Thursday 25 February 2010

State of Play in the Climate Change Cyberspace War


In ABC online The Drum's Unleashed four articles have been posted by journalist and former Greens candidate for the seat of Higgins Clive Hamilton this week as part of a series of five:





Who's defending science? (update - last article in series)

Reading these in conjunction with Jonathon Holmes' Malice, misquotes and Media Watch and an earlier The Punch article by Paul Coglan The holy war on climate change and a picture of the Australian state of play emerges in what has to be seen as an ongoing war on science.

The comments sections on these mainstream media webpages are littered with climate change denialists and this particular comment directed at Hamilton is fairly typical in attitude of the whole which survive after moderation for offensive language, defamation, hate speech etc:

moredissent4u : 23 Feb 2010 9:46:36pm

Clive Hamilton cannot countenance that his tome, Death Rattles of the Climate Change Sceptics, has come back to bite him. Sceptics who baulk at dire predictions of apocalypse are branded as heretics and deniers.
Hamilton is yet another egregious elite who cannot abide any dissent from his thought bubbles. The pathetic prohibition banner on this site screams censorship. Clive has proclaimed that Andrew Bolt is the enemy who will lead us astray. To exorcise the devil incarnate, Clive decrees we proles are forbidden from partaking of the fruit.
Like many who are sceptical of the exaggerated impact of AGW, I am neither paid for my stance nor will I be bullied into abjurement by battalions of sanctimonious self appointed censors. Hamilton's current obdurate diatribe reeks of a petulant, self-righteous boy who will not accept he too is fallible.
Whilst I do not condone any threatening of scientists or journalists by anyone, I noted that comments on Bolt's Blog deemed threatening by Pitman, demonstrates that precious Pitman borders on becoming paranoid.
I cannot wait to discover exactly whom Hamilton will traduce in his next noxious edition!

What set off these claims of screaming censorship and decree forbidding to him/her the fruit of Andrew Bolt's 'wisdom'?
Why this November 2009 graphic downloaded from kathleenjoyful's Flickr photostream and pasted alongside Hamilton's second article:














It seems that she has now become collateral damage in the climate change cyberspace war.

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