Speaking of agendas ...

Sad to say, the pond has no agenda.

It doesn't have an overt or a covert or a hidden agenda, unless you count as an agenda reading the commentariat and commenting on their commentariat perversity.

You won't find any thoughts on day to day incidents, such as the 2DayFM affair, if only because the pond has only the dimmest knowledge of the facts or the station, never having willingly or knowingly listened to that wretched broadcaster for a nanosecond.

The pond instead turns to the commentariat for guidance on the world, so you can imagine the complete sense of utter loss when generally grumpy Paul "Magic Water" Sheehan failed to show up for duty today.

Oh sure at first there was the business of dancing in the street and whooping and hollering for joy.

But then came a sense of emptiness and loss. Who on earth could take the king curdmudgeon's place?

The Punch, for example, is full of lightweights, and sure enough a lightweight by the name of Tim Blair turned up to scribble for the blog Where were the adults in the room at 2DayFM, seizing on the moment to open with a rant about how regulated the hapless Blair, and the rest of us are:

We already have enough laws, right down to inconsequential matters such as the colour of cigarette packets and what we’re allowed to wear on our heads when we ride bicycles. Beyond laws, we have conventions and standards that further guide behaviour. Barely any element of our lives escapes regulation.

At which point the pond decided to wish Blair an inconsequential dose of throat or mouth or lung cancer or a hearty dose of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (since emphysema is too hard to spell, even if the lingering memory of a smoker gasping to drag oxygen into the lungs while walking up a few steps still haunts the pond).

Perhaps Blair will suffer the ironical fate of that motorcylist killed in helmet law protest as he blathers on about regulation, especially as he seems to end up supporting the actual need to regulate the media, if only to apply the actual regulations currently in existence.

But truth to tell Blair is a lightweight, a gadfly, and no substitute for Sheehan, though his turning out for The Punch suggests just how dire it's going to get for that blog in the Xmas season.

What we needed was a rag in full triumphalist agenda-laden mode, and happily The Australian on a Monday is in full triumphalist climate denialist mode. That take Mr. Sheehan, you're not missed, not missed at all, as the rag does one of its block-booking, top of the page ma, compilations and emarks on yet another digital crusade:

Yep, the rag has been running a climate denialist agenda for yonks, so there's no reason to expect it to change its stripes, even right at the moment other outlets are running stories like Climate change conforming to UN predictions: scientists.

Professor Matt England from the University of New South Wales says the findings send a message to doubters. 
 "Anybody out there lying that the IPCC projects are overstatements or that the observations haven't kept pace with the projections is completely off line with this ... the analysis is very clear that the IPCC projections are coming true," he said.

Poor Prof England, does he really think that The Australian will pay any attention to the truth?

When it can run with a headline grabber like Forget the doom: coral reefs will bloom (behind the paywall because you have to pay to save the reefs and Chairman Rupert) by Graham Llloyd, who, it is proposed in his byline is the rag's environment editor, which is a bit like saying 'open secret' or 'liquid gas' or 'jumbo shrimp' or 'genuine imitation' or 'deafening silence' or any other oxymoronic jape that might help you make it through the day.

In his usual way, Lloyd assembles a grab bag of references to arrive at conclusions which will satisfy the climate denialist tendencies of the paper's editorial stance.

So it is that he quotes a paper allegedly in Nature: Climate Change today, by lead author Merinda Nash with a quote from the paper that shows up only in Lloyd's column (google it and you will draw a blank).

But if you follow the Nash reference, you'll discover her name is attached to a report card for 2012 which is far less optimistic than the simplistic, simple-minded Lloydian notion that coral reefs will bloom as climate science kicks in, and instead suggests that acidification poses more than the odd threat, most notably because research has yet to discover many things.

You can get hold of The Marine Climate Change - Impacts and Adaptation Report Card for 2012 in pdf form by heading off here, and reading:

Ocean acidification has the potential to significantly affect calcification and a range of other processes in economically significant habitats (e.g., coral reefs, oyster beds), food webs, regionally important ecosystems (e.g. Southern Ocean pteropods) and with implications for planetary geochemical cycles (e.g. through corals, foraminifera, coccolithophores). However, our present understanding of the impact of ocean acidification on physiological processes is informed largely from short-term laboratory experiments whilst we currently know very little about the response of individual organisms, populations, and communities in natural settings and under gradual change scenarios [Doney et al., 2009]. Along with observations of carbonate chemistry. There is a need for baseline observations of important marine populations and wider community responses to acidification in key Australian marine ecosystems (e.g. Southern Ocean, Great Barrier Reef). In concert with this fundamental research, we need to understand how impacts on calcification and other processes will affect the overall structure and function of entire ecosystems and what the consequences of significant changes are likely to be in terms of those ecosystems especially important to the millions of Australians that depend on them for food, livelihoods, and tourism.

Now it's pretty hard to get "forget the doom, coral reefs will bloom" out of that kind of uncertainty, but Lloyd manages, not because he's interested in the science, not because he wants to assemble an interesting story about the science, but because he wants to assemble a little bit of glossy window-dressing that advises the punters "all will be well", without providing any references or links that allow any kind of meaningful follow-up to his story.

Is it beyond a reporter to provide links to the references referenced, and the scientists in the story?

Sure thing, at least if you're in the business of providing smoke and mirrors for The Australian. Old media and its quaint old 'trust us' ways ... as if the pond and Red Riding Hood had never heard of the wolf at the door ...

Another example. Lloyd references another scientist, who it seems is astonished at the news that all will be well, and forget the gloom, celebrate the bloom:

The early findings from the survey have astounded the scientists involved, including Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a leading global figure in raising concerns about crown of thorns starfish, coral bleaching and ocean acidification. 
 "The survey has shown that deeper reefs may be protected to an extent from some of the perils of climate-driven events such as mass coral bleaching and storms," he said. "These deeper corals may be important refuges if we get big changes in the shallows."

Indeed. Rush off to Ove Hoegh-Guldberg's blog, Climate Shifts, and it seems he hasn't yet managed to put his astounded astonishment into print, and as recently as December first, was running stories that suggested we should forget the bloom, and remember the doom, as NOAA proposed listing 66 reef-building coral species under the Endangered Species Act. Yep he was parroting the NOAA line:

NOAA has identified 19 threats to the survival of coral, including rising ocean temperatures, ocean acidification, and coral disease. As carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere, the oceans warm beyond what corals can withstand, leading to bleaching, and the frequency and severity of disease outbreaks increase, causing die-offs.

Which reminds us that the pond doesn't have an agenda, but it's clear you can't say that about people scribbling for The Australian.

Which however does explain why the rag would turn to Tim Wilson who urges Australia to Junk Kyoto and the carbon tax.

Wilson goes under the grand title of "director of climate change policy at the Institute of Public Affairs", which has its oxymoronic splendours, because according to the IPA, there is no climate change happening, which explains why there should be no policy, but why there should be a Tim Wilson to explain it all, though perhaps his title should more accurately read "director of no need for policies because climate change isn't happening if you listen to the Institute of Public Affairs".

If you've got a moment or perhaps a lifetime, the IPA provides a guide to its consistent climate science denialism. You can start here with the latest works, but if you've the desire, you can trawl through the entire news publication effort, an extended burst of dissembling and distortion which is a marvel, and which generally follows the theme that climate change isn't happening, but if it is happening, there's no need to do anything about it, because the coral reefs will bloom. (Or you might just settle for a short read, The Institute of Climate Change Denial).

But then it's long been known that the IPA has an agenda, and so does The Australian, home away from home for the IPA, which is why you will also find Graham Lloyd offering in the same bunch of stories, Doha grabs faux victory, (behind the paywall so you can spend your time better employed listening to the parrots squawk), and an editorial Climate talks dead as a Doha, free to read, and definitely over-priced, along with a shock horror sensationalist $3 billion a year price, as if that was the only price to pay should the worst predictions of climate science come to pass.

In it the comedy stylings of the editor are given a full flight of fancy, and if you don't chortle at this line, you really have no sense of humour:

The Australian has consistently backed an economically responsible approach to climate change ...

What the editorial meant to say was that The Australian has consistently backed any climate denialist within cooee that it could dig up and give a free run to, and today's effort is just more of the same.

What the rag wants is to dismantle the world government conspiracy represented by the UN (those pesky black helicopters don't you know), so that the US, China, India, Japan, South Korea, a few of the larger European countries and Australia can go out and do it on their own, and to hell with the rest of the world:

Free of the vested interests of bit players, a smaller forum would be better placed to agree on cutting emissions through harnessing technology and efficient market mechanisms.

Yes, those naughty bit players with their vested interests - like sea water washing through their villages - are ruining everything, and we should let the big players work it out, because they're entirely free of vested interests.

Like Australia, which simply has no vested interest in digging up coal and shipping it out of country as fast as it can manage ...

So what's the takeaway message from today's effort? Why surely it's to put the IPA in charge of climate science, and then if we take an economically responsible approach to climate change and do nothing or at least three fifths of flying fuck all, why then a thousand reefs will bloom ...

Or some such thing.

Which is why it's handy that the pond doesn't have an agenda. 

There's no need, not when the hypocritical stench of the zillions of agendas emanating from The Australian are enough to satisfy anyone with a taste for agendas ...

(Below: and here's a few oldie cartoons in case you've decided not to check out the IPA's back catalogue of climate denialism, the first here, and xkcd in his usual home here).