Peter Hume,
There are many ways to save electricity.

http://www.redenergy.com.au/page.html?saving-energy
http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/

Unfortunately, I think there is a noticeable disinterest in saving electricity.

Perhaps a different pricing structure would be necessary to stimulate interest.

As for media reporting of electricity consumption, it is confusing, with some sources saying that the rate of electricity consumption has been less than the rate of population growth, while other sources are saying that the rate of electricity consumption has been greater than the rate of population growth.

oh dear yet another thread about climate denials.
Can anyone tell me why climate denial think 100 ppm of CO2 has no effect but 0.7 ppm of O3 does?
Back to the article itself. Interesting piece but I can't help thinking that I was surprised at the author talking about journalism, I didn't think they did that anymore. I far as I can see the new papers, radio and telly is filled with a people who don't let their ignorance stop them from having a strong opinion about a subject and having a complete disrespect for everyone who disagrees with them.
Never mind Climate reporting just look at the trash that they try to pass off as political reporting.

I think the real problem here is that science education, in Australia at least, is essentially useless. Content is written by the ‘advocacy blocks’. If you don’t understand what a scientific hypothesis is, and if you’ve no idea of how to test it, you’re at the mercy of anyone who sounds convincing.

Lacking the tools necessary to analyse the sort of hyperbolic assertions that get bruited about in public discourse, people resort to the old argumentum ad verecundiam. Who’s telling the truth, who’s exaggerating, who’s lying? If your only decision procedure is to assess the speaker’s reputation, or to count heads in the various advocacy blocks and believe whichever spokesperson tells the best lies about how many people accept his/her position, you’re not just vulnerable, you’re doomed.

There’s no other explanation for The Goreacle. An Inconvenient Truth is the biggest showcase for junk science since Bishop Usher, and the only reason for swallowing a bar of it is that Al Gore had authority. Once. In politics, not science.

It wouldn’t be that hard to give students a few basic insights into statistics, for instance. Just a little knowledge, the sort that could easily be taught in primary school, would have been enough to raise questions about Wakefield’s scare campaign against MMR vaccines. Only a tiny bit of physics will tell you that Himalayan glaciers can’t melt away in just 20 years.

Educating journalists isn’t a solution — a journo is just another authoritative voice, and believing authority because it’s authoritative is just one more example defective induction.

It isn’t necessary for EVERYONE to know enough science to sort truth from the grant-inducing fictions so many ‘scientists’ and journos peddle these days. If a few friends and neighbours are sufficiently educated in science to call a foul, even the ignorant will think twice about accepting the more extravagant claims they encounter in the media. But, because science education is so poor, most people will never encounter a credible objection. Fix that problem, and you’re home free. Ignore it, and you’re left with ... argumentum ad verecundiam.

Bonmot/Bugsy - no that silly arguement does not get you out of it. You dragged Plimer in because he's the only one of the many sceptical scientists you can criticise (names given in the earlier post).

To drag in Plimer, specifically in order to attack him, gives you hope that, really, the global warming case might have some substance after all. You concentrate on the weakest (or most attackable) in a series of arguments and hope that no-one will notice the strength of the rest of the case, or that you can't think of any other counter-arguments.

As for the business of admitting errors, there are still scientists who cling to the hockey stick graph which the originator, Mann, has himself abandonded, without really admitting he has done so and without apology.

If you're going to get indigant over failure to admit errors, get indignant with the global warming crowd.

[Deleted for abuse.]

Anyone waiting for warmists to table scientific evidence that anthropogenic CO2 emissions cause dangerous global warming, will be waiting in vain. This is because the warmists' case is based on the AGW hypothesis, which has failed to be validated by scientific evidence.

Instead of using the scientific method, the best the warmists can do is assert that AGW is real, often depending on alarmist results from climate models, and questionable conclusions.