I know what it feels like to be ‘cancelled’, over and over. Even before that became something that was talked about. So, I am particularly grateful for my blog, and also my MailChimp.
I don’t email to everyone on the MailChimp list as regularly as I should, and many complain that my maybe once-monthly emails go straight to their spam, even though they have my address in their contacts, etcetera. But all I can do is try. And so I sent out an email again this morning, to try and alert everyone to Mark Steyn’s defamation trail and provide links so they can follow along.
So many have tried to cancel Mark Steyn over the years, but he persists.
My email advertising his trial is reproduced below. Before you read it, you might consider SUBSCRIBING HERE, and keep checking your spam, and make my j.marohasy at climatelab.com.au one of your contacts.
My first film, ‘Beige Reef’ is about persisting, CLICK HERE. I make this comment near the very end. About the importance of being acknowledged, and also about the importance of persisting if you care about the truth and about nature.
WHAT I WROTE THIS MORNING, TO THOSE ALREADY SUBSCRIBED:
I have been busy, and I have been meaning to send out an update to keep you in the loop. It is now important, so that you can follow along with the defamation trial against Mark Steyn. Information and links in my most recent blog post, CLICK HERE.
As I explain in that post, what Mark Steyn and I have in common is a desire for historical temperature reconstructions to be accurate.
We have both been trying to make this point, in different ways, for over a decade. That the defamation action against Steyn, for characterising Michael E. Mann’s infamous hockey stick that misrepresents the last 1,000 years of northern hemisphere temperatures as a ‘fraud’, is now, finally, after 12 years, going to court, is very significant.
This defamation trial is likely to continue for two weeks.
In Mark Steyn’s opening remarks he characterised Michael E. Mann as a ‘vicious blowhard’ borrowing, I think, language from Twitter. Of course, it is at Twitter where Mann spends most of his time – bullying and harassing, I am quoting from Mark Steyn, again.
It is interesting that this trial is being given two weeks. I remember being asked to explain all of this in less than three minutes by an IPA colleague some years ago. I remember at the time that he, or it might have been his sidekick, then sent me a link to something by Jordon Peterson that went for more than an hour. Then again so many conservatives are much happier listening to the virtues of free speech, rather than being asked to think in any depth about the important components of an accurate historical temperature reconstruction. Mark Steyn is an exception in this regard.
Early in 2020, when it was apparent that the world would be swept by a global pandemic, at least one of my colleagues at the IPA commented that maybe this will give us all some relief from the topic of climate change – a topic he never felt particularly comfortable with.
More recently, leading conservatives have attempted to replace any discussion of causes of climate change with advocacy for nuclear power. I’m not against nuclear power, but I would have thought that backing a particular solution to a non-existent problem potentially fraught. Mark Steyn might agree, and this defamation case against him, whatever the outcome is likely to only further expose this ulcer that no amount of denial will make go away.
You see, it is the case that carbon dioxide is not a problem, but floods and drought are, and have been for a very long time.
There is a need to be able to accurately characterise these phenomena, and ideally to be able to forecast them with some degree of accuracy, as I have been explaining for some time, including with all my work showing the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to monthly rainfall forecasting for locations across the landmass of Australia – for anyway with long historical temperature and rainfall data series. I will list my research papers on this topic at the very end of this email.
I saw there was an article in The Guardian on the weekend suggesting that maybe there was opportunity for better weather forecasting by using AI.
It was sent to me by someone commiserating that my decade long efforts with John Abbot might be acknowledged and sifted through for some insights, including into why we have experienced such a wet El Nino here in Australia. Instead, my colleague Peter Ridd, for whom I dedicated so much time and effort over so many years comes out with an opinion article in The Australian congratulating the Bureau on their forecasts. I’ve made comment on all of this in a recent blog post, CLICK HERE. And I’ve filed The Guardian article as a comment in the thread that follows.
Some years ago I tried to generate some support to expand this rainfall forecasting effort with John Abbot, to add to the funding from the B.Macfie Family Foundation. One Melbourne-based financial whizz, who I went to seeking financial support, commented to me that if our AI-based forecasting technique was so good, it would already have been developed by a team at Harvard University. I queried, ‘Harvard?’ He repeated, ‘Harvard’.
Everything I thought to say at that moment I knew to be potentially offensive, and so I said nothing.
You see, I’ve never known conservatives to be much in favour of freedom of speech, except when there is an apparent political advantage.
Was it Frederick Hayek who wrote, conservatives fear change and socialists want to control change, so they have much in common – and so both are potentially enemies of innovation, and I would also argue freedom.
Freedom of speech is not absolute. It is always limited by a whole range of things, including defamation but here’s hoping Mark Steyn wins.
Thanks for reading this far.
Best regards,
Dr Jennifer Marohasy
PS. And there is much more to read across at my blog including photographs of the recent highest tide for the year day in Noosa National Park, CLICK HERE
The feature image at the very top of this note, is of an apple stuck on the end of a truncated banana photographed in my kitchen, and is reproduced here from a blog post I did many years ago, that Mark Steyn has extensively quoted from, CLICK HERE.
A LIST OF TECHNICAL JOURNAL ARTICLES BY ABBOT AND MAROHASY ON WEATHER AND CLIMATE FORECASTING AND RELATED MATTERS
Abbot, J. & Marohasy J. 2017. The application of machine learning for evaluating anthropogenic versus natural climate change, GeoResJ, Volume 14, Pages 36-46.
Abbot, J. & Marohasy, J. 2017. Skilful rainfall forecasts from artificial neural networks with long duration series and single-month optimisation, Atmospheric Research, Volume 197, Pages 289-299. DOI10.1016/j.atmosres.2017.07.01
Abbot, J. & Marohasy, J. 2017. Forecasting extreme monthly rainfall events in regions of Queensland, Australia, using artificial neural networks. International Journal of Sustainable Development & Planning, Volume 12, Pages 1117-1131.DOI 10.2495/SDP-V12-N7-1117-1131. (Open access.)
Abbot, J. & Marohasy, J. 2017. Application of artificial neural networks to forecasting monthly rainfall one year in advance for locations within the Murray Darling Basin, Australia, International Journal of Sustainable Development & Planning. Volume 12, Pages 1282-1298. DOI 10.2495/SDP-V12-N8-1282-1298.
Abbot, J. & Marohasy, J. 2016. Forecasting monthly rainfall in the Bowen Basin of Queensland, Australia, using neural networks with Nino indices. In AI 2016: Advances in Artificial Intelligence, Eds. B.H. Kand & Q. Bai. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-50127-7_7.
Abbot, J. & Marohasy, J. 2016. Forecasting monthly rainfall in the Western Australian wheat-belt up to 18-months in advance using artificial neural networks. In AI 2016: Advances in Artificial Intelligence, Eds. B.H. Kand & Q. Bai. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-50127-7_6.
Marohasy, J. & Abbot J. 2016. Southeast Australian Maximum Temperature Trends, 1887–2013: An Evidence-Based Reappraisal. In Evidence-Based Climate Science (Second Edition), Ed. D. Easterbrook. Pages 83-99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-804588-6.00005-7
Marohasy, J. 2016. Temperature change at Rutherglen in south-east Australia, New Climate, http://dx.doi.org/10.22221/nc.2016.001
Marohasy, J. & Abbot, J. 2015. Assessing the quality of eight different maximum temperature time series as inputs when using artificial neural networks to forecast monthly rainfall at Cape Otway, Australia, Atmospheric Research, Volume 166, Pages 141-149. doi: 10.1016/j.atmosres.2015.06.025.
Abbot J. & Marohasy J. 2015. Using artificial intelligence to forecast monthly rainfall under present and future climates for the Bowen Basin, Queensland, Australia, International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning, Volume 10, Issue 1, Pages 66 – 75. DOI: 10.2495/SDP-V10-N1-66-75
Abbot J. & Marohasy J. 2015. Using lagged and forecast climate indices with artificial intelligence to predict monthly rainfall in the Brisbane Catchment, Queensland, Australia, International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning. Volume 10, Issue 1, Pages 29-41.
Abbot J. & Marohasy J., 2015. Improving monthly rainfall forecasts using artificial neural networks and single-month optimisation in the Brisbane Catchment, Queensland, Australia. WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, 196: 3-13.
Abbot J. & Marohasy J., 2015. Forecasting of monthly rainfall in the Murray Darling Basin, Australia: Miles as a case study. WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, 197: 149-159.
Abbot J. & Marohasy J. 2014. Input selection and optimisation for monthly rainfall forecasting in Queensland, Australia, using artificial neural networks. Atmospheric Research, Volume 138, Pages 166-178.
Abbot J. & Marohasy J. 2013. The application of artificial intelligence for monthly rainfall forecasting in the Brisbane Catchment, Queensland, Australia. River Basin Management VII. WIT Press. Editor C.A. Brebbia. Pages 125-135.
Abbot J. & Marohasy J. 2013. The potential benefits of using artificial intelligence for monthly rainfall forecasting for the Bowen Basin, Queensland, Australia. Water Resources Management VII. WIT Press. Editor C.A. Brebbia. Pages 287-297.
Abbot J., & J. Marohasy, 2012. Application of artificial neural networks to rainfall forecasting in Queensland, Australia. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, Volume 29, Number 4, Pages 717-730. doi: 10.1007/s00376-012-1259-9 .
Ends.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
When my father, also a Landscape Architect got old, he would write to people complaining and pointing out things they had missed. I suggested that he write one positive for every negative letter … I’m trying to follow that advice now. You have been overboard (fun pun) on the positive, with beautiful stories, photos & videos … while at the same time diving deep (I know) into the corruption within your field. Keep at it please; especially about the temperature manipulations, and feed us often with the images of the reefs.
Thanks Paul. Much appreciated.
My favourite author, for many years, was James Michener. I remember parts of the beginning of his novel, Hawaii. “The chance emergence of the island was nothing. But its persistence and patient accumulation of statue were everything. Only by relentless effort did it establish its right to exist…
And I also love his very first book, Fires of Spring. But I’m not sure why.
Mt Marapi erupted in Indonesia on December 4, 2023….(23 hikers killed) ….Cyclone Jasper subsequently intensified and lingered, with major flooding for North Queensland.
Mt Merapi erupted ( circa 7 degrees of Longitude further Southeast of Marapi) last Sunday, January 21, 2024
Queensland (and New South Wales,) now faces another Cyclone threat, that may be even more serious, if the effects of the Mt Merapi eruption,(combined with other recent volcanic activity in a number of Indonesian volcanoes,) exacerbate the precipitation aftermath of this latest (yet un-named) Cyclone.)
Still NO acknowledgement from the BoM,(or anywhere else for that matter,) on the link between volcanism and the subsequent effects on cyclone development and rainfall.