Mailman,
Kenan Malik, the author of the article in question, seems to be more colourful than most reporters. A candidate for the Red Front, a supporter of free speech, defender of Salman Rushdie and supporter of animal experiments. More of a shit-stirrer than a cookie-cutter Guardian bod. Would have thought they'd have had him on a short leash. Maybe next time.

Enjoyed this BBC April Fools' prank from the BBC (quite a while ago, when humour wasn't a bad word). Hadn't seen it before and Terry Jones was always good value — probably old hat with you guys.

I see the Guardian Media Group has had to pay out for defaming Douglas Murray today. That one is gonna hurt the left as old Duggy is one detested man by them.

tomo,
Thanks. As you say, there'll be more. Usually good listening, though preaching to the choir.

Neglected to mention our recent media sensation: Cyclone Alfred (the name was changed from Anthony to avoid confusion with our prime minister — a different kind of disaster). It was to hit southern Queensland with powerful effects reaching into NSW. All day Saturday the ABC was running a tag team of its top reporters to give us a blow-by-blow account of the unfolding disaster. Other channels sent their teams too. "Blow-by-blow" turned out to be more or less literal. The moment the "cyclone" hit land, it was downgraded to a "tropical low": moderate winds, fair bit of rain. Nothing much was happening, so the media scrum was rushing to individual trees that had fallen. All rather pathetic.

There has been some flooding, but well short of flooding that happened in 2024.

It's a tricky one for the alarmists. I suspect the BoM, favouring its preferred narrative of catastrophe, hyped Alfred in the first place. Given the predictions, the media (also catastrophillic) had little choice but to send teams to report on a damp squib.

At least they didn't get to faking disaster, but it's too much to hope that they might send a team of reporters to ask the BoM how they could get things so wrong.

Would be interesting to know the economic cost of all the hype.

tomo,
That video comes up as "private" for me.

On the bureaucracy, if the efforts in the USA go well (achieving more than just column inches — or column metres), maybe it'll mark the turning of the tide for the rest of us. Big "maybe".

Meanwhile, some cynical amusement from Wikipedia. I do like the notion of a negative half-life.

Pcar,
Thanks for the link to the Ben Pile article. Sensible, though in the part you quoted, where he more or less says never mind the technicalities, look at the big picture, that's far from a new approach. It's pretty much what Bjorn Lomborg has been doing all along. Hasn't won through I'm afraid.

I think the fundamental problem is that it's not a fair fight. The alarmist position is weak in all dimensions and should be dead already. The "referee" has been bought. But I think the argument that will ultimately win it for us is the utter futility of sacrifice when China's CO2 output is growing many times faster than we can shrink ours.

The main point in that article seemed to be about Ukraine rather than climate. I agree with him that peace should be the first priority. This weakens that point:

And throughout, news media of all kinds have simplified a very complex conflict to abstract moral binaries, dismissing all such observations of how this war developed – a.k.a. history – as ‘pro-Putin’.

IMO, history should be where we learn what worked and what didn't work in the past, with the hope that we avoid future mistakes. Unfortunately, it is *extremely* popular (as in the above) to look through history for grievances so scores can be settled today.

I ridiculed that notion recently in an EconTalk comment (regarding Israel/Gaza) saying that there isn't going to be some formula where you evaluate all the historical wrongs and come out with Ok. You get to kill 844 of our innocent civilians and then we'll be all square.

.,
Much has changed in Britain over the decades, so it's nice to see that public inquiries still do their job as well as ever.

Matt Ridley on the "Covid Day of Reflection"

tomo,
That thread says that the Met Office operates as a trading fund — handling its own revenues and expenses outside the government's main budget — but it's just a lie isn't it? What percentage of its supposed revenue is voluntary private payment?

To the main topic of that thread: Steve McIntyre used to talk about the legal repercussions of faking mining assays, contrasting that with what Mann and his ilk had been up to. Met Office is doing the same. Academia and "trading funds" aren't held to as high a standard as private companies.

Couple of reasonable reads from comments at Jo Nova's today:

   Roger Pielke Jr describes his ousting from tenured professorship. I only read the first third or so and skimmed the rest. Shades of Brazil. Might be fitting for a DOGElike eye to light on UC Boulder.

   University of Sussex is offering a degree in climate justice. As the author of the article highlights, the degree is a BA, despite being pure BS.