Climate debate abounds with deception

The ABC and The Guardian Australia have shown that when the assessments of climate scientists don’t fit their narrative, they are prepared to go on the attack.

Blatant deception has become endemic in what is an extreme debate on global warming. The alarmists who sneer at so-called climate deniers are, all too often, fact deniers.

The ABC and The Guardian Australia have shown when the assessments of climate scientists don’t fit their catastrophist narrative, they are prepared to ignore or verbal scientists and attack other media for sharing the information. Consider a forum at the University of Sydney on “The Business of Making Climate Change” in June that included the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes director Andrew Pitman.

Asked about climate and drought, Professor Pitman said this: “This may not be what you expect to hear but as far as the climate scientists know there is no link between climate change and drought. Now, that may not be what you read in the newspapers and sometimes hear commented but there is no reason a priori why climate change should make the landscape more arid.

“And if you look at the Bureau of Meteorology data over the whole of the last 100 years there’s no trend in data, there’s no drying trend, there’s been a drying trend in the last 20 years but there’s been no drying trend in the last 100 years and that’s an expression of how variable the Australian rainfall climate is.”

You will not have heard that comment, in full, on the ABC, nor read it in The Guardian Australia; yet they have run many comments from Greens and Labor politicians saying the drought is linked to climate change.

This self-censorship is extraordinary enough because there could hardly be a more relevant and factual contribution from such a reputable source that puts the lie to the political posturing over a crippling drought that is dominating political debate.

But it gets worse. What the ABC’s MediaWatch did a fortnight ago, and The Guardian Australian replicated last week, is run cut-down versions of that quote and accuse me and others at Sky News of misrepresenting Professor Pitman. That’s right, it is commentators sharing a reputable climate scientist’s own words, uncut, that they criticise.

These journalists failed to run the pertinent information but slammed others for running it. Their tenuous justification is a statement from Professor Pitman’s centre claiming he should have said “no direct link” rather than “no link”.

The insertion of the word “direct” into his assessment is mere semantics and changes nothing.

Indeed the statement begs the question of how and why this ex post facto qualification came about, not directly from Professor Pitman, but from his centre.

In that June forum Professor Pitman also said the “fundamental” problem in this field of science is that “we don’t understand what causes droughts” — again underscoring the absence of a climate change/drought link.

Last week he was reported on the topic again in The Guardian Australia: “But the fact that I can’t establish something does not make it true or false, it just means I can’t establish it.”

Astonishingly, the website argued this quote bolstered its claims of misrepresentation when clearly it reaffirms his critical point; there is no link established between our drought and global warming. The evidence is in, no matter how much it is buried, denied and spun away by the ABC and Guardian Australia.

All of Professor Pitman’s comments demonstrate that politicians are making a link between global warming and drought that climate scientists have not established.

In comparison, some of us at Sky News have run Professor Pitman’s comments in full a number of times, drawn our conclusions, asked others to comment and allowed audiences to make their own judgments. Additionally, I have repeatedly invited Professor Pitman to discuss the issues, live and uncut to air.

He shrinks away. We can imagine it is difficult for scientists to have their work pushed and pulled for political point-scoring — but they have a public duty to share the facts.

Professor Pitman’s work is being grossly misrepresented by the ABC and The Guardian Australia, who argue the opposite to his declared reality. His centre should be clearing the air but is doing the opposite.

The dishonesty of the reporting by Paul Barry’s Media Watch, at your expense, is stunning. They cut, trim and misrepresent what has been broadcast on Sky News, fail to ask pertinent questions of Professor Pitman and try to convince the public that his research shows the exact opposite of what he has said repeatedly.

There has seldom been a clearer demonstration of George Orwell’s 1984 maxim: “War is Peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.”

The Guardian Australia should be left to its own devices, I suppose, but Ita Buttrose should not sit idly by and allow Media Watch to implement the antithesis of the ABC’s charter mission.

PC crowd bully Leunig

It behoves me to defend Michael Leunig, despite having never met him, nor warming to the whiny tone of his cartoons, and holding a bit of a grudge against him because he didn’t support his fellow cartoonist, the late, great Bill Leak, in his hour of need.

Still, we need to stand by Leunig because the bullying handed out to him in the searing world of social media is another assault on free expression.

Were he around today, Leak would be in Leunig’s corner, showing a solidarity too many spared for him. Leak was probably helped into his early grave in 2017 because of a nasty and illiberal pile-on over his provocative cartoon about indigenous community dysfunction.

He was given the full thought-police treatment under Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act by the Australian Human Rights Commission.

In miserable comments soon after Leak’s death, Leunig said Leak had probably been “egged on” by others to draw his “cruel” cartoon that was a “terrible mistake”. He could hardly have been more insulting, wrong or cowardly.

Still, when Leunig last week dared to suggest that some of us — in his drawing, a mum — might be distracted from the better and more important things in life by our smartphones, all hell broke loose. A social media barrage attacked Leunig for things he did not choose — his age, sex and skin colour — as well as for his cartoon.

On Channel 10’s The Project Leunig was denounced as a “dinosaur” and a “74-year-old dude” who was “targeting mums” and has “form going after women and mums in particular”. We were told it was “time he exited the public sphere for good”.

At least Leunig didn’t confront an AHRC investigation trying to taint him as sexist or racist. But the vigour and tone of the public shaming was worrying; not seeking to disagree or discuss but to silence, condemn and de-platform.

Lucky for Leunig, some cartoonists are consistent. Leak’s old mate, The Daily Telegraph’s Warren Brown, defended Leunig from what he called an “extraordinary” overreaction. “We’ve all copped it out of the blue,” Brown sympathised. “A cartoon is about making people think.”

Yep, Leunig gave some readers pause to think.

Well played, Warren, Bill would have loved your work, and he would have rung you to say so, not deferred to social media.