More than 1000 cold snowy records set in US, one small media outlet covers it

I guess it is winter. In a cold snap last week nearly 1,400 records were broken in the US. 886 places recorded the lowest maximum, 325 recorded the coldest minimum, and 127 places recorded the highest snowfall.

Source: Hamweather

Total Records: 1,379
Snowfall: 127
High Temp: 28
Low Temp: 325
Low Max Temp: 886
High Min Temp: 13

A few days ago the records for that seven day period were even higher: 205 snowfall records. 969 Low Max. 203 Low temps. 17 High Temp. 61 High minimum.

Media coverage of the record cold? Almost non-existent

A search for news of cold records set in US from Nov 26 to Nov 30 turns up one story in the Christian Science Monitor  and pretty much no where else (did I miss some?). When 1,000 heat records fell in a week USA today covered it. They don’t seem to have mentioned the cold records, but we might wonder whether that’s an editorial bias, or (I think more likely) that no official climate or meteorological group issued a press release.

More cold is apparently on the way, look at the forecast map:

Remember, it’s just weather.

What exactly do these records mean? Hard to say

For perspective, the USA today story about heat records includes this:

“Those numbers might seem big, but they’re hard to put into context — the National Climatic Data Center has only been tracking the daily numbers broken for a little more than a year, said Derek Arndt, head of climate monitoring at the center.”

Thanks to IceAgeNow via Climate Depot

10 out of 10 based on 3 ratings

174 comments to More than 1000 cold snowy records set in US, one small media outlet covers it

  • #
    Yonniestone

    I can almost see a cliché 1980’s advertising man complete with ponytail and cocaine cough advising the MSM outlets,

    “Remember people, warm is sexy and cold is frigid, and the public want sexy!”

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      Eggsuckindog

      Yep cold as hell everywhere but here in Florida – shorts and flip flops.
      You, Bolty, Blair and Prof Bunyip should come over sometime, boats always running and beaches are stunning and yes I’ll find a world class golf course for Bunyip.

      warning in Denver on Fox about frost bite in minutes as the high was only 8F, windchill -25 @ noon. By next tuesday they will have a high about 32’F – wonderful

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      • #

        Warning: Casper, Wyoming -20F. No wind at the moment, but wind chills to -25, even if it reaches the forecast high of 7F (sounds a lot like Denver–maybe they share the forecast!)

        Additional Warning–wear gloves when starting your cars, etc. It only takes a couple of minutes of contact with the car’s ignition to frostbite your exposed fingers. It does not help if the car is a garage unless it’s heated.

        Egg: I actually like my cold! Not much for beachwear and flip-flops.

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  • #
    Dave

    Unbelievable,

    1,000 snow records set in the US – 1 MSM report?
    One typhoon in the Philippines – 1,000’s media reports all stating CAGW.

    Record highs for global sea ice extent – no MSM reports.
    Bushfires in NSW start in October which is normal – 1,000’s MSM reports blaming CAGW.

    97% Climate models predictions wrong – no MSM reports.
    IPCC release new predictions on CAGW – 1,000’s MSM reports.

    All Tim Flannery previous predictions wrong – no MSM reports.
    Tim Flannery gets sack – 1,000’s MSM reports.

    Solar activity is currently decreasing at one of the fastest rates as anytime the last 10,000 years indicating a cooling period – no MSM reports.
    Adam Bandt blames TA for bushfires – 1,000’s MSM reports.

    Until this MSM fixes up it’s act, and start to focus on the science as opposed to producing results that it thinks the left GANG GREENOIDS want to hear, this scam is not over.

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    • #
      MemoryVault

      To be fair, Dave, I don’t think you can sheet it all home directly to the MSM.

      Typhoon in the Philippines = CAGW, bushfires in October = CAGW, IPCC predictions = CAGW, were all commented on authoritatively and extensively by the likes of the BoM, CSIRO, Steffen, Karoly, assorted university professors, and others. The media simply regurgitates the crud these taxpayer-funded charlatans puke out.

      Conversely, cold and snow records in the USA, record sea ice extent, climate models wrong, and decreasing solar activity have all been studiously ignored by these same bottom-feeders, so the MSM can safely claim they have been totally unbiased in reporting “informed opinion” on these matters.

      Tim Flannery and Adam Bandt are, of course, darlings of the inner city elite, so anything they say is deemed “newsworthy”, no matter how puerile.

      .
      The only long-term solution is to get the scum off the public teat, and replace them with people who actually do “science”. Then, just maybe, we might more balanced media coverage. Unfortunately, that would require government action by politicians with the gonads to do it, so I’m not holding my breath. Especially not after today’s efforts by Hunt and Turnbull.

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      • #
        Dave

        I agree MV,

        But I thought journalists use the principles of truth, accuracy and factual knowledge. Maybe not.

        Now days they use Twitter, Facebook and sensationalism, in all forms of media from print through to the web. The MSM outlets have lost the plot, and don’t realise that their method of news is finished. That’s why so many Blogs are becoming the source of information, with huge numbers of people contributing information and facts. God help me if Adam Bandt is considered more newsworthy than criminal data alteration by the BOM and CSIRO.

        Pat gives more useful news here at jonnenova.com.au about environmental reporting than the Guardian, the ABC and Fairfax combined.

        Hunt and Turnbull are a disgrace, along with Abbott if they don’t rein in The ABC and that turkey Mark Scott very shortly.

        Eradicate the GANG GREEN from the media.

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        • #
          Kevin Lohse

          Dave, there is no such thing as good censorship. We rightly cavil against the attempts at censorship by the ecofascists and highlight as evil their all-too-often success at denying us the right to freedom of speech. The success of this blog and TWTW in terms of readership and internet activity demonstrates that there are an increasing number of folk out there listening and thinking about the arguments. The comments sections of quality papers, even the Guardian, are carrying an increasing number of well-informed sceptic posts. The message is getting through despite, even because of, all the white noise and increasingly fantastic pronouncements of doom from the treehouse kidz, and their acolytes. I suggest that sceptics should continue to push for equal access to the Heritage MSM while building on the blogging success. As to the Warmist campaign, Never Interrupt The Enemy While He Is Making A Mistake.

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          • #
            Ian Hill

            Re the message getting through, I was recently talking to some people older than me and they were puzzled as to why the TV weather report said it was the hottest night for nine years, as it was not a particularly uncomfortable minimum in Adelaide (25.9C). I told them it was probably referring to the hottest November night and then they understood. Whether they just didn’t hear the November bit or it was deliberately omitted is beside the point, I could tell that that kind of reporting didn’t impress them at all.

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        • #

          My local media basically described themselves as a professional YouTube–they go and talk to important people and show footage (okay, YouTube skips the “important” part). I was flatly told by the station manager it was “not their job” to ask or question the truth of a story. They report. That’s all. And the anchors read the teleprompter. Think of MSM as a giant, overpaid version of YouTube.

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        • #
          Steve

          I recall chatting to a person who used to work as a journalist for an un-named well known media outlet in oz .

          When I asked if they had a form of censorship, he answered “thats one of the main reasons I left”.

          We kicked around a few things, and I was left with the thoughst that censorship is alive and well, and given the red-ragger influence in the media its not surprising, given AGW is basically a left wing conspiracy in the true sense of the word.

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      • #
        Peter Miller

        MV

        Unfortunately and sadly, the only solution to the biased reporting on climate, while also giving a wake up call to the media and alarmist supporting politicians, is this:

        An epidemic of hypothermia, causing hundreds of thousands (especially the elderly) to die during an unexpectedly long and severe cold spell.

        Unlikely to happen in Australia, but in Western Europe and the southern United States, it is probably only a matter of time.

        190

        • #
          bobl

          No, No,
          This is exactly what we DON’T want, the whole point in fighting this hysteria is to replace it with a simple, prudent – we plan for all eventualities, hotter, colder, much the same. In this scenario noone dies unnecessarily, and we spend exactly what we need to spend, to prevent death and injury from the many floods, droughts, and cold snaps that we face.

          Making energy more expensive simply reduces our technological ability to adapt to temperature change, by making it too expensive to use technology, heating or cooling appliances. It however does seem to play to deep green’s sociopathic need to reduce the population, by killing the most vulnerable – the new eugenics.

          No we don’t need this to happen, we need to prevent it happening.

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          • #
            Peter Miller

            Bobl

            You are talking about an ideal world and one in which we all deserve to live.

            I was talking about our actual world, where bad science is routinely peddled by unscrupulous ‘scientists’ or the unemployables. This bad science prevails, becomes trendy and somehow goofy laws are then enacted in its support.

            Of course, deaths from hypothermia and fuel poverty should be prevented, but you are up against the green machine, which has a totally different agenda.

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              Peter–You underestimate the power of the media. They can conveniently skip reporting on people freezing–and probably do. Half the country would have to freeze–the half the media actually covers, being the East Coast in the USA–and some important people would have to get stranded and die before any reporting occurred. If massive deaths in Germany under Hitler were hidden, how hard can it be? (I am NOT equating AGW to Hitler–I am saying if you could hide that many deaths, how much of the country would have to freeze before reporting occurred on a level that actually mattered.)

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          • #
            Apoxonbothyourhouses

            Motherhood stuff Bob. Pointless feel good mumblings offering no direction. So what would YOU do to change the ABC from a Conservative Fee Zone and into an organisation that observes and respects its own charter? Or beat a modicum of common sense into indentured academics on my taxpayer dollars bad mouthing the hands that feed them. Millions without education and clean water while ivory tower professors are paid to preach disobedience. These attitudes are so entrenched that only a major smack in the face by nature (politicians haven’t go the balls or vision) will bring on an outcome.

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            • #
              bobl

              I have already posed a solution both to this forum and the government. I propose to enforce standards of truth at the ABC, by establishing an independent ombudsman to handle complaints with the power to revoke the ABCs broadcasting “license” and conduct an audit of truth. The opening of the fact checking unit to all australian media and the public, and by increasing it’s exposure to legal challenge.

              In short by making the ABC accountable for the truth of what it says, in exactly the same measure as commercial media.

              I do not propose to attack bias directly, it can retain that, but I do want to give the public the tools to effectively censure the ABC when 100 meters Williams makes stupid claims about sea level, or equates sceptics to pedeophiles and rapists of women. Or for that matter, they portray someone having intimate relations with a dog.

              All upheld by the ABCs clearly ineffective internal public affairs unit.

              If you agree that the ABC needs an independent umpire then write your member and demand it!

              PS, while you’re at it, demand your right to ask the ABC’s shiny new fact checking unit to check the facts for YOU, their employer, so you can hang the ABC from their own petard.

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              • #
                Apoxonbothyourhouses

                “I propose to enforce standards of truth at the ABC, by establishing an independent ombudsman”. A fine sentiment which shows your heart in in the right place. But, but, but show me one shred of evidence to indicate our current politicians have the fortitude to make it actually happen.

                When some in Canberra showed vestiges of courage there was our Malcolm dousing down – God forbid – any action or expectations. Saying in effect don’t make waves. Why? Because the ABC is virulently anti Abbott and maybe if they are on-side they could help my long term plans?

                Cynical? Well yes but living in a Western style democracy little else remains. A German friend recently said “Bugger the lot of them because we are being screwed by experts. I’ve given up and from now on I’m only going to look after family and those I love”.

                Conclusion: I am not alone.

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          • #
            Tim

            bobl

            killing the most vulnerable – the new eugenics.

            “Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries.” — Henry Kissinger, National Security Memo 200, dated April 24, 1974

            “The elderly are useless eaters.” — Henry Kissinger, quoted in the book The Final Days

            (Eugenics is not all that new.)

            20

      • #
        Apoxonbothyourhouses

        When I read your Turnbull comment I repeatedly pressed the “like” button but you still only got one vote – sorry about that. I’m 97% certain it’s somebody’s fault.

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    • #
      King Geo

      Yes the mainstream media on the whole is still very much focussed on “CAGW scare mongering”. But this will change. As I keep saying the next LIA is imminent & until that rears it’s ugly impact (shiver shiver !!) we are going to have to put up with the same AGW bullshit. The impact of the impending LIA will be very severe in the high latitude North Hemisphere economies like the EU, USA, Canada, Russia & China. For obvious reasons expect 3 of those 5 economies to deal with the impending “big cold” better because they won’t be almost entirely dependant on RE – so things will become very grim for 2 vulnerable economies, ie the entire EU & parts of the USA e.g. California, Washington State & the NE States – Texas will keep booming. It might be a good time to start buying some property in the Midland/Odessa area. “Solar & Wind Power” dependant States like California will be looking for energy backup from their “fossil fuel rich” neighbouring states like Texas which have not gone down the same “RE path to self destruction” – in the near future many citizens of sunny California will not be happy with former Governor Arnie who was heavily involved with “California’s dependence on Renewable Energy” – Arnie will in due course have well earned his title of the “Terminator”.

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      • #
        bobl

        This is going to be a major problem for CA, along with your water supply. Not looking good, however the Nuclear option is available to you (and I dont mean filibusters).

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      • #
        Karl W. Braun

        Washington State is quite well endowed with hydroelectric whereas California appears to have good supplies of frackable gas.

        10

    • #
      Rick Bradford

      Well, the MSM is overwhelmingly Modern Liberal, and as Evan Sayet points out, to a Modern Liberal, critical and rational thought is a form of discrimination and hence bigotry.

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    • #
      Albert

      I remember reading about 6 months ago that new cold records would be set

      00

    • #
      Jason Calley

      I think that anyone who has open mindedly researched the CAGW hypothesis will be forced to conclude that the MSM coverage is absolutely biased toward support of warming. Just remember that they are equally biased in all the rest of their reporting. Economy, world events, new technology, politics, health and medicine, terrorists, good guys and bad — the MSM lies about all those things, just like they do about CAGW.

      Luckily we live in a time where we can research matters for ourselves, at least if we don’t mind the hard work of thinking! Even luckier there are courageous individuals like Jo Nova who help us find out what is real. 🙂

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  • #
    Rereke Whakaaro

    It is still only weather, folks. Let us not fall into the traps of the vapourous.

    Records only become records by breaking another record.

    The only relevant questions are a) how long did the previous record last? and b) by how much was it broken?

    If the answers are, “not long”, and “a little bit”, then it is not worth getting out of bed for.

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    • #
      Safetyguy66

      Spot on Rereke, I was toying with posting the last 2 months from Weatherzone, because if I remember rightly both October and November finished a smidge below average on minimum and maximum temps. (disclaimer I forgot to look over the last few days of those months, but for most of the month they ran up to 1c below average on both min and max.) For the same reason, we all know its just a few months and we are in danger of sounding like we regard with any seriousness the pathetic amounts of data being used to try and spot patterns in our climate.

      It reminds me of people staring intently at the last 20 spins board next to the roulette wheel. Rarely have so many, been so deluded by so little information, none of it relevant to the next spin, but try telling them that.

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    • #
      Andrew McRae

      Compounding what you’ve said, the records get even more meaningless when they are averages over very small areas. A bigger statistic could be generated by subdividing the areas to arbitrarily small sizes and reporting individual weather stations records being broken, and then there would be several thousand “records” being broken in the same week or nearly 10,000 in a year (NOT that this cheap trick has been done before).
      But only the average temperature of 20 million sq.km would be representative of that whole USA/Mexico region. That’s just one record and not so easily broken.

      When NCDC mysteriously retired several thousand weather stations from the official temperature record in the early 2000s they were really shooting themselves in the foot. They cut down the size of their scary headline generating machine at precisely the wrong time.

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      • #
        Andrew McRae

        Okay I get it. It looks like advertising spam because the word cheap is inside the hyperlinked text.
        One day I will figure out these auto-mod rules.

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      • #

        Great link. Wonder what this would look like for the last 3 months in the Midwestern United States. Bet we don’t see that!

        Face it, statistics can be the best tool in the world for creating what you want people to see. Now, if we could educate people on that fact…..Uncle Joe’s Traveling Statistics Show bringing you global warming, global cooling or “awe, that’s just right”! Now all we need is a little blonde girl and some large hairy mammals!

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        • #
          Andrew McRae

          If you’re talking about the ClimateCentral link, yeah, surely the best part is when they imply that the Earth cannot warm naturally, so if warm records are broken… guilty.

          As for your role-playing recruitment…Well… Earth is in The Goldilocks Zone, so the casting call seems appropriate. The bears would have to be the polar variety.

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          • #
            crakar24

            Speaking of poley bears (my boredom has reached new depths) i stumble across this story

            http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/new-documentary-recounts-bizarre-climate-changes-seen-by-inuit-elders/article1215305/

            Now this is an interesting story and was created initially because the heathens (thats us) did not believe the scientists about the Arctic so this guy went to the horses mouth. The inuit readily acknowledge that the climate is changing and thats all of the good news, the bad news is they dont care because the climate has always changed no matter for what reason so they will adapt.

            To make matters worse they say the poley bear is not endangered in fact they are a pest (too many) but most interesting is that they say the earth has shifted on its axis as the sun now rises and sets at different latitudes and the stars have moved which of course my explain all teh apparent warming.

            This is not the type of news the believers want to hear so it was dismissed with the wave of a magic wand by simply saying

            The scientific explanation is that the warming Arctic air is causing temperature inversions, which in turn cause the light of the sunset to refract so that the sun appears to be setting a few kilometres off-kilter. “There is so much garbage in the air, it’s refraction that’s causing our elders to think our world has tilted,” Kunuk says.

            So the elders are now branded as a simple folk therefore everything they say (poley bear numbers etc) can be ignored……….back to the solemn word of the rent seekers again.

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            • #

              I always wonder when documentaries are done in the original language and then translated, how well are they translated? Few people speak Inuit and it seems unlikely the Inuits themselves will see the documentary (even if they did, what would they do?). It’s also interesting that he includes the claim about the earth axis and tries, as cracker24 says, to explain it away. The abundance of polar bears is actually mentioned in several documentaries I have watched. Apparently, not all scientists have gotten the message to leave out the part where they wait for the polar bears to leave before they can retrieve their equipment.

              The Inuit’s complaints about scientists disturbing polar bears and that causes behavioral changes in the bears is actually something that comes up more and more often. The simple act of tagging or banding can alter the population–it’s happened with penguins. Seems scientists are not exempt to the laws of nature and that their “stealthy” monitoring is not as “stealthy” as they say. Sadder still, the population changes get blamed on climate change, when a bunch of poorly educated scientists banding and radio collaring are the real cause. It’s Make Your Own victims strategy.

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          • #

            Andrew mentions The Goldilocks Zone, and my take on that is that this term applies to us here as occupants of Planet Earth, as we have evolved to suit the particular Planet we live on, so if we are looking for anything else, then it has to be in the Goldilocks Zone that we are used to.

            This then goes back to The Drake Equation that some of you may (or may not) be aware of.

            I first came across a version of this Drake Equation in the late 80’s, and it was cause for much discussion in the Staff room we occupied as Electrical Trades Instructors at the RAAF School of Technical Training.

            When I started blogging, the site owner asked me to branch out and start covering other things, which I think I have successfully done, One of those was a short Series I did on air travel, and in Part Three, I canvassed this Drake Equation. That’s at this following link for any who wish to read it.

            Liftoff (Part 3)

            This needs to be tempered by the time it would take to get there if (pretty big if) we were to ever find a suitable Planet in that Goldilocks Zone.

            The closest Sun to us here on Earth, other than our own is the Triple we refer to as Alpha Centauri, the bottom of the 2 Pointers which points to Crux.

            That Star is 4.3 Light Years away, and saying it like that makes it seem nearby. But that’s measured in light years, in other words the time it takes for the light to reach Earth, and that is measured by light speed, 186,000 Miles Per Second. That means Alpha Centauri is 25 Trillion Miles away.

            So, using our current technology for space travel, and that means travelling at 17,000MPH increasing ever so slowly the further you go, then we could actually reach Alpha Centauri in ….. 161,000 YEARS.

            And that’s the closest.

            There is as close to actual zero chance that even if we were to actually find a habitable Planet in that Goldilocks Zone, then we will NEVER get there, not in our life time, and not really in any lifetime, ever.

            The same applies for any life form out there which might be looking for us. They are not doing it, and the only reason an alien life form would find us would be by the purest of accidents, as, even if they have the technology, because they are looking for somewhere in THEIR Goldilocks Zone.

            So, maybe Douglas Adams Hitchikers Guide is perhaps the closest thing there is to the truth we have.

            Tony.

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    scaper...

    Yep Rereke, weather when inconveniently cold and climate when it is hot.

    Records are like stupid laws…should be broken.

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  • #
    Ross

    It is only the beginning of December. Wait until January / February. Those predicting a bad NH winter may get more than they bargained for.
    While I don’t want to wish misery on the people in the UK , if the really bad weather eventuates in the early New Year it might just be “the straw that breaks the camel’s back” with regard the stupid UK energy policies and Cameron will asking to “get rid of all the green crap” alot faster and earlier.

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      Carbon500

      Ross: Re. your comment ‘While I don’t want to wish misery on the people in the UK , if the really bad weather eventuates in the early New Year it might just be “the straw that breaks the camel’s back” with regard the stupid UK energy policies and Cameron will asking to “get rid of all the green crap” a lot faster and earlier.’
      I’m not hopeful. We’ve had a few cold winters by UK standards, and nothing much seems to have changed re. our politicians’ attitudes. All but a handful voted for the Climate Change Act, and given their faith in ‘the science’, I’m finding it hard to see what will change such deep-rooted beliefs. I hope I’m being unnecessarily pessimistic.

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        Graeme No.3

        Nothing changes a politician’s mind (such as it is) faster than the thought that he/she will lose the next election.
        That was why Julia was dumped in Australia, not because the party wanted Rudd. They couldn’t stand him until the “day of reckoning” was near.

        Even Camerloon is feeling the heat??? If enough votes go to UKIP he becomes not only ex PM but ex Leader, and in a matter of minutes. The stream of waffle coming from Whitehall is panic starting. A very cold winter, as seems likely, and the failure of the wind turbines to provide much electricity will cause a lot of the Government MP’s to start thinking. If he doesn’t change policies then Camerloon may not make it to the next election at all.

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          Carbon500

          I think you should henceforth be known as ‘Graeme the Realist’ (and given the identity of one of the site trolls, please don’t take this as an insult, it’s meant as a compliment) – I think you have a much better grasp of a politician’s way of thinking than I have. Thanks for a very entertaining and interesting post.

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    Phillip Bratby

    Time to move to Florida by the look of it. With the impending Maunder minimum, a beach-front property will be on growing land.

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    Safetyguy66

    Only the “crank”, “right wing” media would entertain such nonsense as balanced reporting. If your not spewing the Government line, your just risking your profitability and in Australia, maybe your very existence and right to publish. Who doubts for a second that the Greens media review http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3449417.htm would result in anything other than Milne dictating what gets published on politics and the environment, were she still able to command enough power to do more than order some vegan mush for lunch?

    Its amazing that in 10 or so years we have gone from an enviable, investigative media who broke stories about Governments, the police, the clergy, science, education etc etc to the bunch of soft touches we have today. Take asylum seekers for example, the reason the media hates the LNP weekly briefing is they are no longer being fed stories 3 times a day by a panic stricken PM who couldn’t spend more than 4 hours our of camera shot without screaming a misogynist plot was afoot to silence her. Now journalists actually have to go out and seek facts rather than sitting at home telecommuting on the back of Government handouts, its too much for them. Little wonder they wouldn’t jeopardise the last links they have to weak minded opposition bleeding hearts by publishing some counter facts on climate.

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      MemoryVault

      in 10 or so years we have gone from an enviable, investigative media who broke stories about Governments, the police, the clergy, science, education etc etc

      You’re new to this, aren’t you Safetyguy?

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        Safetyguy66

        LOL ok it was a stretch.

        I blame Rockfords 2008 Basket Press Shiraz.

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        Winston

        In fairness to Safetyguy, the MSM has reached new levels of duplicity and stupidity in the last six years, where most editorial comments are diametrically opposed to the truth.

        Just a totally non-partisan, non-climate and non-political example:

        Today Show this a.m, the ever reliably moronic Gretel Killeen commenting on the methanol drink spiking incident in Bali of a Central Coast teenager on Schoolies. She suggested that we shouldn’t blame the Indonesians, and that it was an indictment of Australia’s drinking culture!

        So, a girl holidaying in Bali, goes into a bar in a resort area, has ONE alcoholic drink in a supposedly legitimate establishment, and nearly dies and not only is it her fault, but it is our responsibility because we have a culture which encourages drinking of alcohol.

        When the MSM are so disconnected from reality, and completely off the beam about what should be an apolitical issue, what hope is there when there are political ideologies at stake? These people shouldn’t be allowed out of their residential care facility unsupervised, IMHO.

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          Andrew McRae

          On the newspaper and current affairs front, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Operation Mockingbird taken to a whole new level. OTOH, these vapid TV hosts are not so easy to explain.

          Making alcohol is not in my area of expertise, but I have on occasion read about how vodka is made and the necessity of distilling the liquid to remove the small amounts of poisonous methanol that is produced during fermentation. If I wanted to make alcohol I would at least read about how to make it properly and what can go wrong. Whether it is Indonesia or Russia there are apparently a LOT of stupid shady still slimeballs out there who don’t even try to succeed in their goal. Never mind that they are distilling the stuff without a license, they aren’t even going to succeed in their own dodgy business venture if their customers don’t come back for a refill.

          What part of “One cocktail shouldn’t kill you” doesn’t Ms Killeen understand?

          These people shouldn’t be allowed out of their residential care facility unsupervised, IMHO.

          Back inside and hit the books, Gretel, that’s doctor’s orders! 😀

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            Graeme No.3

            Andrew:
            the “first run” is always discarded. This is the methanol rich bit because it is the lowest boiling point portion. Then as the temperature rises the ethanol portion comes over. At the back end of the distillation the ‘fusel oils’ start coming over. (Higher alcohols and esters). As these aren’t good to imbibe in large quantities the distillation is usually ended at this time (to save fuel) but the actual cut off point is up to the distiller. The fusel oils add flavour to the spirits, so getting the level right is important.

            Remember James Bond? In one or other of the books he sprinkled black pepper on top of his vodka. Not for flavour but to soak up the fusel oil bubbles on top of the vodka and drag them to the bottom of the glass.

            The problem is not the illegal distillers trying to make the maximum amount of spirits, which is the usual case, but that the methanol portion was separated out and then sold to the bar owner.

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              Winston

              And hence a wanton disregard for the safety of their customers. But of course its the young woman’s fault for being such a piss tank.

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            Mark D.

            Andrew, that isn’t a distillation problem. So long as the fermented material is edible to begin with (grain, fruit or vegetable) the amount of fusel oil (posionous material) in home-fermented and distilled alcohol is minimal. As Graeme No.3 has mentioned, the first part of the “run” is discarded but even that would probably only cause a headache.

            There is plenty of lore in the history of moonshining about the supposed potential for death from consumption. Most of this is complete B.S. originating with Temperance Society wives and anti-moonshining law enforcement. There probably is SOME truth to high lead contamination in some “Shine” but that would be from a poorly built still. On the other hand, it is fairly easy to consume a deadly dose of ethyl alcohol when the proof is near 200. Just a shot of the stuff on an empty stomach makes the room move in strange ways 🙂

            The “fake” vodka in the story must be seriously adulterated with other chemicals.

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          Steve

          Yeah well unfortunately, going drinking in a country with very loose controls on pretty much anythng to do with tourists, you probably shouldnt be surprised at stuff like this.

          Clearly a career highlight…..nuff said.

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    Ricko

    Here in Snowy Hokkaido(Tobetsu, Sapporo) we had a 75 centimetres of snow on the 12th of November – the older locals had never seen so much snow so early, the local government were totally unprepared and it took 3 days to get all the roads cleared. The Temps are trending 3 – 4 degrees below average, even Hokkaido TV are saying to prepare for a very cold January – February. So for you guys in the Southern Hemisphere – think of us a you are enjoying your warm summer. BTW heating here is primarily Kerosene heaters – and I have my 450 litre tank filled to the brim – burn baby burn.

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    Just how cold does it have to get before the MSM, politicians and various “authorities” admit it? How many excess deaths due to cold weather and fuel poverty have to be reached before people say “No more!” The La-la-la brigade should be run out of town – all of them (out of all of towns, too).

    How long are citizens of the world going to sit there pretending to be dumb while these “authorities” pretend we don’t notice their lies?

    This is so far beyond a joke now, I am almost ashamed to live in this era. I thought we were an advanced civilization – but this world is still very much in the dark ages. What does it take to take down this nonsense?

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      ROM

      Relax AD
      There are some 6 billions of humanity out there who couldn’t give a rats ass about the stupidity of the western elites and to them, thats us!
      They are just getting on with the next leg up of civilisation.
      What is happening to us is just old, very old history repeating itself all over again and again as it has since the dawn of civilisation.
      Nations rise and fall
      Civilisations rise and fall but mankind marches onwards, two steps forward and often one and occasionally two back but ultimately we, Homo Sapiens are always moving ahead to the next great goal what ever it will be.

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        King Geo

        AD – it will take the imminent LIA to take down this nonsense – hopefully no later than 2015AD – when that happens it will bring cold comfort to us AGW skeptics (who are scientifically correct) and as I keep saying it will result in the “Warmists” receiving therapy for SLOFS (severe loss of face syndrome).

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          King Geo

          While on the subject of SLOFS – SLOTHS are pretty ugly tree hugging mammals – a good analogy for many “Greenies” all of who are totally obsessed with non-existent CAGW. It is these very folk who will really need “very intensive treatment programs” for SLOFS.

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      Safetyguy66

      See if you can talk Manfred into reposting his classic speech on human courage and endeavour and the complete lack of it in the last 25 or so years, its classic. It makes you want to turn life back to 195x just to be around when our species had some cahones!

      I really feel your pain. Im 47 and amazingly I don’t fit Naomi Oretske’s denier template in that I am completely un-moved by the notion of having to change my life for environmental reasons, I do it gladly (in fact Id put the way I live up against 99% of so called greenies for carbon footprint and waste management) nor am I a technophobe. I have one bucket list item and that is to see either a permanent international base on the moon or decent manned mars mission. Right now Id say the chances of either in the next 30 years are as near as damnit to zero. The main reason being we have wasted the better part of 10 years pouring resources into whiffle dust to desperately try and stave off the impending attack of the green dragons. http://youtu.be/MDCCvOv3qZY

      Will we snap out if it in time to persue the only rational course our species can take? Being to strip mine this rock and build the mothership? Not a chance, we will perish in fear on this little pebble and never even realise it was global naval gazing that wiped us out… I hope Im wrong, but nothing in modern society indicates even the most minute appreciation of the genuine problems we face as a species.

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6158855.stm

      Yeah Im a whacko…. and our species would be safer if there were more whackos like me.

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        Dave

        Safetyguy66,

        Yeah I’m a whacko… and our species would be safer if there were more whackos like me.

        I will have to change my preference of describing trolls as whackos, because I frequently use this describing Greenies, but now it will be reserved for you. I agree, we need more whackos that can take our world to better things.

        I read this on a link to Scientific America and an article on the worlds 10 greatest inventions, where one poster said these were the 10 greatest inventions of all time:

        1. Socket wrench.
        2. Container shipping.
        3. Genetically modified organisms.
        4. Microsensors.
        5. Computer mouse.
        6. Whole genome sequencing.
        7. Artificial intelligence.
        8. Robots.
        9. Satellites.
        10. Mega wind turbines.

        This chap is definitely a lettuce leaf short of a sandwich. What a narrow minded FW, idiot, fruitloop.

        I would like to see the media & science actually start looking at the future of mankind, and it’s possibilities. I think we’re going to need the gene from fish that produces antifreeze for their blood, and splice it into some tomato plants very soon, not a phargueing mega wind turbine. Can plants grow in snow with some type of organic antifreeze running through the xylem and phloem?

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          Maverick

          That is frankly unbelievable that they could miss sewage, electricity, piped water and vaccines. it just shows how much these left wing journalist turkeys take for granted.

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          Just can’t let go of the propaganda wing, can they? No wonder science is fast becoming an extinct species.

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          Grant (NZ)

          Computer mouse! No way! It is the device that has deprive computer users of productivity more than any other device. It is much faster to type commands than it is to take you hand off the keyboard and navigate and click/double click/right click. The computer mouse and the GUI interface give the appearance of making computer users more productive, but if you know how to type commands you can get a whole lot done a lot quicker.

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            Eddie Sharpe

            I have to agree with Grant.
            On the face of it, it appears so much easier to point and click.
            But it breeds a form filling mentality that results in a lot more point , click, tick & drop down box selection than would be required in plain text.

            To make one timesheet entry in an online task tracking system I have to make 10 click, tick or drop down box selections, as well as entering the time & duration. I make typically up to 130 such entries a week, and most of these actions are always to select the same values.
            I’ve stopped complaining, because the ‘lets have another box for this’ mentality has made if grow to such an extent that it can occupy up to 20% of a week.
            Most people won’t realise but I find saving it up to do all in a oner is most efficient, so the cost is inescapably obvious.

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              You are complaining more about the design of the user interface rather than having to use a mouse to drive it.

              A badly designed user interface is always inefficient and time consuming. However, the best designed command line user interface is far worse than a typical GUI if the intent is to accomplish something that is non-trivial. Interestingly, I have yet to discover a well designed command line interface and I have been doing this kind of thing since the mid 1960’s.

              The most that can be said of a command line interface is that they can be made to work eventually. That is after spending a huge effort learning them. Then if you don’t use them constantly, you forget exactly the syntax and spelling. Then nothing works without an effort to learn again.

              I can’t count the times I have watched so called UNIX geeks spend ten or twenty minutes trying to force command line UNIX to print a text only report in a single font. Conversely, it is click, click, click and you are done for a PC running Windows or a Mac running OS/X. With multiple fonts, sizes, colors, photos, graphs, charts, etc.

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            I suspect you are looking only at yourself using a limited range of applications all the time. Sort of learn one thing once and then use it forever. If so, spending a week learning how to do it is not so bad.

            However, if you have a user base of 100,000 who each use 10 different program mixes each with the mix changing every few months, it is a different story. 100,000 times 10 times 4 changes a year means 4,000,000 weeks of lost productivity spent on training just to save a fraction of a second or so per entry. It does not make economic sense.

            The alternative is to have a well designed and consistent GUI for each program that can be used almost immediately without training or even reading a manual. You are productive immediately and the total time cost from using a mouse point and click interface is a minute fraction of the time spent learning command line software.

            However, you are apparently of the UNIX command line mind set and thinks vi is actually a viable text editor. If so, most of what you do is UNIX and you actually produce no output other than a reconfigured UNIX system. Been there done that and will never ever do it again!

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          Karl W. Braun

          Cold tolerant plants get their hardiness from their own production of glycolic antifreeze. There is no need to imbue tomatoes with genes from another kingdom.

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        bobl

        And here you are calling yourself SafetyGuy, nothing safe about your aspirations. OTOH I agree entirely, mankind’s green psychosis, is diverting attention and funding away from the many worthy challenges facing us. For example the world is focussed on a two way trip to mars. Don’t you think you couldn’t find one or two real adventurers that would not willingly give up their lives for the chance to set foot on mars? Have to say that even I would give that some serious thought?

        What has happened to us, JFK was right, we need to do things that are hard!

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          ROM

          Not so silly bobi to want to go down in hiistory as the first human ever to set foot on another Planet.

          The Russians had a couple of volunteers amongst their cosmonauts who were prepared to be launched for a moon landing so as to beat the Americans.
          It was to be a one way trip only.
          Out of those very few cosmonauts there was only to be just a single cosmonaut chosen as that was all the Russian would be Moon rockets could launch to the Moon
          A Russian volunteer who was prepared to die on the Moon just to go down in history in a way that can never be repeated , as the very first human ever to have set foot on another planetary body other than Earth.
          To be the never to be repeated “first” of what one day will be many space explorers and adventurers still to come.

          A couple of those cosmonauts took it on themselves actually to fly to Baikonur Cosmodrome in preparation for a Moon launch and to await final orders to go. But the Politburo lost it’s nerve as having a cosmonaut die on the Moon from the perspective of the politically fixated Politburo would have been disastrous for the image of the all powerful, never admitting failure Russian Communist Party.

          And that was the end of the Russian’s manned attempts at space domination and the end of their manned space challenge to the Americans.

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            “Not so silly bobi to want to go down in hiistory as the first human ever to set foot on another Planet.”

            Nobody will ever match Neil Armstrong – first man to ever set foot on another WORLD – forever!

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          Safetyguy66

          I would be on that ship in a heartbeat!

          I have a loving family, a great life and every reason to live. But at the same time, I feel like I have been born 500-1000 years to early. I desperately want to see man reach space and establish permanent outposts on several planets, then I reckon I could die knowing that we gave ourselves the best shot of surviving long enough to realise our potential as a sentient creature. If I could participate in any way, Id be there. Sadly the last thing an adventurous and forward looking space program needs is OHS people bleating about the risks.

          If we had OHS people back in the caves, we would all still be huddled down the back waiting for someone to give the all clear for bears before we went out to hunt…. pointless…. life is about taking risks, calculated risks sure, but risks nonetheless.

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            Robert

            We used to have a sign on the wall at work as part of the 6-Sigma thing that said “Ensure the right tool is available for the job.”

            Yet every time someone who was either untrained, incompetent, not paying attention, etc. hurts themselves using “the right tool for the job” our safety people ban the tool. Our safety people are pretty lazy, much easier to ban whatever caused the problem than to properly train people or get rid of those that can’t be trained. After a number of us mentioned the fact that we keep losing “the right tool for the job” due to safety reasons the sign somehow got lost as well.

            You are spot on about where we would be had there been OHS people back in the caves. Though I suspect we’d have died off as one of them would have decided it would be safer just to seal up the entrance to the cave than to let anyone go out there.

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              Rereke Whakaaro

              In some circles, the word “tool” is also used to identify a person who is an idiot, and/or expendable.

              In those cases, the slogan, “Ensure the right tool is available for the job” has more to do with personnel scheduling, than equipment availability.

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      Peter C

      A D Everard,
      I feel your pain! In the 18th century we had the “Age of Reason”. What happened to that?

      People were supposed to have learned how to think for themselves!

      However Human Nature does not change. Religion is still everywhere on all sorts of whacko forms. Everyone wants to feel secure in their group. Members of the group are superior and will enjoy Eternal Life. Every one else goes to Hell.

      If you have not read it already I can recommend that you read “The Age of Reason”, by Thomas Paine ( a real pain and a rabble rouser if ever their was one). He was imprisoned by the French Aurthorities at time he was writing his book. The book was banned in England for almost a Century.

      Somehow the so called intelectual lefties , after many decades of isolation, have seized the high ground. They are all wrong but it doesn’t matter to most people. Green philosophy has become a replacement religion. Now conservative thinkers are out of step.

      The problem we have is to try again to introduce Rationalism into the debates.

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        Kevin Lohse

        Thinking is hard. Far better to have a machine do it for you, so that when it’s wrong, it’s not your fault. Socialism, being essentially an irrational belief system, actively suppresses the teaching of logic in western educational systems. Undergrads are expected to write polemic to conform with the beliefs of the lecturer, not debate a point to show understanding and clarity of thought. This is why the Noble Lord, a trained and experienced logician, runs rings round his opponents, who now refuse to debate with him. Once more we have to turn to the prescient, “Road to Serfdom”, where the PLAN is laid out for us to study.

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          Kevin–agreed, thinking is hard. The most important thing, though, is the second part of your statement: “so that when it’s wrong, it’s not your fault”. I constantly tell people “You want it to be your fault”. After the blank stare and the “are you crazy?” question, I explain that if something is your fault, you have the power to change it. You can make it better. You can eliminate it altogether. You own it. If it’s not your fault, the best you can do is react to it. You have no power over a solution (at least not directly) and are at the mercy of others. If you want to spend your life miserable, whining that you had nothing to do with your current situation while I live mine taking responsibility and moving forward, it’s up to you. I’m going to proudly say “It’s my fault and I will take appropriate action on the matter”.

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            Kevin Lohse

            Agreed

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            Sheri, I totally agree. What you’ve said is perfect.

            Thanks everyone who commented on my comment. While I understand that people can and have been oppressed, let us not forget that they can and have also risen up in anger. That’s what I’m expecting the world over.

            The lies are getting ridiculous and very see-through, and every green promise has been broken. Not only does going green cost the Earth, but it’s not sustainable, it destroys the very thing they claims to care about – the environment – and ordinary citizens are being forced into poverty and are facing far steeper price hikes as the green rampage continues.

            Tempers are already wearing thin. It’s going to end in violence. It’s a shame, but the greens and alarmists are not interested in listening to reason, they never have been. If they don’t back down voluntarily, they will be made to back down. Human nature does not change and an angry mob is frightening and deadly.

            I just wish the greens and alarmists would wake up to what they are marching towards – On one hand, the destruction of the environment, civilization and freedom for all – including their own. On the other, their own destruction at the hands of mob violence if they persist in lying and bullying and ignoring the rising death toll due to green policy.

            I’m amazed at the strength of their rose-coloured blinkers and their determination to look anywhere but at the real problem – which is their own policies backed by no more than politically paid for assumption!

            And yes, I know many of them know exactly what they are doing, they’ve planned it. Many others don’t, though, and have been thoroughly led astray. These are the ones we must wake up. Wonderfully, some of these are waking up, hence the political hesitation happening everywhere now.

            Yes, unfortunately, we live in interesting times, but the tide is turning. It’s the ridiculously slow rate of the turn that I find painful, but turning it is, and for that I am immensely grateful.

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              Steve

              I agree, however I would also say that in the rush to the black hole of “logic” under socialism, Christianity has also taken a beating.

              Why is this important? Well the whol eof our law structure sits on the christian/Judeo framework of morals and sense of fairness.

              Socialism and greenism is either athiest or pagan – there is no middle in thwe worship of the State ( the new Imperial Cult? ) ground in the lefts eyes.

              As such – this fight is multifaceted. In one fell swoop ( aided it appears by the gay lobby ) the left is trying to monster the past 200 years of civilisation in this country and destroy it – replacing it with an athiest and/or pagan belief structure.

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            Safetyguy66

            Very good points.

            Whatever happened to “back yourself” and “have a go ya mug”. The culture of risk aversion is condemning us to mediocrity and possibly worse.

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              scaper...

              Safetyguy, another symptom of societal regression that I believe is cyclic. History indicates such.

              Just like climate…funny that.

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            Eddie Sharpe

            “It’s my fault” ! Blimey, you wouldn’t last long in a Left whingers capacity Sheri.

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    Yonniestone

    Hey Safety I’m a whacko too and I honestly believe there are more of us out there than we give credit for, just today I had a conversation with someone I have known for years through business but never discussed anything outside of work, well somehow they got around to saying AGW is BS and showed some scientific knowledge as to why.
    I of course put them onto JoanneNova.com.au and will be interested to get some feedback, I deal with the public most days at work and I can say this is not an isolated case of AGW skepticism I have experienced, I would say about 97% (sorry, had to) well honestly 80% of people will be skeptical of AGW if the subject arises.

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    Peter Miller

    Gaia moves in mysterious ways.

    In the green heartland of the USA, California. Oregon, Washington State and Idaho the map shows several record temperatures.

    I guess these are the states where the tail wags the dog for US energy policy, so this would be a classic alarmist case of: “if it is hot there, then it is hot everywhere.”

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    pat

    can’t believe u started this thread, jo.

    i just came online because, a couple of hours ago, i checked to see if Sky News was reporting the Greg Hunt/Carbon Expo/Carbon Market Institute/emissions trading story, which of course it wasn’t.

    checked Sky Weather Channel for local rain forecasts, but noticed the menu had three hours straight listed as “Hot Spell”. checked for description – it was coverage of the hot spell sweeping through south-eastern australia, check when your town can expect a cool change.

    Huh? hadn’t seen any mention online this morning of this heat which would justify such saturation coverage. looked at the State Capital temps for Wednesday & it was 20 max for Melbourne & Adelaide, 29 max for Sydney.

    as for S-E Qld., we’ve been wearing sweaters in the evening for days now.

    have checked online & can see no big stories of any heat wave sweeping anywhere down south, but there is this, which isn’t being touted as anything special. Sky Weather Channel is yet another media outlet i am now boycotting. i’ll check my weather online from now on:

    2 Dec: Age: Carolyn Webb: Get ready for a cold summer shower
    Melbourne can expect showers and decreasing temperatures over the next few days as the city recovers from a Monday scorcher.
    The city temperature reached a high of 36 degrees at 4.38pm before a welcome cool change swept through the city at around 6pm…
    The hottest spots in the state on Monday were Mildura, Walpeup and Hopetoun in the Mallee, where the mercury passed 40 degrees in the late afternoon, while the towns of Swan Hill, Horsham and Kyabram all exceeded 37 degrees…
    The temperature in Melbourne on Tuesday is expected to reach 30, with a sunny start then isolated showers and the chance of thunderstorms from the late morning.
    Later in the week will be cooler, with rain and possible thunderstorms, easing to isolated showers on Wednesday and a top of 20 degrees, a few showers and a top of 17 on Thursday, and cloudy and possible shower on Friday with a top of 20.
    It will warm up by the weekend, however, with maximum temperatures of 28 and 29 forecast for Saturday and Sunday, with possible showers late on Sunday.
    http://www.theage.com.au/environment/get-ready-for-a-cold-summer-shower-20131202-2ykd6.html

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    pat

    btw the “Hot Spell” was listed for 5pm – 8pm, when i turned on at 5pm, but it was probably “Hot Spell” all day for all i know. nicely timed for the Carbon Expo though & the ridiculous publication being put out, “Four Degrees of Global Warming: Australia in a hot world”.

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    pat

    ***coincidence this was announced the same day as the Govt gives the green light to emissions trading?

    3 Dec: Sky News: Rio Tinto capex slash threatens jobs
    Rio Tinto’s near $US10-billion slashing of capital expenditure could lead to thousands of job losses on top of a 3,800 cut in its headcount since last year.
    Rio Tinto announced at an investor seminar on Tuesday that it plans to reduce capex from last year’s peak of $US17.6 billion to $US8 billion by 2015 as it seeks to free up some cash for shareholder returns…
    While it has cut its headcount by 3,800 since mid-2012, the number of job losses is much higher with 1,800 new roles in its iron ore expansion project offsetting the total.
    Another 3,000 roles have left the business through sales of assets.
    An already struggling mining services sector will also feel the pinch in terms of jobs as mining giants such as Rio, BHP Billiton and others stop investing in new projects and expansions.
    When asked about job losses, Rio chief executive Sam Walsh acknowledged that would occur but not on its existing low cost, long life, expandable assets…

    ***Mr Walsh said its other businesses including aluminium, coal, diamonds and minerals would find it tough to get capital allocated to them as Rio focused on paying down $US28 billion in gross debt…

    Rio has been criticised for calling itself a diversified resources company but actually generating at least 90 per cent of its earnings from iron ore in recent years.Mr Walsh said believed that was a great problem to have.
    IG market strategist Evan Lucas predicted significant job losses and said coal and aluminium workers connected to Rio’s disastrous multi-billion dollar acquisitions of Alcan (aluminium) and Riversdale (coal) under Tom Albanese had reason to be nervous…
    http://www.skynews.com.au/businessnews/article.aspx?id=930504

    thought the PM understood the situation!

    3 Sept: ABC: David Llewellyn-Smith : Abbott’s deeply depressing speech for the globe
    The worst election in living memory just hit a new low, writes David Llewellyn-Smith.
    ABBOTT: In fact, Australia’s domestic emissions actually increase from 578 million tonnes now to 621 million tonnes in 2020 – that’s an 8 per cent increase, not a five per cent decrease.
    We only achieve the five per cent decrease that year by purchasing over $3 billion worth of carbon credits from abroad…
    We only achieve an 80 per cent cut in emissions by purchasing in that year alone over $150 billion worth – that’s right, $150 billion – of carbon credits from abroad.
    This is by far the biggest wealth transfer from Australians to foreigners that’s ever been contemplated…
    The carbon tax means our aluminium industry will shrink by 60 per cent.
    The carbon tax means our iron and steel industry will shrink by 20 per cent.
    The Government’s own modelling predicts it.
    The carbon tax will reduce Australia’s domestic coal use from over 70 per cent of our power needs to under 10 per cent, absent carbon capture and storage.
    The Australian coal industry will only survive because the Chinese, without a carbon tax, will do what we are no longer supposed to do: namely buy and burn coal.
    Australia’s biggest export industry will only endure because others will do what we think we should no longer do ourselves…
    LLEWELLYN-SMITH: The whole point of carbon trading is it allows different nations with different strengths to reduce carbon together at the cheapest cost. Cherry-picking what China does versus us makes no sense whatsoever…
    Do I know climate change is certain? Nope. Am I certain it’s man made? Nope. Do I think that listening to politicians ahead of scientists is a good idea. Nope. Will I bet the lives of my children on Tony Abbott being right and science wrong? No bloody way.
    I’m voting Green.
    (David Llewellyn-Smith writes as Houses and Holes at MacroBusiness where this article first appeared) Also writes for ABC’s The Drum.)
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-03/llewellyn-smith—abbott-climate-change/4931534

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    Joe Lalonde

    Jo,

    This area is where climate scientists screwed up royally.

    They went “ALL IN” on following strictly temperature data models and ignoring vast swaths of physical evidence were neglected and ignored.
    If you have vast changes of energy, then precipitation is key to understanding the changes of regional weather “patterns” in a system NEVER designed to repeat itself due to many other factors.

    The current cold(which will be lasting for some years) is a direct result of the suns inactivity and our outer atmosphere loosing atmospheric gases that give us insulating properties.

    Just one persons research…

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      Joe–I have noticed in my research that many writers are saying that a return to colder temperatures is likely. At least as many as say the warming “will come back”. I read that the Russians were building ice-breaking ships last year, believing that the Arctic was going freeze over with a vengeance. Not everyone and every country is falling for the AGW scam. Just the “enlightened ones”. Ever notice how “enlightened” often means “gullible”?

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        Joe Lalonde

        Sheri,

        It is far easier and gains more propaganda when slapping a name like “DENIERS” to people not of the “likeminded”. I guess it could be worse and we’re not all jailed or killed as “insurgents”.

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          Carbon500

          Let the ‘deniers’ fight back.
          How about ‘the great and the gullible’ for those warmists in high office everywhere?

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    Bones

    The media seem to have a problem knowing whether weather is still weather,whether its hot or cold.Only hot weather is of any interest because it can be used as a political tool by groups of scamming political tools.

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    pat

    a MUST-READ. eight or nine years ago, i was convinced about Peak Oil; then i changed my mind when i kept reading about new finds. however, i have wondered why, if Govts/militaries were pretending to be so concerned about CAGW, they were attacking oil countries & causing great disruptions to the oil supply. then, i figured out oil companies needed a really high oil price, in order to make it worth their while to explore unconventional sources, and this FT analysis seems to bear this out. for me, CAGW played a part in all this. anyway, Max Keiser & Stacy Herbert discussed this article & Max claims it shows Peak Oil hit in 2005.

    my own position remains, build new coal-fired power stations, for starters, to take care of more of our energy needs, & forget CAGW, which is a threat to our scientific well-being!

    25 Nov: UK Financial Times: Mark Lewis: Toil for oil means industry sums do not add up
    (Mark Lewis is an independent energy analyst and former head of energy research in commodities at Deutsche Bank; Daniel L Davis, a lieutenant colonel in the US Army, is co-author)
    The most interesting message in this year’s World Energy Outlook from the International Energy Agency is also its most disturbing.
    Over the past decade, the oil and gas industry’s upstream investments have registered an astronomical increase, but these ever higher levels of capital expenditure have yielded ever smaller increases in the global oil supply. Even these have only been made possible by record high oil prices. This should be a reality check for those now hyping a new age of global oil abundance…
    According to the 2013 WEO, the total world oil supply in 2012 was 87.1m barrels a day, an increase of 11.9mbd over the 75.2mbd produced in 2000.
    However, less than one-third of this increase was in the form of conventional crude oil, and more than two-thirds was therefore either what the IEA calls unconventional crude (light-tight oil, oil sands, and deep/ultra-deepwater oil) or natural-gas liquids (NGLs)…
    The much higher cost of developing unconventional crude resources and the lower energy density of NGLs explain why, as these sources have increased their share of supply, the industry’s upstream capex has increased. But the sheer scale of the increase is staggering: upstream outlays have risen more than threefold in real terms over the past 12 years, reaching nearly $700bn in 2012 compared with only $250bn in 2000 (both figures in constant 2012 dollars).
    Coinciding with the rise in US tight-oil production, most of this increase in upstream capex has occurred since 2005, as investments have effectively doubled from $350bn in that year to nearly $700bn in 2012 (again in 2012 dollars)…
    Of course, the diplomatic breakthrough achieved with Iran over the weekend could provide some much needed short-term relief to the market, as Iran’s exports could ultimately increase by up to 1.5m barrels a day if and when western sanctions were to be fully lifted…
    This should worry everybody, because with the evidence suggesting that consumers are reluctant to pay much above $110 a barrel, it is an open question what happens next to the industry’s investment plans and hence, over time, to the supply of oil.
    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5e923e3a-51d3-11e3-8c42-00144feabdc0.html

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      Joe Lalonde

      Pat,

      The easiest places to tap oil at a cheap price have all been utilized which leaves harder and more expensive places to harvest oil.

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      • #

        And being the clever human beings we are, we are finding new ways everyday to make that “harder and more expensive” place “easier and cheaper”. Right now, we can retrieve far more oil than anyone imagined 30 years ago when I worked in seismic processing. Peak oil exists mostly as a concept designed to make people think we are running out of oil, so we have to build archaic, expensive, part-time energy sources.

        Pat–I would disagree totally with the idea that peak oil hit in 2005. I would suppose that people believing that would cause the desired rise in prices and the installation of useless, but well-subsidized, part-time wind and solar, but I don’t see that it matches reality. In fact, as far as I can tell, the Middle East never had all the oil. That was a political construct–the US has always had oil. The government is what stands in the way–and greenies. If ANWAR were opened up, the amount of oil available would skyrocket.
        Having lived in an oil boom/bust state, the prices of oil do affect exploration. If it’s over $100, exploration and drilling increase. If it’s below $50, they pretty much cease. Like any commodity, the prices go down when there’s an abundance and up when there is not. So the oil “boom” dies for around 10 years, then prices go up and it begins again. The latest boom is actually much larger and laster longer than the previous ones. Can it last forever? Don’t know–but I do know that if it ends, that’s not the death of the oil industry. It’s not evidence of “peak oil”. It’s just the way the industry has worked for decades.

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          Joe Lalonde

          Sheri,

          Is it still not a guessing game to actually how much oil is in the ground?

          Certainly would get more investors if the number was higher…hmmmm.

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          • #

            I guess it depends on what you call a “guessing game”. If you really want to know how the reserves are classified, this is a very long pdf that explains the classifications and how these categories are decided, how the uncertainty in recovery is calculated: http://www.spe.org/industry/docs/PRMS_Guidelines_Nov2011.pdf

            Having worked in seismic processing in the early 80’s, what we call “recoverable” oil is much more of a guessing game than most people realize. Except for the Bakken Field (North Dakota) and the Eagle Ford Shale (in Texas), some locations have over 25% dry holes, costing in the millions per well/dry hole. Until we found the huge reserves in ND and TX, oil drilling was anything but certain. This lead developers to be more creative in identifying and drilling. It hasn’t stopped the drilling in areas where dry holes are not uncommon. Of course, if we can hit oil on every well drilled, we will use those reserves first–like we did with Saudi Arabia and the middle east. Then we tackle the harder stuff.

            If history is any indicator, we have consistently underestimated how much recoverable oil there is on the planet.

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    Dave

    More on MSM reporting,

    The first British woman to be awarded the Order of the Rose (Silver), which was bestowed upon her by President Zhelyu Zhelev of Bulgaria, AND also awarded the Grand Official, Order of the Southern Cross from the Republic of Brazil in 1998 is Patrica Rawlings.

    NOW the Baroness Rawlings recommends that UK pensioners and the needy should use blooody electric blankets instead of heating their homes as it’s cheaper.

    What a typical Greenie, yet her antique collection would heat 10,000 homes for a year. The people she is giving advice to have been trying to heat their homes for years, it’s the blooody pollies and idiots like her that keep increasing the power bills.

    What next, the MSM reporting on another politician DILL that’s recommends burning your poor neighbour for heating. The MSM has gone mad reporting the sheight that comes from mouths of turkeys such as the Baroness, Order of the Rose, Grand Official and Order of the Southern Cross.

    I can see some very angry poor folk in the UK getting very upset soon. The UK grid says that they are buying about 1GW from the Dutch, and wind is producing an impressive tiny 1.66GW average all day today. About a bee’s dickk worth of electricity for the UK that cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and this useless antique dealer tells them to go buy electric blankets.

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    Otter

    Who is the COWARD who gives thumbs down, but refuses to post?

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    Dave

    No where near Speedy contributions, but a not bad effort in the Sunshine Coast Daily by reporter Bob Burnett last month:

    At Weather Forecasting Central, the wily old chief forecaster Screwtape is teaching his nephew Wormwood, an apprentice, the art and science of weather forecasting.

    Wormwood: “So, Uncle, our job is to inform people of what kind of weather they can expect.”

    Screwtape: “My dear naïve boy, who put that nonsense into your head? The first priority of weather forecasting, and it’s the same for all government departments, businesses and community organisations, is to avoid litigation. These are litigious times; we can’t be too careful.

    “When you make a forecast you must always give the worst-case scenario; that way, if things turn really bad, we can’t be sued.

    “We’re like doctors Wormwood; you go to your doctor with a pimple on your shoulder and he will tell you: ‘This could be cancer, you may be dead within six months. On the other hand, it most likely is just a pimple. Let me squeeze it and see’.”

    Wormwood: “But Uncle Screwtape, isn’t our job to put people’s mind at ease about the weather?”

    Screwtape: “My dear Wormwood, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Our job is to keep people anxious and fearful about the weather. We don’t just forecast storms, we forecast ‘severe’ storms, ‘huge’ hailstones, ‘super’ cells, ‘cyclonic’ winds and ‘killer’ cyclones.”

    Wormwood: “But Uncle, why create fear and anxiety?”

    Screwtape: “That’s the beauty of the whole thing, Wormwood. It’s been shown that people who are perpetually afraid and anxious are less likely to sue.”

    Wormwood: “So, Uncle, if we get a forecast wrong, do we just apologise and admit our mistake?”

    Screwtape: “My dear boy, you must never admit you’ve made a mistake. The art of good forecasting is to have something to blame when you do get it wrong.

    “To avoid responsibility for a wrong forecast, you can always blame climate change. If it’s hotter than we forecast, blame ‘global warming’. If it’s colder, call it ‘climate change’. If it’s wetter than we forecast, blame ‘rising ocean temperatures’. If the coastline floods, blame ‘rising sea levels’. It’s foolproof.”

    Wormwood: “So, we do all this just to avoid being sued?”

    Screwtape: “Well done, Wormwood, we’ll make a weather forecaster out of you yet.

    Sort of similar to the sheight MSM effort in listing the record cold and snow records in the USA.

    Climate Change causes freezing your asre off.

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    pat

    Hunt gets two pairs of words quoted: “incredibly speculative” & “investing speculatively” … Milne, not a stranger to “spite” or being “despicable”,
    is quoted extensively & gets “the final word”:

    3 Dec: RenewEconomy: Sophie Vorrath: Carbon war heats up, with separate battles for CEFC and CCA
    Speaking at the 2013 Carbon Expo conference in Melbourne today, federal environment minister Greg Hunt reiterated this stance, describing the CEFC as “incredibly speculative” in its operation, and arguing that it displaces effective policies such as the Renewable Energy Target (which the government also happens to be reviewing). This is despite the meticulous rubbishing of such views by the CEFC in their written and spoken submissions to the Senate inquiry.
    But Greens leader Christine Milne used her time at the Carbon Expo podium to reiterate her own party’s belief that Australia needs the CEFC and CCA, to co-finance crucial renewables growth and development, and to advise on climate policy to match the science.
    Milne described the vote to split the repeal bills as an important victory for climate action. “We need to keep those institutions,” Milne told the audience gathered at the MCG. “There is no reason for getting rid of them, except for ideological spite.”
    Milne described the CEFC as a “critical component” of building Australia’s renewable energy market, and the CCA as the premier institution to advise the government on setting an emissions cap, and vital to de-politicise the issue of climate change.
    She accused the Coalition of being a party of “climate deniers”, and its Direct Action policy as “a sham”, pointing out that it can’t be scaled up.
    “It is despicable of Minister Hunt to say Australia’s abatement task has been reduced because some of its industry has gone offshore,” Milne said. “It shows that you don’t get the science, or you do get the science and you’re totally irresponsible – one or the other.”…
    But the final word went to Milne, who warned that, regardless of what happened with the Coalition’s repeal bills, Australia’s emissions trading scheme would come back – “and when it does, it will be much more stringent than it was.”
    “The global emissions budget to keep us to 2°C is diminishing rapidly,” Milne said. “There are no choices here. …Think long-term, think much more stringent emissions budgets, and focus your business plans around this.”
    http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/carbon-war-heats-up-with-separate-battles-for-cefc-and-cca-37743

    the above author:

    Linkedin: Sophie Vorrath
    Deputy Editor Climate Spectator
    July 2010 – Present (3 years 6 months)

    Commentary Sub Editor Business Spectator
    October 2007 – June 2010 (2 years 9 months)

    journalist crikey/the reader magazine
    August 2003 – September 2006 (3 years 2 months)
    http://www.linkedin.com/pub/sophie-vorrath/4/740/582

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  • #
    PhilJourdan

    Ah, the alarmist argument goes, those records are “weather”, while Haiyan is “Climate”. Those that make the rules get to decide.

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      Now that winter storms are named, however, I think they become climate. After all, they are extreme enough to be named and that’s what counts. Look for naming floods and droughts next!

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  • #

    They are about to either report on or skip a lot more cold records. We’re headed for -20F and the record-breaking lows are predicted to extend into most of the US by mid or late week. Bitterly cold and dangerously cold are the words being used by the local media. The forecast map looks like this will hit the east coast, making it very difficult for the MSM to miss. Weather only happens on the east coast in the US–or that seems to be the mantra of the MSM and TWC. I will be be waiting to see how this is reported. The cold is forecast to last for around 10 days. It’s going to be hard to ignore that (not saying it can’t be done, of course).

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    In the demented minds of the “progressive” left, the name is the thing. Change the name, the thing is changed. If you talk about it, it is what you say it is. If you don’t talk about it, it does not exist. As a consequence, to them reality is totally and completely controlled by their thoughts.

    In their own minds they are THE gods who create the universe simply by wishing it so. Their whims are omnipotent. That reality doesn’t work that way, never has, and never will is blanked out by their total evasion that they have NEVER been right about any of their predictions, forecasts, projections, policies, or what ever they are calling such things at the moment. They faithfully believe that by not thinking or saying that they have failed, they succeed.

    Hence, reason, reality, and logic are irrelevant to them and has no impact upon their thinking. You will be more successful arguing with a dead tree stump that with such true believers.

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    Valentin

    Jo, if you just take a look at the article you cited, you will discover that:

    Scientists and skeptics continue to quibble over global warming

    So, scientists on the one side and – what the heck – some stupid people on the other…

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    Joe Lalonde

    Jo,

    Ya gotta love the rallies that have been organized against global warming and the “greenhouse gases” when they happen in the middle of a raging snowstorm or extreme cold snap.

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    pattoh

    Ah well I guess all those poor folk stuck in doors can watch tired cable re-runs of Bay Watch with the “Hoff & the other Silicone Valley” or plug in the tired DVD of “an Inconvenient Truth” to while away the hours.

    Just as well the fossil fuel gas frackers are doing there bit to keep them warm.

    Yep, distracted, entertained & comfortable, no need to do any critical thinking. ( the peasants are not revolting just yet)

    Perhaps in a 100 years time the few remaining signed, mint condition DVDs of Al Gore will attract rare, collectable & value status just like the recently sold Titanic violin.

    Al should get in & do a deal with Franklin Mint while he still has some kudos or get a Chinese entrepreneur to mass produce “Al Action Figures” ( even if one hand/arm can’t move far from the nether regions unless it is holding a microphone or wallet )/sarc.

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    This cold snap will be used as evidence of “greater extremes”, and tied in with recent storms and heatwaves. Like most climatariat stunts, it relies on the use of comparatives while avoiding points of comparison. An obvious point of comparison for North America would have to be the seasons between the 1935 Labour Day Hurricane and the Great Heatwave of 1936. In between there was a fierce cold wave from which many records still stand – and you can chuck in some severe floods before the heat and drought set in.

    If this were to occur now it is obvious what kind of conclusions would be thrust on us by our Green Betters. But it was nearly eighty years ago so…sssh.

    By the way, believers in modern climate exceptionalism and new extremes etc should check out the 1890s in Oz. But they won’t.

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    pat

    is this the “business” of “climate scientists” or a “Science Advisory Council”?

    3 Dec: UK Daily Mail: Sarah Griffiths: The cost of extreme weather events has soared by 60% in just 30 years – and it’s going to get worse, claim climate scientists
    European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (EASAC) believes Europe needs to plan for future probabilities of extreme weather such as floods and fires
    Climate scientists said the costs of extreme weather have risen by more than 60 per cent in Europe in the past 30 years
    The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently warned that extreme weather will continue to become more frequent
    Sir Brian Heap, the president of the (EASAC), which is based in Germany, said: ‘Given the tragic events this year in the rest of the world and the recent IPCC report, EASAC feels obliged to draw attention to the growing impact of extreme weather in Europe.
    The report ‘follows a highly detailed assessment by a group of Europe’s leading experts on climate of historic and likely future changes in extreme weather over Europe…
    Researchers also believe climate research and adaptation plans should be given more priority.
    ‘Looking at the science, global climate model outputs have proved of immense value in providing the basis for understanding climate and its future,’ Sir Brian added.
    ‘However, there is an urgent need to improve regional climate models to reduce uncertainties and improve projections, for example extreme precipitations or hail storms and other local climatic phenomena such as tornadoes remain imperfectly understood.
    ‘The EU has a critical role in strengthening European climate-research communities and building networks across borders and disciplines to provide the data required for informed future policy-making.’
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2517528/The-cost-extreme-weather-events-soared-60-just-30-years–going-worse-claim-climate-scientists.html

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    pat

    3 Dec: UKTelegraph: Robert Mendick: Britain’s £85 billion bill for climate policies
    A new study claims Britain’s climate change initiatives are both ‘staggeringly costly and excessive’
    Climate-change policies are expected to cost Britain more than £80 billion by the end of the decade, as critics warn that the global-warming industry is spiralling out of control.
    Vast sums are being spent on initiatives ranging from climate-change officers in local councils to the funding of “low carbon” agriculture in Colombia at a cost of £15 million alone. Billions of pounds are also being added to fuel bills to pay for green policies.
    The full cost is contained in a study published on Monday by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank founded by Lord Lawson, the former chancellor…
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10486223/Britains-85-billion-bill-for-climate-policies.html

    having demonised Lomborg for years for not being a fully-paid-up-member of the CAGW chorus, ABC calls him “controversial” but uses him to have another go at the Govt anyway:

    3 Dec: ABC: Controversial commentator criticises Coalition’s climate course
    A controversial climate change commentator says it’s a waste of money to focus on short term emission reductions.
    Bjorn Lomborg says the money would be better spent researching ways to make big cuts to carbon pollution…
    (CLIMATE SCIENTISTS?)ASHLEY HALL, ABC: Many of those gathered (at Carbon Expo) were climate scientists, economists and traders – traditionally supporters of the cap and trade emissions trading scheme model that the Coalition wants to ditch…
    Before Mr Hunt took to the stage, Melbourne University’s climate scientist David Karoly outlined the nature of the carbon emission reduction challenge.
    DAVID KAROLY: We are now at concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of greater than 390 parts per million, averaged over a year, and those are higher than at any time over the last 800,000 years…
    The controversial Danish academic and author of ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist’, Bjorn Lomborg, argues 21 years of international action on climate change has delivered little more than broken promises.
    He spoke today at the National Press Club in Canberra…
    ASHLEY HALL: Professor Lomborg says spending money on research and development would be a much better way to tackle carbon emissions
    BJORN LOMBORG: What we need to stop doing is to buy another solar panel. It makes us feel good, but it doesn’t do very much good. What we should be doing is to buy a solar panel researcher – and that’s obviously putting it way to simply – but it’s about getting the next generation and the next generation so that eventually it’ll be cheap enough that we will want to put them in without subsidies…
    http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2013/s3904312.htm

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    pat

    note Figueres made a video appearance:

    3 Dec: Guardian: Oliver Milman: Greg Hunt defends scrapping carbon pricing, saying Direct Action will work
    Environment minister says getting rid of Labor’s ‘brutal’ system is consistent with other nations’ climate policies
    Hunt’s speech was preceeded by a video address from Christiana Figueres, the United Nations’ climate chief, who, rather jarringly, spoke of the growing enthusiasm among other nations for carbon pricing.
    “Pricing carbon, one of the best ways to achieve mitigation results, is being pursued by many countries in many different ways,” she said. “This year, markets have come online in California and China, with Beijing and Shanghai’s first carbon trading system starting just last week.”
    Figueres said the International Energy Agency predicted that 33% of global emissions would be subject to carbon pricing by 2035.
    ***“Markets are widely recognised by the IMF, World Bank and OECD as the most cost effective way to reduce emissions,” she said. “However, broad participation is key to cost effectiveness.”…
    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/03/greg-hunt-defends-scrapping-carbon-pricing-saying-direct-action-will-work

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  • #
    Roy Hogue

    I hate to point out the obvious but…

    If your narrative had been, we’re going to fry, we’re going to fry, we’re going to fry, over and over for the last decade or more and if you had staked your viewership / readership / reputation / rating on that narrative, what would you report?

    Now if you had been an honest reporter and just been an observer instead, you could have avoided taking a position, looked for and presented both sides of the story and then you could report the record cold without harm to your viewership / readership / reputation / rating. But as things stand, no you cannot back out so easily, can you?

    There is literally a lot of money involved in this scam now. They don’t want to risk that money by losing audience share. Loss of audience means they lose money. And having to even indirectly admit they may have been wrong will cost them audience share.

    And then there are the government run outlets with an even more sinister motive — avoid the loss of political power (OZ).

    I have no doubt that this same fear is what’s keeping the U.S. media from digging deeper into Obama and his thugs now that his administration is coming unglued. Fox News viewership would go up and ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC would go down.

    To understand this phenomenon just follow the money.

    And yes, loss of face goes with the loss of money and provides an even greater motivator.

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    ROM

    I sense that the big shift away from the CAGW meme although still spotty is well under way in the media across the western world.

    The shape of the next media / green / activist hyped Catastrophic Climate Event is already taking shape in the media and some scientific circles.
    The lead ups are now appearing to an ever more hyped Global Cooling no doubt soon to be turned into a “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Cooling” with attached “Extreme Weather” [ based on past history, highly likely on a cold climate earth ] and other numerous assorted diabolically nasty human caused events that in the usual alarmist manner bear little or no relationship to either climate or weather but sound serious and can be blamed on somebody somewhere other than themselves of course..

    About the only way a global cooling can be Anthropogenicly created is through Aerosols so I expect that Aerosols from coal and farming and cars and power generation and anything that farts or moves and etc and etc will get a big run as the cause of everything from nose bleeds to gout to the breaking away of the immense icebergs due too much Arctic and Antarctic ice and therefore a severe danger to global shipping and commerce and etc [ ???.]

    In short nothing but the usual familiar yada yada and etc from the usual cultists of the alarmist creed is to be expected with just the temperature signs changed from a “plus” to a “minus”

    A good indicator of this shifting in the CAGW meme currently underway is another amongst quite a few similar items from the GWPF site and also the NoTricksZone site, both European sites. As Europe is the center of the CAGW meme, they carry some weight when changes are seen to be starting to happen.

    Give these below headlined and hypothesised and totally unproven claims the same sardonic consideration that you would for all those other claims from that same bunch of elitist know all climate scientists who profess to be able to accurately predict the future.
    There are many more similar articles as these below appearing over the last half year in the blogs and media articles and all are pointing to the failure and breakdown of the science, the modelling and the claims surrounding the CAGW meme with most articles either openly or subtly suggesting we may be on the way to a new and much colder climatic period of many years and possibly decades in length.

    From the GWPF
    THE CHOICE MAY BE GLOBAL WARMING OR A NEW ICE AGE, SAY SCIENTISTS
    AUSTRIAN NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE: “NATURAL FACTORS SUBSTANTIAL…MODELS INADEQUATE”

    NoTricksZone Blog
    German Scientists Show Climate Driven By Natural Cycles – Global Temperature To Drop To 1870 Levels By 2100!

    For laughs
    Blimey! Skeptical Science Admits Current Decade Running 0.053°C Cooler Than Last Decade!

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    ColdinOz

    Jo off topic here but worthwhile looking at the Hockeyschtick http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/new-paper-finds-negative-feedback.html

    re.the missing hotspot.

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    ColdinOz

    Jo off topic here but worthwhile looking at the Hockeyschtick http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/new-paper-finds-negative-feedback.html

    re.the missing hotspot.

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    pat

    3 Dec: RenewEconomy: Bob Burton: Shell gives Big Coal a shove along the gang plank
    The revelation that the global oil and gas company Shell lobbied the World Bank against funding new coal power stations is a stark indication of the increasing political isolation of the global coal industry. The coal industry is now so isolated that its corporate competitors such as Shell feel sufficiently emboldened to give the already weakened industry a big shove along the gang plank reserved for undesirable industries…
    The rapidly souring mood towards coal is a profound shift from just a year ago. All Shell has done is given Big Coal another nudge on top of those delivered by others. While Big Coal’s lobbyists are undoubtedly feeling lonelier than ever, the one limited consolation they have is that the tobacco and asbestos industries are ahead of them on the gang plank.
    (Bob Burton is co-author with Guy Pearse and David McKnight of Big Coal: Australia’s dirtiest habit (NewSouth Books, August 2013). He is also a Contributing Editor of CoalSwarm, a coal wiki and a director of The Sunrise Project, an Australian group promoting a renewable energy economy)
    http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/shell-gives-big-coal-a-shove-along-the-gang-plank-46408

    reality:

    4 Dec: Economic Times India: Yogima Seth Sharma: Captive coal miners may get to sell surplus output
    India may allow captive coal miners to sell surplus coal to steel, cement and power producers in a move that could challenge the monopoly of public sector Coal India and increase domestic supplies and serve to rein in imports.
    The proposal will go to the Cabinet Committee on Investment soon…
    The Chaturvedi committee was set up in June this year to suggest ways of utilising surplus coal from captive mines to bridge the deficit in domestic production after the Association of Power Producers (APP) suggested the idea of banking 25 million tonnes of surplus coal from captive mines…
    The policy, if implemented, will end the monopoly of Coal India as the sole supplier in the country and comes at a time the government is eyeing a follow-on public offer of the state-owned coal producer’s shares as part of its disinvestment programme…
    “Allowing sale of surplus captive coal will help bridge deficit as the companies would have the incentive to generate surplus coal,” said Kuljeet Singh, partner at EY. India imported coal worth $16 billion in 2012-13 despite being the world’s third-largest producer of the fuel and fifth-largest in reserves as
    domestic output failed to keep pace with demand.
    APP welcomed the move.
    “The time has come when we must liberalise the coal sector,” said Ashok Khurana, director-general…
    India’s total coal production is 557.60 million tonnes while domestic demand is 772.84 million tonnes in 2012-13, according to official data. This has resulted in a shortfall of nearly 200 million tonnes, most of which is being met by imports from Indonesia, South Africa and Australia…
    http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/indl-goods/svs/metals-mining/captive-coal-miners-may-get-to-sell-surplus-output/articleshow/26811206.cms

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    RoHa

    But it’s warm here in Brisbane, so Global Warming must be happening.

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      AndyG55

      Didn’t some idiot say something about rain never filling dams??

      Well !!! Up in sunny Newcastle NSW, we have just had the WETTEST November on record.

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        crakar24

        http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/adelaide-records-driest-november-in-17-years-but-possible-showers-on-way-for-the-ashes-this-week/story-fni6uo1m-1226773348074

        I will see your wettest november in newcastle and raise you with the driest november in Adelaide in 17 years……….though the cricket might get washed out 🙁

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          Dave

          crakar24,

          Amazing South Australia production:

          The grain harvest this year will likely be the third largest on record.

          In fact Dave Lewis, PIRSA Grains Account Manager said,

          “However, as anticipated in earlier Crop and Pasture Reports, this harvest is on track to be significant, and in fact higher than we estimated at the start of the season, thanks to good opening rains and crop establishment, warm temperatures, good rains during winter and low levels of disease in the crop.”

          So it is the driest November in 17 years (a good thing for grain harvest) but yet record rains for the rest of the year.

          Aussies will win the 2nd test.

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            Kevin Lohse

            Well done Australia. That’ll make it 2 wins in 10 tests.

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              crakar24

              Lets not get ahead of ourselves Kevin.

              Dave,

              Yes the grain harvests in SA have been quietly increasing year upon year but these are facts are absent in the mind of an idiot.

              Just last week one idiot wrote a long winded letter to the leader (local barossa paper) about the sky is falling faster than first thought and it mentioned “but what about the grapes”.

              I responded to this gibberish and suprise, suprise i got my letter published so know i sit here hatches fastened flame suit zipped up waiting for incomming (they publish your name thats one of the rules).

              Cheers

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        Kevin Lohse

        OK Good point. Were the dams filled?

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    ColdinOz

    But it’s unusually cold here in SW WA so that must be climate disruption.

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    crakar24

    Latest data from Spencer (UAH) is December +0.19C the pause continues……………….waiting for the ABC to pick this up……………………..waiting……………………………..waiting………………….waiting

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    pat

    to be expected; no opposing opinion, but at least a quick mention of the Pause:

    3 Dec: ABC World Today: Report paints terrifying picture of global warming future
    ELEANOR HALL: The planet has warmed only about 0.8 of a degree since the industrial revolution. The latest IPCC report shows the pace of warming has actually stabilised in recent years. Isn’t this just too extreme an analysis to be taken seriously?
    PETER CHRISTOFF: Look, the stabilisation that has occurred at the moment is regarded by most climate scientists as temporary. These sort of projections that we are now looking at the moment are not alarmist at all. I think they’re actually probably conservative under the circumstances. They don’t factor in a number of other feedbacks which may occur as warming continues and as we move past certain tipping points…
    ELEANOR HALL: What is the most frightening aspect for you of a four degree warmer world?
    PETER CHRISTOFF: Oh look, that’s a terrible question to which one only has to give a terrible answer…
    The oceans have become warmer, are becoming more acidic. So there’s a very significant chance of the collapse of significant marine ecosystems like coral reefs, the Great Barrier Reef, for example, is probably doomed when you get to four degrees. There are very substantial problems with food availability planet-wide and in a country like Australia which used to be capable of producing a surplus of food, by four degrees, would probably be facing food security problems with a larger population, but also a hungrier population.
    And then you have the issues of extreme weather events, floods, more intense storms, bushfires…
    ELEANOR HALL: The physical effects are one part of this. What could the changes in the resource availability then mean for security? Will it inevitably mean more wars?
    PETER CHRISTOFF: The projections are at four degrees that you would have significant displacement of population. If you have mass hunger occurring, populations will move to try and find food. Most of those movements, and the projections go from 65 to 250 million people by the end of this century…
    I don’t think we can understand what a world that looks like the one that’s being projected looks like or how we’re going to react to it. It’s beyond human experience…
    ELEANOR HALL: This sounds like a doomsday scenario. Could humans adapt to a four degree warming of the planet?
    PETER CHRISTOFF: Well, humans are an extraordinarily adaptable species but if you’re looking at a population of seven billion people trying to adapt to a world in which there’s less water and less food, one would have to say that the prospects for an adaptation that would leave life looking roughly like it does for many people at this point in time is virtually impossible…
    There would clearly be some form of adaptation, but it wouldn’t be life as we understand it at this point in time.
    ELEANOR HALL: You say that Australia could be one of the most vulnerable continents…
    ELEANOR HALL: What action would you like to see from policy makers as a result of your report?
    PETER CHRISTOFF: The clearest thing that this report suggests is that our current settings, current targets, and our current policies are inadequate. So Australia’s committed to reducing its emissions by five degrees. We need to look at a much more substantial target, around 35-40, even 45 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020.
    ELEANOR HALL: To go from 5 per cent to 45 though, that’s a massive increase. Do you really expect the current government to take something like that seriously?
    PETER CHRISTOFF: Well clearly there’s a huge gap between our current political settings and what the science is suggesting we need to do. But at the end of the day if you look at the economic, the social and environmental outcomes, there has to be a bit of a reality check and I think that nature is going to give us that…
    We’re talking about billions of dollars. But in terms of the amount of money that is currently spent within the budget on education or defence and so on, it certainly wouldn’t be a dramatic tension for the budget to be reoriented towards dealing with this problem.
    ELEANOR HALL: Peter Christoff, as we’ve been going through this conversation you’re reeling off statistics that really are quite extraordinary. How worried are you that we could actually reach four degrees of warming?
    PETER CHRISTOFF: Extremely worried….
    And I think that under the circumstances, unless there is a change, I think that the likelihood is that we will head towards four degrees, or more precisely that in 10 or 20 years time we’ll start to panic and start to really begin to move very, very quickly to reduce emissions blah blah…
    ELEANOR HALL: Professor Christoff, thanks very much for joining us.
    http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2013/s3903815.htm

    does Eleanor Hall earn Brownie Points from Labor/CarbonExpo for the above? can’t recall Labor upping the emissions reductions’ target in all the years they were in govt – but Christoff only sees it as a problem under “our current political settings”!

    give it up, ABC.

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    handjive

    Off topic for today – the use misuse of the word ‘unprecedented‘ in ‘settled climate science’ by fraudulent climate scientists:

    Dictionary:
    unprecedented |ˌənˈpresəˌdəntid|
    adjective: never done or known before

    Example-
    Michael Mann (email, Dec. 3, 2013): “The changes we are seeing in the Arctic are unprecedented in thousands of years …”
    !?!
    If it is known to have happened thousands of years ago, how is it “unprecedented,” and what caused changes “thousands of years ago”?
    .
    When will these people be held to account?

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    Debbie

    I notice that Pat has already put this up, but here it is again:
    http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2013/s3903815.htm
    Intriguing that the cold records are almost completely ignored but anything to do with heat and it is all over the media with the usual accompanying maybe, likely and probably.
    Saw this comment at Jennifer Marohasy’s blog from Robert:
    “Have we in fact crossed a line as a species? Is it the first time in human history that the tertiary educated are dumber than everybody else?”
    and then:
    ” I still say (they) would be less concerned with warming if they stopped wearing scarves in mid-summer.”

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    minderbinder of QLD

    And yet the popaganda continues. Here is one one interview that Christoff can add to his “publications” list for 2013 to justify his pathetic existence in Melbourne U “Academia”. Direct from that purveyor of all things biased, the good old boys and girls of their ABC.

    Report paints terrifying picture of global warming future

    Eleanor Hall reported this story on Tuesday, December 3, 2013 12:26:00
    Listen to MP3 of this story ( minutes)

    Alternate WMA version | MP3 download

    ELEANOR HALL: While the Federal Government focuses its climate policy energies on repealing the carbon tax, a report published today paints a terrifying picture of a world that’s four degrees warmer and recommends a dramatic increase in Australia’s carbon reduction target.

    The report’s editor is Associate Professor of Environmental Policy at Melbourne University, Dr Peter Christoff.

    He says he will meet Australian politicians from all parties to stress the urgency of the problem.

    He joined me from Melbourne this morning.

    Professor Christoff, what do you say to those who say it’s simply alarmist to be talking about four degrees of global warming, twice the level that world leaders have identified as dangerous, and are working to keep below.

    PETER CHRISTOFF: Well, two years ago or four years ago, it would have been regarded as science fiction to think about a world heading in that direction. But frankly, given the pace of negotiations and the projections that are being made on current levels of emissions and also projected changes to those emissions, four degrees is pretty much about the centre figure that is being projected by the IPCC, the scientific body looking at climate change.

    So four degrees unfortunately is now a very realistic prospect by the end of this century.

    ELEANOR HALL: You say we should use the best available evidence. What does it tell us about the earliest possible date we’d be looking at a four degree warmer world?

    PETER CHRISTOFF: Well a great deal depends on the rate at which emissions either increase or decline. If those emissions increase, then we’re looking at four degrees being perhaps as early as 2070. If they decline, but not sufficiently, then we’re looking at around the end of this century.

    Of course that doesn’t mean that that’s when the warming stops. Warming would continue to occur for some time, for some centuries after that. But at this stage that’s the projection that we’re looking at.

    ELEANOR HALL: The planet has warmed only about 0.8 of a degree since the industrial revolution. The latest IPCC report shows the pace of warming has actually stabilised in recent years. Isn’t this just too extreme an analysis to be taken seriously?

    PETER CHRISTOFF: Look, the stabilisation that has occurred at the moment is regarded by most climate scientists as temporary. These sort of projections that we are now looking at the moment are not alarmist at all. I think they’re actually probably conservative under the circumstances. They don’t factor in a number of other feedbacks which may occur as warming continues and as we move past certain tipping points.

    ELEANOR HALL: So if this four degrees of warming or worse were to take place, which parts of the globe, which populations, would be most at risk?

    PETER CHRISTOFF: You’d probably have to say that most parts of the globe would be at risk. That’s four degrees of average warming, but there would be warming that is in excess of that as you move towards the polar regions in both hemispheres.

    You’ve got to say that Australia as a country which has always had a fairly fragile environment, would be one of the continents and one of the countries most at risk. Certainly it’s the most vulnerable of the industrialised countries.

    But then you have continents like the Indian subcontinent and also China, which are very vulnerable because of their large populations who are extremely susceptible to changes in drought and therefore in food availability.

    ELEANOR HALL: What is the most frightening aspect for you of a four degree warmer world?

    PETER CHRISTOFF: Oh look, that’s a terrible question to which one only has to give a terrible answer. There are a set of compounding problems that emerge when you start moving towards four degrees. You start to see a world in which there are substantial extinctions.

    The oceans have become warmer, are becoming more acidic. So there’s a very significant chance of the collapse of significant marine ecosystems like coral reefs, the Great Barrier Reef, for example, is probably doomed when you get to four degrees. There are very substantial problems with food availability planet-wide and in a country like Australia which used to be capable of producing a surplus of food, by four degrees, would probably be facing food security problems with a larger population, but also a hungrier population.

    And then you have the issues of extreme weather events, floods, more intense storms, bushfires, all these things particularly in the Australian context, I think leave us with a shatteringly different sense of what Australian can and would be like.

    ELEANOR HALL: The physical effects are one part of this. What could the changes in the resource availability then mean for security? Will it inevitably mean more wars?

    PETER CHRISTOFF: The projections are at four degrees that you would have significant displacement of population. If you have mass hunger occurring, populations will move to try and find food. Most of those movements, and the projections go from 65 to 250 million people by the end of this century. Most of those movements are likely to occur with countries, but there would be also the prospect of people moving over their borders and looking for resources elsewhere.

    And how the world begins to handle a problem of that magnitude I think is something that we can only begin to contemplate. One doesn’t know whether it would lead to more conflict. It certainly would lead to problems. I don’t think we can understand what a world that looks like the one that’s being projected looks like or how we’re going to react to it. It’s beyond human experience.

    ELEANOR HALL: This sounds like a doomsday scenario. Could humans adapt to a four degree warming of the planet?

    PETER CHRISTOFF: Well, humans are an extraordinarily adaptable species but if you’re looking at a population of seven billion people trying to adapt to a world in which there’s less water and less food, one would have to say that the prospects for an adaptation that would leave life looking roughly like it does for many people at this point in time is virtually impossible.

    So there are already billions of people living in poverty or in water-stressed and food-stressed circumstances. In a four degree world, their situation would only get extremely worse. And even in extremely wealthy countries like Australia, adaptation I think would be very, very difficult to countenance.

    There would clearly be some form of adaptation, but it wouldn’t be life as we understand it at this point in time.

    ELEANOR HALL: You say that Australia could be one of the most vulnerable continents. Where do you expect to see the worst effects in Australia of a four degree warmer world?

    PETER CHRISTOFF: There will be the extinctions of species. There’ll be a very substantial impact on agricultural productivity. So the issues of food availability will change. We probably have the wealth and the resources to begin to deal with some of the issues of water availability and desalinisation plants and so on. Everyday life will be very substantially different. There are projections for example of what would happen to just average temperatures over time. So in Melbourne for example, we have something like nine or ten days over 35 degrees at the moment. By the time you get to 2070, that’s about 26 days.

    When you’re looking at Alice Springs, the temperatures are 90 days over 35 degrees now, 180 by 2070. And then you get to places like Darwin, which would move from 11 days to 308. You end up with parts of Australia which are virtually unliveable. And the projections are for example, that while Alice Springs would resemble the Sudan, Darwin will resemble like no place on earth.

    ELEANOR HALL: What action would you like to see from policy makers as a result of your report?

    PETER CHRISTOFF: The clearest thing that this report suggests is that our current settings, current targets, and our current policies are inadequate. So Australia’s committed to reducing its emissions by five degrees. We need to look at a much more substantial target, around 35-40, even 45 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020.

    ELEANOR HALL: To go from 5 per cent to 45 though, that’s a massive increase. Do you really expect the current government to take something like that seriously?

    PETER CHRISTOFF: Well clearly there’s a huge gap between our current political settings and what the science is suggesting we need to do. But at the end of the day if you look at the economic, the social and environmental outcomes, there has to be a bit of a reality check and I think that nature is going to give us that.

    ELEANOR HALL: A 45 per cent reduction, what would be the cost of bringing that about. I mean, British economist Nicholas Stern’s analysis that it would cost 1 per cent of GDP globally is now well out of date, isn’t it?

    PETER CHRISTOFF: It is out of date. But it’s not that far off what one could still expect at this point in time. We’re talking about billions of dollars. But in terms of the amount of money that is currently spent within the budget on education or defence and so on, it certainly wouldn’t be a dramatic tension for the budget to be reoriented towards dealing with this problem.

    ELEANOR HALL: Peter Christoff, as we’ve been going through this conversation you’re reeling off statistics that really are quite extraordinary. How worried are you that we could actually reach four degrees of warming?

    PETER CHRISTOFF: Extremely worried. We haven’t seen the sort of focus and we haven’t seen the sort of effort that’s required to avoid exceeding two degrees in international negotiations, nor in Australia for some time. And I think that under the circumstances, unless there is a change, I think that the likelihood is that we will head towards four degrees, or more precisely that in 10 or 20 years time we’ll start to panic and start to really begin to move very, very quickly to reduce emissions. But under those circumstances it will much more expensive and probably much less effective set of policies that we put in place.

    ELEANOR HALL: Professor Christoff, thanks very much for joining us.

    PETER CHRISTOFF: Thanks Eleanor.

    ELEANOR HALL: That’s Melbourne University’s Dr Peter Christoff. He’s the editor of that report; Four Degrees of Global Warming: Australia in a Hot World.

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    handjive

    “The Pause” continues.

    It’s worse than we first thought!

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    John Knowles

    One has to be careful citing every warming event as CAGW and coldness records as the opposite.
    USA & Canada cover <4% of the globe so a bit of coolth in that region is of little significance on its own. The widely meandering jet-stream is bound to bring extended periods where cold polar air moves southward, mixing with saturated mid-latitude air.
    The jets are often maintaining a standing wave-form for longer than in the past so we can expect individual regions to experience anomalous weather, be it hotter or colder than normal. http://squall.sfsu.edu/scripts/namjetstream_modelsml.html
    If you read up on past weather patterns the current situation has most probably happened before. Search for
    "James Marusek : A Chronological Listing of Early Weather Events"
    It takes a while to peruse but gives a fair idea about the variability of the weather during the LIA when some British winters were freezing and windless for extended periods while others had no frosts at all.

    If a media outlet has some fake political agenda to peddle it must be easy to find examples to fool the masses with.

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    Brrrr… I’m knitting a long ‘Dr Who’ scarf fer Jim Hansen.
    Hope he doesn’t trip over it. ) Beth-the-serf.

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    […] that was proof that global warming was happening.  Good times, good times.  Jo Nova is about the only one writing about it […]

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    Jefft

    Just a passing thought bubble:
    Recently watched “Weather which changed History” on TV channel 7 Two, expecting another Climate Change program. Wrong, it was on the loss of the shuttle “Challenger” in Jan 1986, and the fault that caused the disaster was the ‘O’ring seals on the rocket boosters breaking down due to unprecedented cold. Cape Kennedy launch area is Central East coast of Florida, and days before the launch, there were icicles formed on areas of the Shuttle’s booster plumbing.
    This was 2 years, 5 months before James Hansen’s announcement to Congress June 1988, that the planet was warming.
    Now we are seeing reports of freezing weather and stock losses in Texas, Utah amongst other States.
    – I see time as a problem, the younger people haven’t been around long enough to know any different weather conditions, and a lot of older people forget about the drastic weather that was around in their youth.
    And people like James Hansen are still around preaching CAGW.

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      My definition of the cause of climate change is: Poor or short memories.

      It’s not surprising that science is busily rewriting history–the politicians can’t be expected to do it all on their own, can they? Rewriting history has become a full-time job. Columbus landing is now European savages coming to a new land to slaughter the indigenous population (actually worded as “white guys from Europe came here and killed the peaceful Indians. White guys from Europe are evil.) No mention of any bad behaviour on the part of the Indians to one another prior to landing. No mention of the Spanish (we love Mexicans) being involved. I suppose if scientists don’t increase the number of instances of lying about climate change, they can’t keep up the scam. Let’s face it–most of science at university level is dead–just a propaganda machine, along with idiots on television.

      (Note: Weather cannot change history. History cannot be changed–it can be rewritten, but not changed. The past is the past. I saw the show once and couldn’t watch after that because no one and nothing can change history. The title alone screams out “NO SCIENCE”, just fiction.)

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        Roy Hogue

        My definition of the cause of climate change is: Poor or short memories.

        Sheri,

        Aren’t you being a little too generous? 🙂

        It’s not that I don’t think that’s part of it but there’s more to it — like failure to question what you’re told, failure to look for other positions and evaluate them, etc.

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          You’re correct that it’s failure to question, etc, but with extremely poor memories (maybe due to apathy, maybe not), there is no way to question or evaluate. If people had memories longer than 140 characters on Twitter, they would be forced to question and evaluate. When some MSM puppet says it’s the coldest winter on record, they would say “I remember going to night class in college with -30F and -70F wind chill, walking to class. It’s only -11F now and the wind chill is -20F.” (Yes, personal memory) At that point, they are going to start to wonder. How can the MSM be imparting truthful information if one remembers a colder or warmer time? If they have virtually no memory, they run about shouting we are all going to freeze to death cut to “extreme weather”, etc. Maybe I’m overly optimistic about the second part, but without the memories first, there’s little chance to question.

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            Roy Hogue

            Twitter, twitter, twitter, ad nauseam. Facebook too.

            Twitter is well named, sounds like a bunch of birds twittering back and forth. But there’s almost no information content. We’ve trivialized life to a horrifying degree if you stop to think about it — and even if you don’t stop to think about it.

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              PhilJourdan

              Mass media was the road we used to get there. 30 second sound bytes were perfect for twitter. And anyone can twit for 30 seconds.

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    Nice bit of cherry-picking, Jo.

    Here is a slightly more complete selection of data:

    http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/records/

    Recent Records Totals

    Period Hi Max Hi Min Lo Max Lo Min Precip* Snow*
    Yesterday 12 0 0 23 52 56
    Last 7 Days 53 52 243 216 165 137
    Last 30 Days 337 429 1,537 675 1,696 611
    Last 365 Days 9,793 16,339 15,339 10,145 27,407 8,541
    Month to Date 34 48 13 38 137 110
    Year to Date 9,059 15,109 15,041 9,975 24,806 6,856
    Last Year to Date 33,273 30,905 8,803 6,238 25,168 3,368

    So for the year so far, that’s,
    33,273 Hi Max v. 8,803 Lo Max.
    30,905 Hi Min v. 6,238 Lo Min

    Hot records outnumber cold records by over 4 : 1.

    So, when you question why media outlets aren’t reporting things with your preferred slant, the answer is obviously that reporting your slant would be poor journalism.

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    Peter Carabot

    It’s the “internal Variability” stupid!

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    Don Gaddes

    The constant reiteration of falsely accentuated ‘hot’ temperatures in the media ‘weather reports’, has reached a new degree of [Stupid!]
    Channels Nine and Ten gave us the same BoM generated ‘gems.’ “It was the Hottest Day of the Year So Far!” (Dec 29.) ” It is the Hottest Day for Eight months!” (Dec 7.)
    No mention of the fact, that when the wind blows off the desert interior, hotter temperatures ensue in their path. It has always been so!

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