Riffing on the name of a popular science website, it has been remarked that “Everyone f-ing loves science – until it contradicts their personal bullshit”. Never a truer word could be said about, not just activists, but so-called ‘science journalists’ who don’t seem to grasp even the fundamentals of science. Instead, these legacy media hacks simply regurgitate whichever press releases suit their ‘narrative’.
Such ignorant fraudulence was in abundant supply at last week’s Pacific Islands Forum and its attendant media coverage.
The ABC’s reporting of the Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Tuvalu from August 13 to 16 was a spectacular case in point. In a bid to wedge Scott Morrison on the public broadcaster’s favourite subject, climate, Pacific leaders received a free kick. But here’s the thing: most of the islands are not sinking. That is what the peer-reviewed science shows.
In a famous paper from the University of Auckland released last year and based on sophisticated physical models, scientists showed many of the atolls on Tuvalu, Kiribati and Tokelau are actually rising. The finding confirms observations from satellite photos showing the islands are increasing in area, Tuvalu by 73ha between 1971 and 2014.
It gets worse. The ABC’s own fact check unit confirmed this in a ruling last year […][so] where was Paul Barry’s Media Watch, normally the ABC’s climate science policeman?
You’ll sooner meet a genuine “climate refugee”, though, than drag an acknowledgement, let alone a correction, out of our taxpayer-funded broadcaster.
But even the ABC’s prostitution and distortion of actual science pales into that of grasping Pacific leaders who’ve spotted the perfect leverage for another generation of handouts.
Patricia Karvelas did not appear to know the science when she interviewed Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga on RN Breakfast on August 14.
“What impact is the changing climate having on your country right now?” Karvelas asked.
Sopoaga replied: “People are about to be […] swallowed into the sea because of erosion …”
Sapoaga was allowed to peddle not just this nonsense without challenge, but the utterly fraudulent claims of “climate refugees”.
Remember all the scare stories in the 1990s and early noughties quoting the UN predicting “50 million climate refugees by 2010”?
But if journalists are ignorant about actual climate science, as opposed to scary press releases from e-NGOs, their knowledge of the geopolitics of the Pacific is even worse.
Journalists covering the Pacific should know much more about the history of Australia’s relations with its island neighbours. Since the forum was launched by New Zealand in 1971 this has largely been the work of Coalition governments as Labor after the Keating era looked increasingly to Indonesia and China for its foreign policy impetus. The Morrison pivot to the Pacific is back to the future.
This is something Peters understood even if his Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, and many journalists, did not…
theaustralian.com.au/business/media/pacific-islands-leaders-get-a-free-kick
Some Pacific leaders might be well advised to ask the leaders of states to the north, across the South China Sea, whether they think China is the kindly benefactor some at the PIF seem to think it is.
Pacific mendicants seem to be running the razor’s edge of playing the big geopolitical powers – China, the US, and middle-power Australia, which is a pivotal power in Pacific terms – against each other, and scrabbling for the pennies as they fall out. The legacy media are too ignorantly eager to join in and seize the opportunity to damage a newly-elected conservative prime minister, with no thought for the long-term cost.
Pacific Islands will almost certainly feel the very real consequences of toadying to an aggressively expansionist China long before any dodgy climate alarmism projections come true.