Powerful media commentators dismiss the link between climate change and fires.
Media Watch: Fire Haze
Transcript
Hello, I’m Paul Barry, welcome to Media Watch.
And since that report on the New South Wales bushfires two weeks ago, Australia’s fire emergency has spread to five states and destroyed more than 630 homes.
And in the meantime our political leaders have been doing their best to avoid addressing the role of climate change in making those bushfires more severe:
But 11 days ago, after four people died in those New South Wales fires, former fire chiefs of Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania tackled the issue head on:
But leading the charge was a former New South Wales fire boss, Greg Mullins, who said in multiple interviews that a warmer climate was making it harder to fight our bushfires and reducing our ability to prepare for them:
But some powerful media commentators are convinced that they know better. Like shock jock Alan Jones in this full-page column in News Corp’s Daily Telegraph:
And that was just the start of it, because Jones was also assuring readers:
Yep, according to Jones, 23 former fire and emergency chiefs are not worth listening to when comes to bushfires. Unlike him, who’s paid millions of dollars to tell us, on repeat, that man-made global warming is a hoax.
But Jones is not the only one to rubbish or ignore the fire chiefs’ warning.
2GB’s news bulletins that day barely gave them a mention, even as the stations’s talk-show hosts, like Ray Hadley, had a crack at fireman Mullins with barbs like this:
And 2GB’s Steve Price was even more scathing:
Price’s guest, Peter Gleeson, who’s employed as a commentator by Sky and The Courier-Mail to tell us what’s what, also got into Mullins — a firefighter with 39 years experience — to declare:
And predictably, several other News Corp columnists and TV hosts were singing from the same song sheet, either attacking Mullins and his fellow chiefs or denying that climate change is making the bushfires worse.
Or claiming that increased Australian action to fight global warming is pointless:
And in the Herald Sun, veteran business columnist Terry McCrann went even further, by accusing the non-News Corp media of, quote, “dishonesty, distortion and hysteria”:
So, what is the truth? And is it actually inconvenient for all those know-it-alls?
Well, it’s certainly true that fires have devastated Australia since time began. But the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, fire chiefs and climate scientists all tell us the fires are getting worse.
The season’s growing longer, the fires are more extreme and what’s really unprecedented is so many are burning at the same time:
Last Thursday, the ABC was running emergency broadcasts for fires in South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales and Queensland, and we’re told that’s a record.
But what’s unfolding now is what we’ve all been warned of for years.
In 2007, the ABC reported on research from the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology, which predicted:
And three years before that, in 2004, the National Inquiry on Bushfire Management had warned state and federal governments that fires would become larger and more intense as rainfall patterns changed:
And the latest advice from the CSIRO, updated this month, confirms that’s already happening and will get worse:
And, to cap it all, according to Professor Ross Bradstock from Wollongong University’s Bushfire Research Centre, it’s all coming faster than expected:
So, will this make any difference to the doubters and denialists? Almost certainly not.
If they can call the media’s acceptance of expert opinion “dishonest, reckless and offensive”, it’s likely no amount of science or fires or drought will ever make them change their tune.
So, what does the man who employs so many of these crusaders against the science have to say?
Last week, at News Corp’s AGM in New York, a proxy for Australian shareholder activist Stephen Mayne asked Rupert Murdoch this question:
And after detailing a 25 per cent reduction in the company’s carbon footprint, Rupert replied:
Rupert Murdoch is renowned for knowing what his papers and commentators are saying all across the world.
Seems he’s also adept at claiming black is white. Because denial is what News Corp’s campaign against the facts and the experts on climate change amounts to.
And two days after Rupert spoke came another example, from Ian Plimer in The Australian, urging us not to “pollute minds with carbon fears”, telling us:
Hard to believe, isn’t it?
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