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Parody in custard

“Speedy” in comments on this site has done a better than excellent job of satirizing the satirists, so I’m reposting one of his comments here for those who missed it.

Bryan Dawe, ABC

The background is that here in the land of OZ, on our ABC (public funded TV, ie arm of big-government) there is a duo called John Clark and Bryan Dawe who do a weekly prime-time spot. Their pattern is to pretend to be a politician or two and bat questions back and forward. At the bottom of this post is a Youtube video of them on “Climate Change” from two years ago. You can see an archive of them here. Deadpan is the usual delivery.

But because the ABC is about 20 years behind in the real news on Global Warming, Clark and Dawe work with the disadvantage of being ABC viewers, and so when the Liberal Party disintegrated over the Emissions Trading Scheme most everyone on the ABC had no idea why it was happening. This is a real handicap for comedians, since to be funny, you have to be one step ahead of the audience.

Thanks to Speedy for sharing his talent. He’s captured […]

February 1st, 2010 | Tags: , , | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Journalists view world through a mirror: see things in reverse

I like Chris Uhlmann, and he’s spoken out with reason before on the issue of skeptics. So I was a little surprised to see him say:

“…one of the reasons Malcolm Turnbull is staring into the abyss is because he is getting too far ahead of many in his party room.

He accepts the prevailing consensus on global warming and is personally committed to an emissions trading system. A significant part of his party does not or believes that this emissions trading scheme is a dog.”

source: Oh Malcolm, how did it come to this? (my italics)

Coming soon: one of those In-the-Matrix moments when reality shifts for our journalists.

Imagine that ambitious powerful people were exploiting science to create a scare to gain power and money. Who would know? How would you find out? Normally, you’d read about it in the press. A whistle-blower would make an announcement, and the press would be all ears, and bring the story to the public. But imagine the press decided not to print anything from whistleblowers, not because they didn’t speak in reasonable tones, and not because they couldn’t back up what they said, but just because they are whistle-blowers? […]

November 26th, 2009 | Tags: , , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Finally, a politician doing what politicians should do

This is a big step. Steve Fielding in Australia holds a crucial senate vote on the proposed Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). Astonishingly (for a politician) he stands out from the crowd for simply saying the obvious. He wants to “hear from both sides of the debate.”

A simple statement like this should not be remarkable—but it’s so rare. Steve Fielding assumed the mainstream thinking was right, but is now doing what anyone who hasn’t looked at the debate in detail ought to be doing. Some research. It’s a rare occasion when you can see the good side of democracy and free speech in action. He paid for himself to fly to the far side of the world to attend Heartland’s 3rd conference on Climate Change to hear from scientists who are not convinced carbon has a large role to play in our climate.

The Australian newspaper covered it. And Steve expanded today in the Australian on why he went to Washington.

His visit to the Heartland conference has given the Australian ABC enough reason to bother sending a journalist to it (unlike the two previous conferences). See their short coverage from Washington. (Look out for the glimpse of The […]

June 8th, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming, Science Communication | Print This Post Print This Post | |
 
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