Tony Abbott’s bald spot

A great day for forecasters. And how have the 16 business economists in the Bloomberg survey who forecast a Reserve Bank interest rate rise reacted to yesterday’s decision? They have just got back to the business of giving us their next irrelevant and useless prediction. Let me say it again: banks would be better off saving their money than employing the teams of economists who provide such little value to clients.

Those unkind cameras. The unfairness of life is nowhere better illustrated than in the hair of our politically combatant leaders. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has that luxuriant display of immaculately coiffured grey while Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has developed a monk-like bald patch that is growing rapidly. What makes matters worse for the challenger is that the cameras in the House of Representatives often show the Opposition Leader from behind thus highlighting the baldness while the PM invariably gets the front on treatment.

Now I know that John Howard was an exception but I believe he was simply the exception that proves the rule. The public do not like voting for bald headed men and very few have succeeded in this television age. The Liberals should bring back Malcolm Turnbull with his full crop of hair before it is too late.

The Guardian turns. When that great supporter of liberal causes The Guardian newspaper of the United Kingdom starts turning on climate scientists then we know that things are getting serious. Yet turn it is with stories in the last two days, which it describes as a Guardian investigation, which provide wonderful evidence for climate change sceptics.

Among the most damning elements of today’s report into the emails stolen from the University of East Anglia is the revelation that climate scientists acted to keep research papers they did not like out of academic journals.

“One UEA scientist, Dr Keith Briffa, wrote to a colleague to ask him for help rejecting a paper from a journal which he edited. “Confidentially I now need a hard, and if required, extensive case for rejecting.” The request apparently broke the convention that the review process should be independent and anonymous. Briffa was not able to comment because of an ongoing independent review into the stolen emails.

In another email, sent in March 2003, the leading US climate scientist Prof Michael Mann suggested ostracising a journal for publishing a paper that attacked his work.

“I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues … to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.” Mann denies any attempt to “stifle legitimate sceptical views”.

The emails also reveal that one of the most influential data sets in climate science – the “hockey stick” graph of temperature over the past 1,000 years – was controversial not just with sceptics but among climate scientists themselves. “I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story [in the forthcoming IPCC report], but in reality the situation is not quite so simple,” wrote Briffa in September 1999.

Tony will be happy. Tony Abbott will take heart from the growing climate of doubt about the global warming case. Clearly there has been much gilding of the lily as the scientists tried to become public relations spinners who could convince the world to act. Every time they are caught out with another untruth or exaggeration the more public scepticism grows. And that will make the Abbott policy of minimal action increasingly attractive.

The Oscar field decided. With the Oscar best film field now settle, time for an update of the Crikey Oscar Election Indicator: