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CLIMATEGATE – The Tiger Woods Index for NZ

by Whaleoil on December 6, 2009

Why is the media focusing on Tiger Woods and his rooting when the general public is wanting focus on Climategate?

There is now an index for you to work out just how hypocritical the media has become and how they filter our news. It is called the Tiger Woods Index.

Thus, as an experiment, I started trawling around, taking the stats on other issues in the news. To make the figures comparable, I then worked out the ratios of web pages to news pages reported.

On that basis, Tiger Woods delivered 22,500,000 web and 46,025 news pages, giving ratio of 489. That is the “Tiger Woods Index” (TWI) against which I chose to measure a raft of other issues.

“Climategate” was the next obvious choice and that produced 28,400,000 on the web page search, compared with 2,930 news items, delivering a ratio of 9,693. Using the TWI as a comparator, the public in general are more interested in “Climategate” than Tiger Woods, by a factor of nearly 20 times.

Applying the “ratio analysis” (doesn’t that sound grand!) to ten current issues, including the two already mentioned, an arbitrary list emerged, ranked by importance to the general public, against media interest. This is as follows:

1. Climategate: 28,400,000 – 2,930 = 9693
2. Afghanistan: 143,000,000 – 154,145 = 928
3. Obama: 202,000,000 – 252,583 = 800
4. Tiger Woods: 22,500,000 – 46,025 = 489
5. Gordon Brown: 12,300,000 – 37,021 = 332
6. Climate change: 22,200,000 – 68,419 = 324
7. Sally Bercow: 25,000 – 86 = 290
8. David Cameron: 545,000 – 4837 = 113
9. Meredith Kercher: 261,000 – 3,471 = 75
10. Chilcot Inquiry: 125,000 – 4,350 = 29

Let’s look at some Kiwi examples, again ranked by importance to the general public, against media interest. The NZ Media are worse even than the US.

  1. Climategate: 31,100,000 – 74 = 420,720
  2. Lisa Lewis: 116000 – 87 = 1333
  3. Phil Goff: 157000 – 292 = 537
  4. Tony Veitch: 90,600 – 364 = 248
  5. John Key: 196000 – 1327 = 147
  6. Hone Harawira: 169000 – 1320 = 128
  7. Millie Holmes: 7600 – 71 = 107
  8. Susan Boyle: 410000 -  8778 = 46
  9. Taito Phillip Field: 21500 -1150 = 18
  10. Mark Hotchin: 41700 – 343 = 13
  11. MPs Expenses: 18600 – 1454 = 12
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  • Lucy

    chrissy Posted at 6:47 AM December 06, 2009
    Malcolm Turnball posted a News Letter in the Daily telegraph lashing out at Tony Abbot and supporting the Official Australian view on climate change I think John Key should take note of the comments made (go to andrew bolt to read the whole thing) All of the comment where like these

    "Mr Turnbull we don't need 2 Labor parties thanks. You didn't listen to the people, Mr Abbott did. Even Mr Obama is only spending the last day at Copenhagen to lobby for some sports agenda.Copenhagen has become an expensive joke now.Mr Rudd is taking 200 people along with him???? How long do we have to

    throw millions at this farce? Stop the bitterness Mr Turnbull, support your party or leave."

    Comment 7 of 36

    matt Posted at 7:29 AM December 06, 2009
    Poor Mr Turnbull, still trying to be popular with the people. Do us all a favour and just go away.

    Comment 8 of 36

  • John Ansell

    Seems to me the big story here is the contrast between Climategate and Climate Change.

    The public are more interested in Climategate, but the media are over 20 times more interested in reporting Climate Change.

    Or is that just a factor of Climate Change having been around a lot longer?

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/Whaleoil Whaleoil

      I think the public are sick of the lies, they know in their hearts something isn't right and so are searching for it because the media has failed. New Media is handing them the ass and they aren't liking it.

    • corruptionfordummies

      it is amusing (sickly) that they say report climate change (with no evidence) on the news….then just moments later they announce cooler temperatures, no sea rise warnings on the weather segment.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/The_Grizz The_Grizz

    I have been doing some research on Methane gas emissions and performing some back of the envelope calculations on methane gas emissions in New Zealand. We are being told about our dairy industry increasing methane gas emissions and under kyoto we need to reduce this to 1990 levels (I know other sources of methane need to be included as well). Given our sheep numbers have been falling I always viewed the hysteria with scepticism. However, following a back of the envelope calculation, I can now say that agricultural methane emissions in 2007 were less than in 1982! Thats right, agriculture has already achieved objectives on kyoto in terms of methane emissions. Here is my assumptions:

    Sheep population 1982: 70.2 Million
    Cattle Population 1982: 7.87 Million

    Sheep population 2007 38.5 Million
    Cattle population 2007 9.65 Million

    Methane emissions/cow 80Kg/year. Methane emissions/ sheep 8kg/year

    Total Agriculture methane emissions 1982 1192 Million Kg
    Total Agriculture methane emissions 2007 1080 Million Kg

    I have been ultra conservative on my sheep emissions as quantities were all over the place. I took a lower figure so that a higher figure would have shown a greater absolute reduction.

    Curiously,under Muldoon and is silliness to subsidise agriculture, more land was cleared for livestock grazing. Removing subsidies encouraged sheep numbers to drop and diversification of land use. Go to Marlborough and witness land once used for grazing planted out in grapes and fruit trees. The spin off here is that reducing subsidies reduced methane gas emissions.

    That said, I remain sceptical that agriculture is causing a build up in greenhouse gases. Ruminants, wetlands, forests have been pumping out methane gas for millions of years. Human agriculture over the last 100 years would make SFA difference to atmospheric methane.

  • Aye Aye

    This looks like these are the perfect subjects to feed into http://www.google.com/insights/search

  • Lucy

    And the UN will 'investigate' the leaked emails as "they dont look good". Anybody want to take a bet that they will find nothing wrong and it is BAU?

  • Theresaj

    It is just like when the Mt Hood terrorist massacre happened..there was hardly any coverage just endless raving about Hone Harawira..But then it seems to be official policy to keep New Zealanders in the dark about the boundless ambitions of islam.

    • Lucy

      Yep!

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