Bookmark recommendation: Bogpaper.com


Add it to your "bog" roll

Add it to your “bog” roll

I recently came across this site, which is an excellent libertarian blog sporting James Delingpole as one of its writers. There are some very entertaining posts appearing on climate, and I would highly recommend paying them a visit.

A couple of recent examples to whet the appetite. Firstly, on conspiracies – highly relevant given Lewandowsky and Cook’s recent papers:

One of the more recent examples of this delusion [that they are “impeccably reasonable folk”] is the Left’s reaction to global warming ‘deniers’, who are accused of facilitating a corporate plot to destroy the planet. Bogpaper’s own James Delingpole is continually described as a shill for Big Oil by hysterical greens; but you don’t have to be a high-profile critic of the environmental movement to provoke its wrath. Anyone who dares to question the end-is-nigh ‘consensus’ is liable to be branded an unwitting collaborator in the capitalist conspiracy.

In the words of Mad Men’s Don Draper, “There is no big lie. There is no system. The universe is indifferent.” Business isn’t out to get you, because it’s easier and more profitable just to give you what you want. Besides, conspiracies require the ability to work beyond the reach of public accountability – a luxury that is hard to come by in the marketplace, where customers are free to walk away at any time. It’s true that corporations are dangerous when they cosy up to the state, but that’s not capitalism, it’s cronyism; and it’s the state that poses the threat in that relationship, not the business that curries favour with it. Government agencies and other unaccountable institutions provide the perfect hiding place for those with dark ambitions. They’re the ones we should be afraid of.

And the regular satirical column, Marx on Mondays, this week on the subject of the IPCC:

Last week when parts of the IPCC’s much heralded “Climate Change Report” were leaked to the press I, as much as any liberal, found myself despairing at some of its findings. No global warming for 16 years; record levels of sea ice; so many polar bears that the UN was proposing a humane cull to limit their numbers; no extreme weather conditions like hurricanes and typhoons – and – worst of all – the computer forecasts were wrong and there was no global warming! I felt like I did when as a child I found out that there was no Santa Claus!

Thank goodness, therefore, for the IPCC – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. When I was a young boy I remember going to the theatre to see Peter Pan. I, along with the rest of the children, became very upset when Tinkerbell was dying, but Peter Pan saved her life by encouraging the audience to chant along with him, “I do – I do – I do believe in fairies.”

And in like fashion the scientists of the IPCC, when faced with the evidence of their own scientific research that Global Warming was the stuff of fairy tales, simply stood in a circle, held hands and chanted, “we do – we do – we do believe in Global Warming.” And miraculously, just like Tinkerbell, Global Warming was brought back to life.

Much more at bogpaper.com.

Live blogroll returns… (kind of)


Blog Roll Returns!

Blog Roll Returns!

I have restored 90% of the functionality of the Live Blog Roll by adding RSS feeds for a dozen or so of the most popular blogs the sidebar on the right. If you hover over the post title, you will get the first few lines of the post. They are in no particular order, apart from the granddaddy of them all, WUWT, being at the top. Unfortunately they won’t be sorted by recency of post as they were on the old blog, but I hope it’s better than nothing.

If anyone can suggest a better option using the WordPress.com platform, please let me know!

Bloggies: ACM wins best Australian & New Zealand Blog!


bloggies_2013

ACM – Best Aussie or NZ Blog!

UPDATE: Watts Up wins best Sci/Tech and Weblog of the Year, Small Dead Animals wins best Canadian Blog, and James Delingpole wins Best Political Blog. Also, Michael Smith won Best-Kept Secret Blog for Michael Smith News. Congratulations all! Commiserations to Jo Nova in Sci/Tech, but with Watts Up out of the picture having now won it three times, maybe next year!

Thank you to my many supporters who voted for ACM in the Bloggies. Having been runner up to Jo Nova last year, her elevation to the Best Science Blog category saw me in with a chance.

It is funny to watch the climate alarmists squirm as sceptical blogs take out many categories. Why don’t they just mobilise their supporters to vote for them, rather than complaining about how the competition is run? Or flouncing off…

Anyway, thanks again!

Simon, ACM

Tinkering with the theme…


A fair few comments about the new theme being too small, which I agree with. So let me have your feedback on this alternative, which I think is far clearer.

Thanks for your patience while we get this right!

Simon

Migration complete


A few teething troubles!

A few teething troubles!

After a number of teething troubles, we are now back online at WordPress.com. As before it will take a while for the DNS settings to propagate, and the site can also be reached at:

australianclimatemadness.wordpress.com

which will be more reliable over the next few days.

Thank you for your patience during this process!

Bloggies 2013


Cook takes his bat and ball home...

Not playing any more…

Thanks to everyone who nominated this blog again for the Bloggies – this time without any cajoling from me. Now Jo Nova’s been kicked upstairs, as it were, to the Best Science Blog category, I guess I may be in with a shot!

Laugh of the week was once again thanks to John Cook over at Un-Sk Ps-S, who threw a bit of a tantrum at being nominated in such filthy company as WUWT and Jo Nova, and promptly flounced off and “withdrew”. He then proceeded to write a pompous and self-serving article to his disciples wailing about how unfair it all was:

In an inversion of reality, the Science and Technology category is dominated by anti-science blogs that post conspiracy theories about the scientific community, deny the full body of evidence and reject the scientific consensus. The fact that 4 out of 5 science finalists are anti-science demonstrates that the integrity of the Bloggies Award has been compromised. I, like any pro-science blogger, am not comfortable with the notion of competing for an award that has previously been won by anti-science blogs.

Cook uses the term “anti-science” no less than nine times in the space of just four paragraphs, each time revealing his lack of understanding of “proper” science, as opposed to propaganda, which is the stock in trade of Un-Sk Ps-S.

In fact, it is Un-Sk Ps-S that is the only genuinely “anti-science” blog in the line-up, because it isn’t sceptical at all. Cook never acknowledges the uncertainties surrounding any area of climate science, and thus reduces his site to pure dogma. He’s abandoned the “question everything” concept of science and is simply spreading environmental spin. And the only option for him is to smear those who dare do what he can’t (or won’t).

And, of course, we all know the real reason he withdrew. He’d lose.

ACM taking a 'well earned break' (© ABC)


ACM taking a WEB

ACM taking a WEB

Virtually all the ABC seems to disappear off for two months over Christmas, on what has become colloquially known as a ‘well earned break’, so now ACM is doing the same.

A number of other projects are demanding my time, and will do for a while, so new posts will be infrequent (or non-existent) for the time being.

As always, visit the sites in the Live Blog Roll to the right for your climate needs.

Gone fishing


UPDATE: I’m currently awaiting an appeal decision regarding an FOI request. Once this is handed down, I will (hopefully) be posting on the material.

ACM will be on a break for a while. Unfortunately, other (non-climate-related) projects mean that blogging must take a back seat for an as yet undetermined period.

As always, check the live Blog Roll on the right for your daily dose of climate sanity.

Simon

Bloggies: Congratulations Jo Nova


Well done, Jo Nova

Congratulations Jo Nova, for winning the Best Aussie or NZ Blog – a great blog that fully deserved to win.

As soon as I saw you were nominated I knew I didn’t stand a chance!

Thanks to all my readers who voted for ACM.

Simon

Web of Trust infested with warmists – action required!


Warmists arrive, and trust goes out the window.

Whilst we’re on blogging matters, my attention was drawn in the comments today to the Web of Trust extension for browsers, which is a crowd-sourced rating system for websites. It ranks sites on Trustworthiness, Vendor Reliability, Privacy and Child Safety, and provides a little indicator in your browser, green for good, amber for beware, and red, avoid.

I was astonished to see that ACM merited a “red” indicator, and was ranked “poor” for the first three criteria and “unsatisfactory” for Child Safety!

How amazing, since as I don’t sell anything, that I can be rated poor for Vendor Reliability! Equally amazing, since I have never revealed anyone’s email address or contact details, that ACM is poor for “privacy” as well. And as you all know, climate realism is harmful to impressionable children so I guess that’s why it’s rated “unsatisfactory” – what we need is more alarmist indoctrination, right?

Trustworthiness is objective. However, I report stories accurately, and I don’t alter or tinker with the extracts from media sources that I cite. You can form your own opinion as to whether you agree or disagree with the opinions expressed, but that does not go to the issue of trustworthiness.

Let me point out that I am all in favour of this kind of system. It allows people who may not be as internet-savvy as others to get a feeling for a site’s reputation before they engage with it, in particular in terms of those four important criteria.

But it is obvious that in the case of ACM, the system has been infested with warmist headbangers rating sceptical sites poorly. I guess we should be pleased at yet another indication of JUST HOW DESPERATE THEY ARE to stop people seeing the other side of the story. But I am sure that it will be discouraging some potential new visitors to the site who rely on WoT for an honest appraisal of the sites they visit and who are, perfectly understandably, concerned about internet safety and security.

So now it is time to hit back at these losers.

I am asking everyone to go HERE and vote up ACM’s ranking on WoT, so that it accurately reflects the character of this site. Once again, I thank you.