Of Polar Bears And Maul Rats

ABOUT owls and trout other interesting local creatures, amateur observation has revealed quite a bit over the years. Of polar bears, though, not a lot, and unless they fly in with the bats come summer to hang upside down in the pear tree it is where the state of knowledge at the Billabong will likely remain. Pity about that. There has been so much talk and writing about polar bears lately it would be terrific to know a firm thing or two – not a thesis’ worth or even a monograph, just enough of the creatures’ habits to raise an eyebrow at purported descriptions of their more unlikely ones. The careerism of some specialists in that field, that is entirely understandable, $50 million to one researcher alone being a very pleasurable piece of change to allocate and administer. But bears aren’t half so obvious as humans, their mysteries growing in inverse proportion to the expanding body of literature they inspire. What do they eat and how often? Can they really swim 200 miles?  Is cannibalism really on the rise, or do males snack on unguarded cubs as they ever have? Tomcats kill kittens and nobody blames warm weather; perhaps polar bears police their gene pool likewise?

They are all matters on which it would be lovely to take the experts at their word. Except you can’t because, as polar biologist Jeffrey Gleason told a US federal agent, the public and publicists’ reactions to anything concerning polar bears is bizarre. “All this stuff is odd,” as Gleason put it.

He was talking about his co-authored paper, the one that inspired Al Gore’s crusaders to make a drowning bear their standard. Finding four dead bears (or was it only three?) struck Gleason as “interesting”, quite unusual even, but the fuss and the way it “just took off” was beyond rational. Why, his PhD supervisor even wrote him a stern note for lending his name to such a carnival! Somewhat abashed, Gleason added that, yes, it would have been good to take a closer look at the four (or was it three?) and other floating carcasses, but by the then the science was settled and further investigation beside the point. Polar bears are dying because the ice cap is melting, that was the immediate message – thin fare, true, but more than enough to sustain hungry reporters and fund-raisers. No need after that for necropsies to hunt out parasites, abscessed teeth or bullets because, as the carbon choristers are forever keen to chant, climate change is real and dead polar bears its prophets.

In light of the latest sad news from Norway, that conditioned inability to trust the official word is a curse, those eager climate beavers having begun to cloud the waters even before the bodies of bear and boy were taken off the beach. Young Horatio Chapple was not the victim of bad luck, it was global warming wot dun it, as the BBC reported:

The reason is climate change. As rising temperatures melt the sea ice, the number of polar bears may rapidly dwindle. That could mean that there are far fewer bears surviving for people to come into conflict with. But if polar bear numbers fall, we may revere them even more, with more tourists and adventurers flocking to catch a final glimpse of these animals.

If the sea ice retreats, it will also mean that more polar bears will be forced to hunt further inland. And that means more polar bears roaming around parts of the Arctic and sub-Arctic that people call home.

Closer to home, true believer Wendy Carlisle, scourge of deniers at their ABC, didn’t bother with the Beeb’s either/or. She settled the science straight away with the same presumption and surmise so recently deployed against Viscount Monckton.  “On that Polar Bear,” she tweeted, “it was hungry. Ice sheets melting. Expect more of it.”

And that is why it would be wonderful to be as sure of facts about polar bears as of our Melbourne sparrows or the endless feud between magpies and crows. Even a smidgin’ of independent reading raises questions for which there are no ready answers. For example, it is summer in the land of the rising sun, and isn’t that when polar bears are supposed to be landbound by the annual melt? So they should be on the shore at this time of year, right?, regardless of whther or not the poles are melting. Maybe a tortured planet cannot be saddled with blame for a schoolboy’s death after all? Maybe or maybe not, but it is impossible to form a focused view.

And what of the attack of itself, how many like it have recent years seen? Quite a few apparently, but that is just a laybunyip’s impression from a little light reading. Those suspicions and others could be settled with access to some straight-bat science, or even from the secondary source of genuinely objective journalists’ notes. None of what you need is there, though -- not the science, not the reporters and certainly not the clarity. 

Poor Horatio was supposed to be learning about climate change when its most recognised symbol did him in. If you can find irony in the fog of doubts in which advocacy has shrouded both research and ethics, there is a second, and perhaps greater, tragedy to be observed on that Norway beach.

Wendy's Wonderland -- Part V

NOT long after Media Watch went to air last night with its item about sea level’s disappointing refusal to rise as quickly as recipients of climate science grants would wish, Sultan of Smug Jonathan Holmes was exchanging tweets with detractors, admirers and friends. Background Briefing’s Wendy Carlisle was very definitely in the third category.

Now visitors to this blog may recall a series of recent posts on the topic of Carlisle’s poxed work, The Lord Monckton Roadshow. These cited, and linked to, documents she presented as supporting her contentions that

(a) Fred Singer rejected the link between tobacco and cancer,

(b) polar biologists did not attribute drowned polar bears to a storm, rather than a lack of ice, and

(c) Viscount Monckton’s number for sea-level rise is wrong, but less so than Al Gore’s.

Upon examination, it became clear those same documents actually refuted her narrative’s assertions, which were the product of (a) mischief, (b) misrepresentation and (c) mis-reading.

When avid tweeter spot_the_dog brought the posts to her attention, she dealt with the matter by the simple expedient of banishing him, and his questions, from her in box. This is an example of the arrogance others who question her reporting have also tasted. How Holmes reacted to notes from Bunyipitude readers – several have written to say they alerted the media watchdog to his ABC colleague’s travesty -- remains unknown, as no public word or tweet on the topic has passed his well-paid lips.

He has, however, been a good deal more forthcoming with Carlisle, who sent him a little tweet as the sea-level item was coming to an end.

@Wendycarlisle Wendy Carlisle

@jonaholmesMW @abcscience online ran the same stupid story on brady

…which prompted the following exchange:

jonaholmesMW Jonathan Holmes

@Wendycarlisle at least ABC gave CSIRO a right of reply

14 hours ago

in reply:

@Wendycarlisle Wendy Carlisle

@jonaholmesMW yes we shld be thankful for that. But gave Brady a cred that was undeserved. Had you seen it?

There was another tweet, too, with a jocular references to “passing the bottle” and Carlisle making a mock apology for her “impertinent filthy question”. One gets the distinct impression these two are (a) bonza cobbers, (b) ardent warmists and (c) further united by a contempt for those who are not.

Perhaps Holmes has been too busy to set shared climate convictions aside and examine his ABC colleague’s handiwork, but that seems unlikely in the light of the gusto with which he picked at The Australian’s sea-level story. Meanwhile, the duo's display of public affection and mutual regard does raise the suspicion that Holmes will always prefer to look anywhere but in Carlisle’s direction for his show’s targets. And if he has trouble finding them, Carlisle will provide a few suggestions to confirm his aim.

What was it they used to say about Caesar’s wife, that she should be above reproach?

The ABC, it never ceases to amaze. Here we have a fellow paid, and paid well, to keep an eye on slackness-and-worse in the media, yet demonstrating an affectionate eagerness to take advice from someone accused of slackness-or-worse in the media. Meanwhile, the unfortunate Brady, who scored Media Watch’s disdain for being not only a sceptic but a paleontologist to boot (be warned, Tim Flannery), cops both barrels and a salvo of sneers.

It really is an organization to make the jaw drop, their ABC, and not just for putting groupthink and bias on open display. When it comes to a brazen contempt even for the appearance of doing its duty, your tax dollars have never supported its equal.

Wendy's (Other) Wonderland -- Part IV

IT is not just nefarious climate deniers and Bunyips in the pay of Big Carbon who think that, as a journalist, Background Briefing's Wendy Carlisle makes a first-rate propagandist. The mouthpiece for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Sandi Logan, shares that opinion:

@SandiHLogan Sandi Logan

Don't know about that @wendycarlisle - it was never 4500; it's 4000 UNHCR assessed refugees over four years. Important to get/choose facts.

A sniffy Carlisle fires back:

@Wendycarlisle Wendy Carlisle

thanks for the tips on how to do journalism

...to which Logan responds:

@SandiHLogan Sandi Logan

You call it spin when you don't like what you @Wendycarlisle read; you patronise when you're wrong, & are corrected. Nice. Journalism 101?

Please, Sandi, you really must stop highlighting Carlisle's deficiencies. Poor Jonathan Holmes has enough already to ignore tonight.

UPDATE:  At Catallaxy, Judith Sloan writes of the ABC, a debate with Mark Scott (ABC supremo, ex-Fairfax chief Fred Hilmer's godson and --no nepotism there -- former Fairfax high-flier). Here is Sloan's summation of the ABC complaints process:

So here is the ABC’s complaints-handing rule-book (I know – I decided to road-test it a while back – some little clerk got back to me after nearly two months: COMPLAINT REJECTED.)

• Treat the complainant as dim-wit, using a patronizing tone;
• Refer obliquely to the matter raised but declare that all approaches to journalism are equally valid;
• Assure the complainant that the matter has been thoroughly investigated;
• Tell the complainant that management takes all complaints very seriously;
• Finally, quote the internet address of the Editorial Guidelines.

What Sloan is too nice to note: Scott is one more of those jumped-up pen pushers, albeit with delusions of grandeur and the public purse to indulge them.

Wendy's Wonderland

 A CHALLENGE: Wendy Carlisle, the lectern is yours. Respond to the three apparent errors listed below. You have been tweeting up a storm of denial, but a professional journalist would surely wish to invest more than 140-characters in defending her competence, honesty, or both. Email the Billabong or join the comments thread. Silence can only condemn.

 

By the way, there is another little curiosity about your report, but that can wait until tomorrow.

_________________________________________

 

ABC reporterette Wendy Carlisle informs visitors to her twitter page that she is “working on a new secret story”. Women are said to be particularly good at multi-tasking, according to the settled science one finds in dog-eared magazines available in hospital waiting rooms, but Ms Carlisle must be a genuine journalistic wonder. After broadcasting her Background Briefing assault on Viscount Monckton, she promised to address the many criticisms of that 60-minute, taxpayer-funded slander, and in sundry other posts has insisted she and the ABC “stand by our story”. Yet two weeks have passed and no defence, comprehensive or tweeted, has been forthcoming.

Perhaps she simply does not know where to start, there being so much on her plate and so much that was wrong – not just sloppy, but downright, irredeemably false --  about the Monckton report. Now that she is also tweeting defences of a polar biologist who has been suspended over allegations of scientific misconduct, the poor thing may need a little help organising her thoughts. Indeed, she has not found time to note that the bounced boffin, Dr Charles Monnett, was one of her prime sources for her attack on Monckton.

Chivalry is not dead, at least not at the Billabong, where young, firm women can always expect gentlemanly courtesies. So to help the credulous Carlisle address those matters of gross inaccuracy, here are some of her assertions and the documentary evidence refuting them. All Carlisle’s quotes are taken from her broadcast. Each quoted source is lifted from the “supporting documents” she provides at the show's Background Briefing web page:

Wendy’s Wonderland #1:

Wendy Carlisle: … he [Fred Singer] was one of those scientists to basically cast doubt on the link between smoking and cancer

Fred Singer (from the cited paper): There are certain things about smoking which science can demonstrate. For example, active smoking is detrimental to the health of millions of smokers.

Fred Singer: It is accepted that smoking is linked to several forms of cancer, particularly of the lungs, and also to heart disease.

The full document is here. Readers will note that Singer casts not a shred of doubt on the cancer/smoking link; rather, he endorses it. His beef is with the bent and cobbled together “science” deployed to ban fags in bars and other public places, research that saw secondhand smoke designated as a known carcinogen only after orthodox statistical analysis was jettisoned to achieve that result.

Sounds kinda like climate science, eh?

QUESTION FOR CARLISLE: Did you not read the supporting document you provide?

Wendy’s Wonderland #2:

Wendy Carlisle: The scientific paper Lord Monckton cites does not say that the polar bears drowned because of a big storm.

The polar bear paper: High mortality in 2004 was more likely related to extreme and metabolically demanding conditions, such as high sea states associated with stormy weather.

The polar bear paper: Our count of dead polar bears related to the 2004 windstorm almost certainly represents an underestimate of the actual number of polar bears affected

The polar bear paper: Over the next days, high winds occurred across the study area with light westerly winds switching to strong easterly winds peaking at 54 km/h at Endicott and 46 km/h

… Winds offshore were likely considerably higher

The polar bear paper: Seas became very rough with wave heights estimated in excess of 2m.

The full document is here. And just for a little perspective, let us note that the paper’s author, who is in hot water with US federal investigators, has been, ahem, peer reviewed, as he explains: “Uh, well, it was, it was reviewed here. Um, Lisa Rotterman, my wife, who is a, you know, Ph.D. ecologist, reviewed it and, you know, she took the first cut”

Ah, the benefits of a happy and supportive marriage!

QUESTION FOR WENDY: Did you not read the supporting document you provide?

Wendy’s Wonderland #3:

So far, in our examination of Carlisle’s litany of loose reporting, her sins can be understood, if not forgiven. Let’s assume the slur on Singer and the misrepresentation of the polar bear study (itself highly dubious) were inspired by a dash of cavalier laziness and a larger dollop of personal bias. It is easy to see how it might have happened. Her green contacts fed her the libels, and being a reporter committed to carbon justice and a candle-powered planet, she parroted and published them. Shockingly slack, but not without precedent, as a good many of her ABC colleagues so often cut the same corners.

But the third and final of Carlisle’s transgressions is no mere study in slackness. Indeed, it is such a monumental misrepresentation that Media Watch’s Jonathan Holmes, even if he can ignore #1 and #2, needs to be all over this example of dopey, devious journalism. He won’t touch it, of course, but he most definitely should. Read the transcript below – and read it carefully.

Wendy Carlisle: And the show continued like this for another 50 minutes, with Lord Monckton repeatedly misconstruing the scientific evidence.
Christopher Monckton: Because Al Gore says in his movie that because of the melting of two ice sheets, Greenland and the West Antarctic, sea level is going to rise by 20 feet, imminently. But in fact the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that because of those two ice sheets the amount of contribution to sea level rise will be, over the whole of the next 100 years six centimetres, which is two and a half inches; not 610 centimetres, which is 20 feet. So there is a hundredfold exaggeration by Al Gore. 'I'm gonna do this big, baby!'
Wendy Carlisle: On this occasion the exaggerations cut both ways. Yes, Al Gore did overstate his case, but Lord Monckton's assertion, that the UN's climate change panel says seas will only rise by six centimetres this century, is pure fiction. According to chapter five of its report on sea levels, the sea is expected to rise between 20 and 50 centimetres this century.

Well, yes, the IPCC does say something like that, and you can find its predictions of total seal level rise at page 409 of its 2007 magnum opus.

But the key word is “total” – and Monckton was not talking about the overall global increase. The element of Al Gore’s theology that attracts his attention is the projected sea level rise attributable to just two ice sheets, the Greenland and West Antarctic ones. They are but two of several sources and factors the IPCC believes will drown us, the chief amongst these being the fact that water expands as it warms (see graphic 10.33 on page 821 and section 10.7.4.1).

For those interested, the IPCC explains its logic not in Chapter 5, where Carlisle refers listeners, but in Chapter 10 (see section 10.6.1 on page 812), where the settled scientists note that Antarctica is unlikely to be a major source of sea level increases in the short term because the volume of land-based ice is growing. The Greenland ice sheet, it continues, is likely to be more troublesome, but estimating its contribution, and the speed of that contribution, must remain speculative because of all the many variables. According to the graphic on page 830, the near-total disappearance of Greenland’s ice might be seen 1,760 years hence, an interval that would appear to grant humanity a little breathing room.

All of the above is very interesting, but delving into the IPCC’s minutiae is to miss the staggering mischief in Carlisle’s reaming of Monckton. Just to recap, he refers to a 6cm sea-level increase as a consequence of just two ice sources melting in the short term. Carlisle pretends he is talking about total rises from all global sources and then uses that misrepresentation to give him a right bollocking while simultaneously excusing Gore’s towering falsehood.

Where did Monckton get his 6cm? Well, that remains a mystery, quite possibly because the IPCC report is a thick, dense and difficult document for a lay Bunyip to decipher in its entirety.  If that figure is in there and readers can find it, or if more incisive souls can spot the numbers Monckton crunched to get his estimate, please post a note of explanation in the comments thread and this post will be updated ASAP.

But again, fixating on pure numbers is a mugs game. Carlisle’s sin #3 is flat-out misrepresentation, the actual number being beside the point.

QUESTION FOR CARLISLE: Did you not read the supporting document you provide?

Add another exhibit to the body of evidence that says the ABC needs to be cleaned out or, if that proves impossible, shuttered for good. That the ABC published Carlisle’s poison is appalling. That it has allowed it to stand is a disgrace.

Missing Link

FORTY EIGHT hours have passed since Wendy Carlisle of  Background Briefing put to air her assault on Viscount Monckton -- two days in which a transcript of the sixty-minute slander has failed to appear.

The ABC must struggle through on a paltry billion-or-so dollars per year, but surely it could have processed and posted the script by now. Unless, of course, it would prefer to make a line-by-line examination of its handiwork rather difficult.

Readers might like to drop ABC supremo Mark Scott a polite note and ask why it is taking so long. He can be reached at:

Scott.Mark@abc.net.au

UPDATE: Background Briefing's page now says a transcript will be available on Tuesday afternoon.

And in further development, Carlisle says she will be "tweeting a response to claims I got it wrong on Lord Monckton". Let's help the poor, put-upon thing, shall we? After all, a 140-character limit doesn't provide much scope for elucidation. How about this:

"Can't touch me, I work for the ABC"

Until the election, sweetheart. Until the election.

UPDATE II: Now that we know Carlisle's transcript will be going up soonish, thereremains another reason to contact Mark Scott. Apparently the ABC recruits its in-house lawyers from the bargain bin.

Scott.Mark@abc.net.au

Light Up A Viscount

THERE should be no joy in another’s pain, but lately the temptation to have a good, long laugh at the New Establishment’s pain has been irresistible. Things aren’t going quite as planned, what with those dismal polls and the shocking realization that out there in their millions, there really are people who refuse to believe that a nice new tax will be good for them. It has all come as quite a shock to the anointed, whose analyses of what is good for this wretched government have been so consistently skew wiff*. The carbon tax was supposed to be a natural winner, an easy sell, according to those same bell ringers, who  were out early to hail its genius and howl down all detractors.

Now that it is coming to pieces, now that the newsrooms at the Silly, Phage and Collective represent a large chunk of the hidebound 25% of the population still prepared to vote Labor, there is rage in the air. Watch Jonathan Holmes get in a snit about free speech that isn’t his kind of speech. Hear an ABC interviewer slam down the phone. Be amazed as the bravehearts of our fearless press approach this gangrenous PM on bended knee, begging for guidance that they might report her doings more equitably. The prescription was scatological. Her courtiers took it with their Press Club lunch.

Honestly, if you couldn’t laugh you would cry at the way in which the fury of frustration is manifesting itself, shredding even the pretence of balance. A particularly petulant example went to air over Radio National on Sunday morning. It was called The Monckton Road Show, and if there has ever been reason to clean out the ABC come the next election, this is it. It is a vicious,

For some reason the ABC has yet to post a transcript, but you can hear the full broadcast here.  Take particular note of the bit dealing with Lord Monckton’s rejection of Al Gore’s contention that shrinking Arctic ice is drowning polar bears. Referring to the paper on which Gore based his claim, a Monckton sound byte captures him saying:

 “Gore, for once, actually cites a scientific paper. He cites it wrong, of course, but he does cite it. And what he says is a scientific study shows, for the first time, they are finding polar bears that have drowned, swimming long distances to find the ice … so here is the actual map from the paper: Four dead polar bears!…

…did any of these polar bears, according to the paper he was quoting die because they were trying to find the ice. No, they died because there was a big storm with high winds and high waves and they got swamped. Or, as we scientists call it, shit happens. So there is no basis at any point for Al Gore’s story. It was complete fiction from start to finish.”

Clear on that? Good, because the next snatch of audio is from Carlisle, who is quite definite that Monckton is telling whoppers:

“The scientific paper that Lord Monckton cites does not say the polar bears drowned because of a big storm. The paper suggests that the polar bears most likely drowned because there was less ice for them to seek refuge on because of climate change, and that the drowned polar bears could be statistically significant.”

So let’s go to the paper, shall we? And remember, Monckton says it was bad weather that did for those poor bears. Carlisle tells listeners bad weather had nothing to do with it.

If, however, data are simply spatially extrapolated, bear deaths during a period of high winds in 2004 may have been significant

27 bears may have died as a result of the high offshore winds.

Our count of dead polar bears related to the 2004 windstorm….

Over the next days, high winds occurred across the study area, with light westerly winds switching to strong easterly winds peaking at 54 km/h at Endicott and 46 km/h measured at Kaktovik between 10 and 11 September (Fig. 2). Winds offshore were likely considerably higher … Seas became very rough with wave heights estimated in excess of 2m.

If that is not enough for Carlisle, there is this:

High mortality in 2004 was more likely related to extreme and metabolically demanding conditions, such as high sea states associated with stormy weather…

…Our count of dead polar bears related to the 2004 windstorm almost certainly represents an underestimate

What makes Carlisle’s misrepresentation so remarkable is that she has actually posted a link to the paper on Background Briefing’s web page. All anyone has to do is open and read it – something she appears not to have done.

Or did she? It is a dreadful, uncharitable thought, but in her hatchet job on Monckton, Carlisle seems to make a habit of misstating the papers to which she links. One error might be deemed a misfortune, to paraphrase Lady Bracknell, but to commit so many must be construed as carelessness.

Or perhaps  worse than carelessmness. A second of Carlisle’s gross misrepresentations will be the subject of a subsequent post

UPDATE: There has not been much time over the past week to stay entirely on top of events. Andrew Bolt has already pounced on Carlisle's contempt for professional standards 

UPDATE II: For those too young to remember...