Guest essay by Eric Worrall
University of Melbourne “Centre for Advancing Journalism” academic Denis Muller believes climate censorship should be added to legally binding journalistic professional codes of conduct.
Media ‘impartiality’ on climate change is ethically misguided and downright dangerous
January 31, 2020 6.11am AEDT
Denis Muller
Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of MelbourneIn September 2019, the editor of The Conversation, Misha Ketchell, declared The Conversation’s editorial team in Australia was henceforth taking what he called a “zero-tolerance” approach to climate change deniers and sceptics. Their comments would be blocked and their accounts locked.
His reasons were succinct:
Climate change deniers and those shamelessly peddling pseudoscience and misinformation are perpetuating ideas that will ultimately destroy the planet.
…
But in the era of climate change, this conventional approach is out of date. A more analytical approach is called for.
…
Harm is a long-established criterion for abridging free speech. John Stuart Mill, in his seminal work, On Liberty, published in 1859, was a robust advocate for free speech but he drew the line at harm:
[…] the only purpose for which power can be exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.
It follows that editors may exercise the power of refusing to publish climate-denialist material if doing so prevents harm to others, without violating fundamental free-speech principles.
Other harms too provide established grounds for limiting free speech. Some of these are enforceable at law – defamation, contempt of court, national security – but speech about climate change falls outside the law and so becomes a question of ethics.
The harms done by climate change, both at a planetary level and at the level of human health, are well-documented and supported by overwhelming scientific evidence.
…
External guidance is nonexistent. The ethical codes promulgated by the media accountability bodies – the Australian Press Council and the Australian Communications and Media Authority – make no mention of how impartiality should be achieved in the context of climate change. The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s code of ethics is similarly silent.
These bodies would serve the profession and the public interest by developing specific standards to deal with the issue of climate change, and guidance about how to meet them. It is not an issue like any other. It is existential on a scale surpassing even nuclear war.
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/media-impartiality-on-climate-change-is-ethically-misguided-and-downright-dangerous-130778
The problem with comparing discussion of climate change to shouting “fire” in a burning theatre is one of immediacy.
Shouting “fire” to create a fake panic in a movie cinema is punishable, because it has been amply demonstrated through experience that creating a fake panic causes immediate, measurable harm; we know through observation of past events that people can be hurt or even killed during the resulting stampede.
But a public comment disputing alarmist climate claims; not so much.
The author’s comparison of climate change to an imminent nuclear war is absurd. Climate change is a gradual process, with significant changes taking decades or even centuries to manifest.
Even if climate skeptics were totally wrong, there is no justification for shutting down our right to be wrong. Unlike shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre, no single climate “shout”, no matter how wrong, has the potential to alter the trajectory of society to such an extent that measurable harm could be ascribed to it.
If society lowers the bar of censorship to such an extent that publicly supporting a position which might be wrong but which causes no immediate harm qualifies as a punishable offence, then we have lost more than our right to free speech.
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Unfortunately, Fascism is alive and well in Melbourne, spearheaded by the Ultra-Left-Wing Age Newspaper also known as Pravda-on-the-Yarra. The network of back-up propaganda and ‘education’ forces in Australia spreads from James Cook University in the north to the University of Tasmania in the south.
The real threat that these activists wish to counter is the systematic dismantling of their climate lies and threadbare theories surrounding CO2, which is a harmless inert gas that benefits all life on Earth.
Nicholas,
The Age’s sister newspaper in Sydney, The Sydney Morning Herald should be termed Pravda on the Harbour.
Although I presently reside in Sydney temporarily I refuse to buy it but my local coffee shop has a copy I can occasionally read for free.
Its agenda on pressing the “climate crisis” is unrelenting and shrill.
Since the bushfires it has ramped up the issue considerably on the basis that no thinking person could deny that climate change causes bushfires.
Letters to the Editor are ALL in this vein.
Relatives in Sydney are even more scathing in their views about the fall of the SMH, a once great broadsheet, now a declining tabloid.
Indeed you are correct. I live in Sydney and the SMH is festooned with alarm articles about climate is really quite a laugh. Like The Guardian readership at the SMH is falling. I cannot post any comments to any article now.
‘Crisis’? O, ye heretic! The new word is ‘emergency’, to be followed soon by ‘megamergency’. /sarc
The hyperbole of the Greenshirts is constantly evolving.
Maybe a pangalacticrisis? I am good at making sh!t up too!
Given its partnership with HuffPo, I now call it the SMHuffPo.
Agreed Nicholas.
A précis of warmists’ deceitful propaganda tactics follows – 20th Century practitioners included Stalin, Hitler and Mao, who killed ~200 million people. Do we have to do all this again?
The quotes of Vladimir Lenin:
https://www.azquotes.com/author/8716-Vladimir_Lenin
“Truth is the most precious thing. That’s why we should ration it.”
“We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.”
“There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.”
“Free speech is a bourgeois prejudice.”
“The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.”
“People always have been and they always will be stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics.”
“It is, of course, much easier to shout, abuse, and howl than to attempt to relate, to explain.”
“Democracy is indispensable to socialism.”
“The goal of socialism is communism.”
“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”
“Trust is good, but control is better.”
“As an ultimate objective, “peace” simply means communist world control.”
“One of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the workers Communist and the disarming of the bourgeoisie the middle class.”
“One man with a gun can control 100 without one.”
“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”
“Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world.”
___________________________________
In Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov’s 1984 interview he predicts everything that is happening now.
https://youtu.be/bX3EZCVj2XA
_______________________________________
Lenin’s classic leftist propaganda tactics were refined by Josef Goebbels to mobilize the German public for World War 2.
These same leftist propaganda tactics were later simplified by American extremist Saul Alinsky in “Rules for Radicals”:
https://bolenreport.com/saul-alinskys-12-rules-radicals/
_______________________________________
See also this treatise on the leftists’ decades-long program to corrupt our institutions:
https://centerforindividualism.org/the-lefts-long-march-through-the-institutions-is-now-pretty-much-complete-and-its-a-disaster/
_______________________________________
See also:
WHAT THE GREEN NEW DEAL IS REALLY ABOUT — AND IT’S NOT THE CLIMATE
By Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., July 19, 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/07/20/what-the-green-new-deal-is-really-about-and-its-not-the-climate/
Epilogue: Do we have to do all this again?
Regards to all, Allan
Several decades ago, in the days of the USSR, I knew a man who somehow had dual citizenship, Russia and the USA.
He went to visit relatives in Moscow who taught at the University.
He was talking to some students about the US, freedoms, free enterprise etc. when a party member came up.
She objected when he said that communism didn’t really want peace.
She said there would be peace when the whole world embraced communism.
He said that he never would.
Her reply was, “Then we’ll kill you.”
It’s going to be lonely place for the last person on Earth after they kill the second last person for disagreeing with them.
As far back as the 1970’s The Age was referred to as the “Red Rag” and “The Communist Manifesto”, when the cold war ended they had to find a new fear campaign to scare and manipulate the public, then along came global warming. Thankfully it’s circulation is in a downward spiral now that it is owned by the Nine Network which is very performance driven it is only a matter of time before it is forced to change or fold.
The problem with fear driven media is that when times are good and people are happy they don’t care. The once in a decade bush fire season gave them some traction but now that the Indian ocean dipole has faded away and the drought has broken people will forget about that as well.
The following is excerpted from an article by my new friend Zuzana Janosova Den Boer, an engineer who was born and raised in Czechoslovakia and now lives in Calgary. I have met with Zuzana and her husband, a geophysicist, and they are highly knowledgeable and credible. His recent book “It’s the Sun, not Us” is available on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.ca/Its-Sun-Not-Us-Warbling/dp/1525550195
Regards, Allan
“I SURVIVED COMMUNISM – ARE YOU READY FOR YOUR TURN?”
by Zuzana Janosova Den Boer
https://www.spencerfernando.com/2019/01/03/i-survived-communism-are-you-ready-for-your-turn/
[excerpt]
Communism can be characterized by a single word: deception. Communists never disclose their real intentions. They are fraudsters who employ different identities, names and slogans, all for one goal: totalitarian enslavement. Since 1970, the goal of the Communist Party USA has been to subvert environmentalism and use it to advance their agenda. In 1972, Gus Hall, then chairman of the Communist Party USA, stipulated in his book “Ecology”:
“Human society cannot basically stop the destruction of the environment under capitalism. Socialism is the only structure that makes it possible …This is true in the struggle to save the environment … We must be the organizers, the leaders of these movements. What is new, is that knowledge of [a] point-of-no-return gives this struggle an unusual urgency.”
This idea was incorporated into the Green Party program in 1989 (the same year soviet communism collapsed), in which the fictitious threats of ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’ are used to scare the public into believing humanity must “save the planet”:
“This urgency, along with other Green issues and themes it interrelates, makes confronting the greenhouse [effect] a powerful organizing tool … Survival is highly motivating, and may help us to build a mass movement that will lead to large-scale political and societal change in a very short time …
First of all, we [must] inform the public that the crisis is more immediate and severe than [they] are being told, [that] its implications are too great to wait for the universal scientific confirmation that only eco-catastrophe would establish.”
Do you think the UN Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change is promoting science rather than socialism? Read the following admission from the co-chair of the UN IPCC Group III, during an interview in 2010 with the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung:
“We must free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. We must state clearly that we use climate policy to redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.”
__________________
So, to be a ‘climate change skeptic’ is to be intolerable in a liberal democracy whereas to be a marxist or to advocate say extreme religious dogma including vile personal abuse and death threats is not. Wow, that is quite a position for a “Centre for Advancing Journalism”.
Whose definition/opinion/assertion of ‘climate change skeptic’ is to be the basis for decisions pertaining to the enforcement of this edict of intolerance?
Who will make such decisions?
Will this Jackboot Journalism only cover published journalism or will the guiltry be forced to wear a jacket with the ‘star of guilt’ or even be tattood onto their foreheads?
There is quite a bit of historical practice in this general area ranging from the Naziz, the Soviets, the Khmer Rouge so it should not be hard for the proponents of this new regime of shackled speech to flesh out their position in more detail.
“Democracy is indispensable to socialism.” – Vladimir Lenin
I’d take out the “harmless inert gas” as if it were inert it couldn’t be the basic building block of all life.
Y’all know how Forbidden Fruit works with teens and little kids, right? Whatever you purport to ban immediately becomes more attractive; whatever transgression confers “badass” points with peers.
This is a huge part of why pot and vaping are so popular.
Like the “impeachment,” I suspect the result here may surprise them . . . 😉
For those lacking every other inspiration in life, literally seizing the day makes life worth living when it otherwise seems to pass you by. And eventually it is also realized that total control of a populace is necessary to assure the realization of what they so favor. Thus all the charming talk of equality, human dignity, honesty, and personal humility in the interest of their fellows represents a deceitful delay in that bondage.
Meanwhile they will readily enact such contradictions as warning others against shouting ‘fire! in a crowded theater’ while at the very same time falsely yelling ‘deadly crisis!’ to a worldwide audience; insist on lumping as deplorables every skeptic who prudently reveals contrary findings that impede their concerted efforts at stampede; and even ironically decry their own ‘dreams being stolen’ as they welcome a life of bare subsistence for the bulk of humanity. All these entrained motivators take their cues from a common echo chamber that is in the end notably bereft of any substance of benefit to their confreres.
The day will come when”We the People”will have to stand up to these”Bullies”not with words as we have been doing,but with FORCE.They have been trying to take away OUR right to question their ideology for years.
Ah, Nicholas… CO2 is far from inert. Please refer to the process of photosynthesis.
Best Regards
The psychosis is being reinforced…. Can the call for jack-booted thugs be far behind?
The “jack-booted thugs”are already here – they call themsleves XR.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/10/17/angry-commuters-attack-extinction-rebellion-climate-protestors/#comment-2824392
Where are Britain’s renowned soccer hooligans when you need them the most?
XR thugs are the modern version of Hitler’s brown-shirts. Wouldn’t you like to have a crack at them?
C’mon lads – Make XR thugs an endangered species!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/11/19/thugs-bully-munich-conference-center-force-cancellation-skeptic-climate-conference/#comment-2850815
I have great faith in my fellow law-abiding citizens to do the right thing.
Doesn’t Germany have some notable football clubs? FC Bayern Munich and all?
My suggestion is:
Organize the young fans of these football clubs to keep the peace in German cities. The police are obviously are not up to the task.
The good people of Canning Town showed admirable restraint in dealing with the XR thugs, especially considering one of the XR cowards kicked one of the locals in the face.
My new fav video – go Canning Town!
https://youtu.be/9P1UXYS6Bmg
If they are worried about us we must be doing something right. Congratulations to my fellow deniers. Go get ’em guys!
Well said!
This bears closer examination:
His reasons were succinct: Climate change deniers and those shamelessly peddling pseudoscience and misinformation are perpetuating ideas that will ultimately destroy the planet. – article
Valid questions:
1 – HOW will it destroy the planet? Be specific.
2 – WHAT are you afraid of, twit-for-brains Muller?
3 – WHY are you deflecting what YOU are doing onto other people simply because they disagree with your opinion?
4 – WHAT are you really afraid of?
Muller needs to be dropped off up near some Far Northern village where hungry polar bears will be emerging in a few weeks, with hungry cubs tailgating them. I want to know how he’d survive in a truly cold climate with few to no resources available to him.
Erratic weather is NOT climate change. It is simply erratic weather. Also, I guess it doesn’t occur to Muller and his ilk that forested areas which are not cleared of undergrowth (fire fuel) have an oxygen load that enables fires to burn hotter, faster and nastier.
You may also have noticed that as their accusations become more extreme, so too does the vagueness of who they are actually talking about.
All the worst causes need to have an enemy who is frequently referred to but rarely identified in person. If ever an individual is named then it becomes easy to question what it is they are alleged to have actually said or done. That is the point at which the cause is found to be lacking in supporting facts.
They know their arguments for CAGW are pitifully weak, so they need to eliminate any daylight that might shine upon them.
Censoring your opponent is the equivalent of a child overturning the chess board when they realize they’re losing. It is not the strategy of someone who is winning the debate.
Precisely! They have no real argument, so that means they have no back-up, just a lot of arm-waving and jumping up and down and using catch phrases. Everything Muller says about so-called skeptics/deniers can also be said about the ecohippies and Warmunistas.
“Everything Muller says about so-called skeptics/deniers can also be said about the ecohippies and Warmunistas.”
And much more accurately. Classic projection.
“But in the era of climate change, this conventional approach is out of date. A more
analyticalfascist book burning-style approach is called for.”There. Fixed it for those totalitarians.
Orwell was correct.
As was Voltaire before him, when he said, “If you want to know who rules over you, find out who are are not allowed to criticise!”.
I like that quote. It applies to many facets of society.
Is very true in Russia and China, so basically maybe that is the problem for these guys, it is the concept of a democracy.
Almost certainly not Voltaire.
Sorry, not Voltaire but Kevin Alfred Strom in 1993. He’s a white supremacist anti-semite who wrote it regarding Jews. No one’s been able to actually link it to Voltaire or a similar quote to Tacitus. I don’t think we should be giving any credence to this Strom creature even in a backhanded way!
““If you want to know who rules over you, find out who [you] are not allowed to criticise!”.”
This is interesting. We have an example of this happening right this moment.
The current impeachment sham directed at President Trump began with an anonymous “whistleblower”, who I call “the man that shall not be named”.
The Democrats and their propaganda organ, the Leftwing Media, decided that the whisteblower should not have his identify made public, even though there is no law that requires this, and yet this whistleblower has not been publicly named by any of the news media (with one exception) and that includes all the reporters and hosts at Fox News Channel.
Everyone knows this guy’s name. Everyone. It’s not illegal to name this man publicly. But noone names him. Even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court formally declined to name him the other day during the impeachment hearing when it appeared in a question by Senator Rand Paul.
This is all based on conforming to Leftwing desires and nothing else. Fox News Channel hosts say their excuse for not naming him is because Fox can’t independently confirm who he is, which is a joke in itself. They just don’t want to have to weather the criticism from the Left if they made his name public.
So who is ruling the nation? Even conservative Fox News toed this leftwing line. The answer is the Leftwing Media is ruling the nation.
That’s why they are the most existential threat the United States faces. The Radical Democrats try to undemine the U.S. Constitution and the Leftwing Media spread their lies far and wide and cause millions of people to make very bad choices which might just end up taking all their freedoms away from them.
And imbeciles like Mitt Romney and Susan Collins enable this undermining, giving legitimacy to a partisan, political unconstituional impeachment process. I don’t know if Susan Collins thought she was going to pick up votes by voting to continue this impeachment fraud, but were she my Senator, her vote would cause me to think she does not have the understanding to see when Democrats are trying to undermine the U.S. Constitution, which automaticaly disqualifies her from getting my vote.
I hope the Republicans have an alternative to vote for instead of Susan Collins because I don’t think she is going to be the winner. It will either be a new Republcian or the Democrat will win. Conservatives are going to walk away from Collins. Unfortunately, Romney won’t be up for reelection until 2024, so it will be a while before he is punished for his stupidity and vindictiveness.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, will be publicly naming the whistleblower soon, along with his co-conspirators, when he starts holding hearings on how the Democrats have been conspiring to undermine the U.S. Constition in their efforts to gain political power. Senator Graham said he would start the inquiry on Wednesday, right after President Trump is acquitted.
” Even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court formally declined to name him the other day during the impeachment hearing when it appeared in a question by Senator Rand Paul.”
But, his refusal to read Rand Paul’s question implicitly confirms that Chief Justice Roberts not only knows what everyone else knows, but that he is reasonably certain of its accuracy. Otherwise, he would have had no reason to refuse to read the question. Therefore, he was confirming what everyone ‘knows.’
Exactly. And the Chief Justice also knows it is not against the law to name this individual. Yet he refused to name him. He was cowtowing to Leftwing desires and requirements. John Roberts has been a disappointment to me. He has made several moves that are very troubling. Let’s hope Trump gets the opportunity to appoint additional conservative Supreme Court Justices before he leaves Office.
The US constitution recognizes the right of every accused to confront his/her accuser, as stated in the 6th Amendment:
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.”
Here we have the Chief Justice of the US violating the Constitution he has sworn to uphold.
And let’s notice that in their lead-up to impeachment the House Democrats violated Trump’s 6th amendment right to to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence”
The whole process stinks.
When Richard Nixon faced impeachment over the Watergate coverup Senator Barry Goldwater told him, ‘You have only 4 supporters in the Senate, and I’m not one of them.’
When real criminality is obvious evidence, the support for impeachment becomes bipartisan.
The impeachment of Trump fails the bipartisan test.
The first article alleges unknowable intent. The second alleges a crime in opposing a process that violated Trump’s 6th amendment right to conduct a defense.
There are no actual crimes in evidence. It is a purely partisan hit-job; the latest in a long line of attempted discredits.
“There are no actual crimes in evidence. It is a purely partisan hit-job”
The exact thing the Nation’s Founders warned us against doing. Impeachment and removal HAS to be bi-partisan, otherwise it is illegitimate, like this current impeachment of Trump.
I remember watching the Watergate hearings, and there was a point where it became obvious that Richard Nixon was directly involved in criminal activity and that’s when Nixon lost all his Republican support, and the outcome, Nixon’s resignation, was inevitable.
The modern Aussie fascist nazis!!!!
Be very afraid: there are too many out there who will agree with the proposition that those who don’t agree with the alarmism should be silenced!!!
You can challenge QM, GR in a MSM article but don’t whatever you do challenge Climate Science ™.
Then they wonder why nobody trust journalist or the press 🙂
“The harms done by climate change, both at a planetary level and at the level of human health, are well-documented and supported by overwhelming scientific evidence.”
This is the crux of Dennis Muller’s argument and it is 100% false. To date, there has not been a single ‘harm’ scientifically proven to be the result of man-made climate change. There appears to be a growing number of people around the world who believe that proclamations now override reality. If you tell a big lie often enough, people will start to believe it. Where have we seen this attempted before?
But beyond the big lie, lies a very weak argument concerning harm. The problem for these activists is that their ‘solutions’ will produce significant amounts of ‘harm’ immediately. By their own reasoning, they should be silenced!
Muller also goes on to say that “the existential threat is even greater than nuclear war”, which is an obvious serious exaggeration, as nuclear war was at the level of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction). The MAD designation was referring to an exchange between Russia and USA, but, guess what? The radiation in all of the northern hemisphere could have risen to lethal levels. OK, Australia is down-under, but it just takes longer, because if USA hair-spray propellant causes the ozone hole, there you go.
But proclamations ARE reality when they come from the anointed ones, comrade!
It’s ironic that somebody calling for legally enforced “truth” uses total lies to make the argument.
Human health continues to improve everywhere. That is an absolute, indisputable fact.
“By their own reasoning, they should be silenced!”
There is the real irony in all of this! By their own logic, it is they who should be silenced, to prevent the REAL and IMMEDIATE harm of imposing “climate policies,” as opposed to the IMAGINARY and DISTANT harm of so-called “climate change” (the way THEY mean it).
“Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne”
What a mouthful of…BS.
He just needs a to be Senior Research Fellow in Gender Studies and he will have the quinella in useless education.
One wonders what he researches…
Remember, The Conversation is funded by the hapless taxpayer. They are operated out of academic institutions, supposedly following scientific processes.
I think Winston Churchill was spot on when he said-“The fascists of the future will call themselves anti fascists.” The delusional believers behave EXACTLY like a religious cult. They are right because-well, just because.
Demanding a certain group to be denied free speech goes against ALL internationally recognised basic human rights. Time for these fools to look in the mirror as to who has been peddling pseudoscience.
The Conversation is all about silencing opponents. Is it published by the Ministry of Truth?
HT
The essence of this issue is the hubris of academics who believe they have special insights on ‘truth,’ and have no peers that are worthy of debate or defense against. Thus, they call for censoring any who would disagree with them. What would have happened if the scientists of the early-20th century had managed to get laws passed to prohibit publishing anything that questioned traditional Newtonian Physics? Einstein would never have been published! That is what Muller and The Conversation are asking for!
End all government funding of so-called tertiary institutions in Australia.
Now.
The only real reason to censor “Climate Deniers” is because they know full well the “deniers” are right, and can’t be refuted.
Not just right, provably right. Absolutely everything the doomsayers have been bleating on about since the late 60’s and early 70’s about “climate” has been demonstrably wrong. What we now see happening is shutting down discussions, That’s The Conversation for you. What we will see happening more is a gradual “blocking” of access to information (Because it is becoming available online only now). Did you say Google? Many many books that I, physically, read in a library years ago are only “available online” now.
This is what Orwell predicted in his book “1984”.
Exactly there is no immediacy that prevents them from showing/arguing something is wrong before I’ll effects would occur. Therefore, they are just admitting in the arena of ideas and reason they might lose.
But if climate alarmism is causing crippling anxiety among young people, is that not immediate harm? Shouldn’t there be safe spaces where they can be protected from such upsetting speech? where no one is allowed to talk about AGW?
Mark Shulgasser
February 1, 2020 at 11:08 pm
“But if climate alarmism is causing crippling anxiety among young people, is that not immediate harm? Shouldn’t there be safe spaces where they can be protected from such upsetting speech? where no one is allowed to talk about AGW?”
No. No. And No.
“Overwhelming evidence”? Sounds like they plagerised that from Adam Shiff and co.Look where that got them.
They are all operating out of the same play book.
Does anyone else wonder when this stupid-ness will fully rotate and climate denial-ism will be declared an actual religion by these dingbats? Wouldn’t MEAA then violate it’s own code of conduct by showing discrimination against a conscientious denier?
And I find it really strange that they say: “Only substantial advancement of the public interest or risk of substantial harm to people allows any standard to be overridden.” as a sort of anything-goes line. Wonder who in their tribe thinks they are qualified to determine a reasonable person’s understanding of “substantial”? These are the same folks that have escalated Journalist reporting of climate from concern to then crisis to then catastrophe. There is certainly no sense of scale in this profession.
Russell: “These are the same folks that have escalated Journalist reporting of climate from concern to then crisis to then catastrophe. There is certainly no sense of scale in this profession.”
A sense of scale has nothing to do with the End-Of-The-World articles. The Jurinalists (Swedish pronunciation) of the Yellow Stream Media write what they are told to write. If they don’t they will be replaced with someone who will write what they are told to write. There is a reason that some are called presstitutes
Total sellouts, regardless of whether or not they believe the balderdash that they write.
It saddens me to see what people in the intellectual, cultural and academic spheres are suggesting for Western society. True believers are secular now & the young apparently don’t understand how quickly someone like Pol Pot destroyed the comfort zone of the educated.
Disgraceful.
I don’t know what good it will do but I intend writing to our Prime Minister in protest at the Australian government continuing to fund this institution.
Good. Journalism was trash anyway. Most of what I read (on important topics for society, not on who won the rugby match yesterday) is clearly whitewashing of some sort: peddling propaganda for some cause while hiding who wrote it or giving cover to the source by “asking questions” that are not real questions. At least a Press Release comes from the purported source.
For example, after the hack of the Macron campaign, the framework of the DNC lies was used to pretend there were fake documents in the “MacronLeaks” data dump.
Then the person responsible for infosec in the campaign made up another story: that he used “fuzzing” to make many fake email threads to confuse whoever would hack the emails. And the “free press” applauded. Security measures were successful because the emails were hacked and dumped, but at least the infosec guys had fun making up false emails (that nobody saw).
(Be careful, as that’s the new measure of success for journalist. By that definition, you could say the solar road was a success.)
I couldn’t find evidence that “fuzzing” (of texts written by humans by automatically generated garbage) is a thing or that any made up email existed. The journalists asked zero question about the number of purposely made up emails or why they would waste time on such pointless endeavor instead of fighting phishing by using two factor authentification, a cheap solution nowadays.
Journalism is obviously not the only systemic whitewashing operator; the other is the “health authority” that provides cover for Big Medicine. The worst lackey of Big Pharma/Big Medicine in the world is probably the EU. The most serious issue with EU is the encouragement to fast track drugs, yet nobody talks about it, because: lackeys.
…. and there it is again – “supported by overwhelming scientific evidence” – followed by zero scientific evidence.
Ironic that The Conversation wants to shut down conversation with anyone.
Sorry Ben but irony has been forbidden at The Conversation.
Be very careful what you say comrade. To even suggest irony in association with The Conversation is punishable by edict of the central committee.
Ben
I had suggested to the editor that they should consider renaming themselves The Monologue to better reflect what they represent. I did not get the courtesy of a reply.
LMFAO Perfect! Both your suggestion, and the fact that they refused to respond to it – thereby making your point!
It is interesting how they manipulate language in a way that changes original meaning. So “harm” (John Stuart Mill) has been conflated to describe something which may or may not be a problem to some people in the future if some (improbable) scenario of fossil fuel consumption (RCP8.5) happens. Such obfuscation is either stupid – Ie the speaker hasn’t a clue what he or she is talking about – or a deliberate tactic to gain political advantage.
I suspect both is true at the same time. They haven’t a clue about the IPCC’s scenarios, wouldn’t even know what RCP8.5 meant, but do clearly understand the difference between Mill’s “harm” and the outcomes from climate change. It is also a bit pointless anyway, because the MSM don’t as a rule, give a platform to sceptics very often, and then only to be poked fun at.
Eric and others from down under.
I’m from Melbourne.
I agree with others re The Age/SMH but also the ABC which is a disgrace.
Is there any actual Australian CAGW alarmist that actually debates anyone?
“Is there any actual Australian CAGW alarmist that actually debates anyone?”
No, and there never has been.
The climate hysterics’ version of “debate” is: “you sit there quietly while I tell you what to think.”
At least your Sky TV is prepared to discuss CC with “deniers” – notably an interview with Craig Kelly MP! I’m from England just recently freed from the shackles of the EU, or at least starting to get free.
Only debate I have seen. One scientist v a hand full of amateurs. But he is dead now.
Two minutes into it, I chose to view on You Tube in order to see the comments only to find out that the comment section was turned off. I’m not spending another 40+ minutes with the good part of the debate missing.
Waza,
I once bought the SMH when in Sydney one morning and sat down at a cafe for a breakfst coffee awaiting an old friend. She turned up and tore strips off me for reading ‘such utter crap’. I normally would by Rupert’s Oz but thought better of it that day cos my old friend was an inner city living, Green voting, ex separatist lesbian lawyer whose partner was a judge. It was the utter lack of rigour going into the content that pissed her off. I might have been better off reading the Oz that day as far as having a pleasant morning was concerned.
havent heard one yet mate!
they all get a lot of air n paper time
but always alone or on abc as a tag team ie doom and gloom
talking to a GF today
she thinks she believes it
I asked why , what papers has she read what convinces her its true?
reply
well its on all the media..
and shes old enough to know the media lies as do our pollies.
What a disgrace and humiliation for the University of Melbourne, to have this fascist openly saying these things. And, apparently, a ‘senior research fellow’.
One of the most interesting items recently published on Anthony’s endlessly informative blog was Andy May’s graph showing the earth’s temperature over the last 500 million years. In Muller’s world, it would be an offence to publish this graph or even discuss the obvious issues that it raises.
I wonder if Andrew Bolt has commented on this appalling announcement?
Terence Corcoran: Unfund the CBC, Canada’s Pravda and national enforcer of truth
The idea the CBC is an essential disseminator of some higher truth is the starting point for a national campaign for more government funding of journalism
https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/terence-corcoran-unfund-the-cbc-canadas-pravda-and-national-enforcer-of-truth
What aids a man if he gains the whole world but loses his immortal soul? All life is grass thus saving the soul must be the highest priority.
Therefore words that lead the soul astray are the greatest form of harm.
We don’t need to hear opinions about that harm.
Clearly John Stuart Mill was using this argument to call for heresy laws.
That’s what they are arguing for in Melbourne. It’s the world turned upside-down.
“The harms done by climate change, both at a planetary level and at the level of human health, are well-documented and supported by overwhelming scientific evidence.”
Four falsehoods in one sentence. Must be a records of sorts. There is no climate crisis; any ‘change’ is due to mother nature. Therefore the ‘harms’, if any, are out of our contro, while the ‘documented’ and ‘supported’ only exist in the writer’s mind.
The The Conversation claims…
“Academic rigour, journalistic flair”
But most of their output is absolute tripe & much is factually wrong
Some of the regular posters/posers get quite vitriolic if you disagree with them.
If you provide data that refutes the consensus it is removed.
Proud to say I was excommunicated 18mths ago for quoting… H H Lamb & NOAA data!!
Journalism falls under the Arts faculty and aside from Mosher I have not seen anyone ever claim that a degree in that area somehow makes you a scientist to even have a valid opinion.
The alarmist movement in Austraia, which includes left-wing media is purely political. We know this because they only protest against Australia’s 1% GHG emission and will never be seen outside the Chimese embassy in Canberra protesting against their 30% GHG emissions.
Of course the entire climate movement is also purely political as evidenced by the very nature of the Paris agreement, which saw the developing countries given no binding CO2 committments and the largest emitter China given a green light by Obama and the UN to expand their emissions by any amount up to 2030. When you consider that these developing countries currently make up 65% of global emissions and increase these collectively by 3% each year, effectively adding a new developed world of emissions every 12 years, it doesn’t take much to realise this whole deal is a huge money transfer scam and has absolutely nothing to do with CO2 reductions.