All's well, according to 'three older blokes in a pub'

Beneath the Wisteria supporter, Graham Parton lives in Stanley, near Beechworth, and the closest and most influential newspaper is Albury’s Border Mail.

A recent column in that newspaper caught his eye and offended good sense,

Here is Graham’s communication about that issue and it’s interesting to note that “three older blokes in a pub” know more about what causing our extreme weather conditions than the world’s best scientists and climatologists.

 

Hi Robert

Probably not of much interest to your Shepparton readers but I saw a column in the Border Mail today that I just had to respond to. The central premise was that there have been really hot days over the past 50 years ago so therefore this heatwave is just part of a normal cycle. Just to make it worse they have this little vox pop section where a reporter finds three people somewhere in the local region and asks them a question and records their answers. (They got me one once but i had a silly question to answer about whether or not sports people should be subject to the same laws as very one else). Anyway today’s one was asking three older men in a pub if the heatwave had changed their opinion on climate change (which is an interesting question because it assumed they were deniers). All three said that no, it was just part of a normal cycle. So there you have it, three men in a pub!

 

Anyway here's what I wrote to the Border Mail.

 

Your columnist Howard Jones has demonstrated an alarming lack of logic in reaching the absurd conclusion that this summer heatwave is not particularly worse than previous ones. His main “evidence” for this is records that show maximum temperatures reaching into the 40s all through the last century. He may not be aware that those same records have shown that during that time the global average temperature has risen by about one degree and that 2013 was the hottest year on record. Even his totally inadequate method of remembering very hot days from the distant past as a comparison with the current longer hotter temperatures is unreliable. He also needs to consider the trend in overnight lows, which are getting consistently higher, and the fact that these heatwaves happen three times more frequently now than they did during most of the 20^th century. I applaud the Fairfax policy of not giving column space to climate deniers, but how did this one slip through the cracks?