Dreaver again battles the evil west

Fact-free again, again she fails

I posted a letter to TVNZ today as follows.

Dear Sirs,

Formal complaint — TVNZ News 7 July

This confirms my formal complaint emailed to you yesterday.

Concerning your TV1 news item last evening and available at http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/low-lying-island-threatened-rising-sea-levels-video-5498764, I would have imagined that a careful, experienced reporter like Barbara Dreaver, in her research, might have noticed that an earthquake occurred on Lifuka in 2006, causing a subsidence of about 23 centimetres, causing a noticeable advance of sea level and causing a single householder to abandon his house. A documentary about the island was made by Tiy Chung and posted at http://vimeo.com/53200521 seven months ago.

Still, she evidently failed to check.

To blame the sea-level rise on man-made “global warming” is ludicrous. The average natural rise in sea level for about the past 6000 years has been about 1.8 mm per year, so it would take about 128 years to rise by 23 cm. Unless there was an earthquake. But no actual claim of human or even climatic involvement was made by Miss Dreaver — she merely implied that the community on Lifuka has “every reason to worry about climate change in the next few months.”

Your item was wrong.

Dreaver manoeuvred the narration adroitly around “sea level rise” (which never happened: the land fell) and local talk of “climate change” (without scientific corroboration) and never mentioned what is crystal clear in local minds: an earthquake only six years before! The piece was a thinly-veiled plug for the Pacific leaders’ climate change meeting today, because the sea incursion on Lifuka has precisely nothing to do with global warming and you should not have claimed, or allowed your interviewees to claim without appropriate scientific verification, that it does.

Please issue a retraction and a correction.

Yours faithfully,
Richard Treadgold,
Convener,
Climate Conversation Group.

Visits: 69

10 Thoughts on “Dreaver again battles the evil west

  1. Mike Jowsey on 08/07/2013 at 4:50 pm said:

    Good on you RT. Even the introduction to the piece talked about “sea level rise” on Lifuka being the focus of the Climate Change conference today. So, while not directly linking the unprecedented sea level rise to climate change, the inference was indeed strong.

    Although Dreaver did mention the earthquake and subsidence, one quick mention of the earthquake was drowned out by many references to sea level rise and climate change. Clearly a case of spreading misinformation regarding climate change.

    I guess it’s hard to justify a junket hopping around the islands for a week (mid-winter holiday?) if you can’t produce something for your bosses to air. If the article focused on the earthquake and resultant subsidence, as it should have done, then it would have been 7-year-old news. By linking it to a climate change conference in Tonga, it’s today’s news. Beautiful minds.

    Typical MSM hogwash. Now we await TVNZ’s whitewash.

    • Alexander K on 08/07/2013 at 5:36 pm said:

      You got it dead right, Mike.
      I am really pleased RT has complained – my wife suggested I stop shouting at Ms Dreaver last evening! The programme mentioned that the foreshore in question had sunk due to a significant earthquake, but the ‘sea level rise’ nonsense was promoted vigorously once the earthquake was ‘flashed’.
      This took the cake for silliness and both TVNZ and Ms Dreaver should apologise for promoting nonsense.

    • Other_Andy on 08/07/2013 at 6:51 pm said:

      I am glad to read I am not the only one who shouts at the TV.

      Can’t stand the uneducated, biased and sometimes lying media.
      Written many letters, just to let them know some people aren’t falling for the rubbish they’re peddling.

    • Douglas on 08/07/2013 at 8:52 pm said:

      Alexander
      Me too! Had to check locations of tectonic plates and areas of subduction before taking my blood pressure pills.

  2. Andy on 08/07/2013 at 7:22 pm said:

    Where are the Christchurch climate change refugees?

    Some people literally have water lapping up to the bottom of the TV, including my mother in law

  3. Thanks for your support, gentlemen.

  4. Andy on 09/07/2013 at 5:22 pm said:

    I saw a similar piece with NZ comedian and eco-warrior Te Radar who was asking locals on a Pacific Island about climate change. He asked one woman how she found out about climate change, to which the response was

    “I hear about it on the radio, from our President”

    • Alexander K on 10/07/2013 at 4:53 pm said:

      I hate being accused of being closed-minded or of having an agenda, but I do get tired of twozzocks (a brilliant word I learnt during my big OE in the UK) such as Te Radar, who mindlessly gush alarmist rubbish. I have very wide experience of Maori and Polynesian managements of various types and structures; they can never be described as being slow to seize an advantage, and who can blame them after generations of being shafted by melanin-deficient civil servants from ‘head office’.
      I know they are not Polynesian of any kind, but in very recent history the native rulers of the Maldives were very keen on acquiring huge reparations payments from Europe for the Europeans causing the Maldives to sink; when that didn’t produce significant funds, those same Maldivan rulers put out tenders for new and splendidly large airports almost on the tideline of their ‘sinking’ islands to handle their expected boom in ecotourism. Go figure!

  5. Australis on 11/07/2013 at 8:39 pm said:

    At the Cancun COP, the Maldives representative declined to comment when asked to rebut a report that land values in the Maldives had doubled during the previous decade.

    Has the bottom dropped out of beachfront real estate values in the Pacific?

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