The ABC tv program Catalyst was quite special last Thursday. Was that a science report, or an advertorial?
Brisbane was recording temperatures with modern Stevenson Screens in 1890, as were some other stations, but the BOM often ignores these long records.
Forget gloom and doom it’s “kinder” climate now
The ABC team have shifted gear. They heard they should stop being all gloom and doom (it’s climate fatigue you know) and make it simple. So they did, and everything was delivered in a cheesy canter, like an episode of Playschool. Smile everyone! Floods will increase, but we won’t hammer you with ominous music, instead we’ll show Jonica-the-presenter cleaning the floor of her very own home, joking about the pesky trickle in the living room (To paraphrase: It’s flooded again — can you believe?).
Dr Jonica Newby reckons things have changed since she bought her house. It’s simply unthinkable that the climate now is not exactly the same at her house as it was when she first moved in — way back in the historic year of… 2000. (Gosh, eh? I wonder why the BOM don’t publish a paper on it?) Now our national debate is reduced to presenters, not presenting evidence, but just telling us what they reckon. She has lived there for twelve long years after all, and in just another 18 years it’ll be a whole climate data point. Need I say more?
With this kind of mindless anecdotery, it’s fair to ask: is Catalyst still a science show?
If a skeptic said the weather hadn’t changed at their house for 12 years, wouldn’t Catalyst accuse them of mindless cherry picking, ignoring the big picture, and being unscientific?
Speaking of cherry picking: what about the endless droughts that were predicted, or the dams that would not ever fill again, or the four expensive desalination plants in Australia that are not being used? Doesn’t that tell us something about the state of climate science?
How about some statistical chicanery?
Newby tells us that we’ve had … 330 months of above average temperatures (from this NOAA report). It sounds awfully scarey. What are the odds of that? Dr Mark Howden tells us that there is only (gasp) a 1 in 100,000 chance of that happening in “the absence of human influence”.
So where does the 1 in 100,000 estimate come from?
According to the production notes, the number comes from Kokic et al 2012 (submitted). So it’s unpublished. Without seeing the paper it’s impossible to know, and there is no pre-print I can find. But even without the calculations we know that to calculate any probability at all, they would have to start with assumptions we know are wrong.
Nonsense assumptions: either temperatures are flat, or climate models can predict the natural part of the current warming trend.
The temperature of the world is not and has never been “flat”. Obviously, see this graph, or this graph, there is no “flatness” nor a meaningful global average temperature — there is only change. Moreso, things have been warming since the depths of the Little Ice Age in 1680, so centuries before our CO2 became significant some warming factor kicked in (90% of our emissions are post-1945). Their models don’t know what that factor was. Since the world has been warming for 300 years, above-average months are hardly unusual, instead they are expected. (Unless of course, you used the average temperature of the Holocene, but that’s another story).
As for the assumption that climate models and climate scientists can pick out the “natural” trend (and thus calculate the “unnatural” part) — we know current models are unvalidated and the theory behind the models disproved many times over. Models don’t predict the climate on local, regional, or continental scales, nor do they work on the short term or the long term. If we can’t pick out the natural warming component, calculating the odds is meaningless.
As it happens, most of the warming in the last 50 years probably comes from one step change in 1977. Of course, averages after that step up would be higher than those before, and it has nothing to do with CO2.
Howden and Newby don’t even try to name any evidence that man-made emissions cause significant warming. They just assert this is the case. I asked for any observational evidence in support of catastrophic warming 34 months ago. If the observations were overwhelming, it is odd that no one seems to have found the mystery paper yet, though the Earth apparently depends on it?
Then there is the thing about our short records. The climate rolls in a 60 year cycle where temperatures warm for 30 years then cool for thirty years, so getting 27 years of above average temperatures would be — not unusual. Climate scientists tell us that 30 years makes a “trend” but in these Kokic et al calculations, it appears every month pretends to have significance. As Ken Stewart points out, the Australian share index has also been “above average” for 330 months or more. Is that evidence of “unnatural forces”?
If we start with the wrong assumptions, there are all kinds of ways to get 330 meaningless “highs” in a row.
The real meaning of heat deaths and “harvesting”
Talking about Black Saturday, Newby points out that during that heatwave, it wasn’t just the fires that killed, ” it turned out an extra 370 people died during that week than you’d expect. Essentially, it means that they were tipped over the edge by heat stress. There’s a rather confronting in-house term that’s used for this. They call it ‘premature harvesting’.”
What Newby doesn’t realize is that it’s called “harvesting” because it’s often those who are close to death who succumb to the heat. It’s well known that after the heat wave and the spike in mortality, there is often a fall in deaths for the next few weeks [for example see here and here]. It’s also called the “mortality displacement effect “. In other words, sometimes a heat wave only shortens a life by a few weeks. That is not the same in a cold snap, where there is no reduction in mortality afterwards. (See Kysely et al 2009 and CO2 science. )
Winter kills more people than summer does. If we could make summers warmer and winters less cold, we’d save lives. Is that so bad?
And as far as wine goes, grapes in Australia’s south might be ripening, on average, “20 days earlier than in 1985”, but the raw data from the region where The Brown Brothers winery is, shows that global warming hasn’t hit the area.
What record heat?
Catalyst warned us of the recent record temperatures: “Melbourne hit 46.5 degrees. Hopetoun hit 48.8.”
Dr David Jones
We broke the Victorian record by 1.6 degrees. You know, these are records going back over 50 years. You know, you’re not breaking ’em by… by, you know, a few tenths of a degree – you’re breaking ’em by whole degrees or more.
Newby knows that the BOM have records going back 100 years (and more) but didn’t think to ask why Jones says “50 years”. What happened to all the thermometers before 1962? The truth is that the BOM has far hotter records, like these astonishing ones of 50C temperatures in 1896, and an amazing 53.9C recorded by none other than Charles Sturt in 1828. The independent volunteers on the BOM audit team have found dozens of examples of warmer temperatures in Australia, and seemingly, longer more widespread heatwaves. They also found examples of bird deaths en masse from the heat.
To be fair, all climate records are uncertain, which is exactly why the BOM and the ABC ought not propagate the myth that the current “records” are meaningful. The records from the 1800’s were not always done with standardized equipment, (though they had Stevenson screens from the 1880’s) but modern equipment has it’s own problems. Many sites are now closer to airports (and all that baking hot tarmac), which didn’t exist in 1896. Not to mention there weren’t too many car parks in the days before cars, and not too many air conditioners, or 6 lane highways either. Does that matter in Australia? We don’t know. It matters in the US and nearly doubles the trend, but no one has done that audit here.
BOM Adjustments? What BOM Adjustments?
Not only are modern thermometers more likely to suffer from artificial heat sources, the BOM inexplicably makes adjustments that push modern records up, and older records down. The BOM will not explain on a station-by-station basis why it makes these inexplicable adjustments. Modern data has not been audited independently in Australia despite many requests. See Brisbane below and others here.
…
The BOM claims their adjustments are neutral:
Dr David Jones, Head of Climate Monitoring and Prediction, National Climate Centre, Bureau of Meteorology, stated clearly that the adjustments made “a near zero impact on the all Australian temperature”.
When skeptics asked for an audit from the ANAO, the BOM responded by creating a new data-set, which has similar problems, (ie. short records, spurious and careless errors, and is very different from the raw data). It was a lot of trouble for the BOM to do too and in a rush, but it meant it could avoid an independent audit. Hmm.
In the newer ACORN set the BOM carefully and deceptively rewordsmithed the “neutral” claim:
“There is an approximate balance between positive and negative adjustments for maximum temperature but a weak tendency towards a predominance of negative adjustments (54% compared with 46% positive) for minimum temperature.”
There may be a numerical balance in adjustments, this is technically true but deceptive, because the adjustments that warm the trend are larger. What was ominous about this was that this time the BOM knew the neutral claim would be wrong, they could have made the adjustments neutral or explained why it was scientifically justified, instead they chose to keep it, but reword it.
When nearly half of Australia’s reported “warming” comes from adjustments that are called “neutral”, something very unscientific is going on.
If Catalyst wanted to create a one sided show demonstrating how tough the climate was in the 1900’s and how easy we have it now, we already have the data about the floods, the bushfires, extreme cold, burning heat and even the dead birds. It’s all there. Panic and madness in the streets as people flee on trains to escape the outback’s deadly heat? Got that too.
Don’t mention the skeptics
As Newby admitted on ABC radio the idea of the show was to correct the “obfuscation”. So Catalyst was in the awkward position of responding to skeptical talking points, but without mentioning “skeptics” — not by name and not even to allude that they exist. So we know they’re trying to refute skeptics, but not with enough integrity to let the skeptics state their views. It’s likely Newby has never read what the skeptics write, can’t quote them, and doesn’t understand their position. That’s not “reporting” — but rather acting as a marketing agent for one side (the government) against the independent, unpaid whistleblowers. It shows you that either the BOM and the ABC are afraid of rational discussion, or worse, that they “know” the answer, and it’s not up to the public to choose. If they knew they could answer skeptics questions in an honest debate, they wouldn’t be afraid to allow both sides to put their views forward.
Newby made a point of the BOM records, saying they have 112 thermometers that were blue chip and went back 100 years, so isn’t it cherry picking to focus on shorter periods? The independent auditors took only a few weeks to notice that the newest BOM account called “ACORN” includes many short records. Learmonth, for example, only goes back 37 years. Of the 112 Acorn sites , about one third have less than 80 years of daily data.
It would only take a science reporter a few minutes to find that online.
Jonica Newby and the Catalyst team even showed a Stephenson screen, up close and in detail, presumably to counter those pesky images of thermometers near air-conditioners, but without giving away that there are hundreds of thermometers in dubious locations whose photos are available online. They realize of course that if they mentioned that, people would just Google and find the darn photos. The dutiful ABC viewers are kept in the dark but inoculated in a sense, in case a skeptical link crosses their emails. How are those ABC viewers going to feel when they do see the photos that the ABC won’t report? I don’t think the inoculation will survive the bleeding obvious shots of thermometers above concrete and ashpalt, near runways and jet aircraft or many other odd sites.
Weather is not climate — except when it is right?
Catalyst decided to break the old rule “weather is not climate”. They turned everything you see in your own backyard into potential clues that something unnatural is going on. Is it rainier, dryer, hotter, colder, cloudier, or sunnier, and even “did you catch different fish this year”?
This is climate astrology: odd things will happen today in your backyard today. (The dark planet Carbonia is transiting your Finance Sector.) You may have to mop the floor.
Your electricity bills will mysterious rise.
Newby has done months of research on the wrong thing
Poor Jonica Newby doesn’t realize as she talks about the “greenhouse effect” that the physics is not the issue, it is mostly right, but only a small factor. From her radio interview about the program it’s clear she has no idea that feedbacks dominate the climate. Instead she’s obediently mimicking the climate activists strawman debate.
JONICA NEWBY: …what that means – and it really took me months to come to grips with this myself, and I was in full immersion – but you think about it from a physics point of view: there’s a degree of extra heat in the whole weather system.
Now think of just the weather. That’s a lot of energy that’s in that system, so what it’s going to do…
MARK COLVIN: Heat is energy.
JONICA NEWBY: Heat is energy.
MARK COLVIN: It’s just basic physics.
JONICA NEWBY: Yeah, so basic physics tells you it’s going to be wilder…
Newby probably thinks skeptics deny the “basic physics” when that’s never been the case. She apparently doesn’t know the models she relies use dubious assumptions to amplify the basic physics into a catastrophe. She hasn’t done her research. If she had, she’d know the debate is not about the physics, but about the feedbacks. And it’s not that skeptics say there is no evidence, we’ve moved beyond that. There is evidence, and lots of it, from many independent angles suggests that feedbacks are negative, not positive, and the models are categorically wrong and are overestimating the predicted warming by a factor of 7 or so.
If she wants to stop skeptics getting traction she needs to understand skeptical arguments first. The only problem with that of course, is that if she dares to read the papers the skeptics suggest, she might realize they are asking questions her friends at the BOM don’t have any good answers too.
If Newby is a real reporter, she can start by asking the BOM some real questions.
PS: Note to Jonica, “extra energy” doesn’t automatically generate “extra extremes”. This study shows that storms were worse during the Little Ice Age. Ask us, we can explain why that might be.
———–
REFERENCES
Kokic, P., Crimp, S. and Howden, M. (2012) How probable is the recent run of record global mean temperatures without climate change? Environmetrics (submitted).
Catalyst: production notes
Catalyst Transcript
They make the Nazi propaganda machine of the 1930’s look absolutely objective and honest.
How do they sleep with themselves at night?
298
These religious nutters are using the same tactics as the Nazis. in the UK, Eugenics has already started with the ‘Liverpool Care Pathway’ [withdrawal of medication, food and water to accelerate death] being applied to elderly, terminally-ill patients without the approval of relatives. It’s to cut costs.
The first of the Nazi Eugenics’ laws was in 1934, the right to kill deformed babies after birth.
In 5 years, we’ll have a major War over resources in Asia. Watch out Australia because Julia and her ilk may do a deal with the banks to invite the Chinese in for a price to displace the white population.
1211
I want to like people; I really do. But they are just so stupid.
284
Yep, people are obviously stupid if they continue to fall for photos of steam billowing from cooling towers and sensationalist reports of 4 degree temperature rises flying in the face of actual scientific evidence that Jo writes about here.
Today (refer link) it’s the World Bank getting in on the act ably supported by our friends at the Sydney Morning Herald and no doubt the ABC have run this by now. Nothing new here – just a reminder these guys never give up. The World Bank obviously felt it was a good time to remind the western public why we need to hand more power to faceless bureaucrats and Carbon gravy train operators and to donate yet more Billions to China and India to help them clean up their emissions (as if they needed any more help with their international competitiveness). Oh, and of course to help keep the Social Democratic governments in power.
I doubt if 90% of Fairfax, ABC or NYT devotees have any notion of climate feedbacks used in these claims whatsoever.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/catastrophic-warming-to-hit-poor-says-world-bank-20121119-29m9b.html
233
Hey Cookster,
You mean like, the IMF – they’ve started quoting exactly that. They’re probably hoping the money from carbon trading will help pay for the CDOs etc and the debt that hasn’t gone away….
What a bunch of muppets.
152
The more I read, the more I’m convinced that carbon trading is to meant be the new world wide currency, and the reason that we haven’t had economic Armageddon yet is because of the failure of the Bankers to get this trade quite as viable, global and functioning as they had originally planned.
Until then, QE to infinity is to continue to inflate the bubble until the time when all the powerbrokers have their wagons in alignment, the kaboom- a hell like you wouldn’t believe. Just like the first global depression, it will be an insider trading wealth concentration exercise the likes of which have never been seen before.
And like lambs to the slaughter, these complete sheep think that they can be fast and loose with the truth and that their little socialist paradise will occur. Talk about kidding yourself. You don’t have to be born yesterday, but it sure helps.
222
Winston, you might be interested in this: In the March 21, 2007 edition of ‘The Australian’ Paul Kelly wrote about then British Chancellor Gordon Brown: “My ambition is to build a global carbon market founded on the EU emissions trading scheme and centred in London” to which Kelly adds, “The bill will create statutory carbon budgets that will be managed “with the same prudence and discipline” as financial budgets. For Brown, the carbon will be counted like the pound sterling.”
Kelly summarises this position as the “debate is no longer just about the environment. It is about economics, culture, ideology and foreign policy. The old debate about climate change believers and sceptics is dead (being kept alive only for political gain). The new debate is about policy solutions.”
Also “Carbon Currency: A New Beginning for Technocracy”, by Patrick Wood, editor of the August Review (26 Jan 2010), is worth a read if you can find the reference. From his paper: “The new currency, simply called Carbon Currency, is designed to support a revolutionary new economic system based on energy (production, and consumption), instead of price. Our current price-based economic system and its related currencies that have supported capitalism, socialism, fascism and communism, is being herded to the slaughterhouse in order to make way for a new carbon-based world.”
130
Madjak,
The entire purpose of the IMF and the World Bank is seemingly to enslave struggling economies through debt, IMO. It is therefore entirely consistent for them to spruik the CAGW carbon fiasco, because it suits their agenda of genocide without getting their hands dirty. What I don’t understand is why other “intelligent” people left of the political spectrum seem to think that these agencies are a benevolent force in the world, when with cursory examination it is quite plain that they are not.
100
I think alot of the info in this link from page 10 onwards pretty much sums up what the 3rd world thinks of the IMF, and the “pitfalls” of their “strategies”. http://www.actionaid.org/sites/files/actionaid/aaik_imf_policies.pdf
20
I agree – it seems that almost every country that has followed IMF advice in the past has learnt that they’re better off not following their advice – and that tends to be when they’re turning around.
Is there anyone from argentina who would care to comment?
20
Madjak, The Muppets are upset about being compared to the IMF.
20
Jim Henson – I apologise
20
I know that this World Bank thing from yesterday is off topic, but perhaps this same World Bank needs to start addressing the problem they write about by starting in their own back yard, and especially with their own Organisation.
In early October of 2009, and just prior to Copenhagen, I wrote a 3 Part series for the site I contribute at, mentioning why Copenhagen was going to fail.
I updated those three Posts a week or so later, after finding an article published that same week in the TimesOnlineUK.
That TimesOnline article showed how the World Bank was spending Billions of Pounds in the Developing World to construct, and wait for this ….. large scale coal fired power plants.
Now, while that Post of mine was written in October of 2009, that TimesOnline article was soon archived. When I followed the link at a later date I was just taken to the TimesOnline main page, and try as I might when looking back through their cleverly hidden archives, I could not locate that same article, so there I was, now without any proof.
I then started a (what turned into a very long) search looking for that original article. I did find it, and I have included the link below.
However, compare what was said yesterday with this article from 2009, and it seems almost a direct rehash of what was said then, only with one difference. In 2009, they stated a 5C rise, and now that’s back to 4C.
I’ll also link into my own Post, and again, I’m not touting for numbers of visits to my site as that matters very little to me, especially for a Post now more than 3 years old. That UPDATE shows the link to the TimesOnline article. At the bottom of that UPDATE, there are also links back to the original 3 part series written a couple of weeks earlier, before Copenhagen, if any of you wish to read them, because, even though from 3 years back now, the information I posted then has indeed been borne out.
Tony.
Link to my Post dated 15Oct2009: Why Copenhagen Climate Talks Will Fail – Update
Link to TimesOnline UK article. Now, while this article is at a different site, the date at upper left is the regularly updated date, so note here the date of the original article shown directly above the title for the article: World Bank Spends Billions on Coal-Fired Power Stations Despite Own Warnings
140
You are so correct Tony that the world bank is bankrolling coal power stations.
World Bank spends billions on coal-fired power stations:-
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6836112.ece
And then there is this….
World Bank President Admits Agenda For Global Government:-
http://www.infowars.com/world-bank-president-admits-agenda-for-global-government/
70
Hey wow. This climastrology thing is amazing.
Mine did rise!
170
According to a leaflet published by the Australian Government for every $100 of electricity bill there is a $9 carbon price including GST. There is also $20 for retail customer service AND programs for energy efficiency and renewables. I understand that climate change agenda is now costing us about $19 or 19 per cent of electricity charges.
60
That $9 comes from here.
Ana analysis of the costs of electricity in Australia is here; note in particular the lie that electricity prices are increasing due to ‘infratructure’ when in fact most of that infrastructure expense is due to ‘green’
energy initiativeslies.The rest of the infrastructure cost is because successive ALP governments in NSW prevented the electricity suppliers from undertaking maintenance by taking out huge dividends to balance their budgets.
170
The threat of a carbon tax has been bearing on our power supplying industry for a long time. Ever since the AGW call was first made power suppliers have had to take into account the possibility that governments might force a reduction in power usage.
For this reason maintenance and planning were neglected until they became a problem that couldn’t be put off any longer.
Hence the costs which they now call “gold plating”.
80
Cohenite, likewise the cost of electricity in Queensland. The ALP government raped the SEQEB of its maintenance budgets and p1ssed the money up against the wall. During these years, an thunderstorm was a guarantee of long power outages.
40
… “a” thunderstorm …
11
If ‘gold plating the transmission lines’ is the fault for your power bills rising, thank Julia Gillard.
Julia Gillard, 16/08/2010, 2.33 mins:
Maybe it wasn’t the ‘real’ Julia who said that.
30
“Your electricity bills will mysterious rise.”
“Mine did rise!”
Mine too. What more proof of AGW do we need?
20
Roha,
~$900 bill in this household.
That’s 9 more tyres to burn come the end of June.
10
I don’t think you are being fair to either astrologers or Astrology. Whatever you may think about them, they are not being willfully deceptive as are these practitioners of Post Modern Science, and they are not on the public payroll.
200
While o the subject of consensus climate change science, get a load of the latest from Paul Hudson, an apologist for the Met.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2012/11/whats-behind-the-coldest-winte.shtml
The lack of awareness gives rise to some truly amazing one-liners. My favourite is,”The losers, of course, are the readers, and more importantly the whole weather industry itself, which gets tarred with the same brush as those who issue extreme, sensationalist forecasts, which rarely bare any resemblance to reality.” This from a champion of the weather bureau which forecast the barbecue Summer and the dry Spring. I leave it to others to enjoy.
40
Hahaha!
Yes, that’s a journal on E-N-V-I-R-O-N-M-E-T-R-I-C-S. Stop laughing, this is sewious.
And guess what? That words doesn’t even exist!
Wow, sure, now that journal sounds like a pillar of respectability which is on an unbiased quest for the truth. Stop laughing. I know I know, any published paper in the environmetrics journal will fail a basic spell check (due to the name not being a word), but honestly, it really sounds like an oracle of truth. STOP LAUGHING.
And what’s more – it’s just a submitted paper as Jo has mentioned.
Catalyst – Epic Fail.
161
Submitted, but not yet a “a published paper in the peer reviewed literature” so by their own standards worthless.
120
Words are the sharp edge of anything.
Quality Assurance, is not what it says.
Political Correctness, is not what you think.
United Nations, is a misnomer.
Green Peace, sounds like propaganda from the start.
World Bank, wonderful name.
The Crown, a purposefully deceptive name.
91
World Government?
40
Notwithstanding the NRA, I quite like Charlton Heston’s quote – “Political correctness is just tyrrany with manners”.
110
For a word that doesn’t exist Maddy it seems to be used quite a bit in relation to environmental statistics and quantification.
Probably all we need is for the PM to use it and it will go into the dictionary toot sweet huh?? 🙂
But seriously, its the name of something, their journal and society. They could have called it Bill, or Debbie or Numericus Conspratoria or …whatever. Instead they have used a name which conveys some sense of what they are about. ie: Environmental Metrics and Measurement. Fair enough i reckon. Evolution of language in action.
210
Let me help you deflate this nonsense with an example from wiki (it is well referenced), “William Bateson, a proponent of Mendel’s work, coined the word genetics in 1905”.
Soon after it entered text books and became a journal title, decades BEFORE the OED and Websters recognised it.
56
.
As will eventually happen with the terms “banksters” and “climastrology”.
The latter, of course, meaning an investment strategy of the former.
82
who knows?
Just get the words used a few times and appear somewhere in msm and you are in with a chance.
32
Hey all you Science students – good news – they’re not spelling mistakes – they’re just words that haven’t made it into the dictionary according to Catamon and G.A.
I guess that it must’ve been acceptable with their science teachers – then again it was probably political science they learnt, not the real stuff.
Any complaints about being marked down – please contact comrade Julia “you’re a mysogynist” Guilleard. She’ll back you up – just like she did with Rudd.
Just keep confusing the science with the politics. It’s working so well for you.
not
41
George Orwell Anyone?
Newspeak!
10
Well, the word “gas” is a made-up word. It was invented by the Dutch Chemist, van Helmont, in 1600.
Next time you are feeling a little flatulent, just be glad that you don’t feel the need to pass van Helmont. 😉
10
They want to believe.
70
All the figures and graphs she showed over a hundred years showed a steady rise; therefore NO anthropogenic influence. Was I the only one to notice these suckers of the public teat were disproving their own thesis?
I also found her patronising presentation style quite nauseating.
141
That must be what happens on some sort of artificial world where you have neither natural variation or a hockey stick.
70
This supports Winston’s observation about a “Carbon Currency.”
http://www.augustforecast.com/2010/01/26/carbon-currency-a-new-beginning-for-technocracy/
Furthermore, it is also about total control and spying, not just stealing.
http://www.augustforecast.com/2010/03/03/smart-grid-the-implementation-of-technocracy-2/
101
So what’s the plan to stop them?
I keep askng. No one keeps answering me.
Frankly I’m starting to think a good astrologer would be a better deal than what we’ve got.
Anyone know a good one?
52
Good point biter.
now that we know what is going on the question moves from “Is CAGW via CO2 Real” to: how do we raise public awareness about the scam, the money trail, the lies, the use of well dressed suits and elite qualifications like PhD to to mislead, steal and cheat.
THAT IS THE TARGET NOW!
There is NO CAGW.
There is THEFT on a grand scale.
KK
122
Astrologers are legitimate members of the entertainment industry. Climatologists and their allies in Banking are focused on befuddling, defrauding and robbing the Public in their own self-interests with no entertainment value at all.
The Banker-AGW alliance is willfully deceptive and not at all entertaining or scientific.
Post Modern Science has consumed the ABC’s Catalyst which has degenerated to the level of an AGW Propaganda Machine on the public payroll.
131
You know what the pathetic part of it is? By sitting on the Jo Nova blog and commenting on all this we are achieving absolutely nothing. If anything, we are just an asylum for political prisoners made impotent by our inability to mass a mutiny. We have been so thoroughly pacified and sedated in the western world that an uprising (even a peaceful one) is impossible.
Maybe when they finally hit the kill switch and plunge us into global depression and WW3 we will get sufficiently perturbed to get off our armchair and hit the streets. But rather than worrying about the horrifying effects of climate change we will be desperately trying to find food and a source of heat to cook with.
And thus the Green Distopia will begin.
120
That’s right Sonny, throughout the Internet there are Web sites such as this where sceptics pat each other on the back about their superior view of climate and greenhouse effects. However we are apparently achieving very little as the public, businesses and governments seem intent on following the green path to oblivion.
Lately the Bloomberg business Web site appears to have switched to all-out promotion of the Cataclysmic Climate theme in league, no doubt, with yesterday’s announcement by the World Bank. Of course, business is business. No point in worrying about the facts, just get on with taking the suckers money from them.
When and from where are we going to find a way to reverse this incredibly successful scam?
80
I’m a bit baffled, I thought you guys liked science with hard numbers and no models? Are you saying that the tide gauge data, for example, is corrupted?
218
First sensible thing you’ve said.
181
I’ll second that.
KK 🙂
51
Hi KFC
My wife loves “wicked wings”.
KK 🙂
40
SLR trend has been in decline since the 1980s. Just ask the IPCC. Currently it’s about 17cm by 2100.
What is it you don’t understand about this fact?
90
Just to clarify, what you’re saying is that the tide gauges in Australia are wrong? If that is the claim then how does one know this?
Also, does this imply that the IPCC are correct? To be fair that’s not what is usually claimed on this blog if one reads through the comments on many threads.
While I’m at it how do you know that the sea level will only rise by 17cm by 2100? Is that extrapolation or a model you’ve used? If so, I thought you thought all models were rubbish?
214
Have a look at the last graph on this page and the commentary .
There you’ll find reference to 17cm SLR until 2100. Note this SLR trend has been declining for at least 25 years.
Every IPCC report since 1990 has had a declining trend and in the 1980s the trend used by the EPA of the USA was an increase of several metres by 2100.
Click on the oceans page at left then go to last graph and commentary.
http://climate4you.com/
82
Thx Neville, that’s helpful and interesting. I note it says this in reference to the graph (my bold) though:
28
Here is the Watson paper showing a long term deceleration in SLR around OZ.
See conclusions at the end. Same conclusions found for gauges globaly.
http://www.jcronline.org/doi/pdf/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00141.1
60
.
I can understand why you are a bit baffled, Chicken Little.
There are only two mentions to date about tide gauges.
Both of them are by YOU.
.
Talk about being off-subject, off-topic, and off the planet.
111
Ummm, MV, part of the Catalyst programme was about sea level rise. Please try to keep up.
56
Is as may be, Rooster. However, your comment, to quote, was:
Since at that point nobody but you had even mentioned tide gauges, it’s clear why you are so easily baffled.
I guess it’s the text equivalent of hearing voices in your head.
.
** People actually WATCH this ABC crap??
105
This DOES NOT say ‘that the tide gauges in Australia are wrong’, but it is worth noting:
”
RECORDS of global sea level rises may be out by as much as 14 per cent on official findings, a climate change study released shows.
The second CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology State of the Climate report found ocean levels had risen 210mm around the world on average since 1880.
But the study also acknowledged that the margin of error for the average result was plus or minus 30mm.
“
30
I’ve looked right through here JFC…and you appear to be the only one who has said anything about tide gauges being wrong or attempted to raise that as a discussion point.
Don’t you get tired of trying to make people people defend themselves against something they didn’t say in the first place?
I certainly get tired of watching people like you do that.
Which tide gauges JFC and who said they were wrong anyway?????
11
[SNIP]
124
he he he!
31
But I didn’t get any gravy.
That Timmy Flannery and his Global Warming Doomsday Cult took the lot. They’ve exhausted the KY Jelly reserves and when the gravy runs out, then what?
[SNIP]
51
It will ruin your latex rubber sex toys.
50
Almost worthy of Pickering scaper.
05
LOL – that is so funny – I almost cried.
53
JFC,
I’m saying that no matter what the tide gauges do or do not show, you cannot provide the slightest credible link between that and any human activity.
This has been your problem from the beginning. You have no evidence that CO2 is the cause of anything. And until you can overcome that hurdle no one here will take you seriously.
42
Well I would dispute that no one is taking this seriously Roy, after all it seems now that a majority of people do actually accept the science of AGW. Even in the US where they seem to be quite backward in many aspects.
38
Actually JFC, the “majority” do not accept anything of the sort. Just because those who are sitting in a circle at your house passing a bong around all agree with you that the “science” of AGW is real, the silent majority of post-adolescents are entirely on the fence about the matter, and they are thoroughly bemused by the predictions of catastrophe by Flannery and the like, especially in the face of current climate observations (including the coolest summer on the Eastern seaboard in 2011/12 in living memory) which are business as usual from most people’s perspective who have been around long enough to experience the wide variability inherent in our SH climate.
You really need to get out more, JFC, and speak to hundreds of people of all ages (not just your close circle of like minded idiots) like I do before you speak for the “majority”, the majority of whom you haven’t met. Doubtless, if you were being honest, you would admit that you don’t really care what that “majority” thinks unless of course it confirms your predetermined idea of reality.
73
You seem heavy on anger Winston, but very light on data.
28
JFC do you think we give a toss about what the majority of people believe?
The majority of people that you refer to are of below average intelligence. They are the unthinking, unquestioning drones churned out by an education system thats primary goal is homogenizing the population.
And you count yourself amongst the majority? That figures.
53
You’re not very good at maths are you Sonny?
32
JFC,
Your saying it doesn’t make it true. There is no science behind it. What the people you’re talking about “accept” is the fallacious argument that the appearance of authority makes the speaker or writer correct. But that ain’t so; not in your country or mine.
The quality of the arguments you present here could not convince anyone who understands the basic requirement of science: that empirical evidence be presented and then that evidence must withstand examination by others in order to make a credible case. Yours doesn’t meet that standard. In short, you’re a non starter.
Now do demonstrate some semblance of wisdom by going away until you understand what you’re talking about. And in the meantime look up the fallacy of argument from authority. Look up empirical too.
.
.
.
Oh screw it! Just go away. You’re hopeless. 🙁
72
PS: Judging from your reply you can’t read either.
41
I accept that saying it is so doesn’t make it true but the same can be said for counter side of the debate that you put. Anyway I was after all commenting on your assertion that no one bought the argument which is clearly not true.
Despite all the huffing and puffing very little has ever been presented to knock this theory over apart from a few fringe loony types stuff that are easily debunked (to wit, one C. Monckton).
Why don’t you guys get your heads together and enter the real debate and present a paper that will knock it over? I’ve never understood why you don’t do this. You obviously believe you have the evidence to do so.
29
JFC,
I just smile at your side’s one eyed myopic tunnel vision.
You say that you have the (end of argument) evidence, and it has been widely accepted now by (you say) everyone.
Let’s actually pretend for a short while that this may be true.
So, tell me, JFC, what have those people in positions of power done now that they have (you say) umm, accepted this evidence?
We know beyond doubt that far and away the largest source of those emissions (35% to 40% of them) is coal fired power, and the largest source from that coal fired power sector are those large scale coal fired power plants. (which make up 85% to 90% of that former percentage total)
So then, this being the case, and the problem being so dire as you say, and with so much weight of evidence, again, as you say, then surely, for the sake of our future, oh, and the children, those people in positions of power would surely be biting the bullet and just shutting off the major, and the largest source of those emissions. You know, if there’s a Cancer, cut it out.
So tell me JFC, how many of those large scale coal fired power plants have been shut down in the last five years directly as a result of this so called empirical evidence?
Go on JFC, you have your evidence. Surely those people must be doing something about it for the sake of everyone.
OK, JFC, find me one large scale coal fired power plant that has closed down, oh, and I’ll even give you a wide base to work with.
Anywhere on Planet Earth.
So, JFC, with such a huge weight of evidence, have a guess how many of those large scale coal fired power plants have closed because of this
scare campaignweight of evidence?None.
That’s NOT ONE.
In fact, because some of the tiny little coal fired plants are indeed closing, those large scale plants are now working even harder.
And what is the reason those smaller plants are closing. Not because of this weight of evidence, but because they are all reaching, have reached, or, as in most cases, have long far exceeded their 50 year use by dates.
There are even large scale coal fired power plants that have exceeded their 50 year use by dates, and are still just humming along as they always have, extended long beyond their original projected life span of 50 years. You’d think these would be the first to be shut down, directly because of this scare, eh!
And what is replacing that electrical power lost with the closure of these tiny little coal fired plants, in the main, all less than 50 to 100MW?
Why, those CO2 emitting Natural Gas fired plants that are specifically designed to operate for three maybe four hours a day during Peaking Power periods of time, well, those plants are now working up to double and more, (much more in some cases) hours of operation, and because of that they are emitting more CO2 than they would have.
So, JFC, rabbit away all you like about your weight of evidence, and how everyone has accepted it. Until you actually open your eyes and see what those in positions of power are actually doing about it, you know, showing us that they are aware of the huge problem, and are actually doing something about it, then I for one will just keep smiling at your myopic one eyed tunnel vision.
Do something JFC. Don’t just show us how superior you think you are. Actually do something.
You say in your own Comment the following:
I could say exactly the same thing about you JFC, with just the removal of one short phrase and the insertion of another.
Why don’t you guys get your heads together and enter the real debate and get those plants shut down? I’ve never understood why you don’t do this. You obviously believe you have the evidence to do so.
Tony.
92
JFC,
Perhaps you can keep your mind on my actual complaint if I remind you often enough. You have no evidence that links CO2 with anything you claim is happening. You have no evidence that links CO2 with anything actually happening. And you have no evidence that links CO2 with anything you predict will happen in the future.
The problem here is entirely yours, not ours. The burden of proof is yours, not ours.
Where is your empirical evidence supporting your claims of human interference with Earth’s climate?
My statement about not being taken seriously was clearly stated in terms anyone could understand, “…no one here will take you seriously.” You went off on a tangent of your own about a subject I didn’t even touch, general belief in global warming/AGW/CAGW/climate change/climate catastrophe (take your choice of terms).
Now, one more time… Can you present evidence to us that meets the requirements of the scientific method of investigation or not?
So far the answer to that question is a resounding NO!
It is time for you to put up or shut up. Failing to do one of the other will settle the question as to whether you’re a serious commenter on this blog or just a braying jackass with nothing to say.
11
JFC,
Your not talking about these people are you?
Dr Robert Balling: “The IPCC notes that “No significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise during the 20th century has been detected.” This did not appear in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers.
Dr Lucka Bogataj: “Rising levels of airborne carbon dioxide don’t cause global temperatures to rise…. temperature changed first and some 700 years later a change in aerial content of carbon dioxide followed.”
Dr John Christy: “Little known to the public is the fact that most of the scientists involved with the IPCC do not agree that global warming is occurring. Its findings have been consistently misrepresented and/or politicized with each succeeding report.”
Dr Rosa Compagnucci: “Humans have only contributed a few tenths of a degree to warming on Earth. Solar activity is a key driver of climate.”
Dr Richard Courtney: “The empirical evidence strongly indicates that the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is wrong.”
Dr Judith Curry: “I’m not going to just spout off and endorse the IPCC because I don’t have confidence in the process.”
Dr Robert Davis: “Global temperatures have not been changing as state of the art climate models predicted they would. Not a single mention of satellite temperature observations appears in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers.”
Dr Willem de Lange: “In 1996 the IPCC listed me as one of approximately 3000 “scientists” who agreed that there was a discernible human influence on climate. I didn’t. There is no evidence to support the hypothesis that runaway catastrophic climate change is due to human activities.”
Dr Chris de Freitas: “Government decision-makers should have heard by now that the basis for the longstanding claim that carbon dioxide is a major driver of global climate is being questioned; along with it the hitherto assumed need for costly measures to restrict carbon dioxide emissions. If they have not heard, it is because of the din of global warming hysteria that relies on the logical fallacy of ‘argument from ignorance’ and predictions of computer models.”
Dr Peter Dietze: “Using a flawed eddy diffusion model, the IPCC has grossly underestimated the future oceanic carbon dioxide uptake.”
Dr Eigil Friis-Christensen: “The IPCC refused to consider the sun’s effect on the Earth’s climate as a topic worthy of investigation. The IPCC conceived its task only as investigating potential human causes of climate change.”
Dr Vincent Gray: “The [IPCC] climate change statement is an orchestrated litany of lies.”
Dr Kiminori Itoh: “There are many factors which cause climate change. Considering only greenhouse gases is nonsense and harmful.”
Dr Yuri Izrael: “There is no proven link between human activity and global warming. I think the panic over global warming is totally unjustified. There is no serious threat to the climate.”
Dr Steven Japar: “Temperature measurements show that the climate model-predicted mid-troposphere hot zone is non-existent. This is more than sufficient to invalidate global climate models and projections made with them.”
Dr Georg Kaser: “This number [of receding glaciers reported by the IPCC] is not just a little bit wrong, it is far out by any order of magnitude … It is so wrong that it is not even worth discussing.”
Dr Aynsley Kellow: “I’m not holding my breath for criticism to be taken on board, which underscores a fault in the whole peer review process for the IPCC: there is no chance of a chapter [of the IPCC report] ever being rejected for publication, no matter how flawed it might be.”
Dr Hans Labohm: “The alarmist passages in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers have been skewed through an elaborate and sophisticated process of spin-doctoring.”
Dr Andrew Lacis: “There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department.”
Dr Chris Landsea: “I cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound.”
Dr Richard Lindzen: “The IPCC process is driven by politics rather than science. It uses summaries to misrepresent what scientists say and exploits public ignorance.”
Dr Harry Lins: “Surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now. The case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated.”
Dr Philip Lloyd: “I am doing a detailed assessment of the IPCC reports and the Summaries for Policy Makers, identifying the way in which the Summaries have distorted the science. I have found examples of a summary saying precisely the opposite of what the scientists said.”
Dr Martin Manning: “Some government delegates influencing the IPCC Summary for Policymakers misrepresent or contradict the lead authors.”
Dr Patrick Michaels: “The rates of warming, on multiple time scales, have now invalidated the suite of IPCC climate models. No, the science is not settled.”
Dr Roger Pielke: “All of my comments were ignored without even a rebuttal. At that point, I concluded that the IPCC Reports were actually intended to be advocacy documents designed to produce particular policy actions, but not a true and honest
assessment of the understanding of the climate system.”
Dr Paul Reiter: “As far as the science being ‘settled,’ I think that is an obscenity. The fact is the science is being distorted by people who are not scientists.”
Dr Tom Segalstad: “The IPCC global warming model is not supported by the scientific data.”
Dr Fred Singer: “Isn’t it remarkable that the Policymakers Summary of the IPCC report avoids mentioning the satellite data altogether, or even the existence of satellites — probably because the data show a slight cooling over the last 18 years, in direct contradiction of the calculations from climate models?”
Dr Hajo Smit: “There is clear cut solar-climate coupling and a very strong natural variability of climate on all historical time scales. Currently I hardly believe anymore that there is any relevant relationship between human CO2 emissions and climate change.”
Dr Richard Tol: “The IPCC attracted more people with political rather than academic motives. In AR4, green activists held key positions in the IPCC and they succeeded in excluding or neutralising opposite voices.”
Dr Tom Tripp: “There is so much of a natural variability in weather it makes it difficult to come to a scientifically valid conclusion that global warming is man made.”
Dr Gerd-Rainer Weber: “Most of the extremist views about climate change have little or no scientific basis.”
Dr David Wojick: “The public is not well served by this constant drumbeat of alarms fed by computer models manipulated by advocates.”
Dr Miklos Zagoni: “I am positively convinced that the anthropogenic global warming theory is wrong.”
________________________________________
132
I think that effectively ends the argument from authority for JFC, clearly significant numbers of experts disagree with aspects of, or the overall arguments for CAGW, or that AGW is a significant driver over-riding natural climate variation. QED.
Of course, in JFC’s mind, these experts disagreement with his belief invalidates them as experts, thus maintaining his “everyone agrees” meme. Easy isn’t it. At this rate, with his mechanism for determining authority, even if he is the only one in the world who still believes, there will still remain 100% consensus, he will just fail to mention that he is a consensus of 1.
And Tony is quite correct above to assert that if CO2 rise was genuinely believed to be a threat to man- Thorium Nuclear power etc would be being heavily invested in immediately on a global scale, the World Bank wouldn’t be investing heavily in coal fired power stations in the 3rd world, China would be being exhorted to stop building a new coal fired power plant every week, etc, etc. Actions are directed toward perpetuating CO2 emissions with tiny boutique percentages for renewables which are more for the benefit of GE and the like to turn a profit. The fact remains the Carbon taxation (and even ETS trading) absolutely require large amounts of fossil fuel powered plants to be operating to facilitate tax take, money transfer to the UN, trading and money changing for the bankers. Don’t pretend, JFC, that there is some sort of plan to limit emissions, because the evidence is that entirely the opposite is occurring, even as we speak.
52
Ms Newby accepted that a 100mm rise triples the number of flooding events of sea level structures. Another 100mm, another tripling. But we have 170mm sea level rise, that is actually 6.5 times increase in frequency, not 9.
Of course another way to express this is that we con reduce flooding by a factor of 27 (96%) by raising the sea wall top by 300mm. That extra 130mm means that in another 75 years we will be back where we started.
Terrifying.
10
for those still clinging on to the meme that CAGW is a socialist scam –
please ask yourself why the Coalition has brought none of the sceptics’ case to the public’s attention.
explain how come at Ground Zero for the CAGW scam – the European Union –
7 June 2011: The Economist: Europe’s left – Left out
Fewer and fewer European countries are run by left-leaning governments
Today, following the defeat of the ruling Socialists in Portugal’s general election on June 5th, the left is in charge of just five: Spain, Greece, Austria, Slovenia and Cyprus. In Spain, by far the largest of these, polls suggest the Socialists will be removed from office at an election that must be held by next March…
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/06/europes-left
as predicted, Spain is now ruled by a Conservative Govt.
Greece now has a Conservative Government.
i’m not interested to check if there’s been any other reversal, because it wouldn’t make any difference to the overwhelming rightwing slant of the EU countries.
no way was i going to watch Catalyst – in fact i don’t watch ABC at all as i can check what they’re up to online if required.
however, i did turn on abc’s tony delroy as he began his “what the papers say” last nite to hear fairfax hack do his bit on the World Bank’s 4 degree of global-warming-apocalypse heading our way. said the fairfax hack – we might be getting blase about the seriousness of the matter. delroy didn’t laugh at the hilarity of all this. if he did, he wouldn’t have his taxpayer-paid job, and neither would Jonica Newby nor the rest of the hacks at ABC.
what great satisfaction i felt when i quit BBC World Service after two years of closely observing their geopolitical propaganda, which continues unabated to this day, though not in the socialist way some would like to think.
when will ABC hacks decide they can’t take the CAGW propaganda any more, and walk away from their cushy taxpayer-funded jobs?
don’t hold your CO2 breath.
41
as with all things CAGW, follow the money:
16 Nov: UK Telegraph: James Delingpole: Greenpeace stunt backfires. We mustn’t laugh
My favourite bit was this one, where I revealed the astonishing level of subsidies made available to greedy landowners and rapacious wind farm developers.
– Here, roughly, is how the spoils will be divided among the troughers at Ovenden Moor. The landowner will be paid £401,000 pa, index-linked, for the next 25 years. The developer will get an income of around £2,679,300 pa, index-linked, over the same period. The vast bulk of this will come straight from the taxpayer in the form of compulsory subsidies, payable even if the turbines produce no power –
Maybe we should have a whip-round to help Greenpeace launch a more effective campaign. Then again – given that in 2011 their total gross worldwide income was 241 million euros (H/T Matt Sinclair: Let Them Eat Carbon) – maybe not.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100189946/greenpeace-stunt-backfires-we-mustnt-laugh/
63
Dreadnought commented at Bishop Hill:
The Blake’s Progress: Greenpeace to the FCO to the DFID.
When the UK government decided to take a global leadership role in tackling climate change it needed to mobilize several parts of the civil service to deliver on an ambitious plan. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office – the diplomatic service for the UK – took on the role of influencing other nations through ‘public diplomacy’ by engaging non-state stakeholders such as the business community, faith groups, environmental NGOs and the media. The FCO recognized the value of the ‘campaign approach’ to communicating a complex subject like climate change and sought an individual who could apply the principles of ‘campaigning’ to the specific context of a diplomatic service. Blake was invited to help as a consultant with the FCO’s plans and over a period of 18 months organized a global programme of workshops and training materials which inspired, informed and supported UK diplomats working on the climate change brief. As a result of the successful project at the FCO, Blake was invited to work with the Department for International Development (DFID) on shaping an international advocacy programme around development and climate change issues.
From Blake Lee-Harwood’s cv at
http://www.blakeleeharwood.co.uk/bongo.pl/case.studies/
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/11/19/orlowski-why-28gate-matters.html
FCO: BBC World Service
BBC World Service is the probably the world’s best known international broadcaster. It has an audience of 180m in 32 languages for its radio, TV and on-line services. It is funded by a grant-in-aid administered by the FCO, with a total budget of approximately £256m for 2010/11…
A separate Financial Agreement, following from the auspices of the Broadcasting Agreement, also exists…
2010 Settlement Round
The Foreign Secretary has repeatedly made clear the value he attaches to the World Service: it is a fundamentally important part of Britain’s presence in the world. The settlement maintains the FCO’s grant to the World Service, but at a reduced level. The transfer of BBC World Service funding to the Licence Fee in 2014-15 will enhance and safeguard the World Service’s vital role, allowing the BBC as a whole maximum scope to exploit efficiencies while also maintaining clear safeguards for BBC World Service funding and impartiality. The Foreign Secretary will continue to play a role agreeing the BBC World Service’s strategic direction and any closing of services.
http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/about-us/what-we-do/public-diplomacy/world-service
00
In the credits… Dr Jonica Newby.
Not sure what her PhD subject was but its all about trying to show authority.
90
She’s a Vet !
90
Hey now, Vets know a LOT about climate science.
Just like Wayne Swan knows a lot about economics….
80
The vet who treats my cats would certainly make a better prime minister than Gillard or better president than Obama. He knows better than to pretend he knows things he doesn’t know. He also has the advantage that he’s actually run a small business and knows what life on side street USA or Australia is all about.
I think that would be a step ahead. And I’m not being sarcastic. 🙂
The point is this — it all depends on whether you have a grip on reality or not and whether you’re honest or not. Some people have it and some don’t. If a vet actually becomes knowledgeable on some other subject, that’s good. If a vet pretends knowledge of another subject, that’s not so good.
Substitute any other professional qualification for vet and the argument is still the same.
Complaints about Joanne Nova are covered by the same argument. Does she know what she’s doing or not? The answer is an unequivocal yes!
I’ll stay out of the debate about who can call themselves, “Dr.”
30
Ahh…
Ha ha ha…
Dr Jonica Newby is a vet.
Vetarinarians are allowed to call themselves “Dr”, just like my Chiropractor is.
Not a PhD at all!!!
80
Harry, you beat me to it by an hour and a half.
She is a Veterinary Scientist.
The qualification is probably as useful as my wife’s accounting degree in the assessment of CO2 and Global Warming.
Having said that she is obviously very smart.
Anyone who can arrange to get paid to deliver that mindless drivel is not stupid and she is doing well out of CAGW.
Roll on the day of public enlightenment when this type of stuff will be seen for what it is:
useless misleading science and a malignant drain on public funds leading, in part, to a need for significant
extra borrowing by our “Government” to pay for it and similar activity.
KK
100
Obviously not enough money in putting little “tiddles” or “fido” to sleep for Ms.Newby. Wonder if she can offer skeptics the same service, at a discount rate of course.
50
KK,
Probably true as you stated it but think of the possible benefit if our public servants had accounting degrees. They might actually know the difference between red and black ink. A minus sign in the budget might manage to ring an alarm bell.
.
.
.
Or am I hoping for too much?
30
LOL.
60
Obviously used to communicating with chihuahua brains !!
50
I don’t agree with the derision that follows but I agree with the sentiment. Doctor is such a dodgy title. A medical doctor at least has the word as part of their job description but then again a plumber doesn’t go around calling themselves Pb. Smith.
A holder of a doctorate already has postnominals they can append to their name if they wish so why confuse things by using the doctor title?
As for someone who is not a medical doctor and does not hold a doctorate also calling themselves (yes it is the person’s choice with society’s acquiescence not the other way around) and who has not even practiced the profession from which they claimed the title for 12 years… I’d rather not for fear of being as tasteless and classless as “Angry”.
So a conspiracy theory… Shared initials, JN. Same state of origin. Scientific and science coms backgrounds. Female. Light/blonde hair. Worked TV and radio. Worked for ABC. Coincidence? I think not!
24
.
It’s complicated GA.
As I understand it, you don’t need to be a “Doctor” (PhD) to be a licensed medical practitioner (GP).
However, you DO need to be a “Doctor” (PhD) to be a licensed Veterinary Surgeon.
.
Hope that clears it up for everybody.
41
not so… and JN does not have a PhD. Here are the qualifications for registering as a veterinary surgeon I copied from the WA Vet surgeons board (below). In addition to continue to be a registered surgeon you need to show evidence of professional development and active and relevant work in the area. JN admits to not doing this for 13 years now.
40
.
Then I’ll happily stand corrected GA.
Things must have changed over the years.
I was relying on an exchange of letters in a Melbourne newspaper back in the late Eighties between a Doctor Ian Gawler (a vet), and a local GP.
They were debating Gawler’s views on cancer treatment (Gawler had bone cancer). The GP kept referring to Gawler as “Mister”, while Gawler referred to the GP as “Doctor”.
After several letters Gawler lost his cool and pointed that (at the time) a vet such as himself required a PhD and therefore was a qualified “Doctor”, whereas in the GPs case the title was merely an honorific.
20
MV… maybe the “such as himself” was referring to some aspect of his PhD that equipped him with a skill or knowledge outside the normal range for a vet surgeon.
10
Gee Aye and MV,
I am a doctor, and in that chosen field I occasionally use that title. It is a lie of omission, or deceptive if I was to call myself “Dr” in anything other than my chosen field. So, if I presented myself as some sort of expert in economics, or climate, or biology even, I would not and should not refer to myself as doctor, even though I am a doctor!
I hope that is explicable enough. I find the deceptiveness of Dr Neil Blewitt to refer to himself as Doctor when establishing aspects of Medicare, for example to be highly deceptive and inappropriate since it rendered a false belief in the mind of the public that he was a medical practitioner, when he was not.
40
agreed Winston.
I always thought that I could use Doctor to get flight upgrades but it never happens. Heaven help anybody who needs the kiss of life from me.
00
I friend of mine works for the Met Bureau and gave me a bit of an insight into the accuracy of their weather models.
The evening of the Victorian bush fires the weather predicting computer was asked to make a prognosis.
The answer it gave was – “Light showers”.
Luckily the human component exercised a bit of healthy scepticism and manually over rode the result to give a more realistic warning.
72
“What happened to all the thermometers before 1962?”
They were rounded up and sent to re-education camps in the North.
191
hilarious
41
5 Gold Stars from me.
No gold stars? Well, have a thumbs up anyway. 😉
41
Residents of Brisbane and southern Queensland are asking why they were not warned of the extreme weather cells that recently hit the area, destroying crops in Stanthorpe and the darling down and taking off roofs in the Brisbane CBD.
Looks like the computer models blew it again.
64
In Italy they gaoled the earthquake specialists for getting their forecast wrong.
So what’s in store for weather/climate scientists? Are some of them just too smart for their own good?
34
There were warnings in the courier mail on Friday, and other warnings on Thursday. People had plenty of advance notice. Also, there were these huge black storm clouds building up on the horizon about an hour before the storm. i swear to god, people want a personalised email, a text every hour and a government task force to personally clean up their front yard every time there’s a storm in storm season.
70
.
I’m with you on this one Martin.
As soon as things started to look gloomy on Friday morning I checked on the BoM weather site, and sure enough, there were current warnings. After that I checked every couple of hours for updates over the weekend until things cleared.
Not long after I checked the first time, there was an article on the ABC online news about the warnings.
I’m not entirely sure what some people expect – a hand-delivered, gold embossed, personal message from the Premier, perhaps?
30
MartinX
Doh, that was why the profit, Al Gore (peace be on his many mansions) invented the internet. Didn’t you get the tweet?
00
“JONICA NEWBY: Heat is energy.
MARK COLVIN: It’s just basic physics.
JONICA NEWBY: Yeah, so basic physics tells you it’s going to be wilder…”
No. Basic physics tells me that the total system will be in a higher energy state. It doesn’t tell me that the energy imbalances in the system will be more extreme. The higher state may well be a more stable state with the energy more evenly distributed.
131
Dr. Kanya Kusano, program director of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, allegedly said that the AGW theory was more like astrology than science.
80
When your basing your entire evidence for Catastrophic Warming on tree rings, I would agree with him.
Prior to the tree ring graph, nobody outside of weather science cared too much.
Doom was declared from various sectors in various guises; one was no more scary than the other. Until taxing the people to save the world was thought up. Governmnet gained interest in the subject and this is where we are now.
11
“Your electricity bills will mysterious rise.”
Now there’s some poetry. Does it have a tune to go with it?
Have been reading the transcripts of the ICAC inquiry. It surprises this old farmer that some leading modern lawyers seem to be poor wordsmiths, who can’t even be relied on to address people by their correct names.
40
“Your electricity bills will mysterious rise.”
Is this the Voodoo Science we’ve been hearing about?
00
“Your electricity bills will mysterious rise.”
At least they are introducing some levity into proceedings.
00
[…] Catalyst: climate astrology in your very own backyard […]
00
Wow! Are there people who still watch Catalyst?
I gave it up about 18 months ago, when it was well on it’s way of morphing into the propaganda machine this thread tells me it has become.
Thanks for the heads up. Saves me tuning in some time, to see if it was back to a worthwhile science show.
40
This is OT but i want to ask a question
This first link tells us that teh Eurasian Austumn Snow extent is the highest in 3 decades
http://iceagenow.info/2012/11/eurasian-autumn-snow-extent-highest-decades/
This second link tells us that world wide snow cover is way above average
http://iceagenow.info/2012/11/worldwide-snow-cover-average/
We also know the NTH Hemi is going through its most snowiest decade on record
This third link tells us that shrinking snow and ice cover is intensifying global warming
http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/8199-shrinking-snow-and-ice-cover-intensify-global-warming
So my question is, who is the liar?
90
.
Don’t know Crackar.
What I do know is they’re predicting record deaths from COLD amongst the homeless in Delhi this year, due to an expected unprecedented COLD WINTER in India.
50
here’s a concerted MSM effort:
Australian: AAP: Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull can still draw a crowd
FORMER prime minister Kevin Rudd and former opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull can still draw a decent crowd. The pair appeared on the ABC’s talk show Q&A last night and propelled the show into the 10 most-watched programs for the evening…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/kevin-rudd-and-malcolm-turnbull-can-still-draw-a-crowd/story-e6frg996-1226520313311
complete with ABC Q&A video with caption:
“While the former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd faced off with former Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull on ABC’s Q & A, sparring over policy, tax and economy, the hot topic on everyone’s minds was leadership”
Age: Katharine Murphy: RuddBull appeal says much about state of politics
It speaks of our times – the progressive detachment of politics from old-fashioned principles and values, the relentless rise of the presidential “personality” – that it seems plausible Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull could form a breakaway political party.
Plausible enough for the two politicians to get a question from the audience on the ABC’s Q&A program.
The rationale for this new RuddBull (or perhaps BullRudd) party was Turnbull and Rudd were wealthy moderates disliked by their colleagues but ***popular in the community – so why don’t you dudes hook up?…
It is striking though how often you get the question from people outside politics: why aren’t Rudd and Turnbull leading their respective parties, or why don’t they join forces?…
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/ruddbull-appeal-says-much-about-state-of-politics-20121120-29n9i.html
don’t mention the carbon dioxide tax:
20 Nov: BusinessSpectator: Rob Burgess: Labor needs to shut up about carbon
Malcolm Turnbull’s assertion on the ABC’s Q&A last night that “there’s not going to be any change [in leader] on our side, certainly” was wonderfully convincing.
But then all ‘reluctant’ leaders make these kinds of statements before being dragged before voters to save their parties…
If, in early 2013, there is a real prospect of a number of Liberal Party members losing their seats to a reinvigorated Labor Party, and thereby ceding power once again to Gillard, all the principled arguments in the world will be no match for the simple logic that in a Turnbull-Gillard election, the result would be resounding victory to the coalition.
Which is why the carbon-fight-back needs to be slowed…
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Turnbull-Gillard-Abbott-election-carbon-tax-leader-pd20121120-27TD6?opendocument&src=rss
00
the raw data from the region where The Brown Brothers winery is, shows that global warming hasn’t hit the area.
hic! I’ll dring … drink to that!
31
That Catalyst show had me ROTFL. I have never seen such a childish display re’ science unless it was being directed at 5 year olds.
11
After about 3 minutes of watching it, I too was wondering if the programme wasn’t being broadcast in the wrong timeslot. Programmes of similar intellectual depth are usually broadcast in the afternoon; around nap-time for the kiddies.
41
Dr David Jones BOM leading climatologist warned that 2012 was off to a scorcher and summer will be a sizzler HeraldSun 8/1/2012.The atmosphere is overloaded with carbon dioxide and its warming our world he warned.Adelaide had its hottest New Years day in 112 years at 41.6C.The first day of 1900 was 43.1.If carbon dioxide is warming our world,what caused it to be warmer in 1900,im puzzled David? What happened to the scorcher for 2012? On the 15/7/2012 Herald Sun the BOM climate model warned a positive IOD is on the way and will shut down our rain fall.The CBD of Melbourne recorded it,s wettest July in 16 years and the rain keeps falling.
80
But now the BOM has changed its forecast for summer. For QLD it says it will be drier and warmer in the north of the state while above average rain and cooler in the south. This is the opposite to the August prediction.
The darned SOI index refused to keep going down and stayed at just above level. Or should we blame those darned computer models which won’t co-operate? Oh well, at least we we know they are accurate 100 year out.
00
EU carbon hits 16-week low as supply looms
LONDON, Nov 19 (Reuters Poin Carbon) – EU carbon slipped to as low as 6.55 euros on Monday as traders fretted about the large volume of supply due from auctions later in the week…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2066292?&ref=searchlist
“Dubious” JI schemes must be banned to save U.N. market: report
LONDON, Nov 19 (Reuters Point Carbon) – One of the U.N.’s two main carbon offsetting markets, the Joint Implementation (JI) mechanism, could wither and die unless more is done to stop erroneous projects from earning credits, according to a new report co-funded by the EU…..
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2065654?&ref=searchlist
INTERVIEW-German minister backs EU proposal to squeeze carbon market
BERLIN, Nov 19 (Reuters by Stephen Brown/Markus Wacket) – Germany’s environment minister has come out in support of a European Commission proposal to prevent the collapse of its instrument for cutting carbon emissions by withdrawing some emission permits from the market.
Peter Altmaier, an influential figure in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), told Reuters he hoped the ruling centre-right coalition could agree to support it in time for a European Union summit in December.
“The European Commission in recent weeks made new proposals which show a sense of proportion and reality,” he said in an interview on Monday, adding this would help stabilise trade in carbon permits and give business an incentive to reduce CO2…
Carbon emissions trade is aimed at pushing industry towards cleaner energy by making it dearer to burn coal. But with demand for power flagging, the market has been flooded with permits…
Until Monday, the EU’s biggest economy Germany had not taken a position, while its coal-dependent neighbour Poland and the heavy-industry lobby have led opposition to anything that would drive up the price of carbon allowances.
***Energy companies ranging from oil major Royal Dutch Shell to First Solar are among those clamouring for a stronger carbon price to drive innovation and a move away from carbon-intensive coal…
German papers carry frequent headlines about how consumers are paying for the switch from nuclear to renewable energy via surcharges on their electricity bills, and operators say these subsidies for renewable power will rise by 47 percent next year.
Altmaier acknowledged the energy switch was now “one of the two or three top items in the political debate.” It is hard to see how even the popular Merkel can turn this to her advantage for the elections, when she will seek a third term.
But the “greening” of Merkel’s energy policies has robbed one of the main opposition parties – the Greens – of their “no nukes” platform and fired speculation that the CDU and the Greens could try to circumvent their current allies – the FDP and Social Democrats (SPD) respectively – to form a majority.
The Greens’ choice of a moderate leadership ahead of the 2013 election contest has revived such talk.
But like other senior Merkel political allies, Altmaier insisted the CDU’s strategy was to renew the centre-right coalition with the flagging FDP.
“The SPD and Greens have other policy ideas and for this reason I think speculation about a conservative-Green alliance is for now and the foreseeable future not realistic,” he said.
Merkel’s energy policy foresees a huge expansion of the German power grid, which Altmaier wants to make more popular with the population by forcing the grid operators to issue bonds to the public, enabling them to invest.
***”The expansion of the grid will mean many billions of euros being invested and I have proposed that part of this investment should be made available for ‘burgher bonds’ at a fixed rate of 5 percent to give citizens the possibility to create value by participating in the expansion of the grid,” said Altmaier.
This is also likely to be the subject of debate with the FDP-run economy ministry, which likes the idea of giving the public a chance to participate in the expansion of the grid but does not want operators forced to finance projects in this way.
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/reutersnews/1.2065938?&ref=searchlist
10
hellooooo!
Australia mulls signing long-term CO2 purchase deals
BEIJING, Nov 19 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Australia proposed Monday to use A$250 million of public money to sign long-term contracts to buy carbon credits from farmers in a bid to cut greenhouse gas emissions in neglected sectors such as land-use change, according to a statement by the Department of Climate Change…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2065280?&ref=searchlist
20
.
Pat,
This is already underway – with Tassie wanting to convert all farms, forestry etc to CO2 credits. With this and the GST allocation they will be able to get paid to do nothing.
Also the link to Pointcarbon you gave above, gives no details to this con trick.
Gillard is handing over 1/4 of billion dollars to secure long term contracts to farmers to convert their arable land to CO2 credit businesses. Why wouldn’t they? Money for jam. This is not to buy credits – it is only to secure contracts that farmers will have to sign now, so governments can control their land for generations to come. Money, Money Money.
State & federal governments of all parties are forcing industries (grazing, argiculture, horticulture etc) out of business now, then cancel leases, buy their land and introduce the OLD gravy train CO2 credit industry.
Governments cannot manage anything, and especially land management or the environment. It is only the money they seek.
This is stage 2 of the CO2 tax con job. It will only get worse. Fisheries, agriculuture, pastoral – you name – they want it. Start getting used to imported food. This is going to cost more than a sausage sandwich every week.
11
If only we could get by without eating anything, then it wouldn’t matter that they are turning our farms back into forests.
00
China regulator warns against ETS speculation: paper
BEIJING, Nov 19 (Reuters Point Carbon) – A senior official at China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) said this weekend financial investors should stay out of the country’s emerging emissions trading markets to avoid speculation in early years, a local newspaper said…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2065469?&ref=searchlist
10
The normal or average condition of the Earth over the last 5 million years has been Ice Age, but we are in one of the relatively short Interglacials now. The Interglacial began about 10,000 years ago, so we could say that the globe has been above ‘average’ temperature for the last 100,000 months in a row, give or take.
So what are the odds of 100,000 in a row?
I might add that if you average my height over my whole life, I have been above my average height for the last 400 months in a row. It doesn’t mean I am still growing.
91
this was originally, and more appropriately, headlined:
Calif. officials call carbon auction a success
Grand Island Independent-6 hours ago
Grand Island Independent: AP: California sells out of first pollution permits
The effort to curtail carbon emissions involved the sale of 23.1 million permits _ each allowing for the release of one ton of carbon _ for $10.09 apiece, the California Air Resources Board said…
The board would not divulge specific figures on how many permits were bought by individual polluters covered under newly instituted caps on carbon emissions. The board does not comment on bidding activity to protect each polluter’s strategy regarding use of the carbon market, Nichols said.
However, a sampling of the more than 300 companies that are covered include utilities such as Pacific Gas & Electric Co., petroleum refiners such as Phillips 66 Co. and even food processing companies such as Saputo Cheese USA Inc.
Blair Jones, a spokesman for Pacific Gas & Electric, said the company is “satisfied with the process based on what we’ve observed.” He said he couldn’t comment on whether PG&E participated in the auction due to restrictions in the cap and trade regulations…
Robert Day, a partner at Boston-based clean tech investment firm Black Coral Capital, said the high number of bids showed that California’s carbon market is legitimate.
“As an investor, I take a lot of comfort that this was for real, was done right and will continue into the future,” Day said…
About 97 percent of the allowances were bought by companies regulated under the program, and another 3 percent were bought by financial traders for later sale…
Nearly 40 million permits for 2015 _ a year when cap-and-trade widens to include more entities _ were made available in the first auction. About 5.5 million of those allowances were auctioned for $10 each…
The California Chamber of Commerce has filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the program, arguing the board does not have the legal authority to collect money for the state.
“Instead of hiring workers, expanding production, or investing in new carbon-reducing equipment, these auction dollars will be distributed by government for other purposes,” said Shelly Sullivan of the AB32 Implementation Group, a business coalition that supports greenhouse gas reductions but opposes the auctioning of allowances…
http://www.theindependent.com/news/national/calif-officials-call-carbon-auction-a-success/article_e31246e1-5d51-537a-8f8e-29d52faf13a8.html
**article doesn’t give a clue what agency Clegern represents, but at least there’s more detail because it is written by a local staff writer:
19 Nov: San Gabriel Valley Tribune: staff writer, Andrew Edwards: California announces results of first cap-and-trade auction
California businesses subjected to the nation’s only cap-and-trade policy were able to buy emissions credits at pennies above the minimum price when the state held its inaugural auction for emissions allowances last week…
The auction, held Wednesday, ended with affected industries purchasing greenhouse gas emissions allowances at a price of $10.09.
That amount is nine cents above the minimum price set before the California Air Resources Board held the auction…
Clegern (**agency spokesman Dave Clegern) said cap-and-trade can be expected to not only reduce emissions, but also encourage venture capitalists to invest in firms producing anti-pollution technology, such as fuel cell vehicles or autos running on an electrical charge.
Influential industry groups, however, point out that cap-and-trade still raises the cost of doing business in California and continue to oppose the program.
“California employers paid hundreds of millions of dollars for carbon credits during the first cap and trade auction last week. Instead of hiring workers, expanding production, or investing in new carbon-reducing equipment, these auction dollars will be distributed by government for other purposes,” Dorothy Rothrock, vice president of the California Manufacturers & Technology Association said in a statement…
http://www.sgvtribune.com/news/ci_22029778/california-announces-results-first-cap-and-trade-auction
00
Wow!
What pat says here really makes you sit up and take notice eh!
23.1 million credits, each credit accounting for one ton of emitted CO2.
Huge!
Umm, that accounts for the emissions from ONE large scale coal fired plant for one year.
Tony.
50
@TonyfromOz
The propaganda war is won, Tony. There is now a critical mass of the populace that believe CO2 will cause climatic Armageddon
This was achieved through an unremitting barrage of highly exaggerated scare campaigns conducted with a willing meeja. The Catalyst programme simply ran scary anecdotes to demonstrate this and within the structure of propaganda, it works. Shaping public opinion took about 20 years of incessant propaganda … and that was the easy part
Now the hard part … convincing 51% of the populace to vote for reduced standards of living. Your posts, as accurate and interesting as they are, simply underline the fact that propaganda-preferred energy alternatives require a world-wide reduced standard of living to have any effect at all … the meeja shies well away from publishing anything that remotely points to this
33
So I can stop now.
Tony.
(Nyuk nyuk nyuk)
20
Stop or not as you want – you did understand my post, I hope, but I certainly have no desire to interfere with your fun
My point is simply that the easy part (scaring the populace silly) has been done, albeit it took 20 years, hence my comment that the propaganda war has been won. BTW, I’m not an “AGW believer”, the fact is that 2xCO2 increases global mean temps about 1C, while feedbacks are vociferously fought over in the peer-reviewed “liturchur” as we speak
The hard part – actually doing something meaningful for those scared of CO2 – has not been addressed, as your analytical posts, amongst others, show. This part of the AGW meme has NOT been won and no amount of propaganda will overcome the physical engineering/economic issues
Your posts are valuable from this viewpoint … but please don’t think that such analyses will convince the majority that AGW is a non-issue. The “what-to-do” issue is much, much harder for the AGW brigade than populist scare campaigns, which is why they avoid it so studiously. You will have seen that your analytical posts here and elsewhere generate almost no serious rebuttals. We know why, of course
Just don’t waste energy fighting the propaganda scare campaigns – that part of the war is already won
12
ianl8888,
yes, I understood your Post, and its intent, and believe me it has never been fun.
My response was a feeble attempt on my part to try and indicate something with two possible meanings, hence the sly chuckle.
My good lady wife wonders why I bother, when most of the feedback I have ever got is that I am full of sierrahotelindiatango.
I understand that, as you correctly say, people have no comprehension about what will be the end result of what they call for.
I’m beginning to understand, especially in the last 6 to 8 Months, that I’m beating my head up against a brick wall, because no matter what I say, people will always believe what they want to believe, and that’s most definitely not the facts that I try to point out.
So, in effect, your original statement stands in its correct context, that we have indeed have lost the propaganda war, something I cannot fight.
It will be too late when the bovine excrement comes into violent contact with the rotating wind generating device, and the electrical power we now take as a staple of life begins to be rationed, because then, anarchy will prevail.
It’s been a conditioned brainwashing, and the people have just meekly fallen in behind it.
And what I said in my seemingly jocular response is indeed something I have been thinking about lately.
Tony.
10
Ianl8888. #35.1.1.1.1
I beg to differ. While there is a contrary voice, on any topic, people will look at the evidence, and make up their own minds.
Now the conclusion they come to, may be radically different to what they are expected to say in public or at work, but that is a situation they are used to handling. For example, many people go for a drink with their colleagues and Manager, after work on a Friday night, because it is expected of them as part of the company culture. They may not want to be there, and then may just have a soft drink and then leave, but they have been through the motions.
The same things apply in lots of areas of society – they are societal rules.
This is why opinion surveys are so unreliable in these situations. When options are polarised, people will toe the party line, they will follow the societal rules, but in private, they will listen to the contrary voices, and they will look at the alternative arguments, and they will figure out their own version of the truth. Their version of the truth may not be entirely correct, but it is the one that makes the most sense to them.
And that is good enough to make them a sceptic.
10
MUST LISTEN TO THE RATIONALISATION FOR THE SECRECY, AND NOTE THE NERVOUS LAUGHS. I’VE BEEN SEARCHING FOR THIS INFO FOR DAYS:
AUDIO 4mins: KQED California: California Establishes First Carbon Trading Price
KQED Science Editor Craig Miller sat down with KQED’s Tara Siler about California’s counter-attack on climate change and about the auction and why it took nearly a week for the results to be released.
http://www.kqed.org/news/story/2012/11/19/111342/california_establishes_first_carbon_trading_price?category=bay+area
01
It seems to me that there are only two possibilities for David Jones. Either he is dealing dishonestly with the observed, recorded facts or he is just ignorant of history. In any case he is not worthy of his lofty position and salary.
01
This is the Kokic et al paper:
Suicide and drought in Australia [Sustainability Science] (2012)
Hanigan, I. C.; Butler, C. D.; Kokic, P. N.; [et al.] Hutchinson, M. F.
PNAS – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
10
Vultures
00
Good video response by Bob Tisdale to Obama’s first press conference after re election.
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/11/19/dear-president-obama-a-video-memo-about-climate-change/#comments
00
It’s good to see mention of the 60 year cycle in this article, for when that cycle was rising in the 30 years before 1998-99 it was the cause of all the alarm. As a co-author of this article published today you will see that I believe all climate change can be explained by natural cycles.
The real “big picture” referred to is the fact that nothing unnatural is going to make a dent on the massive amount of energy stored not only in the oceans and crust, but all the way down to the core. To bring about a significant, long-term warming (or cooling) in surface temperatures (even within a few thousand years) there would have to be an impossible flow of energy into or out of the whole Earth system.
The stabilising mechanism has nothing to do with the very low terrestrial heat flow: rather it has to do with the temperature which has been established over a billion years or more. So, if you question the brief mention of such in the above article, this page of explanation may help you follow the argument.
42
I once saw Mark Howden produce 32 foot mulga trees from a modelling exercise.
And in the archives at Jennifer Marohasy’s blog is a detailing of a Mark Colvin hatchet job in WA as I recall
10
No wonder people died of heat in the 19th century if they wore the kit in that photograph in a place like Brisbane.
10
I guess they hadn’t figured out they should “make themselves at home” yet.
Didn’t stop them from turfing out the original locals though. Just look up the original purpose of “Boundary Street” in Brisbane.
Just for interest, I have located the building in the background in that photo. it is the City Tabernacle Baptists Church, which still stands today. (That link back there is to Google Street View.)
The site of those Stephensons Screens seems to be on the tail end of Spring Hill, but is now beneath the large building at number 166 Wickham Tce.
30
I agree with Sonny.
Rationality is losing. Scientific method is losing. The spin merchants are winning.
Methinks we are entering a very critical phase of the CAGW game.
42
Fear not for the AGW crowd winning, the natural cycles of our dear planet will put paid to their misadventure very soon. As we speak, the portends of climate change all point to a colder future. The O’ bugger moment comes closer to these people with every passing northern winter.
If memory serves me correct AGW proof was not hotter summers but milder winters with less snow. It would seem that many are getting very ordinary summers and less than gentle winters. That some ski resorts are opening early and closing later in the season is a gentle pointer. The weather gods have a very strange sense of humour, very ancient Greek or Nordic in outlook, it would appear they do not like being mocked by fools, and will have their little joke,at the fools expense.
02
ROFL! Lovin’ it. 😀
Nope, it’s Newby Physics. (teehee)
Heat is not energy, in the same way traffic isn’t cars and electric current isn’t charge.
Heat is the net flow of energy from one body to another (due to a difference in temperature).
As RoHa said above, it’s not necessarily so.
The question in my mind is… does the lapse rate, or rate of the temperature drop with altitude, get faster, or get slower, or remain the same, as a result of Global Warming?
Because the temperature gradient determines the buoyancy force and convection speed on a parcel of warm moist air, and a faster lapse rate should create greater pressure differences and stronger winds.
So the Suncorp billion dollar question is… does an enhanced greenhouse effect change the lapse rate in any way, and by what mechanism can it do that?
Eh? Try telling that to the Slayers. Perhaps it was a strategic decision to pretend the Slayers do not exist.
11
Record low temps in parts of India.
http://devconsultancygroup.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/cold-wave-roundup-record-temperature.html
12
Just thought JFC may be interested in this.I linked to this a couple of days ago at Marohasy’s site.
Here’s a list of 32 SL stations around OZ, but only up to 2003. All 32 stations have an average SLR of 0.9 mm a year up to that time.
They then remove the negative stations to give a SLR of 1.2 mm a year for the rest.
http://www.environment.gov.au/soe/2006/publications/drs/pubs/366/co/co_03_aust_mean_sea_level_survey_2003.pdf
Of course since 2003 the trend should have declined. They state that OZ stns agree with trends at that time around the world.
12
Thx again Neville, interesting. I note as well that from CCR:
http://www.climatecodered.org/2012/10/nasa-climate-chief-demolishes-denialist.html
We are still in, or maybe coming out of, a strong La Nina. Yes these things are complicated but if you take the time to understand them they are quite understandable.
34
JFC these things are complicated but we are now in the cool phase of the PDO and must expect more la ninas like the wetter 1950s and 1970s for OZ.
We’ve just had a period of warm phase PDO with more el ninos than la ninas and higher temps. So this must have had an influence for higher SLs but this should now change.
But I repeat there has been a decline in SLR estimates from the IPCC 1990 to the latest report.
Just check the reports, every successive report has shown this SLR decline.
AR4 has a mid range estimate of 30cm ( 1 foot) by 2100 and every report has shown a decline.
All this mostly during the warm phase of the PDO.
22
But . . . but . . . back when it was warming – you know, 16 years ago – we were told natural variations like la Nina – El Nino had diddly squat to do with it. AND we were told it by the same James Hansen you are quoting now.
But . . . but . . . back when it was warming – you know, 16 years ago – we were told water vapour had diddly squat to do with anything. And we told that by the IPCC – you know – The Gold Standard when it comes to “climate science”.
But . . . but . . . back when it was warming – you know, 16 years ago – we were told warming would mean LESS precipitation – remember – “drought is the new normal”, and “even if it rains the water won’t make it to the dams”, and all the other pearls of wisdom offered us by such “climate science” sages as Flim Flammery Chubb, Jones and Karoly.
92
I’ll just add this graph showing all the models for SLR until 2300 or the next 300 years.
Every model shows Antarctica is negative for SLR while Greenland is positive. Ant= 89% of planet’s ice and Grnl=10% of planets ice.
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1844/1709/F4.expansion.html
So where is dangerous SLR to come from for the next 300 years?
BTW the IPCC has an estimate for only 3.5cm from Greenland until 2100.
Meanwhile Antarctica continues to accumulate more ice and all the models expect this last for the 300 years.
11
Re quote within JPC above:
Consider a continental sized area of the Earth, over land or sea or both. It has been raining moderately over more than half of this area for a day now ending. Questions:
Does this mean that the atmospheric humidity beforehand had been high?
Does this mean that the present humidity is high or low?
Does this mean that the humidity in the immediate future will be low? If yes, how low for how long, roughly?
Is the humidity being replenished at the same rate as the rain falls?
Is the humidity being depleted at a lower rate than the rain takes?
What is the source and path of the replenishment?
Can one plot a typical time sequence relating humidity to rainfall and do the required mass and temperature balances to validate it?
Does the end of the period of rain happen because the humidity drops and the sky runs out of enough water?
Does the end of one period of moderate rain raise or lower the probability of more such rains in the predictable future?
When a rainfall track runs for several days over hot deserts and a thousand km, from where does its replenishment water come?
Is there are credible model linking rain, time and humidity? If so, where can one read about its hindcast performance? Does it have a cyclicity component than can be used for projection?
……
Do questions put in this simple way have simple answers that can be provided by the authors being discussed?
01
OK, I have discovered fairies at the bottom of the garden.
If all on this blog say that you have seen them too, then we can extract billions in government grants to study these little creatures. We can even get the banks to issue fairy credits!
Key to this, is that there must be no dissenting views. Consensus please!
Why is this not a criminal conspiracy to defraud?
42
I see. Unwilling to accept current warming based on modern thermometer records, yet 100% willing to blindly accept the record from more than a century ago.
Oh, and a reminder, local warming != global warming.
315
“James”, Nobody is listening to your LIES.
Stop wasting your time.
64
James,
That was a rather poor attempt at using statistics and then making a totally unsupported statement.
51
And what current warming would that be, James?
Something that happened a decade and a half ago hardly qualifies as “current”.
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James, just how thick is your skull.
You can bang on about ‘attribution studies’, whatever, all you like.
(1) No statistically significant warming for the last 17 years.
(2) A mere 0.7 deg. C over the last 130 years, well within the range of what has occurred before.
There you are. Climate reality for dummies in two easy points.
Live with it!
73
No James,
The real question here is are you willing to accept temperature records from more than a century ago?
Well are you James? I would be interested to know.
62
Damn i forgot to add
But not when the topic is the MWP, in this context the warming cannot be localised it must be global ie a synchronised warming everywhere.
What a joke.
61
James says this BS:
James, therefore local cooling = global cooling?
Do you really want to go there?
71
Oh!
Sterling MD!
Did you get that one James?
That’s why it’s counter productive to argue semantics.
It’s inevitably going down the lose/lose path.
20
Hmm …
I can’t see any alternative … I am going to have to severely give you a thumbs up Mark, as much as it grieves me to do so.
11
This threads cynicism, sarcasm and personal insults are just plain sad.
The Catalyst episode was BS but at least is was on topic.
00
That’s Kinky.
KK
00
Adjustments? Is this referring to the same thing?
06
Your source of complaint against Ken Stewart’s analysis of biased adjustments by BOM refers to the Della-Marta paper; could you summarise the homogenisation criteria for adjusting raw data as described in Della-Marta and also show how Ken’s splicing technigue of interrupted site data is inferior.
32
Hi cohenite, No, but you can if you like. Have fun!
I’m not the one trying to pick holes in the BOM homogenisation process. But I can understand that Ken’s method of just sticking them together is flawed. Adjustment for change of site MUST be made. This is not a desire to show any kind of artificial change, but acceptance that different sites will record different temperatures. To stick them together like Ken does is simply wrong.
04
James you obviously have no clue, nor does your source. Ken does not just “stick them together”. Ken’s explanation of his technique is here.
Ken’s method of adjusting for, in the case of Alice Springs, a site move is to compare data from both sites using a 365 day running mean which compensates for the extra warming at the Alice Springs PO site; it does so by creating an average where any one data point at either site has the difference averaged over the year.
By comparison what the person at Jame’s site has done is simply raise the data points from the colder Alice Springs’ airport up to the warmer level of the PO; why was this done when you had a cooler and warmer site; the basic ‘spice’ could just have easily been to lower the warmer PO site data down to the cooler airport data!
Ken’s method is statistically much more sound and comepensates for artificial or site inhomogeneities at either site; Jame’s site simply chooses the warmer site and patches or splices the cooler data to it creating a warmer trend.
This is what the BOM has done as Ken shows. How could temperature behave in that fashion; the simple answer is it doesn’t unless it is statistically manipulated.
Ken’s methodology avoids this tainting and manipulation and shows a true trend for maximum and minimum.
Just because your chum writes rubbish supported by some pretty graphs doesn’t make it valid James; but then you’re hardly concerned with validity are you?
40
James, three questions of you:
1. Was the Alice Springs site moved from the Post Office to the Airport because UHI was becoming evident at the PO before the shift? The overlap graphs would not deny this possibility.
2. Many Australian time series temperature graphs allow one to postulate a break point in the late 1970s. Alice has this feature. Do you accept that there was a break point then and if so, what method of homogenisation would you use (if any was needed to be used)?
3. Do you have a preferred mathematical method for the detection of signifcant break points? If so, what is it?
30
1. I imagine they moved it to the airport because that would reduce UHI impact. Of the two sites, the PO shows almost no warming, the Airport shows the most warming. The difference – http://itsnotnova.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/alice-springs-raw-vs-acorn.png
2&3. As above, this is not my argument. Good luck with yours. My point, Ken’s homogenisation sucks.
03
You don’t have a point or a clue; and I find your rudeness towards a genuine researcher repugnant.
10
Just a gentle reminder …
As an ex-flyer, the reason for weather stations at airports is to accurately record conditions over the approaches to the runway(s). Local weather conditions have a strong bearing on flight safety. They therefore are, or were, calibrated for that purpose.
I think it is wrong to say that a weather station was “moved from the Post Office to the Airport”. It is probably more correct to say that a weather station was “installed” at the airport, so the Post office felt able to “remove” theirs.
Except that the calibrations for the two weather stations would have been different, in all probability.
00
So “Melbourne hit 46.5 degrees” on 7 February, 2009.
That’s hot no denying, but with Melbourne’s weather station now surrounded by a forest of large concrete buildings and hectares of black bitumen roadway, complete with countless hot engine exhausts, can anyone seriously contend that temperatures currently recorded there are comparable with those recorded there even 50 years ago. No Melbourne’s current temperature records are hopelessly compromised by UHI.
Even so during the Black Thursday bushfires of 1851, before official recording of Melbourne’s temperatures began, a number of unofficial sources recorded the temperature on that day as 117 deg F or 47.2 deg C. No probably not your regulation Stephenson screen installation, but then are the current UHI contaminated readings likely to be any more reliable?
93
As a matter of interest I live at Hopetoun Victoria and I understand the temperature recording has moved from the Township to the aerodrome, from a hill to the flat. it was hot though.
01
Netherlands’ meteorologists going to gaol for incorrect weather forecasts?
So asks Dr Wolfgang Thüne, re-building his Der Wettermann blog. (It’s in German… machine translation may not help much.)
It appears that weather professionals have been presenting forecasts with inappropriate certainty or hubris. Or is the public expecting certainty under the delusion that weather is deterministic?
Those 7-day “outlooks” on TV weather bulletins in Australia make me laugh.
30
Bob,
I have also seen that figure of 47.2C for Melbourne in 1851. That fire covered almost 25% of Victoria so it must have been extremely hot that day.
Just for interest’s sake, I compared the data between the raw max temp figures and the BOM’s High Quality figures for Lismore (Centre St) from 1910-1930 (the station has now closed but it still makes for an interesting comparison). I found that the raw data has been reduced by an average of 0.55C in the HQ data.
All years were reduced except 1919, with 1920 being the same.
I’m sure there is a good reason for this, but, generally speaking, temps have always been reduced for earlier years.
GISS NASA reflects this downward adjusted data (and it appears they do their own adjustments as well). It may well be that the 0.7C increase in temps over the past century may only be about 0.2-0.3C if only the raw data is used – and UHI may contribute significantly to that increase.
61
Thanks for this story Jo. It’s been years since I bothered watching Catalyst. Their ever increasing shrill on AGW and incessant search for AGW-related “crises” proved to me they were no longer a strictly science program, just mindless entertainment really.
I remember one of their stories focused on a “study” on shellfish near Antarctica. The researcher noted small holes in shells and of course this was strongly hinted at Man’s CO2 causing the oceans to become acidic. That was the last straw for me.
Here’s one experiment the CAGWists (and Catalyst) will never do for obvious reasons:
Place some eggshell in soda water and wait for it to dissolve. It won’t. It doesn’t even bubble. Notably, soda water is loaded with many times more CO2 than the oceans could ever absorb, so (according to CAGWists) it should also be stacked with carbonic acid (H2CO3). Doesn’t seem to happen. From Wiki:
Interestingly, the CAGWists have already been here in an attempt to bolster their claims under the heading “Role of carbonic acid in ocean chemistry”:
Now, this 0.1 unit of PH comes from (of all things) the “Ocean Acidity Network” http://ioc3.unesco.org/oanet/FAQacidity.html.
My end of the interweb has been playing up of late so I get a 404 error trying to reach the page. I wonder how that 0.1 unit was arrived at (or guessed)?
31
Catalyst has altered the transcript of Taking Australia’s Temperature by adding the word “global” to partially correct the misleading error re 330 consecutive months with above average temperatures. It’s actually been 3 months in a row of above average temperatures in Australia.
An understandable mistake. Lots of 3s.
There are a few other points worth making including the program’s references to sea levels, particularly at Fremantle where levels remain below their peak in 1999. However, charts are required so I’ve knocked together http://www.waclimate.net/catalyst-accuracy.html if anybody wants to check the Catalyst evidence that we’re threatened by rising seas.
30
You’re clearly wrong. If 110 weather stations report above average temperatures for three months, it’s clearly 330 months’ worth of above average temperatures.
😉
00
NOAA doesn’t seem to reference Kokic, P., Crimp, S. and Howden, M. (2012) in the August through to October reports currently online.
Nor mention the “probability” of successive months during a warm climate phase being warmer than the cool phase climate dominating a previous, “arbitrary” period.
00
Just a quick glance of this year’s monthly temp data for Australia show that the first seven months of this year were all below the average mean. Overall, maximum means are above average and minimum are well below.
November and December mean temps will both have to be reasonably warm otherwise 2012 will be a below-average year – as was 2011.
00
There really is overwhelming empirical evidence that gravity causes the formation of natural adiabatic lapse rates on all planets with atmospheres.
If anyone wishes to try to disprove that there are natural adiabatic lapse rates, such as on Venus, then they would have to produce an energy budget diagram for Venus showing that such low incident Solar radiation at the surface somehow raises the surface temperature by hundreds of degrees. It can’t . Instead the temperature gradient was established as the Sun started to warm the atmosphere when the planet first formed.
Gravity acts on molecules as they drift between collisions, and increases the propensity for the downward component of their motion to increase, and the upward component to decrease. So more molecules exist at the base of the atmosphere as is well known. As potential energy converts to kinetic energy when some molecules “fall” there is a resulting increase in temperature.
That’s why the Venus surface is hot – the atmosphere heated first and the gradient meant the base of the atmosphere was hundreds of degrees hotter than the mean radiating temperature somewhere in the middle. So the surface itself had to get hotter by conduction and radiation at the interface.
Thus, none of the surface temperature on Venus is due to backradiation or any radiative Greenhouse effect. And if there’s no radiative GHE up there, then neither is there down here on Earth.
12
Maybe Dr Newby is the sort of person who these property developers are targeting… http://delorytheape.freewebhosts.com.au/default.html The property developer and the people in the council who approved this development should be liable for any flood damage.. not tax/rate payers
00