Malcolm Turnbull has been ousted as Australia’s Prime Minister and replaced by his former treasurer Scott Morrison.
It follows a week of turmoil in Australia’s Coalition government over the carbon dioxide emissions reduction scheme – known as the National Energy Guarantee (NEG) – which the fanatically Turnbull was trying to foist on a country largely dependent on fossil fuel.
Though Turnbull is a member of the Liberal party – Australia’s conservatives – his politics are very much at the squishier end of the spectrum. An arch-globalist, nicknamed the Honourable Member for Goldman Sachs (where he was a partner), Turnbull is fairly typical of the centrist, ideology-free conservatives who have tended to make the running in western politics in recent years. Indeed, when he first entered politics he seriously considered representing Australia’s Labor party (the socialists) rather than the Liberal party (the conservatives).
Turnbull did not get off to a good start with Donald Trump. Shortly after the President’s inauguration, the two had a sticky phone conversation in which Trump refused to go along with a plan previously agreed with Obama whereby the U.S. was supposed to accept from Australia up to 2,000 economic migrants (mostly from Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan). Trump described it as a “bad deal.” Turnbull subsequently was caught in a leaked tape mocking Trump and his mannerisms and mocking his alleged ties to Russia.
The study authors, from NOAA’s Marine Mammal and Turtle division in La Jolla, California, analyzed sea turtle populations on beaches at the northern and southern ends of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
Because incubation temperature of turtle eggs determines the animal’s sex, a warmer nest results in more females. Increasing temperatures in Queensland’s north, linked to climate change, have led to virtually no male northern green sea turtles being born.
For the study, scientists caught green turtles at the Howick Group of islands where both northern and southern green turtle populations forage in the Great Barrier Reef. Using a combination of endocrinology and genetic tests, researchers identified the turtles’ sex and nesting origin.
Of green turtles from warmer northern nesting beaches, 99.1% of juveniles, 99.8% of subadults, and 86.8% of adults were female. Turtles from the cooler southern reef nesting beaches showed a more moderate female sex bias (65%–69% female).
If global warming continues, the study concludes, then so many turtles may turn female that there will be no males with which to mate. Extinction will then be inevitable.
Just when you thought it was safe to fire up the Hummer, there comes some devastating news from our friends in the climate change industry.
Global warming may be making bearded dragons more stupid.
No really, this is not a joke.
Obviously you’re praying that it is because the last thing any of us would want – dear God, anything but that – would be for arguably the world’s most popular and friendly, frilly-necked reptilian pet from Australia to be dropping a few IQ points as a result of man’s selfishness, greed and refusal to change his carbon-guzzling lifestyle.
Optimism is rising among scientists that parts of the Great Barrier Reef that were severely bleached over the past two years are making a recovery.
Scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science this month surveyed 14 coral reefs between Cairns and Townsville to see how they fared after being bleached.
The institute’s Neil Cantin said they were surprised to find the coral had already started to reproduce.
This will come as precisely zero surprise to anyone here at Breitbart.
But the “Barrier Reef is dying” scare – and believe me, it won’t be the last we hear of it – was never about the facts. Always, but always, it was and is about the narrative.
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has been caught red handed erasing record-breaking cold temperatures from its data records.
The BOM has now been shamed by media investigations into ordering a review of its procedures. But it has yet to provide an explanation as to why it made these “adjustments” in the first place.
These “adjustments” seem to go only one way. The BOM is perfectly happy to record and announce it whenever Australia’s temperatures hit record-breaking highs. But when the temperatures reach new lows it’s a different matter altogether.
For some strange reason that the BOM has been unable to explain, when temperatures go below a certain point it either deletes them as if they had never been – or it enters them into its records at higher temperature than the one actually recorded by its thermometers.
Meet Dr Olivia Doll, the world’s smartest dog. Dr Doll is the formal professional name of Ollie, a Staffordshire terrier, who sits on the board of seven international medical journals and was recently asked to review a paper on the management of tumors.
Her impressive curriculum vitae lists her current role as senior lecturer at the Subiaco College of Veterinary Science and past associate of the Shenton Park Institute for Canine Refuge Studies — which is code for her earlier life in the dog refuge.
Ollie’s owner, veteran public health expert Mike Daube, decided to test how carefully some journals scrutinised their editorial reviewers, by inventing Dr Doll and making up her credentials.
The five-year-old pooch has managed to dupe a range of publications specialising in drug abuse, psychiatry and respiratory medicine into appointing her to their editorial boards.
Dr Doll has even been fast-tracked to the position of associate editor of the Global Journal of Addiction and Rehabilitation Medicine.
Several journals have published on their websites a supplied photo of Dr Doll, which is actually of a bespectacled Kylie Minogue.
Professor Daube said none of them smelt a rat, despite Dr Doll’s listed research interests in “the benefits of abdominal massage for medium-sized canines” and “the role of domestic canines in promoting optimal mental health in ageing males”.
But just like the “penises cause climate change” hoaxers, Professor Daube is using humor to make a serious point about the reliability of research in academe.
The Canadian investigative journalist Donna Laframboise concluded something similar in a report last year for the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
“A journal’s decision to publish a paper provides no assurance that its conclusions are sound . . . Fraudulent research makes it past gatekeepers at even the most prestigious journals. While science is supposed to be self-correcting, the process by which this occurs is haphazard and byzantine.”
Laframboise was especially damning about the way “peer review” has been used to flatter dubious research in the field of climate ‘science’.
This has been a well-publicized problem with climate science ever since the Climategate emails leak showed the scientists at the heart of the global warming ‘consensus’ engaging in all manner of skullduggery in order to prop up their debased cod-scientific theory.
Australia’s national women’s soccer team – hotly tipped for a medal at the Rio Olympics – has been thrashed 7-0 by a team of under-15-year-old boys.
Students at Yale University have petitioned their English Department for a change of curriculum. They want fewer “white male authors” and more contributions by “women, people of color and queer folk”.
Does anyone want to hazard a guess as to why I’ve linked these two stories?
Yes, that’s right. It’s because I am sexist, racist, homophobic pig.
Also because I am a shameless elitist.
I actually believe that whether you’re talking international sport or you’re talking about literature then it is quality – not how many gender or diversity boxes it ticks – that should be the criterion that counts.
What this means, in practice, is acknowledging that Shakespeare is better than Maya Angelou, English literature is better than Nigerian literature, Pride and Prejudice is better than Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Paradise Lost by straight dead white male John Milton is better than anything by lesbian Poet Laureate Carole Ann Duffy (or indeed, probably, by any other lesbian poet in history, ever, including Sappho) and that all women’s sport (apart from showjumping, the only one where girls can compete with boys on equal terms; and possibly women’s beach volleyball) is basically a waste of space.
This doesn’t mean, as far as sport goes, that women should be discouraged from playing it. On the contrary, anything that gets women out of the designer shoe and hand bag emporia, away from internet victims’ groups and onto the playing fields where they can work off the rage, bitterness and insecurity which would otherwise be vented against men has got to be a good thing.
Plus, if any of our daughters were to become a top international sporting champion (which by the sounds of it is pretty easy, if you choose something like football: you just need to shift a spherical object vaguely in the right direction with your foot, taking care to avoid any 15-year old boys) then obviously it would be fantastic news because they’d probably make enough to pay for their own weddings instead of asking their impoverished, long-suffering parents to stump up.
That apart, though, there really isn’t much to be said for women’s sport. As a hobby, yes. But not as a thing to be taken seriously at an international level. Not even tennis where, frankly, they grunt very unattractively, the rallies go on for way too long, and the hottest looking ones almost never make it to the highest levels.
Professor Bob Carter, one of the world’s leading climate sceptics, has just dropped dead of a heart attack at the far too young age of 74. Perhaps it would be pushing it to say that he was driven to an early grave by the alarmist establishment. But there’s no question that his retirement would have been a lot more comfortable, less stressful and better paid if he’d hitched his career onto the Climate Change Gravy Train rather than doggedly speaking up for the cause of honest science.
Bob had known for years that man-made global warming theory was a crock. As a brilliant earth scientist – until 1998 he was head of the geology department at James Cook University in Australia – he understood perfectly well that on the geological scale our planet has experienced shifts in climate of a magnitude so vast as to make a mockery of the notion that humans can influence or control it.
His mistake was to admit this in public rather than keep schtum and take the money. As a result, Bob’s university decided to punish him for his heresy with a series of petty slights:
First James Cook University (JCU) took away his office, then they took his title. In protest at that, another professor hired Bob immediately for an hour a week so Bob could continue supervising students and keep his library access. But that was blocked as well, even the library pass and his email account were taken away, though they cost the University almost nothing.
James Cook University didn’t even bother to pretend to be interested in whether or not Bob was right. All that mattered to JCU is that Bob’s views were not politically correct – and that therefore this might jeopardise their image:
The only reasons given were that the staff of the School of Earth and Environmental Studies had discussed the issue (without any consultation with Carter) and decided that his views on climate change did not fit well within the School’s own teaching and research activities. Apparently it took up too much time to defend Carter against outside complaints about his public writings and lectures on climate change. (Busy executives don’t have time to say “Why don’t you ask Carter yourself?” or “We value vigorous debate here.” Presumably they are too busy practising their lines and learning the litany? )
The harrying of sceptics is commonplace in academe. (See, for example, the even more shocking treatment of Willie Soon).
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has been caught red-handed manipulating temperature data to show “global warming” where none actually exists.
At Amberley, Queensland, for example, the data at a weather station showing 1 degree Celsius cooling per century was “homogenized” (adjusted) by the Bureau so that it instead showed a 2.5 degrees warming per century.
At Rutherglen, Victoria, a cooling trend of -0.35 degrees C per century was magically transformed at the stroke of an Australian meteorologist’s pen into a warming trend of 1.73 degrees C per century.
Last year, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology made headlines in the liberal media by claiming that 2013 was Australia’s hottest year on record. This prompted Australia’s alarmist-in-chief Tim Flannery – an English literature graduate who later went on to earn his scientific credentials with a PhD in palaeontology, digging up ancient kangaroo bones – to observe that global warming in Australia was “like climate change on steroids.”
But we now know, thanks to research by Australian scientist Jennifer Marohasy, that the hysteria this story generated was based on fabrications and lies.
“G’day mate, would you like fries with that? G’day mate, would you like fries with that? G’day mate, would you like fries with that?”
Classic cartoon by Josh.
Oh to be a fly on the wall at Tim Flannery’s waterside property as he practises in the mirror for a job more suited to his talents. This time last week he was Australia’s Climate Commissioner, on an A$180,000 a year salary which required him to work just three days a week. But incoming premier Tony Abbott’s night of the green knives has put paid to that. Flannery’s Mickey Mouse job has gone; so too has Australia’s Climate Commission, a multi-million dollar, allegedly “independent”, propaganda outlet set up by Julia Gillard to help give her climate alarmist policies – such as the hated carbon tax, which Abbott is also abolishing – a veneer of scientific credibility.
As Jo Nova notes, while it may be a good day for the Australian taxpayer, it is far too late now to recoup the billions which have already been wasted on the “expert” advice of Flannery and his alarmist chums David Karoly and Will Steffen.
This agency propped up billions of dollars in pointless futile government spending trying to change the weather. Nothing will bring back money spent on desal plants that were mothballed when the floods came that real scientists predicted. Likewise the money burned on solar panels and windfarms is gone for good too, and still going.
As you’ll see at this website, one of the few things that Flannery is indisputably brilliant at is making idiotic statements and alarmist, pseudo-scientific predictions which seem to bear no relationship whatsoever to observed reality. So what, exactly, were his qualifications for taking on this supremely well-paid gig?
We-e-ll, Flannery is that most dangerous of things – an English literature graduate. Yes, I know I’m an English literature graduate too, but I’m the exception to the rule: on the whole, it would not be unfair to say, English literature graduates have done more to promote the cause of climate alarmism than any other category with the possible exception of “University” of East Anglia environmental “science” graduates.
Reflect, for a moment, on this grotesque rogues’ gallery, every one of them an English Literature graduate.
Tamsin Omond (Westminster-educated cutie; baronet’s grand-daughter; dumper of manure on Clarkson’s doorstep; embracer of every loony climate activist cause going with her Trustafarian mates)
Caroline Lucas (Malvern-Girls-College-educated nightmare; Green MP; watermelon)
Roger Harrabin (BBC alarmist-in-chief)
Bryony Worthington (Friends of the Earth Activist; inspiration for Dave’s “greenest government ever”; architect of the Climate Change Act)
Now, as it happens, I consider the cult of credentialism one of the curses of our age. Just because you’ve got some initials after your name doesn’t mean you’re not a pillock. And as we saw with the Climategate emails, being a qualified “climate scientist” is no guarantee of expertise on – or even entry-level understanding of – the science of climate. So I’m certainly not suggesting that Flannery’s possession of an English literature degree should automatically have ruled him out of contention for the massively influential Climate Commissioner job. What I am definitely suggesting, though, is that if you’re going to entrust the tenderest parts of your national economy to some random beardie bloke’s sweaty grasp, the very least you owe all the millions of people who are going to be affected by his announcements is to do some due diligence, ask some basic questions like: “Does anything this random beardie bloke has ever said or done in his entire life render him suitable to comment definitively on an issue as complex, uncertain and contentious as climate change?”
To which the bleedingly obvious short answer is: “No.”
After his English degree, Flannery managed to land (H/T Philip Bradley at Watts Up With That) a taxpayer-funded gig digging up kangaroo bones, which got him that impressive-sounding and all-important science PhD (palaeontology) before landing a job as a museum bureaucrat cum author of bestselling environmental alarmist books like The Future Eaters. (Sir David Attenborough once described him as ‘in the league of the all-time great explorers like Dr David Livingstone’ – which tells you rather more about the erratic judgement of David Attenborough than it does about the achievements of Tim Flannery).
Flannery, in other words, is a green activist who, like many of his kind – see Bryony Worthington; Roger Harrabin, above – has learned how to play the political system very much to his advantage. It is utterly inconceivable that anyone in the free market would ever pay someone so effectively useless so much money to do so little work for a job so utterly pointless as the one Flannery had as A$180,000 a year (for a three day week) Climate Commissioner.
If he were some weird aberration we could all, no doubt, have a jolly good laugh at the patent stupidity of it all and move on. Unfortunately, though we can’t because Flannery is not some weird aberration. He is just one of the more egregiously idiotic examples of a phenomenon which is rife throughout the Western world: environmental activists being paid eyewatering sums of money to promote junk science, ramp up green taxes and regulations, hamstring free markets, enrich rent-seeking scumballs, drive up energy prices and spout scaremongering drivel, all courtesy of the taxpayer who benefits from one jot.
Consider, for example, The Carbon Trust – a quango to which the taxpayer forks out more than £127 million a year, so as to benefit from its expertise on “low carbon issues and strategies, carbon footprinting and low carbon technology development and deployment.”
But hang on a second. Isn’t all that “low carbon” nonsense starting to look a bit overtaken by events? Aren’t we now fast reaching the stage where all the arguments in favour of committing suicide via “low carbon” have been torpedoed below the waterline? We know – as even the forthcoming IPCC report admits – that climate sensitivity has been overrated, thus making a mockery of all the doomsday scenarios fingering CO2 as a major threat. We also know – what with shale gas, shale oil, clathrates and thorium – that the fallback defence about “scarce resources” has been overdone too.
What we know, in other words, is that every penny of that £127 million we pay James Smith and his pals at The Carbon Trust to keep bigging up renewable energy and talking nonsense about climate change is money utterly and totally wasted. The same goes for the Department of Energy and Climate Change which could safely scrapped in its entirety tomorrow, without the slightest detrimental effect to anyone but the activists who staff it. The same goes for the £3.8 billion green investment bank. The same goes for much of the Met Office, the Royal Society, the British Antarctic Survey and the Science Museum, to name but a few of the once reputable publicly funded institutions which have been hijacked by political activists in order to further the cause of environmental alarmism.
