Ideology adds heat to the debate on climate change — Jennifer Marohasy

The national conversation is all about “seeming” and “confidence”. Greg Hunt (Environment Minister) boasted that he stopped an investigation into the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), and prevented “due diligence” being a part of a one-day wonder “forum”.

His justification:

“In doing this, it is important to note that public trust in the Bureau’s data and forecasts, particularly as they relate to bushfires and cyclones, is paramount,” [Greg Hunt] said.

It used to be that public trust occurred when organizations were fully investigated, accountable, and found clean. Now “Public Trust” is apparently increased when there are no investigations, or only weak whitewashes. Either the public has got a lot stupider, or the media and ministers have.

Plenty of the self anointed (those who know more than the dumb punters) thought Hunt’s boast was a big achievement. Anthony Sharwood, News Corp journalist (oh for a “reporter”!), wondered if the government was paranoid for wanting to check the BOM. Perhaps next he’ll be calling for global corporates to figure out their own tax bill; who needs professional auditing, right — it’s just “paranoid”?

But the bad news for Hunt and the Bureau (and Sharwood) is that the Truth will out, the genie can’t be put back in the bottle, and word is spreading. Who wants to be caught covering up the gross errorsinexplicable adjustments, major changes, and bizarre hot-records in cold-places, all done with mystery methods? You don’t need a PhD to know that maximum temperatures are meant to be higher than minimums. Nor does it take many brains to recognize that there are strange repetitive patterns  and errors in the oldest “quality” data that obviously didn’t come from any thermometer and are not real. Are those who cover it up gullible fools, or deceptive cheats?

Jennifer Marohasy has a great response, at On Line Opinion and in a shorter version in The Australian:

You Don’t Know the Half of It: Temperature Adjustments and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology

By jennifer on September 28, 2015 in Information

 According to media reports last week, a thorough investigation of the Bureau’s methodology was prevented because of intervention by Environment Minister Greg Hunt. He apparently argued in Cabinet that the credibility of the institution was paramount. That it is important the public have trust in the Bureau’s data and forecasts, so the public know to heed warning of bushfires and cyclones.

This is the type of plea repeatedly made by the Catholic Church hierarchy to prevent the truth about paedophilia, lest the congregation lose faith in the church.

Sometimes the minority are right:

Contrast this approach with that by poet and playwright Henrik Ibsen who went so far as to suggest ‘the minority is always right’ in an attempt to have his audience examine the realities of 18th Century morality. Specifically, Ibsen wanted us to consider that sometimes the individual who stands alone is making a valid point which is difficult to accept because every culture has its received wisdoms: those beliefs that cannot be questioned, until they are proven in time to have been wrong. British biologist, and contemporary of Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley was trying to make a similar point when he wrote, “I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything.”

At one time, Charles Darwin was in a bit of a minority.

Sharwood the journalist wants to understand temperature sets by studying “motivations”:

News Corp Australia journalist Anthony Sharwood got it completely wrong in his weekend article (“Does the weather Bureau Tweak Data”)  defending the bureau’s homogenisation of the temperature record. I tried to explain to him on the phone last Thursday how the bureau didn’t actually do what it said when it homogenised temperature time series for places such as Rutherglen.

Sharwood kept coming back to the issue of “motivations”. He kept asking me why on earth the bureau would want to mislead the Australian public.

Jennifer M quotes ClimateGate emails, which is very apt, but let’s turn his question back on Sharwood: ask him which university or public institution in Australia would offer a job to a skeptical meteorologist? Any BOM staff who reported that Australia was always hot and dry, and climate change was natural, would be unemployable. (Lomborg accepted the science, just doubts the economics, and he’s treated like a leper.) Perhaps Sharwood can explain how more funding or status would arrive at the Bureau of Meteorology if it turned out that the climate was controlled by the Sun, that most long term climate modelling was useless, and that the BOM had been wrong for years?  Rephrasing Sharwood: Why on Earth would the BOM want to show that its past predictions were wrong, and that it had mislead the public?

The BOM spoke too soon and unscientifically pegged their colors to the mast of climate change panic. What incentive is there for them to expose that?

This issue is only going to get worse until there is a real review, done by skeptical scientists (because there is no other kind of scientist):

It is so obvious that there is an urgent need for a proper, thorough and independent review of operations at the Bureau. But it would appear our politicians and many mainstream media are set against the idea. Evidently they are too conventional in their thinking to consider that such an important Australian institution could now be ruled by ideology.

This article was first published at   A shorter versions was subsequently published at The Australian, with the wonderful cartoon of Greg Hunt by Eric Lobbecke.

Send your letters in to The Australian, and to Greg Hunt

9.2 out of 10 based on 83 ratings

72 comments to Ideology adds heat to the debate on climate change — Jennifer Marohasy

  • #
    mmxx

    Science has now left the stage.

    The IPCC power play in Paris is going for global.

    Marx my words!

    434

    • #
      Yonniestone

      Emailing my apology to Tony Abbott tonight, what a pack of snake in the grass leftist globalist f#$king toe rags he had to deal with!

      Oh that includes the MSM sycophants that tagged him relentlessly for 2 years, may your quill forever tear every parchment it touches!

      424

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    sillyfilly

    BOM ACORN data has now been validated by one and all expert reviews. This opinionated nonsense from the same vapid and vacuous sources will never change the facts.

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    • #

      That’s right SillyFilly. All expert reviews, which didn’t review the homogenisations, and didn’t replicate the adjustments all say the BOM is marvellous. More so, some anonymous-gullible commenters won’t reveal their names, but they believe the whitewashes mean something. That’s it. I’m sold! 😉

      So Silly, I’m sure you are emailing Greg Hunt to get the Abbott inquest going aren’t you? Since the BOM are so good, a serious inquest will show those deniers how silly they are.

      Do copy us in on those emails, eh…

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      • #
        sillyfilly

        That’s two lame excuses you’ve come up with in my past two posts. Homogenisation is necessary tool of statistical competence to construct a viable long term temperature record and the latest review panel was hardly set up by the BOM. The Berkeley Earth reconstructions confirm the adequacy of the instrumental record but, as usual, you ignore that as well.

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        • #

          “Homogenisation is necessary tool…”

          What kind of homogenisation did the BOM do though? See, you have no idea, because the BOM won’t explain which stations they use and what weighting they give. Unless of course, you work at the BOM?

          A mystery process may be good enough for you but it isn’t science.

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        • #
          Yonniestone

          SF once again your warmists feel justified to snipe about every skerrick of observed data sceptics produce as demanded from the claimants but shriek with outrage if the accused questions their claims rightly incurring the burden of proof, any predetermined outcome of such questioning belongs in a kangaroo court with the numbats that run it.

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        • #

          Sillyfilly
          You are actually right that homgenisation is required to construct a viable long term temperature record. But there are two aspects that need to be considered.
          First is that for homogenisation to cleanse the data of measurement biases experts assume that nearby stations are exposed to almost the same climate signal. The WMO standard on homogenisation states this, as does Victor Venema, a leading homogenisation expert. But this assumption can be logically violated in a number of different ways and there are empirical examples that it has been. Even where there are less aggressive homogenization than employed by the Australian BOM, such efforts can lead to distortions in the data. The only way to find if homogenization is an improvement is to check for distortions in the data. Even the lighter-touch homogenization will have instances where the results will be worse than doing nothing. The Australian BOM employs far more aggressive homogenisation algorithms than even NASA GISS the most extreme of the global temperature sets. To paraphrase Lord Acton :-

          All homogenization techniques have a tendency to corrupt the temperature data, but on balance will usually get a closer approximation to the climate signal free of biases. Aggressive and unaudited homogenization techniques will always give more corrupt output than not homogenizing at all.

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          bobl

          Actually silly, did you actually read the report? The report painted the BOM as incompetent in that they had not properly documented reasons for adjustments and generated the series in a irreplicable and unmaintainable manner. They suggested many aspects needed to be fixed, personally I read the report as scathing, though it was written in govspeak rather than english.

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        • #
          Egor TheOne

          Yep , it’s the old ” if the figures don’t fit the faith , then fudge the figures ” Trick !

          Just like Mick ,the Hockey Stick Mann !

          Who needs science when you have propaganda !!!

          ” if a Lie ( CAGW /CACC /or whatever they call call it this month ) is repeated often enough ( the AlpgreensBC ), then it becomes the Truth ( brainwashing ).

          Herr Goebbels would be proud !!!!

          10

    • #
      Dave

      Sillyfilly,

      So ACORN data is raw data HOMOGENISED when a lawn nearby is irrigated?

      Is this correct?

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    • #
      John of Cloverdale, WA, Australia.

      Sillyfilly, such an appropriate name,
      So blind to fact, she knows no shame.

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      • #
        shrillyfilly

        Hey: homogenised, pasteurised, diluted, adjusted, transformed, trans-warped, repixelated, bastardised, fudged, tarted-up, misrepresented, fraudulently obtained – call it what you want – we don’t care cause we don’t have to explain it… evah, thanks to Greg Hunt.

        BTW, look, Greg stop calling, it’s like this with the polls, they call and ask if we prefer Malcolm or Abbott, Abbott, Abbott, and we say Malcolm, that’s what we do and that’s how you got Malcolm, but we still aren’t gonna really vote for him or you.

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    • #
      Victor Ramirez

      Perhaps the Immigration Minister could arrange similar “expert reviews” for Australia’s offshore detention centres. Would the MSM then be satisfied that everything was above board and beyond reproach…? Yeah, right!

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    • #
      Alfred

      Never look a gift horse in the mouth

      52

    • #
      Winston

      Silly,

      Riddle me this: why would Greg Hunt have to prevent an audit of the BOM to preserve its integrity, if such an inquiry would show that, according to you, everything was above board, squeaky clean and Bristol fashion?

      Surely if things are as “validated” as you claim, Hunt should have been announcing an independent audit confident in the knowledge that this would silence the doubters once and for all, the pristine methodologies of these paragons of virtue would blind us all with the lily white purity of it all.

      Clearly, the more logical analysis is that Greg Hunt, avowed warmist who would do anything to sneak an ETS under the radar and simultaneously sell us out to the UN, is covering the BOMs collective butt because he knows, and they know that an audit would show serial adjustments to manufacture the desired narrative among those who share your particular brand of mass delusion?

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    • #
      Gav

      It seems that sharks contribute to preventing climate change c/o the ABC and thus the fishing or culling of sharks will lead to climate change.
      I can see how credible this scientific fact is.

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      • #
        Peter Carabot

        One parameter that has not been taken into account by the so called “researchers” is the fact that more sharks also means more Methane or Flatulence. Isn’t Methane a “GreenHouse Gas” more potent then CO2???? I want to see the video of a “researcher” inserting a measuring device in a Great White…..Should be hilarious!!

        62

    • #
    • #
      Egor TheOne

      Which version do you prefer ??

      FUDGED (true b’lver) or UNFUDGED ( real )

      http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/GISSWilsonsPromonotory.gif

      10

  • #
    el gordo

    ‘As part of ongoing research into natural rainfall patterns in Queensland, Professor John Abbot and I have been studying the temperature record for northeastern Australia, as temperature is a key input variable in our neural network models (e.g. Abbot and Marohasy 2014).

    ‘Considering the data from the late 1800s until 1960, a cooling trend is evident, followed by warming between 1960 and 2001. In contrast, the last 12 years show quite dramatic cooling. All three periods have occurred while greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, have been increasing in concentration in the atmosphere.’

    Jennifer Marohasy in a letter to Greg Hunt in March 2014

    ————

    Hunt was warned of a sharp regional cooling in north-east Australia, but the minister’s ignorant bias has blinded him. Under the circumstances, stifling the audit may one day be seen as a criminal act.

    Tony Abbott should have sacked Hunt years ago, he is a disgrace.

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    • #
      John of Cloverdale, WA, Australia.

      He Should’ve, Could’ve, Would’ve sacked Turnbull and Hunt, BUT DIDN’T. His (and our) loss, TRAITORS gain.
      In other words, nice guys finish last in politics. Et tu Brute!

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      • #
        Winston

        In our supposedly democratic system, sham though it may be, you cannot lead a party on your own. As PM you have to negotiate around all the powerful factions within your party. Abbott was fighting on multiple fronts, and on his own largely, with allies like Joe Hockey who were honest toilers but ineffective, ministers like Turnbull running dead on him for their own selfish reasons, and people with agendas beyond the party platform like Hunt. The only decent support in terms of effective ministers were Morrison, Bishop, perhaps Dutton, maybe Brandis and a few younger ones. Robb was effective but kept a necessarily low profile, while Bishop and eventually Morrison, while effective were also disloyal.

        I ask you, who else in this country would have had the personal strength of character and single mindedness to have been able to withstand such a perfect storm of malice, treachery, incompetence and self-serving ambition, and yet achieve anything, let alone what Abbott achieved in his short tenure. It was a miracle he managed anything at all.

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      • #
        Gav

        Political leaders tend to lose the plot to such a point that they are shocked when even their mates stick the knife in as “et tu Brut”

        64

  • #
    William

    Much as I hate to repeat it, his failure in this is one of the many reasons that Tony Abbott had to go.
    He simply did not have the spine to do what had to be done.
    Great opposition leader; dud as PM.
    Unfortunately, his replacement is 100 times worse.
    We are well embedded on the sharp end of that spiral inclined plane.

    1017

    • #
      Winston

      Abbott was far from a dud. He was the only beacon of sanity and decent values in parliament in the service of the public at large, but was surrounded by treasonous vipers like Hunt, Bishop and Turnbull who are prepared to sell all of our children’s and grand children’s futures out to the institutionalised theft of the UN.

      These people are freely and willingly working against the national interest, against the taxpayers whom they despise, and against the will of the people. It is only since Abbott has gone that we can see the floodgates opened and just exactly how much he was personally holding back on our behalf. He was the only genuine friend Australian families had, and they were, on the whole too dumb, self absorbed and ill-informed to appreciate it. They will now pay a heavy price. They owe Abbott an apology, as do all those doubters who failed to appreciate just how delicate a situation he was forced to traverse, and how many traitorous colleagues he was forced to negotiate around.

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    • #
      Glen Michel

      Weak in the face of adversity.A person who could not think on his feet- a person who should have instinct and not be controlled by his so-called ” chief of staff”.piss poor on the repeal of 18c and hopelessly out of touch with the restitution of imperial awards.Seemed to be a decent and honourable man but undid his good work on border protection(Morrison) and that tax on that colourless gas.

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      • #
        Leo Morgan

        I have to disagree with your claim ‘[Abbott was] hopelessly out of touch with the restitution(sic) of imperial awards.’
        This was a perfect opportunity for the Party to lampoon Labor’s clamouring, ridiculing them for thinking they’d won the referendum they’d lost, and that Labor was determined to ignore the people’s decision.
        One of hundreds of dropped catches.
        Yes the media were dissatisfied with the election result, and succeeded in changing it, but why was so much nonsense allowed to go unopposed? I foolishly let a lot go unanswered myself, thinking that a lot of the criticism ridiculed itself. I didn’t point and laugh at the claim he was a ‘hypocrite’ to turn from thug in opposition to Statesman as PM- but I wasn’t a party member. Why did the Liberals not ridicule all the anti-Abbott nonsense? Including taking the opportunity to lay the boot in about Labor not realising they’d lost the referendum.

        40

  • #
    RoHa

    “You don’t need a PhD to know that maximum temperatures are meant to be higher than minimums.”

    But you do need a PhD to cook up a sciency-sounding explanation of why the minima are higher than the maxima, and then get pollies and journos to accept it.

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  • #
    PeterS

    If one day they do get caught out fudging the data to suite their global warming scaremongering, I hope they end up in prison along with other scam artists, such as Bernard Madoff. His punishment is 150 years imprisonment and forfeiture of $17.179 billion. Given the AGW scam is at least a couple of orders of magnitude larger, the perpetrators better receive correspondingly larger sentences. Then again we’d be happy with the same sort as Madoff’s.

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  • #
    pat

    still waiting for Graham Lloyd to respond to the latest developments. this story should have been all over TV/radio/press headlines, with Marohasy and Lloyd asked to respond in depth, etc. don’t let this story go folks.

    meanwhile, on jo’s previous “UK Energy Minister” thread, I posted this BBC story from April:

    13 April 2015: BBC: Paul Rincon: Evidence of liquid water found on Mars

    and noted the “coincidental” release of the “Martian” film.

    now we have:

    28 Sept: NYT: Cara Buckley: Ridley Scott Learned About Water on Mars Before We Did, but Not in Time to Change ‘Martian’
    Mr. Scott said in an interview with The Times on Monday that the head of NASA had shown him the photos of the water about two months ago, and that had the news come out before production of “The Martian” began, it probably would have affected key plot points in the film…
    Had the discovery of water on Mars happened before filming began, Mr. Ridley said Mr. Damon’s character “would’ve gone and dug in.” …
    Mr. Scott, whose credits include “Alien,” “Blade Runner” and “Thelma and Louise,” said “The Martian” had already screened twice at NASA; it also recently screened for the crew at the International Space Station…
    http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/28/ridley-scott-learned-about-water-on-mars-before-we-did-but-not-in-time-to-change-martian/?_r=1

    Wikipedia: Martian: Filming began in November 2014 and lasted approximately 70 days.

    29 Sept: SMH: The Martian director Ridley Scott knew about water on Mars months ago
    Scott has worked closely with NASA on The Martian, with the film screened International Space Station earlier this month.
    However, there have been comments across social media that the opening of the film this week has been of suspiciously fortuitous timing with the NASA announcement…
    http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/the-martian-director-ridley-scott-knew-about-water-on-mars-months-ago-20150929-gjxd0k.html

    the MSM has been pumping up this story for 2 days , beginning with:

    news.com.au: NASA to hold urgent press conference to announce major science finding from Mars

    and then the orgy of coverage today.

    unbelievable NASA/MSM.

    32

  • #
    pat

    also posted on the previous thread, but I wonder how many people got ***this message from the MSM today:

    28 Sept: Wired: Chelsea Leu: NASA discovers evidence for liquid water on Mars
    (Georgia Tech scientist, Lujendra) Ojha notes that ***they haven’t actually observed water flowing on Mars…
    http://www.wired.com/2015/09/nasa-salty-liquid-water-on-mars/

    30

    • #
      PeterS

      Yes, they are making it out as though they have discovered life on Mars. Given they already knew there is ice on Mars, finding running water is of little consequence – in fact boring. Time the NASA children climbed down from their ivory kids chairs. Finding life wouldn’t be a surprise anyway. After all it could have come from Earth, the reverse of one theory that life on earth came from Mars. Let us know when they find something really exciting, such as an alien spaceship.

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      • #

        After all it could have come from Earth, the reverse of one theory that life on earth came from Mars. Let us know when they find something really exciting, such as an alien spaceship.

        Honestly, when I saw those images on the news tonight, with what looked like the steep slopes of Fjords, I’m suspecting that maybe if they do find an alien spacecraft, there’ll be Slartibartfast sitting in the cockpit.

        Cue Curly

        Tony.

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  • #

    People like Greg Hunt live in their own socio-economic bubble, rarely interacting with anyone outside it. They may be able to roll back the required investigations, but they’ll never roll back a predominantly climate jaded public’s concern to 2007 hysteria levels.

    More importantly in terms of eroding the BOM’s reputation, we won’t be going away and we’re certainly operating in a target rich environment. One scandal after another, drip, drip, drip.

    Pointman

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  • #
    Harry Twinotter

    Greg Hunt did the sensible thing. You don’t let [snip unrelated topics “people who disagree with the establishment”] call for “reviews” of the medical system. So why would you let climate change dissenters call for a review of our national weather forecaster to suit a political agenda?

    If any group thinks they have credible, scientific evidence that any aspect of the scientific theory of AGW is wrong, there is a forum for that – it is publication in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

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    • #

      Exactly Twinotter. People who disagree with the government are always wrong. They should be mocked. Only people who can write in the closed guild publications are worthy of being heard. Ban the rest. Whatever you do don’t answer their questions, no matter how well argued they are.

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    • #
      James Bradley

      Ah Harry,

      A perfect example of the socialist left ideology of everything.

      Never mind the freedom – just feel the equality.

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    • #
      Harry Strawman

      Great point, Haz,

      See that’s why we – The BOM and Harry and Me, question everything you do, but don’t let you question anything we do.

      It’s the only way we can keep slipping sneaky stuff through, dodging up the figures, fudging the stats, rorting the workers, how else are we gonna keep pulling the wool over your eyes.

      Got ya back, Haz, luv ya bruvva.

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      el gordo

      ‘….call for “reviews” of the medical system.’

      I predict a review into the Australian medical system very shortly, they have been over servicing to a great degree.

      Harry the climate change peer review system is biased towards global warming, which stopped almost two decades ago. As you are aware the pause in temperatures won’t last forever and for the life of me I cannot see why all those scientists who published in favor of warming shouldn’t be sacked.

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    • #
      Egor TheOne

      A quote from one of your idols , no doubt >>>

      “A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect.” Richard Benedict, an employee for the State Department working on assignment for the Conservation Foundation .

      And some more of his esteemed colleagues >>> see pdf page 3 & 4 in particular >>>

      http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/downloads/scientific_paper_on_global_warming.pdf

      00

  • #
    thingadonta

    Apart from democracy, education, freedom of speech, the media, open publication, the rule of law, the scientific method, and various community values passed on from generation to generation, humanity doesn’t seem to have discovered a way of convincing public officials that routine auditing of government institutions is in the community’s best interest.

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    • #
      Bulldust

      It would surprise me even more if an audit, especially internal, of a government agency caught anything of significance. One thing bureaucrats do exceptionally well is covering their posteriors. I speak from first hand experience on this matter. It would take a very motivated politician to push such a thing to fruition. Simply not going to happen in the current political climate.

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  • #
    dp

    How can any department that refuses to self-investigate plausible suggestions of wide spread corruption be considered a subject of public trust? You don’t earn public trust by concealing evidence. Trust is earned only by complete and transparent disclosure. You Aussies need to stand out from your sheep else the neutering will continue.

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    • #
      gai

      Thanks to a scandal prior to CAGW and now CAGW, I have nothing but contempt for my government, the MSM, NGOs, politicians and educational system.

      Once the trust is lost it is lost forever. Not only that it is contagious. I use the banking scams in the USA as an eye opener since it works on both the left and the right. I have been opening eyes one at a time for over ten years.

      JUST FOLLOW THE DOTS:

      ROLLING STONE How Wall Street Is Using the Bailout to Stage a Revolution: The global economic crisis isn’t about money – it’s about power

      Robert Watkins worked for the World Bank while IPCC chair.

      WHAT IS IN IT FOR THE BANKS?

      World Bank Carbon Finance Report for 2007
      The carbon economy is the fastest growing industry globally with US$84 billion of carbon trading conducted in 2007, doubling to $116 billion in 2008, and expected to reach over $200 billion by 2012 and over $2,000 billion by 2020

      Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after ‘Danish text’ leak: Developing countries react furiously to leaked draft agreement…

      …The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.

      The document was described last night by one senior diplomat as “a very dangerous document for developing countries. It is a fundamental reworking of the UN balance of obligations. It is to be superimposed without discussion on the talks”….
      http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-summit-disarray-danish-text

      The developing countries have every reason to be horrified the World Bank would be in charge and attach ‘strings’ to the Climate Change fund.

      “Structural Adjustment Program” has gained such a negative connotation that the World Bank and IMF ditched the name. “… the World Bank and IMF launched a new initiative, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Initiative, and makes countries develop Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP). While the name has changed, with PRSPs, the World Bank is still forcing countries to adopt the same types of policies as SAPs…”

      Structural Adjustment Policies are economic policies which countries must follow in order to qualify for new World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans

      SAPs generally require countries to devalue their currencies against the dollar; lift import and export restrictions; balance their budgets and not overspend; and remove price controls and state subsidies….

      Balancing national budgets can be done by raising taxes, which the IMF frowns upon, or by cutting government spending, which it definitely recommends. As a result, SAPs often result in deep cuts in programmes like education, health and social care, and the removal of subsidies designed to control the price of basics such as food and milk. So SAPs hurt the poor most, because they depend heavily on these services and subsidies.

      SAPs encourage countries to focus on the production and export of primary commodities such as cocoa and coffee to earn foreign exchange. But these commodities have notoriously erratic prices…

      By devaluing the currency and simultaneously removing price controls, the immediate effect of a SAP is generally to hike prices up three or four times, increasing poverty to such an extent that riots are a frequent result.….

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  • #
    ScotsmaninUtah

    “The BOM Moral and Ethical Landscape – adjusted for temperature variability “

    In doing this, it is important to note that public trust in the Bureau’s data and forecasts, particularly as they relate to bushfires and cyclones, is paramount.

    So BOM is NOT to be investigated – well this seems only natural as it should be noted that Greg Hunt obtained his degree from the “Nixon and Kissinger School of Ethics” and has studied with greats such as the “Roman Catholic Church”.

    You don’t need a PhD to know that maximum temperatures are meant to be higher than minimums.

    There is a lot criticism leveled at BOM but a spokesman declared that BOM staff are well educated and have been trained at the very famous Enron School of Applied Mathematics in Las Vegas. when asked about “climate history”. The spokesman said that everyone has been trained in reading into a “6 card deck” and has no problems with memory.

    BOM will be releasing a single this December in honor of COP21 (purported to be their own song)…. “Money for Nothing”.
    lawyers representing Dire Strait’s have been in contact with BOM, but BOM are refusing to cooperate, citing that many of their staff are skilled musicians and their music is far more complex and sophisticated than anything Dire Straits has ever produced.

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  • #
    Ruairi

    The B.O.M. by inviting a test,
    A check that their practice is best,
    Makes their science more sound,
    By the flaws which are found,
    Putting skeptical minds at rest.

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    Ian Nairn

    Didn’t Greg Hunt just say that BoM is inept because an investigation to it might cause the people to distrust it?

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    • #
      Another Ian

      No doubt the CFMEU is breathing much easier and looking forward to the government savings from defunding the Trade Union Royal Commission

      11

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    Peter Carabot

    It won’t do any good, but at least it’s off my chest!:

    Dear Minister,

    Over the past several years, my confidence in BoM has bottomed out. Notwithstanding the huge amount of money that “had” to be spent for a new super computer, their predictions of calamitous climate events has now become worse.
    If I want to know anything about the Australian climate, It’s not BoM that will give me an answer. For a cyclone I will probably look up the USA Navy meteorological site, much more accurate about warnings, developments and positioning then BoM has been. Apart from trying to obfuscate the truth and bury their mistakes the multi million dollar computer and the “models” that it runs, are demonstrably useless when it comes to predicting tomorrow’s weather!

    A thorough and complete investigation of the methods and the motives of the hierarchy of BoM to fudge the figures to suit an agenda are necessary To Restore Confidence in the Bureau. As opposite to what you said that confidence had to be maintained and therefore an investigation was not necessary.

    I dont expect an answer to this email, I never get one, not from You or from BoM.

    Good fudging

    Sincerely


    Peter Carabot

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    Peter C

    In the full article published in Online Opinion I read;

    Nevertheless, the content of the Climategate emails includes quite a lot about homogenization, and the scientists’ motivations. For example, there is an email thread in which Phil Jones (University of East Anglia) and Tom Wigley (University of Adelaide) discuss the need to get rid of a blip in global temperatures around 1940-1944. Specifically Wigley suggested they reduce ocean temperatures by an arbitrary 0.15 degree Celsius

    I have not seen that particular email thread before. Does anyone have a reference?

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      Jennifer Marohasy

      Hi Peter,

      There is a lot in the Climategate emails about ‘homogenization’ which is yet to be discussed/see the light of day. And again I thank Mr FOIA, this time for helping me with my article for OLO, republished in The Australian.

      Anyway, the following direct quotes might help if you want to do a search of the emails:

      From: Phil Jones
      To: Tom Wigley
      Subject: Re: 1940s
      Date: Mon Sep 28 10:20:14 2009
      Cc: Ben Santer

      Tom,
      A few thoughts
      [1]http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0442/preprint/2009/pdf/10.1175_2009JCLI3089.1.pd
      f
      This is a link to the longer Thompson et al paper. It isn’t yet out in final form – Nov09
      maybe?
      [2]http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/24/a-look-at-the-thompson-et-al-paper-hi-tech-wiggle
      -matching-and-removal-of-natural-variables/
      is a link to wattsupwiththat – not looked through this apart from a quick scan. Dave
      Thompson just emailed me this over the weekend and said someone had been busy! They seemed
      to have not fully understood what was done.
      Have looked at the plots. I’m told that the HadSST3 paper is fairly near to being
      submitted, but I’ve still yet to see a copy. More SST data have been added for the WW2 and
      WW1 periods, but according to John Kennedy they have not made much difference to these
      periods.
      Here’s the two ppts I think I showed in Boulder in June. These were from April 09, so
      don’t know what these would look like now. SH is on the left and adjustment there seems
      larger, for some reason – probably just British ships there?
      Maybe I’m misinterpreting what you’re saying, but the adjustments won’t reduce the 1940s
      blip but enhance it. It won’t change the 1940-44 period, just raise the 10 years after Aug
      45.
      I expect MOHC are looking at the NH minus SH series re the aerosols. My view is that a
      cooler temps later in the 1950s and 1960s it is easier to explain.
      Land warming in the 1940s and late 1930s is mainly high latitude in NH.
      One other thing – MOHC are also revising the 1961-90 normals. This will likely have more
      effect in the SH.
      With the SH around 1910s there is the issue of exposure problems in Australia – see
      Neville’s paper.
      This shouldn’t be an issue in NZ – except maybe before 1880, but could be in southern
      South America. New work in Spain suggest screens got renewed about 1900, so maybe this
      happened in Chile and Argentina, but Mossmann was head of the Argentine NMS so he may have
      got them to use Stevenson screens early.
      Neville has never been successful getting any OZ funding to sort out pre-1910 temps
      everywhere except Qld.
      Here’s a paper in CC on European exposure problems. There is also one on Spanish series.
      Cheers
      Phil
      At 06:25 28/09/2009, Tom Wigley wrote:

      Phil,
      Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly
      explain the 1940s warming blip.
      If you look at the attached plot you will see that the
      land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know).
      So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC,
      then this would be significant for the global mean — but
      we’d still have to explain the land blip.
      I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an
      ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of
      ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common
      forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of
      these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are
      1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity
      plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things
      consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.
      Removing ENSO does not affect this.
      It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip,
      but we are still left with “why the blip”.
      Let me go further. If you look at NH vs SH and the aerosol
      effect (qualitatively or with MAGICC) then with a reduced
      ocean blip we get continuous warming in the SH, and a cooling
      in the NH — just as one would expect with mainly NH aerosols.
      The other interesting thing is (as Foukal et al. note — from
      MAGICC) that the 1910-40 warming cannot be solar. The Sun can
      get at most 10% of this with Wang et al solar, less with Foukal
      solar. So this may well be NADW, as Sarah and I noted in 1987
      (and also Schlesinger later). A reduced SST blip in the 1940s
      makes the 1910-40 warming larger than the SH (which it
      currently is not) — but not really enough.
      So … why was the SH so cold around 1910? Another SST problem?
      (SH/NH data also attached.)
      This stuff is in a report I am writing for EPRI, so I’d
      appreciate any comments you (and Ben) might have.
      Tom.

      Prof. Phil Jones
      Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 ???
      School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 ???
      University of East Anglia
      Norwich Email ???@uea.ac.uk
      NR4 7TJ
      UK
      —————————————————————————-

      References

      1. http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0442/preprint/2009/pdf/10.1175_2009JCLI3089.1.pdf
      2. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/24/a-look-at-the-thompson-et-al-paper-hi-tech-wiggle-matching-and-removal-of-natural-variables/
      Search Text:

      [Don’t know why this was traped in moderation except for possibly the length. But it deserves to be seen.] AZ

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    Ross

    Often in life someone says something that at the time, to them, it is just a simple “throw away” comment. But because of, usually their ego, they don’t understand what they have actually said and how others will interpret it,it often goes on to define how people remember that person (for good or bad). Something tells me Hunt will always be remembered by a large part of the Australian population for this gloat on how he stopped this investigation –it won’t be remembering him in a good way.
    I can almost see a political saying developing –” Doing a Hunt “. It might overtake white wash.

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    Martin

    This affair is VW revisited, but worse because it’s by a government agency.
    Thank you Greg Hunt.

    “Sharwood kept coming back to the issue of motivations”.

    How’s this for starts?

    http://climateaudit.org/2015/09/28/shuklas-gold/

    Perhaps somebody should do some scratching beneath Australia’s counterparts.
    After all, in addition to Wivenhoe, look what they’ve given us:

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/billions-in-desalination-costs-for-not-a-drop-of-water/story-e6frgczx-1227094416376?sv=127c70f7ae41111d448ae3ffaca5f058

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    Hew Manatee

    I guess we can look forward to the Royal Commission on Trade Union Corruption being wound up soon, on the basis that “public trust in large organisations that represent so many workers is paramount.”

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    el gordo

    Harold Warren Lewis, a respected physicist who had previously advised both the U.S. Government and the Pentagon on various matters including missile defence and nuclear winter, shocked his peers when he disseminated his letter of resignation from the American Physical Society.

    Lewis accused the American Physical Society of supporting “the global warming scam, with the trillions of dollars driving it that has corrupted so many scientists.”

    ‘The physicist’s letter contained a number of complaints, including the APS’ lack of a response to his endeavours to gather a committee to evaluate evidence for a human link to climate change.

    ‘Lewis revealed that global warming was “the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud” he has even seen in his career.

    – See more at: http://www.australiannationalreview.com/top-physicist-claims-global-warming-scam/#sthash.BVein3tS.dpuf

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      Harry Twinotter

      El Gordo.

      Old news, isn’t it? I guess he is one of the 3% then.

      Not to worry he joined the GWPF lobby group, so it sounds like he is OK.

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        el gordo

        It seems so, my bad.

        In Memoriam

        Harold (“Hal”) Warren Lewis

        (October 1, 1923 – May 26, 2011)

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    Harry Strawman

    Sssshhhh Harry,

    Ixnay on the Global Warming Policy orumFay – mate they have just advised Britain to scrap the arbonCay olicyPay on the British Steel Industry because of the high costs and loss of jobs the arbonCay olicyPay causes.

    Remember the meeeeetiiiing – we agreed we need to steer away from highlighting the growing numbers of believers that become sceptics – you know – because, like, there are no sceptics that have become believers – it’s kinda a one way street there, like the old saying “Once you’ve had facts you’ll never go back”

    So, yeah, like cheese it, Haz, you’re screwin’ the pooch on this one bruvva, but like I still got ya back man, just lettin’ ya know, luv ya bruvva, maintain the stage rage.

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    Firey

    I recently was not well & frequently had nurses checking my temperature. They used ear thermometers & checked about four times a day.

    I must remember to check these results next year. I wonder if they will have been homogenised & if they will be 2% lower than when recorded. Those darn thermometers cannot be trusted.

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