The ABC’s archive of error

The ABC, home of the green fact-mincer.

For the billion dollars-plus the ABC costs, the taxpaying public gets substantial volume but little of genuine value. Alleged comedy production Tonightly, for example, offers a wholesale consignment of obscene language from host Tom Ballard but very few laughs. Economic analysis? Well there’s Emma Alberici cranking out thousands of words in a bid to tackle a topic whose most basic comprehension — that revenue and profit aren’t the same thing — is seemingly beyond her grasp. And science? If you caught 4 Corners‘ latest climate beatup on Monday, you will have been reminded that only one species of boffinism gets a look-in, the comfortably settled sort which insists the world is doomed unless professional warmists’ long and ever-expanding record of dud prophecies is treated (and funded) as holy writ. Viewers and listeners get lots and lots of that.

Still, there is something to be said for the ABC, whose online archives often provide a handy tool for referencing what it has broadcast in the past and comparing them with today’s realities.

Case study #1: Last year the ABC’s Tom Joiner profiled Scott Goodwin, a former NSW policeman who married a Swedish girl and now patrols the town of Växjö , where the report noted

Anti-refugee sentiment in Växjö has festered in recent years over a widely perceived link between immigration and a rise in violent crime, something no shortage of experts and even the Swedish government have refuted.

This meshed nicely with the national broadcaster’s preferred narrative that there is nothing finer than multiculturalism and only, as Joiner put it, “right wing media” would see anything but good in a policy that encourages non-assimilation and suburban silos of ethnic separatism.

This week, however, the New York Times reported the death of an innocent Swedish man, blown up by a hand grenade amid the escalating violence of Sweden’s ethnic gangs. Reporter Joiner and Officer Goodwin should perhaps find a moment to update their appraisals of how well multiculturalism is working.

Case study #2:  The Climate Council, those busy little catastrophians, have been beavering away to produce yet another allegedly expert report on the wonders of a renewable economy and the urgent need to embrace

… a national energy road map outlining how Australia can cut its rising greenhouse gas pollution levels, while continuing the transition to clean, affordable and reliable renewable energy and storage technology

To further the persuasive impact of this pitch, the Climate Council offers the “expert opinion” of Melbourne University’s Professor Andrew Stock. Here and once again the ABC archives come in handy, especially for any reporters whose ambitions rise above mere stenography. A quick check reveals that, amongst his other expert credentials, Professor Stock was a board member of Tim Flannery & Co’s commercial debacle, Geodynamics. In case that brave new hope for a green world has been lost and forgotten in the barrage of other costly and forlorn schemes for a carbon-free planet, here is the learned professor’s view of “hot rocks” energy as reported by the ABC in February, 2010, when Origin Energy made a major investment in Geodynamics’ doomed project.

“Geothermal, if we can realise its potential, has a tremendous role to play into (sic) our future in Australia.”

And remember, renewable power is “affordable”, as quoted above. An expert says so.

For a further archived reminder of the ABC’s appetite for green snake oil, follow this link or the one below.

— roger franklin

Read More