Yeah The Australian's track record is bad. Very bad. Tim Lambert, a computer scientist at UNSW keeps track of the egregious errors and misreporting by The Australian on the status of climate science. He is up to
The Australian's War on Science #73 so far. I have no doubt this latest article might qualify as #74 soon.
The lengths that The Australian will go to in order to protect its political slant on science reporting were demonstrated when it totally misrepresented CSIRO scientist Phil Watson's research paper on sea level rise earlier this year. Even letters from Watson's own Department and statements from Watson himself that it had been misrepresented made no difference and did not lead to any corrections. All this from the newspaper which gives prominence to sceptics like Australia's very own Dr Bob "if you can't see it, it won't hurt you" Carter - a reference to his continual and quite ridiculous claim that because CO2 is colourless and odourless, it must by default be harmless and benign. He thus demolishes a couple of centuries worth of accumulated knowledge of chemistry and gas properties in favour of the "ostrich principle", to The Australian's delight.
The "tobacco" analogy, incidentally, extends even further, such as the protracted war being waged against the science by industrial interests. This is the exact same stuff we saw start during the 1950s, when the link between tobacco smoke and lung disease was becoming recognised as scientific evidence and research advanced. The evidence became conclusive in the 70s and 80s, but the industry
still resists education and controls, and the odd person or two
still lives in compete denial right up until their diagnosis! Now if they just accepted the blindingly obvious evidence and simply stated "yes but I don't care", I wouldn't mind so much. But some still go out of their way to convince themselves it doesn't exist.
It's a stark demonstration of the sometimes fragile nature of human intelligence.