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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
The only way that they can even dream of propagating the faith is with the point of a bayonet on the barrel of a Green gun
Everybody Dance Now!!!!!
I have been saying for ages that there is a very large measure of totalitarian imperialism in the imagination and intentions of followers of the Green Religion and I found it revealing that a piece in today’s Age would be so frank about advocating the use of force to make sure that the requirements of the climate change catechism are met by those of countries who don’t want to fall into the right rhythmically approved climate dance.
If we are to make peace with the climate, we must first win the struggle against the carbon-industrial complex and its proxy wars (over climate science and renewable baseload electricity). We only deserve to win if we are prepared to enforce climate security through trade sanctions or, ultimately, force itself. We need a powerful international environment court to remove the social licence to pollute. The climate polluter that undermines clean technology is the Napoleon of our era.
A coalition for climate protection will be able to take action without waiting endlessly for an impossible 100 per cent consensus.
Our best and brightest economists will be able to redesign trade law to fairly reward those inside and penalise those outside the treaty, in the most economically efficient way possible.
Nothing short of this will generate momentum towards zero emissions in the developed world and low emissions in the developing world and China. An enforceable regime of climate law will, like 19th-century treaties of Vienna, require an alliance based around at least some great powers. But staying with a non-binding treaty model means we are all unhappy and the planet is doomed. Good diplomacy is, as always, about taking what you can get.
Dan Cass was the Australian Conservation Foundation’s official observer at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. He is a lobbyist.
There is a certain desperation among the Profit$ of the faithful because the credulity of the public is in such serious decline that the only way that they can even dream of propagating the faith is with the point of a bayonet on the barrel of a Green gun. Hmm does anyone remember that Lenin said once “all power comes from the barrel of a gun”? well its seems that those purveyors of this ideology are at last being honest enough to say in public what has been obvious for a very long time; if you can’t convince people that what you say is true then they will just have to be forced to believe it or else!
Cheers Comrades
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
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
😉
Merry Christmas to Everyone
the eco-friendly but hi-tech solution to the present delivery problem
Merry Christmas to all of my readers and commentators, I hope that you and yours enjoy the blessings of the season and are able to spend it with those who matter most to you.
A laid back one at home this year at chez Hall the children are excited and will appreciate the fact that Santa is being kind to the reindeer and the boomers by doing the rounds in this snazzy number that is powered with eco-friendly hot air, all supplied by the Warministas in Copenhagen just a few days ago.
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!
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Greenpeace Recants
Read this post via the Blog surfer feature of WordPress and I thought that it is well worth promoting because the Greenpeace fellow is such a hoot as he squirms and then finally has to admit the error of their previous pronouncements on the Arctic Ice extent for this year.
Ice Capades: Greenpeace recants polar ice claim
4 mins ago by wattsupwiththat.
Well it is that time of year again, the Arctic ice begins to melt, as it does every year, and all sorts of crazy talk starts coming out. This time from Greenpeace. I am encouraged though, as they have come around to the idea that maybe they are doing more harm than good by overselling the alarmism.
NSIDC also has taken a more moderate tone, announcing that there will “likely be no record low ice extent in 2009“. This is a sharp contrast to last year’s ridiculous press statement from NSIDC’s Dr. Mark Serreze about an “ice free north pole”. Now that Greenpeace has come clean on their statement, maybe Dr. Serreze will finally admit his statement was “a mistake”. – Anthony
From Not Evil Just Wrong:
The outgoing leader of Greenpeace has admitted his organization’s recent claim that the Arctic Ice will disappear by 2030 was “a mistake.”
Greenpeace made the claim in a July 15 press release entitled “Urgent Action Needed As Arctic Ice Melts,” which said there will be an ice-free Arctic by 2030 because of global warming.
Anthony Watts
Cheers Comrades
😀
This is for Shawn and JM
Reading through the “friend surfer” I came across this post that shows record levels of sea ice for this time of the year and I could not pass it by without noting it here for the benefit of two of my commentators who were getting rather heated about the dire predictions of an ice free Arctic this year (or the near future)….
Arctic Springtime Ice On The MendGuest post by Steven GoddardTwo of the Arctic ice sites show April 16 ice at recent record levels. The Japanese site IJIS has a seven year April record going back to 2003, and reports 2009 levels at the highest extent on record for the date: 13,649,219 km2.The Danish Meteorological Institute has a five year database, and also shows April 16 ice extent as the highest in their short record.
source
Cheers Comrades
😉
Update
It seeems that the Antarctic is not playing to the doom merchants script either:
ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.
The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent’s western coast.
Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth’s ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica. The destabilisation of the Wilkins ice shelf generated international headlines this month.
Iain Hall's SANDPIT 