Media Watch - Paul Barry, Eh?

Who would have possibly guessed the ABC would appoint another lefty sympathiser to the role of host of Media Watch?

I think it’s a given over 50% of the voting public would count themselves as conservative.  Less than 40%, probably count themselves as of the Left.  That figure may be less.

With the recycling of Paul Barry as host of Media Watch, we can surmise ABC management has little or no respect for over 50% of Australians who may – or may not watch ABC television.

Many solid ABC supporters such as myself, have been driven away from the public broadcaster (we are required to sponsor) over the years because of obvious bias to the left, lack of balance, ongoing group-think and an appalling disregard for the views of over 50% of the population.

See Andrew Bolt’s articles here and here.

It is time to give the ABC Board members a good dressing down, I think.

The ABC Board

The duties of the Board are set out in section 8 of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983 (the ABC Act)

The ABC Board is responsible for the ABC’s operations. The duty of the Board is to ensure that the functions of the Corporation are performed efficiently with maximum benefit to the people of Australia, and to maintain the independence and integrity of the Corporation. The Board is also responsible for ensuring that the gathering and presentation of news and information is accurate and impartial, according to recognised standards of journalism, and that the ABC complies with legislative and legal requirements.  (My bold)

The Board members are:  The Hon James Spigelman AC QC

                                           Mr. Steven Scala AO

                                           Mr. Mark Scott AO

                                           Dr. Julianne Schultz AM FAHA

                                           Ms Cheryl Bart AO

                                           Professor Fiona Stanley AC FAAS FASSA

                                           Ms Jane Bennett

                                           Simon Mordant AM

To contact the ABC Board (taken from the webiste)

To Contact the ABC Board:

ABC Secretariat
Board Executive Officer
Box 9994 GPO Sydney NSW 2001

Telephone (02) 8333 5312
Fax (02) 8333 5482

Email board@your.abc.net.au

GetUp & The Greens

Today, Andrew Bolt addresses the suitability of one Anna Rose to conduct lectures at the Australian National University, given her CV and past history as an AGW scaremonger.

Apparently, Ms. Rose used some of her campus lecture time to campaign for husband, Simon Sheikh, retired head honcho of GetUp and now an ACT Federal Greens Senate candidate.

Even better, the ANU is now on the warpath, launching a formal investigation into the Sheikh/Rose joint political campaign conducted on campus property and on campus time, it seems.

GetUp, of course, wildly claims to have over 400,000 members – a figure hotly disputed as some rather creative accounting.  If you manage to let GetUp get hold of your email address, you are counted as a member!

Now to that bastion of logic, common sense, practicality, rationale - those economic geniuses, the Greens!

I had occasion to contact Adam Bandt a couple of years ago expressing my support for his stance on Australia’s Live Trade.  For years, I’ve lobbied to have this cruel and unnecessary practice halted.  Since that time, I’ve received some interesting emails from Mr. Bandt’s office.  It seems the Greens have the same mindset as GetUp.  Your email address is harvested and you become a de facto member of the Party.

I didn’t mind receiving the odd email from Mr. Bandt’s office.  I was provided an insight into the Green’s current strategies, etc.  However, this year, I unjoined myself from his mailing list after I received an email (via Bandt’s office) from Green’s Leader, Christine Milne weeping and wailing and begging for donations.

Today, I received no less than four emails from the Greens, one from a candidate standing  in a seat absolutely miles away from my own electorate. I was requested to support this candidate, send donations, of course, volunteer to help get this candidate elected and volunteer to go on venue clean up duty!  The remaining emails were from ‘lists’ at vic.greens.or.au.  Now, you could unsubscribe via links provided but when I did exactly that, I received some sort of certificate expired nonsense!

Just to set you minds at rest, I have adjusted my email setting to return crap to sender!

GetUp and The Greens – poor little dears.  They painfully exhibit delusions of grandeur.

Both groups are to the far Left of logic and reasoning.

Both groups are run by a collective of moonbats.

Both groups push their pathetic desperation to appear relevant.

Carve Up The ABC, Mr. Abbott

An incoming Coalition Government should look closely at the ABC; its agenda, its funding and whether or not the Australian taxpayer has been getting value for money.

Over a number of years, value for money has not been the case.

I believe the ABC has reached its ‘use-by’ date.  Managing Director, Mark Scott has had plenty of time during his tenure to yank the ABC into a reliable, balanced and factual broadcaster thus maintaining consumer loyalty.  

Mark Scott has failed.

The ABC’s radio and television arms run almost as many obnoxious advertisements (for itself) as those commercial broadcasters rely on, legitimately paid for as part of their business models.

After years of being a rusted-on supporter of the ABC, I feel betrayed.  People who know me know I don’t take prisoners.  Break it up, sell it off, I no longer care.   The ABC has lost its status as a sacred cow and certainly does not deserve my support or sympathy.

It’s pretty obvious there is quite a large revolt against the ABC and it only has itself to blame.  A partisan attitude towards the green/left aside, dumbing down of the public broadcaster is unforgivable.  I used to love the science programme, Catalyst.  Had I regressed to the age of 12, I may still love it!

I regularly turn to Catallaxy Files to catch up on weekly threads dedicated to the irrelevanace of the ABC’s Monday night Q and A programme.  It saves me having to endure an hour’s worth of leftoid drivel.

The ABC can be as ‘flabbergasted’ as it likes.  I’ve adjusted my viewing and listening habits, particularly over the past five years or so and I couldn’t give a rat’s rectum as the ABC sinks under the weight of its own ‘group-think’!

From mUmBRELLA:  Click link for full article.

ABC ‘flabbergasted’ by BBC’s Foxtel move

A new premiere BBC drama and comedy channel to be launched by BBC Worldwide and Foxtel has left the ABC “flabbergasted”, a spokeswoman has told Mumbrella.

Following 50 years of broadcasting BBC content in Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation was not consulted about plans to launch a premium channel on Foxtel in mid-2014.

A spokeswoman for the ABC said the public service broadcaster had been seeking talks with the BBC’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide as its three year contract comes to an end on June 30 next year, but had been knocked back before the announcement was made.

“We were pretty flabbergasted,” a spokeswoman said. ”We only found out yesterday and we had been asking them for a while to sit down to talk about a new deal, so we were pretty shocked.”

The new premium channel will feature”premiere British drama and comedy, ad-break free and as close to UK transmission as possible,” Foxtel said in a press release.

However the ABC will retain popular shows such as Doctor Who, as it has a contract for the lifetime of the show, and Grand Designs and QI which will not be affected by the deal.

Content used on Four Corners from the BBC’s Panorama will also be unaffected, as will popular children’s programs such as Peppa Pig – the number one program on ABC iView - the spokeswoman said.

An ABC-Friendly Turnbull

I have a number of problems with the Member for Wentworth and Shadow Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull not least his fawning over the ABC.  I believe Malcolm is with the wrong Party.

Lateline’s Tony Jones interviewed Malcolm Turnbull on Thursday.

Here’s part of the transcript relating to the ABC discussion.

TONY JONES: OK, let's go to another area of your Communications portfolio. The Government gave the ABC a $10 million funding boost for its news and current affairs division last week. Do you support that?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I don't need to support it, but I welcome it.

TONY JONES: Do you endorse it? Do you think it's a good idea?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am a great supporter of the ABC. It is not entirely immaculate. It does have some flaws. Even you err on occasions, Tony. But the - smile! Lighten up! But seriously though, the ABC is more important than ever. The news media business, the newspaper business in particular, is under enormous threat and their business model is challenged, there are journalists losing their jobs all the time, newspapers may or may not be viable in a few years' time, so the importance, the role, the significance of the ABC's news and current affairs is more important than ever and that puts a very heavy burden on the ABC to maintain the highest standards of balance, of integrity.

And you know, as Jim Spigelman, your chairman, said the other day, and I thought it was a very, very, very keen insight, as you'd expect from Jim - he said that the ABC relates to its viewers and listeners not simply as consumers, as a commercial operation might, but as citizens.

So the ABC has a very, very heavy responsibility and Australians expect it to live up to that and of course the research indicates they have very high regard for this organisation.

TONY JONES: Now Jim Spigelman you mentioned, the chairman of the ABC, also said in an interview on this program not so long ago that one of the great fears the ABC has is of funding cuts. Obviously they think back to the beginning of the Howard government in '96 and '97 when 12.6 per cent of the ABC's operating budget was essentially cut by the government in a cost-cutting exercise. Would you be in a position to assure listeners, viewers that this won't happen again if the Coalition comes to government let's say at the end of this year?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well what I can say to you is that we don't have any plans to cut the funding to the ABC.

TONY JONES: That you know of?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, that I know of, yes. It's unlikely that there would be plans to do that that I wouldn't know of, but that I know of, I'm not aware of any plans to cut funding to the ABC.

But having said that, let me just say this: government is under pressure - every department is under pressure and the ABC's management - and I believe they understand this - the ABC's management has to be aware that it has an obligation to its owners, the Australian people, to run this vast enterprise of the ABC as efficiently, as cost effectively as possible.

And I - look, I have a high regard for your chief executive, Mark Scott. I think he is very focused on getting more bang for the taxpayers' buck.

TONY JONES: You're talking about an economic argument, but of course what's often used against the ABC is a bias argument and some people maintain the ABC's budget should be cut because it has bias internally. "Group think" I think was one of the phrases used by a former ABC chairman.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that is the - that's not a good reason to cut the budget. If the ABC is not being fair and balanced, then that is an issue that should be addressed by the ABC's management. ABC's - you know, there are plenty of arguments for cutting any government agency's budget. One is that if you've got to cut spending and everybody's got to bear some of the pain, so that's - there can be general across-the-board cuts.

I think the important challenge the ABC has is to ensure that its work practices reflect the enormous efficiencies that modern technology delivers. The fact is that every aspect of what this television network does, radio network does can be done much more efficiently because of modern technology, the latest technology.

If the ABC is more important than ever, Malcolm, then don’t you think it must reflect impartiality and balance as a matter of course, regardless of what the ABC’s Code of Practice states?  Don’t you think there should be conservatives in the front line, presenting  and/or directing programmes to ensure there IS balance?  You do know, don’t you, Malcolm, that there is not one conservative presenter or host on the ABC, other than perhaps, Amanda Vanstone who hosts and obscure Radio National programme – and who listens to RN?

I ask you this, Malcolm, can you honestly look me in the eye and tell me the ABC has maintained “the highest standards of balance, of integrity” ? The ABC does have a heavy responsibility to the taxpayer and quite frankly, it has failed to live up to that responsibility.

Malcolm, should you become Communications Minster later this year then I suggest one of your first missions should be to put the fire hose through the ABC starting with the Board and Managing Director, Mark Scott and work your way down to the cleaners.  The ABC needs a massive purge and in fairness to everyone, some belt-tightening.  If that cannot be achieved, then break Aunty up and put her up for sale. 

The Gillard Government’s recent $10 Million funding injection is clearly an exercise in pork-barrelling in an election year.  Blatant strategy to curry as much favour as it can. 

Taxpayers have had a gutful of having to fund a Green-Labor mouth piece year after year.  We know ABC Management has failed spectacularly to ensure the ABC is balanced and fair and you should be well aware of that, Malcolm.  Something must be done and I am expecting you to do it as a matter of priority.  Are you up to the challenge or will you roll over and let the ABC continue as is? 

The ABC has become a law unto itself with an apparent attitude that it needs only to satisfy the cravings of a small sector of inner-city self-analysed elites to the detriment of the wider population.   No wonder Aunty’s ratings have suffered.

The Australian’s Chris Kenny has an interesting article here:  http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/aunty-still-in-denial-but-proving-political-bias-is-as-easy-as-abc/story-fn8qlm5e-1226578726810

Oh My Goodness, Dr. Karl!

I do declare you owe Andrew Bolt an apology as well as all your followers, don’t you think?

I blogged last December about Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki here.

Reblogged, in part from Andrew’s Blog.  Read the full post.

Doctor Karl Kruszelnicki presents science on the ABC. In 2007 he ran as a Senate candidate for the Climate Change Coalition.

So you expect him to know the very basic data about global warming. You expect him to make it his duty to at least know whether the planet is indeed warming, and if so by how much.

Right?

Then explain this exchange of tweets, which I am told Kruszelnicki deleted from his Twitter account. (They certainly aren’t there now.) 

Yes, I did write about these tweets in an update to my column yesterday, but the more I reflect on this the more I consider this a particularly egregious example of warmist know-nothingness. It is also a symbol of the giddy and irresponsible ignorance of so many of the noisier global warming prophets.

Dr Karl, debating the figures of Britain’s Met, asserts the world has warmed 0.3 degrees in 16 years - which still isn’t that much, actually.

But the Met’s figures, as tweeter Bill correctly informs him, actually show a warming just one-sixth of what Dr Karl claimed. That is so small that scientists say it’s statistically insignificant. It’s indistinguishable from background noise. Essentially zero.

As Andrew notes, if he had been so factually incorrect, he’s be hauled off to Re-education Camp via the Press Council.

Sometimes I do believe “group-think” can be very dangerous to the credibility of some public figures who follow the new religion of CAGW.

Dr. Karl makes frequent appearances on the balanced, unbiased ABC that tries to reject the accusation there is a group-think mentality within the public broadcaster.

Yesterday, we received news that the ABC would be receiving a $10 million funding increase to budget.  Some cynics may say that this is a typical example of ALP pork-barrelling.

Thanks to this massive injection of taxpayer funding, new senior appointments will be made.  One of them will be Jake Sturmer, Science & Technology.  I suggest we take note of this name and furnish Mr. Sturmer with appropriate correspondence whenever we see silly-billies running off at the mouth before they have had the chance to engage one of those fact-checkers the ABC appears on the cusp of utilizing. 

A fact-checker at the ABC would be something to behold!

ABC Reins In Faine

Wonders will never cease!  The obnoxious Jon Faine has, at last, been censured by the ABC over his disgracefully prejudiced and unfair treatment of Michael Smith and Editor-at-Large, Mark Baker during their ‘right of reply’ interview conducted on 23^rd November, 2012.  Faine’s treatment of both men was appalling.

I posted about the incident on the 24^th November, last year.

Yesterday, the ABC’s Audience & Consumer Affairs, who, I imagine, received a truckload of complaints from listeners who had come to the end of their tether with Local Radio 774’s week mornings host, Faine and his obvious bias, issued an apology citing there had been a “lapse in standards”.  Now, there’s an understatement in relation to Jon Faine.  Faine has repeatedly illustrated he has only one standard – and that is standard according to the political far Left.  No other standards need apply for an interview with Faine because they will be belittled and talked over.  This seems to be Faine’s preferred tactic to censor dissenting opinion!

I have a question for the ABC.   If 2GB had to attend a radio re-education camp, according to an ACMA ruling and radio broadcaster Alan Jones was directed to offer an on-air apology to Lebanese muslims in December of last year for comments he made in 2005 which were deemed inappropriate in our New World of political correctness, then surely the same should apply to the ABC and 774 morning host, Jon Faine.  Will Local Radio 774 and  Jon Faine be marched off to the ABC’s (non-existent, apparently) equivalent of ACMA’s re-education camp?   Unfortunately Auntie is immune, generally, to ACMA’s fangs, which is a great pity, in my opinion.   Apparently, ACMA will only intervene when there has been a resolution stalemate.  No level playing field.  One rule for the bulk of mainstream media and another toothless rule for the ABC.  This anomaly must change as the ABC is now a large mainstream media player.   The ABC must not be given free rein to self-regulate.  It has to stop, regardless of some common sense determination by the Audience & Consumer Affairs in relation to the antics of Jon Faine.

More importantly, will Faine be required to offer both Michael Smith and Mark Baker an on-air apology?  If not – why not?  ABC – you know that would be the right thing to do.  Simply putting up some token grovel statement on Faine’s website and on the ABC’s Upheld Complaints page is not good enough.

By the way, at the time of writing this post, no such apology appears on Faine’s website which can be found here.

Further reading, The Age and The Australian.

The Morally Bankrupt Australian Greens

Another example of the repugnant and morally bankrupt Australian Greens Party.  Not content to simply create mayhem with regard to Australia’s border control via importation of boatloads of illegal entrants (who immediately affix themselves to the public teat, form ghettos that, in many cases, become no-go zones, even for law enforcement officers and show an unwillingness to assimilate into Australian society and Australian way of life.)  The Greens are also driving Australia’s prosperity into the ground via useless and ill-conceived  CAGW schemes, they now clearly show they have no intention of upholding Australian law.

 

The Australian Greens are in coalition with Labor ensuring the Gillard Regime would have the numbers to govern along with help from several Independents.   An unspeakable three-year disaster for this Nation.

 

Sinclair Davidson is correct.  Financial arson has been committed by Jonathan Moylan.

 

Reblogged from Catallaxy Files.

Australia's leading libertarian and centre-right blog

Financial arson

5 comments

How to characterise what Jonathan Moylan did?

Well the Greens are trying to run a ‘civil disobedience‘ line.

THE Greens leader, Senator Christine Milne, has endorsed a controversial hoax by an anti-coal activist, saying his actions were ”part of a long and proud history of civil disobedience, potentially breaking the law, to highlight something wrong”.

Her comments came after a tweet by her colleague Lee Rhiannon, who publicly congratulated Jonathan Moylan, an activist under scrutiny for impersonating a bank and temporarily wiping $314 million off the value of Whitehaven Coal.
”Congrats to Jonathan Moylan, Frontline Action on Coal, for exposing ANZ investment in coalmines,” Ms Rhiannon tweeted on Tuesday night.

Okay – good luck with that. I’m not convinced myself but it does leave the Greens having to explain why destroying economic prosperity and shareholder value is for the ‘good’. Having destroyed the Tasmanian economy they are turning their sights onto the mainland.

Conversely Nikki Williams from the Australian Coal Association has an excellent op-ed in the Australian.

The deliberate and fraudulent manipulation of the stockmarket is a serious offence, which undermines confidence in Australia’s investment system.

I disagree with two sentences.

Contempt for the interests of the public is an unusual face for the activist movement.

No. Ask the Tasmanian logging industry about that.

Free speech is a right that must be protected, but with free speech must come responsibility and accountability.

This is not a free speech issue. Moylan should be free to tell us all about the evils of coal mining and how it is disgraceful that ANZ is lending them money and, if he were an ANZ shareholder, turn up at the AGM and ask tough questions etc. etc. etc. In fact, Moylan is free to do all those things already.

Moylan did not say what he liked, he did what he liked. Moylan committed an act of violence against Whitehaven’s shareholders and the integrity of the Australian financial markets – so every person in Australia who has direct investments or indirect investments like superannuation.

If he had set a forest fire we would immediately recognise the wrong – he did the financial equivalent.
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More about this disgusting saga at Michael Smith News.

Suspect Global Warming Tales: 2013 - No. 2

Like a bull camel in musk with a gob full of foam and lips-a-flapping, we have the Australian Conservation Foundation’s Programme Manager, Tony Mohr scaring the bejesus out of the chooks at the ABC’s online website, The Drum.

Tony, dear fellow – this is Australia, one of the hottest places on the Planet and not called “a sunburnt country” for nothing.  I thought we were not supposed to confuse weather with climate!  Oh!  Nevermind - I must have my wires crossed again!  We’ve lived through heatwaves before, you know and we are bound to live through them again.  Heatwaves in Australia are not a new phenomena – although I think you would like to assume your readers are a little bit stupid.  You need to do a bit of research on the influences of la Nina and el Nino weather patterns and perhaps take a bit of a look at that bloody big and hot Star we call the Sun and how it influences weather and climate on Earth.  Flares and spots – that sort of stuff.

Here’s Tony liberally spreading his foam in part.  You can click on the link below, if you are fit enough to stomach the diatribe.

Australia is in the midst of a heat wave. In and of itself, that's nothing special, but it is getting hotter. What we do today will dictate how hot we are tomorrow, writes Tony Mohr.

Chances are that as you read this, if you're not in Sydney, you're either sweating uncomfortably or sitting in an air-conditioned office.

It's probably somewhere between 35 and 40 degrees Celsius outside. More if you're in one of Australia's hotter regional areas. You probably had a fitful night's sleep.

We all know the symptoms; Australia is in the midst of a heat wave.

In and of itself, that's nothing special. We have heatwaves all the time. But it is getting hotter. Climate change is making things worse. What Australia - and the world - is seeing is weather on steroids.

No-one can point to any given hot day and say categorically that 'it is hot because of climate change'. No-one is trying to. But we know very well that as the climate heats up, it makes the chances of a day being hot greater, and it makes the likely maximum temperature even hotter.

We can't look at Lance Armstrong's career and say "that stage win on Alpe d'Huez was because of doping". But we can say "doping was absolutely a factor in him winning seven straight Tours de France". Likewise, we know climate change is a factor in the increasing number of hot days and nights we are experiencing in Australia, even if the cause of any given hot day is ambiguous.

According to the National Climate Data Centre, nine of the 10 hottest years on record have been since 2000 (the other is 1998), and of the hottest 20 years on record - that is, since 1880 - the earliest is 1987, which comes in at 20.

Last year in the US, heat records were broken with distressing regularity. In an ordinary year, the ratio of hot-weather records to cold-weather records is roughly equal. In 2012, for every cold-weather record, there were 3.5 record hot days.

The CSIRO has found Australian annual average daily maximum temperatures have steadily increased in the last hundred years, with most of the warming trend occurring since 1970. There has been an increase in the number of hot days and a decrease in the number of cold days. 2012 has been announced the ninth-hottest year on record.

Please take note at paragraph 9 of this foaming essay as it is relevant to my previous post involving the detective work undertaken by Anthony Watts and relating to records and their potential for some creative manipulation.

CSIRO, please note – we are coming out of the Little Ice Age, you know!  I would say a bit of warming is natural and to be expected.  Of course, I am blindly assuming your data is accurate.  

The CSIRO is another body attached to the public teat that requires a good looking into.

Get your umbrellas up and follow the bouncing ball here:-

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4455022.html

Sceptics Should Die!

Richard Parncutt is, apparently, an ex-pat Australian with a rather interesting and not so flattering  academic history - if you can be bothered to research it!

Quite frankly, so-called academics such as this Professor do more to promote CAGW scepticism when they place their idiocies on the Internet and subject them to 'peer-review'!  You could call this one an own goal, if you like!

This man is not a climate scientist by any stretch of the imagination, yet he would like to condemn to death scientists who are absolutely qualified to research in the field and express opinions.

It appears someone at the University of Graz, Austria recognised the good Professor's utter stupidity was potentially damaging to the University's reputation and removed Parncutt's inflammatory rant from his University website - possibly due to several violations not least violation of human rights!

This man, along with some other 'erudite' Professors not qualified in the field of climate science, such as Stephan Lewandowsky from the University of Western Australia, appear to be indicative of a systematic failure in quality education over the past couple of decades.

No wonder we worry for the fate of our children in the real world when there is a distinct lack of quality educators.

I am now going to prepare myself for impending execution because I have the unmitigated audacity to question the methods some people are applying to the 'science' of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and consequential ramifications to world economies!

The piece below is reblogged from Jo Nova's excellent science site.  See link below.
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Death threats anyone? Austrian Prof: global warming deniers should be sentenced to death

Richard Parncutt,  Professor of Systematic Musicology, University of Graz, Austria, reckons people like Watts, Tallbloke, Singer, Michaels, Monckton, McIntyre and me (there are too many to list) should be executed. He’s gone full barking mad, and though he says these are his “personal opinions” they are listed on his university web site.

For all the bleating of those who say they’ve had real “death threats“, we get discussions about executing skeptics from Professors, wielding the tyrannical power of the state. Was he paid by the state to write these simplistic, immature, “solutions”? Do taxpayers fund his web expenses? (And what the heck is systematic musicology?)

Prof Richard Parncutt says:
“I have always been opposed to the death penalty in all cases…”

“Even mass murderers [like Breivik] should not be executed, in my opinion.”

“GW deniers fall into a completely different category from Behring Breivik. They are already causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of future people. We could be speaking of billions, but I am making a conservative estimate.”

Consequences

If a jury of suitably qualified scientists estimated that a given GW denier had already, with high probability (say 95%), caused the deaths of over one million future people, then s/he would be sentenced to death. The sentence would then be commuted to life imprisonment if the accused admitted their mistake, demonstrated genuine regret, AND participated significantly and positively over a long period in programs to reduce the effects of GW (from jail) – using much the same means that were previously used to spread the message of denial. At the end of that process, some GW deniers would never admit their mistake and as a result they would be executed. Perhaps that would be the only way to stop the rest of them. The death penalty would have been justified in terms of the enormous numbers of saved future lives.

Recant you foolish deniers or we’ll kill you! Yeah. Welcome to modern scientific debate.

Who should die? Anyone named on Desmog:

Much more would have happened by now if not for the GW deniers. An amazing number of people still believe that GW is a story made up by scientists with ulterior motives. For a long list of climate change deniers and their stories see desmogblog.

So the denier database becomes the “death list”. The list decided by PR experts on a funded smear site, who profit from marketing Green corporations.

But it’s ok, he includes a caveat where he says he didn’t say what I quoted above, so he can later pretend he isn’t discussing real deaths of real people:

Please note that I am not directly suggesting that the threat of execution be carried out. I am simply presenting a logical argument. I am neither a politician nor a lawyer. I am just thinking aloud about an important problem.

And we all feel so much better don’t we?

But seriously, Global warming deniers are the worst vermin on the face of the Earth, worse than holocaust deniers, tobacco deniers and worse than someone who bombs buildings and shoots children en masse:

I don’t think that mass murderers of the usual kind, such Breivik, should face the death penalty. Nor do I think tobacco denialists are guilty enough to warrant the death penalty, in spite of the enormous number of deaths that resulted more or less directly from tobacco denialism. GW is different. With high probability it will cause hundreds of millions of deaths. For this reason I propose that the death penalty is appropriate for influential GW deniers.

Here’s how the deadly reasoning goes
How does he know we are facing disaster?
He knows, because he’s read a blog that pretends to be scientific and it says so. The same site resorts to ad homs, and kindergarden namecalling (like “denier” and “Christie Crocks”) and is debunked all over the internet, but the Prof is too poorly trained in reasoning to spot the cheap tricks, and he didn’t think to search for “SkepticalScience debunked”. Oops.

More at Jo Nova, including comments, here:-

http://joannenova.com.au/2012/12/death-threats-anyone-austrian-prof-global-warming-deniers-should-be-sentenced-to-death/

The Disappearance Of Research Journalism

 It’s time we addressed malfunction, misinformation and a distinct lack of research and corrections in some sectors of our mainstream media – in particular,  printed and online newspaper publications.  I’m looking at you, Fairfax Media and the ABC online.

When one sings from a particular hymn sheet, one produces biased, blinkered tosh such as this from the ABC’s Science & Environment Reporter, Sarah Clarke:

I seem to recall Sydney Radio broadcaster, Alan Jones, was recently marched off to Re-education Camp because of some slight error he made with regard to actual global temperatures – as they were when his broadcast went to air.  I wonder if the ABC’s Sarah Clarke and Fairfax reporters, Ben Cubby and Tom Arup should also be systematically marched off to Re-education Camp because of their one-eyed reporting of climate related stories.  Research?  Where has it gone?   Clarke, Cubby and Arup and a heap of other so-called journalists would rather not open any doors that may challenge their CAGW religion, apparently.  Result:  Readers get bias, not the full story. 

Journalism by Press Release is commonplace nowadays.  No critical analysis, no research.   Are journalists too stressed or pressured to do a bit of old fashioned foot-slogging?   Can’t be too hard with the Internet, surely.  Perhaps they are too concerned about their tenure to go rocking boats.  Maybe that old saying “keep them in the dark an feed them bullshit” is applicable to today’s journalistic attitude to their readers.  What they (the readers) don’t know won’t kill them besides I’m too busy and too stressed to give a balanced perspective.  Is that the new norm we, the readers, are expected to accept?  It’s no wonder newspapers are dying and no wonder so many of us are gravitating to Blogs.  That’s where you find investigation and research being practiced these days. 

It annoys the hell out of me that a number of journalists publish without question the Gospel according to Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.  There is actual science being published on the subject but it is being mostly ignored in the MSM.   Why is that?  Because it contradicts the faith?  How can readers make informed decisions when so much data appears to be deliberately withheld from the public? 

There are a number of internet outlets available for those wishing to evaluate for themselves where the truth lies with regard to whether or not this Planet is about to cook itself into oblivion.

Two award-winning Blogs worth mentioning are: 

http://wattsupwiththat.com/

http://joannenova.com.au/

ABC Self Policing - The Danger Within

Malcolm Colless has an interesting piece in Quadrant Online outlining the roughness of the media playing field as it stands today under the current Labor regime purporting to be running this country.  Into the ground - but that's another story.  There is nothing level about the media playing field when it comes to 'their' ABC.   Not 'our' ABC - although we all pay for the thing.

The socialist bias within the ABC is now no longer something to joke about.  There is not one conservative presenter on radio or television.  Programme presenters such as Jon Faine (Local Radio 774)  Leigh Sales  (7.30) and Tony Jones (Q & A) no longer feel shackled by the ABC's Code of Practice and fly their political preference flags with gay abandon.

Should commerical media fall victim to constrictions and, by definition, censorship if the government of the day gets its way, then the powerful media outlet, the ABC, should be subject to the same regulatory controls.  Why should the ABC be treated differently?  It is in the media business afterall, although taxpayer funded, which is all the more reason the ABC should be accountable.
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QED
The ABC's indecent advantage
by Malcolm Colless

November 30, 2012

There has been a lot of whinging lately by the free-to-air TV broadcasters about lopsided competition rules. Free TV Australia, the commercial television lobby group, has urged the government to impose tax penalties on the major international online companies to create “a level playing field”. The FTAs should know all about this, as they have enjoyed years of unfair advantage over any competition in their patch.

But the Australian Broadcasting Corporation with the help of its owner, our Federal Government, is well positioned to take advantage of a very uneven playing field in the future digital delivery of news and opinion online.

The reason is quite simple. While traditional commercial media companies, particularly print operators, are finding it increasingly necessary to build pay walls around their digital content, the ABC can, and presumably will, continue to provide its content for free, courtesy of the Australian taxpayer.

On a “share of voices” meter, which measures across-the-board media impact, the ABC leaves the rest of the industry for dead -- and it always has via the sheer number of its taxpayer-funded outlets.

The spectre that this raises is of ABC dominance on the news and current affairs digital platforms already battling for market share and advertising revenue as traditional media outlets attempt to cope with a seismic shift in community reading and viewing habits. The fact that the ABC does not need to worry about establishing pay walls to underwrite the value of its content puts it in a very powerful and potentially monopolistic position. While the Labor Government may see this as a comfortable alternative to a hostile press it raises serious questions about the free flow of information, a basic component of any democracy.

The government has already taken a giant step towards controlling this information with the establishment of the National Broadband Network. It would have us believe the multi-billion dollar NBN is necessary to shore up Australia’s competitiveness in global markets, having argued that this task cannot be successfully carried out by private enterprise. Time will tell if this policy assumption is correct, but the government’s aim in the meantime is to nationalise the information superhighway and be its content gatekeeper.

All of this is pertinent to Labor’s desire to put more shackles on an already heavily regulated press in order to placate left-wing political pressures in its own minority-government camp. The opportunity for government action on this comes from the inquiry it ordered into media regulation (it would prefer it to be known as “reform”) conducted by former judge Ray Finkelstein.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, who has carriage of this issue ( and ministerial control of the ABC and SBS), may well see the traditional press as a soft target. We will see about that. But he has learned that trying to interfere with the flow of internet information can be a dangerous game indeed.

In 2008 Conroy unveiled a scheme to legislate mandatory filtering by internet service providers of Refused Classification-rated material hosted on overseas servers. This brought an immediate and hostile response from internet users, particularly when it was found that the Government’s intended hit list went well beyond child-abuse websites and the like.

Despite deferring a final decision until after the 2010 federal election Conroy maintained his support for the scheme, but yielded to unrelenting opposition earlier this month when he announced the proposed legislation had been abandoned.

So it will be interesting to see how far Cabinet is prepared to go in the face of Finkelstein’s recommendation for all media outlets to be covered by a new “super-media regulatory body” which would be called the News Media Council.

Whether this can be justified in terms other than those of naked politics is another matter. But whatever the merits of that case, the fact remains the ABC has strenuously argued that what may be good for commercial media’s goose is not good for its own, taxpayer-funded gander, meaning that it needs to be left to operate under its own internal complaints system.



Veteran journalist Malcolm Colless believes in freedom of speech -- and a level playing field

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2012/11/the-abc-s-indecent-advantage