2 August 2017, The Conversation, ‘Just do the weather’: does it matter if TV weather presenters aren’t experts? When Olympic swimming champion Giaan Rooney was asked to fill in presenting the weather segment on Melbourne’s Channel Seven weeknight news program just before Christmas 2012, she was taken aback. She pointed out that she knew nothing about weather and that her credibility was in sport. “Don’t worry, just do the weather,” was the reply from the network. Six weeks later, the 30-year-old Rooney was invited to continue in the role, replacing the 52-year-old presenter and trained meteorologist David Brown, who had been presenting on Seven for 20 years. As it turned out, Brown remained with the network and eventually went on to present the weather for Seven’s Sydney weeknight bulletin. But the switch from Brown to Rooney illustrates a dilemma that has never been resolved. Just who should present the weather on television? Weather presenters have long been a crucial component of any television news team, and are promoted as such. For many in the audience, they’ve also been the main conduit of weather information. Ten years ago 90% of Australians received at least some of their weather information from television. This has since fallen to 71%, according to a Bureau of Meteorology survey. But that’s still a lot of eyeballs. And with their segments usually perched at the end of bulletins, the extent to which weather presenters connect with viewers helps to determine whether their station can carry the valuable news audience over to the start of the next program. Read More here
Tag Archives: Denial
8 July 2017, Reuters, Leaders from the world’s leading economies broke with U.S. President Donald Trump on climate policy at a G20 summit on Saturday, in a rare public admission of disagreement and blow to multilateral cooperation. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, keen to show off her skills as a mediator two months before a German election, achieved her primary goal at the meeting in Hamburg, convincing her fellow leaders to support a single communique with pledges on trade, finance, energy and Africa. But the divide between Trump, elected on a pledge to put “America First”, and the 19 other members of the club, including countries as diverse as Japan, Saudi Arabia and Argentina, was stark. Last month Trump announced he was pulling the United States out of a landmark international climate accord clinched two years ago in Paris. “In the end, the negotiations on climate reflect dissent – all against the United States of America,” Merkel told reporters at the end of the meeting. “And the fact that negotiations on trade were extraordinarily difficult is due to specific positions that the United States has taken.” The summit, marred by violent protests that left the streets of Hamburg littered with burning cars and broken shop windows, brought together a volatile mix of leaders at a time of major change in the global geo-political landscape. Trump’s shift to a more unilateral, transactional diplomacy has left a void in global leadership, unsettling traditional allies in Europe and opening the door to rising powers like China to assume a bigger role. Read More here
22 June 2017, Renew Economy, Australia’s new citizenship test: swear allegiance to Queen and Coal. The Coalition government’s new citizenship test appears to include talking points that might have been prepared by the coal industry in defending their role in climate change.Details of the extraordinarily complex reading material that new citizens are being asked to comprehend, in preparation for their citizenship tests, have been revealed in The Australian newspaper, which was concerned by the level of complexity in the language. What struck us at RenewEconomy from the examples used by The Australian was the nature of the content. It looked like marketing spiel from the coal industry, so we checked it out further. Take this, for example: “Clean coal is another avenue for improving fuel conversion efficiency. Investigations are under way into super-clean coal (35 per cent ash) and ultraclean coal (less than 1 per cent ash). Super-clean coal has the potential to enhance the combustion efficiency of conventional pulverised fuel power plants.” And on it goes. You can read more here. But having absorbed this, the hopeful new citizen is then given some practice multiple choice questions. Such as: Read More here and be astounded by the audacity!
23 May 2017, The Conversation, The world would be better off if Trump withdraws from the Paris climate deal. The conventional wisdom that the United States should remain under the Paris Agreement is wrong. A US withdrawal would be the best outcome for international climate action. With Trump set to decide on the matter after this week’s G7 meeting, his aides are split on the issue. Chief strategist Steve Bannon heads the faction pushing for an exit. Secretary of State and former ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson has argued for the US to retain a “seat at the table”. It is within the president’s power to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and perhaps even the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which has overseen global climate diplomacy for some 25 years. In a commentary published in Nature Climate Change today, I argue that a US withdrawal would minimise risks and maximise opportunities for the climate community. Simply put: the US and the Trump administration can do more damage inside the agreement than outside it. There are four key, interconnected risks related to US participation in the Paris Agreement: that the US will miss its emissions target; that it will cut climate finance; that it will cause a “domino” effect among other nations; and that it will impede the UN negotiations. Read More here