I Told You Not To Get Me Started...

It's sad to see Australia's media catching up with the rest of the Western world in one respect - reporting global warming theories as fact and swallowing advocates' swill whole.

One also finds it rather ironic that the author of this News piece on environmental hysteric Tim Flannery is one Verity Edwards.

Her intro:

AUSTRALIA faces the prospect of a dry and dusty Murray river, the disappearance of world heritage areas, the death of coral reefs and rising seas - and all by the end of this century.

She goes on to explain how Flannery believes this will occur - because we're all burning evil coal.

At least further on she gives the game away for those with brains to see it:

Dr Flannery, who is due to release a book on climate change next month...

Flannery, who is a palaeontologist, has already made lots of money out of hysterical junk science scaremongering. He has a best-selling book and is a darling of the ABC.

Fortunately, many of his colleagues in academia see Flannery for what he is. Blogger Anti-Green reported quotes from said colleagues on 7 June, 2004:

"Just because a guy is well known does not mean he knows what he is talking about," Dr Stephen Wroe, a palaeontologist at the University of Sydney, says. "I've got a fairly cynical view of Tim. He's an opportunist. He knows climate change is a buzzword, but a few months' work does not make him an expert."

Dr Judith Field, an archaeologist at the University of Sydney, doesn't hold back, either: "Tim doesn't let the facts get in the way of a good story. He does a lot of broadbrush stuff, with broad consequences, and some of it is just plain wrong."

Field, who has been contesting Flannery's theories for years, adds another whack: "Most of our hypotheses are tested with facts, and that underlies the work we do. But most of what Tim does is conceptually driven, and not based on data. And he has been selective in his use of data."

Flannery, of course, struts the same part of town as Robb Willer, a murky red light district in which advocacy masquerades as research, motivated by what the researcher can gain from getting the 'right' results. In Flannery's case, a promo for his new book.

Then again, perhaps I'm being unfair with the red light district analogy. Unfair to prostitutes, a mostly 'what you see is what you get' group of professionals.

The same cannot be said for tarts like Tim.

Ok, ok. Withdrawn, your worship...

-- Nick