Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's truly bizarre advisers - Example One

Maurice is one of a range of voices that the Government takes very seriously

The Sydney Morning Herald 1 October 2014:

Tony Abbott's top business adviser says the Bureau of Meteorology is caught up in global warming politics and nothing short of an independent review will dispel suspicions of bias.

Maurice Newman, who chairs the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Council, is highly critical of the BoM's process of homogenising climate records.

Mr Newman questioned the way the bureau adjusts historical data, which he equates to manipulation of Australia's temperature records…..

Employing more than 1700 people and costing taxpayers $300 million a year to run, the bureau must "dispel suspicions of a warming bias", Mr Newman says.

"Trust in our national climate records is critical.

"Nothing short of a thorough government-funded review and audit, conducted by independent professionals, will do."

So who is the Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Council?

Talk about un-Australian!

Putting the heat on

It is not just the ABC that needs to have a long hard look at its inherent anti-government bias. Recently, another taxpayer-funded agency, also with a three-letter acronym, has been guilty of politically motivated bias. You can tell just by its name that "the BOM" (the Bureau of Meteorology) is a doubtful organisation with anti-establishment tendencies. Its preoccupation with storms and freak weather events is unbalanced. For example, how often do you hear talk of "an unusually pleasant string of Sunday afternoons"? This may well have happened, but oh no, you won't see that on the BOM website.

The BOM finally went too far this January. Allegedly the temperature in Melbourne was 41, 42, 44, and 45 degrees on four consecutive days. This is so biased it is laughable. For example, in my airconditioned living room it was under 30 the whole time, until the power failed, and even then it only reached 39 degrees. It is time the BOM was broken up and privatised, so instead of just one narrow view that serves only the anti-economic interests of greens and other looney-tunes, mainstream voices can be heard. We need choice, not depressing and frankly un-Australian weather "facts".

Paul Johnson, Clifton Hill

Source: The Age, 10/2/14

Okay, it's school holidays ....

... so who let the kids loose at APN?

Climatology 101 sees students provided with locations' air pressure readings and then requires them to prepare synoptic charts that involves joining places of equal air pressure - the lines drawn are called isobars.

Seems some bright spark at APN is doing a bit of in-house child minding during the school holidays. Well, that's the conclusion this reader arrived at after reading The Daily Examiner's weather reports lately. The evidence? Look at the weather maps (below) that appeared in The Examiner this week.

Here's DEX's map for Friday it (appeared on Thursday January 9):

And here's the BOM's map:

Need more evidence?

Here are more efforts provided by APN in DEX this week.

Since when have isobars been drawn using a ruler, and thus appearing as straight lines? 

Seems someone at APN gave their kids new pencils and rulers for Christmas and headed them in the direction of the weather page.

Images from The Daily Examiner (digital edition) and Bureau Of Meteorology.

ABC TV News relocated Tabulam: can its residents seek relocation allowances?

The 7.00pm news on ABC TV provided a giggle at our place last night. In the weather report Tabulam, which we had been very confident was located on the upper Clarence in northern NSW, was reported to have had the heaviest rainfall in NSW with 70mm. That in itself wasn't earth-shattering news but the next bit was! According to the ABC, Tabulam is in the Hunter valley!

See Tabulam's latest weather observations here, courtesy of the Bureau of Meteorology.