It is a worrying prospect that almost all the print media in Australia will soon be controlled by either Rupert Murdoch or by the Fairfax group with Gina R. sitting on a substantial stake.   Australians do not have a lot of sense in recognising interest group arguments.  Its not just the concentration of  control that worries me but also the ability to distort and control political debates in Australia.  The  Murdoch press does not have strong truth credentials on issues that vitally affect our nation’s future such as climate change. If the Fairfax media are exposed to influence by someone who puts great weight on the views of ragbags like Lord Monckton then we do have real problems ahead.

But hey! This is capitalism. Why should she not have a 15% stake in Fairfax?

What is the truth in this situation? I have not got a clue but should we not wait for the issue to go to court rather than participate in this horrendous trial by media.  Strauss-Kahn was apparently an excellent head of the IMF – he certainly got the seal of approval from Joe Stiglitz – and regardless of the outcome of this case his career has been irreparably damaged.   Discussions in the press about his past alleged philandering reflect a philistine puritanism to the extent these past liaisons were based on mutual agreement. His accuser remains largely anonymous but she too has a life and deserves her day in court to make her allegations.  Currently she is being identified as a conniving prostitute.

We love to be titillated by scandals but this is silly behaviour. It sells newspapers and that is about all.

Andrew Revkin points out that climate change coverage in the US media peaked in 2007 – indeed it has become the greatest story rarely told.  Part of the reason is the issue-attention cycle discussed in relation to the environment by Anthony Downs* in 1972.  According to this theory an event occurs triggering public interest in an environmental issue and then – even though the problem is unresolved – other issues replace it as its novelty value wears off and boredom with the concern sets in. In addition, the effects of climate change are either gradual or, if potentially immediate (hurricanes, droughts), only ambiguously linked to anthropogenic global warming.  Catastrophic outcomes are only an imperfect means of fostering public opinion to act on climate change issues particularly since climate delusionists are happy to sow the seeds of doubt about causation. Often too effects such as the breakup of sea-ice formations are geographically distant and understandable only in terms of elaborate scientific explanations.  The gradualism of many changes means that we can ‘get used to’ living in a degraded environment.  It becomes difficult to maintain climate change as a significant public concern.

In a democracy the media largely fashion public opinions which determine election outcomes.  If the media can be corrupted by self-interested corporations or if the main competition they face is from Hollywood then public policy decisions will be poor.

* Downs is a significant public policy scholar. I have a particular appreciation for his “Still Stuck in Traffic” book which is one of the best discussions of traffic congestion I have seen. In the article cited Downs applies issue-attention cycle theory to the problem of addressing traffic congestion.

And it is important to understand what scientists are, in fact, saying here.  The main authority cited here – Ian Allison – agrees that climate change is occurring and that it is anthropogenic. He emphasises that the Arctic ice sheet is certainly diminishing as is that of Greenland and Western Antarctica. His only claim is that Eastern Antarctica is cooling with anecdotal evidence confirming a ‘slight increase’ in sea ice.   Moreover, this could be explained by the fact that the Antarctic is a continent surrounded by the Southern Ocean, which may be absorbing global heat.  The Antarctic also has an ozone hole above it which could be acting as a pressure valve, allowing heat to escape the icecap. Allison says “It could be that when the ozone hole is fixed, there will be more warming” Allison.  Moreover the organisation SCAR, which The Australian cites to confirm a net gain in sea ice in the Antarctic, is also recorded as using ‘modeling to predict a warming over Antarctica of up to 3^oC during the next century’. Indeed ‘SCAR warns that melting on the Antarctic Peninsula may be of sufficient magnitude to make a substantial contribution to global sea levels. The committee says it cannot predict how the continent’s ice sheets will respond to warming but says observed recent rapid changes give cause for concern’.

On the specific sea ice issue I searched in vain for the claimed report at the SCAR site. I did find a single additional news reference to the main author cited in The Australian’s report Ian Allison. The message he provided there again differed from the emphasis in The Australian story.  Quote:

“I think it is now unequivocal that warming of the world is occurring and I think the last IPCC conclusively showed that a major cause of warming is greenhouse gas emissions from mankind.

We now know that the ice sheets are contributing to sea level rise and for the Arctic, at least, this is because the warming of this region is much greater than in other places on Earth.

We also know that glaciers in mountain areas are undergoing a very rapid retreat and they’re a major contributor of sea level rise, too. 

Greenland is of more concern because of the warming of the Arctic. Greenland is at lower latitude than much of Antarctica and we’ve seen the direct effect of the melting.

We still don’t understand many things about the dynamic response of the ice sheets but we do see direct melt exceeding snowfall in Greenland.

This might not mean a runaway effect but it does mean Greenland is contributing to sea level rise and will continue to add to sea levels at the present temperatures for many hundreds of years”.

In The Australian too, the book by denialist Ian Plimer is spruiked. The book apparently argues the usual irrelevances – climate change science is a religion, CO2 is a food for plants,  the IPPC is a hotbed of environmental activism lacking science, AGW is a conspiracy by self-interested scientists, climate is always changing with etc. etc. The denialists do like to recycle half-truths. The Plimer book is promoted and a defence of climate change scepticism advanced in an editorial along with a truly monstrous piece of distortion by Christopher Pearson.  Pearson does not only endorse scepticism – he dismisses claims of standard science as simple nonsense, as a ‘mass delusion’. ‘How could such a solid-seeming expert consensus so quickly develop on such an absurd hypothesis?’ An ‘absurd hypothesis’? Pearson’s claim itself is absurd.

I do not reject the need for scepticism in scientific matters but I have problems with The Australian’s approach.  Why Ian Plimer’s skeptical views were so strongly promoted when the views of the United States’ EPA (announced last night) went unreported?   The Herald-Sun picked up the EPA report and featured it prominently.  So too did the Wall Street Journal. The EPA took a markedly different approach to Plimer. I quote from the EPA’s press release:

“ ….In both magnitude and probability, climate change is an enormous problem. The greenhouse gases that are responsible for it endanger public health and welfare within the meaning of the Clean Air Act.

…. The science clearly shows that concentrations of these gases are at unprecedented levels as a result of human emissions, and these high levels are very likely the cause of the increase in average temperatures and other changes in our climate.

The scientific analysis also confirms that climate change impacts human health in several ways….. for example, suggest that climate change may lead to higher concentrations of ground-level ozone, a harmful pollutant. Additional impacts of climate change include, but are not limited to:

• increased drought;
• more heavy downpours and flooding;
• more frequent and intense heat waves and wildfires;
• greater sea level rise;
• more intense storms; and
• harm to water resources, agriculture, wildlife and ecosystems.

….In addition to threatening human health, the analysis finds that climate change also has serious national security implications. …. climate change presents significant national security challenges for the United States. Escalating violence in destabilized regions can be incited and fomented by an increasing scarcity of resources – including water. This lack of resources, driven by climate change patterns, then drives massive migration to more stabilized regions of the world”.

A more complete account is here.  It is an excellent read and much more interesting that the numerous press articles referred to here which propagandise rather than throw doubt on the case for taking climate change issues seriously.   Further comments on the Plimer book are given by Paul Sheehan here and by John Humphries over at the ALS blog.

For more than two centuries, newspapers have been the indispensable source of public information and a check on the abuses of government and other powerful interests. And they still reach a vast and growing audience. Daily print circulation has dropped from a peak of 62 million two decades ago to around 49 million, and online readership has risen faster, to almost 75 million Americans and 3.7 billion page views in January, according to Nielsen Online.

This is a remarkable decline in print and surge in online patronage.  What is happening? One of the difficulties is that a lot of advertising is going online.  Another is that ‘entrepreneurial’ newspaper bosses have laden newspapers with a stack of debt from their purchasing binges around 2005-07 when news media prices were at peak levels.  The Fairfax family has problems in this regard in Australia and Murdoch has massive debt everywhere.

On the consumer side attitudes are changing too.  I read the main articles in the NYT almost every night online. This has the effect of reducing my interest in the Australian media. It is also time-consuming – I have less time to read newspapers.  My newspaper arrives around 6-00am and if I am up earlier I go online to see what they are saying.  This represents my gradual shift away from the printed media - its a shift that I think is likely to be widespread.

And newspapers are expensive - the online reads are free – even if they are not provided you can get the title of the article you are ofter – this is normally available – you can Google that and dig up the article somewhere.  (The exception to this is the AFR – it is expensive and I must buy it to gain the very selective information I want from it).

I have no objection to a pure online service but I don’t see how the economics will pan out. Charging is difficult since there is so much free competition.  The online providers deliver a lot of social value but I don’t see how that will yield a buck for them.

Interesting futures here…..

Now I learn from Tim Lambert’s Deltoid that Keith has rejected another paper by David Karoly criticising the same ‘denialist’ climate change views without any apparent review or consideration on the grounds that:

…at the moment Quadrant is focusing on offering a platform for the sceptical position on this issue. We find that the pro-IPCC position is very well represented in almost every media outlet in the country, including academic journals and websites, but it is very difficult for sceptics to find any outlet for their voices to be heard. Hence, in the interests of balance, we believe the sceptics deserve a fair go in a little journal like ours. If the current position changes, we will be glad to consider pro-IPCC articles such as yours. 

But, as a fellow conservative, I am really just really disappointed in Keith Windschuttle. The disappointment goes well beyond not having my article reviewed and considered for publication in Quadrant. It is the festive season so I’ll simply say to Keith that his behaviour seems to me appalling and short-sighted and hope that eventually he will see this and allow Quadrant in the future to present a more truthful, balanced and accurate picture of the consequences of anthropogenic climate change. I wonder had I not published the draft on my website whether Keith would have applied this alternative reason for rejecting my article. If he had I would still have rejected his view as inappropriate. Journals such as Quadrant are misleading the public by presenting only climate change ‘denialist’ views and ignoring the overwhelming alternative views of mainstream science. Moreover, the consequences of Quadrant getting it wrong are serious.

Why should we pollute a major source of information and entertainment with lies and bad taste? Even if you do support the hideous quality commercial TV shows is it sensible to plaster them with such a huge volume of advertising even from the perspective of commercial interests?

Surely the incentives are to pre-record material and delete the advertising during playback. I have slipped into doing this almost unconsciously with the pay-TV service I subscribe to.

In the same edition of The Age Israel is recorded as warning the Palestinians that they face a ‘holocaust’ if they continue to launch rocket attacks on Israel. The report is overall very hostile toward Israel. Presumably the Age got this report from Reuters or the BBC.

Melanie Phillips argues that the word ‘Holocaust’ is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word ‘shoah’ which generally means disaster. The word is used to describe the holocaust but describes a broader set of calamitous situations than the Holocaust. It is not an innocent mistake. For example, the word ‘death’ includes the idea of ‘murder’ but it is wrong to say when a ‘death’ occurs that that is inevitably a ‘murder’.

The misrepresentation seems to have first been made by Reuters. It provided Hamas with one of their vile, deceitful propaganda victories – the Jews are ‘new Nazis who want to kill and burn the Palestinian people’. This is a convenient deception and exaggeration as Hamas continues to pour rocket attacks on Israel and Israel asserts its right to defend itself.

If Phillips is correct The Age – and numerous other newspapers who took the Reuter’s story – has again indulged itself in poor quality journalism. They should clarify matters quickly and immediately.

Update: 54 Palestinian’s were killed yesterday and 2 Israeli’s as Hamas continues to fire rockets and shake its fist at Israel. Why did the Palestinians elect such so-called leaders? Hamas is a terrorist organisation that attacks innocent civilian communities in Israel and then feins shock outrage when Israel responds with force to terrorist attacks. Hamas argues that Israel is trying to destroy it. Hmmmm.

*Many others, including Robert Manne, have criticised this movie on similar grounds. The movie won 3 Oscars and gets my award for a touching poignant analysis.