- JoNova - https://www.joannenova.com.au -

About

Thousands of unpaid scientists are fed up with name-calling bullies and rent-seekers. A perfectly good civilization is going to waste

Jo won prizes as a science grad and international awards as a blogger. She’s author of The Skeptics Handbook which has been translated into 15 languages. Each day around 12,000 people read joannenova.com.au. In 2018 Jo toured Europe speaking about How to Destroy an Electricity Grid. Before blogging she hosted a children’s TV series on Channel Nine, was a regular keynote speaker, and managed the Shell Questacon Science Circus. She was an associate lecturer in Science Communication at ANU. At one time she helped fundraise for The Australian Greens. Then she grew up.

Joanne Nova, Jo Nova, 2016, photo. Andrew Bolt described her writing as “outstanding”, and called one piece “a magnificant polemic.” She’s been quoted by her heroes James Delingpole, Christopher Booker, and Mark Steyn. She’s been blamed for the collapse of the ETS and named in the Australian Parliament.

The Oxfam report on ClimateGate news improbably listed her blog influence as being equal to NASA in the Climategate email saga. The Wheeler Centre in Melbourne listed Jo Nova as the balancing counterpoint to the combined scientific weight of The UN and government departments. Such praise!

Her blog won Best Topical Blog of 2015, The LifeTime Achievement Award in the 2014 Bloggies and Best Australian and New Zealand Blog in 2012. Jo won the Dauntless Purveyor of Climate Truth in 2023, an award won by Apollo 7 astronaut Walter Cunningham. About 1.5 million people visit the site each year. Jo has at times been a regular guest on Outsiders on SkyNews with Rowan Dean.

Her articles in The Australian and The Spectator include:

She has presented speeches across Australia, in New York, Washington, Munich, Oslo and London.

A prize-winning science graduate in molecular biology. She has given keynotes about the medical revolution, gene technology and aging at conferences.  She hosted a children’s TV series on Channel Nine, and has done over 200 radio interviews, many on the Australian ABC.  She was formerly an associate lecturer in Science Communication at the ANU.

She is married to Dr David Evans, the Stanford PhD in fourier analysis, former leading carbon modeler for the Australian Greenhouse Office. They support their own research and writing. At the moment they are living largely off donations from readers (Thank you!) and are based in Perth, Western Australia.

Why the blog?

In 2008 Jo was dismayed that the good brand-name of science was being exploited and wrote The Skeptics Handbook pro bono. Some 220,000 copies of the Handbook were published worldwide and were distributed to the Australian Parliament and US congressmen. It was so popular that volunteers translated it into French, German (twice), Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Turkish, Japanese, Danish, Czech, Portuguese, Italian, Balkan, Spanish, Lao and Thai. Her paper Climate Money was the first to document the unprecedented rise of volunteer auditors  and independent scientists and the massive one-sided way government funding worked to distort science: supporters of the man-made climate catastrophe had been paid 3,500 times as much as skeptics. She was  among the first to spotlight the influential role of banks and financial houses who had a major stake in carbon trading. Banks want to save the world. Who knew?

The Blog

Jo Nova was one of the four heretics mentioned by Matt Ridley in his summation of the global effort to separate science from pseudoscience.

“The remarkable thing about the heretics I have mentioned is that every single one is doing this in his or her spare time. They work for themselves, they earn a pittance from this work. There is no great fossil-fuel slush fund for sceptics”.

She has got a mention by The Australian [World wide web of doubt Hot and bothered , Let’s have a debate, Aunty] , ForbesThe Spectator, Mark Steyn, Andrew Bolt [here and here], ABC (the Drum1, Drum2), The Science and Public Policy Institute, The Hawaii Reporter, James Delingpole of The Telegraph (and here and here too), Christopher Booker, and The Examiner, The West Australian. Jo did a five part debate with Dr Andrew Glikson, through Quadrant Online, then at her own blog. The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald tried to disparage her with an ad hominem. So did Clive Hamilton. Of course, Joanne has her own DeSmog Blog page (no skeptic should be without one.)

Jo has been interviewed on The John Batchelor Show (NY) [1] [2], the Corbett Report and with Michael Smith on 4BC and on Global Cooling Radio.

A varied career

Jo Nova is the stage name of Joanne Codling. She took up the name in 1998 for privacy reasons when she started work with Channel Nine as the host of the children’s TV series Y?.  Her first full time job at age 22 was as manager of the half million dollar exhibition called the Shell Questacon Science Circus with a team of twelve. She spent five years touring Australia with hands-on science. As an associate lecturer at ANU Joanne helped to develop the Graduate Diploma in Science Communication in its earliest years. She put her favourite hands-on science experiments in the book Serious Science Party Tricks.

Joanne has also managed programs bringing hands-on science to street kids in Melbourne and remote Aboriginal communities as well as earning money as a cartoonist, graphic designer and illustrator. She is into liberty, medical research, money, history, and climate science, as well as anthropology, Austrian economics, and the trajectory of great civilizations.


Joanne Nova lives in Perth, Australia. She welcomes comments (not spam) email: joanne AT joannenova.com.au (replace the ‘AT’ with’@’ to foil nasty agents.)  She received no funding for the first Skeptics Handbook or to create this site. Donations help to cover costs, and made the second Handbook possible in late 2009. She and her husband are self employed.

Her phone number is unlisted, she does not live in Bateman or Palmyra. (Please don’t phone them!).

More details about her speaking, TV, radio work and qualifications here.

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