Guest post by Dam Buster of Preston
Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt have again shown their complete ignorance of the facts with their latest feather-fisted attack on comments made by Tim Flannery.
Blair makes the suggestion (to which Bolt dutifully links) that a recent report in The Age contradicts what Flannery stated in 2005.
Here’s what Flannery said during a Lateline interview on June 10, 2005:
MAXINE McKEW: And South Australia and Victoria — what would you say? What’s the good news, what’s the bad news?
TIM FLANNERY: Well, the good news for South Australia is that we are at the end of the Murray River catchment, and our water can taste awful at times and can be rather poor quality, but we do have a large catchment behind it for a relatively small city. So water quality is going to be a significant issue for Adelaide. There is increasing recycling, of course, here as well, which is a good thing. Melbourne’s doing very well with recycling but Melbourne’s also vulnerable to water deficits. It’s a large city, it’s in an area of quite dramatic climate change, and therefore will be vulnerable as well.
MAXINE McKEW: Let’s cover the issue of pricing of water, Tim. Who’s ahead of the game there?
TIM FLANNERY: Well, Jeff Kennett, for all the terrible things he did, perhaps, to many of us, actually did a lot of reforms that were quite important, and water was among them. It used to be in Melbourne that water would be on a rated basis with a little bit of a cost for your extra water. That’s changed now and you pay for the water you use and there’s a stepped tariff, and that’s a great — that sends a strong signal to the user that water is a precious commodity not to be wasted, and you’ll have to pay for water, and if you use a lot of water you pay a lot more, and that’s the sort of message we really need to get through. I really can’t emphasise that enough, that, you know, in this period of uncertainty, we have to be very careful of our water resources because a lot’s at stake.
Nothing new there. Melbourne is vulnerable to climate change, as highlighted in the CSIRO Climate Change Study. Refer to page 17, which states in part that:
“the impact on water supply availability, both streamflow changes due to climate change and population growth scenarios were used. The system yield analysis showed that the streamflow reduction for the mid-range climate change scenario in Table 2 would result in an 8% reduction in the average annual volume able to be supplied in 2020 rising to 20% by 2050. This data was then used to assess the shortfall and buffer between supply and demand.”
Of course, over the past 10 years the actual streamflow into Melbourne’s storages has been well below even the 8 per cent reduction:
So what does The Age report state that contradicts the above? Here’s what Blair quoted:
Melbourne will have so much water in the next few decades it will no longer make economic sense to install rainwater tanks or greywater systems in new homes, a State Government-commissioned report has found.
However, if he’d quoted a little more of the story, we would have seen the following:
MELBOURNE will have so much water in the next few decades it will no longer make economic sense to install rainwater tanks or greywater systems in new homes, a State Government-commissioned report has found.
The Government’s big water projects, including the controversial desalination plant and north-south pipeline, will eliminate the need for ambitious water saving targets for new homes, apartments and renovated houses, according to the report by the Institute of Sustainable Futures, based at the University of Technology, Sydney.
Despite Melbourne Water chairwoman Cheryl Batagol last week expressing concern that the Government’s water plan “may not be enough”, the report said the $4.9 billion projects will yield an extra 240 billion litres “resulting in a likely surplus … until well beyond 2050″.
Do Blair and Bolt even read the articles to which they link? Seems not, and it appears as though they’ve “beclowned” themselves for the umpteenth time.
Flannery was right: Melbourne does have a shortage of water. It will continue to have a shortage of water supply due to the combination of increased population and industry, and less reliable rainfall. The construction of the desalination plant and the North-South pipeline will alleviate the current and future water deficit.
Yet again, Blair and Bolt have demonstrated their profound dishonesty by cherry-picking quotes to create a story.
35 Comments
27 October, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Top notch work, DBoP.
I suspect you could develop a computer program to produce half of the posts from Bolt and Blair these days. Search RSS feeds from news sites looking for a statement that appears to contradict a “prediction” of Tim Flannery; search for a report of cold weather; search for a typo in Fairfax paper; rinse and repeat.
27 October, 2008 at 8:47 pm
excellent dam buster, excellent. montlhy rainfall figures would of also given the goons a clue, but they only seem to report rainfall when they can cherry pick the dam catchments and show that as ‘above’ average like timmy did recently in sydney and andy did with perth.
“Yet again, Blair and Bolt have demonstrated their profound dishonesty by cherry-picking quotes to create a story.”
i keep saying this but we need to stop using warm and fluffy words like cherry pick and start using the word lying. bolt has been shown to lie with his agw graphs.
“Do Blair and Bolt even read the articles to which they link?”
we know andy doesn’t, remember the aboriginal bush foods served at the council meeting? but you can’t fucking tell me that timmy being senior at the tele somehow means he doesn’t have the skill the time or the seniority imperitve to fact check his own writing? then again, it is the tele….. and it is tim blair.
27 October, 2008 at 11:19 pm
CLOWN FISKED.
27 October, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Oh, sorry. CLOWNS.
28 October, 2008 at 8:12 am
i did respond in the same way at his blog, yet some of his readers still don’t understand.
firstly flannery says that perth is probably going to dry up and that melbourne is under threat, notice the difference in strength of comment. and secondly the excess water is, as you’ve also said, coming from big projects that have nothing to do with rainfall. the pipeline suggests to me that the government has realised that we can’t supply enough water to keep the city going and farm much in victoria.
i also commented that it’d been pointed out to me, i think it was you dop, that after the thompson was built that tanks were banned to make sure that more people were paying rates for the thompson and that you feared that the gov would do the same once the delsal plant comes online. i think that release was all about laying the foundation for this process……bastards!
28 October, 2008 at 8:28 am
I don’t know how Blair or Bolt look themselves in the face in the mirror every morning.
The dishonesty required to do what they do – i.e. selectively extract ‘news’ from a range of daily sources and use it to construct what is essentially a fictional narrative – is quite extreme.
It’s little wonder that neither of them could make it as a journalist. Clearly their arrogance is so extreme that they cannot ‘report’ stories cleanly without using them to further a personal ideology. The irony is that no-one bleats more about media bias than those two.
I swear, if there was a ‘ministry of information’ in Australia those two would be running it.
28 October, 2008 at 8:31 am
Bolt also purposely misinterpreted Flannery’s comments on Perth – Flannery’s timeframe for Perth was decades; whereas Bolt uses current water levels to claim Flannery is wrong now. As usual, when confronted with this, Bolt just ignores the criticism.
28 October, 2008 at 8:39 am
OT:
There seems to be an almost constant refrain from the Cons re media bias:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/bias_wins_democracy_loses/
Do they ever stop and think that this may actually mean that the Conservatives are actually out of step or alignment with the mainstream rather than concluding that the media is complicit in some gigantic conspiracy against them and their political beliefs?
I guess you can’t talk about perspective to people with one-eyed, blinkered tunnel vision.
28 October, 2008 at 9:08 am
Good work DamBuster.
Ive noticed Bolt has been hard at work on his GW denial this last week.
I was snipped for ‘childish abuse’ for commenting on his “Disobediant Weather’ post on Thurday.
The abuse in question did not exist, i simply pointed out a few little holes in his argument and questioned his understanding of the difference between surface area and volume, in regards to the ‘recovering’ sea ice. I dont believe that andrew doesnt know the difference, i believe he deliberately misrepresents things, secure in the knowledge that most of his readers are fucking clueless.
He really is a gutless coward, and i think he knows his writing will not stand up to any scrutiny. This is why he censors dissenting views.
28 October, 2008 at 9:09 am
Thanks for the feedback everyone.
Bolt has been on this bandwagon for years about building the dam on the Mitchell River. Of course used flooding on the river a few years ago as validation, even though the vast majority of the flooding was due to stream flows entering the Mitchell River below the proposed dam site.
According to current Streamflow data:
http://www.ourwater.vic.gov.au/monitoring/monthly/streamflows/table_of_streamflows
the Mitchell River is currently flowing at 38% of the long term daily average flow. So to think that a dam on that River would be our saviour is simplistic and wrong.
As for banning rainwater tanks? I don’t think that would happen. I know there was restriction after the opening of the Thomson Dam, but the undersanding regarding tank water is different now and there would be a massive backlash.
Tanks show people how much water they actually use and the governement has invested too much time and effort into them to back track now.
28 October, 2008 at 9:12 am
DbD – According to Bolt 1 square kilometre of ice 1cm thick is better that 0.5 square kilometre 1m thick.
What scientists have found is that the average age of the sea ice in the artic is dropping (i.e. it melts faster than what it used to).
Also his ‘analysis’ that things are on the improve are the same as his “it’s been cooling for 10 years” rants.
28 October, 2008 at 9:25 am
Bolt either knowingly or naively uses the classical statistical sleight of hand: claiming the short-term noise in a series is really the signal. Given that Bolt, although no mental giant, is also no dummy, I suspect he does it knowingly. The question is: why?
Given the man, of apparently such steadfast and well-informed political beliefs, was a speech-writer for Labor, one can assume that he is an opportunist. Perhaps Bolt, like Hanson, has identified a little niche for himself in this game and is happy to cast aside intellectual and moral rigour in the pursuit of career enhancement and notoriety? I think that’s it.
28 October, 2008 at 9:37 am
Here’s another irony from Bolt:
Bolt claims that Professor Keen, who has indeed made dire predictions regarding the current financial crisis, is a “Doomsayer”.
He links to a G Henderson article as reference where Henderson says:
“Keen has been able to get away with the view that there is something inevitable about the coming of a 1930s-style Great Depression. This overlooks the fact that governments can take decisions which may alleviate increases in unemployment or falls in property prices. Despite Keen’s economic determinism, there is little that is inevitable about economics. The Australian media would be well advised to be more sceptical about economists with messages on their (fashionable) T-shirts.
Gerard Henderson is Executive Director of The Sydney Institute.”
Um…what is it that Henderson, Bolt and their ilk have been saying would be inevitable as a result of addressing climate change?
28 October, 2008 at 9:58 am
I suspect he does it knowingly. The question is: why?
Can’t say for sure. obviously, but to my mind Bolt actually believes the angle he’s pushing. He overcomes the problem of selective and dishonest reporting by convincing himself that the premise behind his viewpoint is 100% correct.
He knows he’s manipulating data and misrepresenting analysis, but he’s so convinced he’s right that it doesn’t matter to him that he needs to ‘massage’ the evidence to have it fit his narrative.
It’s a gigantic example of “fake but true”. As always, Bolt perfectly represents the very mentality that he so regularly rails against.
28 October, 2008 at 11:06 am
Blair is most probably looking for a spelling error to totally pwn you
28 October, 2008 at 2:03 pm
cosmicjester: LOL.
28 October, 2008 at 7:02 pm
I suspect he does it knowingly. The question is: why?
My theory is that Bolt doesn’t want to have a whole argument he only wants to damage the opposing point of view. It is all spin. Unfortunately for Andrew he comes off a little Quixotic in his global warming monologues.
29 October, 2008 at 8:08 am
windrider – I agree. He has to make sure he keeps the volume of spin arguments going on his blog so that when something more substantial comes along he can self link and link to Blair on numerous posts. It doesn’t matter that those posts are baseless, it is just to prove a point.
29 October, 2008 at 8:16 am
i meant to post this at the time but there wasn’t a suitable thread. andy often uses one year that deviates from the normal to claim no warming, no ice melt. but timmy obviously thinks using a whole year is passe, he uses the BOM rainfall radar to claim flannery is wrong about dams:
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/less_is_more/
shorter blair: it’s raining RIGHT NOW therefore flannery was wrong about dam levels. lol!!
29 October, 2008 at 9:54 am
Funny that Blair links the BoM monthly report which states:
Sydney had above average rainfall for the month of September with Observatory Hill recording 99.2 mm compared with the historical September average1 of 69.2 mm. September is normally Sydney’s driest month. There were 10 rain days during September which is average for the month. Nearly all the rain fell on two days early in the month in association with a low pressure system which formed off the NSW coast. The remainder of the month was virtually dry as a prevailing high pressure system and dry NW winds maintained generally settled conditions.
but he forgets about the Temperature:
September was a particularly warm month for Sydney, with maximum temperatures above the historic averages throughout the Sydney basin. The mean maximum temperature at Observatory Hill of 21.4°C was 1.5°C above the historical September average1. This is now the 11th consecutive year with September mean maximum temperatures being above the historical average. The last time Sydney recorded a cool September (below average maximum temperatures) was back in 1997. The warm daytime temperatures were largely a result of prevailing NE – NW winds and generally clear skies.
For the first time in 150 years of record Sydney has recorded two days in September with a maximum temperature above 32°C, on the 20th and 28th. Most Septembers usually record zero such days or very occasionally, one day.
hmm who would thought that the weather could be warmeneringer.
29 October, 2008 at 10:42 am
Toaf: I like your comment on the Blair thread. nice.
30 October, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Mondo: “It’s little wonder that neither of them could make it as a journalist. Clearly their arrogance is so extreme that they cannot ‘report’ stories cleanly without using them to further a personal ideology. The irony is that no-one bleats more about media bias than those two.”
It is ironic in one sense, but in a psychological sense it’s entirely consistent. Both men see the world through what Aldous Huxley called “a latticework of projected concepts”. To a degree we all do that, but their particular latticework is especially dense and allows very little light to penetrate. They are very secure in that darkness – to them, it is reality itself, pure and simple. So anything that intrudes on their darkness and tries to inject a little light into it appears hostile to them and they react against it instinctively. Conversely, notice how ready they are to unleash the dark forces of denial, ignorance, racism and religious hatred. This is not just a matter of pushing an ideological agenda, it is also a way of reassuring themselves that they really aren’t loonies because they have so much congenial company in the dark places they inhabit.
30 October, 2008 at 6:03 pm
“To a degree we all do that, but their particular latticework is especially dense and allows very little light to penetrate”
“This is not just a matter of pushing an ideological agenda, it is also a way of reassuring themselves that they really aren’t loonies because they have so much congenial company in the dark places they inhabit.”
Very well said. I tend to see Bolt and Blair, and their rusted on supporters, as basically being child-like with arrested development in certain areas, particularly that of emotional maturity, problems that are exacerbated by their mindless sycophantic cheer-squads.
I don’t really think that either of these two clowns really self-asses at all.
In regards to what forces are behind their woefully shoddy selective reporting, I genuinely believe that Andy in particular, given that he believes his own hype more than Timmy, naively thinks that what he is presenting is quality work.
In addition to this as, Mondo has stated above, he also adopts a sort of “means to an end mentality”, where he conveniently ignores certain facts, under the mindset that his overall thrust is correct and doesn’t need to be blemished by individual facts that may be in existence.
30 October, 2008 at 6:15 pm
The real issue is and how why these two talent-less anti-journalistic hacks, even get a millisecond of air-space, on issues that they have absolutely know qualification in, or knowledge of, aside from what they garner from the websites of their ideological compadres.
The Hun and the telegraph don’t care because B1 and B2 generate advertising dollars from the visits of brainless dolts who pour over what these two knuckleheads spew out, because they serve up what they want to hear. The hun lets Andy do his little thing, including hiding behind cowardly censorship, because he makes News Limited money.
But for serious programs, such as those on the ABC to include them is utterly absurd.
Its not balance to match informed opinion with uniformed, or quality reporting with tabloid-esque rubbish.
31 October, 2008 at 8:00 am
‘But for serious programs, such as those on the ABC to include them is utterly absurd.’
I suspect Bolt and Blair getting air time on the ABC is a hangover from Howards cultural war, and the ABC’s attempts to be percieved as politically neutral.
I also wonder if their inclusion in shows like Insiders and Q&A isnt just a way to provide contrast in debates.
You have to have a representitive of an ideology present to really get stuck into them, and what better way to prove these people are fools than give them a forum, airtime and rational people to debate in an environment where they can’t SNIP or censor questions or statements and then demolish their arguments in public.
Give them enough rope and they will prove our point for us!
31 October, 2008 at 8:05 am
DbD – I agree with your comments. I think that they use the position in a way to create some PR to keep the web counters ticking. Like watching hinch when he was on TV to see what sort of thing he would say.
As for your last comment about enough rope, my personal favourite 30 seconds of tv from this year will be Annabel Crabb’s pwning of Bolt’s 7 graphs.
31 October, 2008 at 8:11 am
And if anyone has seen Bolt’s column today on the tpoic of this post… well I will re-read it once the blood pressure drops and get back to you.
31 October, 2008 at 9:09 am
Once he starts affecting your blood pressure, it’s time to stop reading him.
31 October, 2008 at 12:02 pm
“Once he starts affecting your blood pressure, it’s time to stop reading him.”
There is much sense in this approach and lately I haven bothered to muse over Bolt’s stuff much at all lately, given that spending much time in Bolt’s community is ultimately unhealthy and unproductive for all of those that do, and largely akin to slamming one head against a brick wall, for those who try to speak a bit of sense too Bolt and his sycophantic imbeciles.
The problem is that his infantile dribble is given so much airspace in some of the nation’s major forms of media and therefore it is very important that sites like this exist.
Dissuading people from being morally responsible citizens within society, such
as their impact on their environment is something that affects us all. And it is also true that uniformed, blind and prejudiced individuals get one vote just like the rational adults within society.
To coin old Winston; “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
31 October, 2008 at 2:56 pm
DAM WRONG AGAIN
Poor Andrew in his column today. The hot water must have run out at his house because he was on the dam rant again. Note he linked the incorrect data used in this post.
One comment he made:
“We even have the very river – Gippsland’s Mitchell, which flooded twice last year, sending more water into the sea in one devastating burst than is left in Melbourne’s biggest dam today.”
well derr Bolt. Every major River has had that sort of thing happen. Over the last 2 years the Mitchell River has had 4 months with above average streamflow. That is 4 out of 24. There has been as many months where the streamflow has been below 5% of the average over the same time period.
The flood he talks about was in June 07 when the River flowed at 500% of the normal flow.
Bolt’s hydrographical experience is well known….. His engineering degree is… umm his science background is…. bugger it.
Once you take into account the environmental flows, downstrem diversions, system losses etc his dam would in fact be bone dry for about 5 months of the last 24 month period.
And Bolt is the one who talks about the green myth….
The magical Bolt Dam on the Mitchell River would in fact be in a similar position as every other dam in Victoria. Could he name just two dams with a capacity over 50GL that are currently over 50% in Victoria?
31 October, 2008 at 5:42 pm
“The magical Bolt Dam on the Mitchell River …”
Bolt has more flaws than the politicians he criticizes. He has latched onto this idea and is unwilling to let it go. He now has to engage spin rather than reason to convince people his idea will work.
Bolt has vision of the solution but he only has a flawed vision of the solution.
31 October, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Windrider, I agree with you. That is the definition of the right-wing cause, if you’d scrutinise it.
31 October, 2008 at 6:02 pm
“He has latched onto this idea and is unwilling to let it go. He now has to engage spin rather than reason to convince people his idea will work.”
Kind of sums up the entirety of the “work” he does over at the Hun.
As John Howard succinctly stated, although regularly ignored himself; “for every complex issue, there is a simple answer, and usually it is wrong”.
The construction of dams cost millions of dollars, normally involve large-scale environmental degradation and habitat destruction and typically
involve displacing many people from their properties, many of whom have lived there for generations.
I can see where country people, who have to move off their properties to meet the needs of the water supplies of city dwellers have a point to be pissed off about, particularly if they the self to live off relatively small supplies.
What does Bolt care about this stuff in his air-conditioned office, with the sprinklers on the garden care about this though?
1 November, 2008 at 8:49 am
“He has latched onto this idea and is unwilling to let it go. He now has to engage spin rather than reason to convince people his idea will work.”
I think i may have said this before, but Bolt really does exhibit a LOT of the traits of narcissistic personality disorder.
A massive ego and bloated sense of his own worth, an inability to admit failure or fault, a glass jaw in regards to himself and a hide like an elephant when dealing with others, and the way he actually seems to believe he knows more about any given topic than the experts in that field.
Example: The way he believes he understands climate science better than a climate scientist, that he understands engineering and dam construction better than an engineer, and understands the concerns of farmers far more deeply than any farmer ever could.
The man is a monumental tool bag, no doubt, but i really think he needs some professional help. From what i have read, malignant narcissism is one of the hardest psychological problems to treat, as a main part of the disorder is an inability to self analyze or self critisise, and obviously the first step in dealing with a problem is admitting that there IS a problem.
http://www.mental-health-today.com/narcissistic/dsm.htm
1 November, 2008 at 10:55 am
“The magical Bolt Dam on the Mitchell River would in fact be in a similar position as every other dam in Victoria.”
make that just about everywhere else in australia. i’m not the expert bolt is on this issue, but i always thought less rainfall meant less inflow to dams. cherrypicking the months of good rainfall without accounting for all those other months of nothing or looking at the longer term trend is just dishonest or dumb.
“Example:”
he also does not take criticism well. after anabelle crabbe pwned him on insiders he was on his blog talking about getting shouted down. and remember how that brisbane scientist pwned him in crikey and quick as a flash bolt was there jarring crikeys new editor for it going downhill after christian kerr left. talk about playing the man.
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