colmes, Kirsten Powers, Joe Trippi and Juan Williams are regular Fox commentators. What's more, the Fox program News Watch hears the views of two conservatives and two liberals (in the American sense of the term) each week.
In the land of Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly this is a particularly grand and silly joke, as Faux Noise acts as the propaganda machine for Republicans and tea partiers throughout the land. That's why we love Henderson so. The way he oscillates between Hamlet and clownish grave digger in a flash. And then returns to gnaw at that irritating marrowless bone of fifteen minutes of broadcasting:
There is no debate on Media Watch. Newman is correct in drawing the ABC's attention to the need of a spirit of genuine inquiry. This will not occur until the ABC becomes genuinely pluralistic and junks fashionable group-think. Let's drink to that tonight.
Yes, above all, let's not in a spirit of genuine inquiry report on the doings of the weather bureau or the CSIRO. Let's keep on with the Murdoch group think.
Oh dear Australia, can the American dreaming and Fox News and Chairman Rupert's vision - all bow down to Chairman Rupert - be far away?
Meanwhile, Media Watch is doing something right. Each week it irritates the shit out of Henderson is another good week's work ...
(Below: as the ABC resolutely refuses to hire Gerard Henderson, surely the time is right for them to make an offer to bring Glenn Beck to the antipodes. Let's see how Beck and Chairman Rupert and Roger Ailes likes them taxpayers' apples).
See that all sounds very convincing but really it's just ostension in a fancy wrapper.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, really-truely not all scientists believe the bunkum that is AGW.
But you just don't get to hear contrary views. Do you?
Here's an extract that talks about a paper written by our very own ABC's ex-TV weatherman Mike Pook (at least I think it's him). Pooky wasn't all long legs, boobs and short skirts, he's also got a PhD.
But it's not reported in the oh so insular Australian media (expect by me).
And, in what can only be described as irony I read The Guardian for info on anti-AGW. (Although it could also be termed self-abuse)
" In a third paper, accepted for publication by the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Climatology, three scientists – two Australians and one American, revisit data on upper-atmospheric humidity. The three are Garth Paltridge, Albert Arking and Michael Pook, and they have found that, contrary to climate model predictions, water vapour in the upper atmosphere is acting as a brake on global warming.
Established climate models assume constant humidity at all levels in the atmosphere as the temperature rises. But, using data from weather balloons accumulated over 35 years, these researchers find this is not so. At the lower levels, it is higher than expected, dropping below normal at the higher altitudes.
This, they say, implies that “long-term water vapour feedback is negative – that it would reduce rather than amplify the response of the climate system to external forcing such as that from increasing atmospheric CO2.” This, in one fell swoop, challenges the central premise of the warmists that, once CO2 reaches a certain level, we experience runaway global warming."