Presentation post - The Onion
What is it?
The Onion is an American “fake news” organisation that promotes itself as America’s Finest News Source.
It features satirical articles reporting on international, national, and local news as well as an entertainment newspaper and website known as The A.V. Club.
The Onion’s articles comment on current events, both real and imagined. It parodies traditional newspaper features, such as editorials, vox-pops, and stock quotes, as well as traditional newspaper layout and AP-style editorial voice. Much of its humor depends on presenting everyday events as newsworthy items, and by playing off of commonly used phrases, as in the headline “Drugs Win Drugs War.”
A second part of the newspaper is a entertainment section called The A.V. Club is The Onion’s arts and entertainment section. It’s non-satirical, featuring interviews and reviews of various newly-released media. Online it presents as a separate entity from The Onion itself and has its own domain, includes regular features, A.V. Club blogs and reader forums.
History
The Onion was founded in 1988 and originally published in Madison, Wisconsin, by two juniors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Tim Keck and Christopher Johnson; they sold it to colleagues the following year. The Onion was at first only a success in a limited number of cities and towns, mainly those with major universities.
The creation of its website in 1996 allowed it to receive national attention.
In early 2001 the company relocated its offices to New York City.
In April 2007, The Onion launched ‘The Onion News Network,’ a web video send up of 24 hour TV news. Interestingly, it is still published as a hardcopy.
What’s It Got?
Our Dumb World combines Google Earth and The Onion’s satire producing gems of descriptions of countries around our world. Check America, Brazil, England and France for a laugh. But be warned that it can be gruesome as well, with a bloody picture of a Sudanese civilian accompanying the profile for the ‘Featured Country of the Week’ (Sudan at the time of writing and for some weeks after).
In its style of mimicing traditional newspapers, it also runs breaking news stories, such as the one announcing that Cheney was to speak at the Republican Convention, where he’s tipped to deliver an inspiring set of closing remarks to convention security on the benefits of f..king yourself.
Satire and politics go hand in hand, so its no surprise that this is an area that receives significant attention from The Onion. A classic prophetic piece was this one on Bush: Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over, written way back on 17/1/2001 - before September 11. This piece also highlights The Onion’s influence, as it has 2110 diggs.
The excitement of the current ’War for the Whitehouse’ race is also providing lots of material, and The Onion’s coverage includes great pieces such as the
Portrayal Of Obama As Elitist Hailed As Step Forward For African Americans.
Social Comment
The Onion is also influential in its social comment and its more serious articles deliver razor sharp criticism under the guise of comedy:
Study: Iraqis May Experience Sadness When Friends, Relatives Die. This pieces has 2237 diggs and aroused public debate, challenging the US’s perception of people from the Middle East
The Onion also investigated the soulessness of the formal education system came under scrunity in a light-hearted piece of local first-grader Connor Bolduc, 6, experienced the first inkling of a coming lifetime of existential dread
6-Year-Old Stares Down Bottomless Abyss Of Formal Schooling.
Who likes The Onion?
I first started reading The Onion online around 1999, whilst doing post-grad studies at UNSW. At this time, it was a much simpler website, but the content was very biting and very funny. I loved it.
Today, The Onion’s following has moved past cult followings and it is an influential presence. It reports attracts 5,115,368 monthly unique visitors and 35,387,35 monthly page views.
While I am unsure about mixing a fake news publication with serious media such as The AV Club, it nevertheless works. This publication receives 1,032,901 monthly unique visitors and 10,506,791 monthly page views. Sixty-one percent of its web site readers are between 18 and 44 years old. In print, The Onion has a national circulation of 690,000.
Who Else Likes the Onion?
The Onion’s success was resoundingly recognised in the 12th Annual Webby Awards. The Onion took out awards in 2 categories, Best Writing and Comedy: Individual Short and received both the Winner and the People’s Voice Award in each.
Things are looking up for Andrew
The night sky is an amazing place, and one that Andrew’s recently discoverered. Check out his new telescope and hear about what he’s found now that things are looking up.
Can hot rocks save the world?
Scientist’s believe that Australia may have an alternative power source. It’s underground, but it’s not coal and it’s a whole lot cleaner and greener.
Resources Minister Martin Ferguson says that Australia’s hot rocks or geothermal energy, could produce enough electricity to meet the country’s power needs 26,000 times over and it would be possible to get a power station up and running in 4 years.
Geothermal energy works by pumping water deep underground to where the hot rocks lie. The water is converted to steam which shoots to the surface, and presto, you have power.
What I’m wondering is where does all that water come from?
A solar rebate alternative
Rather than the industry collapsing as had been feared following the changes announced to the solar rebate in the last budget, things have been thriving, with applications continuing to flood in. Unfortunately, what has changed is that applications are now for smaller, less efficient systems.
Rebates are an effective but often not the best way to drive market change. Industry wants the rebate scrapped and replaced with a national feed-in tariff law which would pay those with solar panels for the electricity they generate.
What a good idea!
ETS modelling
The Business Council of Australia says it has the first hard data showing what emissions trading will do to Australian businesses.
It has released a report that it says is what will happen to companies unless the Federal Government changes the design of its emissions trading scheme.
The BCA said it fully supports a comprehensive emissions trading scheme, but the design must be right.
The ACF however is scathing in its assessment of the scheme, saying the BCA proposal is “totally irresponsible and would produce a complicated, weak scheme, full of exemptions and loopholes”.
And others are saying that it’s not all bad news. Michael Molitor, the chief executive of the CarbonShift consultancy and a senior adviser on climate management to PricewaterhouseCoopers said in SMH: “Climate change is going to mean big changes to the economy but they may not be bad changes.”
Last months’ Government green paper set the broad framework for a carbon trading scheme in Australia, but it did not set a cap on the level of emissions to be allowed. This won’t be outlined until December when the white paper is released.
The green paper estimated a one-off 0.9 per cent increase in inflation if a $20-a-tonne carbon price was imposed. Only about 1000 companies (the biggest polluters) are likely to be included in the trading scheme but charging for carbon will increase basic costs such as energy, which will filter down through most goods and services.
Industry Funds Management’s chairman, Garry Weaven, said in the SMH piece that almost every company will be affected and while the obvious winners are renewable energy companies and the obvious losers big polluters, factors such as company management also will come into play. “Some of the companies with the biggest carbon footprints have the most to gain,” he says. “If they can do better than their competitors, they will have an advantage.”
Weaven was also clear that the changes could be made: “It’s absolute nonsense to say we can’t afford to address climate change. It’s patently obvious world economies can adapt to factoring in new costs; they’ve always had to do that. The price of oil went up about fivefold during the biggest boom market we’ve seen. It wasn’t high oil prices that caused the end of the boom but stupid lending [practices].”
For Farmers?
CANA has summarised the anticipated impacts on farmers. It’s not all doom and gloom, but as Australia already has extremely variable rainfall patterns, higher temperatures leading to higher evaporation rates, coupled with decreasing rainfall are changes that are going to cause pain to all the country.
Murray-Darling Basin Impacts
The Murray-Darling Basin produces much of Australia’s food and fibre and is highly dependent on irrigated agriculture.
There’s significant changes in water availability predicted as a result of climate change. This will have a significant impact on how water is managed in the region.
But the most scary part of this news for farmers and (hopefully) for all Australians is the significant impact it will have on Australia’s food security.
CSIRO has released the results of its rainfall-runoff modelling in the Murray Darling Basin, undertaken as part of the Murray-Darling Basin Sustainable Yields Project.
The modelling shows a decrease in mean annual runoff, particularly in the southern MDB where more than two-thirds of the results show a decrease in mean annual runoff. The median indicates that the future mean annual runoff in the MDB in ~2030 relative to ~1990 will be lower, by 5 to 10 percent in the north-east and southern half, and by about 15 percent in the southernmost parts. Averaged across the entire MDB, the best estimate or median is a 9 percent decrease in mean annual runoff.
The report does note that there is considerable uncertainty in these estimates, with the extreme dry and extreme wet values in the northern
half of the MDB ranging from a 30 percent decrease to a 30 percent increase in mean annual runoff. In the southern half of the MDB, the extreme estimates range from a 40 percent decrease to a 20 percent increase in
mean annual runoff, and in the southernmost MDB, the extreme estimates range from a decrease in mean annual runoff of up to 50 percent to little change in mean annual runoff. Averaged over the entire MDB, the extreme
estimates range from a 33 percent decrease to a 16 percent increase in mean annual runoff.
This impact is also illustrated in the MDBC presentation, where a reduction in system inflows due to climate change of 1100 gigalitres is predicted.
But no matter which way you look at the results, the country is in for some big changes.
Smoke and Mirrors
The vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is real, it’s already happening and that it is the result of our activities and not a natural occurrence.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says this era of global warming “is unlikely to be entirely natural in origin” and “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence of the global climate.”
Yet the sceptics persist and they are many.
A body of thought believes there is a concerted campaign to discredit the science that says that anthropogenic activity is behind the climate change being experienced by the world today.
David McKnight argues that this campaign is reminiscent of that successfully mounted by the tobacco industry.
So What Does The Research Show?
So what does the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have to say on the matter? Here’s a summary of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).
1. Observed changes in climate and their effects
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level.
2. Causes of change
Global GHG emissions due to human activities have grown since pre-industrial times, with an increase of 70% between 1970 and 2004.
Global atmospheric concentrations of CO2, methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years.
Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations. It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent (except Antarctica).
Advances since the TAR show that discernible human influences extend beyond average temperature to other aspects of climate.
Human influences have:
_ very likely contributed to sea level rise during the latter half of the 20th century
_ likely contributed to changes in wind patterns, affecting extra-tropical storm tracks and temperature patterns
_ likely increased temperatures of extreme hot nights, cold nights and cold days
_ more likely than not increased risk of heat waves, area affected by drought since the 1970s and frequency of heavy precipitation events.
Anthropogenic warming over the last three decades has likely had a discernible influence at the global scale on observed changes in many physical and biological systems.
3. Projected climate change and its impacts
There is high agreement and much evidence that with current climate change mitigation policies and related sustainable development practices, global GHG emissions will continue to grow over the next few decades.
Continued GHG emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century that would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20th century.
There is now higher confidence than in the TAR in projected patterns of warming and other regional-scale features, including changes in wind patterns, precipitation and some aspects of extremes and sea ice.
Studies since the TAR have enabled more systematic understanding of the timing and magnitude of impacts related to differing amounts and rates of climate change.
Altered frequencies and intensities of extreme weather, together with sea level rise, are expected to have mostly adverse effects on natural and human systems.
Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries due to the time scales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if GHG concentrations were to be stabilised.
Anthropogenic warming could lead to some impacts that are abrupt or irreversible, depending upon the rate and magnitude of the climate change.
