(Political) Climate Science

I was having a conversation with an old friend of mine today about Australian politics and the difficulty of predicting outcomes and it led to the ideas which I've now put together in this blog post (thanks Tina). We were attempting to understand the political climate in Australia and Tina proposed we needed an index to look for Indicators of Change.

I put forward that in the "sea of bullshit" which comprises Australian Politics and the recent common vernacular to call politicians "Muppets" (for the obvious reasons) that we needed to develop something akin to the Southern Oscillation Index which allows Climate Scientists to make better predictions of transitions of weather types.

So I proposed the MOI or Muppet Oscillation Index.

In the following short essay I will attempt to clarify the MOI and identify key elements that vary the MOI over time. In this essay I will restrict analysis to the larger milestones in the Political Climate and in good academic style leave work for future research to clarify the effects of some of the indicators which are clearly at work in our Political Climate here in Australia.

A typical SOI would appear like this:

... with occasional transitions of "state" from red to blue. Even in this data we have some attempt to quell noise in the data by averaging over 3 months. A brief movement into the RED does not indicate a change of State from Red into Blue (and vice versa). However its clear when there is a change that we have the classic El Nino or La Nina State years.

My most basic view of the indicator of political change is not in the nebulous polls (which are so often inadequate predictors of outcomes), but in the actual election results. This below is the data showing when our State changed from Red to Blue.

It becomes clear that (looking at the above MOI chart) that the once clear distinction between Muppet Group 1 years and Muppet Group 2 years is becoming less clear. I don't think this can be wholly attributed to the Also-Ran group numbers, and so I feel there is some sort of Climate Swing is at work in the Political Climate here.

I have decided to call the change of State the Statler Waldorf Swing, and so during Statler Years one bunch of muppet hecklers are in opposition and in Waldorf Years the other muppets are in opposition. Its important to observe that as neither group of Muppets ever provides actual Leadership, the primary distinction is on which Muppet Group is in opposition. For it seems that Australians no longer vote governments in, but vote them out.

Unlike the SOI the MOI is compounded by the addition of (initially) a thrid influence Muppet Group 3 and later a fourth group of Muppets who I'll call "Also-Rans" (note: this is not to be confused with the Pauline Effect)

Methane is well known as a potent Greenhouse Gas and a well known source of this gas is Bullshit (see figure below)

I propose that further research is needed to identify if Bullshit is the main cause of this cyclic change in the MOI and that if so then the source of this Bullshit must be identified and cleaned up. I postulate that as the levels of Bullshit increase that it creates agitation molecules (probably Administratium) of the political climate causing a loss of clarity due to an increase in background heat and thus Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) quality reduction.

As King Wang knows all to clearly, "in the land of the blind the one eyed is king" and perhaps the MOI has an influence from the Wanger Circulation (as indeed the Walker Circulation is well understood in the SOI).

As I identified in a later post (about the Zombies of Moronity and their role in disrupting the distribution of truth) the problem is also the ZoM, can upset the Sheep (who in the MOI are perhaps the greatest source of electorate noise).

I'm not sure (again further research is needed) but feel that the daily distribution of Bullshit by the various media outlets (Social Media such Farcebook for example) is indeed increasing the agitation of the Sheep leading to a masking of the influence of the Major Muppet Groups and allowing Minor Muppet Groups (on the graph as Also-Rans). It is this that I believe to be representative of the Hanson Effect (or perhaps like the Dunning Kruger Effect it should be rightly named the Hansen Katter Effect).

I hope that once we can clarify some of these Political Climate Indicators we may be able to move away from Muppet Government and towards Sensible Government. In the mean time I'm distributing a kit to assist in coping with the difficulties of the Political Climate and the influence of the Muppets

I encourage you to print this and have it on the table between you and the daily news paper...