Friday, December 18, 2009

ABCTV had a role to play in failure - if only it knew what role

Copenhagen non event - ABCTV will clearly be remembered for being part of the problem - not part of the solution.

On the eve of the greatest moral imperative of the century, the ABC puts a proud blogger up against a highly qualified scientist who lists references on very page of his very big book. 2 nights in a row.
Andrew Revkin doesn't undertstand about deduction, so he is happy to stick pedantically to mere facts ;
No wonder Austrailans are increasingly skeptical of ABCTV -At least a few of them are educated in these matters and can see this is not debate, this is pressure hot air .
Lea Sales tonight asks the dumb question without realising how dumb it is - "Nations have had plenty of time to make sure they would come somewhere near a consensus - why haven't they ?" . The hot air that has driven this debate has run out of hot air.
Obama's speech on the subject was just a lot of hot air and he better hope thinking people don't recognise it as such !
What about us _ Putting on their weekly report from the worried has only increased the doubt about the ABC 's sanity and equity.
The expensive stalemate - the Copenhagen non event - ABCTV will clearly be remembered for being part of the problem - not part of the solution.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Scientists can handle debate; Clearly ABCTV cannot

How does our public broadcaster get away with allowing journos and polys to run the discussions on current affairs ( 7:30 report and latelinetonight ) . Let alone the science ones !!!

Tonight we learn nothing but that those who run these shows are mainly interested in point scoring- not the issues of truth that go beyond the games of those speculators and nonscientists who get to join them to agree to get stuck in some clause of misplaced concreteness that's currently their favourite .
Pity they didn't watch the grumpy old men where the old team were so right about the modern disease of reporters in "me control mode"
Take tonights program on Lateline . Instead of establishing that we can/can't actually measure the temp changes in the atmosphere and interpret their significance ( both are critical to the validity of the numbers) the english journo gets to push the only point he understands -the measurement system .
That Plimer appears to disagree with the authors basic conclusion is common and fair because he's not talking so much about the measure, but the numbers it produces - their interpretation and significance .
Scientists watching can handle debate
Clearly the ABc cannot .ABCTV wouldn't keep letting nonscientists report when the issue in the public mind in december 2009 is clearly " what do scientists really say " ABCTV just don't want to let it happen .
And What a finish too tonight ( after lateline) - signs of desperation. Since when did the church get such authority and respect on scientific matters. Following closely on offering the same status to journos and american polys. The clever country ? no

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Ever changing agendas- the proponents are simply unbelievable .

RE lateline with Tony Jones : The man from NASA undermines the super trade talks . The man from NASA is not playing the game, or is he ?.

So now Copenhagen is not trying to do what's needed. If Politics is about compromise, it is also in this case about being totally ineffective - let alone totally incredible .

Like Rudd, these quick fiz merchants and fearmongers are prepared to compromise on what would have cost us the earth, to fix up what they said was fixing the earth . Totally incredible-that's what they are!

How can this be? Tony Jones and our polys take themeselves too seriously - after all, what do they know? . A big picture scientist up the front on Lateline would probably not answer Jones standard repeat question ; "will you please say yes or No " - he would probably take so much time to answer the question that it would be "time to move on "- how convenient, how convenient a truth is the way we talk about the truth ?

Well , we've moved on alright, and current affairs on the ABC have run out of time running the same old same old reactionary agendas .

Did James from NASA deal effectively with any of the questions? ; lets just say without being greek, that he ducked and dived in the same way a man looking to defend misplaced concreteness would be expected to do.
As a scientist I didn't learn a thing, but that NASA are employing scientists , like they do here, to defend the blinkered views they have of how the world works .

The fact that NASA and CSIRO can't be trusted to give us more than what comes from the school of mere description, ( including the now infamous schools of wild speculation and monitoring ) shows just how sorry the state of objective science is in both places in some areas.

To say anymore would be to miss the point of these very words !