Another round of government-funded PR went out a couple of weeks ago, across the obedient Pravda-media. It told us about another meaningless “record” that was probably not a record, and wouldn’t tell us whether man-made warming was the cause, even if it was. Not a single journalist had the wherewithal, nous or intellectual honesty to search the Internet looking for a different point of view. Though, in their defense, how could they have guessed that Prof David Karoly wouldn’t know about the UAH satellite program to measure temperatures? (It has only been running since 1979.)
This below, are the 12 month averages over Australia by satellite. Graphed at Kens Kingdom by Ken Stewart, with no doctorate in climatology and no government funds.
In the troposphere over Australia it was a hot year but not a record.
For the third time this year we’ve been hit with claims of a “hottest ever” record that doesn’t tell us anything about the climate, but does reveal a lot about the sick state of government funded science, corrupted, decrepit, and so far from being scientific it might as well be run by Greenpeace. If the government stopped funding climate science entirely, climate research might speed up.
The “hottest” headlines are science-marketing
- Again, for the third time, the more accurate, more comprehensive satellites show it was a hot year, but was probably not a record. Satellite data shows we didn’t have a hot angry summer. Man-made emissions were probably not to blame for the hot angry summer we didn’t have. And now apparently we also haven’t quite had the “hottest” 12 month period since 1910 either, but the hottest since 2010. (But what’s a hundred years between friends?)
- Again, for the third time, the “records” depend on mystery methods that can’t be replicated. This time the records appear to be based on ACORN data, supposedly the highest quality we have. This is the dataset we were told had neutral adjustments — an equal number of positive and negative changes. But inexplicably (yet again) somehow those neutral changes increase the trend. (Define neutral?) Who would have guessed that thermometers in the 1920s and 30s were overestimating temperatures and nobody noticed for decades after the fact? (Lucky that got fixed, eh!) Handily for record-makers, the BOM have more than one dataset — if it’s not a record in one, it might be in the other? The angry summer records depended on AWAP data that are not published in full either, and subject to different mystery-black-box adjustments. Back in 1910 that set has a mere 16 temperature stations on a continent of 7 million square kilometers. (No there can’t possibly be anything to hide in those undisclosed methods can there?)
- Again, for the millionth time, even if it is the hottest for a century, it doesn’t mean anything about the cause. To state the bleeding obvious: all causes of warming cause warming. The world started warming up in the 1700’s, long before CO2, the trend was the same in the 1870s as it was in the 1980s. None of that fits the man-made- emissions graph of CO2. Ergo, CO2 didn’t have much effect, if any. The climate models can’t tell us what caused the warming to start 2-300 years ago, they don’t work on 20 year, 2000 year or 200,000 year scales. They don’t work on local, regional or global scales. They don’t work on vertical atmospheric scales. They don’t work.
The need for constant “record” headlines (despite the conflicting data) is the mark of an effective lobby group, but it isn’t the mark of careful impartial scientist.
The satellite data shows it was not a record
There are thousands of measurements coming in from satellites that criss cross the nation day and night covering every corner of the land. This data came out within a few days of the propaganda pieces published all over the country, but the “scientists” at The University of Melbourne couldn’t wait, indeed, they were in such a rush you’d think there was an election on, and dare I say, that getting out an inaccurate message before the vote, was more important than waiting a few days to get the science right?
The satellite measured TLT (meaning Tropospheric Lower Temperature) more accurately shows what the bulk atmosphere above the Australian land-mass is doing – which is the quantity that is most directly related to greenhouse gas impacts. Indeed the models tell us that the rate of warming should be larger in the mid to upper troposphere than at the surface. In other words, if CO2 caused the warming, it would turn up in these satellite records before we saw it in the surface charts.
Some of the propaganda
- “Australia’s warmest 12-month period on record” [BOM]
- “Warm winter caps nation’s hottest year“
- The Conversation proves its worth as a government funded outlet: happy to print any old science as long as it’s bad enough.
The Conversation includes this gem of reasoning from David Karoly:
“However, attributing a single event or a record to human activities isn’t easy. But last year Hurricane Sandy put the spotlight on climate change and extreme weather.”
In other words, long trends don’t matter, ignore decadal averages, the current drought in hurricanes, forget global compilations of energy that show that storms are not getting worse, throw all your history out the window. If there is ever a bad storm anywhere in the world, it is our fault. Straight from the playbook of the witchdoctors of neolithic times. Send Karoly some conch shells.
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I ask again, as I did in June, if the satellites showed that the last Australian year was a record hot temperature, would Sophie Lewis and David Karoly have left that data off the paper, and entirely out of their calculations, and removed all mention of them from their press releases?
As I said then:
The peer reviewed, comprehensive, [hottest ever] Lewis and Karoly paper does not contain the words “satellite”, or “UAH”. Lewis and Karoly apparently do not know about the UAH satellite program yet, otherwise they surely would have emailed John Christy or Roy Spencer (as we did) to ask for the data. We can only hope that they get enough government support, more funding, and better education in future so that they may discover what unpaid volunteers figured out on the Internet for free 3 months ago. Frankly it is shameful that the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science is not connected to the world wide web and has not trained staff to use “google”.
Since the Uni of Melbourne don’t seem to have web access, perhaps someone can do them a favor and send them this in snail-mail so they can finally find out about the University of Huntsville Alabama? I’m sure John Christy would be happy to post them a printout of the UAH Australian data. I can relay messages if Prof Karoly would like.
Luckily my email goes all the way to America.
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Related posts:
- Mystery black-box method used to make *all new* Australian “hottest” ever records
- Not the hottest ever summer for most Australians in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane. Not “extreme” heatwaves either.
- How well did that 50 degree forecast work out for the BOM?
- Eight reasons the Australian heatwave is not “climate change”
- Australia – was hot and is hot. So what? This is not an unusual heatwave
- Extreme heat in 1896: Panic stricken people fled the outback on special trains as hundreds die.
Thanks to Ken, Ed, Chris, and all the independent BOM audit team and to John Christy for the data.
UPDATE: Changed “Junk science” to “Not so” in the headline. Don’t want to overuse the term.