Before I begin, I should make a correction to my post of yesterday. Whilst I strongly suspect Caroline Overington to be the author or at least editor of the ‘Cut and Paste’ column in The Australian, I am unable to accurately identify her as such. Therefore, any future observations of this small-minded piece of literary partisanship will NOT focus on Caroline Overington, despite my personal suspicions to the contrary.
After a despicable effort expressing disappointment at the aftermath of Tropical Cyclone Yasi yesterday, it would appear that ‘Cut and Paste’, a mindless, anonymous, editorial op-ed column in the Conservative Express is at it again:
BOM website:
SINCE [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2001 report] there has been a growing number of studies that indicate a consistent signal of fewer tropical cyclones globally in a warmer climate.
To my way of thinking, this sort of thing is outright dishonesty of the worst possible kind, purposely pushing a political and ideological agenda for which this excuse for a newspaper and its editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell, are very well known. Again, after having been exposed yesterday as deliberately cherry-picking the Bureau of Meteorology website article on Tropical Cyclone Trends the author or authors of this odious piece of pseudo-journalism are back at it again, picking the selected eyes out of the very same piece. For the record, here is the entire para from which the above has been selectively chosen:
Since that time there has been a growing number of studies that indicate a consistent signal of fewer tropical cyclones globally in a warmer climate. However, there are significant regional variations in the direction of the changes and these vary between models. Substantial disagreement remains between climate models concerning future changes in tropical cyclone intensity, although the highest resolution models show evidence of an increase in tropical cyclone intensity in a warmer world.
The emphasis & highlighting are mine, to draw the reader’s attention to what has been deliberately avoided so as to portray a specific and erroneous ideological perspective.This is science. The very same science being deplored & decried by these head-in-sand contrarians as inconsistent and inconclusive. Petty, penny-ante, out-of-context deliberate mis-representation of one’s opponent’s written positions can hardly be said to be assisting the proponent’s stance, yet these people persist in continuing to do exactly that. The evidence is available, the science is ‘in’ and while science by its very nature is sceptical, science continues to explore and garner evidence. All the while the contrarian interest seems only concerned with denial, obfuscation and outright lie as a bulwark against its perceived ideological opponents.
For the average conservative #auspol troll, to lie, prevaricate and use logical fallacy is argument du jour, but for a supposedly professional journalistic body, promoting itself as the “flagship national broadsheet newspaper” while presenting Bureau of Meteorology public domain information as anything other than what it is, smacks of not only desperation, but gross dishonesty. This is the overt dumbing down of Australian society – admittedly the more gullible, easily led sectors – so much warned against by progressive thinking sources and a major media outlet is actively engaged in it. It’s deplorable, and not likely to end any time soon, sad to say.