Do they “discuss” ClimateGate emails … without quoting the emails?

Who digs for details, and who hides the evidence?

The PR writers for Big-Government were quick to come up with excuses for ClimateGate II. Which is all very well, but it’s blindingly obvious where their own personal prejudices lie if they won’t print the emails that they are supposedly discussing. It’s not so much cherry-picking, but cherry-denial. “Don’t mention the radioactive cherries, but lets discuss how cherry farmers have been victimized, talk about the history of cherry tree farming, and hear their excuses and assertions that the cherries are an essential part of our diets. Don’t mention the Geiger counter. OK?”

This is standard issue damage control for ClimateGate — protect the cheats and liars, attack the whistleblower, and  use excuses and padding-fillers to cover a story without actually giving the public any information on the [...]

It’s not a conspiracy, it’s a culture. When comedians and scriptwriters live off a diet of dogma at the ABC (it starts with the science unit), why would we be surprised that they’d churn out the same half-truths, deceit, and sloppy reasoning in their fictional work?

The ABC Chairman — Maurice Newman — recently worried about the poor intellectual quality of ABC “investigations” in The Australian, “Ad hominem attacks substitute for logical and evidence-based discourse that would otherwise allow viewers and listeners the opportunity to decide for themselves where they stand on the issues.”

The ABC editorial policy tells us the ABC must: [...]

“Science broadcaster turned climate-sceptic blogger and convoy backer, Jo Nova, let loose. “The ABC coverage is so shamefully biased, a government PR agency could hardly have done a better job,” she claimed.

“They carefully avoided selecting any of the key messages in the speeches or petition (but they put in any odd unconnected grievance they could find). They didn’t interview the organisers, instead just showing a snippet of a song and a truckie tooting.” But the opponents of the rally were no less inclined to conspiracy.”

When the media coverage of the Convoy was so dismally biased, I wasn’t suggesting a conspiracy. No one needs a conspiracy when good old fashioned incompetence will do. I have documented some of the poor media coverage of climate science, and especially ABC coverage, at length.

Indeed, Mark Scott, director of the ABC himself admitted that the ABC is there to help the government. The fact that he thought it was OK to admit that publicly tells you how far the ABC has come from any notion that it is [...]

Less than a week ago, there was a rally at Parliament House with around 3,000-5,000 people. And today there was another one, this one with around 600 vehicles according to Matt and Janet Thompson, and this one by people who have gone to extraordinary lengths, driving up to 5,000 kilometers from all corners of the country.

The convoy is a rolling protest that involved thousands of people across the nation. In Sydney, people switched their headlights on in sympathy, and Andrew Bolt records at least one witness suggesting half the cars on the road had their lights on.

Feelings and support for the convoy are widespread and running high. One of the convoy supporters from near Clermont reports: ‘In only 24 hours, we gathered 300 signatures for the petition, local beef producers had organised fuel donations of over $13,000 and the CWA had organised food and drinks for everyone on the convoy.  This support from a town of only 2000 was amazing and a testament to a united effort.’

Dale Stiller’s comment is typical on Just Grounds: The convoy has experienced nothing but support. There have been [...]

The local state Liberals (the conservative party, who are in government in this state of Western Australia) voted overwhelmingly in favor of a Royal Commission on climate change science. Now that is a news story all by itself. It could have had headlines like: “Liberals demand climate scientists be put to the test”, “WA Liberals demand answers from Climate Science”.

Instead the ABC makes its headlines from almost the only person in the room who disagreed:

Actually, he wasn’t even in the room. As it happens, Mal Washer didn’t attend the conference last weekend, and sums up his total insight into why this motion was passed overwhelmingly:

” I don’t know who brought it up and I don’t know who would be silly enough to support it.”

“I don’t know how many were there when this, I was not there when this happened, right, so I don’t know how many people were there”

“... I don’t know how that slipped through. Whether they’re a bit battle fatigued at the [...]

I’m sure Wendy Carlisle thinks she’s helping Australia.

The awarded writer who calls herself a science journalist, breaks laws of reason, makes a litany of careless errors, ambushes interviewees with false claims, and devoutly stares past hundreds of peer reviewed references as if they don’t exist. Yes, Anything but the evidence!

She thinks hunting through resumes of retired scientists is a good way to inform us about the need for a Carbon (sic) Tax.

It’s a wake up call ladies and gentlemen. This is the state of “science” at your ABC where polite discussion and meaningful research has been replaced with tabloid guttertalk.

The ABC is not part of the problem, it IS the problem. It’s not just that we spent $1 billion last year on the ABC — the real cost of the propaganda-machine disguised as “impartial reporting” is the billions of dollars we have already malinvested due to the ABC’s inability to provide rigorous and relevant science reporting, and the multi-billions more we are about to waste.

The nation is about to undergo a [...]

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In addition to regular readers of Jo Nova, those familiar with John Cook’s misleadingly titled website “Skeptical Science” may be shocked by what follows.  Some will also likely recall Jo’s article; Robyn Williams shreds the tenets of science.  It largely covered the awful Robyn Williams interview of Bob Ward of 2/Oct/2010, and resulted in strong ridicule of the ABC going viral around the world.   Well, lo [...]

Chris Uhlmann does a good job trying to fill in the gaps in the reasoning, and Greg Hunt looks silly denying the obvious. Coal provides the cheapest source of energy around, so if we replace it with anything else there will be extra costs. Hunt keeps waving the magic fairyland contradictory combination of “we’ll only use the cheapest alternative” and “we won’t do anything to raise costs.”

The real problem here is that the Coalition are not free to speak about a science theory. Each time they step slightly outside the politically-correct-line they are bullied and derided, which would be fine if it was just by the Greens, but isn’t fine when it includes most of the [...]

Marc Hendrickx describes how hard it is to get rid of a single baseless defamatory comment on the ABC taxpayer-funded-site:

The following anonymous comment was posted to [Sara] Phillips’s blog shortly afterwards:

Annie : 03 Dec 2010 7:07:53pm

The denialist clowns return again . . . climateaudit.org . . . run by Stephen McIntyre a known climate denialist and extremist right-wing provocateur . . . you are a joke as are your answers . . . laughing hysterically.

Marc Hendrix suggested it be removed as defamatory. The ABC editors protested, and here’s the weird thing, it would have taken them less time to just say “yes” — after all, it’s only a comment. But in the sum total editorial-calculation-of-the-day there was apparently some net benefit in fighting to keep an unsubstantiated insult visible among hundreds of other comments? (Go figure.) According to the ABC editors: “He [MacIntyre] could reasonably be described as ‘right wing’ as a speaking member of the [...]

What Mark Scott admitted as the managing director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation was really what everyone knew anyway: the ABC aims to please the gatekeepers of the pay-checks (which is, after all exactly what we’d expect from most organizations in the long run).

What makes it telling is that he could forget that he’s never supposed to admit this. I mean, they promote themselves in ads as “our ABC”. It’s supposed to serve the people, not the government. The key problem is that although the people pay for the ABC, they don’t hold the purse strings. And to some extent, the people, don’t really try to either. We get what we are willing to put up with.

THE ABC managing director, Mark Scott, has told an audience of film and television producers that the way he had been able to secure additional funding was by convincing the government the national broadcaster was working in its interests.

For a long time, Mr Scott said ABC management had simply gone to Canberra crying poor and telling the government what a great job it was doing.

“And I think if you take that approach, well, then you’ve joined the queue of [...]