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Some thoughts about mooted changes to Media ownership law in Australia
People are creatures of habit and it is only that so many people are habituated to buying the news papers that any are still being sold at all. Just take any kind of commute on public transport and consider how many people are reading a paper and how many are staring at a screen instead. Some certainly may be playing games or even watching video but I expect that they will be out numbering those who are still reading dead tree editions of the MSM.
Then there is the things in the paper that people buy them for, most papers are not exclusively about politics and current affairs anyway, so some readers will be buying the paper for its coverage of sport, lifestyle or even just for the crossword puzzles. My point is that the political classes (in particular those from the left ) just look at the raw sales figured and they think that every reader of the Herald Sun is in the thrall of Rupert Murdoch and that the owners dictate to their readers directing their opinions. The reality is that all media entities write to their audience. If they don’t their audience wither away quite quickly. With the coming of the internet this is even more how things work Online entities are even more in an endless quest for readers so you have to play to what your readers want rather than thinking that you can manipulate their thinking. I have been writing a blog for nearly a decade now and I have noticed just how quickly particular readers flit in and out its the same now with the way that people read things online from the likes of Murdoch, Fairfax or even the Guardian People don’t just get their news from one source any more no matter what the subject is they will read what several sources say about it and then make up their mind. This behaviour is the same when it comes to broadcast TV people flit form one channel to another seeking different perspectives. My argument is simple, if the media consumers have changed their habits then perhaps there is something in the notion that media diversity laws from the last century should perhaps reflect those changes as well.
Cheers Comrades
Critical mass casualties as motorist goes bonkers at protest
I personally love the way that a civil society will allow and even encourage the expression of the public will by way of peaceful protest, However there is no getting away from the fact that. there are some types of protest that only ever succeed in pissing people off enough that they may do something stupid:
Click for video
Hmm what is really stupid is that this chap was unable to make a single fatalalty dispite injuring 40 loonies…*
But to be realistic when these sorts of “protests” have been held here or in Europe there has been only annoyance and dare I suggest it the desire to do what the Golf driver does in the vid. But don’t “critical mass” realise that there is a fine line between making your point and doing more harm than good for the promotion of bicycles ?
Hmm maybe they don’t ….
Cheers Comrades
* cue my humorless critics insisting that I am advocating that cyclists should be run down and killed if they get in the way of car drivers….
Just maiming them is adequate 😉
Half a million page views at the Sandpit
I know that statistical miles stones are really meaningless but that does not stop you feeling pretty good when you reach them. Well if you keep an eye on the hit counter at the bottom of the page some time today I expect that you will see the counter tick over t0 the magical “500,000” mark . That is pretty good for a modest blog written as a bit of fun .
Thanks very much to all of those who take the time to read what I and my friends put up here and a special thanks to all of those who take the time to comment and argue with what is on this web-page. Commentary and argument is the life blood of blogging and long may it keep pumping at the Sandpit.
Cheers Comrades
Researchers found no major changes in the levels of vegetation and greenery in the forests despite the drought.
One of the lings that I have long believed is that the biosphere is much more resilient than so many of the Warministas are willing to admit. and when a commentator here spoke about the destruction of teh Amazon rain forest due to “climate change” I just knew that it did not ring true. Then this morning I found the piece I quote below which shows that a NASA study has demonstrated that the forest is far more resilient than the IPCC would have us believe:
A new study, funded by Nasa, has found that the most serious drought in the Amazon for more than a century had little impact on the rainforest's vegetation Photo: REX
A new study, funded by Nasa, has found that the most serious drought in the Amazon for more than a century had little impact on the rainforest’s vegetation.
The findings appear to disprove claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that up to 40% of the Amazon rainforest could react drastically to even a small reduction in rainfall and could see the trees replaced by tropical grassland.
The IPCC has already faced intense criticism for using a report by environmental lobby group WWF as the basis for its claim, which in turn had failed to cite the original source of the research.
Scientists have now spoken out against the 40% figure contained in the IPCC report and say that recent research is suggesting that the rainforest may be more resilient to climate change than had been previously thought.
It comes just days after the UN announced an independent review into the panel’s procedures following a series of scandals over its most recent report which was found to contain factual errors and claims which were not based on rigorous scientific research.
The InterAcademy Council, which is the umbrella organisation for the national academies of science around the world, will examine how the IPCC’s reports are compiled and communicated.
Dr Jose Marengo, a climate scientist with the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research and a member of the IPCC, said the latest study on the Amazon’s response to drought highlighted the errors in the previous claims.
He said: “The way the WWF report calculated this 40% was totally wrong, while (the new) calculations are by far more reliable and correct.”
The new study, conducted by researchers at Boston University and published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters, used satellite data of the Amazon rainforest to study the effects of a major drought in 2005 when rainfall fell to the lowest level in living memory.
The drought saw rivers and lakes dry up, causing towns and cities that rely upon water flowing out of the rainforest to suffer severe water shortages.
But the researchers found no major changes in the levels of vegetation and greenery in the forests despite the drought.
There is a human threat to the Amazon forest and that is the clearing of the land for agricultural production and the extraction of timber. If we want to save the Amazon basin then it is this real and pressing problem that we have to address rather than the futile pursuit of “emission reductions” that are politically impossible.
Cheers Comrades
8)
Cue JM & PKD
Its all about activating the guilt chip in the heads of the latte sippers
The guilt chip is clearly evident in this Latte sippers brain. It is the one that you can see right at the front.
The guilt chip is clearly evident in this Latte sippers brain. It is the one that you can see right at the front.
Warministas love to counter the citation of extreme winter conditions (as proof that the world is not warming) with the suggestion that it is only “weather” and that “weather is not Climate“. Personally i have always thought that such a distinction is rather spurious. Spurious in the same way that saying that the millimetre marks on a tape measure are not a measurement in the same way that the metre marks are. It is all a matter of scale. Despite the Warministas denouncing any citation of any weather event that contradicts their argument they are still rather fond of citing weather events that fit with their own prognostications
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny – and ignored warnings from scientific advisers. The report’s author later withdrew the claim because the evidence was too weak.
The link was central to demands at last month’s Copenhagen climate summit by African nations for compensation of $US100 billion from the rich nations.
However, the IPCC knew in 2008 that the link could not be proved but did not alert world leaders, who have used weather extremes to bolster the case for action on climate change.
Kevin Rudd last November linked weather extremes to the debate over the government’s emissions trading scheme.
“We will feel the effects of climate change fastest and hardest, and therefore we must act this week, and the government will be doing everything possible to make sure that can occur,” the Prime Minister said at the time.
British Climate Change Minister Ed Miliband has suggested floods – such as those in Bangladesh in 2007 – could be linked to global warming.
US President Barack Obama said last year: “More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent.”
Last month British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told parliament that the financial agreement at Copenhagen “must address the great injustice that . . . those hit first and hardest by climate change are those that have done least harm”.
The IPCC has now been forced to reassess its report linking extreme weather to climate change.
There is a clear dissonance here between the “weather is not climate” mantra and the “weather events prove Global Warming is happening” rhetoric that we are getting from The likes Of Obama and Brother Number One and it is obvious to me that the rhetoric is intended to activate the guilt chips in the heads of the worlds progressives this enables the aforementioned leaders to bring about fundamental changes to our society by stealth. Changes to the energy economy and changes to the world’s political institutions. But then hasn’t that been the desire of religion since men began to draw pictures on the stone walls of their caves? Like the measuring tape I mentioned earlier it is all a matter of scale and finding the marks on the tape that fit the liturgy.
Oh yeah its also another reason to think that the UN in general and the IPCC in particular is as useless as titties on a bull.
Cheers Comrades
😉
A piece of religious flim-flamery
Could there really be a more cringe worthy piece of religious propaganda? When I saw part of this on the news last night I just could not believe it! Especially after reading one of the Pee pee club‘s resident Waministas say this :
The science is accepted at the highest levels and despite the “Hysteria*” of the ludittes like your self, there will be action, there is action so argue away if you feel it gives you some sort of purpose.
The notion that we sceptics are being hysterical about the “climate change” issue is so utterly laughable when you look at what is being produced by the Warministas to rev up the faithful at Copenhagen. Like the show from Leah Wickham of Fiji who is apparently having some sort of crisis about the possibility that the seas may engulf her Island home:
Leah Wickham, a young Fijian student activist, was suddenly overcome with emotion as she stood on stage with the president of the UN climate conference, Danish Environment Minister, Connie Hedegaard, facing a room full of reporters and TV crew (click for source)
For some thing that is supposed to be a serious part of solving a serious problem for the entire planet why does this whole production have the stench of the tent show revivalists? The heart string plucking use of sweet little poppet’s making appeals to be saved , not from damnation in the next world but in this one is even enough to make AGW believers like my friend Ray write about just how awful this crap is . Oh yeah i forgot to make note of the fact that the poppet has a Polar bear soft toy that that’s swallowed by the earth as well!!!!
Shit they just could not lay the clichés on any thicker if they tried!
Expect more of the cute little poppet making the gut wrenching appeals for salvation, more news reports about disappearing islands in the Pacific, and generally more more hysterical appeals for salvation.
Do you have sin in your heart?
Oh yeah!
An electric appliance or two?
Oh yeah!
Do you drive a car?
Oh yeah!
Do you have a plasma TV?
Oh yeah!
Repent now !!!!
Put on that hair shirt and don’t you dare blaspheme by saying that you can see the emperor’s buttocks because you know that a vile sin like that will bring the Wrath of Gaia upon you………
As I said at the beginning, it is utterly cringe worthy.
That “climate scientists” and world leaders should lend their credibility to such a piece of religious flim-flamery is incredibly disappointing but sadly I am not surprised and that is the real worry.
Cheers Comrades.
* bold added
Update
Oh it gets even better !
With the leaking of a draft of an agreement sending many delegates into something of a tail spin:
The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as “the circle of commitment” – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week.
The agreement, leaked to the Guardian, is a departure from the Kyoto protocol‘s principle that rich nations, which have emitted the bulk of the CO2, should take on firm and binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while poorer nations were not compelled to act. The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.
The document was described last night by one senior diplomat as “a very dangerous document for developing countries. It is a fundamental reworking of the UN balance of obligations. It is to be superimposed without discussion on the talks”.
You could not invent this stuff!
🙄
Environment in a D cup
Gisele Bundchen (click for the story)
Gisele Bundchen (click for the story)
Nice looking woman, but I find the consciously beautiful people some what tragic, especially when they trade on that beauty for their livelihoods, But the idea that perfectly filling a D cup qualifies you to comment on the environment really funny. I also can’t help wondering if the lady in question will be embarking on a personal reforestation program though, you know just to be entirely consistent with here save the jungle message 😉
Cheers Comrades
Hat tip to the bloke in the left hand seat 😉
Iain Hall's SANDPIT 