Conversation series on media and misinformation

Simply put, the Australian media have failed the public by creating a phoney debate about climate science that is largely absent from the peer-reviewed literature, where real scientific debates take place.

And who is paying for this? Never forget that most "news" you get these days on MSM is a form of infomercial. Real news be damned, it's what pays that gets airtime. And will the people and companies paying for the disinformation ever feel the sharp edge of revenge's knife? Why are all the tobacco executives still living in luxury, after denying the tobacco-cancer link (despite their own suppressed studies proving the link)? Why has nobody, who has lost a loved one to the tobacco scourge, taken some dramatic action to hurt these swine? Note that Gina Rinehart, coal baron and AGW denier, drives around in a bulletproof limousine containing bodyguards. Who would do that but someone who knows they have done something wrong and deserve punishment?

Ah-ha!

I can shoot your argument down in flames - George W. Bush drives around in a bullet-proof limousine. So there.

Hang on, what I meant was,
The Pope drives around in a bullet-proof limousine, so there!

Hang on.....does Mugabe favour the bullet-proof limousine as a mode of transport? Umm....I'm detecting a pattern - somebody call in the auditors.

Andrew Hughes is spot on -- pure political marketing is the only way to describe Comrade Gillard's $12 million carbon tax advertising campaign.

Perhaps it's a Danish CLOUD that is obscuring your views on climate change!

Rick - you might find this commentary on that subject interesting:
[Critics of carbon tax are not qualified](http://theconversation.edu.au/whos-your-expert-the-difference-between-p…)

Your calling Prime Minister Gillard "comrade" indicates a complex of related tribalistic beliefs. Do you feel any obligation to society at large, or only corporate financial elites? Whatever your moral values, reality doesn't give a fig about them. Global warming is real, and is already costing us lives and wealth.

Well Forbes magazine has rehashed several of the outdated and rejected claims in a new Op-Ed, in support of Rick Perry, without the slightest hint of the stupidity involved.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2011/08/30/rick-perry-neednt-swea…

That UK Telegraph 'interpreter of interpretations' has produced another piece of fiction, to add to his novels, with respect to that CERN CLOUD paper. This chief wizard quotes another of his ilk Lawrence Solomon - Science Now Settled.

Cracked-pottery appears contagious.

"Cracked-pottery appears contagious"

At last, something I can agree with on this site, not least, I suppose, because I see so much evidence of it here!

(Just teasing)

Nope, it's the desires of the Denialists like yourself Dai, who insisted that the experiment would be the "final solution" to AGW.

(just teasing you ignorant buffoon!)

More US puffery on misreading studies can be found here:
http://my.auburnjournal.com/detail/186758.html

The very last paragraph is perhaps the actual lead of this screed of ignorance.

Here's a good read,

http://theconversation.edu.au/bad-tidings-reporting-on-sea-level-rise-i…

> Global warming is real, and is already costing us lives and wealth.

What is costing 'us' lives and wealth is global warming *hysteria*, as even most of your comrades who abetted the biofuel drive, the [crime against humanity](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/05/biofuels.food) have admitted.

Perhaps you will find out soon, as will tens of millions of ordinary Aussies, that electricity bills will go through the pink-batted roof because of this CAGW fantasy.

Where are all those 'climate refugees'? In round figures, how many Pacific islands have been inundated by sea level rises? Has the Barrier Reef vanished? Polar bears vanished? Snow ended in the UK? More Atlantic hurricanes?

You need to realise: just because you want something to be true, that doesn't mean that it is true.

Well, I guess you'd know all about misinformation, Ricky.

> What is costing 'us' lives and wealth is global warming hysteria

Really? Care to point out where a life was lost due to global warming "hysteria"? How about just money lost due to it?

> that electricity bills will go through the pink-batted roof because of this CAGW fantasy.

CAGW is YOUR fantasy.

And electric bills are going through the roof. Why? Fuel prices are rising. It's running out and a large war was just fought to get hold of some more of it. That has to be paid for.

> In round figures, how many Pacific islands have been inundated by sea level rises?

[Ask them yourself](http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47944)

Now, about those lives lost to GW "hysteria"...?

> Has the Barrier Reef vanished?

Is it dying? Yes.

> Polar bears vanished?

Are they dying out? Yes.

Oh, you mean your fantasy about everything being dead HASN'T HAPPENED YET? Sorry, your fantasies have nothing to do with reality.

Stephan Lewandowsky and Ullrich Ecker point out that:

Ignoring the complexity of scientific data is, however, not without merit, as revealed by the fact that The Australianâs Editor-in-Chief, Chris Mitchell, received the âJN Pierce Award for Media Excellence for leading the newspaperâs coverage of climate change policyâ in 2009.

The award is presented each year by the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association.

And the APPEA would know all about media excellence in coverage of climate change policy.

Cut and Paste have their own way of trying to silence dissent with this attack on Stephan Lewandowsky [today](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/bomb-throwers-even-at-the-age-but-…).

Thanks to [Cut and Paste](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/never-mind-climate-change-…), and the rest of the editorial team, I have saved a tidy sum giving up my long term subscription to The Australian.

Apologies for continually raising the Australian's climatic misdemeanour's but today's paper includes a letter from Bob Carter and I quote:

As long ago as 2005 it was apparent that global average temperature was starting to decline in the face of rising carbon dioxide emissions.

"...global average temperature was starting to decline in the face of rising carbon dioxide emissions..."

That's good then. No need for me to worry that the Arctic has just cracked the all-time records for lowest sea ice volume and for lowest sea ice area. P'raps Bob C can explain to us how icemelt is just as disconnected from temperatures as temperature is from CO2. P'raps?

Perhaps not.

Adelady it also struck me as being a bizarrely strange year to claim climatic cooling given 2005 and 2010 tied for the hottest global temperatures on record. As this [letter writer states](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/cant-have-it-both-ways-on-…)
>BOB Carter (Ready for Climate Change, Letters, 9/9), makes me wonder if he makes this stuff up as he goes along?

I did enjoy [Cut and Paste](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/with-so-many-people-going-…) today, particularly the quote from Adam Brereton in New Matilda.
>To put it bluntly, News Limited, and its flagship The Australian, are spinning rubbish for the punters, which is bad because they're gormless twits who'll accept any old shit.

>Far from being complicit in that project, many otherwise moral journalists are kept under lock and key by Mitchell, forced to scurry about whenever he shouts "Berk! Feed me!" from the editor's office.

I am trying hard to desist from my masochistic tendency to peruse The Australian for dumb and even dumber climate articles but they make it so much fun.