ABC ERODES DEMOCRACY BY SUPPORTING THE BIG LABOR LIE

By Kevin Glancy

There are a number of forces at work in Australia that contribute to the erosion of our democracy. Not least is the Gillard Labor Government and its assault on freedom of speech through the proposed changes to discrimination law.  Then there’s its upcoming attempt to silence the press in response to the Finkelstein media inquiry.

We should not be surprised. Julia Gillard’s own contempt for democracy has been clearly established through her broken ‘no carbon tax’ promise and her other frequent bouts of dishonesty but these proposed ‘discrimination’ changes show even further contempt for our diminishing democracy.

To his great credit, ABC Chairman Jim Spigelman, a former Chief Justice of NSW and critic of the proposed changes recently stated in his Human Rights Day oration, “The Gillard government’s planned consolidation of all federal discrimination laws would significantly redraw the line between permissible and unlawful speech and open the way for the banning of publications.

If the government’s draft bill were enacted, discrimination in all areas would be affected by provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act that were used last year against newspaper columnist Andrew Bolt so that merely offending people would amount to unlawful discrimination. 

 I am not aware of any international human rights instrument or national anti-discrimination statute in another liberal democracy that extends to conduct which is merely offensive. We would be pretty much on our own in declaring conduct which does no more than offend to be unlawful. The freedom to offend is an integral component of freedom of speech. There is no right not to be offended.”

ABC Chairman, Jim Spigelman should be applauded for taking a stand against this Left-wing attack on democracy however, perhaps he should turn his attention closer to home and to the damage that the ABC is also doing to our democracy, particularly because it is supposed to represent all taxpayers and not just the Labor Government and those who support them.

There is still not one single conservative commentator employed in any main programme throughout the ABC network of national television, radio or online activity. How can that be the case in our democracy when the ABC is funded by Australian taxpayers and many would be of the conservative persuasion?

Coalition politicians should boycott the ABC to highlight and draw attention to this disgraceful omission.

The ABC should either be a political-free zone or cater for all aspects of the political spectrum with objectivity and balance. This is clearly not the case. Instead its Left-wing bias cannot be denied and perhaps one of the biggest and undeniable examples of such bias is the role that the ABC has played in supporting Labor’s carbon tax.

The glaringly obvious deceit exercised by the ABC over a number of years has been it’s total subservience to Labor’s global warming agenda.  Whereby the ABC should have been chairing the climate change debate so that viewers could form their own opinions instead, it made sure that there would not be a debate.

I cannot remember one single respectful interview that the ABC has aired with any eminent scientist who does not agree with Labor’s take on global warming. There are at least 31,000 eminent scientists in the US alone who disagree with the role that CO2 plays in the climate and we have a number of Australian scientists who do not conform to government climate propaganda either.

It’s a point worth emphasising since 1998, more than 31,000 American scientists from diverse climate-related disciplines, including more than 9,000 with Ph.D.’s, have signed a public petition announcing their belief that “…there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

Included are atmospheric physicists, botanists, geologists, oceanographers, and meteorologists.

Despite this and other anti-warmist evidence, the ABC has consistently allowed the following lie amongst many others to be broadcast and remain unchallenged. Not one shred of objectivity or balance has been applied by the broadcaster in its editorial commentary.

THE GLOBAL WARMING LIE THAT COOKED THE WORLD

One by one, sometimes two at a time they all appeared on whatever programme the ABC could muster and they sang in unison, spreading the climate change propaganda.  ‘There’s scientific consensus’ they declared!  ‘97% of the world’s scientists all agree that man and CO2 are the cause of global warming – so how can you possibly disagree with that kind of overwhelming consensus of opinion? So don’t talk rot you climate change denier, extremist, murderer” and so on.

How many times have we heard that consensus line trotted out on ABC television and radio programmes whether by an announcer, one of its guests or a number of Labor politicians appearing on the ABC including Penny Wong, Greg Combet, Craig Emerson, Julia Gillard, Tanya Plibersek et al?

All have gone unchallenged by the ABC and its on air staff be it Q&A’s Tony Jones or Insider’s Barrie Cassidy or Jonathon Holmes on Media Watch. Not one of them asked, “How do you know that 97% of scientists all agree? Do you know how many scientists there are in the world? How did you arrive at that figure?

You see the 97% consensus line is a downright lie and cannot be supported by any evidence whatsoever. There is no consensus other than the collection of usual suspects in Australia who rely on government funding to promote climate change propaganda on behalf of the Labor Government including those who work for the ABC.

So how did that great big consensus lie perpetrated by so many originate? Here’s how it was conceived.

In 2009 two researchers from the University of Illinois sent out a simple 2 question/2 minute online survey about global warming to 10,257 earth scientists. I won’t detail the first question here because it was so non-specific that most of us, even me would have answered in the affirmative because most of us agree that the climate changes.

The second question asked: “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?”  

Again it’s a non-specific question. The word ‘significant’ is subjective. Do they mean rising or falling temperatures? Human activity relates to what exactly? The way we plant trees, how we use the land what? There’s no mention of CO2 emissions.

However, here’s the rub. Of the 10,000 plus scientists who received the survey only 3,146 bothered to respond.  But only 82% of that number said ‘yes’ to the second question and given its vagaries, hardly a ringing endorsement.

So the researchers then selected 77 of those scientists who had been sent the survey on the basis that they had more than half of their papers accepted by peer-reviewed climate science journals. Out of those, only 75 had answered ‘yes’ to the second vague question.

Remember! There was no mention at all of CO2 emissions or rising temperatures in that second question. No actual relevance to any argument about the influence of carbon dioxide on the climate.

So this 97% consensus of scientists referred to by so many in the global warming industry is in actual fact a mere handful of 75 out of 77 scientists who answered a non-specific question about climate change.

This is the absolute nonsense that many on the ABC and in politics have hung their hats on and have used to ridicule others who don’t share their opinions.   There isn’t even any mention of CO2 influence in the survey yet we still have a carbon tax.

Back when all this stupidity started had the truth been promoted by the likes of the ABC; that relatively few scientists believe CO2 is the cause of climate change, then the cost of living in this country and in particular the cost of electricity might not be hurtling towards the heavens at great speed.

ABC’s own  journalists should have known and reported that almost half the scientists involved in the UN IPPC at the outset deserted the sinking ship years ago, when their work was hijacked by young green activists who were unqualified to edit their submissions and produced their own alarmist report, which was then declared the real deal to be swallowed and embraced by Left-wing governments like our own.

The ABC has been completely derelict in its duty (and they are not alone) in promoting that ‘consensus’ lie and all the others. The difference is that the ABC has a charter and an obligation and you would think that its staff would make sure that what they tell us is at least based on a grain of truth. They owe us that much – we pay their wages.

I can also be quite sure that you did not and will not hear on the ABC News that according to the UK Met Office using data from their 3000 weather sites around the world that global temperatures haven’t risen in the past sixteen years. That there was a slight upward trend in the previous 16 years and there was no rise at all in the previous 40 years.

I also bet that you haven’t heard on the ABC about the leaked UN IPCC AR5 Draft Report that reveals some bad news for those who believe there’s an increase in extreme weather events due to climate change.  Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado sums up the report;

 ‘No significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency…does not support AR4 conclusions regarding global increasing trends in droughts…low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale…there is currently no clear and widespread evidence for observed changes in flooding’ 

Note: The AR4 report is the previous IPCC release which suggested increasing trends.

In other words the alarmist predictions of an increase in extreme climatic events such as tropical cyclones/hurricanes, flooding and droughts due to man’s influence on the planet is a fallacy and not based on any reality. So much for the independence of the ABC News editorials and 3 cheers for its fawning support of Labor climate change policy.

So with the greatest respect Mr Spigleman there’s some work to do in your ABC office in the new year. Your admirable and timely defence of democracy should be applied to your own ABC while we still have a skerrick of free speech left. The ABC should be the supreme example of free speech in exercising the rights of all to provide opinions on your ABC network including conservative views and those who disagree with global warming rubbish.

I also look forward to 2013 when thanks to the Chairman’s efforts in the name of democracy, the ABC finally stops the majority left-wing biased panel selection on Insiders, Q&A and Drum etc. but I won’t hold my breath.  Mind you, most intelligent people don’t bother anymore with such programmes simply because there is no objectivity or balance.

To be able to describe and prove that the ABC are so editorially biased is an absolute disgrace given the substantial amount of funds provided by all Australian taxpayers.

People can criticise ‘shock jock’ radio all they like but those radio stations stand or fall on their programming and whether you like them or not, market forces will ultimately decide their success or failure. On the other hand the ABC in comparison is a sheltered workshop with no competition and has the support of Australian taxpayers whether we like them or not.

Australia’s ABC and the BBC in the UK have applied much the same left-leaning strategy as far as global warming is concerned. In the case of the BBC they actually ‘banned’ so called climate change deniers including scientists from appearing on any of their programmes.

It seems that as far as the BBC is concerned, climate change realists are more dangerous than the late Jimmy Saville who allegedly preyed on young children for many years while happily employed by the BBC.

One can only conclude on the available evidence over the past few years that the ABC has also applied a no climate change denier zone in its programming.

Hysterical claims, misinformation, lies, name calling and insults is often the refuge of those who cannot support what they say with any evidence and on this occasion I’m not talking about the Labor Government’s members who regularly indulge in such cowardly behaviour.

The following example again highlights that absurd behaviour so common amongst global warming folk. This time the person involved falls right into the ABC required criteria for a place on one of their programme panels.

Australian academic and warmist, Professor Richard Parncutt now teaching at the University of Graz, has suggested that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for influential global warming deniers.

“I have always been opposed to the death penalty in all cases, and I have always supported the clear and consistent stand of Amnesty International on this issue. The death penalty is barbaric, racist, expensive, and is often applied by mistake… Even mass murderers should not be executed, in my opinion. Consider the politically motivated murder of 77 people in Norway in 2011. Of course the murderer does not deserve to live, and there is not the slightest doubt that he is guilty. But if the Norwegian government killed him that would just increase the number of dead to 78…

Global warming deniers fall into a completely different category from Behring Breivik. They are already causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of future people. We could be speaking of billions, but I am making a conservative estimate.

I wish to claim that it is generally ok to kill someone in order to save one million people. Similarly, the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for global warming deniers who are so influential that one million future deaths can with high probability be traced to their personal actions…

Another counterargument is that we can never be sure that the predicted GW will happen, or that its effects will be as severe as predicted. But this is not a strong argument. The courts are used to dealing with uncertainty…

I don’t want to be a saint. I would just like my grandchildren and great grandchildren, and the human race in general, to enjoy the world that I have enjoyed, as much as I have enjoyed it. And to achieve that goal I think it is justified for a few heads to roll. Does that make me crazy? I don’t think so. I am certainly far less crazy than those people today who are in favor of the death penalty for everyday cases of murder, in my opinion. And like them I have freedom of speech, which is a very valuable thing.

Yes it is Professor, but only for the moment as far as our government is concerned and it’s supposed to work both ways. The people you wish to murder have the same right to air their opinions as you have, but if I had suggested a likewise punishment for those providing misinformation on your side of the fence I’m quite sure that my head would have rolled from the nearest guillotine but somehow it’s ok for you to be so stupid and insulting.

These are the irresponsible hands that fertile minds are placed in when they attend our universities. With Professors like Richard Parncutt doing the lecturing, what hope is there for our planet?  And he’s worried about climate change.

Call him up ABC he’s passed the audition for your programmes.