The Perth of my youth was a friendly West Australian town, half asleep by the bays and reaches of the Swan. We called ourselves the “Wildflower State”. Perhaps the “Flogging and Hanging State” would be more apt. First, I’ll reminisce about the hangings, then the floggings. In 1964 when I was a reporter and part-time … Continue reading →

Tony Thomas How nice of the Sydney Peace Prize people to award its Gold Medal for Human Rights this month to Christiana Figueres, top negotiator of the toothless 2015 Paris climate accord. The Sydney Peace Foundation, backed by the City of Sydney and Sydney University, somewhat incoherently cited the good lady’s ‘relentless drive to ensure … Continue reading →

Freeman Dyson verified statistically at Bomber Command’s Operations Research  that  crews’ chance of survival on missions did not increase with experience. About 75 per cent of crew never completed their 30-ops tours, but which planes were shot down turned out to be entirely random… My science hero is Richard Feynman, but his understudy, Freeman Dyson … Continue reading →

  CBS last February ran a hefty piece ‘Climate Change’s Role in Australia’s Fires’. It features Australia’s ex-Prime Minister  Malcolm Turnbull calling his ex-colleagues dangerous idiots… Timing is everything, not just in the stockmarket but in the media’s climate reports. America’s 60 Minutes on CBS last February ran a hefty piece ‘Climate Change’s Role in Australia’s Fires’. … Continue reading →

It’s symptomatic of the madness besetting Australia that the States (Labor and conservative-led) have all subscribed to the net-zero-2050 mantra. So has the clueless Australian Academy of Science. So have scores of nations. Where will it all end? There’s no great mystery about what Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese’s net-zero-by-2050 emissions announcement last weekend will cost. … Continue reading →

It’s a worthy saying, “Do not speak ill of the dead”, but I’ll make an exception for Dr Rajendra Pachauri. The chair of the IPCC for 13 years, to 2015, died at 79 last Thursday, January 13, of heart problems. He bugged out of the IPCC abruptly when a 29-year-old woman employed at his TERI … Continue reading →

Local barbarians are now calling for state-sanctioned silencing of those they brand “climate deniers”. It’s sad that these people infest the state-run ABC TV, academia and journalism, three institutions where democratic values and support for free inquiry should be the default positions. Tony Thomas A verse by W.B. Yeats has been adapted to many a … Continue reading →