Herald churnalism

Today, the NZ Herald reported:

We saw the many faces of National in Bill English's fifth Budget. There was the prudent, fiscally responsible National with an emphasis on moving the Government's books back into the black after years of deficits; the priority to cut government debt; the steely resolve to continue on with the partial sale of state assets and the nod to business with cuts in ACC levies.

Kerre McIvor (Woodham) has really outdone herself here... While Bill English's fifth budget essential does nothing, McIvor has made it seem grandiose. But even worse, she's claimed that National's priority is to cut government debt, which is a complete lie!

Under this budget, the government's net debt is forecast to rise from $57.9 billion in 2013 to $70.3 billion at the end of 2017. New Zealand's national debt will increase by $61 billion in the same time period, meaning we will be $208 billion in debt to the rest of the world.

How the fuck does that translate into "prudent and fiscally responsible" in anybodies language?

Somebody who writes for the NZ Herald should really get the facts straight and dig a little deeper into the story. McIvor has simply relied on National's propaganda to write her story and that's not journalism, that's churnalism.

Put the fear of god in them

Today, Stuff reported:

The only memorable lines came later at the after-match function - John Key called Labour and the Greens "the devil beast", Labour leader David Shearer called the finance minister "Blackjack" Bill. And NZ First leader Winston Peters reckoned he was tempted to call in the Serious Fraud Office, the numbers were so shonky.

Claiming that the Greens and Labour are "the devil beast" is extraordinary, especially considering John Key is meant to be agnostic.

The Prime Minister apparently doesn't believe in the devil, and therefore shouldn't be using the fear of god as a way to try and undermine the opposition.

Some have even claimed that Key isn't just agnostic but is in fact an atheist... I wonder how that can be true though when this latest reference to spiritual matters isn't an isolated incident.

In March this year, Stuff also reported:

Prime Minister John Key has waded into the fracking debate, accusing its opponents of talking nonsense.

At a Taranaki energy site, he said he had had enough of the scaremongering over the practice, particularly from the Green Party.

"From what they're saying, you'd think that because of fracking we'll all go to hell in a handbasket," he said.

Talking about Hell and the Devil might be a normal practice of devout Christians, but it certainly rubs the wrong way against a Prime Minister who claims to be agnostic. Perhaps we should add this latest inconsistency to John Keys list of falsehoods?

Citizen A with Keith Locke & Matthew Hooton

Scientific consensus on climate change

Yesterday, the Guardian reported:

A survey of thousands of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals has found 97.1% agreed that climate change is caused by human activity.

Authors of the survey, published on Thursday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, said the finding of near unanimity provided a powerful rebuttal to climate contrarians who insist the science of climate change remains unsettled.

The survey considered the work of some 29,000 scientists published in 11,994 academic papers. Of the 4,000-plus papers that took a position on the causes of climate change only 0.7% or 83 of those thousands of academic articles, disputed the scientific consensus that climate change is the result of human activity, with the view of the remaining 2.2% unclear.

Clearly the protestations that climate change isn't man made are entirely wrong!

The study blamed strenuous lobbying efforts by industry to undermine the science behind climate change for the gap in perception. The resulting confusion has blocked efforts to act on climate change.

It's not just lobbying, it's the huge amount of money polluting industries have available to spend on buying politicians and trying to mislead the public.

In 2004, Naomi Oreskes, an historian at the University of California, San Diego, surveyed published literature, releasing her results in the journal Science. She too came up with a similar finding that 97% of climate scientists agreed on the causes of climate change.

She wrote of the new survey in an email: "It is a nice, independent confirmation, using a somewhat different methodology than I used, that comes to the same result. It also refutes the claim, sometimes made by contrarians, that the consensus has broken down, much less 'shattered'."

We can therefore say with absolute certainty that the scientific consensus that climate change is man made has not changed and any claims to the contrary should simply be dismissed.