Robbo,

The weather in May was soooooo exTrEeme many of us couldn't find the energy to post about it due to heat exhaustion.

Dont worry though, June is in for the same treatment as well no doubt...neh mind the incessant rain and NEARLY getting to the point of putting the fire on more times than Ive cared to think about though the first half of this month.

Finally...you know when someone HAS to tell you they are a world class impartial organisation that one probably should take anything they say with several tons of salt and exercise extreme caution when reading anything they post when one has a mouth full of coffee!

Did the MO spokesman forget the /sarc tag?

Just heard that you UK denizens have all sweltered through the hottest May on record, and not a complaint from any of you. That famed stiff upper lip on show again.

I assume the Met Office have incorporated How To Lie With Statistics into their employee handbook. Tele reporter seems a bit glib with the figures. What does this mean:

There were far fewer blue skies than normal in May, with Britain seeing just 159.3 hours of sunshine, 17 lower than might be expected.

Ah, I see the Met Office helped the reporter with this web page. What utter tripe! Why not come up with a mean national wind vector while they're at it? The figures on the graph go back to 1910, but I bet you they didn't start averaging them across the country until the global warming era. It's nice to know the typical sunshine on a spring day in Aberdeen or Penzance, but splitting the difference is bonkers.

In the Tele article, the Met Office spokesman said:

We’re a world-leading weather and climate science organisation, providing impartial and transparent scientific evidence on the UK’s weather and climate. This impartial evidence shows irrefutably that our world is warming and humans are playing a part in this.

Mailman,
Agreed on all points.

Don't worry too much about not having kept those e-mails. The Lancet wouldn't be embarrassed by them; these days they celebrate doing things wrongly. And I'm sure they know they're doing the wrong thing (in contrast, say, to Rosanne D'Arrigo, who evidently didn't get it when she talked about needing to pick cherries if you want to make cherry pie).

I'm with tomo on Musk: never been keen on him, but I do enjoy how angry he has made the woke ninnies.

Saw this item on unauthorised changes to a Frederick Forsyth novel when catching up at Jo Nova's. The part that was removed described a way of subverting wealthy western societies, and sounded rather like what's been going on (degrading universities, social justice campaigns, etc.). Would be interesting to know who decided it should be removed, and why.

Also see Musks pay package was passed at yesterdays Tesla stockholders meeting...probably much to the disappointment of the left. This would probably explain the total absence of reporting on this event from the "main stream media". Nothing for them to crow about.

Meanwhile NASA focuses on the science of trans worship wile Musk does all the heavy lifting for them!

Any science blog that contains the words "skeptical science" in its heading should be treated with the same caution one uses when visiting countries with the words "peoples democratic republic" in its name. Extreme caution.

Robbo,

The media uses emotion to manipulate the young and impressionable exactly because they can be manipulated with emotion to support any position the media deems worthy. Hence why we only ever hear about palestinian children dying in overly emotionally dramatic news broadcasts because that kind of propaganda works on the emotionally under developed so well. Kinda why it doesnt work on those of us who are older, more jaded and worn down by life! ;)

In regards to the Lancet, Ive mentioned here before that I had an exchange with the geezer back in the early naughty's about the politicisation of their research, to which the geezer replied that it was deliberate and intentionally used to manipulate people and what they supported/believed for their (The Lancets) benefit.

Really wish I had kept those emails as they were eye opening.

.,
I should have known that that misspelling was not a mistake.

They repurposed my ironic take on Paypal "buyer protection" for Australia's "whistleblower protection", but I forgive them.

The underlying error in that video is who they blame. They seem to think the party sitting in government actually controls the government machine. Commands from the bridge are only advisory when they get to the engine room.

Amusing that Skeptical Science had an uphill battle trying to push their propaganda on LinkedIn.

The Australien Government

tomo,
Yes, the Lancet is sinking, but it seems to have that in common with all the other formerly esteemed journals. We're hearing Side-B of The rising tide lifts all boats.

Mailman,
The propaganda is so blatant. Time and again we get footage of the man carrying a young child while running to an ambulance. It should tug at the heart strings but, having seen similar footage dozens of times, I don't recall ever seeing the child having an obvious injury. Might be cynical of me, but even if the child is crying, I suspect it's probably because his dad has given him a Chinese burn (or whatever) for dramatic effect.

But if the propaganda doesn't work on you or me, it seems quite effective on a fair number of university students. Perhaps it's today's Spanish Civil War as a fashionable cause celebre.

Today, Jo Nova has a piece on the NIH doing Monkeypox gain of function work, then hiding that fact from Congress. They were mixing a more deadly, but less infectious strain with a less deadly, more infectious one. I thought there might be a benign interpretation — to reduce the infectiousness of the less deadly strain — but no, if the story's correct, they simply wanted to make the more deadly strain more infectious. Mad.