The ABC's quality control at Unleashed appears to have failed. They have published an article by Plimer that merely repeats many of the claims from his discredited book. Plimer has enlarged his claim from his book that volcanoes emit more CO2 than human activities. Now it is:
Over the past 250 years, humans have added just one part of CO2 in 10,000 to the atmosphere. One volcanic cough can do this in a day.
Tamino proves him wrong even if you count supervolcanoes. And note that it is dishonest for Plimer to use supervolcanoes to argue that humn emissions don't matter, since supervolcanoes only happen every 100,000 years or so.
Deepclimate has made on online complaint to the ABC, requesting that they correct at least some of Plimer's false claims. Plimer is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
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Dunno about Plimer, as he appears to have gone well off the deep end, but supervolcanoes definitely go more often than every 100k years - we have some in NZ that go at regular intervals varying between 2000 year return times and 20k-30k return times, and depending on whose classification of supervolcano, we have somewhere between 3 and 5 of them.
When I hear supervolcano, I think VEI8 level explosions. Herea re the ones we know of:
* Lake Taupo, North Island, New Zealand - Oruanui eruption ~26,500 years ago (~1,170 km³)
* Lake Toba, Sumatra, Indonesia - ~75,000 years ago (~2,800 km³)
* Whakamaru, North Island, New Zealand - Whakamaru Ignimbrite/Mount Curl Tephra ~254,000 years ago (1,200-2,000 km³)[6]
* Yellowstone Caldera, Wyoming, United States - 640,000 years ago (1,000 km³)
* Island Park Caldera, Idaho/Wyoming, United States - 2.1 million years ago(2,500 km³)
* Kilgore Tuff, Idaho, United States - 4.5 million years ago (1,800 km³)
* Blacktail Creek, Idaho, United States - 6.6 million years ago (1,500 km³)
* La Garita Caldera, Colorado, United States - Source of the truly enormous eruption of the Fish Canyon Tuff ~27.8 million years ago (~5,000 km³)
* Siberian Traps 252.6 ± 0.2 million years ago [7][8] (1-4 million km³)
Some apparently include VEI7 events as supervolcanos. there have been 2, maybe 3, in the last 2000 years: From Wikipedia, "The only ones in historic times are Tambora, in 1815, Lake Taupo (Hatepe), around 180 AD,[15] and possibly Baekdu Mountain, around 979 AD.
Baekdu is right at the cutoff, and may have been VEI6.
Then Kikai Caldera in Japan about 6300 years ago, and Lacher See in Germany about 13,000 years ago.
There is nothing in that list with a 2000 year supervolcano eruption return time.
Supervolcano entry on wikipedia:
"VEI 8 eruptions have happened in the following locations.
Lake Taupo, North Island, New Zealand - Oruanui eruption ~26,500 years ago (~1,170 km³)
Lake Toba, Sumatra, Indonesia - ~75,000 years ago (~2,800 km³)
Whakamaru, North Island, New Zealand - Whakamaru Ignimbrite/Mount Curl Tephra ~254,000 years ago (1,200-2,000 km³)[6]
Yellowstone Caldera, Wyoming, United States - 640,000 years ago (1,000 km³)
Island Park Caldera, Idaho/Wyoming, United States - 2.1 million years ago(2,500 km³)
Kilgore Tuff, Idaho, United States - 4.5 million years ago (1,800 km³)
Blacktail Creek, Idaho, United States - 6.6 million years ago (1,500 km³)
La Garita Caldera, Colorado, United States - Source of the truly enormous eruption of the Fish Canyon Tuff ~27.8 million years ago (~5,000 km³)
Siberian Traps 252.6 ± 0.2 million years ago [7][8] (1-4 million km³)"
I looked but couldn't find an entry for 'super-dupervolcano'.
Tim, has anyone complained to the head of the School of Civil, Environmental & Mining Engineering at the U. of Adelaide about Dr. Plimer's claims (not opinions)? Our faculty encourages members to share our knowledge with the public through articles such as these, but if the dean of our faculty saw unsubstantiated stuff like this coming from any of the faculty members or grad students, he'd raise hell.
1) Suggestion:
never mention Plimer without saying University of Adelaide Professor Plimer...
2) Adelaide graduates might well write polite letters to the school, indicating that they understand the Plimer is entitled to say whatever he wants, but this does not bring credit to the school, nor encourage alumni giving.
3) As for ABC: what's their business model? If advertising is a component, rather than writing to ABC, pick some advertisers and write to them expressing your intention to stop buying their products because ABC supplies anti-science as though it were opinion. Get friends to do so also.
John: ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) is a non-commercial taxpayer funded tv station. Normally fairly sensible they occasionally pander to fringe groups who have trouble with the concept of "facts" in pursuit of ratings.
re: #6 MarkG
Thanks; so I modify the advice, but with the same approach.
Entities can ignore complaints, but they {public or private}
are more sensitive to complaints to their funders.
MAybe it's becuas eits Saturday but the site hasn't been publishing comments all day. Poor form.
John Mashey@8
Unfortunately it's a little more complicated than that.
To a greater or lesser extent, the ABC's editorial policy is set by a single individual known as the Managing Director (TM). This individual rises to the exalted position by way of a simple majority vote of the ABC's board or directors... all of whom are political appointments (in recent history, staff had a board member, but that was done away with in 2006).
Conservative commentators, politicians and lackeys have for a number of year, painted the ABC as having a strong left wing bias. Repeated whacking over the head from morons like Tim Blair have left the ABC extremely sensitive to criticism of this sort, and, as such, the go out the their way to provide the worst kind of "balance", letting any old right wing view pass with minimal scrutiny. In addition, board members (just a reminder, political appointees) will generally select a managing director who will know-tow to a number of demands in editorial policy. In recent year, board appointees were made by the conservative, global-warming denying Howard government. This has resulted in board members like Keith Windshuttle ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Windschuttle ), helping to shape editorial policy, and increasing the pressure on the ABC for "balance".
This reached nadir in 2007, with the ABC screening the "Great Global Warming Swindle", brought about, in my humble opinion, in an effort for the ABC to be seen as less left wing. Any attempt to provoke a reduction in appearances by the Plimers and Carters of the world is likely to result in howls from conservatives in the corporate press and the press gallery in Canberra decrying "left wing bias" and a "shutting down" of "debate".
The best we can hope for in this situation, is that the ABC publishes counter articles, or subject people like Plimer to intense scrutiny by the likes of Tony Jones and Kerry O'Brien and push for reform of the ABC board.
The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) is entirely taxpayer funded, with the small exception of income from "ABC Shop" stores, which sell books, DVDs, and other merchandise relevant to what airs on the ABC channel.
From 1996 until late 2007 Australia had a ruling government which was a coalition of the Liberal Party and the National Party; both are right wing, with the Nationals representing rural constituents (generally fairly conservative) in particular. Under the prime minister John Howard, the coalition was dominated by conservative/neo-conservative ideology.
Anyway, as the various 5 year terms came up for renewal on the ABC board, John Howard took the opportunity to shift the board to the hard-right. The majority of the current board members are known to be right-wing, strong free market supporters, "Stolen Generation" skeptics, and "Anthropogenic Global Warming" deniers (as opposed to undecided, or genuinely scientifically skeptical). With google and a bit of browsing my claim can be verified. Stacking the ABC board is one thing that is sadly bi-partisan - Labor indulged itself when it was last in power.
Under this current board some changes are evident in the atmospherics of news and current events shows. As another blogger has pointed out, it was under this board that "The Great Global Warming Swindle" was shown, and also a live audience debate was held afterwards. That debate descended into farce, in large part due to the fact that La Rouchians had snuck into the audience. The LRs are in La-La land; unreal!
In my opinion, under the current board the ABC is not only being biased in presentation and representation on some politically based shows, but it is also too selective in the choice of right wing interviewees and panelists. The progressive Liberals, and the centre-right Labor adherents get crowded out by the Andrew Bolts of this world. Those voters and taxpayers who are centre left or centre right have a paucity of representation with regards to the live-panel shows and with regard to content.
It would be great if the ABC news stories showed a more neutral and factual stance by their reporters, rather than having them add the odd gratuitous snipe at something or other that's considered left wing. The ABC is meant to be above that sort of thing in its news reporting.
With the current ABC practices, I feel it is unlikely that they will listen to complaints about Ian Plimer's "Unleashed" piece of fiction. Plimer can grizzle all he likes about politics, greenies, Labor voters ad nauseum, but he crosses an ethical line if factually erroneous statements are made in the full knowledge of both the errors of fact and of the political impact of the erroneous statements.
Proving that he has crossed that line is tricky though, as it might provoke Plimer into lawyering up and fighting in the legal arena. Which would be ironic given his own legal precedent, but no fun to go through.
Donald @ 10, my suspicion is that, even if Plimer did lawyer up, he'd do about as well as he did when he tried using the Trade Practices Act against a bunch of Creationists about 15 years ago. I think he walked away from that with only the shirt on his back - costs were awarded against him. I doubt he'd make the same mistake twice, especially as he must know how dishonest his current postion is.
re: 6, 9-11: thanks; always useful to get the local info.
So, is it possible to campaign to downgrade its funding?
>So, is it possible to campaign to downgrade its funding?
Yep, Andrew Bolt, Peirs Akerman, Tim Blair and the extreme right deniosphere have been campaigning on this for years.
Its the old chestnut of 'moving the centre'. The ABC is in the centre, but the extreme right have dragged that centre to a new place.
The countervailing 'left' are too busy paying off their mortgages to get out and make a difference. Their counter weight is very light, involving email campaigns and blog debates (like me here).
Canât rock the boat, -got a mortgage to pay.
John @ 12 - no, our last government already reduced the ABC's funding as far as it could be. The reason (not owned up to) was because of a perceived left bias.
The kind of thing the ABC got knocked about the head and shoulders for doing: mentioning "invade", "preemptive attack", "missing weapons of mass-destruction", "refugee" (as opposed to the "correct" expression "illegal immigrant"), "...without trial", "torture", etc. And that is just the start.
When it comes to the great AGW issue, the ABC again got stiffed in parliament with complaints about having senior scientists (from the CSIRO, a national government and self-funded research organisation with budget of around $900m AUD pa) referring to the "consensus", the "IPCC", and the biggest farce of all - climate research scientists being gagged by the CSIRO's media arm, then under the jurisdiction of Donna Staunton, a one-time lawyer for big Tobacco prior to taking on the PR job). It seems that there is still a gag of sorts, one in which senior scientists are gagged from any discussion of any issue that might be construed as public policy commentary. On that very topic, there is a risible - LOLROF - interview by the ABC of an internationally renowned CSIRO climate scientist, Kevin Hennessy, in which the extent of the gag was made evident in the silliest manner possible. The following exchange is between the interviewer, Janine Cohen, and Kevin Hennessy:
JANINE COHEN: Scientists still working at the CSIRO are very cautious about what they say, particularly when it could affect government policy.
KEVIN HENNESSY, CSIRO IMPACT GROUP: I've never been told by any of my superiors that I can't talk about scientific issues. We have to be careful not to stray into being policy prescriptive, but we can certainly be policy relevant with our science. We still need a risk-management approach that includes adaptation...
JANINE COHEN: Kevin Hennessy is the coordinator of the CSIRO's Climate Impact Group. One of his jobs is to talk about the potential impacts of climate change. But there are some likely impacts of climate change that are clearly a no-go zone. Some scientists believe that there'll be more environmental refugees. Is that a possibility?
KEVIN HENNESSY, CSIRO IMPACT GROUP: I can't really comment on that.
JANINE COHEN: Why can't you comment on that?
KEVIN HENNESSY, CSIRO IMPACT GROUP: That's, that's, er... No, I can't comment on that.
JANINE COHEN: Is that part of editorial policy? You can't comment on things that affect immigration?
KEVIN HENNESSY, CSIRO IMPACT GROUP: No, I can't comment on that.
JANINE COHEN: Can I just ask you why you can't comment?
KEVIN HENNESSY, CSIRO IMPACT GROUP: Not on camera.
JANINE COHEN: Oh, OK. But is it a policy thing?
KEVIN HENNESSY, CSIRO IMPACT GROUP: I can't comment on that.
How's that for fully sick?
> Some scientists believe that there'll be more environmental refugees. Is that a possibility?
After having been told and reporting:
> It seems that there is still a gag of sorts, one in which senior scientists are gagged from any discussion of any issue that might be construed as public policy commentary
IS damn weird.
It is also weird since the question has nothing to do with science.
cf
> Dropping a large weight will possibly have huge consequences for killing people if they are standing underneath. Is that a possibility?
Yes, it does.
How does that change any science, though? Should dropping weights be banned? But that's a policy thing, not a science thing. So you should be asking a politician (note the similarity of the names: policy and politician, this is known as "a clue").
The point of my mentioning the Kevin Hennessy interview, in which he won't/can't answer on whether there will be an increase in environmental refugees, is that he is the head of the CSIRO Climate Impact Group, at least at the time of giving the interview in 2006.
How is it that the group formed to study climate impact upon the environment and upon humans is unable to answer a question about whether an increase in environmental refugees may occur or not? The group models exactly that sort of thing as part of the overall scientific endeavour. For the head of the group to be unable to even say something as benign as "We expect that, conditional on the estimates of sea rise..., there is a possibility of an increase in environmental refugees." That would have answered the question, have been faithful to the science, and not have in any way been policy prescriptive. But Hennessy could not even do that! Instead, he had to resort to "No comment." or the equivalent.
Speaks volumes for how CSIRO scientists really interpreted the version of the media policy that they were given.
> How is it that the group formed to study climate impact upon the environment and upon humans is unable to answer a question about whether an increase in environmental refugees may occur or not?
Because that depends on politics.
E.g. If a US state lost land considerably, they would not be refugees because they would move to another state, still within the US.
Mauritius (I think, one of the islands anyway) are looking to buy land from Australia or Asia to move to. If they do, they will not be refugees.
And may I ask you WHY they should answer the question: they CAN answer how much land would disappear if the sea level rose 2m.
Whether there are refugees from that depends
1) will they relocate to a new country (if they don't, no refugees but greater population density)
2) will the new country accept them (if there isn't, they won't be refugees: they'll be dead)
3) will the new country think of them as refugees or immigrants (rather like the german/italian/french/etc that poured into the US: they weren't refugees, they were immigrants who now make up the vast majority of 'merkins)
And these are *POLITICAL* issues, not physical ones.
Displaced: a physical reaction to being unable to breathe underwater.
Refugees: a political reaction to being asked to look after the displaced.