Jennifer Marohasy

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The Maverick Healer: Jesus

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It’s Christmas Day.  An annual event commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ.  He was a healer, and in the most empowering of ways.    Sometime just through simple touch.  He was also an outcast, decried by the elites of his time, he was sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate the Roman governor of Judaea under the emperor Tiberius.  Sentenced to death not because he stole something, or killed someone, but because he challenged their authority and more than anything else tried to bring people together.

Two thousand years later, and I’ve woken up this morning to a story in the Epoch Times about Fired Health Care Workers in the US.

Many health care workers, once hailed as heroes for working throughout the pandemic, now settle into the holiday season without jobs because of their personal medical decisions.

In North Carolina, Carlton DeHart was working as an advanced heart failure coordinator nurse for the Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center in Charlotte when she was fired in September for not meeting the deadline to get vaccinated.

Because DeHart was undergoing fertility treatment, she told The Epoch Times, she decided against it, adding that she didn’t feel comfortable ‘adding a not-long tested unknown into my body.’

She chose not to file for an exemption because, she said, ‘it’s a form of compliance.’

She doesn’t regret the decision, she said, and with the reducing rates of efficacy, changing definitions of what it means to be fully vaccinated, increasing reports of side effects, and the censorship surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines, she’s ‘still determined not to comply.’

Though DeHart misses her team and her patients, she said doesn’t miss the ‘top-down draconian hospital politics’ that pushes allopathic treatment.

Her hope is that the firings will propel a new medical community forward that doesn’t lean into the heavily prescribed drugs, radiation, and surgery but into more innovations outside of orthodox medicine.

‘I think we were moving that way anyway because people weren’t happy with the corporate care they were getting, and this will hurry that along,’ DeHart said.

Today, on this Christmas Day, my heart goes out to all of those who have chosen to transcend the corporate and the mandated and to try a different way.

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I’ve extracted the feature image (at the very top of this blog post) from some drone footage shot by Stuart Ireland flying behind Russell Island from our little boat Kiama, with Rob McCulloch and me.

2021, New Year Wishes and Unreliable Weather

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If I were the head of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, I would make more skilful weather and climate forecasting my priority. I would put a system in place for measuring improvement, and I would make sure the team of meteorologists believed it was possible to improve, not only in their skill at providing daily weather forecasts, but also in seasonal rainfall forecasts.

Back in June 1944, British Meteorologist James Stagg was so skilful with his forecasting that that he could reliably advise General Eisenhower that there would be a lull in the storm. This information allowed the successful D-Day landing of 156,000 soldiers in Normandy to go ahead.

It is possible to forecast lulls in storms, and El Niño and La Niña events, because the passage of the Moon overhead is regular and cyclical. In the same way that artificial neural networks (ANNs) can be used to mine historical data on our social media preferences, interpret medical scans, and underpin driverless car technology, so too this technology could be used to generate more reliable weather and climate forecasts. John Abbot and I showed its application to monthly rainfall forecasting in a series of research papers and book chapters published from 2012 to 2017. They are listed at the end of this note. How the years go by.

If I was the head of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, I wouldn’t be asking for an audit of the current system because I know that the tools my Bureau uses (simulation modelling) are not fit for the task at hand. In the same way I wouldn’t be asking for an audit of coral reef research. I would use the money instead to get some proper statistically rigorous programs in place for monitoring coral cover and water quality, and monitoring the skill of weather and climate forecasting – and of coral bleaching.

One of my proudest achievements of 2021 was showing how just three of us (Stuart Ireland, Leonard Lim and me) over a short two days working from a little speed boat could lay 36 transects at the inshore Pixie Reef just to the northeast of Cairns, and upload the photographs (with the help of Jaco Vlok) leaving a permanent record of the corals in different habitat types at that reef for that moment in time.  Pixie reef was recorded as more than 65 per cent bleached in 2016. That was an El Niño year, and also a year of relatively low sea levels along the western Pacific. You can see the state of Pixie Reef as it was in February 2021, five years later, for yourself, by clicking on each of the 360 thumbnail photographs published on my website.  Most of the corals are looking so beautiful.

Stuart Ireland with tape measure and camera just on 9am, 24th February 2021 at Pixie Reef.

As the Moon is the driver of La Niña–El Niño cycle, so changes in its orbital path correspond with periods of bleaching including the 2016 bleaching, as well as the recent wet weather along the east coast of Australia. James Stagg understood the importance of lunar cycles, and so do the Chinese. A technical paper by Jialin Lin and Taotao Qian entitled ‘Switch Between El Niño and La Niña is Caused by Subsurface Ocean Waves Likely Driven by Lunar Tidal Forcing’ is worth reading and is open access at ResearchGate.  I didn’t get a chance to mention it when I was recently on Sky TV with Andrew Bolt.  Andrew reminded us that not so long ago we were told by Tim Flannery that Australia’s reservoirs would never fill again because we were doomed to drought – forever.    He has been proven so wrong by the cycles of flooding since.

Arthur Day contributed chapter 4 to Climate Change: The Facts 2020. Recently, he sent me some more information on Antarctica. I published this at my blog along with a video Stuart Ireland made after he visited Antarctica a few years ago – when he got to swim with the seals. It’s magical.

Antarctica is a long way from the Great Barrier Reef, but it is the temperature and pressure gradients between the two – or at least between the Poles and the Equator – that can have a major impact on the intensity of the Earth’s weather systems.

The good news for the corals is that the 2020–2021 Australian cyclone season was another ‘below average’ season, producing a total of eight tropical cyclones with just three of these categorised as severe.  This means last summer there was not only fewer cyclones, but they were less severe cyclones.  However, this trend will likely reverse – because the climate is always changing.

Much thanks to the Bureau for updating the chart to this year, to the 2020-2021 season. The data and report is here: http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/tropical-cyclone-knowledge-centre/history/climatology/

We end 2021 in eastern Australia, which borders to the western South Pacific, with reservoirs full of fresh water, beautiful corals just offshore, not to mention very high vaccination rates. Australians should be confident about the year ahead even if our Bureau of Meteorology keeps fudging an increasingly unreliable temperature record to falsely claim imminent catastrophe. I will be writing much more about this next year – in 2022.

Before finishing this last blog post to you all for the year, I would like to mention the late Christian Kerr and Rob McCulloch. The first a political journalist, the other a marlin fisherman – two very different men who were both such good friends to me.   We lost both this last year.

Christian Kerr would sometimes text or phone after I sent out one of my irregular e-newsletters; he would ask if he could republish something in The Spectator Australian Online. Consequently, he launched one of my most important papers, co-written with John Abbot, about using artificial intelligence to distinguish between natural and man-made global warming. It is the first of the papers listed below.

Living in Noosa I managed to escape much of the lockdown insanity that so affected Christian and many of my other friends and colleagues in Melbourne. Indeed, while much of Melbourne was house-bound, I went on a wonderful Great Barrier Reef adventure with Rob McCulloch all the way to Myrmidon Reef at the end of last year, and to Pixie Reef earlier this year. More recently I was diving Heron Reef.

Rob McCulloch and I planned the trip to Myrmidon in September 2020 in order to search for the monster corals. That was after one of his clients from Sydney cancelled because of a last-minute COVID-19 border closure. Rob was known as one of the best marlin fishermen in Australia. He is remembered in the short documentary Finding Porites, which is dedicated to his memory. You can watch it on YouTube, here.

Neither Christian Kerr nor Rob McCulloch waited for other people to do things for them, or to audit things for them. I will miss their courage and their kindness, but especially their enthusiasm for my work and my writings.

Thank you especially to the B. Macfie Family Foundation for continuing to fund my work through the Institute of Public Affairs.

John Roskam will step down as executive director of the IPA early in the New Year.   John backed me to set-off with Rob McCulloch on the little boat Kiama to find the monster corals and trusted me to edit the last two climate change books.   I will always be so grateful for these opportunities.

Best wishes to you for a happy Christmas and prosperous New Year. And remember, lost time is never found.

Corals fringing Heron Island, November 2021. Photo credit Stuart Ireland.

The photograph at the top is of me under-the-water offshore from Heron Island just a month ago. I’ve written a first blog post on the trip, here.  There will be more next year about Heron Island, and the need for some quality assurance of underwater photographs used as evidence of mass coral bleaching.

Key publications with John Abbot, 2012 to 2017

Abbot, J. & Marohasy J. 2017. The application of machine learning for evaluating anthropogenic versus natural climate change, GeoResJ, Volume 14, Pages 36-46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gf.2017.08.001

Abbot, J. & Marohasy, J. 2017. Skilful rainfall forecasts from artificial neural networks with long duration series and single-month optimisation, Atmospheric Research, Volume 197, Pages 289-299. DOI10.1016/j.atmosres.2017.07.01

Abbot, J. & Marohasy, J. 2017. Forecasting extreme monthly rainfall events in regions of Queensland, Australia, using artificial neural networks. International Journal of Sustainable Development & Planning, Volume 12, Pages 1117-1131.DOI 10.2495/SDP-V12-N7-1117-1131.

Abbot, J. & Marohasy, J. 2017. Application of artificial neural networks to forecasting monthly rainfall one year in advance for locations within the Murray Darling Basin, Australia, International Journal of Sustainable Development & Planning. Volume 12, Pages 1282-1298. DOI 10.2495/SDP-V12-N8-1282-1298.

Abbot, J. & Marohasy, J. 2016. Forecasting monthly rainfall in the Bowen Basin of Queensland, Australia, using neural networks with Nino indices. In AI 2016: Advances in Artificial Intelligence, Eds. B.H. Kand & Q. Bai. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-50127-7_7.

Abbot, J. & Marohasy, J. 2016. Forecasting monthly rainfall in the Western Australian wheat-belt up to 18-months in advance using artificial neural networks. In AI 2016: Advances in Artificial Intelligence, Eds. B.H. Kand & Q. Bai. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-50127-7_6.

Marohasy, J. & Abbot J. 2016. Southeast Australian Maximum Temperature Trends, 1887–2013: An Evidence-Based Reappraisal. In Evidence-Based Climate Science (Second Edition), Ed. D. Easterbrook. Pages 83-99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-804588-6.00005-7.

Marohasy, J. & Abbot, J. 2015. Assessing the quality of eight different maximum temperature time series as inputs when using artificial neural networks to forecast monthly rainfall at Cape Otway, Australia, Atmospheric Research, Volume 166, Pages 141-149. doi: 10.1016/j.atmosres.2015.06.025.

Abbot J. & Marohasy J. 2015. Using artificial intelligence to forecast monthly rainfall under present and future climates for the Bowen Basin, Queensland, Australia, International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning, Volume 10, Issue 1, Pages 66 – 75. DOI: 10.2495/SDP-V10-N1-66-75.

Abbot J. & Marohasy J. 2015. Using lagged and forecast climate indices with artificial intelligence to predict monthly rainfall in the Brisbane Catchment, Queensland, Australia, International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning. Volume 10, Issue 1, Pages 29-41.

Abbot J. & Marohasy J., 2015. Improving monthly rainfall forecasts using artificial neural networks and single-month optimisation in the Brisbane Catchment, Queensland, Australia. WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, 196: 3-13.

Abbot J. & Marohasy J., 2015. Forecasting of monthly rainfall in the Murray Darling Basin, Australia: Miles as a case study. WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, 197: 149-159.

Abbot J. & Marohasy J. 2014. Input selection and optimisation for monthly rainfall forecasting in Queensland, Australia, using artificial neural networks. Atmospheric Research, Volume 138, Pages 166-178.

Abbot J. & Marohasy J. 2013. The application of artificial intelligence for monthly rainfall forecasting in the Brisbane Catchment, Queensland, Australia. River Basin Management VII. WIT Press. Editor C.A. Brebbia. Pages 125-135.

Abbot J. & Marohasy J. 2013. The potential benefits of using artificial intelligence for monthly rainfall forecasting for the Bowen Basin, Queensland, Australia. Water Resources Management VII. WIT Press. Editor C.A. Brebbia. Pages 287-297.

Abbot J., & J. Marohasy, 2012. Application of artificial neural networks to rainfall forecasting in Queensland, Australia. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, Volume 29, Number 4, Pages 717-730. doi: 10.1007/s00376-012-1259-9.

Crown-of-thorn starfish, Heron Reef, 10th November 2021. Photo credit Stuart Ireland.

In Adelaide, for Krish

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Last Wednesday my son-in-law Christian, who I call Krish, rolled his Toyota Landcruiser about 6 hours to the southwest of Nhulunbuy near a place called Bulman. My daughter, who was in the passenger seat, went into brace position and escaped the crash relatively unscathed, even able to run into Bulman for help. They had just set off on their honeymoon that was planned as a camping adventure all the way across the top-end of Australia to the remote Kimberly region.

Of course, many of us worry about Krish and his risk taking. He has been known to go surfing in crocodile infested waters, but this time he had only packed his fishing rod and had just bought new tyres for the vehicle. I had helped him wash the vehicle (the first time in over a year – obviously bad luck) and he had been up late just before the wedding soldering wires so the main interior light worked again.

He has driven that dirt track out of Nhulunbuy to Katherine many times, but it is well known to be treacherous. He was apparently not even driving that fast, having just got going after stopping to watch buffalo cross the red dirt.

The track not far from Bulman, on the way to Katherine from Nhulunbuy.
Christian and Caroline were evacuated from near Bulman in remote East Arnhem Land to Darwin and then Adelaide.

Anyway, all of that is incidental to the fact that Krish is now recovering at the spinal unit of Royal Adelaide Hospital in South Australia with 8 screws, a plate and a bone graft, all skilfully insert by Dr YH Yau. The operation was very successful and Kris is already able to take some steps, but managing the pain and other complications is going to take some time.

I am so grateful to Careflight for evacuating Krrish and Caroline to Darwin. I am also so grateful to the doctors in Darwin for recommending an immediate subsequent evacuation to Adelaide because of the specialist spinal unit here headed by Dr YH Yau.

I was meant to fly from Nhulunbuy to Cairns, last week but instead flew to Darwin and then onward to Adelaide. I have been here a week now. I would stay forever, or leave tomorrow, if I thought it could take away the pain that Krish is having to endure.

There is a specialist spinal unit at the Royal Adelaide Hospital that has performed what could be considered a miracle, so Christian can walk again.

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Update 7 August, nickname changed to more traditional spelling of Krish. 🙂

My Daughter is Getting Married, And

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They went in search of oysters.

Caroline Marohasy and Christian Wright searching amongst beds of oysters on the rocks at a remove beach in East Arnhem.

He didn’t find a single pearl, rather he found the whole world. That’s true love.

I’ve always wanted the very best for my daughter. Now she is marrying the very best.

Yep. She is engaged. With a ring on her finger and a date for the wedding!

So, I will be the mother of the bride!

Christian proposing to Caroline, just recently.

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Feature picture (top photograph) is of some of us sitting in the water just after the surprise proposal, which was one Saturday morning on a little island off the top end of Australia, near Nhulunbuy.

Why Craig Kelly Resigned on Tuesday

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Craig Kelly has a huge following on Facebook. His daily posts were ‘liked’ and ‘shared’ by thousands, until he was blocked – disallowed, censored. His page is still there. He just can’t post anything. The banner at the top of his page says:

Today’s truth is frequently tomorrow’s error. There is nothing absolute about the truth … if the truth is to emerge and in the long run triumph, the process of free debate – the untrammelled clash of opinion – must go on.

Craig is quoting Australia’s longest serving Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies.

Last Tuesday, on 23rd February 2021, he handed his letter of resignation to the current Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. That was in the Great Hall of the Australian Parliament in front of the joint party room: 110 Senators and Members of the House of Representatives belonging to the Liberal and National Parties.

He has been a member of Parliament for over a decade, and he does make close friends. In making the speech that he did at 11.20 am that morning/Tuesday morning, Craig knew he would be losing some of his closest friends, and perhaps forever.

Craig phoned me yesterday to chat about it – while he packed up to leave Canberra after a tumultuous week. He was heading home: back to Sydney where he lives. But there is no refuge anywhere for Craig. Just two weeks ago, during a home invasion, someone flew the Islamic flag from his bedroom window and photographed it there while accusing him of being a supporter of the caliphate. Also recently, he was accused in the Sydney Morning Herald of being anti-Semitic because he described Dr Zev Zelenko as having a long Jewish beard. That is a fair description of the physical appearance of the American doctor who has recommended the drugs Hydroxychloroquine, Zinc and Azithromycin as a treatment for Covid. Craig is actually a fan of Zev’s – on the public record as describing Zev as a true hero, and someone from whom he (Craig Kelly) draws strength, courage and inspiration.

Craig likes people, and people of all ethnicities. He grew up in the 1970s, with a father who travelled the world buying wholesale for his successful furniture business in south western Sydney. Craig got to go on some of these overseas adventures: down the back streets of far-flung places from Hong Kong to Istanbul, where his father would seek out, not only the best business deal, but also the best of the local foods – especially the sweets.

Like his father, Craig cares about small business and also people, and their capacity to make their own decisions about how they furnish their home, what they choose to eat, and what medications they choose to take or reject. In his letter of resignation given to the Australian Prime Minister on Tuesday Craig wrote:

I acknowledge that some of my conduct over recent months has not helped … has made it difficult for you and the government. However, at all times I have acted upon my conscious and my beliefs – not political expediency.

My goal has only been to save lives and ensure that my constituents and all Australians, were not denied access to medical treatments if their doctors believe those treatments could save their life.

Craig was censored by Facebook for posting a quote from Professor Tom Borody who advocates Ivermectin, when combined with Doxycycline and Zinc, as an early treatment for Covid. Professor Borody is another of Craig’s heroes: recognized worldwide for his innovative clinical work and research into complex gastrointestinal disorders and infective disorders.

Another professor, probably Australia’s most senior immunologist, Robert Clancy, has also suggested there are alternatives to vaccination for the treatment of Covid. In a recent interview on ABC radio Professor Clancy made mention of a recent scientific review that summarises 43 different studies on Hydroxychloroquine, concluding that:

HCQ is consistently effective against COVID-19 when provided early in the outpatient setting, it is overall effective against COVID-19, it has not produced worsening of disease and it is safe.

So, why is Facebook banning Craig and why did the Australian Prime Minister’s Office ask that Craig Kelly remove – that he delete – 20 previous Facebook posts?

It was reported by The Guardian newspaper that up to 70 posts had disappeared from Craig’s Facebook page – the inference being that he/Craig had deliberately deleted them.

Craig has told me that all his Facebook posts are still there, and he has no intention of removing any of them. Craig tells me that he stands by everything that he has written on Facebook as accurate and correct. He acknowledges that others may disagree, and that he is keen to discuss why, especially with reference to clinical trials and published scientific papers.

Craig acknowledges that he is neither a scientist nor a doctor – but rather a politician with a keen interest in these issues who will always make-up his own mind based on reading and consulting widely. I know from personal experience that Craig will spend hours discussing detail and seemingly anomalous results always in search of the truth. Craig and I both enjoy the technical, and we both like puzzle solving.

My expertise, and most recent peer-reviewed published papers, are in climate science. Craig has been known to text me at midnight, asking for clarification about some detail pertaining to how air temperatures are measured and/or the historical temperature record for Australia remodelled/homogenised by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Craig attempted to raise the issue of the world’s longest heat wave record in the Australian parliament a couple of years ago. Specifically, Craig was attempting to draw attention to how the historical observations/temperature measurements have been changed, and how the values as originally recorded at Marble Bar between 31 October 1923 and 7 April 1924 have been adjusted down.

When the Australian Bureau of Meteorology cools the past – as it does with most of the 112 temperature series used to construct the official statistics – current temperatures appear hotter. The remodelling of Marble Bar has, to quote Craig, also robbed Australia of the world’s longest heatwave record. This now goes to Death Valley in California.

Whether it is climate science or medical science, Craig revels in the detail. It is his current inability to communicate this detail, or to defend himself against accusations that he is promoting unproven treatments for Covid, that left him with no choice but to resign from the government on Tuesday.

He made up his mind last weekend. He finished drafting his letter of resignation to the Prime Minister Monday night. He also wrote a letter that same night to the Speaker, informing him of his resignation and asking for a reallocation of seating in the chamber and that he be given indulgence to address the house/the parliament.

Last Tuesday morning was really difficult for Craig.

The first thing the Prime Minister asked Craig when he gave him his letter of resignation was, ‘Why didn’t you tell me first’.

Had Craig told Scott Morrison of his intension to resign first, Craig believes that the Prime Minister would have denied him the opportunity to address his colleagues that morning in the joint Party room. There was nothing more important to Craig, than what he calls ‘eyeballing’ his colleagues, and explaining his decision: a most difficult decision – to leave the team, the government – his government.

Looking people in the eye, and having a firm handshake are both characteristics of Craig Kelly.

They are traits I so remember of my father, who like Craig’s father, travelled the world through the 1970s – but as an agricultural scientist working on international aid projects. Dad would often take me with him, and I also got to eat the most delicious foods. Dad liked his sweets, but also the hottest chilli sauces in the back streets of Jakarta.

I never got to meet Craig’s father, but I did go to his funeral, out of respect for Craig.

Craig Kelly is a good friend of mine, and his particular perspective on alternative treatments for Covid are worthy of scrutiny. And like Craig, I am of the opinion that the Covid vaccines now being rolled out across Australia may not be the best choice for everyone. More than anything else, just like the flu vaccines, it should be up to the individual whether they choose to be vaccinated – or not.

Update 31 May 2021
David Archibald just published this data on Ivermectin and ‘whole of country trials’ that backs up what Craig has been asking for … choice in terms of what we can use to prevent and/or treat Covid, there should be more options than just vaccine:
https://wentworthreport.com/ivermectin-whole-of-country-trials-in-real-time/

Writing in the Mountain Home magazine, Michael Capuzzo has put together a compelling narrative in support of Ivermectin that is also damning of mainstream medicine and their ability to act in the best interests of the individual when it comes to the oh-so political Covid-19: https://www.mountainhomemag.com/2021/05/01/356270/the-drug-that-cracked-covid

photograph
The feature image shows Craig Kelly in the Australian National Archive checking actual historical temperature records, and comparing them with values currently listed by the Bureau.

Replete with Sand

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We live at a time when it is fashionable to lament how nature has become overwhelmingly depleted. So when sand is stripped from the local beach there is much public gnashing of teeth and a newspaper headline.

Noosa’s main beach with relatively little sand, just 18 months ago.

But when the same beach is replete with sand, the tendency is to ignore this good news, as though it is but a temporary aberration.

Sand has accumulated naturally over recent months.

In reality it is perhaps a case of cycles within cycles.

My friends Bruce, Nicole and Patrick were at Main Beach, Noosa Heads, with me just on dawn and at low tide this morning to admire all the sand.

With the tide out it was possible to see the high tide mark, which as Bruce points out in the video is usually much higher up the beach. With the beach replete with sand it is as though sea levels have fallen, at least high tide is that much further from the board walk.

Postscript

Another perspective: looking to the south. Drone shot by Patrick.
Of course, I couldn’t resist walking around to Tea Tree Bay and standing in a marine pot hole. More information about these structures and sea level fall over 4,500 years here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/sea-level-change/. And much thanks to Patrick for the photograph.