Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Taken For A Ride

THE editor of Brisbane’s Courier-Mail recently pulled his reporters off the Bligh and Newman campaign buses, drawing praise from MediaWatch for his explanation that the pleasure of being manipulated was not worth his newspaper’s time or expense. Good for him. But why spurn only politicians’ guided tours? It is a question raised by a spate of reports concerning the BoM’s air-monitoring station at Tasmania’s Cape Grim. Suddenly, reporters are cranking out stories all over the place, most mentioning the research outpost’s findings as further evidence of global warming, which The Age’s Tom Arup parrots most dutifully of all in today’s newspaper.

This must be what that quality journalism is all about: Get taken for a lovely ride to a scenic Tasmanian location, read the packaged information the minders hand out, return to the office and … regurgitate immediately and without question.


 
And it works. Look how many catastropharian recountings have appeared in the past few days, all hooked onto that pleasant afternoon at Cape Grim. As for the fun of being taken for a ride, the independent minds of the modern press just cannot say enough nice things.

If politicians’ spin is to be rejected, why are the warmist establishment’s stunts still seen as worth a reporter’s time?

No need to answer that.

13 comments:

  1. Bunyip I've just read The Australian's resident Leftie, Peter Van Onselen's diatribe on the wonders of Bob Carr. Was there a Bob Carr bus ride by any chance? How can any reporter not realise that the punters' care factor regarding Carr is well into the negatives?
    I also loved Graham Lloyd's scientific analysis of the climate change summary report from our marvellous tax funded weather-mongers. We all know from the moon and Venus that greenhouse gasses affect climate, therefore the world is getting warmer because there has been a tiny increase in the partial pressure of CO2. Well, that's compelling alright Graham.

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  2. One slight problem overlooked by the media - if you view the location of the monitoring equipment - the results over the last few years have been contaminated by recent construction, earthmoving and welding activity from the adjacent wind farm generators

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  3. PhillipGeorge(c)2012March 14, 2012 at 1:13 PM

    dead trees don't tell lies
    when you drive into the high country the stomatal densities increase as a feature of altitude; thining air.
    When you dig up fossilized leaves with a lower density the only possibility is higher atmospeheric partial pressures of CO2 than what exists today.

    More plants in more places [than today]; bigger healthier animals [than today] - they are the mega fauna.

    Fear Factor. Zero.

    But the Nazis, Lenin, Mao, Mugabe, Muhammed, Pol, Idi all do demonstrate something.

    Bible right, men wrong. But the cognitive dissonance of celebrate Pasteur and Darwin all in the same building goes on like a Kurt Vonnegut train wreck.

    The PIGS economies of Greece and Spain loon large on the horizon. Wasted on what. The river gods and the sky gods and gaytopian fundamentalism of "caring" for the ungrateful. When the bank account is empty lets see their heroic self sacrifices.

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  4. Nothing will ever change unless we end the cultural-Marxists domination of the Universities. Show me a journalism student and i'll show you a Leftist. Even the 'conservatives' we have in the MSM these days are former Leftist's who have 'seen the light' and shifted their views a couple of degrees to the Right.

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    1. Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.March 14, 2012 at 3:09 PM

      Yep, I'm merely a humble commenter, but count me in as being a lefty apostate from a dozen or more years back. In In my case, this was a deep schism, a full 180 degree turn. Liberating!

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    2. I bet! Can't imagine what it must have been like to escape that thought prism. Good for you Lizzie, maybe consider staring your own blog? Let a thousand blogs like his one bloom I say, Finklestein be damned.

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    3. I'd read a Lizzie B. Blog, regardless of subject. The lady has a nice way with the words...

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  5. I must be getting old...What ever happened to those old cynical hard workin', hard drinkin' and smokin' journos of yesteryear who used to have ink stains on their fingers, a pencil behind their ear and a world weary disdain for chicanery and spin while clacking away on their Remingtons?

    Did they all die of liver failure?

    Are they wheezing away now on oxygen masks, coughing up phlegm from all that dusty cigarette smoke? Are they dying in a hospice somewhere? Are there none of those scoffing salt of the earth types here in the land of the living that would have chortled at all this global warming tripe?
    Surely they are not all gone? Can someone clone their DNA? Bring them back like Jurassic Park monsters so they can make merry with the new breed of dimwits...

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    1. Cynics! Those were the days. Not like these wild eyed ideologues.

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    2. Hey, True Blue, ... don't say you're gone ...

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  6. Just as well the messengers are journalists of the highest quality reporting the settled science from trusted experts, not zombie activists writing beatups from supplied source material to help the science establishment heist the new Greens-controlled taxpayer slush fund. Tom Arup is shortening as a contender for "Best Press Release" at this year's Walkleys.

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  7. Not an ounce of scepticism among them! Any notice how the graphs presented all have bases and scales that exaggerate the changes being presented? Straight out of that old classic 'How to Lie With Statistics'!

    And despite the fact that we've had cooling for a couple of years and no warming for a decade we are still warming. The long-term trend is still upwards, apparently — just as 23 year-old is still growing because the long-term trend is still upwards. I guess even I'm still growing on the long-term trend. I long for the days of 1998 and 2003 when a single year was enough to confirm runaway warming for these turkeys!

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  8. A decidedly cool summer, last year not exactly hot despite claims it's the hottest year evah!, dams full to overflowing everywhere – time to ramp up the rhetoric again. The ABC was back on the case, with Linda Mottram in the morning accusing skeptics of being greedy seaside developers ignoring rising seas, Glover in the afternoon getting Matthew England to say everything’s still on the rails warming-wise, then the Grim Tassie Outlook in the evening, including the visual pollution of a wind farm serving as a liturgical background to the earnest reporters.

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