JoNova

A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).

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The silent undercurrent of skepticism

The Spectator gave me an unusual assignment. An open-ended request to gather thoughts over a couple of weeks and note them in a diary. It’s an interesting genre because it brings out messages that might not come to life otherwise. This was printed in the Australian Edition of The Spectator Magazine, out today.

Jo Nova opens her diary

Another friend, Troy, has had that transformation: not from a climate ‘believer’ to ‘sceptic’, but from being only vaguely interested to being hopping mad. Friends like Troy know my husband David and I are sceptical of man-made global warming, and have listened (if only politely). Then one day they’ll call us, suddenly very interested in details of missing upper tropospheric patterns or Vostok Ice core data or some other unlikely topic. It’s always the same pattern — no matter whether they’re an accountant (like Troy), a lawyer, or our high school babysitter. They’ve admitted some doubt in public, and then been shocked at the force of the response. The sneering derision — Oh My God! How could you? — is over the top. It has an extraordinary effect, as if a fuse has been [...]

April 24th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Comments (281)

The ABC — protecting big government from awkward questions

Not to state the bleeding obvious, but there is mammoth legislation on the table — you know the drill: it will change the landscape of the economy, affect every purchase, and eventually, affect our weather too – the whole enchilada. Since it’s so big, you’d be forgiven for thinking that our dedicated public funded broadcaster (the ABC) would leave no stone unturned to make sure that this nationally transformative legislation stacked up. After all, the Australian people pay for the ABC?

If, hypothetically, some major foreign financial houses were going to benefit from the proposed legislation, we could be sure that would set off the red alert at the ABC, they’d be searching high and low for potential conflicts of interest. If a Nobel Prize winning physicist, a professor of atmospheric chemistry, and our former head of Australia’s National Climate Center all held grave fears that the legislation was based on out-of-date, inaccurate science, then the ABC would ferret out these independent views, and make sure that the public at least heard their “take” on the situation. We could count on the ABC to find the whistle blowers who are trying to save the nation from wasting trillions of dollars [...]

April 17th, 2010 | Tags: , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Comments (40)