Last week, sociologist and blogger Mark Bahnisch made the comment that “blogging reflects not just a broader decline in civility, but something about the very nature of political discourse – it’s not about getting to the truth but about swaying others through means fair and foul.”
But surely blogging can be about honest discussion and debate. Surely through postings and comment on the same, there is the opportunity for a wide range of views to be canvassed and discussion advanced.
Such discussion is desperately needed on Murray River issues.
Interestingly, John Quiggin, is paid to research the “sustainable management of the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB)” and is probably also Australia’s highest paid blogger.
He earns a massive $230,000 a year! No typo there.
I began working on MDB in July 2003 and six months later in December 2003 published “Myth and the Murray: Measuring the Real State of the River Environment”.
Since this time there have been two House of Representatives Parliamentary Inquiries on MDB issues; the Living Murray Initiative has been kick-started; and the National Water Initiative ratified.
Quiggin’s University home page gives a list of his submissions, newspaper articles, conference and journal papers. Quiggin regularly contributes opinion pieces to the Financial Review on a range of topics except the MDB. Most of his comment on the MDB appears to have been in his web-blog.
On 21st April 2004 I was alerted to a blog posting in which Quiggin suggested that the Prime Minister should consign the interim report of the House of Representative’s Standing Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry “to the dustbin, where it belonged” essentially because the committee had clearly been hoodwinked by me and that as an employee of the Institute of Public Affairs I was a right-wing hack.
This was my first introduction to the world of blogs.
Quiggin has since removed this posting. On 30th April he replaced it with a posting of the same title on the basis that “having veered from the Murray to libertarianism… I thought I’d move it back to the top of the page.” Quiggin deleted the first couple of paragraphs of the original posting but does not mention this in his re-posting.
He also made a posting on 24th April 2004 to what he called summarize his objections to the claims put forward by me.
In all of this Quiggin completely misrepresents my work and my recommendations. Quiggin also misrepresents the work of my colleague Lee Benson. Quiggin’s post of 30th April claims Benson and Marohasy’s main argument is that “we should do nothing until all the uncertainties are resolved”.
I make no such claim. Rather my concern is that academics and ‘science managers’ continue to seriously misrepresent the available data and sensible proposals to address real environmental problems.
Benson’s work recommends immediate actions to improve the MDB environment – but not what the government bureaucrats were proposing at that time.
A media release of November 2003 states “Dr Benson’s report puts forward a number of different approaches to system management – approaches which he believes will lead to significant environmental benefits with much less risk of social or economic impact than the current approach focusing on increased environmental flows.”
Benson’s proposals, backed by the MDB’s largest irrigation company, were surely worthy of detailed scholarly discussion by someone being paid to study the same. Instead Quiggin dismissed Benson’s detailed 70-page report in a single sentence on his web-blog and without outlining an alternative proposal from which we might move forward.
Frank Devine concluded his article in the March 2005 issue of Quadrant quoting Tim Blair with the comment that “blogs will remain raiders on the periphery of the media unless they can demonstrate an ability to build things up as well as cut them down.”
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Hmmm,
JQ also said “the great majority of climate change sceptics, globally speaking, are also creationists.”
Globally speaking.
http://www.observationdeck.org/weblogs/?p=538
“blogs will remain raiders on the periphery of the media unless they can demonstrate an ability to build things up as well as cut them down.” Wow. That’s the most ironic thing I’ve read for quite some time. Imagine Tim Blair saying that :- )
Ms Marohasy,
The $230,000 link is dead.
Don’t count on Quiggin commenting here, he doesn’t like to leave the security of his blog.
You claim that Quiggin “deleted the first couple of paragraphs of the original posting”. Unfortunately for your claim, the original posting is available here: http://tinyurl.com/9xp95 and shows that your claim is false. You owe him an apology.
JF,
The link to the $230,000 was working perfectly yesterday morning. So what has happened? Anyway, I will try and scan and upload my hardcopy. Thanks for the tip.
Tim
Not sure what I should apologize for.
1. You have confirmed that the original posting was removed from Quiggin’s site.
2. The link you provide is to a different site and is incomplete. The original posting included reference to the house of reps report and recommended the PM ‘bin’ it because it relied on my work specifically ‘Myth and the Murray: Measuring the Real State of the River Environment’.
3. And what did I get wrong in ‘Myth and the Murray’? Why was Quiggin so vicious about my work.
JF, Have found another link to the $230,000
http://www.arc.gov.au/pdf/ff-project-summaries-20.03.031revised.pdf
And have inserted this new link into my original post. Thanks,
Jennifer,
1. It is misleading for you to claim that he “removed” the posting when all he did was move it to the top of the page and add a note saying that is what he did.
2. The link I gave does not include all of the original posting, but it includes the beginning, which is enough to prove that your claim that he removed the first couple of paragraphs is false. The current version also contains the recommendation that the report be “binned”, so your implication that this had been removed is also incorrect.
3. JQ has a whole post (24/4) on what is wrong with your work.
As you’ve apparently forgotten, Jennifer, you contacted me in October 2004, asking for a link to my work on the MDB, and I pointed you to http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/rsmg/publications.htm.
Tim,
1. & 2. Quiggin removed the original posting – you have confirmed this. That you have found a version of this confirms my original comment – which was made in the posting so people understood the chronology and understood that a focus of Quiggin’s original post was my work on the Murray River. But this is not the main issue.
3. The main issue is why Quiggin has misrepresented my whole argument. This is what he continued to do in his post of 24/4/2004. For example where do I argue issues of medians versus mean? This appears to have been made up?
Can we, for starters, get agree on one key point:
1. Salt levels have halved in the Murray at the key site of Morgan over the last 20 years?
WRT to an earlier posting on this thread about creationists. I know many climate skeptics and none of them are creationists. One of their key arguments is that climate change is something that has always happened and has driven the evolution of life on earth. Well know climate skeptic Ian Plimer has in fact fought the creationists over education syllabus.
John, Thanks for providing the link to your MDB working papers. I had been looking for these on your UQ home page.
Further, as regards your claim that my Fin Rev pieces haven’t addressed the Murray, you apparently missed
http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/news/2004-06-03-AFR.htm
and
http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/news/2003-10-23-AFR.htm
Jennifer,
You’ve quoted me rather selectively.
In http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3376, I wrote:
“One leitmotif in our political life is the decline of the public sphere, and the disconnection between the increasingly professionalised sphere of party politics and the mass of citizens. Much of this harks back to the liberal (in the philosophical sense) model of truth as emerging from debate and discussion. In fact, on blogs as elsewhere, much political debate – whether between Left and Right or along other cleavages – is marked by missed encounters, a failure to engage, sniping, snarkiness, and spin.
In this, blogging reflects not just a broader decline in civility, but something about the very nature of political discourse – it’s not about getting to the truth but about swaying others through means fair and foul. Similarly, in the masculine tone of a lot of political blogs, and the dominance of male commenters and bloggers, blogs are very much embedded in and part of the society we live in. Again, there’s often a confessional dimension to blogs – as Michel Foucault argues in late modern culture more broadly – and blogging is not without its ‘look at me’ egotism and its own internal hierarchies and exercises of power that structure the conversations that take place. But the beauty of blogging is in the sense that all this can be challenged.”
Note in particular the last sentence. Your extract reads as if I’m endorsing ‘means fair and foul’ and it’s clear from the context that I’m not.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for the comment. BTW I didn’t read it as you endorsing ‘means fair and foul’ but rather as an obsersvation from you about many blogs – it resonated with me. I found your piece thought provoking. It got me thinking about Quiggin’s postings of last year on my work on the Murray.
Hi John,
Thanks for posting links to the two pieces on the MDB that you have written for the AFR.
For the benefit of readers interested in the project for which I’ve been funded, I’ll give the objectives:
“The project will develop tools for the modelling of uncertainty in the absence of probabilities and with imperfect knowledge about possible events. It will also formalise and assess the precautionary principle for the sustainable management of complex systems. Finally, the project will apply these tools to analyse and improve policies for the reform of property rights, institutions and land and water management in the Murray-Darling system. The project will assist in the formulation of sustainable responses to problems of drought and irrigation related salinity in the Murray-Darling system.”
In the 18 months the project has been funded, it’s produced over 30 journal articles, conference papers and working papers, with a substantial number of additional papers in progress.
Quiggin also smeared and libelled Ratzinger on his blog.
Why are my taxes paying for this abysmal behaviour?
Thanks, Jennifer – I wasn’t saying that it was your intention but it was open to that reading.
Welcome to blogging btw!
Jennifer: Tim Lambert’s link didn’t come from a different site. It’s a snapshot of Quiggin’s site that was cached by an anonymous proxy and then by Google on the 28th. The reason it looks different is that the link it contains to the stylesheet (which contains instructions on how to lay out the page) is broken.
Lambert’s link proves that the post was not altered when Quiggin moved it. However, it doesn’t prove that the page wasn’t altered between when you first saw it, on the 24th, and when Google cached it on the 28th. Perhaps Quiggin could clarify this.
The only change in the post was the sentence added at the top to say that the post had been moved.
Jennifer, asks ‘For example where do I argue issues of medians versus mean? This appears to have been made up?’
On p7 of your report, you say:
“The 80 per cent figure appears to be
calculated by variously combining losses and
diversions and calculating medians rather than
averages, giving the impression that the basin has been
John,
Thanks for clarifying your reference to means and medians.
In your post of 24 April 2004 you suggest that this was one of the 3 most substantive issues I raised! This was really misrepresentation!
You have now pointed out, that I pointed out, on page 7 in my 27 page document, that there has been a tendency to variously combine figures to suggest a worse case scenario. Furthermore you suggested in your post of 24th April last year that you prefer medians.
A couple of my substantive issues were and remain that:
1. As a nation we are unclear how we realy want the Murray River to be managed. We have not thought through the issues of ‘healthy’ as opposed to ‘pristine’ in the context of an old river that runs through a semi-arid environment (pg. 24).
2. There is no general acknolwedgement of the many programs that have been put in place to, for example, improve water quality including successfully reduce salinity levels (pg. 24).
Can we get some agreement with respect to at least this second issue – that is that salt levels have significantly reduced at the key site of Morgan.
Jennifer,
1&2 The post mas moved. It is wrong to claim that it was deleted.
3 You argue means vs averages on page 7 of your paper but accuse Quiggin of making this up. That’s a second apology you owe him.
Jennifer,
Is that all you’ve wanted all along. That somebody agree with you that the salt at Morgan has decreased?
How much do you get paid btw? And who funds it? (Ultimately.)
btw – you attempt to portray Quiggin as a mere blogger is hysterical when you choose to post it on your, um, blog. Especially when you begin by talking about how much somebody gets paid.
From memory, and I only go into this as I know JQ has far too much self-respect to take your cheekiness to task over this, the big bucks are for the Churchill Fellowship (whatever that may be, but I’m sure it’s deserved and apparently somebody else with lots of money did too). I don’t believe it’s a life-time annuity. So you can stop turning green. He’ll be pauperised soon enough.
You are so out-classed, here. Don’t hesitate to delete these, my petty comments. I’d do the same to yours.
John Quiggin,
In trying to get myself fully up to speed on the issues I’ve gotten myself confused. Please clarify a couple of points for me.
In your post of 24 April 2004 you refer to “previous posts”. Can you please provide the links for these posts?
Your post of 30 April 2004 is identified as an update explaining that, because the post is still drawing comments, you have moved it to the top of the page. It does seem odd, however, that in updating you removed the original post. Doesn’t this leave you open to speculation of manipulation of content?
Also, in removing the original post you rendered any outside links to it – possibly from antagonistic sources – obsolete. If you aren’t removing original sources when updating in an effort to avoid dissenting comments, why then do you update in this way? Can you think of anyone else who removes original posts when updating?
For someone who slimes others with sublime casualness, it is base hipocracy for Mr Lambert to be demanding an apology. Perhaps he should apologize for smearing Prof John Brignell as an “inumerate”.
Jennifer, as I’ve advised you already, I’m not going to bother debating the issues further until you correct the errors in your post that have already been pointed out, and which you’ve admitted above.
JFB, moving a post doesn’t break links or delete existing comments and it doesn’t ‘remove the existing post’. Your other points have been answered above. I suggest you take the time to learn a bit about how blogs work before engaging in further debate on this topic.
Who makes the political decisions on the “environment”, is it the politicians, advisors or scientists?
Or nobody and everybody, the Public Choice Theory.
From “Dancing Naked in the Mind Field” by Nobel Prize winner Kary Mullis
“Who are these people who make comfortable salaries arranging scientific symposia and stories for the media? They aren’t politicians. Politicians don’t know anything about scientific things. They just want to look like they do. Somebody has to advise them. Who are those advisors? It’s an important question because those people–who are always having to come up with the imminent disasters that can be prevented by governmental projects, sponsored by informed and well meaning politicians-are manipulating you. They are parasites with degrees in economics or sociology who couldn’t get a good job in the legitimate advertising industry. They are responsible for a lot of the things that you accept year after year as your problems. The problems they imagine for you are as imaginary as the commercials during Seinfeld about some Australian outback macho guy, with a Hollywood model by his side, driving a four-wheel-drive vehicle, with pathetic halfwits in pursuit due to a misunderstanding about the relative merits of the vehicles”.
Read the rest on http://www.globalwebpost.com/farooqm/study_res/mullis/method.html
JFB, I forgot to mention the other posts referred to on 24th April are the post already discussed,
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2004/04/30/science-vs-the-right-part-2-australia/
and
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2004/04/17/science-vs-the-republicans-part-1-the-us/
So climate sceptics are mainly creationists?
This write certainly is no creationist and adds weight to Jennifer’s observation that many climate sceptics are not creationists.
I also know Phillip Adams believes in the Big Bang Theory, amongst other atheists one assumes, but it never occurs to them that the Big Bang is simply scientifically sophisticated creationism and no different to the theological big bang except in the time when this fiction occurred.
And it took a Whig lawyer, (read social democrat)Sir Charles Lyell (often also described as a geologist) to remove creation from its Ussherian date to its present more modern date in the distant past during the early nineteenth century.
An no I don’t believe in the big bang either since I am not a creationist.
re: Charles Lyell and the date of Earth creation; Mikhail Lomonosov, Comte du Buffon, William Smith, and John Phillips may beg to differ on who gets the credit for that.
Avocadia – they well might I suppose.
Just keep in mind the statement describing the Big Bang – “in there beginning there was nothing, which exploded”. It would be interesting to see the flexibility of the time when that happened.
Re blogs being raiders on the periphery of the media etc
The Australian blogger Arthur Chrenkoff, whose 25th installment of “Good News from Iraq” was featured in the Wall Street Journal, has been read by millions on the web worldwide.
Arthur has been building things up nicely.
Chrenkoff sure has by being accurate and even handed.
In contrast to the blogs of the usual suspects who, in the main, shoot messengers, being unable to engage in reasonable interlocution because of ignorance of the topic.
Chrenkoff, Tim Blair (and now this blog), John Ray, Lavoisier Group and ‘Enery Thornton are my main sources of information these days when in town.
Newspapers? nope, expect for the West Australian and my infrequent Modesty Blaise eccentricty.
Jennifer, Ron Manners spoke affectionately of you at the Ayn Rand 100 year Anniversary dinner – but I missed the midday function which you gave an address for other more pressing reasons.
Hope you can cope with the flak from the usual suspects, but mortars firing facts usually silence them.
John Quiggin,
Your unusual updating technique first came to my attention on 18 April this year. At some point on that day I accessed a post at your blog, which I believe to have been originally posted on 14 April, via an external link. Later on 18 April, when I attempted to access that same post via the same external link, the link no longer functioned. Thinking this odd, I sent the following to the blogger who had posted the link to your 14 April posting: Something odd has happened with your Quiggin link; it leads to a file that doesn’t exist.
I then went to your site and found the post had been updated and moved. Later that evening I received a response to my email above: The Perfesser “updated” it. Fixed link now.
The quotes around updated obviously indicating the sender thought something unusual had taken place. To get the link working it had to be updated to reflect the new location of the posting.
Why did you state above that your updating technique doesn’t break links when in my experience it does?
Whereas I have no reason to think you have used your unusual updating technique to manipulate either posts or comments, I cannot understand why you delete original posts when you update them. Can you not see that your unusual updating technique might cause some readers to be suspicious, especially when you refuse to elaborate on why it is you delete original posts when you update them? (To clarify, by delete, I mean that you remove the post from its original location.) Can you refer me to any other bloggers who use this unusual updating technique?
In the recent past I have experienced commenting difficulties at your site that I have not experienced at any other site “rejected comments, deleted comments and deleted comments that later reappeared. Such difficulties, when combined with your unusual updating technique, might cause a cynical person to think there’s something funny going on at your blog.
Why is it so difficult to get straightforward answers out of you?
Finally, just so you know, I’m an atheist Global Warming skeptic.
“is marked by missed encounters, a failure to engage, sniping, snarkiness, and spin.”
Ya no Mark Bahnisch, the first step to fixing a failing is to admit it not project it onto others.
I linked to JQ’s April 21 2004 posting when he posted it. That link still works. The post was not deleted. Since then has switched to wordpress which includes the data in the permalink, so changing the date breaks links.
Tim Lambert,
So, John Quiggin is incorrect in the following: “moving a post doesn’t break links or delete existing comments and it doesn’t ‘remove the existing post'”. (Please note that this is in the present tense, not the past.)
It would therefore be appropriate for me to advise him, as he advised me: “I suggest you take the time to learn a bit about how blogs work before engaging in further debate on this topic”.
JF, WordPress does not involve files that physically exist on the server. The page you look at is generated from a database on the fly. So when John changes the date of a post (ie, moves it) he does not “delete” another file because it never really existed. It may not be the best solution because, as you mention, external links to that entry are broken. The term “permalink” suggests permanency, but if you regularly move posts in the chronology of the blog, it can cause problems. I wonder if there is a plugin available to make posts “sticky” (along the lines of sticky topics in some forum software)? Alternatively, it might be possible to hack together a template that uses categories creatively to make some posts sticky by taking them out of the main WordPress loop. But all of this is probably not worth the effort considering the very few posts it concerns.
Why on earth is it necessary for this “comment” posting to have so much emphasis.
I gain the impression that we are dealing with Ludditesm despite their expertise with Apple computers etc.
If that is so, then their comments about climate have similar worth – essentially zero – because they don’t understand it.
Emphasising Cathy’s point, Climate is a geological factor, not a meteorological one.
Diverting attention by infantile arguments over aliases and links might fool most but not all.
Robert,
The point I will continue to make is that John Quiggin uses an unusual updating technique – can you think of anyone of significance who uses the same technique? – that could easily cause confusion or suspicion, or both.
It seems to me the Marohasy-Quiggin brouhaha arose because of confusion stemming from his updating technique.
Ah,
you are not hinting that Quiggin is adopting a novel Torquemada technique for the blogosphere ?
But no, no one of significance would be bothered, only those of insignificance, or further down in the tree.
Why should we continue, then, giving them life by commentary?
I would not, or would any suggest JQ deletes anything, or debates subject matter in reasonable perspective, just a lot of Bad Language retort and leagel threats. Normal Intelligent people listen to the true reprisentation on any Enviromental issue, and we do not get a fat Government grant to tell otherwise, just the facts, not fiction.
This is why all people need a very thorough grounding in both economics AND science. While you idiots were getting totally wound up in what amounts to ego debates the scientific fact remained that the river system needed urgent action. Little more than a year later I wonder if ANY of you have had pause to reflect. We no longer have time to fuck around at the pace of paradigm shifts.