They call it the silly season, when not much is happening in politics, so far-fetched yarns and preposterous anecdotes get a run in the press. Yet this year, no silly season fiction could be more laughable than the true story of the climate-change alarmists, global-warming proof-seekers and Green activists stranded in unprecedented levels of Antarctic ice. The joke got less amusing when the expedition’s hapless leader Chris Turney — professor of climate research at UNSW — and his spokesperson tried to downplay the role of climate scientists on the stricken vessel, claiming there were only ‘a couple of them’ aboard. For the first few days, most media outlets succumbed to this spin and failed to mention any climate-change agenda.

This despite the fact Turney and the ABC’s Lateline promoted the voyage last year as a $1.5 million expedition ‘to answer questions about how climate change in the frozen continent might already be shifting weather patterns in Australia’. By retracing the steps of Douglas Mawson’s path-breaking expedition a century ago, the aim of this comic troupe was to ‘see how the actual ecology is responding to changes’. ‘There’s so much out there that we just don’t understand and you can only do so much of [sic] computer models,’ Turney said, somewhat ironically.

Had the eager participants of this largely taxpayer-funded voyage of vanity stumbled upon penguins sipping piña coladas under swaying palm trees in Commonwealth Bay or discovered daffodils sprouting around Mawson’s hut, perhaps they might have returned as conquering heroes. Instead, they have stranded themselves and their cause in a frozen wasteland of obfuscation and lies, as the Antarctic — in defiance of every IPCC prediction and computer model — grows colder and bigger.

The cost of rescuing this ludicrous expedition will end up being millions of tax dollars, but the damage done is far higher; our universities will be a global laughing stock and other worthwhile scientific research projects abandoned. Meanwhile, proudly patting themselves on the back, the Chinese rushed to the rescue, only to find themselves also trapped and in need of US assistance. Luckily for all concerned, the rescue vessels were powered not by wind turbines but by good old-fashioned, carbon-emitting fossil fuels. The marooned climate scientists may not get the warm inner glow they were clearly seeking, but at least they won’t freeze to death.

On the other side of the globe, while the US and most of Europe suffer freezing winters, the Australian Greenpeace activist Colin Russell had to be helped out of Russia by Julie Bishop and $35,000 of taxpayers’ money after being arrested for trying to stop the Russians drilling for oil in, er, Russian waters. Adding rudeness to his stupidity, Russell — who had defied government warnings about his own foolhardy expedition — then lambasted Ms Bishop for not doing enough to assist him.

Meanwhile, on our own shores, local councils base their planning restrictions and approvals on the IPCC’s most extreme climate change predictions, costing home-owners potentially millions of dollars. Unlike Antarctic ice, the climate-change joke is wearing very thin.

Abbott’s Ashes success

Allow us to do some self-promotion. Anybody surprised by the 5-0 massacre of the Poms in the latest Ashes series obviously isn’t a reader. Regular subscribers were warned in the middle of last year to anticipate such a resounding Aussie victory.

The reason, of course, is that they are familiar with the Barnes Principle; the notion that Australia’s sports people will always achieve international greatness under a Coalition government while floundering in petty vindictiveness and failure during Labor years. It was our regular contributor Terry Barnes who first canvassed his theory in these pages last August, urging sports fans to cast their votes for Tony Abbott. ‘The crash in Australia’s Test fortunes since December 2007 coincides with the disastrous Labor tenures of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard,’ he wrote. ‘By contrast, Howard governed in a golden Test era. Australia won 16 Tests in a row not once, but twice.’

With a historian’s forensic precision, Mr Barnes analysed sporting results from Hawke to Gillard: ‘Thirty years of results show conclusively that Australian Test cricket flourishes under the Coalition but languishes under Labor.’

It seems his theory is not only accurate, but gaining widespread acceptance. ‘Change the government, change the country,’ tweeted blogger Tommy Tudehope regarding the Ashes whitewash. Even Michael Clarke subtly acknowledged the Barnes Principle, putting his team’s reversed fortunes down to ‘a different time, a different era.’