Dutch EV expert debunks Murdoch-pedalled myth about electric car emissions

Dutch electric vehicle expert Auke Hoekstra has cut through the latest claims of renowned climate denialist Bjorn Lomborg, published this weekend by The Australian, on the emissions from electric vehicles.

The Lomborg article, as Hoekstra puts it, has one clear message: “electric vehicles are an expensive and meaningless way to combat climate change and only useful for virtue signalling by people with too much money.”

As it happens, this is a view trotted out by the Murdoch press on an at-least annual basis.

But Hoekstra – an EV, energy and smart grid researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), the same university from which the 2019 winners of the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge Cruiser Class hail – is not having any of it.

He took to social media channel Twitter on Sunday (Australian time) to debunk the latest claims.

Read the story from The Driven by Bridie Schmidt - “Dutch EV expert debunks Murdoch-pedalled myth about electric car emissions.”

'Prolonged and intellectually incoherent campaign against action on climate change'

Robert Manne writing in his new book, “On Borrowed Time”:

“The Australian has conducted a prolonged and intellectually incoherent campaign against action on climate change, which has undermined the hold in public life of the central values of the Enlightenment, Science and Reason. This has helped make action by any Australian government on the most serious question of contemporary times far more difficult than it ought to have been.”

Climate change critic loses argument with university

Murry Salby loses his argument
with Macquarie University.

Climate change critic and atmospheric scientist Murry Salby has lost his long-running court battle against Macquarie University, which he had accused of a raft of workplace contraventions and political ­interference.

Dr Salby, whose employment was terminated in 2013, had claimed Macquarie demoted him, obstructed his research and interfered with his right to interact with his research students ­because of his political views.

In emails obtained by The Australian in 2013, he claimed the university had blocked the presen­tation of research that was highly critical of the now defunct Climate Commission and refused him travel to Europe to unveil those findings, which he said countered “reckless claims” about the role of mankind in greenhouse gases.

Read today’s story in The Australian - “Climate change critic Murry Salby loses case against university.”

Dogs bark, mostly, about things they don't understand

If you read The Australian or Britain’s The Times this week, you might have concluded that concerns about ocean warming and acidification are all a big beat-up.

Based on a study of the expert literature, the newspapers ran with a line that the marine science expert community has a penchant for “doom and gloom stories which has skewed academic reporting” because we only report the bad bits and rarely the good.

Given that the majority of scientists in this area (including the hundreds working in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change process) do not feel this is the case, what is going on?

Read the piece on The Conversation by the Director of the Global Change Institute at The University of Queensland, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg  - “It’s not ‘doom and gloom’ to point out what’s really happening to coral reefs.”

Newman's claims on climate change 'incorrect', 'irrelevant' and 'old red herrings'

C

laims by the Prime Minister's chief business adviser about climate change have been rejected by the head of the Bureau of Meteorology as "incorrect", irrelevant and "old red herrings".

Greens climate spokeswoman, Larissa Waters.

Earlier this month, Maurice Newman, the chairman of the Prime Minister's business advisory council, came under fire after he wrote in The Australian that scientific modelling showing the link between humans and climate change was wrong and the real agenda was a "new world order" led by the United Nations.

In a Senate estimates hearing on Monday, Greens climate spokeswoman Larissa Waters read through the opinion piece, paragraph by paragraph, asking the bureau's director of meteorology and chief executive Rob Vertessy to respond to Mr Newman's claims.

Read The Age story - “Bureau of Meteorology rejects Maurice Newman's climate claims”.

Successful response demands collaborative effort, and the truth.

Humanity’s successful response to climate change is not about winners and losers, goodies or baddies, right or wrong rather, rather it is about a collaborative effort.

Any collaborative effort warranting praise begins with telling the truth and so it was encouraging to see that The Australian had been chastised for failing in that area.

The Australian Press Council has considered a number of complaints about reporting by the national newspaper in the week leading up leading up to the release of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in September 2013.

In making its adjudication the council said: “The Council emphasises that, of course, this adjudication neither endorses nor rejects any particular theories or predictions about global warming and related issues”.

Beneath the Wisteria supporter Ian Edwards from Dicky Beach on Queensland's Sunshine Coast has written to The Australian and encourages others to also tell the newspaper’s hierarchy of their displeasure.

This is what Ian wrote:

I recall as a young professional proudly holding a copy of the Australian under my arm as I strode the streets of Brisbane. “I now read the Australian. I’m on my way.” Now, I’m not so sure. To be blunt, the Australian’s coverage of climate change over the last couple of years has been disgusting: one sided, biased and factually incorrect.  This has now been recognised by the Press Council. If the Australian is incapable of journalistic integrity of such an important issue as this, what credibility does the paper and everything else it reports have?

Regards

Ian Edwards

Maurice Newman doesn't let the facts stand in the way of a good story

Maurice Newman - avoiding the facts.

An oft-made jibe about journalism is that the facts should never be allowed to stand in the way of a good story.

Now it seems the chairman of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council, Maurice Newman, has taken that to heart.

In a December 31 opinion piece in The Australian, Mr Newman illustrated his ignorance, wilful or otherwise, of the essential and critical facts of climate change.

His interpretation of the facts has been described as “flat-earth” thinking in a story published in the Age headed: “Maurice Newman’s flat-earth thinking ignores climate change facts”.

One who questions the legitimacy of what Mr Newman has said is the Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Melbourne, Prof David Karoly, who has spoken in Shepparton and is a Beneath the Wisteria supporter.