By Dr. John Happs ~
“Several years ago, I stopped listening and watching the news and current affairs on the ABC. I was sick of being consistently fed what I believe was biased and unbalanced reporting.”
Robert Onfrey (www.robertonfray.com)
Australian Broadcasting Corporation Logo
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) was established in 1932 and is required to be politically independent since its charter is enshrined in legislation under the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act, 1983. The ABC provides radio, television (since 1956) and online services throughout metropolitan and regional Australia.
Unlike other Australian broadcasters, the ABC is privileged in that it receives more than $1 billion in annual funding, courtesy of the Australian taxpayer. Those taxpayers rightly expect the public broadcaster be fair, balanced and impartial in all its programs yet, when it comes to broadcasting evidence-based information about climate change and energy, it is clear that the ABC is anything but fair, balanced and impartial.
James Paterson has noted:
“On both radio and television, and across regional, metropolitan and national programs, the ABC consistently and overwhelmingly favoured renewable energy and treated the coalmining and coal-seam gas industries with extreme disfavour. This suggests the problem of bias at the ABC is endemic across the organisation.”
http://ipa.org.au/news/3155/environment-of-fear-as-abc-fails-bias-test
The ABC is a serial offender when it comes to spreading falsehoods about climate change and there are so many examples of blatant bias in this area that it is difficult to know which ones to highlight.
Journalist Tom Switzer warned that the ABC’s left-wing bias is entrenched, incestuous and that climate skeptics, however well-qualified and informed, will never get a soft interview.
Switzer’s claim is diametrically opposed to the ABC’s editorial policies that require a diversity of perspectives to be presented so that “over time no significant strand or belief is knowingly excluded or disproportionately represented.”
Former chairman of the ABC, Maurice Newman agrees with Switzer, saying the ABC’s Science Show, for example, is more politics than science.
Newman added:
“A powerful group has captured the corporation, at least on climate change.”
And:
“What it (the ABC) does have is a duty to all Australians to broadcast honestly the best available evidence on both sides of the argument so that we can make up our own minds. This is not happening.”
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2013/07/the-climate-of-bias-at-their-abc/
Gideon Rozner, Director of Communications at the Institute of Public Affairs went further, saying;
“… evidence suggests that despite vague charter requirements for ‘independence’, the ABC is not impartial in any meaningful editorial sense. A 2013 study, for example, demonstrates that the voting intentions of ABC journalists substantially favour the Greens, especially when compared to other journalists and the population as a whole.”
https://image.s7.exacttarget.com/lib/fe8a137271630d7d7d/m/1/45261013-d271-4463-b002-1c15576e52fb.pdf
Dr. Lubos Motl was rightly shocked when he listened to the ABC’s Robyn Williams and his criticism of those with rational and evidence-based views about climate change. Williams childishly suggested that the denial of climate change is on a par with paedophilia, promotion of asbestos and drug trafficking. Motl responded:
“I encourage all the Australian readers to be deeply ashamed of their inability to fix their national public radio station and to eliminate hardcore totalitarian liars from institutions that are supposed to provide all the taxpayers with impartial information.”
https://motls.blogspot.com/2012/11/climate-propaganda-in-australia.html
The ABC has long been practicing deception about climate change. Looking back to 2008, we had Marian Wilkinson on the ABC’s Four Corners program exaggerating about Arctic sea ice, saying:
“It could be the greatest change to the planet’s environment many of us will ever see… The Arctic sea ice is retreating as climate change advances….”
And:
“If you want to see climate change happening before your eyes, scientists will tell you, go to the ends of the earth, and that is why we are here in the Arctic Circle…”
Adding to her Arctic sea ice ignorance, Wilkinson added:
“As the Louis ploughed through the thick sea ice we met one Arctic dweller already struggling with climate change – the polar bear… The US Government now estimates two thirds of its polar bear population could disappear within decades.”
Except that the Arctic was much warmer 6,000 years ago and 90% of global glaciers were smaller than they are today:
Andreev et al. (2008) reported:
“Grass grew 300-350 days a year in the late stages of the last glacial in the Siberian Arctic. This allowed horses, antelopes, and other large grazers (mammoths) to continuously reside at these high latitudes. Horses continued grazing on Arctic grass year-round until as recently as 2,200 years ago. Today these regions have tundra climates. Grazers can no longer survive in the modern colder-than-the-last-late-glacial conditions.”
https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/16847/1/And2007b.pdf
Arctic sea ice has not declined since Wilkinson made her unsubstantiated claim in 2008. It has fluctuated as it always has and always will into the foreseeable future:
Wilkinson’s alarmism about polar bear populations is equally fatuous, as pointed out by polar bear expert Dr. Susan Crockford who said:
“The US Geological Survey estimated the global population of polar bears at 24,500 in 2005.”
And:
“Additional surveys published 2015–2017 brought the total to near 28,500.”
And:
“Data published in 2018 brought that number to almost 29,500.”
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2019/02/State-of-the-polar-bear2018.pdf
Of course, there is little chance that the ABC will run any program saying they got it wrong and that both Arctic sea ice and polar bears are doing fine.
In 2009, the ABC’s Catalyst episode with Jonica Newby gave viewers a master class in climate change bias, arranging a soft interview with serial climate alarmist Dr. Will Steffen who maintained there was evidence that extreme weather events are increasing when even the IPCC could find no evidence to support that claim. In fact, empirical data show no increase in extreme weather:
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2017/04/05/reviewing-trends-in-extreme-weather/
Steffen was allowed to continue, again with no evidence provided, that there was no doubt in his mind that burning coal contributes to climate change and that the burning of fossil fuels meant:
“We’ve now got a problem on our hands”.
Presumably this is the same problem we were supposed to have had 30 years ago.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/floods-report-to-go-to-carbon-price-committee-20110117-19trl.html
Steffen also went unchallenged by Newby when he made the ridiculous claim that:
“Sea level rise is tracking at the upper-level range of projections.”
The late Professor Nils Axel-Morner who was arguably the world’s leading expert on sea level, said of his research findings:
“If you go around the globe, you find no sea level rise anywhere.”
https://climatism.wordpress.com/category/origins-of-the-global-warming-scam/
Steffen also went unchallenged when he made the equally ridiculous claim that:
“Ocean temperature is certainly tracking at the upper level.”
Except that it isn’t! Ocean temperatures, as recorded by the network of approximately 3,000 Argo buoys reveal, if anything, a slight cooling of the oceans.
Orme et al. (2018) showed that the North Atlantic sea-surface temperature is now colder than just about any other period in the last 7,000 years and peer-reviewed papers show ocean cooling elsewhere:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379118303573
Sea-surface temperatures in the South Atlantic and Southern Ocean are colder today than they have been at any time in the last 12,500 years:
Gomes et al. (2020) have shown that the sea-surface temperatures off the coasts of Lisbon were 5°C warmer about 11,000 years ago:
It is clear that the ABC is not interested in peer-reviewed, published studies that challenge sea-level, ocean temperature or extreme weather alarmism. The ABC’s mission appears to be about spreading climate alarm.
A visit to the ABC website “ABC Science” provides other excellent examples of either ignorance or bias when it comes to reporting on the link between atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and global temperature. Dr. Paul Willis correctly points out how graphs can be abused to use correlations to show causation over a limited period of time when there really is no link between the two variables. He gave the example of autism and organic food sales over a short time period:
Willis could have also shown how a short-time period inverse plot can also suggest a clear link. Consider the following:
The above might suggest the ludicrous notion that, as more people in the US visit Universal Studios, fewer people will be killed by lawnmowers.
Clearly, had these data been extended both backward and forward the correlation would quickly break down. Yet Willis falls into (or ignores) the same trap when he moves on to discuss global average temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations over a “brief and convenient” time period.
Willis ignored the longer record over geologic time showing that atmospheric carbon dioxide has never driven global temperature over the last 500 million years:
No comment from Willis about the fact that uncontaminated satellite data show no significant global warming over the last 20 years, despite rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
The position remained the same in 2022 when around 150 peer-reviewed, published papers pointed out the lack of global warming over extensive regions of the planet:
Willis said:
“We have known for over 100 years that CO2 molecules can store heat energy and, as a consequence, the more CO2 there is around in the atmosphere, the warmer it will be.”
Really? Tens of thousands of scientists would disagree with Willis but not one of them is likely get a fair interview from the ABC although the door at the ABC will always be open to climate lobbyists such as Greenpeace advocate Bill (call me Doctor) Hare.
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2021/12/a-marked-degree-of-misrepresentation/
Of more importance, had Willis bothered to look at the peer-reviewed, published literature, he would have found that a number of researchers have shown that, on those rare occasions when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and global temperature track closely (as in Willis’s short-term graph implies) it is temperature that drives carbon dioxide levels and not the other way round. Willis could have consulted any of these peer-reviewed, published papers:
Petit et al. (1999) — analysed 420,000 years of Vostok, and found that as the world cooled, the delay before CO2 began to fall was several thousand years. https://www.nature.com/articles/20859
Fischer et al. (1999) — described a CO2 lag of 600 plus or minus 400 years as the world warmed up from the last glacial maximum. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10073931/
Monnin et al. 2001 – looked at Dome Concordia (also in Antarctica) and found a CO2 delay on the recent rise out of the last major ice age to be 800 ± 600 years.
Mudelsee (2001) – Over the full 420,000 year Vostok history CO2 variations lag temperature by 1,300 ± 1000 years. https://www.manfredmudelsee.com/publ/pdf/The_phase_relations_among_atmospheric_CO2_content_temperature_and_global_ice_volume_over_the_past_420_ka.pdf
Caillon et al. 2003 – analysed the Vostok data and found a lag (where CO2 rises after temperature) of 800 ± 200 years. https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2406977/posts
Indermühle et al. (1999) – Found that changes in sea surface temperature were largely responsible for the observed millennial-scale changes of atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
https://www.nature.com/articles/18158
In 2010 Senator Malcolm Roberts lodged a complaint to the ABC Audience and Consumer Affairs about the Stateline interview (29th October, 2010) between Jessica van Vonderen and IPCC contributor and serial climate alarmist Dr. Hoegh-Guldberg.
The ABC’s Van Vonderen said:
“Queensland MPs also received some disturbing reading material this week a report outlining the impact of climate change on Queensland. Sea levels are rising faster than expected and there are predictions for more frequent severe weather events. The outlook for the Great Barrier Reef is grim too.”
All of which is unsubstantiated nonsense.
Roberts pointed out that inaccuracies were stated and/or implied by Hoegh-Guldberg and that the program failed to meet any standards of integrity, accuracy, openness and balance. Roberts added that Hoegh-Guldberg, in his role as Director of the Global Change Institute, is with an organisation that seeks research grants on the topic of global warming and he asked:
“I please request that ABC-TV interview Professor Peter Ridd and/or Dr Walter Starck to discuss the Great Barrier Reef’s health and resilience. These scientists are experts in their field and see the reef more than as just an emotive icon used by politicians and journalists inciting fear to push an agenda or by academics seeking research grants.”
And:
“One could easily conclude the ABC is interested more in alarm and hype than in science and evidence.”
https://climate.conscious.com.au/docs/20151012/4.7DTranscript.pdf
The ABC refers to Ove Hoegh-Guldberg as a world-renowned reef expert yet, investigative journalist Donna Laframboise points out how Hoegh-Guldberg has had close ties to activist organizations for the past 17 years. She reminds us that, between 1994 and 2000, Hoegh-Guldberg produced four reports about coral reefs and climate change that were funded, vetted, and published by Greenpeace and, since that time, he has written two more reports for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/10/24/book-excerpt-ipccs-activist-experts/
Dr. Peter Ridd made clear his views on the alarmism about the Great Barrier Reef from activist scientists:
“We can no longer rely on our science institutions. This is a very sad thing.”
And:
“Coral Reefs recover – the scientists make hay when it dies in a spectacular way but they are quiet when it recovers.”
And:
“The temperatures on the reef are not even significantly warmer than average on a hundred year timescale. Corals that bleach in one year will be less susceptible to bleaching in following years.”
https://www.2gb.com/podcast/peter-ridd/
In 2011 Catalyst reporter Mark Horstman took a different alarmist tack:
“Scientific institutions are working to combat a rising wave of attacks on the integrity of scientists and their work.”
We were told how:
“Mark Horstman highlights the damage being done to the public’s trust in science and the impact these attacks have on the personal lives of hard-working and conscientious scientists.”
If Horstman was referring to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as comprising hard-working and conscientious scientists, he really should have interviewed some of the many scientists who contributed to the IPCC process and resigned when they realised that this political/ideological organisation had no intention of providing unbiased information about our changing climate.
https://climatefact.org/scientists-about-the-un-ipcc/
Had Horstmann looked up comments from climate scientist, the late Dr. Vincent Gray, who contributed to every IPCC report, he would have seen Gray’s comment that the IPCC’s climate statements are:
“An orchestrated litany of lies.”
Had Horstmann looked up comments from climate scientist, Dr. William Gray, he would have seen:
“I am of the opinion that (global warming) is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people.”
In 2011 journalist Chris Kenny commented:
“To search for climate change references in the ABC archives is to drown in a rising tide of fear and loathing. To say the public broadcaster has campaigned on climate is now uncontroversial; even its outgoing chairman Maurice Newman spoke about the extent of its groupthink.”
And:
“With annual public funding of more than a billion dollars, it is incumbent upon our ABC to tackle significant national policy debates with an appropriate sense of objectivity and detachment and to play its part in encouraging sober, evidence-based discussion and analysis.”
https://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com/2011/11/abc-activism-not-journalism.html
In 2012 the ABC received a number of complaints following the Robyn Williams Science Show. Complaints included:
“The ABC should have more intelligence than to produce such a biased, evidence-free tirade such as this and call it science.”
And:
“I consider [the presenter’s] defamatory description of Climate Sceptics, of whom I am one, to be a very serious matter, which must be addressed by the ABC Board openly and transparently. This will protect the ABC’s reputation.”
And:
“In [the program] the most vile comparisons were drawn between climate change sceptics and various criminals including paedophiles by [the presenter] and [the professor].”
The ABC responded:
“The ABC’s editorial principles for impartiality note that balance should follow the weight of evidence. The ABC’s coverage appropriately rests with the weight of the broad consensus – that climate change is occurring and that human activities contribute to climate change.”
Apparently, ABC personnel appear not to know that consensus has no place in science. They also appear not to know that, if consensus is important to the ABC, then it should be made known that tens of thousands of scientists reject the ABC’s climate alarmism. Since 1998, more than 31,000 scientists, including geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers and environmental scientists, signed the Oregon Petition: http://www.petitionproject.org/ In 2008 over 1,500 scientists, including 200 with expertise and qualifications in climate science signed the Manhattan Declaration: http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=54
In 2013 we had another biased Catalyst program with Anja Taylor telling us about the looming climate apocalypse saying:
“Understanding exactly how a warmer world drives weather wild is crucial to predicting just how bumpy a ride we’re in for.”
We were also told that:
“This past year in Australia, we’ve seen plenty of heat. At the Bureau of Meteorology, forecasters have been watching record after record tumble.”
Dr. Karl Braganza from the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) was allowed to add to the alarm:
“And we talk about climate change in the future of 1,2,3, degrees – that’s actually hard to imagine.”
Indeed it is! But how far into the future do we have to wait? After all, Al Gore told us in 2006 that we had 10 years left to prevent the Earth from turning into a total frying pan. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/quotation-of-the-day-another-failed-prediction-about-climate-catastrophe/ Braganza seemed oblivious to the complete failure of the many computer model predictions and how they have been spectacularly wrong. Not surprisingly, Taylor failed to mention record low temperatures around the world and the temperature stasis over the last 20 years.
In 2013, Geoffrey Luck, who was an ABC journalist for 26 years, related his attempts to bring about some balance about climate change on the ABC’s science program Ockham’s Razor. Luck reflected on the comprehensive rebuttal of climate alarm by Des Moore and Tom Quirk and suggested to Robyn Williams that:
“.. all we need is a programme of O.R. devoted to the application of these sound principles to the questionable science of AGW, the frightening predictions of the IPCC, the political hectoring of Nicholas Stern and Ross Garnaut, and their unforgiveable acceptance by government.”
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2013/07/refuting-the-myths-of-climate-change/ Williams replied:
“I would like you to come in to the ABC as soon as possible to join me in the studio with either Prof. Matt England or Andy Pittman from the UNSW. You can go through each of your objections to the evidence and hear their answers. We can then broadcast the result.”
Williams is unlikely to have England or Pitman in the studio, debating with any of the many skeptical scientists who have the qualifications, expertise and empirical evidence that would demolish any climate alarmism wheeled out by England or Pitman. In fact, there are many well-qualified scientists who resigned from the IPCC process because of what they saw as scientific fraud. Any one of them would provide evidence to show there is no climate emergency but the chances of Robyn Williams and the ABC giving any of them a voice are estimated at zero.
In 2014, Smith and Nasht interviewed Jo Nova and David Evans for an ABC documentary called “I can change your mind” it was suspected that this program about climate change would be anything but impartial and that proved to be the case. After the program was shown, Nova said:
“In the final version that went to air, not only did three of the four key sets of evidence that fuel our skepticism vanish, the editors split and diced sentences to make it appear that David said a sentence he never actually said.”
And:
“Obviously Smith & Nasht were on a fishing trip here (funded by you and me). They were fishing for ways to discredit skeptics. In the end they had to resort to deleting 75% of the evidence, and 100% of my points.”
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/12/abc-doco-uncut-evans-nova-minchin-and-rose-the-full-unedited-video/
In 2014, the ABC produced a ridiculous report called:
“Scientists sound alarm over ocean acidification.”
We were told that:
“Ocean acidification has risen by a quarter since pre-industrial times as a result of rising carbon emissions, casting a shadow over the seas as a future source of food, scientists warned..”
And:
“It is now nearly inevitable that within 50 to 100 years, continued anthropogenic [man-made] carbon dioxide emissions will further increase ocean acidity to levels that will have widespread impacts… on marine organisms and ecosystems and the goods and services they provide.”
Further increase ocean acidity?
The drama continued without any mention of the fact that there is no ocean anywhere on the planet that is even slightly acidic. Neither was there any mention of the fact that buffering within the oceans is so great that no ocean at any time will experience neutrality let alone acidity.
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2014/10/08/4102808.htm
Also, in 2014 we had an equally exaggerated story, reported as “News in Science” telling us that:
“Sea level rises seen in the past 100 years are not within the natural fluctuations seen over past millennia ..”
In fact, sea level has been rising fractionally from the 1770’s, as we continue to emerge from the Little Ice Age.
Why didn’t ABC reporters look at tide gauge measurements, such as the one at Brest, France. This shows the rate of rise has changed little over the past several decades:
Why didn’t ABC reporters look at tide gauge measurements, such as the one at California. This also shows the rate of rise has changed little over the past several decades:
Why didn’t ABC reporters check the more than 40 peer-reviewed, published papers that show no sea level rise alarm?
Why didn’t ABC reporters check the many peer-reviewed, published papers that show sea level was significantly higher than today between 4 and 8 thousand years ago?
Why didn’t ABC reporters point to the more than 30 years of “flawed, failed and grossly misrepresented” global sea level rise speculation?
Why didn’t ABC reporters look at the work of the late Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner who was arguably the world’s leading expert on sea level? As the late Christopher Booker recalled:
“The uncompromising verdict of Dr. Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.”
In 2014, ABC Science reported:
“Endangered species Antarctica’s emperor penguin population could fall by at least a fifth by 2100 as the sea ice on which the birds breed becomes less secure, predicts a new study.” (Note the word COULD)
And
“The emperor penguin is fully deserving of Endangered status due to climate change, and can act as an iconic example of a new global conservation paradigm for species threatened by future climate change.”
Except that such alarmism ignored research conducted by Dr. Peter Fretwell of the British Antarctic Survey. Fretwell used satellite imagery to show that Emperor Penguins move between old colonies and establish new colonies.”
Additionally, Dr. Michelle LaRue from the University of Minnesota noted how satellite imagery estimates have now more than doubled the population of known Emperor Penguins with two new colonies having been identified.
Emperor Penguin colony
LaRue added:
“It would appear then that slightly increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature stasis over 20 years have done absolutely nothing to threaten the Penguins.”
https://canadafreepress.com/article/penguins-gone-today-here-tomorrow
Again, in 2014 ABC Science reported:
“Thawing out Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier, one of the biggest single contributors to world sea-level rise, is melting irreversibly and could add as much as a centimetre to ocean levels in 20 years, say scientists.” (Again, note the word COULD)
What a pity ABC Science failed to mention that:
“In early January 2008, the Pine Island Glacier was getting some personal scientific attention from a team of researchers led by NASA scientist Robert Bindschadler of Goddard Space Flight Center. Bindschadler and his colleagues set out on an expedition to make the first human visit to the ice shelf. Their goal is to investigate the hypothesis that the rapid retreat of the Pine Island Glacier is due to the rising water temperatures beneath the ice shelf.”
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/8384/pine-island-glacier-antarctica
What a pity ABC Science failed to mention that changes to the Pine Island Glacier had nothing to do with the climate and that NASA glaciologist Jay Zwally has shown that ice melt in Western Antarctica is offset by the expansion of the eastern ice sheet.
https://www.cfact.org/2018/06/27/volcanic-heat-found-under-antarcticas-fastest-melting-glacier/
ABC Science also failed to point out that researchers have located more than 90 volcanoes under the Antarctic ice:
Neither did ABC Science point out that the heat from volcanic activity is producing some melting beneath the ice sheet.
https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=295861
In 2014 ABC Science reported:
“Climate change blamed for beaching of 35,000 walruses on Alaskan coastline.”
An estimated 35,000 walruses on Alaskan beach
We were told that:
“The walruses are hauling out on land in a spectacle that has become all too common in six of the last eight years as a consequence of climate-induced warming.”
No mention here that, since 2019, there have been over 350 peer-reviewed scientific papers published showing no significant warming in the modern era and/or much warmer temperatures than today when CO2 levels ranged from 180 to 280 ppm.
No mention here that:
“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has found that the Pacific walrus does not require protection as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The finding follows a comprehensive review and analysis of the best available scientific information concerning the species, as well as local and traditional ecological knowledge of Alaska Native peoples.”
Dr Susan Crockford is an evolutionary biologist and has been working for 35 years in archaeozoology, paleozoology and forensic zoology. She is an expert on polar bear and walrus numbers and says:
“The presence of such massive herds onshore in six out of the eight years since 2007 indicate that the now well-protected walrus population may be so high that it is approaching the carrying capacity of its habitat.”
And:
“Those who suggest these events are a sign of pending catastrophe are looking for victims of global warming to tally on a ledger, but in doing so they not only fail to acknowledge potential consequences of natural fluctuations in walrus population size but fail to concede the obvious resilience of this species to profound sea ice changes they have survived repeatedly before now.”
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2014/10/walrus-fuss.pdf
Naomi Oreskes
On the 1st September, 2014, Tony Thomas lodged a complaint with the ABC saying that the Science Show quoted science historian Dr. Naomi Oreskes who made the ridiculous claim that global warming would kill everyone’s puppies and kittens by 2023, followed by the entire population of Australia.
Thomas pointed out, with empirical evidence, that:
“The IPCC in its final draft for its 5th Report, showed actual temperatures running below the lowest bound of the IPCC forecasting. “
Following the complaint from Thomas, the ABC responded on the 23rd September:
“The original introduction stated that “Earth’s climate is changing at the highest of predicted rates, scientists have given up on the much talked about two-degree ceiling …” In context these words telegraphed the premise on which Prof Oreskes’ work of fiction is based; however, it has been interpreted as a statement of incontrovertible fact and has therefore been removed to prevent any further misunderstanding.”
Too late! In the same way that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) have admitted to many climate falsehoods at a later date, the damage, as ABC personnel would be fully aware, had already been done.
http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/tony-thomas/2014/09/abc-rights-wrong/
Acknowledging how blatantly biased the BBC is, James Allan, Garrick, Professor of Law at the University of Queensland, made a comparison between the BBC and the ABC:
“You would need to have undergone a lobotomy to see the BBC as anything but a mouthpiece for the left, but judged against the hire-our-mates cronyism, outrageous bias, stacked panels and highly selective news sense of our own national broadcaster it is a model of even- handedness.”
http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2014/04/brits-teach-abc/
In July 2015 we had a classic example of the ABC asking loaded climate questions to someone with no science background but who would give answers alarmists at the ABC required. On ABC Radio National, Fran Kelly spoke to United Nations official Stephen O’Brien about tsunamis and cyclones. She asked:
“Give us a sense of the effects [of climate change] which are already being felt in our region and discussed at this conference.”
O’Brien replied on cue:
“The Pacific Region, and particularly the Pacific Island countries whose land, as you rightly say, are the ones just above sea-level, are the ones that really do have the greatest challenge when it comes to climate change effects on humanitarian need, with the regularity of cyclones, tropical storms, and tsunamis coming through. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. And we see that [these] effects of climate change seem to be exacerbated so that they are more frequent and even at times more severe…”
Had Kelly consulted an expert on cyclones, such as Dr. Ryan Maue, rather than a UN official with an axe to grind, she would have been shown the following data:
More frequent cyclones? The evidence says no.
More severe cyclones? Again, the evidence says no.
https://iowaclimate.org/2021/07/10/new-study-defies-alarmists-finds-no-notable-changes-between-present-and-future-cyclone-energy-2/ In 2017, a listener contacted the ABC and asked the following:
“The document I seek is a list of links to articles related to “global-warming”, “climate- change”, “CO2” and “coral bleaching” that represent the sceptical view of those respective debates – as presented by the ABC on all its platforms. I have listened, viewed and searched for years and I’ve not found any sceptical articles on the ABC’s platforms.”
The response from the ABC was:
“I have taken reasonable steps to identify and locate all relevant documents. My search for these documents involved contacting the following relevant people, who in turn consulted with relevant managers and staff within their respective teams: • Director News • Manager Editorial Policies, News.
I requested that searches be conducted of all hard and soft copy records for documents which fall within the scope of your request. As a result of those searches, no documents were identified.”
No reference was made to any of the more than 1,000 peer-reviewed, published papers that reject climate alarmism:
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
No reference was made to the more than 100 peer-reviewed, published papers that show the sun is the principal driver of global climate change:
http://notrickszone.com/100-papers-sun-drives-climate/
Geoffrey Luck was an ABC journalist for 26 years and, in 2017, he wrote:
“That the ABC is Fake News is not new. What’s new is that the ABC’s fakery is now entrenched. Unashamedly and blatantly, Australia’s largest news-gathering and publishing organization lies by omission, distorts by selection and excludes inconvenient truths.”
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2017/08/abc-pay-twist/
One would hope that, by now, the ABC would take measures to ensure there would be no more lies by omission, distortion by selection or exclusion of inconvenient truths.
This is not happening, as witnessed by Michael Brissenden’s Four Corners interview of farmers in 2018:
In 2018 the late Larry Pickering wrote:
“If you give a national broadcaster a taxpayer-financed budget it will always devolve into an activist Left think tank, as has the Brits’ BBC. The rabid Left has always harboured an attraction for free money and its incestuous in-breeding ensures only the Left survives. But, like the doomed cheetah, incestuous in-breeding always faces eventual extinction.”
In 2019 Philippe Armstrong wrote:
“Blind Freddie can see that the ABC is run for and supported by the Left. Its most ardent supporters hail exclusively from the Left …
The point of the ABC should be to serve the Nation. It is not supposed to be a plaything of the radical left.”
And:
“The ABC has become an angry organisation. It is made up of Social Justice Warriors and Left-wing progressives who clearly cannot be appeased.”
https://www.pickeringpost.com/philippe-armstrong/13882/its-our-abc-we-want-it-back/
The ABC’s Paul Barry
The ABC’s Media Watch is renowned for its promotion, without any empirical evidence, of the climate hysteria and the serial alarmist host Paul Barry knows exactly how to keep the hysteria going.
On the 3rd February, 2020, Barry exclaimed:
“Passionate denial that the bushfires should make us act on climate change runs right across the Murdoch media… No amount of expert opinion is enough to convince the know-it-alls on Sky.”
And:
“No amount of expert opinion is enough to convince the know-it-alls on Sky and 2GB and in the News Corp papers who argue tirelessly that climate change isn’t happening, or isn’t to blame, and/or this summer’s fires are nothing new.”
Numerous peer-reviewed, published papers show that fires are far less common today than in the past. See for instance;
Rehn et al. (2021)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0959683620988030
Rushton and Walsh (2021)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0959683620988034
Earl and Simmonds (2018)
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/2017JD027749
Yang et al. (2007)
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2013JG002532
The ABC’s Paul Barry obviously thinks he knows more about wildfires than is revealed in the peer-reviewed, published literature.
Valerie Richardson summarised:
“Climate activists often warn that global warming is stoking forest fires, but it turns out the amount of land burned by wildfires worldwide has plummeted by 25% since 2003, according to NASA.”
But don’t expect to hear that from the ABC.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/29/nasa-area-burned-by-global-wildfires-dropped-by-25/
As Vic Jurskis observed:
“But it’s hard not to admire the highly-skilled delivery of propaganda and junk science by our public broadcaster..”
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2021/09/the-abcs-great-climate-cop-out/
Unsubstantiated claims by alarmists such as the ABC’s Paul Barry that climate related disasters are increasing because of climate change are totally without foundation. As physicist Andy May points out:
“While “climate-related” risks do exist, as they always have, it is well documented that they are decreasing with time, both in terms of frequency, financial impact, and severity. Figure 1 is a plot of the number of climate related disasters from 2000 through 2019 from EM-DAT.”
With regard to any of the claims of carbon dioxide-driven heat waves and other extreme weather events, Alimonti et al. (2022) point out that, on the basis of observational data, there is no climate crisis:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-02243-9
Former Times journalist Rupert Wyndham best sums up the problems with climate coverage from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and we can see how these apply equally to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Here are a few of Wyndham’s comments on coverage of climate issues. He exposes the lack of ethical standards when a broadcaster:
Routinely ignores its own Editorial Standards (as it happens, legal requirements), that is an ethical issue;
When scientists, or those claiming to be, concoct evidence, that is an ethical issue.
When they refuse to engage in debate with their peers, that is an ethical issue.
When they defame and willfully denigrate the motives of any who have the temerity to question their fraudulent orthodoxy, that is an ethical issue.
When it is in possession of information indicating gross malfeasance within the climate change community, which for weeks it deliberately suppresses, that is an ethical issue;
When it subsequently, and for years, deliberately and willfully ignores rivers of evidence and reports from unimpeachable sources which run counter to its prevailing orthodoxy, that is an ethical issue;
When it continues to give currency to demonstrable misinformation generated by vested interests, that is an ethical issue;
When it establishes a complaints procedure which, on artificial and synthetic grounds, is carefully designed to reject all objections to its prevailing orthodoxy, however well attested, that is an ethical issue.
When the supposed repository of the UN’s collective wisdom on climate change, namely the IPCC, is exposed as a practised and persistent liar, that is an ethical issue.
So, does the ABC lack ethical standards when it comes to reporting about climate change?
I’ll let the reader decide.
Dr. John Happs M.Sc.1st Class; D.Phil. John has an academic background in the geosciences with special interests in climate, and paleoclimate. He has been a science educator at several universities in Australia and overseas and was President of the Western Australian Skeptics for 25 years.
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boudicaus
Thu 07/28/2022
Reblogged this on boudica.us.
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whatyareckon
Mon 05/30/2022
Reblogged this on whatyareckon and commented:
To work at the ABC one must be able to lie without looking like you are lying!!!!
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PA Pundits - International
Mon 05/30/2022
Ha ha ha!
Yep, that’s a good one.
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