In another ludicrously ignorant piece, Rowan Dean, the silliest little fellow from the Sky After Dark (SAD) menagerie, said “This summer I have had a Road to Damascus style conversion, yes folks I am now a firm believer in climate change. My entire summer holiday was a victim of catastrophic climate change; it was so damn cold, so wet and so miserable every single day[,] that I spent most of my summer with the heater on, rugged up in ugg boots and tracky dacks staring at the wet drizzle outside wondering when it was ever going to stop”1. Again, he demonstrates his inability to understand the difference between weather and climate. Weather is what affects our days, whether (excuse pun) it be rugged up as Dean says he was, or sweating profusely in a 40 degrees C western Sydney, as it was today, January 24th, 2021. Climate is the long-term average of the weather for a region or a planet. While Dean has made this silly error before2, this time his repeated stupidity is exacerbated by his seeming lack of knowledge about the reason why this summer has been relatively cool and wet. It was all over the news last year that La Niña was on its way, and that we could expect the summer to be relatively mild and wet. Who told us? Climate scientists and meteorologists and they have known this for decades. These are the same people that Dean disparages because he is convinced he knows better.
Australia’s weather is influenced by many climate drivers. El Niño and La Niña have the strongest influence on year-to-year climate variability over most of the country. They are part of a natural cycle known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The ENSO cycle loosely operates over timescales from one to eight years. La Niña occurs when equatorial trade winds (which blow east to west) become stronger. This results in a drawing of cooler, deeper water up from below, thereby cooling the surface waters of the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean and warming the surface waters in the western Pacific to the north of Australia. This warming in the western Pacific means the area tends to produce rising air (warm air rises, Rowan), cloud development and rainfall (rain comes from clouds, Rowan). As a result, heavy rainfall can occur to the north of, and within eastern Australia. Conversely, over the eastern and central tropical Pacific, air descends over the cooler waters, meaning the region is less likely to develop clouds and rain. As a consequence, while Australia has heavy and widespread rain, parts of South America have drought3.
Dean then whined about politicians including Josh Frydenberg, David Littleproud and Scott Morrison, clambering “aboard the smoky scorched bushfire bandwagon” and acknowledging that climate change was responsible for last summer’s devastating bushfires. “Then of course the international mob all piled on, from Greta [Thunberg] to Prince Charles to the UN to Piers Morgan and every other climate luvvie screeching to the whole world that climate change was to blame for Australia’s bushfires”1. You have to feel sorry for the scientifically illiterate Rowan Dean; he can no longer find solace in the climate change denial and the Covid-19 denial of his great hero, the Mango Mussolini, who has been dumped from the US presidency. Even worse, not only have the climate change ‘luvvies’ proven to be correct, but the epidemiologists seem to have been correct about masks, social distancing and lockdowns, while not taking seriously his advocacy for the ‘Swedish model’ for dealing with Covid-194. Sweden has had over 1,000 deaths per million population, while Australia has had 35 per million5. Poor, sad little Rowan.
Sources
As dean should know (it’s in the bible), “there are none so blind…. ”
Dean’s ignorance of climate change would be astonishing if we hadn’t already witnessed the same stupidity thousands of times over previously. His is a classic case of the wilful ignorance I mentioned on another Blot topic. You’d think that a grown man (note I didn’t use the word mature) would avail himself of climate change science fundamentals – including the difference between weather and climate – before offering his uneducated opinion, but as we know his target audience is equally wilfully ignorant. After all, the fundamentals which underpin climate science have been publicly available – in easily digestible form – for well over a couple of decades.
Reminds me of a climate change discussion I had on a sports forum many years back. After I’d rebutted many of his climate furphies earlier, one bloke (from nth Qld) offered the view that because the label had changed from global warming to climate change, therefore the science was all bs. I explained that the label was simply that – an easily understood term under which all manner of public discussion could take place, and the the change was made because CC better encompassed the overall process. The science and data was stlll there if he wished to learn about it. Needless to say that fell on deaf ears. I was persistent though. After weeks explaining the reasons why most credible “climate” scientists had concluded that man-made greenhouse is the primary cause of warming and batting away the numerous furphies from sceptics and a few rabid deniers, I think I managed to kill off at least a few of the “old wives tales”. My message was essentially this – read the science and THEN make up your own mind. I’d done quite a bit of reading on CC/AGW but the best resource I found was the skepticalscience website which has rebuttals of all the common myths and the cherry-picking pseudo-science. I don’t visit the site much any more but I see the number of myth rebuttals has now risen to 197!
Science always needs to be explained and “sold” to the public but sadly climate scientists have had to waste considerable resources over decades to refute the pseudo science, the myths, and the outright bullshit which was being pushed by conservative forces in the USA especially, but also in Australia and the UK.
Jon,
Dean is a monumentally vacuous waste of space. He did a piece on the supposed nomenclatural changes regarding climate change, as if to indicate some form of subterfuge. Of course, it was nothing of the sort; these were the names of different things. I had a crack at explaining this too.
https://blotreport.com/2018/10/30/is-rowan-dean-a-liar-or-just-stupid/
Rowan the Dean of Atmospheric Science and Oceanography at Murdertruth University is merely trying to make climate change…that is global warming….er that is greenhouse effect or sumpthink like that, more comprehensible to his massive, ten million strong “Outsiders” audience. Me here up in the back bloks of me beluvd Quoinsland, I got a lot of toim for Deanie. Cozza him splainin’ it all, oi kin talk to me mates about it at the bar. Jeez, oi never sore sum-wun so brainy as wot that Rowan is. So, put in simple terms for dummies, cloimate change is how every day the cloimate varies a bit. Clouds in the morning, clear at midday, thunder at foiv a clock, wind at six, rain all noit. At first oi thort “It carnt be so easy to get as that”, so oi goes to the Dubbinjabba local loibry, gets out the ICCP latest report on weather type stuff, an’ starts reedin’. Well blow me down, sh..-long words an’ sentences all the way, with a ton of fancy pikchers with jaggedy loins all goin’ from bottom left to upper right like a lotta Mount Kozee-oskoes. After ten minutes oi got a damn moigraine, an’ gave up tryin’. Oi tell yaz, yer almost gotta be a bit edjukated to unnerstand all that wankin’ in them artikels about weather. Me, I’ll just keep on watchin’ me ol’ mate on Skoi chanel; at least the way Deanie boy torks is roit to the point Aussie style. An’ he shore sticks it good to that preemiaa in Victoria. Melbun peeple are all up ’em-selvs ennyway, oi reckun.
Russell,
Holy mackerel! Have you joined the Liberal National Party?
I’ve certainly gone potty-bonkers, but no degree of madness could make me join the Lib-Nat fascist nutters. Just trying to deal with the loony culture we exist in these days! Example of that: the utter crap blabbered on Sky Channel after dark by Dean, Paul Murray, Sharri and their sorry cohort of fourth-raters.
Russell,
I limit my engagement with the microbes on Sky. I like to beat Rowan Dean on occasion because he says such stupid things about subjects for which an enormous amount of science is available online. However, obtaining knowledge is clearly beyond him.
no no no no no no …… i reckon you lot are giving Dean (and his ilk) way to much credit for being stupid and/or willfully ignorant. Methinks he knows full well what he is saying, who he is saying it to, (yup ok, they is the stupid ones), and who pays him to say it (and pays the folks to write what he’s told to say). As unclefuckinrupert has been quoted as saying there are no climate deniers at News Ltd, meaning that on the board there are no climate deniers, coz they know full well, but it doesn’t suit their narrative or business model, aimed at the numpties. (i’m dreadfully sorry Tim Minchin, but i cannot excuse them or be sympathetic just coz they haven’t read the same (or any) books). Yer all being way way too kind when there exists an almost inexhaustible list of pejorative expletives that would be much more suitable.
Clive,
I too thought that he was just a malevolent Murdoch mouthpiece. However, after I heard him fall for the drivel of David Burton, who said that rain was caused by a star 25 light years away, I knew he was just an anti-science, gullible prat.
Well put there Clive – Dean very likely knows the true facts of climate change, but for his political and pecuniary purposes he parades on TV as a man of the people – to be exact, the deplorables who bother to watch Outsiders. Hint to readers here: don’t waste a cent on a copy of Australia’s version of The Spectator magazine. A certain loud-mouthed pseudo-journo whose name is frequently repeated on this post, is editor of The Spectator. Sorry, that’s actually the Ma….bator.
I hadn’t previously read the below BLOT:
https://blotreport.com/2018/10/30/is-rowan-dean-a-liar-or-just-stupid/
What a laugh. Made my day. Your mate Steven is a good comedian. David Burton and Rowan Dean are even better. What a sad joke they are.
https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/astrology/11130220
Warren,
They are extraordinary, aren’t they? Just not in the way they think they are.