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In a move unprecedented in the democratic world, the Australian Academy of Science is lobbying the tech giants Meta (Facebook), Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and TikTok to censor and harass any Australians who circulate what the Academy insultingly labels “climate denialism misinformation”.[1]
The Academy represents 589 leading scientists and operates as funding/political lobby and trade union for the largely university-based science community. When not disrespecting freedom of speech and crying wolf about climate perils, it does good work promoting Australian science in education and the community.
It wants the Big Tech giants to “inoculate” Australians against critics of alarmism by “actively promoting reliable, peer-reviewed and appropriately labelled material from trusted sources,” presumably the Academy and its followers. “These positive measures should be in addition to measures to reduce the spread of disinformation.”
The Orwellian agenda is in the Academy’s public submission to the tech giants’ 2022 review of the Australian Code of Practice on Misinformation and Disinformation. The Academy made its submission on August 3 in conjunction with the junior group, the Australian Academy of Technology & Engineering.
The Academies wants the tech giants’ power brought to bear against news organisations – it specifically names Rupert Murdoch’s “Sky News Australia and its media personalities”.
Dr Garth Paltridge, who has been a Fellow of the Science Academy for more than 30 years, is shocked that the Academy is turning to Big Tech to shut down climate debate. He tells Quadrant Online: “The bottom line is that research on climate change is indeed still highly controversial – both in the prediction of the extent of the change and (even more so) in the prediction of the impact of the change on society.
“I just cannot understand how any science academy that is supposed to operate through rational debate can behave like this – that is, to use pure political brute force to prevent one side of the argument from putting its case.
“I can only assume that the Academy is subconsciously ‘chasing the money’ and is influenced by the vast funding available these days for the support of alarmist climate research. Certainly there is virtually no money to support scientists brave enough to put their heads above the parapet with a contrary view. That might be why the critical scientists seem largely to be retired.”
The Academies’ submission says,
The Code currently excludes professional news content that is published under a publicly available editorial code, except where a platform determines that specific instances fall within the scope of disinformation. However, some Australian news outlets are havens for climate science misinformation (Lowe, 2018) – so this exclusion undermines the ability of the Code to guard against such denialism.
This exclusion allows climate science denialism and other misinformation to flourish, either through lack of enforcement of the disinformation provision of the Code or failure of news outlets’ misinformation to meet the higher bar of being considered disinformation. For example, a UK report recently found that Sky News Australia and its media personalities are a key source of climate science misinformation globally, including during the late 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) (King, Janulewicz & Arcostanzo, 2022). Clearly, the Code was not sufficient to address the traction of climate misinformation from Sky News Australia during this time.”
A King et al paper Deny, Deceive, Delay which the Academies’ submission cites approvingly, refers to “political right-wing … top influencers” as part of an alleged “intellectual dark web”. The authors name Sky Australia’s Rita Panahi and prominent UK, European and North American sceptics. They condemn Ms Panahi as follows:
Pahani [sic] is an American-born Iranian refugee who became a prominent right-wing media personality in Australia. Starting her media career at the major News Corp newspaper the Herald Sun, Panani [sic] also hosts a show at Sky News Australia. She belongs to a set of presenters at the station that are promoting the most controversial content and platform conspiracy theorists. During COP26, Panahi attacked Prince Charles as the “biggest hypocrite and idiot” and claimed he bullied a hitherto reluctant Australian PM Scott Morrison to attend the summit. Previously, she called climate change “scaremongering” that was not “rooted in hard science.”
It’s curious that Rita Panahi is the only ornery Australian individual actually named in the Academies’ submission and citations. The major damage to the Academies’ catastrophism is being done by Andrew Bolt on Sky, Chris Kenny in The Australian, the Spectator (Australia), Joanne Nova’s world-ranked sceptic blog, the Institute of Public Affairs’ bulletins and speakers, Tim Blair’s blog for the Daily Telegraph (sadly, paywalled), Senators Malcolm Roberts and Pauline Hanson, the Nationals’ ex-Minister Matt Canavan and ex-PM Tony Abbott, famed for calling climate science “absolute crap” and likening climate scientists – presciently – as “thought police”.
All this sceptic output is re-cited and re-published on social media. Clearly the Academies would be delighted to see the media giants slapping “Misinformation!” and “Code Violation!” labels on it, cancelling accounts, as LinkedIn has being doing to US sceptics, and down-ranking the material to oblivion on search engines.
The Science Academy’s chief executive is Anna-Maria Arabia, whose early career included a total of five years as an adviser with Anthony Albanese and Kim Beazley. In a subsequent job as chief executive of Science & Technology Australia, she led a march of 200 members to Parliament in 2011 calling for legislation or similar means to silence global warming sceptics. (at 2.20). She jumped to the Academy leadership in 2016 after three years part-time as policy director for the Opposition Leader Bill Shorten.
Various members of the alleged “ intellectual dark web”, according to the Academies’ cited King paper, include mega-best-selling psychologist Dr Jordan B. Petersen, Danish climate rationalist (but orthodox warmist) Dr Bjorn Lomborg, US investigative author Dinesh D’Souza, Canadian founder of Rebel Media Ezra Levant, US blogger Tony Heller who daily fact-checks alarmist propaganda, Dr Patrick Moore who co-founded Greenpeace but quit over its anti-science campaigns, Michael Shellenberger – another sceptic convert from environmentalist lobbies, Prager University which combats left-wing academia’s brainwashing, US media personality Sebastian Gorka who has perceptively likened climate policy to Stalinism, artist Scott Adams and his Dilbert cartoons, and American Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch and critic of Antifa – justifiably — as a far-Left terror group. The King paper says (p32),
While climate issues are not part of their [conservative pundits] main content strategy, they nevertheless engage in frequent criticism of their respective governments’ environmental policies, attack or ridicule prominent climate activists, or employ narratives outlined in the previous section of this report. During COP26 in particular, they downplayed the climate emergency and amplified accusations of hypocrisy against politicians and other figures attending the Glasgow summit.
Another paper cited approvingly and quoted by the two Academies is a conspiracy rant “The Toxic Ten — How ten fringe publishers fuel 69% of digital climate change denial.” It is published by a fringe leftist group calling itself Center for Countering Digital Hate. Calling the sceptics “fringe” publishers is odd as the Center then says they have 186 million direct followers. The Center’s evil-ten list is Breitbart News, The Western Journal, Newsmax, Townhall, Washington Times (as distinct from leftist Washington Post), The Federalist, hugely popular centre-right commentator Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, The Patriot Post and the Media Research Center. And just to smear sceptics by association, “Russian State Media”.
I am familiar with the US Media Research Center, a well-resourced and incisive critic of America’s Democrat-supporting mainstream media. I read every morning its “Newsbusters” update (damned in the cited paper) which pillories the daily bias in left-liberal print and electronic media. I also tune in regularly to Ben Shapiro’s daily podcasts, which involve per month 20 million visitors, 130 million page views and 40 million downloads. Blocking such outlets would be a huge win for the Left.
The Academies’ cited Toxic Ten paper actually attacks Facebook, Twitter et al for supposed slackness in censoring critics of alarmism, calling them “greedy platforms” sucking in money from fossil fuel interests:
It is the greatest crisis ever faced by our species… We are calling on Facebook and Google to stop promoting and funding climate denial, start labeling it as misinformation, and stop giving the advantages of their enormous platform to lies and misinformation. As long as Facebook and Google carry on doing business with climate deniers, they cannot claim to be ‘green.’ They owe it to us and the planet we all share, to deliver.
The two Academies also want a tech-giant crackdown on any “issues advertising” involving criticism of their net-zero CO2 fantasies and apocalyptic forecasting. A sceptic group called “The Climate Study Group” has paid for about ten ads in The Australian exposing flaws in the climate-apocalyse narrative and the harmful impacts of renewables. It could be the Academy’s target. .
THE Academies also want a crackdown on health information with which it disagrees, notwithstanding that health bureaucrats such as America’s Dr Fauci, Victoria’s Dr Brett Sutton and politicians often change their minds about what COVID science claims are valid. So much for “misinformation”.
The Academies also appear stung by the revelation from the Australian Institute of Marine Science that the Barrier Reef’s coral extent is the highest on record, notwithstanding the Science Academy harping for decades on the Reef’s alleged perilous decline. The Academy now says (my emphasis),
Climate denialism is just one example of how misinformation results in societal harm. Disinformation on health matters (such as false and misleading vaccination, sexual and reproductive health information), or ecological and environmental matters (such as material misrepresenting studies of coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef) are a barrier to good policy and a healthy society.
The Science Academy began life in 1954 as a respected body, but in the past decade has been captured by the green/Left lobby. For example, it displayed its dark-green philosophy and economic illiteracy in 2014 by sponsoring and bankrolling its Fenner conference on an anti-growth theme titled, “Addicted to Growth? How to move to a Steady State Economy in Australia.” The show attracted a host of eco-nutters keen to drag Australian living standards down by 50-90%.[2]
About the same year it dumped on high schoolers a supposed “Science by Doing” course, taxpayer-funded, for 10,000 science teachers and around 60,000 students.
It urged the teachers to shame kids into climate activism:
Ask [15-16 years old] students if they have ever taken action or advocated for a cause. Do they know of anyone who has?”… Key vocabulary: advocacy, campaign, champion, environmentalist.
PLUS lesson outcomes: At the end of this activity students will … appreciate the need to lobby at all levels of government to ignite and lead change – even if it is unpopular with the voters.
PLUS: “If you were concerned about Earth’s sustainability, who would you vote for?”
PLUS: “Could we do without it [mining]?… Would you work for a mining company?”
PLUS: “Students debate the merits of government spending on science. They research six big-systems experiments and justify their funding proposals. Which big experiment will you fund?”
PLUS (in an updated 2018 version): “Scientists let us know all the facts and figures about climate change. They know just how quickly the icebergs are melting, and almost to the day when the Great Barrier Reef will be dead.” [It’s currently at record coral extent]
PLUS: propaganda songs, cartoons of “CO2 elephants” dropping from the sky, featuring of conspiracists like Naomi Oreskes and video rants by alarmists competing with Al Gore to depict the coming apocalypse.
It withdrew the course soon after its public exposure.
The Academy not only fell hook line and sinker for “death threat” nonsense from ANU luvvies some years back, but just last year ran the fauxborigine Bruce Pascoe as its opening plenary speaker at its Future Earth three-day summit called Reimagining Climate Adaptation. Bruce regaled the Academy’s science-friendly audience about how his alleged forebears chatted to whales in Bass Strait circa 12,000BC, before joining their peace-loving cousins in Victoria (shields an optional fashion accessory).
The Academies’ submission shows influencing from the psychologists Drs John Cook and Stephan Lewandowski playbook on how to deal with “deniers” who continually find support among the public. Those two psychologists spent much of their careers at Monash/Queensland and WA Universities respectively, trying to liken climate sceptics to various sorts of lunatic conspirators. Cook was lead author for the 2013 paper claiming a 97 per cent scientific consensus for the orthodox warming hypothesis – though he defined the hypothesis so broadly that the vast majority of sceptics would also agree with it. Cook’s paper on the alleged “97 per cent” was eviscerated in the peer-reviewed science literature by Dr David Legates et al as flawed in every dimension and actually showing only a 0.3% consensus. Another of the Cook-Lewandowsky papers on “deniers” (Recursive Fury) in 2014 was retracted by its hosting journal, Frontiers.
Cook-Lewandowski’s 28-page playbook invented the concept of “inoculating” people against “denialism” by getting in first with orthodox claims. The Academies’ third recommendation uses the same meme:
Platforms should consider mechanisms for proactive promotion of trusted information to inoculate against misinformation.
The Academies’ submission also castigates “anti-scientific” scepticism without any attempt to answer claims by scientists who dispute the orthodoxy – scientists often an order of magnitude more eminent than the Academy executives trying to shut them down.
For example, in mid-2019 ninety leading Italian scientists petitioned the Italian government that the IPCC climate narrative about CO2 warming from human activity was an unproven hypothesis deduced merely from complex computer models. They said natural variability involving the sun, moon and ocean currents can explain most of the warming, and the suppression of fossil-fuel energy is therefore harmful to society.
The petition’s lead authors are below. I am not saying numbers of signatories matter, only disputing the Academy suggestion that sceptics are anti-science nutters:
- Uberto Crescenti, Emeritus Professor of Applied Geology, University G. D’Annunzio, Chieti-Pescara, formerly Rector and President of the Italian Geological Society.
- Giuliano Panza, Professor of Seismology, University of Trieste, Academician of the Lincei and of the National Academy of Sciences, awardee of the 2018 International Award of the American Geophysical Union.
- Alberto Prestininzi, Professor of Applied Geology, La Sapienza University, Rome, formerly Scientific Editor in Chief of the magazine International IJEGE and Director of the Geological Risk Forecasting and Control Research Center.
It’s my speculation that the Academies were emboldened to take their brazen anti-debate stance by the success of Twitter and Facebook in swinging the US 2020 election Biden’s way. The Academy had been appalled by Trump’s disavowal of the Paris 2015 agreement and his rollback of Obama’s anti-emissions regime. The digi-tech giants in the crucial last weeks of the campaign suppressed the corruption revelations from Hunter Biden’s laptop. Facebook was encouraged by the politically corrupted FBI and more than 50 ex-intelligence operatives to falsely label the laptop contents as Russian disinformation. The Washington Post and NYT, six months after Biden’s accession, admitted the contents were authentic.
Oh well, the Academy of Science seems happy now to trash its own credibility. Say what you like, I still insist the Academy does some good work in non-alarmist disciplines.
PS: The submission finishes: To discuss or clarify any aspect of this submission, please contact Mr Peter Derbyshire, ATSE Director of Policy and Government Relations at Peter.Derbyshire@atse.org.au or Mr Chris Anderson, AAS Director of Science Policy at Chris.Anderson@science.org.au.
Tony Thomas’ latest essay collection “Foot Soldier in the Culture Wars” ($29.95) is available from publisher ConnorCourt
[1] The term “Climate denialism” was invented to echo “Holocaust denialism”.
[2] The conference flier read: “Novelist Edward Abbey once noted that ‘Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell’. Our economy is meant to be a ‘servant of society’, not its master, yet is this true today? On a finite planet nothing physical can keep on growing forever – yet that is the ideology of the ‘endless growth’ neoclassical economics that now dominates the thinking of most governments and business. This has led to a rapidly worsening environmental crisis that degrades the nature on which we all depend. We cannot keep avoiding talking about this issue – hence the need for such a conference…”
“All scientists agree …” – after you censor those who don’t.
The UHA satellite data from 1979 till end-July 2022 shows global temperature back to its’ starting point. Although this 40+ year period is a time cherry pick, the actual IPCC definition of climate is the various means of weather ranges over 30 years. The satellite period now exceeds this time span by over 30%, and still we have no measured increase in “global temperatures”.
I expect this will now cause a new definition of climate, designed to avoid this acute fact.
All this in now quite openly recorded, so the insulting smear of “conspiracy” is just another rabid mouthful of spite from the activists.
Thanks Tony we certainly have a Cargo Cult Science academy!
I have never before seen such an outrageous attack on the progress of Science as this article from the Australian Academy of Science. It surely is time for the traditional scientists in the Academy to call out the pressure group within that seeks to inhibit debate. Debate and criticism of the current wisdom are essential components of the Scientific Method.
The AAS references a paper by Ian Lowe, which includes ““The late 1990s saw the beginning of a well-funded campaign by the fossil fuel industry and other vested interests to muddy the water, leading many to believe to this day that the science is still uncertain.”. (I spent decades in the mining industry and never saw money flowing to climate change campaigns.) But, the main point is this: Science relies on measurements, not exclusively, but largely. If Ian Lowe was writing a scientific paper, he would not use guesswork about funding, he would show numbers. I have been on the watch in Australia for actual numbers of dollars the mining industry has contributed in that way and have failed to find any. Maybe, I have not searched and found the right source.
So, unless Ian Lowe can produce figures, one has to regard him as a source of misinformation. Therefore, logically, the AAS finds itself objecting to its own referred sources. How quaint a way to conduct Science!
Geoff S
Dr Paltridge cancelled in three… two…
I agree that it was wrong for Panahi to say of Prince Charles “this man is the world’s biggest hypocrite and idiot” as there are likely bigger hypocrites (Gates, Kerry, Gore spring to my mind as strong challengers but it’s a big field) and while it is uncertain whether she meant “biggest” to also qualify “idiot”, there are certainly even bigger idiots than him.
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Better to say “this man is a huge hypocrite and clearly an idiot”.
In which case we can hear the death knell of the scientific system of enquiry ringing loudly. Science is a system of enquiry. It can only know what it can measure. That does not mean understand and in the measuring there are factors which influence outcomes:
. can the measure be done effectively with the current level of technological expertise?
. who will pay for the measuring and what are their expectations?
. who will make it possible to do the measuring and how objective are they?
. who will do the measuring and how independent are they?
In short, the scientific system of enquiry is only ever a source of theories, not absolute facts, and a system like any other human creation which is influenced and often controlled by vested agendas.
At least such a clear statement of censorship makes it very clear that the scientific system of enquiry is corrupted, subjective and very unscientific.
Oh, that’s right, Code assessable, Box tickers, How convenient, Let’s put these more that below average scientist’s ‘hoax mathematicians’ on real world Observational Performance based approval process and test their nonsense.
Great article, Tony.
Good work again Tony and thank you for all the links.
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If I was in the ruling clique of the AAS I would certainly want you banned from commenting anywhere. Should we more correctly refer to it now as the Australian Academy of Antiscience?
It would appear that despite her academic qualifications (BSc Hons) Anna-Maria Arabia doesn’t understand the fundamental principles of science. The key to good science is the scientific method. This involves a sequential process of observation, formulation of a hypothesis that explains the observation, testing the hypothesis and finally communicating the results to others. All of these steps must be available for review. Without this last step, which often comprises dispute, the process is meaningless and the outcome mere propaganda. It would appear from her actions in attempting to suppress dispute that Ms Arabia prefers the propaganda outcome.
Perhaps a clue to Ms Arabia’s preferences is contained in her employment history. Following graduation, she worked as a medical researcher for five years. This was followed by 9 years as a policy advisor to various ALP politicians partially overlapping with 6 years in executive roles in various scientific advisory bodies. The majority of her employment history has been funded by the taxpayer.
Two things stand out from this career. Firstly an absence of any climate-related experience, although it should be hoped that some understanding of scientific method was applied to her research. The second is that left-wing politics, not scientific research, forms the largest component of her work experience. The conflict between politics and inconvenient science has a long history, the most famous battle being between Galileo and the Church more than 400 years ago. Any scientist should aspire to emulating Galileo and not the Inquisition. In this, like so many other political true believers, Ms Arabia has failed dismally.
Well done Tony Thomas. Perhaps we should not be surprised when a scientist, of her generation, displays such a total lack of understanding of the scientific method. We have schools and universities turning out semi-literate Wokerati who have no knowledge of history, let alone respect.
Who would have thought that the scientific system of enquiry would become the censorious, narrow-minded, religious entity it has so long decried? Actually, anyone who understands the ‘shadow effect’ at work in the human nature would have thought this was bound to happen. That which we condemn in others is that which we deny in ourselves.
Anyone who has raised a bunch of kids will be familiar with the increasing shrillness of the eight-year old with zero self knowledge screaming for the rules of the game be modified and fixed to suit them. The classic sign of recognition dawning that the other kids might be on the correct side of history.
Thanks again Tony
Nine years ago I bet $10 on a certainty: the Climate Con would be mocked out of existence by 30th June 2023. I have begun saving up to pay out …
Just today I received a circular from my local Council announcing a reduction in ‘collection services’ and the supply of a 4th plastic bin (made from fossil-fuel) to save the planet.
The Mayoral letter began with following utterly unbelievable garbage (which is where I had to go to retrieve his letter so I could inform you of why involution has replaced evolution. We have passed the peak as a species and are now regressing rapidly back becoming green pond scum …
‘Today I am writing to you about a new initiative to reduce waste and improve the recycling of disposable materials. At the top of the residents concerns in every survey we have undertaken in the past few years is the threat posed by climate change …’
I could read no more, so I cannot explain to you why the 4th plastic bin will save the planet … but I will view pond scum with much more respect in the future. In fact, it is the future …
It is impossible to out disinformation any government.
In attacking people that actually know sh*t from Shinoa, I find it strange that they didn’t mention http://www.clintel.org, and the climate declaration signed by 1200 people in the know.
Or The Friends of Science in Calgary Alberta, that publishes some of the most factual data on the subject.
It is indeed shameful that we have allowed the Commies to take over academia.
Well said Tony, and all BTL commentators.
Jordan Peterson has said he never attributes to malice what can be ascribed to stupidity.
Given that the AAS comprises supposedly educated individuals, the former must be suspected, though given the standard of contemporary university education, the latter is quite possible.
I agree with everyone above. Thanks Tony.
@gareththomassport,
Jordan Peterson has a way of getting to the very nub of the matter.
In a similar vein I have long been disinclined to so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ having found humans arrogant, ignorant, self-serving, stupid, greedy and hubristic enough to create any kind of chaos without the slightest plan.
The chances of such ‘unintentional’ horrors is dramatically increased with corrupted education, academia and science.
There are clearly very real problems with the practice, teaching and public understanding of ‘science’ in Australia. These have been brilliantly illuminated by the ‘Climate Change’ movement and most recently the ‘Pandemic Response’.
Part of the problem in my view is the overlay of people, not actually engaged in scientific practice or teaching, who make a living by promoting commercial, industrial and political programs that rely on particular scientific ‘information’. Examples might be journalists who cater to one side or other of the climate change debate, or industry leaders promoting carbon reduction or pharmaceuticals. This is where much of the scientific ‘information’ disseminated to the public becomes seriously deficient and distorted,
However there is also a deeper and more disturbing trend. We use ‘respect’ as a buzzword, but we do not accord the views of others the time of day. We hear a lot about the ‘science’ of climate or disease from people pushing an agenda without regard for the whole truth.
Science cannot thrive in a society where basic moral principles have been abandoned. In particular an absolute commitment to telling the truth is essential for science to flourish. For this reason, censorship of scientific discourse cannot be tolerated.
@Stephen Due,
Very well said.
Surely a major part of the problem is that the scientific system of enquiry long ago sold its self and ‘soul’ to Government and corporations and in becoming an industry, profit and power-driven, thereby betrayed the very principles on which it needed to be founded.
There is no independent science in the main and certainly not in allopathic medicine or indeed, in something as profitable as the climate change business. Ethics, morals, integrity, cannot survive when Mammon is the ‘god’ the system serves.
Answer this. If your funding model was totally dependent on receiving grant monies and you knew that successful applications for grants were dependent on your research reaching the outcome desired by the grant body would you a. make sure your research supported the government or b. reported facts that may or may not support the government? Just think of the reaction of the electorate if they knew how they have been screwed because of fraudulent science. Those pseudo scientists at ANU would never get another job if their ineptitude or is it their prostitution was exposed. As it is the ANU should have its funding stopped forthwith. A few years in the real world might sharpen their focus.
Karl Marx put out the idea that whoever had control of the means of production, would thus have control of society/the state. That idea was accurate in an industrial revolution world, but in today’s information-based world, it would be whoever had control of the communications media, that would have control of society
The Australian Academy of Science sounds like “Russian Disinfomation” to me. lol. Simply bollocks.
This woman is not a scientist. She is an activist who has captured an official position in an organisation now held hostage by the universities that are completely overtaken by the false doctrines of Marxist environmentalists. Science comes off second best every time in that milieu.
Well done, Tony, for showing up the background and pathetic referenced ‘sources’ this person offers to push for an Orwellian muzzling of scientific freedom and of democracy itself.
It is high time refuting some of this catastrophism was done by members of the Academy. Wise ones should consider getting out from under before the modelling and catastrophising policies are shown to be as deficient in real-world outcomes as the Covid modelling and policies have been.
Winter is coming in Europe. Do they want to carry the can for this? Good luck with that.
And good on one very brave and clear-eyed woman called Rita Panahi.
Great piece, Tony, thanks.
It’s weird that this attempt to enlist social media giants as green-left censors of evidence on climate is playing out at the very moment Alex Berenson is showing through FOI releases how the Biden Admin successfully bullied Twitter into banning Berenson’s reporting of facts on Covid and the vaccines over-sold as preventing it.
The evils and dangers of social media censorship on Covid are being illustrated at the exact moment the ‘Academy of Science’ is calling for the same policies to be applied to those who use facts to combat climate change hysteria.
This morning, 6am September 1 2022, the AEMO website records power supply categorised:
VIC 78% brown coal/gas, with coal as 70% of supply, wind 0.07%
NSW 94% black coal/gas, with coal as 93% of supply, wind 0.06%
Q’ld 92% black coal/gas, with coal as 83% supply, wind 0.03%
VIC hydro supply is recorded as 0.17%. None of these 3 States record any “battery” input.
Irrespective of cherry picks, or “solar is best at noon”, or “wind will be blowing in the Strzelecki Desert” arm waving, observe how close we are to rationing. The Academy of Science crabwalks this information.
Andrew Bolt commented on this last night in his program on Sky News, defending his criticisms of ‘settled science’ that had turned out to have more substance that the so-called science on which some of the outlandish claims had been made. He also noted that none of the reference group advising this woman were climate scientists, adding that they were being pressured by a particular group who publish their version of climate science (i.e. by an in-group of university climate modellers). Catastrophic, and in particular anthropogenic, climate change is not well-supported by any properly validated real-world evidence so far in spite of the huge amounts of money available for research. Research with a ‘climate’ factor tagged onto it is easily funded – which is perhaps why so many ‘it’s probably due to climate change’ pieces arise in studies that are actually about something else.
One useful thing about the various Covid fiascos is that they demonstrated a real need for a political oversight of the work of so-called ‘experts’ when it comes to policy making, for such claimants tend to push their own barrows and close off all opposition and critique – as we saw with the Covid modellers.
You certainly keep abreast of such affairs far better than I can, Tony.
Your quote in ref [2] from The conference flier aligns with the summary beliefs of many science-based conservationists such as myself. I would be extremely interested if you could expand into a future column your own analysis of this summary.
Ms Arabia appears to advocate an informed debate, but her behaviour runs contrary. A given major science-based policy issue will sometimes turn into a heated sandpit of insult-slinging. For example, in New Zealand the issue of fluoridation had already by 1980 become an arena in which it was ‘OK’ to sling heated insults (almost all from the advocates of fluoridation). The IPCC & related arenas regarding climate have now become approx that bad. I gravely doubt Ms Arabia’s sincerity in her advocacy of what in fact we desperately need – informed debate. My own quaint attitude is that many aspects of climate deserve further debate, and I’d like to observe, and even participate. But in what medium/forum can that occur?
Bravo lbloveday
Stated another way; HRH The Prince of Wales may not be the worlds biggest idiot, but he would have got through the heats and into the semi-finals.
Thank you Tony for being just about the only reporter covering these issues — and for doing it on your own time!