OnPoint: Nick Smith. Spanking. Now.
165 Responses
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First post!
And to be serious, are we surprised at politicians finding ways to spin information in a way that allows them to pretend that an inconvenience, as they and their backers see it, is simply not feasible? I'm sure Labour did the same thing, but this is pretty far out there. Ignoring in-the-text explanations that the report is explicitly not saying what he says it's saying, to the tune of $15b/year, is a spectacular failure of comprehension. Either that or it's some seriously wilful bullshitting.
Whichever it is, I'm not holding my breath on the media calling him on it. -
Whichever it is, I'm not holding my breath on the media calling him on it.
Forehead. Vein. Proper fucking reporting. Where you check things and shit.
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I dunno. This is a bit more than some vague social-cost analysis, or time-saved on travel costing. This is the climate change minister completely making shit up on the cost of climate change.
He's poking his elbow to demonstrate how a rectal examination is performed.
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You know, I think I spend all those hours on research for no pay, *just* so I can write lines like that.
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My vote is with "seriously wilful bullshitting". These buffoons have no intention of telling the truth.
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And this, Keith, is surely one of your most triumphant fiskings yet. Bravo, man.
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Now that I've done my best attempt at a neutral position, I'll say that I'm with Sacha. I'm sure I could find instances of Labour spinning things in ways that run counter to the report writer's stated aims, and I probably wouldn't have to go back terribly far in time to locate them, but $15b/year is a whole lot of shit.
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Can Nexus run this? It is several shades of awesome.
Also, I'd rate your chances of MSM picking this up - the science may be too science-y, but "Minister Makes Shit Up," is a pretty timeless theme. -
Let's not pre-emptively get distracted by the partisan "but they did it too" line. This is very serious on its own and I hope some smart, attentive journos are standing by to interview Keith and make him famous
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I'm happy to hold him to it:
According to the analysis that Nick Smith has been waving around, if we do not cut our emissions by 40% by 2020, we will incur a cost of $60 per person per week.
Keith Ng. Spanking. Now.
According to the analysis that Nick Smith has been waving around, if we do not cut our emissions *at all* by 2020, we will incur a cost of $60 per person per week.
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spit in your face and some hearing damage.
Entirely forgivable. Welcome, in fact.
That Smith managed to get it so spectacularly wrong is either gross dishonesty, or an abject failure in reading.
It's getting pretty dire when the bullet-point cabinet can't even get the bullet points right. (I feel rueful about getting snowed by that '11 slices' line. Fool me once: shame on you etc.)
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Currently family in the UK *only* buy NZ butter etc. because they, rightly, view our farmers as the least subsidised and most efficient in the world. This attitude will change very fast if they see us as one of the dirtiest countries in the world. Just saying.
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Keith Ng. Spanking. Now.
According to the analysis that Nick Smith has been waving around, if we do not cut our emissions *at all* by 2020, we will incur a cost of $60 per person per week.
Sigh. I'll take it.
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Sigh. I'll take it.
Don't bend over just yet. I'm looking at the report and haven't yet reconciled it with the statements Smith has made.
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Sigh. I'll take it
Strikethrough can be your friend, you know.
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Better struckthrough now than later.
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Don't bend over just yet. I'm looking at the report and haven't yet reconciled it with the statements Smith has made.
No - Smith is still very much spanked, but Graeme is right that my original wording is misleading. It implies that "cut emissions by 40%" and "no cuts at all" are the only two options.
Russell - the distinction is too subtle and confusing to leave in there.
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CLARIFICATION:
The original post said that "According to the analysis that Nick Smith has been waving around, if we do not cut our emissions by 40% by 2020, we will incur a cost of $60 per person per week."
This was untrue because if emissions was reduced by, say, 15%, the cost would be lower, yet it would not be "cutting our emissions by 40%". The statement would only be true if 40% and 0% reductions were the only options available.
This does not impact on the substantive argument - that the $15b is a cost of *not* reducing emissions - and it does not impact on the fact that Nick Smith's absolutely misinterpreted the NZIER/Infometrics report.
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Forehead. Vein. Proper fucking reporting. Where you check things and shit.
Indeed -- meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, could I be cynical enough to suggest that Lucy Lawless might do a damn sight more for the planet if she and her husband laid off the air miles? A cute campaign is not a public policy debate either.
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The New Placard for Parliamentary protest...
Racing Ross Mason and David Haywood here...
I bags first dibs on the Nick's Myth placard : )yrs
Mr Phelps
Emission Implausible -
You can see how they might have come to the conclusions they did if they assumed the conditions that apply to only table 9, applied them to the rest of the report, and ignored the huge caveat below that scenario on the likely effect of such a high carbon price.
I've seen plenty of cherry picking by politicians. Taking a report or academic paper and making it say something it really doesn't say. But not usually on something as large as this. As should be evident from the numbers here, climate change policy has significant economic and social implications.
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jb,
Is anyone REALLY surprised at this brain fart? I mean, knowing just how DIM Nick Smith is?
More proof here http://bit.ly/mbJPI -
But Guyon said on his live cross it was cold! And besides, he was happy to leave all that complicated science to the minister.
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But Guyon said on his live cross it was cold!
And didn't he add something about "Global warming hasn't come to Wellington"? That had me yelling at the TV.
Now Keith has me yelling at the bloody computer. Good work sir.
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And besides, he was happy to leave all that complicated science to the minister.
And this is actually the problem: it's natural and easy to just recycle the written media material you're given. I've done it myself.
But, frankly, the original report is not a lengthy one, and employs nearly as much boldface as Keith does to emphasise its salient points.
Even if reporters don't have the time or skills to analyse it properly (and that's not necessarily a criticism -- the broadcast reporters in particular may not have spent a lot of time at a desk yesterday), there should be people at major media organisations who can do that.
With Simon Power's flub last week, this is another example of misleading claims in a ministerial speech being reported as fact when they should not have been.
If editors are going to have airs and graces about speaking truth to power, then they need to look to their own intellectual independence.
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Now Keith has me yelling at the bloody computer. Good work sir.
The word on the street is that you do in fact yell. A lot.
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