We’re going to try something different with the open thread – rather than a fresh thread each day, this Monday thread won’t be replaced until it’s time for the weekend. Our thinking is that this should allow more continuity in your discussions.
Because this post will get pushed down and eventually off the front page, we’ll also add a handy link to the current open thread over in the sidebar, right near the blogroll and post categories.
Have at it.
39 Comments
One can only imagine the reaction if someone on the right was caught out admitting lies, deception, and a need for emotion (faith?) to trump science and reason, like this chap from Greenpeace was, by the BBC of all folk: http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/amcelhinney/2009/08/19/exclusive-lies-revealed-greenpeace-leader-admits-arctic-ice-exaggeration/
I think it’s a given that there’s crackpots on both sides of the fence Shabadoo. It still doesn’t change the scientific consensus of the experts.
How disingenuous Shabadoo! People like you mock Flannery and others when their claims don’t turn out, and here you are mocking this man for actually admitting he over-egged his cake.
This isn’t really evidence of crackpots or of emotion trumping science. It’s an interesting example of how this ‘debate’ works.
Greenpeace, in the piece under discussion, were referring to some research by NASA that suggests that Arctic sea ice will be gone in the next thirty years. The interviewer took the imaginative leap of interpreting ‘arctic sea ice’ in Greenpeace’s press release as meaning the Greenland icesheet.
NASA does not think the Greenland icesheet is going anywhere soon. Presumably the people who wrote the press release don’t think so either. Leipold (the guy being interviewed) hadn’t seen the press release. He was ambushed. He should have kept his mouth shut until he had seen the press release.
This was discussed in some detail over at deltoid. (http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/shoddy_journalism_from_stephen.php). The press release is there as well if you want to have a look at it.
I didn’t read anything about “lying” in that piece, Shabadoo. He admitted to a mistake. So what? In fact, as the NSIDC states, he probably still isn’t far from the truth.
Shabadoo,
The alarmist’s are circling their wagons to protect one of their own.
Greenpeace CEO admits misleading the public with exaggerated climate change scenarios only after being confronted by a reporter and only after retiring. He also defends the “practice of “emotionalizing issues” in order to bring the public around to its way of thinking and alter public opinion.”
But he didn’t lie and it is disingenuous of you to mock him. FFS!
A conservative attack-blogger (aka “a keen observer of the left”) tries to go respectable by turning out an essay full of the same misrepresentations he’s been spinning for years. Quadrant publishes it because, well, you know. The inevitable debunkings are here and here.
Shabadoo and chistery: read the links in Tobias’ post at 7.
Now that’s lying, and isn’t it just SO Right!
Thanks for the link, Tobias. Ed Darrell also has a couple of related posts:
http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/the-war-against-rachel-carson-still-rages/
http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/monckton-will-lie-about-anything/
Like his loony namesake in the US, it seems that Beck is willing to lie, distort facts, quote out of context, and throw science out the window in order to score some cheap points against environmentalists. He’s a persistent nit-picker of this blog (his own blog’s raison d’etre seems to be to monitor the typos of Pure Poison, Loewenstein and a couple of others) but his own attempt at producing a substantive argument fell into 17 shades of fail.
BTW, I think the week-long open thread idea is a very good one. The best threads at Catallaxy, for instance, are the weekly open threads, and I think it’ll work well here.
Nice piece in today’s H.Sun by Alan Howe, laying the blame for the Coalition’s current shambles firmly at the feet of Little Johnny. You’d hardly label Howe as a Lefty, either. Couldn’t agree with him more.
Thanks, THR – we were thinking a bit of continuity in the thread will be good. We’re very happy to hear feedback from people about anything we try out on the site.
THR and Tobias, let’s not forget that noted scientician Tim Blair linked approvingly to Beck’s debunked piece – and, later, Beck’s shrill attempt to “deal with DDT denialists”. His lies, as noted by THR and Tim Lambert, are of course ignored.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Murdoc’s assault agains the ABC’s fre internet space
http://wl.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,26195756-7582,00.html
Quote:
Scott to hit back on criticism of ABC’s internet space
Geoff Elliott and Simon Canning | October 12, 2009
Article from: The Australian
ABC managing director Mark Scott will this week attempt to hit back at mounting criticism of the public broadcaster’s role in the internet space which commercial media companies say is threatening their business models.
The debate is heating up after Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation (owner of The Australian), again urged media companies to adopt online payment platforms for news at the World Media Summit in Beijing.
———————————————————————
What a horrible fascist bully boy, the ABC had better not fold to this kind of BS
Tobias, if you’re in the mood for trying out some things then how about some basic text edit buttons (for bold, italics, underline etc) or alternatively a sticky post or guide in the right hand column on what html tags (or bbcode or other) work on the site.
I’d love some bbcode functions
bitpattern, Wordpress uses XHTML tags, which should be enough for most of the things you’d like to do.
Thanks for that link, El Barbudo – and I see Blair offers the level of detailed and critical analysis of the content he links to that we’ve come to expect.
It doesn’t seem to have picked up much interest from his commenters, though – “WB” has accounted for one-fifth of the comments so far, and nearly half of the comments that are there seem to have nothing to do with the topic.
Thx, Dave. I’ll look into that and learn myself the commands.
Another interesting piece at Deltoid highlights more lying about Rachel Carson, this time involving “Lord” Monckton and Jackie Kennedy. Will these twerps ever come out with something that isn’t pure horseshit?
If quadrant was hoping to get a much needed credibility boost after the windschuttle hoax fiasco, then publishing war on science pieces where (as Tim Lambert says) the author needs to lie about facts that can be easily checked is a strange way to go about it. These paranoid ’stream-of-consciousness’ rants against science and medical facts are par for the course from the far right extremists, but if Quadrant wants to engage in such delusion then it should hand back its taxpayer funds – why should we pay for that crap?
Tobias, this is precisely why people of J.F. Beck and Tim Blair’s ilk prefer sniping and infantile smart-arsery to advancing their own arguments: whenever they attempt the latter, they get their fragile chins handed to them.
Something to celebrate: the impending death of One Nation.
Dark times in WA lately. Firstly, there’s the rolling back of Geoff Gallop’s reforms of marijuana laws, and scarily increased search powers for police. Remember when they had to have reasonable suspicion before searching folk? Ahh, those were the days.
Premier Colin Barnett to introduce tougher marijuana legislation
And just in case you thought Labor might do something about it…
Barnett’s also been weighing in on boat people again, to the irritation of the relevant authorities who know what they’re doing better than he does.
And then some of it’s just silly…
MPs fired up over smut on TV
So there ya go… the great western Mondayitis. I wish I could say that’s all the unpleasant mischief the Liberals have been up to.
Sounds like plenty of cause for concern, Bird of paradox.
Good to see Chris Evans dealt with Barnett’s statements appropriately, although I see that the Liberal Party has reanimated Ruddock again to spread his special blend of fear and blame.
Add to that the fact that a mental health patient is to be the first to face mandatory jail term for alledgedly assaulting a paramedic.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/6209222/patient-puts-mandatory-sentencing-to-first-test/
Interesting article here about bloggers:
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/technology/blogger-sacked-over-anticouriermail-rant-20091012-gtqo.html
Obviously you have to be careful about posting negative articles about your employer.
I notice that the Quadrant-published DDT expert has continued to run into problems with the integrity of his argument. THR wrote a second post related to the Quadrant essay, responding to the author’s hasty attempts to defend his flawed article.
So the next tactic is a quick attempt to move away from the original arguments and set up a new one based on this media report – this time claiming there are no studies to support the story’s suggestion of a link between DDT exposure and genital abnormalities or male fertility.
The most cursory follow-up on the news story reveals that the lecture reported in the story is available online – complete with citations:
- Bornman, M.S., Delport, R., Becker, P., Risenga, S.S. & de Jager, C.P. 2005. Urogenital birth defects in neonates from a high-risk malaria area in Limpopo Province, South Africa. Epidemiology. (16)5. S126 – 127.
- Aneck-Hahn, Natalie H., Schulenburg, Gloria W., Bornman, Maria S., Farias, Paulina & de Jager, Christiaan. 2007. Impaired Semen Quality Associated with Environmental DDT Exposure in Young Men Living in a Malaria Area in the Limpopo Province, South Africa. Journal of Andrology, Vol. 28. No. 3: 423-434.
It looks like there’s a more recent publication about the urogenital defects (in this case, extra nipples) as well. That’s about 5 minutes with Google to track the information down. This is a(nother) poor reflection on the level of intellectual rigor that can be deemed acceptable for publication in Quadrant.
Google scholar turns up even more, esp on the longterm health effects of DDT exposure – although full articles are often behind paywalls. I’ve made the observation before that Quadrant is now irrelevent, it’s been hijacked by far right nutters who lack the intellectual capacity to produce scholarly material. Their series on ‘The Left’ was another case in point: wild claims about the meaning and origins of the concept of social justice which were neither accurrate or based on historical evideence. This latest article just reinforces why the publication is in decline.
You should do a post about the DDT stuff toby.
Janet Albrechtsen’s column is a bit of a hoot. She opens with this “gem” about Teh Left:
“The Left has a gift for using clever language to push its causes. The trick is to start with a literal truth, a platitude so steeped in emotion it tugs on the heartstrings of human nature, something that just about every sane person will agree on. But what makes the use of a literal truth so seductive is the way it is used to hide a substantive untruth. A bit of intellectual rigour lifts the cloak on these dishonest word games. Just a few quick examples before we move to something far more serious.”
And then she demonstrates that she wouldn’t know intellectual rigour if she woke up next to it after a night on the turps:
“Just ask a coalminer in the NSW Hunter Valley who may lose his job to a scheme that will make no difference to global warming whether he thinks Australia should lead the way on climate change.”
“Steeped in emotion”? I should think that the above is just that.
Later on, she gives us a repeat performance of this howler which, I suppose, is par for the course. Her fulminations about an HRA constitute the remainder of the column and, it seems, are based on unsubstantiated claims and assumptions about how such legislation would work. Our Janet really isn’t big on self awareness, it appears.
“the Jooooos made them do it.
woolfe of NWA (Reply)
Wed 14 Oct 09 (09:07am)”
Comment on Andrew’s story about Swine Flu, and how’s this for covering one bottom
“Of course, things may yet change, even drastically. Many cases are yet undiagnosed. The flu season in the northern hemisphere has barely begun. This flu virus may yet morph into something more lethal.”
Was there as much hysteria from these people who don’t want a ‘tax on everything’ when the GST was passing thru parliament?
And here’s a good article about press coverage given the opposition. Nice to know there are still some capable journos out there.
http://www.nationaltimes.com.au/opinion/politics/a-big-swing-and-a-miss-in-coalition-pledge-to-axe-spending-20091013-gvkx.html
It must be raining in Melbourne today as I see Bolt is on about the Magic Dam again:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_water_everywhere_so_wheres_the_dam/
I have a take on it on my blog for those keeping score.
I posted a comment on this to the 7:30 report site (hasn’t appeared there yet), and sent an email to Media Watch.
The segment Rudd takes tough line on asylum seekers on the 7:30 report last night contained this gem of misleading statistics:
In year to March, net immigration to Australia stood at 278,000, the largest number in history. Each year, another 6,000 or 7,000 arrive by plane with a visitor’s visa and then claim asylum. And from January, 2007 to today, 213,000 people have arrived by boat without a visa.
Wow! Firstly, the segment stated 2,013 people by boat without a visa, which has been mis-transcibed. Secondly, the first two numbers are per year, and the final number is over nearly 3 years.
I might expect that sort of dodgy figures from tabloid journalists, but expect better for my 8.5cents per day.
I just had a look at Quad/Beck – that’s an article? Barely more than a long Letter to Editor but it seems to miss the point of Carson’s title “Silent Spring” – it wasn’t just about toxic build-up at the ‘Top’ of the food chain, aka humans but the effects much lower down, from thin shelled eggs to beneficial insects. Who cares, as long as we get cheep-cheep krispy kremes & greaseburgers.
A tip: if you know that it will be a slow moderation day, please let us know. All you have to do is to put a post at the top, or a note at the end of the first post.
Sincere apologies for the slow moderation today. As the four of us all have day jobs, sometimes we all get very busy at the same time. Today was one of those days. We appreciate how frustrating it is to have your comment sit in moderation for hours.
How a civilisation commits suicide…
The Parrot on Telsta Breakup.
After 7am Alan Jones decided to talk Telsta.
His line – and that of a caller (a Telstra shareholder) is that competition “has never been better in the telecommunications market in Australia”.
The breakup is all because “the new broadband network would never get off the ground if Telstra isn’t involved”.
Note for the communications minister – if he ever steps into the cage – if competition is so good then why is Telstra’s involvement in the NBN essential?