Advertisers have pulled their advertising from News Limited columnist Andrew Bolt’s new TV show on Network Ten despite Ten telling us that the show is “selling well”.

A Facebook event dubbed Operation: Bolt-Cutter has been set up by Christian Price, a Melbourne writer/comedian best know for his Flashboard Wars blog. Price noted the advertisers during The Bolt Report’s debut on Sunday and then posted the details of the companies. He wrote the aim is to contact the companies “and tell them we will never be buying their products or services again, ever.”

According to the event, Tele-Choice, iPrimus and Mr Rentals have advised that they will no longer be advertising during the show.

http://www.themusic.com.au/newsletter/advertisers-pull-pin-on-the-bolt-report

CLIMATE sceptic Christopher Monckton has been offered a prime speaking slot at the National Press Club in Canberra on July 19, despite a spate of cancelled public appearances.

Lord Monckton - who recently accused Julia Gillard's climate adviser Ross Garnaut of “fascist” views - is set to debate the Australia's Institute's executive director, economist Richard Denniss.

The Australian Online understands Lord Monckton has been offered the spot but has not yet accepted because he has a speaking engagement in Melbourne which he is trying to shift.

But the Monckton camp is believed to be close to agreeing to accept the July 19 invitation and to rescheduling his Melbourne appearance, provided the NPC debate focuses on the economics and science of climate change.

The following is a transcript of Jay Rosen's keynote address at New News 2011, part of the Melbourne Writers Festival, co-sponsored by the Public Interest Journalism Foundation at Swinburne University of Technology. (Melbourne, Australia, August 26, 2011.)

This talk had its origins in my appearance about a year ago on the ABC's Lateline with Leigh Sales. We were discussing election coverage that looks at the campaign as a kind of sporting event. Every day journalists can ask, "who's ahead" and "what is the strategy for winning?" A perspective that appeals to political reporters, I said, because it puts them "on the inside, looking at the campaign the way the operatives do."

I then mentioned the ABC's Sunday morning program, The Insiders. And I asked Leigh Sales if it was true that the insiders were, on that program, the journalists. She said: "That is right." I said: "That's remarkable." She… well, she changed the subject. And let me add right away that Leigh Sales is one of the most intelligent journalists I have ever had the pleasure to meet.

So this is my theme tonight: how did we get to the point where it seems entirely natural for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to describe political journalists appearing on its air as "the insiders?" Don't you think that's a little strange? I do. Promoting journalists as insiders in front of the outsiders, the viewers, the electorate… this is a clue to what's broken about political coverage in the US and Australia. Here's how I would summarise it: things are out of alignment. Journalists are identifying with the wrong people. Therefore the kind of work they are doing is not as useful as we need it to be.

Part of the problem was identified by Lindsay Tanner in his book, Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy. He points out how often the Australian press reframes politics as entertainment, seizing on trivial episodes that amuse or titillate and then blowing them up until they start to seem important. I'm not going to dwell on this because Tanner has it well covered. So did my mentor in graduate school, Neil Postman, in his 1985 classic, Amusing Ourselves To Death.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2862328.html

----------------------

I've got news for you (you may know it already): Andrew Bolt is not a "journalist", or if he is — and is a fully paid member of the AJA — he's a "journalist" like I'm an astronaut.... In my dreams. Alan Jones admits that he is not a journalist and would not want to be. Becoming a journalist for Jones would be horrendous like being neutered...  as he would not be allowed to lie. Journalists have a strong code of ethics and most journalists adhere carefully to that code. But opinionators — the ill-informed ningnongs who give a bad name to the journalist profession — have nothing but loopy bile for something they don't like — and bugger the facts if those are in the way... Andrew Bold has the gravitas of a twisted carrot but no balls for being honest.

Please inform yourself with comments and toons such as "only the Nuz" and plenty more like it on this site...

ABC News Online understands Ms Gillard made angry early-morning phone calls to The Australian's publisher, John Hartigan, and editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell after which the article was pulled.

It is understood Ms Gillard had phoned Mr Hartigan on Saturday after another Murdoch journalist, Andrew Bolt, had written on his blog of ''a tip on something that may force Gillard to resign''.

It began: ''On Monday, I'm tipping, a witness with a statutory declaration will come forward and implicate Julia Gillard directly in another scandal involving the misuse of union funds.''

No such witness has come forward.

It is believed Mr Hartigan has assured Ms Gillard that no News Limited journalist was planning to write any such story about her - but he apparently had not checked with The Australian.

Today, Bolt's blog read cryptically: "No politics until further notice. Principles to weigh up. Faith to keep. Sorry."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-30/gillard-angry-over-australian-article/2862694

Bolt should apologise as well and grovel — or disappear like Milne. Milne should be sacked...

Columnist and political commentator Andrew Bolt has been found guilty of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act over two articles he wrote in 2009.

Bolt was being sued in the Federal Court by nine Aboriginal people including former ATSIC chairman Geoff Clark, academic Professor Larissa Behrendt, activist Pat Eatock, photographer Bindi Cole, author Anita Heiss, health worker Leeanne Enoch, native title expert Graham Atkinson, academic Wayne Atkinson, and lawyer Mark McMillan.

They alleged two articles written by Bolt for his employer, the Herald and Weekly Times, implied light-skinned people who identified as Aboriginal did so for personal gain.

The articles were headlined "It's so hip to be black" and "White fellas in the black".

Bolt's lawyer, Neil Young, had argued the articles represented his client's genuinely held views on matters of public interest.

Bolt argued his articles were fair and were within the laws of free speech provisions.

But barrister Ron Merkel SC, appearing for the applicants, said the articles took a "eugenics approach" that was frozen in history.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-28/bolt-found-guilty-of-breaching-discrimination-act/3025918

Controversially, the judge also ruled that it's the group of people who have been offended that should determine whether or not a comment is offensive. In other words, the views of an average Herald Sun reader are not important here. It's the views of Aboriginal people that matter.

In essence this case was lost on this point - the belief by the judge that "people should be free to fully identify with their race without fear of public disdain or loss of esteem for so identifying".

Bolt did not get an exemption under the Act because of "the manner in which those articles were written" and because "they contained errors in fact, distortions of the truth and inflammatory and provocative language".      

I think the ruling is dangerous because it asserts as indisputable fact that Bolt's articles were not reasonable and were not written in good faith and do not classify as "fair comment". The Judge clearly believes they were not written with a genuine public interest in mind.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3026182.html

Hullo? "Bolt's articles were not reasonable and were not written in good faith"?

Can the devil take us to hell in good faith? I know, it would be simplistic to state that Bolt was trying to stir the possum rather than be genuine... but as he writes on other issues of importance where he OBVIOUSLY tries to stir the possum with falsehood rather than be genuinely raising a valid point, one can doubt his motives entirely on this issue of colour...

I spent time in Africa.

There, in the village, I would have been one of ten 'whiteys" amongst several thousands black people... But amongst the black people there was some "half-coloured" people (and some albinoes too)... I still remember this fellow, nice genuine fellow like the rest of the population, with a skin that had about half white distinct large patches to half black large patches over his body. The colours did not mix. He had a blue eye and a dark brown eye. It happens.

I know some aboriginal people from the same father and mother, where the sister in fair-skinned while the brother is very dark. It would be an affront to claim the sister was not Aboriginal as she is proudly so.

Culture is not only genetics. It is about belonging and acceptance...

Andrew Bolt's recent run-in with the federal court is just the latest controversy in a long and tempestuous career. John van Tiggelen meets the man regarded as Australia's most influential "megaphone".

"Keep up the god work, Andrew" – a reader's typo on Andrew Bolt's blog.

Seven days before Justice Mordecai Bromberg finds him guilty of racial vilification in the Federal Court, I turn up at Andrew Bolt's house, for dinner. Bolt is cooking. He cooks like I cook, the Dutch way. Lots of flavour, lots of everything, and anything but Dutch. On the kitchen bench are two salads, one Greek and one FNQ (prawn, mango and avocado). There is a Sicilian pasta for entrée, beef bourguignon for main. Dessert is on me: I've asked my mother to bake some gevulde speculaaskoek, a traditional cinnamon-spiced slice with a marzipan-like filling. Unlike almost everything else in Dutch cuisine, it is to die for, not from, although my mother appeared to have other ideas.

"I'll put poison in it," she said, when told for whom it was intended.

Nonetheless, it is hard to reconcile the life and death of Socrates with Bolt's work. He is not pretending to be the philosopher, which is wise. But he is certainly holding up the Athenian gadfly as his champion. I am not convinced this marriage is a fertile one.

Most obviously, there is Bolt's power. Socrates was the son of a stonemason, and, for all his aristocratic connections, he was poor. Nietzsche referred to the philosopher as "rabble", belonging to the "dregs of the populace". Nietzsche had a barrow to push, but the general gist is right. Socrates had no official position – aside from a brief stint as president of the assembly – and no institutional support. One of the gadfly's jibes during his sentencing was to ask for a public pension instead of punishment. 

Andrew Bolt's circumstances are quite different. Without wishing to pry into his financial business, it is fair to say that Bolt earns well more than average wage – a far cry from ordinary battlers, let alone the genuinely poor. More importantly, Bolt is perhaps the most influential political commentator in the country, writing for one of Australia's largest media companies, News Ltd. He has serious sway. He also has friends in high places. After the racial vilification verdict, Federal Opposition leader Tony Abbott reportedly urged Bolt, over dinner, to keep up his media commitments.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3693346.html

Shadow attorney-general George Brandis has questioned the decision to award a Human Rights Medal to a lawyer who ran a race discrimination case against newspaper columnist Andrew Bolt.

Senator Brandis has told Senate Estimates he was disappointed Ron Merkel QC was awarded the 2011 prize, partly in recognition for his role in the court case.

Mr Merkel was lead counsel representing nine Aboriginal people who successfully argued Bolt breached the Racial Discrimination Act in two articles published in 2009.

Senator Brandis says he was alarmed by the commission's choice.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-14/brandis-questions-human-rights-medal-for-bolt-case-lawyer/3828868

Brandis should be aware that Ron Merkel QC can be hired — like any QC — by whatever litigants — and win or loose according to judgement. Whether he was successful in representing Aboriginal people against Bolt has no bearing on the price of fish. To see Brandis, tooted as the Libs' (conservatives) choice for Attorney General, lambast Ron Merkel (a fine QC) shows that he's got no sense of the laws and its processes in this land.

Brandis shows great stupidity in this attack — a stupidity that a first year law student would not be allowed to have should he/she wishes to proceed to year two...

From Independent Australia:

IT IS SELDOM that I take time to read the Liberal Party’s Victorian-based propaganda news letter, which is published under the “Herald Sun” title. This once great newspaper has plunged to really sinister depths in its obvious aim to bring down the Gillard government, which relies on the tweets of the U.S. citizen Rupert Murdoch to determine its daily editorial policy.

Like Washington determined our foreign policy under the Howard Government, a private citizen in New York now determines the daily front page fear campaigns of this once great newspaper.

But I digress.

The reason I opened the tome was to read the reaction of the Herald Sun to the disgusting racism heaped on one of our greatest footballers, Adam Goodes, who incidentally happens to be an Aboriginal.

This, of course, was all Andrew Bolt needed to work himself into a lather of racist self-righteousness which would have made Alan Jones and the rest of the Bolt cheer squad baying at the moon.

...

Witness the following:

‘Still, … [Goodes is ] widely admired, has been showered with almost every prize in footy, and was playing in the Indigenous Round honouring players of his background. What, should one girl’s abuse matter against all that?’

‘Well’ opined Bolt, ‘to Goodes it was so “shattering” the game itself “means nothing”.’

Bolt said the media team was encouraged to

‘… see the girl as a white racist caricature instead of just one very young teenager.’

Bolt is a grown-up white racist caricature, whose influence is terrifying.

He can hardly wait for the government to change so his heroes in the Abbott camp can change the laws to allow the likes of him to get away with saying anything, irrespective of the hurt it may cause.

We need to be afraid — very afraid.

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/australian-identity/indigenous-australia/gratuitous-bolt-says-racism-is-all-goodes/

Bolt is an idiot... A dangerous clever idiot... See toon at top....

There is something quite sick in the obsession News Limited has with our country's public broadcaster, the ABC, writes senior correspondent Barry Everingham.

For what seems years, the Murdoch press has been trying to get its grubby hands on the broadcaster's payroll and this week it has hit pay dirt.

Splashed all over The Australian's front page with a spill to page two, those of us who could be bothered reading the story learned what such stars as Tony Jones, Leigh Sales and Barrie Cassidy are paid to provide balanced reporting, which is lacking in the newspapers of the News stable and the TV programs churned out by the Fox network.

Well, there is a theory abroad that as the ABC is funded by the taxpayer we have a right to know what the employees are paid.

I have no argument with that but there is no need for specific details. All we need to know is what the annual salary bill is, not what individuals are paid.

And what is sauce for the goose is also goose for the gander.

Are shareholders in News told that its common knowledge around the journos trap that the convicted racist Andrew Bolt's salary is paid from New York? The figure is rumoured to be in the vicinity of 500k, excluding of course what Australia's Mother of the Year pays him for his TV clap trap on Channel 10.

Are the shareholders told what Tim Blair gets or even that Piers Ackerman is actually, paid to spout the right wing rubbish he spews on a regular basis.

Then there's the likes of Alan Jones, utterly infamous for at least three things — two of which spring to mind are his outrageous denigration of Julia Gillard's father and his encouragement of bogans to get the Cronulla riots going.

This country is blessed by having such an organisation as the ABC.

There are many fine writers in the Murdoch stable however the events in London now before the courts illustrate what a dark and evil empire it has become.

What News does in the UK is nits business, what it does here is ours and it is time the news buying public shows its collective displeasure by not buying their publications.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/news-corps-abc-obsession,5915

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Gus: Uncle Rupe has been trying to destroy the ABC for his "good" reasons... He sees the ABC as a government enterprise that forces the commercial channels into a bidding war for content... He would not care much for Media Watch as well... Recently he had some success with Foxtel buying a lot of BBC programmes that used to be on the ABC... Except Dr Who, that Mark Scott, the right-winger CEO of the ABC congratulated himself for having salvaged from the "debacle"... Uncle Rupe OWNS (runs) ABC Books... His book publishing company take most of the profits from ABC Books... When the ABC promotes (advertise) its book product say for Christmas, Uncle Rupe takes his bacon cut...

A while back, Rupert Murdoch tried to acquire the ABC archives.... to provide the ABC with "cash"... For bean-counters this seems to be a win-win situation... bean-counters love cash ahead of anything else — especially if it's of artistic and assets that do not seem to do very much other than collecting dust in the cellar. But everyone knows that cash is "ephemeral" and can evaporate faster than alcohol brandy in a flambé... Archives are the church pillars of the ABC. Archives are the bible... Imagine the Catholic Church selling its golden treasures (with no social meaning — apart from a few tribes in South America having been butchered to acquire the gold for the goldsmiths) and its sacred books (full of ancient lies) to make a few bucks..!!!!

As the tentative paperwork was being inked, the selling of the ABC archives TO UNCLE RUPE created a stink. The staff at the ABC fought hard to keep what is theirs to use for the future. Programmes such as the educational SHOCK HORROR AUNTIE (I like it) could not exist... I think the whole affair got hushed up but one needs to remain VIGILANT... and become vigilante should the need arise.

This reminded me of the locals in Africa selling their crops to the Indian store for cash... then six month later, they ran out of food and the locals had to buy their own produce at the store for about three time the price... The Indian shop keeper was fat, all his family was full of fatties... the locals were always lean and hungry...

That is not the way to go...

Uncle Rupe does not like the ABC which in general is doing a good job, especially since that Jonathan has quit Media Watch... His ramblings were intellectual-pretend pap and often wrong.

But in a perverse way, the ABC does not hate Murdoch, contrary to what some news.com.au blogs express:

Will the ABC tell us the latest news about its pet anti-Murdoch oracle ...blogs.news.com.au/.../will_the_abc_tell_us_the_latest_news_about_its_pet_ anti_murdoch_oracle/4 Nov 2013 ... On Monday the ABC held an orgy of hatred against newspapers owned - like this one - by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. ... vote-rigging row in Falkirk after one of the candidates for the seat directly accused him of trying to fix the selection. ... As a reminder, You should get out more. .... Monthly Archives.
One has to say though that Murdoch showed his rabid bias in the recent election and his totally irrational views on global warming — views that will bite us in the bum... On this subject alone, Uncle Rupe needs to be fought tooth and nail till he bleeds bad.

Right wing commentator Andrew Bolt is at it again, this time arguing the sky will fall in if there is any constitutional recognition of the fact of Aboriginal people being here before whites arrived. Everyone knows Indigenous people were here, so what’s the great fuss? Bolt’s view is an attempt to revive the Terra nullius doctrine which, for 200 years, fictionalised that the British came to an empty land and settled peacefully. That myth was discredited by the high court of Australia with its Mabo ruling 22 years ago, but people like Bolt are still yet to catch on.

Bolt also plays mischief-maker, claiming to be an Indigenous Australian. Like Pauline Hanson did in her maiden speech to the parliament in 1996, Bolt makes his claim based on a technical view that everyone born in Australia is legally, but not socially, an Indigenous Australian. His mischief is to ignore common sense and community normality which distinguishes between Indigenous Australians on the one hand, and white Australians like Bolt on the other. Bolt wants to lead his followers through the chaos he ferments.

As part of the scare-mongering tone of his article, Bolt gets it wrong about the aim of the Aboriginal provisional government (APG), claiming it is a separatist movement. The APG wants an Aboriginal assembly of elected Aboriginal people with legislative power, returned land and a budget – in the same way different states do. And this aim is within the federation of Australia. How is that separatism?

Bolt also claims the courts lean "too far" towards Aboriginal people. This is a case of never letting the facts get in the way of a good story. Aboriginals make up 26% of the prisoner population, yet only constitute2.5% of the Australian population. In 20 years since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, Aboriginal imprisonment rates have climbed from one in seven to one in four. Too far? Come on.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/31/andrew-bolt-indigenous-australian-come-off-it

Bolt makes a long list of the things that are undermining the Government:

• They are doing OK on foreign policy, but voters don't care about that
• Their broken promises continue to "kill" them
• The budget is in "blowout" and the economy is struggling, and that undermines their "entire argument for being"
• They are suffering an "onslaught" from the media which makes it impossible for them to sell their agenda
• They have a lousy media strategy which is "too often defensive and reactive"
• Tony Abbott is just too nice, which means "The Government is getting killed in bare-knuckle politics"
• Joe Hockey is a dud "who can't dominate the agenda"
• They lack an effective head kicker, and so look weak
• Scott Morrison (who Bolt, like many on the right, sees as heroic) is underutilised
• Julie Bishop is great, but again, no-one cares about foreign affairs
• Malcolm Turnbull's ability to coddle "the Left-wing media" is being wasted
• They have no "inspiring cause" they can evangelise about
• They don't have enough spruikers outside government, including within business circles, who will help them push their plans
• They lack "inspiring reforms" that will "energise [their] base"
• They need to dump fights they can't win like Medicare co-payment and the parental leave scheme
• They are ignoring new talent, especially women, within the parliamentary party
• They have no senior Victorian ministers, as they have had in the past
• They keep getting caught out in interviews on the ABC. Ministers "sit there passively while the interviewer asks the gotcha questions"

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-21/dunlop-abbotts-problems-go-deeper-than-bolt-realises/5908856

The CONservatives (liberals) led by Turdy Tony got in government by default... They have no clue as to what a good social structure for Australia should be. They only harp on cash for the rich and brickbats for the poor... And they are lousy at cash making and nasty at brickbats... It ain't going to work... They are stupidly entrenched in political warfare... And they act like idiots. And they LIE...

But Bolt blames the wrong crowd when he says they are suffering from "an onslaught in the media"... Pure shit, Bolt. 70 per cent of the press and media in under Mr Murdoch's thumb who supports Tony Turdy to the end of the world... No, Turdy Tony and his sad petty lying con-men are inept, unintelligent, infantile and dumb...

See toon at top.

Last week, Andrew Bolt described Sydney Swan Adam Goodes’ 'war dance', performed during the AFL's Indigenous Round, as ‘inflammatory, race-loaded and symbolic violence’. Eddie McGuire remarked: ‘I don't think we ever want to see it again.’

Is the uproar evidence that Australians can’t handle cultural difference? That, as Waleed Aly told Offsiders, we lose our minds ‘the minute someone in a minority position acts as though they’re not a mere supplicant’?

Wesley Enoch, director designate of the Sydney Festival, says sometimes it’s the commentary around such events that needs to be unpacked. Rather than being unable to handle difference, he suggests Australians are generally just apathetic.

‘We kind of accept it. We don’t do anything about it.

‘We are the quiet majority that go “that’ll be alright” rather than the silent majority that wants change.’

Enoch says media personalities often provide the words and arguments for people who feel uncertain or nervous about how to feel.

‘Journalists like Andrew Bolt, those kind of conservative commentators ...  he’s providing the structure: if you are feeling threatened by this, you then have the language to use,’ he says.

Centre for Independent Studies policy analyst Trisha Jha believes interest characterised the initial public response to the dance.

‘I don’t think there was any real vitriol from the public until it was channelled through Eddie McGuire and Andrew Bolt,’ she says.

‘If the airwaves are full of influential media commentators saying this is this, and this is that, and this is why you should care, maybe people then think, “Well, maybe I should care. And if I care, then what do I think about it?”

‘That turns something that was previously a non-issue for ... probably the vast majority of Australians, into another battle in whatever political or cultural wars that are happening at the time.’

The expectation of gratefulness

Writer and performer Candy Bowers says these conversations are heavily weighted towards certain voices, and it is often hard for people of colour to speak up on issues they are passionate about.

‘My community of colour are those people who don’t want to say anything about it because they don’t want to ruffle their position; they don’t want to look like they’re being radical or racial in any way,’ she says.

‘The amount of times I hear people say, “Are you playing the race card on this? Aren’t you just backing him because he’s black?”

‘We’re marinated in this White Australia Policy stuff and assimilationist stuff that keeps on going through my community and young people of my community. [That] is to me one of the most terrifying and horrifying parts of the culture I live in.’

Jha argues that often there are structural issues that underpin the frustration people feel about cultural change, and that produces an environment where prominent people from ethnically or culturally diverse backgrounds can face a backlash.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/sundayextra/can-australians-handle-cultural-difference/6532180

A Herald Sun report claiming Cardinal George Pell is being investigated by police over child abuse allegations has sparked angry words between the paper’s top columnist Andrew Bolt and the reporter behind the exclusive story.

Bolt, who calls himself a friend of the Vatican official, labelled Lucie Morris-Marr’s report that police were investigating allegations of sexual abuse by Pell a week before he was due to appear before the royal commission a vicious and shameful smear which was part of a “sinister” campaign to destroy the cardinal.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/feb/22/andrew-bolt-lashes-out-at-herald-sun-reporter-over-george-pell-story

If I was vicious, I would tell you about a lot of Pell's parachuting some Opus Dei priests to destroy a friendly Catholic community the control of which he had lost, because of the fantastic care from a loving priest, who then had died, was "too sharing" and not "traditionally hierarchical enough", like not "keeping the blacks underfoot"... and I would tell you about some of his still standing old-fashioned hard line pre-Vatican II decrees... but I won't.

A very active cyclone season is stepping up around the Australian tropics, with the Bureau of Meteorology monitoring four significant systems spiralling around the country's north.

BOM's radar includes severe Tropical Cyclone Marcus, Tropical Cyclone Nora off Australia's north west, and two tropical lows to the north east.

Cyclone Marcus, off Western Australia's north west, is by far the most extreme of the systems.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-23/cyclone-marcus-cyclone-nora-two-ot...

CLIMATE CHANGE WHENEVER we have a natural disaster, the Greens screech about global warming — but as usual they’re wrong, writes Andrew Bolt.

Bolt is wrong, says Gus Leonisky... Bolt writes shit as usual. Read from top. As Bolt tells us that the Australian cyclone seasons should have less cyclones as the earth warms (Bolt does not believe in global warming), and blast Di Natale for linking bushfires, cyclones and other disastrous stuff to global warming, one cannot link any of them to warming but the trend for global warming is for more disastrous crap to come our way.

Bolt writes the usual nasty stuff with gentle acidic bile and makes no sense of anything, not even his own inflated hubris...

Read from top.

Climate science deniers and conservative media have found themselves a new “free speech” hero — an academic who is suing his own university and thinks the multiple human threats to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef are overblown.

Professor Peter Ridd might be a new name to some, but the marine geophysicist has a long association with groups pushing denial of the well-established links between human activity and dangerous climate change.

Outlets including Breitbart and Fox News have joined a steady flow of columns and interviews across Australia’s conservative media landscape covering Ridd’s case, sometimes handing over space to him in their column pages.

Each time, Ridd, of Australia's James Cook University, has been painted as a bastion of truth pushing back against the establishment. But how does that image hold up to scrutiny?

News Corp Australia’s political commentator and climate science denier-in-chief Andrew Bolt has been especially enthusiastic, writing multiple blog posts and columns, inviting Ridd onto his Sky News show, and asking other stablemates to comment (News Corp columnist and climate science denier Terry McCrann called for James Cook University’s executive to be “sacked immediately”).

Ridd’s case, wrote Bolt, was “not only about free speech,” but was an issue of “whether scientific debates are settled by censorship or by debate.”

“A mainstay of Western civilization is on trial here,” added Bolt, with no fear of overstatement.

Climate science denier James Delingpole of the hyper-partisan Breitbart wrote that the “gagged” Professor Ridd had “plenty of solid scientific evidence” to show the reef was “doing just fine.”

So what’s actually been happening? Another, less hysterical way of looking at the case, is this.

Ridd has been happily criticizing the science linking dangerous climate change to greenhouse gas emissions, and the science showing the impacts of humans on corals, for more than a decade.

Ridd has also repeatedly, over many years, said that the impact of agricultural runoff and water quality on the health and growth rate of corals is overstated.

But his employer, James Cook University, initiated its own action against Ridd after he had criticized specific organizations at his own university in media interviews, saying they could not be trusted. This, the university alleged, went against the university’s code of conduct.

So this is not about Ridd’s “freedom” to say what he wants, but is about an alleged breach of the university’s code of conduct — whether you agree with that code or not.

When the university censured Ridd in 2016, he ignored them. He gave an interview in August 2017 to another climate science denier, Alan Jones, on Sky News. Ridd was there to talk about his chapter in a climate science denial book produced by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA).

Ridd said “we can no longer trust” the government-backed Australian Institute of Marine Science and the Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, based at James Cook University.

The university alleged this constituted further “serious misconduct” so Ridd took the issue to his lawyers, and a case is proceeding.

To help fund his legal bills, Ridd got some help from the IPA (a key organization pushing climate science denial in Australia for two decades) to set up a crowdfunding campaign that raised the necessary $95,000 in just 49 hours.

The IPA’s executive director John Roskam was the first donor with $500. Other notable givers included climate science denier blogger Anthony Watts, U.S. Interior Department employee and climate science denier Indur Goklany, Perth philanthropist and IPA funder Bryant McFee, and author and political scientist Don Aitken. (The Washington Post and others have reported how Goklany has had a key role in re-writing Department of Interior climate documents.)

Many of Ridd’s cheerleaders have taken his scientific claims without skepticism and have not entertained the idea that he might be wrong.

But Ridd repeated in detail several of his criticisms in a November 2017 “Viewpoint” article in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin — opening up his arguments for scrutiny.

Now, as reported in The Guardian Australia, a team of nine scientists, many based at the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the James Cook University center Ridd has attacked, have issued a response through the same journal. Their assessment of Ridd’s claims is sharp.

They say Ridd’s criticisms are based on “misinterpretation, selective use of data, and over-simplification” and that they ignore “formal responses to previously published critiques.”

While Ridd and his colleague Piers Larcombe argue their critiques are “largely ignored,” these researchers point out that in fact, many of Ridd’s arguments have been directly addressed in the scientific literature.

The Australian Institute of Marine Science researchers write: “To republish previous claims that have been addressed and refuted appears to be selecting information to support their statements and an example of the very issue Larcombe and Ridd (2018) are criticizing.”

Also in the 2017 Sky News interview, Ridd accused others scientists of lacking objectivity and suggested another problem was that “we also potentially have scientists with an ideological bent.”

This is the time to look at Ridd’s own “ideological bent” and his long history associating with climate science deniers whose “theories” are rejected by every major scientific academy on the planet, as well as governments around the world.

Ridd has been affiliated with several groups that reject the science linking human emissions of carbon dioxide to dangerous climate change.

Ridd is a director and “scientific coordinator” of the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF) — a group he has been associated with since its launch in 2005 (and not to be confused with the Australian Conservation Foundation).

The AEF, which emerged from a 2004 meeting organized by the Institute of Public Affairs, promotes the idea that wind turbines make people sick and that human-caused climate change is unproven.

Ridd is also listed as an adviser to the Galileo Movement — an Australian group that for many years was run by former One Nation Senator and climate science denier Malcolm Roberts.

Ridd joined a list of well-known climate science deniers in 2009 when he co-signed an open letter coordinated by the Cato Institute — a U.S. “think tank” funded by petrochemical billionaires Charles and David Koch.

The letter ran as a full-page ad in several newspapers, including The New York Times, and claimed that recent temperature changes were “modest,” that the “case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated,” and global warming had stopped.

In 2011, Ridd called for a “Scientific Challengers Office” that “should start on Global Warming” and “the supposed threats to the Great Barrier Reef.”

Ridd is based at the “Marine Geophysics Laboratory” and, according to his university research profile, he “raises almost all of his research funds from the profits of consultancy work which is usually associated with monitoring of marine dredging operation.”

Several major coal and gas projects are listed as former clients of the lab, which was also home for the late Dr. Bob Carter who was, at one time, associated with 10 or more different climate science denial groups around the globe.

Ridd says he stands for “truth and honesty” and has “spent my whole life fighting for scientific truth.”

The problem is that the version of the “truth” he has been standing alongside, including his own arguments, have been repeatedly shot down by the world's leading scientific institutions.

Read more:

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/03/28/climate-science-deniers-new-hero-p...

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http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33287