And so after the Royal chucking, it's back to the usual with climate science denialism and immigration on the reptile menu ...

 

It didn't take long for the reptiles to get back to their main game, and that means the pond is also back to usual business, and in particular on to a link noted by an esteemed correspondent...

It was to a story in The Graudian,  Climate scientists first laughed at a ‘bizarre’ campaign against the BoM – then came the harassment.

The lede pretty much says it all Former Bureau of Meteorology staff say claims they deliberately manipulated data to make warming seem worse are being fed by a ‘fever swamp’ of climate denial. 

The fever swamp is of course the IPA, doing for fossil fuels what it did for smoking, and the lizard Oz. 

There was this further note below a meaningless meteorological map... ...As a target for those with an often visceral distrust of the established science of human-caused global heating, the Bureau of Meteorology’s temperature record might be seen as ground zero.

Skipping down the story a bit, it became clear that the lizard Oz was part of ground zero (let's not take away credit due to Sky after dark and loons of the Bolter and Rowan Dean kind):

Marohasy, and the Australian, have claimed the bureau’s methods contradict guidance from the WMO, despite previous studies arguing the contrary.

Did they? Well there was a link, and while the pond refuses to link to the reptiles, it will cheerfully provide a gobbet to save time and trouble ...

Back to the tail end of the story ...

...Dr Anthony Rea, a director at the WMO, says the organisation does not audit members but does produce guidelines “and members can implement these in different ways depending on their specific requirements”.

He says: “No measurement is perfect, the bureau’s temperature measurements included, but we all know there are multiple lines of evidence proving that global temperatures are rising, from satellites to ocean buoys to deep sea profilers. All evidence points in the same direction.”

Marohasy says her own analysis of three years of Brisbane airport temperature data shows automatic thermometers record warmer temperatures than parallel mercury probes 41% of the time and are cooler 26% of the time. This, she argues, means “future new record hot days could be a consequence of the probe rather than global warming”.

But scientists and the bureau say it was never possible – and it was never claimed by them – that mercury probes recorded the exact same temperatures as automatic probes.

The bureau has analysed the same Brisbane data, finding the maximum daily temperatures recorded manually by the “liquid-in-glass” mercury probes were on average only 0.02C cooler than automatic probes across three years. For minimum daily temperatures, the manual probes were 0.02C warmer than the automatic probes.

A bureau statement said: “There is no significant systematic difference in maximum and minimum temperatures, or the [daily] temperature range, or the effective response time of measurement, observed using mercury thermometers compared with platinum resistance probes.”

Gallant says: “I don’t even know what [the sceptics] are trying to highlight. That there are differences in measurements? We know that already and we take that into account.

“Some people might ask why can’t the temperature record be scrutinised? Scrutiny is part of the scientific process, but [critics] never put their findings into reputable peer-reviewed journals. The bureau has done this. Scientists have done this, and they all show the same thing.

“It’s just someone’s opinion until it’s published. That’s why I would argue this is harassment. They need to put up or shut up.”

The Guardian sent questions to The Australian, but did not receive a response.

Sad to say, the chances of getting a meaningful response is beyond zero and off to infinity, because that's a key part of the reptile game ... implausible deniability by keeping mum when it matters ...

IPA and climate denialist hack Marohasy did at least attempt a response ... it's all BOM's fault ...

In an 11-page response to questions, Marohasy defended her claims and said she intended to publish responses to the work of Ayers and to publish details of her current work on mercury probes with her IPA colleague, Dr John Abbot.

She said it was true that she had “pursued this issue with the bureau and some members of its staff for close to a decade”, adding: “But if they had acknowledged the genuine issue and the public interest in sharing the data, in say, 2015, we could have moved on.”

“There has been no harassment on our part,” she said. Because the bureau had initially refused to release the Brisbane data from mercury probes, leaving her and Abbot to resort to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to get the information, “the harassment, obstruction and misinformation has been by the bureau”.

Always blame the victim, and yet earlier in the story ...

...Dr Greg Ayers, a former director of the bureau and leading CSIRO atmospheric scientist, has written four peer-reviewed papers testing claims made by sceptics.

In one paper, Ayers, who left the bureau 13 years ago, compared the Acorn-Sat warming trend with four other international data sets that use weather balloons, satellites and raw data from the bureau. In all cases, Ayers found a comparable warming trend.

One longstanding bureau critic is Dr Jennifer Marohasy of the rightwing Institute of Public Affairs – the Melbourne-based group that has been a central cog in attempts to deny or undermine human-caused climate change in the eyes of the public since the 1990s.

For several years, Marohasy has claimed the bureau’s practice of taking automatic measurements from the final second of each minute breached guidelines from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization, which recommends temperatures should be averaged over a minute.

But Ayers and the bureau say the response time of its automatic probes means the recorded measurement is effectively an average of the temperature over the previous 40 seconds to 80s.

In another study, Ayers examined if the bureau’s recording method could generate a bias towards higher temperatures.

Ayers took all the data recorded at two locations to see if taking extra readings across a minute made any difference to the temperatures recorded. While tiny differences were found, the study concluded the bureau’s method was “not at risk of bias”.

And why should any of this matter? 

Well along with being unable to let the real Queen go for the faux King Chuck, there came this abomination this morning, an abomination routinely offered up on a Monday ...

Yep, the Caterist was at it again, gas was in the news, and the unbearable Bearup was also at it again, and what stuck in the pond's craw was that taxpayer money, courtesy the federal government, was enabling the Caterist. 

Good times for quarry floodwater whisperers, good times for implausible climate science denialism ... (refer here to Vietnam and to the ACT, thanks to the esteemed correspondent) ...

For those who came in late, Broad is the loon who resigned soon after Labor came into office, because he knew his cost-hiding big budget blow-out game was up ... ABC the yarn here. (That's what happens when you peddle Malware and it gets into a system and fucks it up and next thing you know there's a Russian on the line).

As for bullshit, is there anyone better at it than the floodwaters in quarries whisperer?

At this point, there might be a stray innocent wandering past and wondering what the Caterist solution might be?

It's simple: troll the libs by nuking the country ...

The pond has been down the SMR path so many times before, together with other assorted plans to nuke the country, and the cost benefits and comparisons therein, and can't be bothered to do it all again, but instead is content to point out that the best reptile ploy in support of the Caterist is to run a funny shot of Albo looking kinda funny ...

Oh just fuck off to a quarry, and leave the pond in peace, and for those wondering why the pond is impatient, it wasn't so long ago that the Caterist was advising that climate science wasn't a thing, there wasn't a problem, and nothing need be done about it, before discovering that the best way to troll the libs was to propose nuking the country ...

Meanwhile, a special word for the lizard Oz editorialist, doing what the Major would usually be doing ...

Ah, the bloody ABC ... not that the pond can comment, because the pond watched not a whit or a jot of any of the coverage by anyone at any time ...

So the arse lickers, subscription hunt over, are suddenly republicans again? What a bunch of wankers ...

But if the Major wasn't getting agitated about the ABC, what was he up to this day? The pond realises no one probably cares, but it's the pond's duty to contemplate the mystical thinking provoked by ancient realms and reptiles of the Major Mitchell kind ...

By golly, did the Major run this past Dame Groan?

Devotees of a jolly good Groaning will remember Dame Groan from many past hits, such as this one, not so very long ago ...

And so on and so endlessly forth, and yet the Major seems unaware - oblivious  might be the word the pond is looking for - of past bashing of immigration, led by the Groaner, but not limited to her weekly groaning ...

Migrant bashing, up there with snake-bashing on The Simpsons, has always been a favourite reptile sport ...

But what of the Groaner and her weekly groaning? So many offerings, so little time, so many reminders ... (and even worse they seem to be wearing masks) ...

The pond could go on endlessly, as Dame Groan herself has done, but it seems that the Major is oblivious ...

Uh huh. The pond will wait for the next groaning - perhaps even tomorrow - to sort out this sorry mess, and must rush through the final Major gobbet, because there's a Killer on the road, his brain is squirming like a toad, like a dog without a bone, like an actor out on loan, like a rider on the storm ... and the pond must find space to give that man a ride...

Unfair racism accusations? Unfair? Says it all really, and so to that Killer on the loose, and whaddya know, he's also on about immigration, and that's why the pond had to find room ...

Somewhat in perspective? You can win elections with racism and you can target audiences after dark with racism, but the pond must hurry on because for all the benign words offered up in a Konsoling way by the Kindly Killer, a hard rain will eventually fall ...

Yes, yes, the pond knows that it promised a hard rain, but first there's another quick gobbet ...

But what about that hard rain? Ah, here the Killer sees hope for the mutton Dutton and Sky after dark and an endless keening, whining, and it goes without saying, constant groaning about persky, difficult uppity furriners ...

All's well that ends well, and thank the long absent lord that for all his talk of economic growth, Killer sees a splendid future for Dame Groan and the reptiles and the mutton Dutton and the rest of the pack,  karrying on and kavorting with more killer toxic blowback ...

And after that, what next for the reptile rage machine, what next by way of angertainment? 

The immortal Rowe offers up a preview ...