Despite acknowledged flaws in computer models and global temperatures' prolonged plateau, three august Australian bodies have issued reports insisting that the climate-change "crisis" is real, bad and getting worse. Have they no shame?
Our March edition is now on sale, with essays from Anne Henderson, Hal G.P. Colebatch, Daryl McCann and many other of Australia sharpest writers and thinkers. Plus, Michael Connor at the theatre, columns by Peter Coleman, Peter Ryan and John O'Sullivan and a fresh poem from Les Murray
Australia has been remarkably lucky, says new Treasury Secretary John Fraser (left), who notes that the nation's ever-growing debts are being financed at blessedly low interest rates. When they rise, unless the will is found to crimp government spending, the crunch will hit hard, deep and long
Actually, only five have complained so far, but why not apply warmist statistical methods to allegations of roving hands, lurid texts and an obsession with 'voluptuous breasts' that have seen the world's premier alarmist resign? One possible defence: climate change makes bureaucrats hot to trot
Be it on TV or radio, every minute of every broadcasting day is the same: Tony Abbott is evil, the Coalition is worse and only Malcolm Turnbull is fit to lead -- until the next election, that is, when the Labor/Greens auxiliary that controls the national broadcaster can campaign for their luvvie soulmates
Every first-year law student knows the story of the snail in the ginger beer and how, against all odds, a new tort of negligence was created, defining the duty of care a provider owes the end user. Little known is the Queensland connection in that landmark of British jurisprudence
They all seemed like good ideas at the time, especially the bit about making Bill Shorten look good in order to secure a firm hold on his party's leadership. Unfortunately the other part of this strategy hasn't quite clicked: presenting Abbott & Co., as paragons of unity, competence and fairness
A friend and brave colleague awaits trial in an Azerbaijani prison, the charges against her so patently ridiculous they would be laughable if a courageous reporter did not face the prospect of an extended stint behind bars. Her real crime? Daring to shine a light on the business dealings of her country's President and its First Family
A legal technicality has wiped the jumbuk jihadist's terrorism conviction, but the man who revelled in the company of Osama bin Laden was never an innocent abroad. He knew full well what he was doing -- and so do his apologists on the left
Twenty-one Copts are beheaded on a Libyan beach, their butchers' mockery filmed in graphic detail for the amusement and edification of the legions who take seriously the Prophet's unambiguous call to strike at the necks of unbelievers. There is blood on more hands than those which wielded the knives
They Marched in March -- the usual suspects in all their serried shades of anger and incoherence -- because, well, it would have made even less sense to bemoan the fact that Tony Abbott and the Coalition won an election last September by April-ing in April. Zeg is fearful of such antics' impact on the easily impressed.
At the University of Wollongong there is so much diversity to honour, especially when Christians are demanding all the attention with their mangers and tinsel, that staff have been sent a chirpy reminder that Christmas is about much more than the Messiah
Climate change is torching Australia, according to the likes of Tim Flannery and his fellow warmists at the Bureau of Meteorology. If only the money now spent on computer projections and big-ticket fire fighting gear could go toward fuel reduction
A New Zealand court has rejected the argument that one can claim asylum from the alleged ravages of climate change. For the plaintiff, it is back to teeming Kiribati, where the real problem is a booming population
A cash-strapped America no longer has the resources to continue as the world’s policeman, as its craven capitulation to Tehran makes clear. For Australia the message is chilling
Good reporting hangs upon the obligation to lay out the facts without fear, favour or bias. At the national broadcaster a rather different approach prevails, as coverage of the Triggs hearing demonstrates: begin with an inaccurate summation, omit relevant background, and highlight only the most dubious and partisan accusations
So some senior Liberals don't like Tony Abbott and aim to do him in with a campaign of leaks, lies and ludicrous pseudo-scoops of the kind that suckered The Australian only last weekend. Perhaps they haven't heard what treachery brought the Tories after Margaret Thatcher's ouster
Putin is not alone in using ethnic-TV broadcasts to sow dissension, discord and resentment in emigre communities around the globe, but the sheer size, slickness and penetration of his propaganda enterprise eclipses even the considerable efforts of Islamist incendiarists
A President who refuses to acknowledge that Islamist terror has anything to do with Islam is a poor prospect to resist Russian ambitions in the Baltic, should Moscow next target those nations in its campaign to re-claim the former Soviet empire. As Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia understand, they are on their own
They were there at the start, when the study of climate was in its infancy, but today the names of meterologists such as Hubert Lamb are seldom mentioned by those colleagues and their heirs who very quickly grasped that sound science doesn't pay half as well as a good scare story
When Peter Minter banned Quadrant's poets from his magazine's pages on the grounds that they had published in what he likened to a Nazi journal, the curious might have wondered just what sort of verse he actually favours. Here's a hint
Readers can form their own judgement as to whether this first-person account would count in Andrew Bolt’s challenge to Robert Manne to “name ten” Aborigines stolen purely for racial reasons
PM Stephen Harper has three election victories under his belt and, from a conservative point of view, not much to show for them. Being nice to political enemies is all very well and good, but it leaves your supporters less than impressed
If "Indigenous culture" is to be recognised in Australia's Constitution it is vital to understand what the term means. Rap songs and break dancing, perhaps?
If a slick video and the IPCC's latest inaccurate and untruthful arguments are the best it can do to demonstrate a dangerous warming problem, its advice should be ignored and funding withdrawn
We all know that global warming inflicts the darndest effects on our dying planet. Just at the moment, for example, all that CO2-generated extra heat has frozen New York's Hudson River and made it colder in some North American locales than it has ever been before. Closer to home we can see more evidence of warming's impact, most particularly its damage to the newsrooms at The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, where the inmates seem to believe their remaining readers are even dimmer than themselves. Given that those papers daily feature the insights of Peter Hartcher and Mark Kenny, still pounding the Abbott Death Watch beat, that is very dim indeed.
The latest proof is the illustration -- reproduced above -- that accompanied "environment editor" Peter Hannam's appropriately breathless report that the Liddell Power Station is poised to kill people right and left. All that filthy smoke, you see. According to the unquestioned dictation Hannam took from the spokesperson for an organisation representing green medicos and calling itself the Climate and Health Alliance, many residents of the Hunter Valley "will end up end up with cancers in years to come." The luckier ones, presumably, will be drowned quickly and quietly by rising sea levels.
There's a problem, though. The Liddell complex doesn't actually emit much in the way of smoke -- not enough, certainly, to inject the right amount of shock and horror into an appropriately unsettling newspaper illustration.
Not to worry! That's where a polarising lens and PhotoShop can come in handy. As No Tricks Zone reports, while the Fairfax papers may no longer have a shred of credibility, they still possess a very shmick suite of photo-doctoring software. Too little smoke for a good beat-up? Why, just chuck a bit in here and there! The readers will never be any wiser and, anyway, what's the harm of an artificially soot-blacked white lie or two when Gaia is on her death bed?
Smart liars know that their deceptions should owe some debt to reality, as that little grain of truth always makes a fib more convincing. At the SMH, however, even that wisdom has gone out the window (along with sub-editors, a healthy stock price, readers who prefer not to dress in op-shop fashions and editors who read their own pages before sending them to press).
Hence, all that filthy smoke rising from water-cooling towers, which in the real world emit only white wisps of perfectly harmless steam, as in the un-adorned illustration below.
As for the power plant's two chimneys, which do emit smoke, well the SMH's goosed photo seems to have lost one of them altogether.
No Tricks Zone's expose of the photo can be read in full via the link below. The readers' thread has some very interesting observations on longevity in the Hunter Valley. It seems, despite the smoke, they are a very healthy lot and growing more so with every passing year.
-- roger franklin
In an age gone by, those seeking cheap amusement would visit the Bedlam Asylum to gawk at the lunatics and their antics. These days there is no need to leave home. Fairfax Media brings the same demented vulgarity, crazed paranoia and eye-rolling, spittle-flecked madness to your desk at the mere touch of a keyboard -- except they pass it off as journalism.
Here is the latest example, but be warned: while such themes and language are no doubt welcome in the home of, say, Fairfax Media CEO Greg Hywood, those who are less hip and feminsta-groovy might find writer Clementine Ford's latest airing of her problems with men even more sad than they are unhinged.
The Sydney Morning Herald has a code of ethics, which may come as a surprise, but here it is for all to admire -- especially this bit intended to assure readers that reporters aren't being played by contacts with barrows to push or, indeed, are just making stuff up:
"Where a source seeks anonymity, the journalist shall first consider the source's motives and seek alternative attributable sources. Quotes not attributed to a named source will be used only with a section editor's approval."
Let us now extend sympathy's fullest measure to SMH chieftain Darren Goodsir, who must have had little time for anything over the past week but granting executive approvals to correspondent Mark Kenny's use of anonymous sources. Lots and lots of anonymous sources, all ringing the death knell for Tony Abbott:
"Tick, tick, tick ..." was how one insider described the feeling in Parliament House…
Mr Abbott weathered what one MP called a "cavalcade of complaints"
…even [Coalition] neutrals say the situation cannot be allowed to fester. The government is dying...
“It's voters, our voters, who've decided they can't stand this prime minister …," said one marginal seat Liberal.
One senior Liberal called the performance "embarrassing", and another described it as "the last straw" for Mr Abbott's leadership.
As many as a dozen to 16 ministers, according to one inside estimate, would back a switch to Malcolm Turnbull in the event of a challenge.
Just for the record, the SMH Code of Ethics also nails its flag to the mast of accuracy and fairness. That inspirational document can be read via the link below.
Gerard Henderson's latest Media Watch Dog has just been posted and Nancy is in fine form. From this week's first item:
What a stunning performance by David Marr and Richard Glover during the Drive With Richard Glover program on ABC Radio 702 late yesterday afternoon. Discussion turned on evidence given that day at the Royal Commission Into Responses to Child Sexual Abuse concerning Knox Grammar School in 1980s. It turned out that Timothy Hawkes, who appears regularly on Drive With Richard Glover Drive on a Monday, was mentioned at the Royal Commission.
Dr Hawkes (for a doctor he is) is the high profile headmaster at The King’s School in Parramatta. In 1989 he was the MacNeill Housemaster at Knox Grammar School on Sydney’s North Shore when a 13 year old boy boarder was indecently assaulted in his bed. Tim Hawkes did not contact NSW Police at the time or later – believing that this was not his responsibility but, rather, that of the principal. Outside the Royal Commission yesterday Dr Hawkes declared that he had “nothing to regret” concerning his behaviour at the time.
Tim Hawkes’ extraordinary performance at the Royal Commission was not even mentioned on Drive With Richard Glover yesterday. Initially Richard Glover asked David Marr about whether there were any comparisons with Cardinal Pell and the Catholic Church. This overlooked the fact that there is no evidence that George Pell was ever aware of a contemporaneous attack on a 13 year old boy or girl which he failed to report to police. David Marr responded by referring to his recent article of sexual abuse within the Yeshivah movement in the Jewish community, which was published in The Guardian Online.
Neither Glover nor Marr mentioned that Knox Grammar School is under the control of the Uniting Church in 1989. Only the Catholic and Jewish religions were mentioned. Moreover, as previously stated, the only person who was named in the segment on the Drive With Richard Glover program was the Catholic Church’s Cardinal George Pell who had nothing to do with what went on in the Royal Commission yesterday. It was “Blame George” time again. How about that?
Plenty more where that came from via the link below
According to Fairfax Media's Peter Hartcher (above), who thinks as hard as he can when attempting to put the day's news in just the right perspective, Gillian Triggs is indeed a biased political operative masquerading as a human-rights champion.
Also according to Hartcher, Tony Abbott is wrong to paint her as a biased political operative masquerading as a human-rights champion:
"Was Triggs guilty of playing partisan politics? It seems so. Why didn't she inquire into the problem of children in detention when they were being locked up at an increasing rate under Labor? Why wait until now?
Abbott is probably right on this point. But so what? Triggs' report gave the government an opportunity to highlight its progress in solving the problem."
In Fairfax newsrooms this passes for reasoned commentary.
Physicist John Reid, who blogs at Blackjay, writes:
Climate Change is a wonderful science Problem with a capital “P” because it feeds into Western cultural preconceptions about guilt and redemption, about the fundamental wickedness of humankind and about the ultimate perfectibility of man and society. In the West there has always been a breast-beating minority with an exaggerated sense of sin, who wish to change the world before some imagined apocalypse overtakes us all. They tend to take the moral high ground and vilify those who would question their baseless beliefs. Nowadays they are called “the Greens”.
What does it take to be a successful writer in Australia? Alan Gould draws on …
Hal Colebatch’s new book, Australia’s Secret War, tells the shocking, true, but until now largely suppressed and hidden story of the war waged from 1939 to 1945 by a number of key Australian trade unions against their own society.
