AUSTRALIA’S national broadcaster, the ABC, has recently started a new online blog site called The Drum. Very unusually (for the ABC), it then sought a contribution from a climate rationalist (me) for the site, which I provided – deliberately making it more opinion than science.
The response was a surprising rush of emails (more than 500 in 24 hours), most of which condemmed either the ABC or the article, or both. Out of this hive of activity then emerged the Queen Bee – in the form of former Labor government Science Minister Barry Jones, who proceeded to launch a fairly robust attack on my original article.
In turn, this provoked my colleague Alan Moran, of the IPA in Melbourne, to write a retort, which commented on the fact that the ripples of Climategate are running up on even Australia’s distant shores – in the form of Willis Eschenbach’s expose of probable tampering with the Darwin temperature record.
Overall, an astonishing number of more than 2,000 blog postings were made regarding these three articles, with the conversation also spilling over onto other blogs as well.
In order to try to restore some science into the conversation (silly, naive me), I have now written a reply to Mr. Jones, which is posted at Quadrant Online, at:
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/12/why-barry-jones-is-wrong
This article contains links to the various The Drum pieces.
As a taster, one of my conclusions, with which I am sure some of your readers will agree, is:
“The practice, promulgated by the IPCC, of endlessly analysing short trend lines fitted in carefully selected ways through temperature data that is inherently cyclic has nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics.”
Finally, though on an apparently unrelated (but actually quite closely related) topic, The Drum has also published an extremely thoughtful and insightful piece by experienced ABC journalist Jonathan Holmes, on the problems of separating “fact” and “opinion” in news and current affairs programs.
I suspect that Holmes’ article will be of even more interest to your readers than yet another cat-fight “he says, she says” squabble over AGW! It’s at:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/08/2764585.htm?site=thedrum?site=thedrum
With seasonal greetings
Bob Carter
Web home page: http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/ <http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.