Laurie Oakes ensmallens the prime minister

Laurie Oakes reports:

Two months ago the Prime Minister made a big fellow of himself when he met insulation installers on the lawns of Parliament House.

He told them the home insulation scheme suspended because of rip-offs, shonky work and safety concerns following four deaths, would resume in slightly different form by June.

Promise broken. Do click to observe Kevin Rudd’s historic meeting with the installers, and Oakes’s perfect response to Greg Combet’s claim that the insulation scheme wasn’t an expensive shambles. The clean-up bill for this insanity is expected to hit one billion dollars.

UPDATE. Rudd runs away.
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/big_kev_ensmallened/

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Two radio interviews with Lord Monckton. Professor Andy Pitman chickened out of one.

Have a listen to Lord Monckton and make up your own minds. It has been clear what tactic the alarmists have decided to use against him, ie try to avoid his substantive arguments and instead paint him as some kind of wild-eyed crazy. (Perhaps made easier by the fact that a thyroid condition does give him very prominent eyes.) Two good radio interviews with Monckton. Here the ABC’s Karyn Wood notes that no warmist (including Professor Andy Pitman) would come on the show to debate Monckton, who then repudiates Pitman’s ludicrous claim about wicked corporations funding sceptics such as himself. They then discuss other scare claims. And here is 4BC’s Michael Smith and his listeners exploring the issues with Monckton. Andrew Bolt Tim Blair comments: Several readers credit Readfearn for having the courage to actually appear. By contrast, the latest to dodge Monckton is Professor Andy Pitman, who apparently declined a radio invitation. It’s a curious thing; Al Gore travels the world to speak at events closed to media and routinely declines debate challenges, while Monckton travels the world looking for debates but finds people running away. This may say something about the relative confidence they have in their arguments. It’s interesting, too, that leftists applaud the widespread reluctance to debate Monckton, but then tune in anyway to see comrade Readfearn get belted. Where’s the solidarity, brothers?

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Climategate: "The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering"

Dr Tim Ball:

It’s beyond belief that the mainstream media can’t see the devastating importance of the emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) known as Climategate. The blindness cancels the claim they’re society’s watchdog. Left wing journalist Amy Goodman said when writing about the Bush administration, ”You know governments are going to lie, but not the media.” Now, with a new administration she is silent, proving there are lies of commission and omission.

Most haven’t read the emails or summarily dismiss them because of political bias. Journalist Clive Crook illustrated an open mind, albeit on second look. “In my previous post on Climategate I blithely said that nothing in the climate science email dump surprised me much. Having waded more deeply over the weekend I take that back. The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.”

Full article here.

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International Free Press Day

Okay, like Maxwell Smart, I missed it "by that much," but well worth publicising and supporting anyway.

It is a cause for grave concern that some of the most serious threats to free speech, as Mark Steyn found out in Canada, come from within our own societies in the form of an intolerant and militant political correctness, increasingly given teeth in the form of human rights and equal opportunity commissions that can judge you on charges that they have brought against you and then punish you once they have found that their own accusations have been proved.

It’s four years (and a couple of days) since Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published several cartoons, leading to widespread Presbyterian unrest. Mark Steyn:

To mark the anniversary, the International Free Press Society, with which I am honored to be associated, has declared September 30th International Free Press Day. In the four years since their publication, I have learned at first hand how imperiled true freedom of the press is in a western world by now almost congenitally disposed to pre-emptive surrender. So I am happy to support International Free Press Day, and I hope it will become an annual event.

As Steyn wrote at the time: “The Danish cartoons story was a test, and the civilized world failed it.” The media especially. International Free Press Day is at least an attempt to learn from that test.

Tim Blair

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Media Matters - revolutionary vs "bourgeois" truth

HOT AIR: We should point out that Media Matters has begun a pattern of screaming ‘Smear!’ when people point out what others have actually said.

We must distinguish between “bourgeois truth,” which is concerned with sterile facts, and “revolutionary truth,” which is concerned with what will promote the revolution. Hot Air is a trafficker in mere bourgeois truth, while Media Matters understands the importance of revolutionary truth.

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/85390/

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The funnest new game in town

Madonna King is just the latest player of an increasingly popular new game: try to get a direct answer out of Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan.

 

Previous players, with equally entertaining results, include Emma Griffiths, Chris Uhlmann, Tony Jones (twice), and Kerry O’Brien.

 

Andrew Bolt

 

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TV station falls for plane crash hoax

"A BOLIVIAN television news channel has been left red-faced after falling for a hoax that saw it claim pictures from the hit TV show Lost were actually the last moment of Air France flight AF447 before it plunged into the ocean on June 1."

 

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25679077-401,00.html

 

I'd seen them and wondered myself about the time of day issue. I was pretty sure all the news reports had the Air France flight being during the night.

 

But also, the tail of the plane is visible in the first of the photos and it's not that of an Air France plane.

 

And as if the authorities, which would have possession of any recovered items, would have released them so soon.

 

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Guess who thinks Rudd's ocker-speak is normal?

Laurie Oakes.

 

Who does seem to feel that it is his job to make Rudd's excuses for him.

 

More here

 

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Common Sense and The Perils of Predictions

 

Forbes, “Absolute Return” column, April 21, 2008, page 246:

Here’s another name you should own, Freddie Mac ($29 per share)…Freddie is cheap at 1.1 times book [value].

Less than five months later, Freddie Mac’s stock was worth 25¢ per share, a loss of 99%.  It has since recovered to 70¢ per share, so the loss is “only” 97.6%.

 

A forecast of a stock of a single company five months into the future seems easy.  The company had government backing (federally sponsored corporation).  What could go wrong?

 

Yet, the forecast published by Forbes, short of an outright bankruptcy, could not have been more inaccurate.  It is worth examining how a situation that seemed rock solid (government-backed securities!) became catastrophic to see if there are any lessons that might apply to the atmospheric sciences.

 

The assumptions that Freddie Mac (and other financial stocks) were low risk was primarily a result of computer models.  As one expert stated (using pseudonym at http://blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/?p=1265 ),

 

The problem is inherently complex – imagine being asked to value a portfolio of 10,000 residential mortgages issued to a total of something like 17,652 individuals. Each mortgage balances some issue amount against some payment stream; each has had zero or more payments recorded against it, each has an initial interest rate; an interest computation method; zero or more early payment opportunities; some mention of late or missed payment penalties and conditions, and an expiry, renegotiation, or call date.

 

While I do not doubt that is “complex,” the level of complexity is miniscule when compared to the complexity of the earth-atmosphere-ocean system and their interactions.

 

Full post at Watts Up With That?

 

Plus, the next installment of Tim Flannery Prediction Watch!

 

See how this prediction, made just last year, is going:

 

The water problem is so severe for Adelaide that it may run out of water by early 2009.

 

But I think you can guess

 

Which only goes to make this comment by Flummery, just a few weeks ago, not just strange, but really, quite disturbing. This man is clearly not telling the truth.

 

Australian scientist and campaigner Tim Flannery, one of the conference organisers, said climate change was harming his home country. “Water resources have dried out to the point where they’re now affecting the future of some of our cities.”

 

And while Flummery is a scientist, his field is palaeontology and his particular area of expertise the evolution of kangaroos.

 

But his real talent is obviously in marketing.

 

Andrew Bolt checks out a prediction made by the CSIRO:

 

Remember the CSIRO’s claim that global warming would kill the Australian ski season?  Six years on, the snow is actually even better:

VICTORIA’S snow resorts are enjoying the best ski and snowboarding conditions for a decade.

At the same link there's something wonderous and unexpected to behold - an ABC journalist covering both sides of the argument! What is the world coming too?

 

"One ABC program, however, is now trying to cover the other side of the argument. Brave journalist, that."

 

And who said Queensland was backward?

 

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Sniff the Zeitgeist

The wind has shifted.

 

George Negus' pathetically soft interview about climate change with Lord Nicholas Stern on SBS has produced an interesting reaction even from SBS's own viewers.

 

Most are outraged about Negus' fawning over Stern and his inability to ask a single hard question.

 

He finishes the interview with this typically trite and shallow observation: Why do I get the idea that Lord Stern just might have been trying to tell us to grow up - politically, that is.

 

Here's a question that Negus could have asked, if he had been arsed enough to do some research:

 

Why did Stern use a social discount rate of only around 2% in finding that the costs of doing nothing now would be greater than acting now, when he knows full well that the accepted figure should have been around 4%?

 

Why, despite devoting not a few words in his review to the importance of the social discount rate, did he not mention in the review the rate he used? (People had to badger Her Majesty's Treasury to get the figure - so much for a supposedly "independent" review!)

 

What is is about climate change boosters and hiding stuff? Whether it's Stern or the Hockey Stick's Michael Mann, is the reason they act like they have something to hide the fact that they do have something to hide?

 

(Well, in the case of Michael Mann it turned out he did definitely have something hide.)

 

Now, Back to Senator Steve Fielding.

 

He's recently returned from a conference of sceptics in Washington and he's got some questions for Senator Penny Wong.

 

He hasn't made up his mind yet, but at least, unlike George Negus, he does appear to have an open mind.

 

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The island of Lohachara reappears!

It was always one of the lamest global warming/rising sea level scare stories ever, that is, the disappearance of the island of Lohachara in the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal.   Breathtaking in its studied refusal to look at the already long available evidence that the islands in this group come and go and move all the time in response to tidal flows and other factors.   It also confirmed the fact that Geoffrey Lean is possibly the most incompetent environment writer for any newspaper in the world, though his Amazon rain forest doomed by drought story, which actually got the results of a study completely arse about also stands out amongst his ignorant scaremongering!     Tim Blair Sunday, June 07, 2009 at 12:22am     Recall the tragic island of Lohachara, eaten by global warming some years ago: Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India’s part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.   The story, by the Independent on Sunday‘s environment editor Geoffrey Lean, was a complete crock, omitting even a vague date of the island’s removal. And now, as Achintyarup Ray reports, Lohachara is back: The island is there in front of one’s eyes. Says boatman Mukunda Mondal (41), “Yes, the island is emerging. I have noticed it for the past one year. It’s clearly visible in winter.”   Judhisthir Bhuian, now a resident of Jibantala colony on the Sagar island, had his home on the Lohachara . He still goes back to the place where their house once stood. ”A huge landmass is coming up, covering Lohachara and Bedford,” he says.   Geoffrey Lean – a tilter by nature as well as by name – has been wanting for inspiration of late. Perhaps he could examine Lohachara’s revival, which marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists didn’t come true.   UPDATE. For no apparent reason, the Independent only a few hours ago republished Lean’s absurd 2006 piece.   UPDATE II. From the Times of India piece referenced by Ray: 2007. Kodak Theatre, Hollywood. The list of Oscar presenters includes Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lopez.   Instead of the usual million-dollar goodies, each of them receive a small glass model called the Lohachara sculpture after an island which “in December, 2006, became the first inhabited island to be lost to rising sea levels caused by global warming”.   A little more than two years later, Lohachara island is emerging again.   And the website for the holy Lohachara sculpture has vanished.

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Is Laurie Oakes spinning for K R Puff'n'Fluff?

Laurie Oakes explains away the most bizarre spin of Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan:

Rudd and Wayne Swan played into Turnbull’s hands when they botched the post-Budget sales pitch through an apparent reluctance to use the figures - a deficit of $57.6 billion and debt peaking at more than $300 billion.

“Apparent” reluctance? Judge how merely “apparent” it was in this interview and this. Yet Oakes insists:

But those pundits who put this down to misguided “spin” are off the mark. It is the result of old-fashioned, unadulterated incompetence.

 

The advice of the spin-doctors - accepted by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer - was that the Government should embrace the numbers, not run away from them.

 

Swan did not leave the deficit figure out of his Budget speech deliberately. It was supposed to be there. Stuff-up, not spin, was the explanation.

Really? Then how odd it was that this “stuff up’’ was repeated in Swan’s Budget speech to the National Press Club, where once again the only figure he failed to give was for the deficit. And that in later interviews he baulked again and again at giving the figure. Can Oakes seriously claim this was not spin, but a mere oversight?

 

Apparently yes:

And when Rudd kept saying that the debt would peak at “around 300” - without using the words “dollar” or “billion” - it was not a cunning ploy to avoid giving the Liberals a line they could use in their election commercials.

 

The PM is simply a sucker for jargon. Saying “300” instead of “300 billion dollars” is Treasury-speak. Having sat around with Treasury boffins for weeks preparing the Budget, Rudd started talking like them.

And if you believe that, Oakes has another line to sell you - that the Opposition is bungling by linking the wild spending of Rudd to that of Gough Whitlam:

Whitlam, Labor’s 92-year-old folk hero is such a loveable, great-grandfatherly figure these days, and his period in office was so long ago, that using him to frighten the horses just doesn’t work.

What on earth has got into Oakes?

 

Andrew Bolt

 

This is something I've noticed about Oakes for some time, not that he's alone in this, that is, this tendency to make Labor's excuses for it.

 

Everything becomes okay about Joel Fitzgibbon's relationship with a Chinese woman with connections to the Chinese regime and military, who made gifts to him and paid for several trips to China, and the Opposition rank hypocrits, because a single photo of her with John Howard is dredged up from years gone by.

 

But how many trips did she pay for for Howard? Any gifts given? Was it any different to the thousands of people who have their one-off photos taken with the prime minister at hundreds of functions in a year?

 

The photo was meaningless in relation to questions of Fitzgibbon's actions or judgement and the Opposition's questioning of them, but you wouldn't have thought so watching our journalistic elite at work

 

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The BBC, Mad Cows Disease and climate change

This is by David Whitehouse and is taken from the Greenie Watch blog:

 

It is very interesting to see today's story on BBC News Online about BSE/CJD "vCJD carrier risk overestimated.". It is the latest in a long line of similar assessments of the vCJD situation.

After many years of sporadic interest the BSE/vCJD story took off in 1996 after an admission in parliament by the health minister that there was a link between BSE contaminated meat and a new strain of the degenerative vCJD brain disease that had afflicted a handful of people. Initially, few people knew anything definite about the disease and its possible progression and, depending upon assumptions, computer models predicted anything from a small number of people being affected to a large fraction of the population. While such uncertainty existed it was right for journalists to reflect the scientific situation but as I was science correspondent for BBC Radio at the time, I soon began to realise the tension between science and journalism and the changing approach to science within BBC News at the time.

In terms of news the potential for a modern day catastrophic plague is a much 'better' story than the possibility that nothing much more will happen. So whilst the uncertainty persisted that was the story that was emphasised with the appropriate caveats. However, it soon became clear to most scientists at least that a major catastrophe was not in the making. The increase in numbers afflicted, despite the unknown incubation of the disease, was not increasing as some predicted, but that fact was inconvenient to some and did not impinge on our general approach to the story.

In such circumstances I took the view that journalists should stay close to the data and not let the scientific possibilities, however dramatic and 'newsworthy,' obscure what was actually happening, especially when those possibilities rested on a cascade of debateable assumptions being fed into a computer model that had been tweaked to hindcast previous data. It was not a point of view taken by other arms of the BBC one part of which was repeatedly promoting the same scare story coming out of one institution based on said computer models and predictions. I believed that taking a sober approach was the right one, especially for the BBC, which was looked to for responsible reporting. Wanting to get on air with a story and make an impression with editors and management was one thing, but I took the view that a journalist should not tailor the science to suit ones ambitions, or survival, that way. The political journalist John Sergeant summed it up when he said that there were many journalists who reported what they could get away with rather than what they know.

My approach was not favoured by the BBC at the time and I was severely criticised in 1998 and told I was wrong and not reporting the BSE/vCJD story correctly. But with hindsight I was correct in my approach. To date the total number of people afflicted with BSE/vCJD remains very small. In fact, far smaller than many illnesses that never get a mention in the media, and the scientific doom mongers have moved onto new pastures. But the attitude towards science still remains at the BBC and has been evident in its evangelical, inconsistent climate change reporting and its narrow, shallow and sparse reporting on other scientific issues.

Reporting the consensus about climate change (and we all know about the debate about what is a consensus in the IPCC era) is not synonymous with good science reporting. The BBC is at an important point. It has been narrow minded about climate change for many years and they have become at the very least a cliché and at worst lampooned as being predictable and biased by a public that doesn't believe them anymore.

Times are changing. New data is emerging, the world refuses to warm in the past decade, the sun becomes quiet, and scientists are beginning to study themselves investigating how entrenched positions become established and whether consensus is a realistic concept. History and science will always correct things in the end. It has done so with vCJD and it is not impossible that the judgement of history and science on current environmental reporting will be the same.

SOURCE

 

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Aussie woman had swine flu!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But got better.

 

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Yes, no bias at the ABC at all!

I suppose it's funny in its own way, watching the ABC make a complete fool of itself whenever it deals with those dangerous lunatics called sceptics. The way it has to preface any appearance of one of them with a leper's bell being rung, just in case anybody watching might be foolish enough to be tricked by them So has course Professor Ian Plimer's recent appearance on Lateline had to be prefaced by not one, not two, but three scientists taking a contrary view to his. Something you can be sure would never be done for a proponent of anthropogenic climate change. But Andrew Bolt notices another thing: ABC’s Lateline still hasn’t put up the transcript of its interview with global warming sceptic Ian Plimer on April 27. But Lateline has put up the transcript of the introduction to that interview, in which three warming believers attack Plimer. Robert Manne would approve. I think they just can't help themselves. Actually, something else that's typical of the ABC also is peeving me here, and that is the way they deliberately misrepresent Plimer's position as "denying global warming," when he doesn't do any such thing.

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