ON 10th September 2014, the Sydney Morning Herald published an article suggesting that I was an amateur, hostile to climate science and in denial. When I attempted to respond by way of an opinion piece, I was told there was no space. That I would not be published. 
I’ve just lodged a complaint with the Australian Press Council. They only allow 400 words by way of ‘reason for complaint’. I’ve provided the following reasoning:
Michael Brown’s article ‘Pseudoscience and nonsense reign once science is left behind in climate debate’, published by the Sydney Morning Herald on 10th September 2014, is in breach of the Australian Press Council’s General Principles 1 and 3. In refusing to provide Jennifer Marohasy with an opportunity for reply The SMH is in breach of Principle 4.
There are four key errors of fact that combine to mislead the reader. Dr Brown claims Dr Marohasy has found “a few potential errors” in the homogenisation process as implemented by the Bureau. In fact Dr Marohasy has shown that the homogenisation process as implemented by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology is flawed because it can result in changes to both the direction and magnitude of temperature trends. Dr Brown claims Dr Marohasy has cherry-picked a few unrepresentative examples. The examples provided by Dr Marohasy are real, valid, and illustrate the potential impact of homogenisation, which is to mislead the public on climate change. Dr Brown claims that Australia continues to warm and the warming temperature trend is clear in raw and homogenised data for 100 years. In fact Australian and global average surface air temperature has remained more or less steady since 2001 (e.g. Nature Climate Change, volume 4, pages 222-227).
Dr Brown describes Jennifer Marohasy as a “plucky amateur”. Dr Marohasy is not an amateur. Indeed Dr Brown has also omitted key facts in particular that Dr Marohasy is an adjunct research fellow at Central Queensland University with several recent peer-reviewed publications in climate science.
Dr Marohasy submitted an opinion piece correcting some key errors of fact on 15th September 2014. On 16th September she was advised that it would not be published.
In publishing Dr Brown’s opinion, but refusing to publish Dr Marohasy’s rebuttal, the Sydney Morning Herald is continuing to withhold important information from the Australian public, in particular most Australians remain ignorant of the fact that all the data used to calculate national temperature trends is homogenised, that this can have an impact on both the magnitude and direction of temperature trends. Furthermore in publishing an article that suggests Dr Marohasy is “hostile” to climate science, practices “pseudoscience”, is in “denial”, and performs “sloppy” work, the Sydney Morning Herald is not only misleading its readers, but also defaming Dr Marohasy.
I would have thought that in the interests of balance, fairness and keeping their readership across the issue that the Herald could have simply published the opinion piece that I submitted. This article follows:
Evidence and transparency is important in science
If some technocrats had their way, it would be accepted practice to routinely alter historical temperature records, particularly if those records did not accord with global warming theory.
I have complained for some time about the practice of homogenisation undertaken by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. My concerns were mostly ignored until I gave a lecture at the Sydney Institute in July. There, I described how cooling trends at RAAF Base Amberley in Queensland and the post office at Bourke in New South Wales have been changed into warming trends through homogenisation.
More recently, I provided The Australian with an example from an agricultural research station outside Rutherglen in north-eastern Victoria. Since 1912, a weather station there has observed an overall cooling trend. Rather than incorporate this cooling into the official record, the Bureau has applied algorithms that have flipped the cooling trend of 0.35 degrees Celsius into a warming trend of 1.73 degrees Celsius.
Homogenisation may legitimately be used in climate science to correct for anomalies in data when stations are relocated from one site to another. The Bureau claims that the Rutherglen station was moved in the 1960s or 1970s. Yet there is no evidence to suggest it was ever moved. Even if it were so, this does not explain why the record for, say, 1913 is a full 1.8 degrees Celsius cooler in the modified and homogenised data than in the original.
The overall effect of manmade global warming is estimated to be 0.8 degrees Celsius over the last century. If so, homogenisation has the potential to create a highly distorted impression of temperature trends.
That is only the start. When the entire instrumental record is considered, the very hottest years in Australia occurred in the late 1800s. Indeed the hottest year on record is perhaps 1878, and the hottest January was in 1896. This is not what we have been conditioned to believe, but it is what the data shows. The Sydney Morning Herald itself documented the heatwave of January 1896, reporting on the mass evacuation of affected residents by train from inland regions.
The Bureau believes that data prior to 1910 is unreliable for the purposes of the national record. The same Bureau, however, is happy to use that data for reporting global temperatures.
If we take those early records into account, it is clear that New South Wales experienced cooling from the late 1800s to about 1960. After 1960, temperatures across the state and the nation started to increase. This warming continued until it reached a plateau in 2002. Because the warming of the late twentieth century never completely negated the cooling of the early twentieth century, the overall net trend is actually one of cooling.
Peer-reviewed literature supports my contention that early twentieth century cooling was real and significant and that homogenisation creates an artificial warming trend in the official temperature record for Australia.
Yet last Wednesday in the opinion pages of the Sydney Morning Herald (Pseudoscience and nonsense reign once science is left behind in climate debate) Michael Brown, an astronomer from Monash University, argued that I had found merely “a few potential errors” in the data “while ignoring the fact that warming across Australia is seen in both raw and homogenised data”.
I have always been of the opinion that anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either. Insisting on precision and transparency is not, as Dr Brown suggests, quackery, pseudoscience or “plucky amateurism”. It is the very essence of scientific method.
Unfortunately, we have reached a stage where consensus is driving the science, rather than science shaping the consensus.
It is often said that global warming is the greatest moral issue of our times. If so, the truth surely matters. Upholding the truth means respecting dissent. It requires careful and public scrutiny of information which does not conform to received wisdom.
____________________________
Dr Jennifer Marohasy is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Central Queensland University with six recent peer-reviewed publications in climate science focused on the application of artificial intelligence to rainfall forecasting. This research required Dr Marohasy to compile long temperature series for different locations as arrays for a neural network model, in the process she became interested in the methodology used by the Bureau of Meteorology in the compilation of an annual average temperature for Australia.
Sources, if required, for para beginning “The peer-reviewed literature”:
Deacon, E.L. 1952, Climatic Change in Australia since 1880, Australian Journal of Physics, Volume 6, Pages 209-218, see especially Figure 1 showing the ten-year running averages of mean summer maximum temperature for Bourke, Alice Springs Narrabri and Hay)
Trewin, B. 2013, A daily homogenized temperature data set for Australia, International Journal of Climatology, Volume 33, see especially page 1524)
Source, if required for para beginning “That is only the start”:
‘Excursion to Cool Climates’, January 25, 1896 and Extraordinary Heat at Wilcannia, January 18, 1896.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
With sales reflecting the quality of journalism presented @Fairfaux, and advertisers fleeing, space would be one thing they wouldn’t be short of.
You threw them a life preserver, more than they deserve, but their stupidity is for all to see.
Not to mention the lack of ethics.
Take heart, unusual precedents have been set before:
A recent 2012 Press Council ruling came down to argument over two words –
Quite So
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/quite_so/
Hi Jennifer,
Maybe, like some of us involved in food production, you have been burning the midnight oil. As I read it, your comments about the raw vs homogenised data at Rutherglen showing a WARMING adjustment of 1.8 degC in 1913, should have instead stated that the effect was a COOLING adjustment of 1.8 degC.
Could be just my below trend reading skills.
Cheers, Slowlurnr.
***
Thanks Daryl – fixed. Jen
An agenda driven press is nothing new. Here is what T. Jefferson had to say:The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
Keep up the good fight. Truth and integrity will win out.
Jen, if they allowed your response they’d have to get Leonardo Di Caprio in.
‘Evidence and transparency is important in science’
Yep!
Well said Jen.
It is very disappointing to watch the behaviour of BoM and this treatment of the Australian temperature records.
It is not serving a useful, practical, public service.
It instead seems to be serving a political PR purpose.
Maybe they will give you some space for rebuttal @thecon. Like this:
“The Victorian health minister’s response to these figures has been disappointing. Rather than consider the evidence, Davis tried instead to blacken my reputation and has claimed publicly that my analysis is biased. He (or his staff) has trawled the archives of The Conversation and my CV for ammunition.
First he appeared on ABC radio and stated that it was “important for the community to know” that I have “done work for a political party”, referring to my “expert review work for the Queensland Greens”.
https://theconversation.com/dirty-air-dodgy-politics-why-its-easier-to-attack-science-than-listen-to-morwell-fire-death-stats-31782
The pigs are taxiing for take off …
If Michael Brown thinks you’re a “plucky amateur” as regards climate and temperature with but a Ph.D. in entomology, Jennifer, then Michael Brown must declare himself a “plucky amateur” in that field as well, with but a Ph.D. in cosmology.
A look at Dr. Brown’s publications page at Monash U shows nothing on any aspect of terrestrial climate. Where, then, is his expertise to comment critically on your expertise? Hoisted by his own petard, I’d say.
Dr. Brown claims, “a century of science that proves global warming has occurred and will continue.” His polemical context allows us to presume he meant human-caused global warming.
I’d like to know, what “science”? As a practicing physicist, Dr. Brown presumably knows that explanatory meaning in science is derived from a falsifiable theory. Such a theory produces unique solutions (predictions) that are so specific, so detailed, and so precisely statistically improbable as to be strictly testable by reference to observations and/or experiment.
Dr. Brown would not surrender that standard in cosmological physics.
And yet, he has abandoned that standard in taking his stand on climate. There is no falsifiable theory of climate. No physical theory exists that can produce unique solutions to the climate energy-state or unique predictions about the behavior of climate.
In taking his position on AGW, Dr. Brown has done what virtually every single physical scientist has done, who likewise claims belief in human-caused global warming. Dr. Brown has abandoned the standard of science.
There is some blindness-inducing aspect of AGW that causes otherwise well-trained scientists to go completely overboard and to abandon in climatology the very standard they would fiercely defend in their own field.
This behavior is mind-numbing in its paradox, and shows the compelling power of political thinking. It causes people to not only become irrational but, as in Dr. Brown’s case, to decorate the irrational with the ostensibly rational. Bad choices are made to seem good.
Steven Weinberg’s observation about religion as the only system that causes good people to do bad things can now be evidentially extended to AGW-assertionism.
And if Dr. Brown is reading this, I’ll ask him: when have you ever seen a climate projection published with physically valid confidence intervals?
“Physically valid” means CIs that convey predictive accuracy, rather than just precision about a modeled mean.
A hint for other readers: the answer is never.
Dr. Brown is staking his views on model projections that have never, ever been assessed for physical reliability. Except for here; extended if my formal paper gets published.
I think it proves that they can’t accept the facts and don’t want their readers to be given a different point of view. Just more evidence that they are very unsure of their ground.
Let’s face it if they were confident they would be happy to print Jennifer’s response and hopefully ( in their view) she would expose her limited understanding for all to see. Like their ABC Fairfax is indeed a first class joke. But more strength to the Australian’s arm for publishing info on the BOM and Jennifer’s ( and others like Ken Stewart’s etc) hard work.
Best wishes Jen. We know who are the ones really in denial. Their ship is leaking.
I don’t mind if the Fairfax press publishes the opinions of, say, David Jones in 2009…
“David Jones, the head of the bureau’s National Climate Centre, said there was some risk of a worsening El Nino event this year, but it was more likely to arrive in 2010 or 2011.”
But it would be nice to see it re-published prominently along with this later text from Mr Jones own BoM:
“The 2010–12 La Niña event consisted of two peaks over successive summers; the 2010–11 peak was one of the strongest on record”
But perhaps Fairfax are just plucky amateurs, and we expect too much of them.
Hi Jen,
It would seem that your Michael Brown is studying how galaxies get to come and go, by observation.
He seems to have an interest in astrophysics , but it appears, not professionally.
I think Michael is throwing stones from a very thin glass house.
It may not even be impolite of you, to have a serious shot at him and his opinion based science, in some other publication.
He is neither qualified to give opinions on you, nor the Australian weather.
He IS an interested amateur.
Michael Brown preaching to the choir complete with hockey stick and insults to the fore:
https://theconversation.com/what-i-learned-from-debating-science-with-trolls-30514
What a guy! What a scientist!
The same holds for their comments section – they won’t publish any comment that questions the veracity of the facts in a story.
Not an indicator of confident journalism.
Just checked out his article, SD. Hockeysticks, bushfire danger indices…Michael was born to the superficial.
What about that big picture of Princeton in the middle of his article to illustrate where some contrarians come from. Huh? Did they run out of polar bears?
Of course, like the Posh Left which bred them, the Conversation staff are ferocious snobs, so maybe they just like looking at Ivy League buildings.
What breaks my heart is that we paying for this trashy dogmatism masquerading as a “conversation” through university and CSIRO funding.
Genuine scholarship and innovation are going to take a huge hit from from all this. We should be merciless in our criticism of the klimatariat. Think of the valuable infrastructure we don’t have, the useful alternative energy we don’t have, the improvements to meteorology we don’t have. Where are our new dams, our nukes, our new gen coal plants? Billions gone on toy tech and subsidy scams.
Gloves off, I say.
Robert, you’re spot on with the “con”.
But how do these people get so much traction with their ideoscience?
You get the impression we could be in the middle of another ice age and the penny still would not drop.
@spangled drongo
“But how do these people get so much traction with their ideoscience”
Simple, they have access to “proper” newspapers and science publication.
No matter how much we wish it was otherwise Joe public still trusts a newspaper or radio/Tv far more than they trust blogs.
Besides how many ppl actually visit blog sites? Numerically maybe a lot but %wise very few.
And these are people who are interested and fairly knowledgeable on the subject anyway
Blogs preach to the converted whichever side you happen to be on.
It doesn’t help either that there is an incredible amount rubbish on the internet, be it conspiracy based or other.
Tends to put ppl. off.
Yes, JW but somehow you get the feeling that ~ half the people in western economies just believe it because it suits their lefty, entitlement mentality.
If the AGW push eventually fails because of the bleedin’ obvious [and that would take a long time] they’ll find some other reason to believe.
Brown even looks a bit like RFK ☺.
http://mediaequalizer.com/brian-maloney/2014/09/rfk-jr-jail-those-who-disagree-with-me
We are very fortunate in Australia, we have a scientist that knows everything. That will mean another Nobel Prize, I’m sure…
That scientist is Dr Michael Brown…Unfortunately any scientist ( or lay person) that does not conform with his beliefs on Global Warming is summarily dismissed or called an amateur…..
It certainly does not bode well for science in Australia.
Keep up the great work, Jennifer.
Oh dear, not only did Australia cool over the 20th century (maybe, still work in progress), but the very late 20th century rise in temperatures (that triggered all the headlines) may have been heavily influenced by the roll-out of Automatic Weather Stations.
‘You get the impression we could be in the middle of another ice age and the penny still would not drop.’
Even if hell freezes over, they will still deny. We may have to accept Fairfax as the voice of unreason on climate change because of their left wing bias, with the Murdoch stable the ultimate winners.
It would be interesting to know if the Fairfax board is orchestrating this ‘sin of omission’ to keep their green/left audience.
With David Cameron saying that questioning government policy is Terrorism and Obama saying the UN will force its member countries to buy into the Global Warming mantra and any dissent is an act of Terrorism. Something is very wrong in this World.
Dear Dr Jennifer Marohasy’s I’ve been following your thorough expose with fascination as to how the BOM have got away with this. Skin deep (or zero), analysis by the SMH similarly follows that of the ABC’s sensationalist reporting of Australian “temperature” increases a few months back from the BOM. I should not be surprised as I sold all my Fairfax shares a few years back when they were 5x the current value and any decent journo’s they once had, have since been let go as they go further into the red. I wouldn’t hold your breath about Julian Disney & his cohorts at the Press Council holding to the SMH to account though, as evidenced by the recent concerns from The Australian about their sinister “press control” of free press opinions. As a chemical engineer (where heat and mass control were our fundamental building blocks), & with 30 years business experience I read with interest the recent “Degree of uncertainty” by Steven Kinon and thought how gullible the public has been to the plethora of “so called scientists” that influence the Public through uncritical media like the ABC & SMH. Keep on keeping on girl as true science will ultimately prevail here……regards JB.
Just a note of support. Going through the press council is a good route. At the very least they will need to respond, when they do, you can respond in full and in detail. At worse you will waste their time, at best you will force a concession. Your basic points are very simple, your published articles are backed by the available data and historic sources and Dr. Brown should not have resorted to personal attacks. Keep up the good work.
Media in most countries seems to be firmly under control of alarmists. Their most commonly used tactic is to simply deny skeptics any voice. Your experience is an obvious and egregious example of standard operating procedure in the US, much of Europe and the UK.Keep pushing forward. Never, never never surrender.
RE: “Evidence and transparency is important in science”
Appreciating your good and thoughtful reasoning, as your concern that “we have reached a stage where consensus is driving the science, rather than science shaping the consensus.” But if the critics about the way sciences uses the term climate at: http://www.whatisclimate.com/
has any merits, any consensus may turn out as rubbish.
Back to the future at home of “Academic Rigour”, 30 Sept, 2014, thecon …
“2013 was Australia’s hottest year on record, but how much of that was due to human-caused climate change?
Today scientists publish five research papers that reveal the extent of human influence on Australia’s extreme climate conditions in 2013. The papers are published in the latest issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.”
Australia had a carbon(sic) tax yet it was still the hottest?
Take heart. The first comment demonstrates how much Marohasy/Stewart has rattled their climate quackery.
https://theconversation.com/human-hands-are-all-over-australias-hottest-ever-year-32267
Further on the latest conversation link above.
https://theconversation.com/human-hands-are-all-over-australias-hottest-ever-year-32267
They claim the bush fires in October 2013 are evidence of man made Global Warming.
Well, they are correct, that is, the fire was caused by ‘man’:
“SYDNEY, Australia, October 23, 2013 (ENS) – Live ordnance training exercises conducted by the Australian Army last week touched off a catastrophic bushfire that has burned
more than 47,000 hectares of bushland, a New South Wales Rural Fire Service investigation has determined.”
http://ens-newswire.com/2013/10/23/australian-army-started-bushfire-blazes-climate-also-blamed/
Also, as more snow is now evidence of Doomsday Global Warming, why not mention the snow in October:
http://www.snowatch.com.au/1-7-day-snow-forecast.php
Again, the question:
Where is the evidence of the success of the carbon(sic) tax on stopping catastrophic Global Warming?
Jen, have you seen the 5 chapters about Oz in the Sept 2014 Bulletin of American Meteorological Society?
http://www2.ametsoc.org/ams/assets/File/publications/BAMS_EEE_2013_Full_Report.pdf
The Australian Research Council Climate team has contributed and it looks like the BOM’s ‘hottest year ever’ is the foundation claim – we have got to get BOM to:
– include the 19th Century temps into their formal records and
– stop homogenising data that doesn’t need to be homogenised.
What can I do to help?
Good luck Jennifer.
Great comment Pat Frank.
Brown is a serial offender; he writes regularly for The Conversation and is implacably rude and condescending towards sceptics; in his manner and comments he is rather similar to Sheldon Cooper.
This is why the BoM does homogenization.
I predict that the ABC ET al will trumpet that the two last days of September for Sydney this year were the two hottest consecutive days on record.
Yesterday was 32.9C and today was 33.5C.
In Sep 1965, there were two hot consecutive days – 31.9C and 34.6C. These were the raw temps and thus 1965 was just warmer than this year.
However, ACORN has adjusted both 1965 temps down by some 0.7C each.
Now anyone would think the Sydney Obs would have had extremely reliable thermometers and meticulous accounting in those days – and there would have been no station moves. So why the huge downward adjustment?
This is how they fool the public.
Since the temps today have not been subject to the homogenisation process, then we must compare raw with raw to be able to make any claim of records.
As Pat Frank notes, there is NO FALSIFIABLE THEORY of CLIMATE …
though a hot spot in the troposphere was predicted, though positive
feedback in sync with CO2 increasing emissions was predicted, these
are conveniently forgotten or homogenized because the dogma trumps
observation, it is the ‘noble lie’ necessary in cli-sci for ‘noble ends.’ (
I just ran the figures for Richmond RAAF as it is also an ACORN station. The BoM adjusted Richmond down by only 0.1C for the 1965 Sep consecutive day records. So 0.7C for Sydney Obs, only 0.1C for Richmond.
Unbelievable!!
We copped that September heatwave up on the midcoast in 1965: five consecutive days over 30 and averaging around 35. Nothing at all like it since. Given the heat of the last few days has been high but not over 30 here, do I assume the planet is cooling?
Ian, the Observatory does seem to be rather a toasty spot these days, doesn’t it?
Jennifer,
Thank you for defending the true spirit of scientific research and inquiry. Those who oppose the publication of your response appear to believe that Science must strictly conform to politically correct dogma.
Who reads the Sydney Morning thingo anyway?
Pat Frank,
“Dr. Brown would not surrender that standard in cosmological physics.”
Actually, very little in Cosmology is based on falsifiable science. They are theories based on observations at the extreme of our instruments and are interpreted based on Consensus beliefs.
Take solar physics for example. The PROOF, given us by these men, that nuclear fusion is actually the driver of the sun’s output is based on a particle that is extremely difficult to detect Whether this particle is the one that actually proves their claim or is something else is unprovable. They make assertions and we are supposed to say “thank you awesome oracle, er, scientist, have some more money!!”
http://www.ps.uci.edu/~superk/neutrino.html
The anger and vitriol of the warmist fellow travellers is astonishing if it weren’t for their fervent belief that they are the would-be saviours of the planet.
The Noble Cause of Climate Change/Global Warming/CAGW is as dangerous as the anti-Semitism, anti-Black, anti-Protestant, anti-Catholic, ethnic tribalism of the past. Were there, today, social structures that encourage jailing, exiling, whipping, stoning or executing dissenters of the Royal Court, we would be running for our lives.
And all because we have the temerity to say that statistical manipulations have made a minor observation stronger than true-to-the-facts, and that computer models are not, based on comparison to observation, looking accurate enough to deep-six the fundamentals of our civilization.
The loss of religion in the everyday life has led to a delusional grasp of eco-green ideology as a means to self-meaning and societal value.
kuhnkat @ October 1, at 11:09 am,
How many physicists does it take to change a light globe (bulb)?
Two; one to hold the globe and one to rotate the universe, but I’m not sure which universe. Is it currently up to eleven of them in parallel? Oh, and bayonet fitting versus screw fitting, depending on region? I dunno, it may be too hard even for a physicist
Ian George September 30,at 5:30 pm,
Ian you wrote:
“…In Sep 1965, there were two hot consecutive days – 31.9C and 34.6C. These were the raw temps and thus 1965 was just warmer than this year.
However, ACORN has adjusted both 1965 temps down by some 0.7C each.
Now anyone would think the Sydney Obs would have had extremely reliable thermometers and meticulous accounting in those days…”
I think it is important that you or one of your colleagues ask a very specific question of the BoM to explain why. I already have big broader questions with them on clearly corrupted data and would rather not take it on personally. Even if they evade response, that in itself is a reportable item!
cohenite September 30, at 12:02 pm
Yes Cohers,
All that nasty brown stuff, comes from astronomer Brown, who as far as I can see has done little or no research into the BoM and yet describes Jennifer, who definitely has, as an amateur for doing so, despite her qualifications and strong environmental leanings. (And also partnered with a scientist; John Abbot)
John @ September 29, at 5:29 pm
John,
Yep, I’m sure you were joking, but when you wrote the following, perhaps you should have used the ending: /sarc (which hopefully he would understand).
“We are very fortunate in Australia, we have a scientist that knows everything. That will mean another Nobel Prize, I’m sure…
I’m not to sure that he who issues brown stuff is all that bright, and he may take you seriously and be encouraged.
Given the quality of people who are hailed as ‘scientists’ these days, I’d be inclined to got with the ‘plucky amateur’ title.
Are your readers aware that The Sydney Morning Herald, the paper whose reputation has been built on non-biased and factual reporting by it’s many journalists over 100 years, is by the admission of it’s Letter’s Editor no longer publishing letters which contain opinions contrary to that of the ludicrous “Consensus”.
This statement was contained in the “Postscripts” column in a Saturday’s issue several months back.
If Michael Brown has a Ph.D. in Cosmology, he obviously hasn’t yet read “The Neglected Sun” by Professor Fritz Varenholt and Dr. Sebastion Luning. The book is into it’s third print run and without doubt is recommended reading.
I have discovered that of 69 locations throughout Australia, representing 828 monthly records only 10.75% of those locations/months have a “Hottest Month” record for the year 2013, which were predominately in September of that year.
Additionally January 2013, was claimed as the “Hottest Month” on record throughout Australia. This a blatant distortion of the truth, in actual fact only 12 of those 69 locations recorded January as a record breaking year.
Who is going to be the first pseudo “climate change expert” to step up and confess that perhaps their modelling is incorrect. But then perhaps they are already so securely ensconced in “belief” it is impossible to retreat.
More strength to your arm in the struggle against the Forces of Darkness and Evil. The ABC, Fairfax and their subsidiaries are the ones in denial of the facts of Nature. Nature is a hard task-master and in the end all submit to her bidding. You will be shown, by Nature, to have corrected their mistakes and misrepresentations for them.
>”I’ve just lodged a complaint with the Australian Press Council.”
I’m sure you will report their opinion and I look forward to reading it. I don’t know the process in OZ but Online Media Standards Authority in NZ (there’s also a Press Council) requires a response from the publisher. I and Mike Jowsey tried this avenue vs Radio New Zealand here:
http://www.omsa.co.nz/decisions/page/2/
Not successful but in my case:
“While the Committee ruled to not uphold the complaint, it noted for future reference that it was important that headlines conformed to the Code of Standards along with the text in news and current affairs content. In the Committee’s view, the need for care with headlines is particularly relevant in an online environment, where those browsing news and current affairs content may only view the headline in the first instance.”
Full decision for my complaint: http://www.omsa.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/Decision-OMSA13003.pdf
The headline was “Climate deniers ordered to pay court costs”.
At least Radio NZ had to think about what they wrote then and what they will write in the future.