Our next Prime Minister does not believe in Climate Change, an Australian Republic, equality for women, fairness in taxation, the rights of the disposed or afflicted to seek another country or any other worthy cause.

Yet we will elect him in September. What does that say about Australia?

I’ve not had many but in the aftermath of such an event, driving feels much more dangerous. The question then is how much is my prang random? If for example, the speed limit has recently gone up, or vehicle standards have been relaxed, it may well be that my heightened fear is valid because the risk has changed and my prang is not truly random.

But if the motoring environment is exactly the same as it was before my prang, then my heightened fear is driven by my visceral experience, not by a real increase in road danger.

The problem with the Climate Cult is that such scientific questions do not fit into the propaganda campaign that is underway. Facts and truth are not particularly relevant, whereas I believe it is absolutely vital that output from the climate council et al must be scientifically factual, especially as they are claimed to be such.

I actually agree with you about the scientific credibility of the denialist argument but that is not where the damage is being done. It is Flannery, with his unthinking public relations programme that is the real problem here. He is making it up as he goes along and it shows. People’s opinions are influenced by the credibility of the person trying to influence them. The “drought is with us indefinitely” statement has done enormous damage to the scientific authenticity of the data because climate mystics aren’t interested in such boring and cerebral themes as the scientific method, testing hypotheses, statistical analysis et al.

The sceptics would be blown away if the quality of the information from Flannery’s shop and the IPCC was not so politicised and open to influence from non-scientific activists. Let’s face it, people are being asked to radically change their way of life.

And one can’t help feeling that the underlying reason is that such themes would not support the propaganda campaign. Hence the absence of an “Extreme weather event” histogram.

2) Scientists may have a plan to restrict atmospheric carbon to 450 ppm, which they think might limit the world to 2deg warming. China India and the USA are going to blow us all through that target without any help from Australia. When the climate lobby says we have a window of opportunity, thay are l ying. The targets are unachievable and absolutely nothing Australia does will make a difference.

If the climate lobby is right, it’s all over, folks.

When you get a cluster of measurements at the extreme there is evidence that the measurements are not random, that something has changed. For example, I saw an article yesterday that says that younger people are taller than their parents, on average. This means that some factor - diet, electricity, better health care, for example is influencing children’s growth.

With climate, there is powerful and unimpeachable evidence that the world has warmed because of the cluster of high global temperatures in the last 15 years. They are not random.

So the debate has moved on. It’s no longer about whether or not the world is warming. Even Tamas Calderwood acknowledges that the world is warmer today than it was 100 years ago. The debate is now about why it is warmer.

On this matter, the science is less certain. One clear correlation is that there is more carbon in the atmosphere today than there has been for probably 10 million years so there is evidence it is contributing.

But the climate lobby is not talking about that any more. The current rhetoric is about extreme weather events. There is this orchestrated campaign to look out the window at the weather events and say it proves AGW is true. If so, someone should be able to produce a simple bell curve histogram that demonstrates that the extreme weather events we are experiencing today are not random in the same way it has been done for global temperatures.

Your failure to point me to one makes me suspicious that it doesn’t exist.

Eccles, do I take it then that you feel you have an entitlement to the taxes of others (of all political sides)?
There are plenty of low wage non-right wingers who object to paying extra for their electricity just so that Eccles the trendy inner-ciyt leftie can have a couple of ‘right on’ solar cells on his roof which he can admire occasionally from the plane as he jets off to another eco-conference in Tuvalu.
It is not everyone in the country getting something they don’t deserve, it is a small group of self serving idealogies who happen to have latched onto the latest fad and are able to con government for tax money. It won’t last forever and when the tide turns these poxy solar panels will mark houses down as belonging to the parasite class.

This to me is the right-wing of Australian political discourse, encapsulated. This nagging certainty that everyone in the country is getting something they don’t deserve, except for them.

Imagine the traditional bell curve representing normal distribution of events. The peak is in the middle. It is also the average.

Increase the average temperature, but also increase atmospheric water and increase the probability of extreme wind events, because they come hand in hand with temp rise.

The bell curve elongates - its standard distribution increases. Weather extremes of all kinds increase. More extreme high temps, but also some increased low temps. More high winds, but also periods of great calm. And so forth.

Climate change due to rising global average surface temperatures is happening; it is real. It is accompanied by extremes at both ends of the scale.

However, as in the above example, note that globally the number of record high temps is significantly higher than the number of record lows, due to the mean rising.

I hope that by this short essay you will come to understand why it is entirely to be expected that climate change will be associated by such things as the occasional North American cold winter. It stands to reason and is in no way surprising. This, despite the fact that the world is slowly being cooked by its inhabitants.

I have no issue that the world has warmed in the last 50 years. So I can reasonably expect that as Flannery et al are now pointing to extreme weather events and their frequency as proof of cl imate change, there will be a study, a statistical anal ysis that shows recent events to be non random with a high confidence level.

Maybe you could point me to the study that supports the new improved extreme weather event narrative?

One thing is absolutel y true. Extreme weather reporting has grown massivel y when you appl y the adjective to “reporting”, rather than “weather”.

You guys are beyond parody.

Compete in a free market and let people decide what they want to spend their own money on. Without the AGW scare there will be NO wind industry at all.
Fossil fuels are in no danger of being unable to sell their product and you are living in a strange world if you really believe that they give a toss about any half baked CO2 hoax.

“Most designs follow the wind and are safe in cyclones”
You should be writing for Viz!!

” captive consumers denied a free-market choice”
Yes. That is your only strategy to sell your ridiculous non-viable wind - deny consumers a choice. Nice. Thanks, by the way.

Oh so Queenslands drought prediction is now something to be airbrushed out of history is it Malcolm? Inconvenient truth that Flannerys predictions were rubbish?

If you guys all want solar panels then how about you pay for them yourselves rather than expecting the tax payer or electricity consumer to keep providing handouts. You do realise that eventually other people get sick of paying for your free ride in life, don’t you?

Another good thing would be a theoretical LNP government threaening to bring the country to it’s knees by short term vested interests and thus exposing themselves as the hollow unrepresentative swill that they are. But this second part of my comment is probably wishful thinking. but we’ll see how the next british election goes.

To the rational, the evidence is clear. To the ideologically blinkered, nothing will change their incorrect views.

Andrew Bolt will be dribbling into his porridge and mumbling about how the world is getting colder long after everyone else is utterly terrified by what our carbon burning has wrought.

David, you’re welcome to accompany Mr Bolt, just don’t pretend it’s based on anything more than cheap conservative’s politics to maintain a status quo that must change.

Or we ruin a very nice planet…the only one we have.

There’s a health warning to go with that rag, didn’t you know? It can apparently reduce your IQ.

You need to take care.