Sloppy Science in a Nutshell: head of climate analysis says drought is permanent 4 years before record floods

It seems that whenever prominent CO2-driven folks condescend or blunder into making falsifiable statements about the climate system, the system duly responds by revealing them to be false.  Real Science has this beauty, using quotes from the Sidney Morning Herald:

January 4, 2008
IT MAY be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent, one of the nation’s most senior weather experts warned yesterday.
“Perhaps we should call it our new climate,” said the Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate analysis, David Jones.
March 13, 2012
Changes to the system are almost certainly due to human activity.
The past two years have been Australia’s wettest two-year period since at least 1900

Yet the show goes on.  They have the money, the politicians, big agencies, big finance, big green, and of course virtually all of education from nursery schools upwards. Their scandals are numerous - the list at NoTricksZone is now up at 129 items, and is surely incomplete.  I suspect there are also many thousands more on smaller scales, within and around all the uncounted initiatives on the climate crisis bandwagon. 

But thoughtful teachers everywhere must be asking themselves how long they must go along with this madness.  On the one hand are to be found agitated activists and all the power that effective PR (such as the IPCC) and financial prizes can win, and on the other, are calmer citizens and all the integrity that careful observation and reflection can bring.

 It is clear to me which side has won the financial and political battles.  It is also clear which side has won the moral and intellectual ones.  Which side should teachers best be on?  The educational battles have also been lost, but the war is surely not yet over.  I think it is in the field a war between irresponsible adults who cannot contain or cope with speculations about CO2-driven catastrophe, and responsible ones who are dismayed by over-the-top reactions to something so poorly supported by observation and experiment.

Note added 14 March 2012: Real Science has more examples here of stupid, irresponsible, and subsequently refuted claims by scientist-activists.