Guess who won an award for understanding Natural Phenomena?

The Australian Academy of Science has announced its 2014 Academy awards to “celebrate scientific excellence.”

To show how excellent, their excellence is, the Frederick White Prize for scientific achievements contributing to the understanding of natural phenomena goes to Professor Chris Turney, University of New South Wales.

 

Professor Chris Turney2014 Frederick White Prize - Professor Chris Turney

“Professor Turney is an internationally recognised earth scientist and research leader in both climate and environmental change, from the tropics to the poles. By pioneering new ways of combining climate models with records of past climate change (spanning from hundreds to thousands of years), he has discovered new links between variability mechanisms in the Australian region and global climate change”.

Australian Academy of Science

 

Curiously the 2015 McFarlane Burnet Award has already been awarded. Professor Lambeck will be doing wonderful work this year. Good to know.

The point of this post? Just another poke at the scientific hierarchy for awarding a prize to a man who uses broken models with proven flaws to help us understand the natural phenomenon  that he so famously got 74 people and two ships stuck in. And there are people who think we should listen to and laud these associations?

The Frederick White Prize is “up to $3000”.

 

9.6 out of 10 based on 167 ratings

219 comments to Guess who won an award for understanding Natural Phenomena?

  • #
    Andrew McRae

    A model citizen.

    201

    • #
      bullocky


      I’m surprised he didn’t have to share it with Professor Stephan Lewandowsky for his seminal conspiracy ideation study; it must have been a tight finish. Graham Redfearn, though not a scientist or researcher, must have been well up in the vote tallies.

      The good news is that all three are still very much in the running for a Nobel.

      No bull!

      212

    • #
      PhilJourdan

      *Groan*

      64

    • #
      mareeS

      Hopefully he will donate the prize as a tip to the crew of Aurora Australis, and to the scientists at Casey, for the inconvenience caused by that mad escapade.

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      • #
        James (Aus.)

        The two AA crew members, Leanne and Mark, who provide the daily situation report from the AA, write,

        “The unsung heroes of the [AA] voyage are the galley staff. Their ability to stretch the provisions for an additional 52 passengers for 3 weeks has been extraordinary”.

        $3000 would not come even close to covering the food bill racked up by Turney, his wife and kids, and his dozens of munching trippers. Let alone the rest of journeying to pick them up, and the consequent disruptions to programs which most likely extend into the next 12 months.

        100

    • #
      Jon

      He won it for understanding pack-ice?

      110

    • #
      crosspatch

      I would prefer a working model.

      20

    • #
      Mike Jowsey

      His motto should be “Any port in a storm!”

      40

  • #
    scaper...

    Chris Turney???

    What a f###ing joke!

    542

  • #
    Kevin Lohse

    The 1914-18 war was notable for, amongst other things, of awarding honours to Generals after they had made a particularly spectacular mess of a battle. It would appear that Australian Academy of Science is determined to follow that example in an attempt to mask the true nature of the Turney disaster from the public. Pathetic, isn’t it? I suppose we should be grateful that Dr. Whiteface in the ship of fools only wasted thousands of dollars rather than thousands of lives.

    962

    • #
      Peter Miller

      Brilliant comment. What else needs to be said?

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    • #
      Peter Miller

      Another example is the UK’s honours list, which is filled with failed politicians, expensive bureaucrats, cronies like the prime minister’s hair dresser and sundry footballers.

      251

      • #
        Howard Priory

        Another blog points out that it’s straight out of Yes Minister. When Bernard says the National Theatre looks like a carpet warehouse, Sir Humphrey turns on him and snarls, “We gave the architect a knighthood so that nobody would ever say that.”

        311

    • #
      Steve

      They gave a Nobel to Al Gore for his climate nonsense, and another for Obama for , well, nothing basically. Just coz the could….

      The Nobel is just meaningless now.

      The Establishment awarding themselves things to try and create the illusion of credibility.

      Similar vein.

      This bloke made such a c**k-up, that they must have had to scramble to try and bail the water…er….ice out of the badly sinking ship faster than it could come in.

      What an absolute howler.

      Rates right up there with Prince Philip and his comments about workmanship…..

      80

    • #
      Apoxonbothyourhouses

      For what it is worth I have written to AAofS and told them (in my opinion) that they are a disgrace to good science and hopelessly out of touch with the real world. Their web site asks for donations – response Buckley’ or less. Won’t do any good as their ivory towers are too high but it cuts down on my therapy sessions.

      60

  • #
    Beachcomber

    Perhaps it would be more appropriate for the Australian Academy of Science to re-style this the Thanksgiving Award for outstanding Turkeys???

    391

  • #
    Heywood

    “The Frederick White Prize is “up to $3000″.”

    $3000 would be a good start to go towards the bill for rescuing this idiot and his activist mates. Has he even made it back to land yet?

    392

    • #
      AndyG55

      “$3000 would be a good start”

      No, it would not even pay the cook !!!

      242

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      “Up to” actually translates to “Less than or equal to”.

      So it could be $30, and the prestige of being the person who discovered that rapidly expanding sea ice is a natural phenomenon, and not anthropogenic after all.

      Let us raise a glass, or an egg cup, in a toast to this achievement. Or not.

      231

  • #
    Andrew

    Actually he understands nature perfectly. Nature is a device for converting taxes into grants.
    Step 1: Identify a cyclical natural phenomenon.
    Step 2a: Statistically, it’s 50% likely to be on the “bad” side of long-term norms. If so, collect $200,000 and write a paper of how it proves climate change.
    Step 2b: If it’s on the “good” side, say things like “Everywhere else, X is happening due to climate change but here climate change is manifesting as not(X).” Collect $200,000, wait 3 weeks to be rescued, tweet requests for donations, then write a paper about how it proves climate weirding due to climate change.

    551

  • #
    PeterS

    Which natural phenomenon? The one that says global warming creates more ice? Of course it’s not surprising given Al Gore got the Nobel Prize for his so called understanding about man-made climate change. The West is going to the dogs and clearly is showing signs of a diminishing “empire”. We all better start learning Chinese or Russian.

    361

    • #
      King Geo

      Yes “Western Civilization” is losing the plot when the likes of Gore wins a “Nobel Peace Prize & Oscar” (extraordinary), Flannery “Australian of the Year” (even more extraordinary) and now Turney from the “Ship of Fools” a Frederick White Prize for “Climate Modelling”. Yes with this trend China and India are going to overwhelm “Western Civilization” very soon.

      391

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      The nice thing about learning Russian, is that so few people outside of Russia, and its former satellite countries, actually speak it. Even fewer can read it.

      The nice thing about learning Chinese, is that there are so many dialects to choose from.

      50

  • #
    David

    Why are you all surprised? Obama got a Nobel for doing s.f.a.

    481

  • #
    turnedoutnice

    The ar$elickers always get the gongs.

    Look at Lewandowsky for example, being pulled out of UWA to save him as a Marxist asset.

    232

    • #
      Kevin Lohse

      It is difficult to envisage the New World Order pollies seeing Lewandowsky as anything other than a useful idiot to be offered up as a human sacrifice when the AGW scam finally blows up.

      341

      • #
        Greg Cavanagh

        They are either smart enough to understand how to use useful idiots, or they believe these people are in fact, GREAT. It’s difficult to know which is which (which is perhaps telling in itself).

        20

    • #
      Andrew

      Pulled out? I had hoped he was pushed – either the uni fired him or the govt withdrew his 457.

      81

  • #
    Phillip Bratby

    Is the award made on April 1st?

    231

  • #
    Konrad

    Perhaps $3000 is reasonable recognition of his ground breaking discoveries involving flightless birds of the Antarctic.

    151

    • #
      Sean McHugh

      They also discovered there were no bananas growing. Their journey should be compulsory reading in schools.

      211

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Technical point:

      Penguins do fly. They just do it under water. And they are very fast too.

      170

      • #
        John B

        By your flawed logic humans can fly.

        412

        • #
          Mortis

          No, penguins do “fly” underwater, humans obviously do not – read a book before making snarky comments that are wrong.

          131

        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          The logic is not flawed.

          Penguins swim on the surface by using their feet, in the same way that ducks swim on the surface.

          Ducks use their wings to fly up, into the air. Penguins use their wings to fly down, under the surface, which is where their feed stock lives, and the penguins need to be faster than the fish they eat, for obviously reasons.

          People often make the mistake of calling penguin wings, “flippers”, because that is what sea-lions and seals have. But the structure and the purpose is different. Penguins use wings for propulsion, and their feet for steering. Seals and sea-lions use their tail flippers for propulsion, and their front flippers for steering.

          Same environment, but two different evolutionary paths.

          I hope you made a note of that. It may be included in the end of term examination.

          180

        • #
          Andrew McRae

          You are both mistaken.
          Let us attempt to apply the dictionary definition of “fly” to both humans and penguins.
          Fly means to travel through the air. It is not possible to fly through the water, by definition.

          However humans can fly using aircraft, that’s allowed in the definition of “fly”.
          Therefore penguins can fly in the same way as humans, here are pictures and a video of a penguin flying.

          Humans can also fly without using machines (except for the machines used to make their wingsuit).
          Here is a video of a human flying without an aircraft and touching down without a parachute.

          The impossible was yesterday.

          10

  • #
    Geoff Sherrington

    Do keep in mind hat the exciting events on the recent exhibition expedition brought to the spotlight the questionable alleged science drawing on your taxpayer money.
    It’s unfair to pick on this chap when, if you shine the spotlight on any number of climate change projects funded by the taxpayer, you’ll find much poor work.
    The Academy must have found that he was the top of the heap, while ignoring that the whole heap is malodourous.

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    • #
      Peter C

      It’s unfair to pick on this chap when, if you shine the spotlight on any number of climate change projects funded by the taxpayer, you’ll find much poor work.

      Agree that you are being provocative !

      But what about the Australian Academy of Science? What a bunch of useless idiots. Can Australian Scientology be brought into any greater disrespect?

      172

      • #
        Greg Cavanagh

        Can Australian Scientology be brought into any greater disrespect?

        Not easily, but they are probably working on it.

        Giving out prizes and status rewards to idiots is an intriguing feature of science (and perhaps human nature as scumbags seem to rise to the top).

        40

  • #
    Con Tend

    Using same models Flannery and Al Gore use?

    111

  • #
    Geoff Cruickshank

    Good God! I thought Joelle Gergis was a shoo-in for this one.

    111

  • #
    Sunray

    Thank you Jo. These people remind me of a gang of paedophile “Holy Men/Women”.

    [Do not make slanderous comments about other people, even using the semantic trick of expressing it as your own impression. You would have been moderated if I had seen this earlier -Fly]

    78

    • #
      Kevin Lohse

      Let’s not follow the Warmist game of unacceptable slurs unconnected with the matter in hand. There is no connection between Climate Science and Paedophilia, though it is likely that Lew and Cookie could find one given the opportunity. It is enough to highlight the atmosphere of corruption,cronyism, medieval ignorance and attitudes in which these people operate. Why is it that you can never find a Mod when you need one?

      151

  • #
    Yonniestone

    The Frederick White prize must now be the equivalent of getting an elephant stamp for spelling words as they sound.

    kwiss Turnee thu oltimite awkseegen fief.

    111

  • #
    Joe V.

    Would he have been awarded this award, if not for getting a bunch of tourists stuck in the ice, for triggerring a worldwide polar rescue effort and for drawing more ridicule on the climate science community in the process , or would we just not have heard about it ?

    111

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Given the timing, this award must have been agreed, prior to the expedition even departing.

      Just like the Macfarlane Burnet award, that Jo mentions.

      Yet more evidence that the whole of Climate Science is a rigged dog and pony show.

      50

    • #
      john robertson

      But wait, surely this “award” was predetermined last year.
      If the 2015 is already decided, logically the 2014 was too.
      Turney deserves this award, who better to embarrass the clowns who issued it.
      Ship of fools is a fitting acceptance tour.

      60

      • #
        Graeme No.3

        My thought too.
        Perhaps they switched the Award to Turney to “cover-up” his fiasco, and Professor Lambeck gets it delayed by 12 months.

        10

        • #
          Krudd Gillard of the Commondebt of Australia

          Correct and I am sure we have all seen this before. Warmist scientist finds him/herself in bad spot. Suddenly, they receive an award for excellence. Propaganda machine in full swing.

          10

  • #
    AndyG55

    Anyone would think that they were ACTIVELY TRYING to bring some of these awards into DISREPUTE !!!

    231

  • #
    Bones

    Don’t be to quick to think that turkey is getting an award for nothing.Just remember the new school policy for not making slower kids feel left behind,is to give an award to EVERYBODY.Imagine what he could have got for something intelligent or worthwhile.

    131

  • #
  • #

    They are just using this as an opportunity to rub our faces in it. The Left control the institutions of this country. The Howard government was too scared to put a stop to it and so, it appears, is the Abbott government. The Left have won. This country is finished. Happy Australia Day.

    111

    • #
      Bones

      How about we give the new govt a little more time.Abbott has already cut flimflam loose,we wait now for the rest of the krudd/juliar climate troughs to be drained.

      191

      • #

        AHRC, ARC, ACMA, ABC, SBS, BOM, CSIRO, RET, 18C, national curriculum, taxpayer funding of NGOs, the ‘arts’, the UN, treaty law, judicial reform, civics to be taught in schools rather than green activism, student ‘services’ fees, academics forbidding open discussion ….. and so on. I’ll give the Liberals the benefit of the doubt when they have the spine to deal with ONE, JUST ONE, of these things, as true conservatives would.
        And let’s not get started on the cowardly state government.

        71

      • #
        Kevin Lohse

        Agreed. Politics is the art of the possible. From the right way up part of the globe, Mr. Abbott does not yet appear secure enough in the Senate to do anything draconian, whatever he may privately wish. There is also the problem of unwinding the renewables scams without seriously damaging those of the electorate who were suckered in by appeals to their greed. They may have been selfish and foolish in equal parts, but that does not disqualify them from voting. Meanwhile, Warmist Science is disintegrating daily as the data flows in and further professional misconduct id discovered by sceptic researchers. After the Senate elections hopefully produce a Coalition majority is when Mr. Abbott can be fairly judged.

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        • #
          Greg Cavanagh

          Kevin; your wisdom and clear thought is an inspiration.

          40

          • #
            • #

              I’ve been explaining this to people for years. I should have gotten a grant and wrote something up and then I could be an expert! 😉

              30

            • #
              Bulldust

              Kevin … maybe this report released by EnergyQuest will help:

              http://www.energyquest.com.au/insightsandanalysis.php?id=192

              They talk about how gas generation came to the rescue during the recent hot weather in Vic and SA, and how useless renewables were, to wit:

              “Wind still supplied 19% of power in South Australia but only contributed 5% of the increased need for electricity. Wind generation was lower in Victoria, making a negative contribution to meeting increased power demand,” he said.

              “What about solar PV? In a heatwave wouldn’t that increase dramatically? Solar PV generation was certainly higher in both Victoria and South Australia, by around 10% and at a peak contributed 11% of power in South Australia and 5% in Victoria. However overall, with limited installed capacity and low capacity use for much of the day, solar only contributed 1% of increased generation in both states.”
              (Emphasis added)

              In a nutshell… wind and solarPV were worse than useless … the money would have been much better spent elsewhere.

              31

              • #
                Bob Malloy

                Twice this week ABC overnights have had guest on that have implied that the Gas Powered Generators are required exclusively to take up the slack when we all come home and switch on our AC’s. Not me I don’t have one.

                Early in the week it was Sara Phillips, Tony wrote about her here, http://joannenova.com.au/2014/01/weekend-unthreaded-25/#comment-1373905.

                This morning they had a women on to talk about building energy efficient homes,she hinted again to AC’s costing every consumer of electricity extra money, whether they have air conditioning or not.

                They must all have the same hymn book, the chapter about the RET and the inefficiency of green power has been totally removed.

                00

        • #

          Meanwhile, Warmist Science is disintegrating daily as the data flows in and further professional misconduct id discovered by sceptic researchers.

          With respect, Kevin, it was never about the science; it was always about the politics. The scam will go on long after the science is discredited.

          Secondly, there are lots of things Abbott could do using administrative rather than legislative powers. There is no sign of anything positive yet, not even some ‘motherhood’ statements about reforming the institutions of the country and giving power back to the people.

          The business with the AHRC was the moment at which the Abbott government could have drawn the line in the sand. No doubt when the Abbott government was elected the AHRC crowd sighed and thought ‘Well, the game’s up. We’ll have to go and get real jobs now,’ because they, like us, would have quite rightly expected that their self-indulgent leftist ‘wankfest’ was to come to an end. But when the Abbott government wimped out and appointed Tim Wilson as a commissioner, no doubt champagne corks popped in the AHRC boardroom and they had a good, hearty laugh at our expense. Remember that: they are laughing their heads of at us because they know that no matter who is in government and no matter how much we rant and rave on our blogs, THEY continue to run the show and set the agenda.

          Happy Australia Day to you.

          30

  • #
    Dave

    The Australian Academy of Science has had a long history with the ABC.

    Google “Australian Academy of Science ABC” and you get over 8,480,000 results.

    And here is the answer, the ABC, Fairfax and The Guardian couldn’t possibly interview Professor Turkey as the leader of the SHIP of Fools. But they’ll be all over the Winner of Frederick White Prize with no mention of the tragic stupidity exhibited by this scientist.

    It’s just a smoke screen to protect one of their own, and the GREEN media will lap it up with more CAGW rubbish spewing forth at every occasion. In 1993, Robyn was the first journalist elected as a Fellow Member of the Australian Academy of Science. WTF.

    They’ll wait for the ice to melt from The Ship of Fools story and then he’ll be back in the spotlight. But we’re waiting for the Ice Turkey.

    281

  • #
    Bones

    Hi Jo,sorry to O/T from a wonderful roast,when looking at the link on green bonds[blue&greentomorrow.com]there was a story that day 17 jan :from pond to cup:and at the bottom of this story were more lovely water related topics.
    Monetise risks to encourage long term investment in water security.
    World water day and a few others.All these refer future water problems and how we should be paying more.It seems that after making everyone pay more for electricity,they are now starting on water.If you have already seen this,do what all others do and just ignore me,I get that a lot.Now back to roast TURKEY

    51

    • #
      Bones

      Sorry Jo just found the other part of this story.

      11

      • #
        Bones

        Link no worky,I can drive a truck not a computer.Story at drtimball.com Nov 1 2013 :water replacing climate as the new UN enviro scare: I love doing things the hard way,it keeps me busy.

        41

        • #
          AndyG55

          Bones, you are playing in my sandpit now.

          I can assure you that if populations increase as expected in Australia, most capital cities will have quite severe potable water supply issues if we have a long drought.

          And lets be honest, severe drought happen in Australia, regardless of any fictitious climate change.

          The best and cheapest option is more dams for LONG TERM storage.

          Welcome Reef would have shored up Sydney’s supply for a good many years.

          A dam on the Mitchell river somewhere would fix Melbourne.

          A second major dam, just for storage would fix Brisbane and SEQ.

          Adelaide and Perth could be in trouble though. Neither really has the terrain and rainfall match to provide good long term storage nearby.

          The issue is that other alternative water augmentation schemes are likely to be more expensive.

          Desal, local water harvesting, recycling, long distance pumping….. it all costs !

          The big difference here, is that the water engineers KNOW this to be the case. (As opposed to the AGW renewable frauds)

          The other big issue is “how much storage is enough?”

          We only have a maximum of 150 or so years of stream flow and rainfall data, and in reality, this is MUCH MORE VARIABLE than temperature can ever be.

          Its not at all like energy supply, where you can just dig up more coal or gas. We can’t just “make it rain”

          Furthermore, we DON’T KNOW what the worst drought is that Australia can throw at us.

          Another “Federation” style drought would put the water supplies in many places in Australia into a highly “stressed” situation.

          110

          • #
            Bones

            Andy,you get no arguemant about Australia being a dry continent from me,but the people I’m talking about are looking to manufacture a worldwide water crisis just as the UN have done with the weather.

            91

            • #
              David Smith

              Bones,

              I think you’re spot-on about the next ‘crisis’ to keep the masses worried.

              Unfortunately, water management seems to be studied by people just as stupid as the global warming numpties. Case in point:
              A neighbour of mine has just completed a Masters in ‘water resource management’ (or some such). Him, another mate, and I were sat in the pub once and the subject of CAGW came up. Unbelievably, this guy with a Masters didn’t know that CO2 was not the most abundant GHG. He refused to believe me when I told him it was water vapour. He only accepted the fact when the other guy looked it up on the net on his phone and confirmed what I was saying. (Ironically enough, the other guy found the fact on Skeptical Science. I’m sure the SkS kidz would love to know that their site helped me convince the Masters Man that CO2 wasn’t quite as abundant as he thought it was!) Masters Man was also shocked when I told him quite how little 400ppm really is.
              It’s unbelievably worrying, it really is.

              141

              • #
                AndyG55

                I find it incredulous that a guy in water resource management doesn’t know the basics of hydrology.. That is a serious worry !!

                Did he do it at TAFE or something ?

                30

            • #
              AndyG55

              They just need to get the rabid greenies out the way, and build decent dams.

              But certainly, as world population grows, the water storage and supply infrastructure needs to keep up.

              In many places it has not.. that is the real issue.

              20

            • #
              john robertson

              Bones,
              Encourage them.
              The water crisis is a tarpit, the further they can be encouraged to leap, the better.
              See Penn& Teller; BS, Water.
              The Ban DHMO website.
              This trap is well prepared, so encourage the do-gooder idiots to take this path.
              One truly idiotic aspect, we are “destroying” water.
              Idiocy abounds, but in these corrupt PC times, the best defence is get them preaching, let them blow their cover completely.
              Give them lots of rope and snub the other end to a moving bus.

              40

          • #
            janama

            the solution is here – trillions of tonnes of fresh water under the continental shelves in major continents.

            http://www.planettechnews.com/science/500-trillion-tons-of-fresh-water-under-the-ocean-s-continental-shelf-in-giant-aquifers

            11

          • #
            edwina

            There are huge amounts of water in northern Australia. Many rivers are suitable for storage either for their regions or sending elsewhere by pipeline. It can be done.

            The problem is not engineering. Too many of these rivers are regarded as protected. In short, they are now regarded as just scenery or sacred or too ecologically valuable to disturb.

            Our culture no longer sees these water sources as valuable to our way of life and progress. As a people we no longer have any remaining backbone as shown by those who came before us.

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            • #
              jorgekafkazar

              As a people we no longer have any remaining backbone as shown by those who came before us.

              Perhaps a name change is in order, then. How does “Wustralia” sound?

              00

          • #
            Kevin Lohse

            Andy G55 Are you saying that those mothballed desal plants may be useful after all?
            Edwina. Connect your Green effect on use of water with the Green effect on water management on the UK’s Somerset levels and Kent floods. The State sponsored and maintained ecology movement seems to be more prone to unintended consequences than even most government enterprises.

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            • #
              AndyG55

              Kevin, At some stage in the distant future, the desal plants in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, may play a very small part in augmenting the water supply during a drought, but they are still a monumental waste of money.
              The ones in Adelaide and Perth, may actually be useful, because those 2 cities don’t have decent long term storage.
              As for ecological flows, there is always a necessity to have good flows in natural rivers. Take the Hawkesbury River for eg. If flows are not managed properly, the whole river system could stagnate, become polluted etc, but to maintain those flows requires the release of water from Warragamba. They are actually now treating all sewage in the Richmond Windsor area to A+ standard, and using that water to help reduce the required releases from Warragamba.

              None of this is simple, Its hard to do long term water balances when you don’t know future rainfall, and Australia has one of the most variable rainfall patterns in the world.

              Iirc, they are estimating that Sydney will grow from 4.5M to 7M by 2050 (sorry might have the timeline wrong), that is a large increase, and how to supply the water for that increased populations needs to be looked at now.

              Edwina, Yes there is plenty of water up north. Even the north coast of NSW has very large railway events, but there are no large dams, and delivering that water to the large cities is actually a very costly engineering exercise, even if dams were built first. The solution is to try to make sure urban expansion goes where the water is. Again, not an easy thing to do. And expensive.

              Janama, Yes there is water available in lots of places, the problem is the cost of getting it to the population centres, and the world has just wasted one heck of a lot of money on other stuff. I’m not sure how much economic resilience is left in the system. Time will tell.

              30

              • #
                Kevin Lohse

                Andy G55.
                i know a little of the Perth area as my son has settled there and made me a Grandfather. We’ve visited a couple of times, and my in-laws live up in the hills to the East of Perth – the Murray-Darling ranges I believe. We also spent time touring around Bussleton and down to the Southern Ocean. Both in the hills to the East and in the wine-growing areas to the South, there are small agricultural reservoirs most of which seem to be dams across suitable natural depressions turned into water storage. Is the bedrock, especially in the Ranges, suitable for large-scale storage of water? I take your point about good flows, so do the mining operations in the hinterlands east of the Murray-Darlings present problems in maintaining healthy uncontaminated flows? I realise that none of this is simple, but it’s a lot simpler than managing a mass exodus of a million folk because the water has run out. I’d be grateful if you could waste a little more time on this subject. Regards, K

                00

              • #
                AndyG55

                Kevin , I haven’t actually studied Perth region in detail.

                But one of my colleagues has done quite a bit of work on how best to use the aquifers around the Perth area.

                I think she is currently away on a conference + holiday so hard to catch up with her.

                00

              • #
                Bones

                Andy,when you said”I’m not sure how much economic resilience is left in the system”,you got to the whole point of the exercise.As with the weather rubbish to waste as much money as you can.Third world here we come.

                10

              • #
                edwina

                …delivering that water to the large cities is actually a very costly engineering exercise…

                Beg to differ. Pipelines are not a new technology nor pumping stations. Water was pumped to the WA goldfields uphill via steam pumps.

                The Bradfield scheme to deliver northern water to the much cherished MDB was mooted in the 1940s but has been derided ever since out of hand. In a nation like USA years ago or in China today such a proposal would have been completed before you could say “Jack Robinson.”

                We are just too cautious, too careful, too fearful, too visionless, too negative to do anything remotely like building a Harbour Bridge or a Snowy Mts Scheme anymore. We navel gaze about our treatment of the first Australians and other academic PC trivia instead.

                20

              • #
                AndyG55

                Edwina, The old WA goldfields pumps were delivering tiny, tiny amounts of water compared to what is required for a major modern city.

                And yes, I know of many of these schemes, but the will has yet to be there.

                We have wasted so much on this renewables energy stuff, desal plants etc. and gained nothing worthwhile.

                This waste may have the secondary effect of making governments wary of doing these expansive, expensive schemes even though they would open up large tracts of Australian land.

                As you say, a visionary government rather than a wimpy steady as she goes government is called for. But where to find one !!

                10

          • #
            scaper...

            Andy, there has been another dam built in SE Qld.

            It was completed just before the great manmade flood of 2011. Wyaralong Dam (21,000 megs pa) in the Logan-Albert catchment area.

            Here’s the kicker…the authority thought it would take five years to fill. It took around five weeks! There is no infrastructure in place, treatment plant and connection to the grid so at this point, it is nothing but a water feature.

            Ah, the lucky country, “Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck.”

            Donald Horne’s descriptor holds true to this day!

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            • #
              AndyG55

              That’s good, The delay before it can be used will allow natural flora and flora to establish itself, and allow the water to settle. No rush at the moment, plenty in Wivenhoe.

              The new one isn’t that big though, only 1/10 the size of Wivenhoe.
              I’m talking , another dam the size of Wivenhoe. (or 10 new ones like this tiddler)

              10

              • #
                scaper...

                True, we need more dams to supply SE Qld.

                Or maybe just one, the Borumba Super Dam at the head of the Mary River! Just a matter of raising the dam wall that when constructed, would vertically feed the Stanley River that is the catchment for the Somerset/Wivenhoe Dams.

                There will be a new dam constructed in Northern Qld. It will be named ‘Hell’s Gate Dam’. This Dam will be utilised to feed the Intrastate Water Transfer Project.

                The first stage to supply 4,000 Gigs pa to feed the Murray/Darling system. The second stage is the Wentworth Project and the third stage is to supply Brisbane and Sydney.

                Got all the info, the routes of the pipelines/canals, a full CBA that has the potential to reinvigorate the inland and a payback of less than twenty years, which is pretty good for a nation building project of this scale.

                Been lobbying the now government for five years and have secured the interest of five front bench Ministers.

                The Greens need to be destroyed to realise the vision. I see the issue of CAGW as the vehicle to accomplish such.

                10

            • #
              edwina

              The huge Wolfedene dam south of Brisbane to be its main storage was cancelled in 1991. The locals had protested for over 10 years. These were mainly hobby farmers or tree changers wanting space for their daughters’ ponies.

              Wayne Goss promised to stop the dam being built and his chief assistant, Kevin Rudd, was only too eager to sign the papers.

              It was a classic case of where a noisy minority spoilt big plans not just for then but endangers the future SE QLD population. Such protesters should be happy with themselves…not.

              00

              • #
                AndyG55

                Welcome Reef, and the dam on the Mitchell River in Victoria and even Tillegra near Newcastle are the same sort of situation.

                We dodged a bullet in 2008, 2009, then got very wet in 2010, but

                there will be another long drought, probably in about 10-15 years time, if NATURAL climate patterns continue.

                Then the yelling will start, and it may be too late.

                The message should be to build these dams and to start now !

                The rabid greenies should just get the **** out the way and let Australia progress.

                30

              • #
                Long Distance Voyager

                Welcome Reef, and the dam on the Mitchell River in Victoria and even Tillegra near Newcastle are the same sort of situation.

                With regard to the Mitchell, it will never be built. The locals don’t want it and the Nationals are against it, so it doesn’t matter what the Greens want.

                In 2006 Sinclair Knight Merz put together a report on Victoria’s water supply options (I think they may have done it for all states). The proposed storage on the Mitchell was 500Gl with a sustainable yield of 85Gl per annum.The project would have displaced more people than those affected by it’s occasional flooding and would have destroyed the Gippsland Lakes.The cost was estimated at $1.4 billion including transfer pipelines and pumping stations. Unfortunately projects of this nature always finish up over budget. Even if you started the project today with a construction period of say 5 years it would still likely cost in the order of $5 billion.

                It’s worth noting too that even if construction of the Mitchell had started in the late 90’s it is highly unlikely it would have had any usable water by 2009, given the flows in the river in the 2000’s.

                Given that we now have a Desal Plant which can currently produce 150Gl per annum there is no point in building another dam, given the fact that there is a lack of sites in Victoria suitable for a major storage.

                The only real option is for recycling of treated water to be increased. Whether this results in the introduction of treated water into the water supply system remains to be seen.

                00

  • #
    RoyFOMR

    Who was Frederick White?
    Judging by this biographical sketch, a seriously impressive bloke!
    http://www.science.org.au/fellows/memoirs/white2.html

    RIP

    31

    • #
      Speedy

      Roy

      Yep, and just shows how far downwards the CSIRO has sunk. From White’s biography.

      Even at the age of 83, White could be a staunch defender of the scientific ethos that had motivated CSIRO for so long. In two radio talks about CSIRO, C.B. Schedvin, then Professor of Economic History at the University of Melbourne, argued that, in CSIRO’s decision-making, the scientific ethic must be supplemented by other values and criteria, especially economic ones (Schedvin 1988). White disagreed and, with some of his former colleagues, had a brisk round of private correspondence with the author (F.W.G. White papers, MS111, Archives of the Australian Academy of Science).

      These are the types of people who DON’T get on in the CSIRO these days.

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      • #
        RoyFOMR

        Speedy
        Absolutely agree. Pygmies in the shadow of a giant.
        Sadly, my RIP could equally apply to the death of a once great Australian institution.
        Schedvin won, it appears, but Science lost.

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  • #
    Winston

    Leftards absolutely love awards, no matter how unearned or pathetically insignificant. It is their whole reason for existence, being unable to function without the constant validation and accolades of their similarly motivated brethren.

    Not for them such outmoded concepts as modesty, humility or selfless service for its own sake. No, for them it is no shame to be a coward receiving a bravery award, to be a warmonger receiving a peace prize, to be a rapacious greed merchant receiving a gong for his “charitable” works, or to be a talentless hack being rewarded for achieving nothing other than compromising the scientific research of others.

    Normal people would feel the dint of embarrassment at such inappropriate praise, but not these guys.

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    Professor Turdey – and I apologise that my errant finger got the better is just another character in the scheme of things;unfortunately unrecognised by most,whether way. Still,bore it up him and these so-called scientific bodies who debase mans pursuit of enquiry.

    62

  • #

    Still working my way through South by Ernest Shackleton, and I wonder if this hero of the time would be as well received as Turney is today.

    From the time the Endurance was beset in the ice, it drifted, locked in the ice, for 1500 miles in total, for around 10 Months before finally being crushed.

    As an example as to why Shackleton may not be such a hero these days, I’ll quote just two (of many similar) quotes.

    September 30 began well, for we got two penguins and five seals during the morning to add to the food supplies.

    and this:

    Two bull crabeater seals climbed on the floe close to the ship and were shot by Wild. They were both big animals in prime condition, and I felt that there was no more need for anxiety as to the supply of fresh meat…..

    I wonder how the green urgers would look upon this, and similar occasions are spread throughout the book so far.

    A truly fascinating book.

    Days of heroes like this are long gone.

    What we get is Turney, and he gets an award. What has the World come to?

    Tony.

    253

    • #
      Speedy

      Tony

      I was also thinking something along those lines. Stay tuned.

      Cheers,

      Speedy

      51

    • #
      Harry Passfield (AKA Snotrocket)

      Tony: Wait ’til you get to the bit in South where the stranded crew – waiting for Shackleton’s return – are a bit short on grub so go out and dig up the (frozen, of course) heads of the seals they’d eaten some days previously, and boil them down to make some kind of soup!!!

      Now that, I claim demands an award.

      50

  • #
    ursus augustus

    The Peter Principle (*) is still the driving consideration for climate scientology it would seem. Professor Turney has been audited and his thetans have found him rising to new heights.

    * “Players” will be promoted until they reach a level at which they are incompetent or words to that effect. Twerker Turney has clearly arrived at that point in his career.

    71

  • #
    Joe Lalonde

    Jo,

    I used to think that awards, like even the Nobel Peace Prize, would be quite the honour until they started giving them out for shoddy science.
    That just corrupted the whole field of who is receiving them.
    It certainly is not for excellent research and excellent science or even for peace.

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  • #

    Mrs. Nova, You are “Etelän akka” (=Southern Louhi*), shredding innocent heroes of the Climate Sience. How nasty.

    Here in Finland Anthropogenic Climate Change made beginning of this winter (2013-14) warm and now it make weather colder than average. All know that climate change make just this kind of things: warmer winters and colder winters. Prof. Turney just forgot the later option. Nobody is infallible.

    *) See Kalevala

    [I think we’ll add a /sarc to the end of your commet Risto. Mod oggi]

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  • #
    AP

    Of course he should get an award for excellence. He works at a “centre of excellence” (the Centre of (sic) Excellence for (sic) Climate System Science), so it’s obvious he does excellent work. Excellent. Just living and breathing excellence, every day. Lets hope their climate science is better than their English. Oh.

    Hey… this is the same mob who redefined ENSO so it fits their models…

    And wasn’t he the co-author of some paper that contained such serious errors it had to be pulled from the journal?

    http://www.climatescience.org.au/

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  • #
    A C Osborn

    Australian Academy of Science are making themselves a laughing stock.

    200

    • #
      Andrew McRae

      They work inside a UFO.

      40

      • #
        Konrad

        That would explain it. Get closer than 100m to that thing and the tinfoil hats no longer work.

        Actually get inside and they would be babbling nonsense like – “adding radiative gases to the atmosphere will reduce it’s radiative cooling ability! Turney’s a hero! Purple wombat lawnmower!!”

        11

        • #
          Andrew McRae

          Yes more CO2 would cool the upper atmosphere quicker and it would seem according to weather balloons that is what happened (roughly as predicted by GCMS), accompanied by tropospheric warming which was between 40% and 80% of the amount predicted by the PCM GCM (other GCMs being similar).
          Yes, most surface cooling is by moist convection and not by OLR. But CO2 is present throughout the atmosphere and, unlike convection, radiation moves energy both up and down.

          The measurements tell the whole story.
          CO2 has an emission/absorption band centred at 15μm with a thin peak.
          The GHGs intercept and therefore delay the departure of the radiative component of outgoing surface radiation because their absorption spectrum overlaps mainly with earth temperature spectrum and not solar temperature. The test of whether the absorbed energy manifests as higher molecular motion (ie temperature) is whether the re-emitted spectrum has a temperature dependence.
          That tiny central CO2 peak is strong enough to show up in actual measurements of OLR and DWLWIR even with 1970s technology, and it is clear the 15μm band is from a colder portion of the atmosphere than at the surface, so the surface OLR is thermalised by GHGs.
          The predictions of conventional radiative transfer theory applied to the Standard Atmosphere precisely match the measurements.

          Real measurements are poison to Slayers. You may have only hours left to live.

          Even Miskolczi’s finding that humidity decreased as CO2 increased, if it were true, would mean the total optical depth (tau), and therefore the theoretical radiative equilibrium temperature (which is never really reached due to convection) would be independent of CO2 concentration, not that there is no greenhouse effect in reality because the greenhouse effect redistributes energy vertically and so can affect the surface temperature even if the total optical depth is constant.

          As to what happens after CO2 returned radiation hits the ocean… that is where the debate is, not about whether an incrementally warming GHE is possible.

          11

          • #
            Konrad

            Andrew this is ridiculous –
            “Real measurements are poison to Slayers. You may have only hours left to live”

            I am not a “slayer” and have nothing to do with PSI, but you have just yelled “slaaaayer”

            This post from just yesterday should help you understand.

            “Real measurements are poison…” Um, just what have I been posting since 2010? Could it be empirical experiments designed so others can easily replicate them?

            Do radiative gases warm the lower atmosphere and cool the upper atmosphere? Yes

            What does this cause? Tropospheric convective circulation.

            Did the “basic physics” of the “setted science” increase the speed of vertical tropospheric circulation with increasing concentration of radiative gases? No.

            OLR measurements? They increased over 30 years of satellite observation and have only flatlined and decreased slightly in the recent CERES data in lockstep with satellite temperature records.

            “As to what happens after CO2 returned radiation hits the ocean…” Well that is indeed the important question. I have show by empirical experiment that DWLWIR cannot heat nor slow the cooling rate of water that is free to evaporatively cool.

            But it gets worse. My next experiment will remove all confounding atmospheric attributes above the ocean, all except pressure. A water sample receiving no DWLWIR will be heated at depth by SW and only cool from the surface by LWIR. Radiative GHE believers, “doomers” and “lukewarmers” alike, agree that the oceans would freeze without incident LWIR.

            If the sample does not freeze, but instead rises toward 80C like a “solar pond” then AGW, lukewarm or otherwise, is utterly disproved. Because this would mean that the net effect of the atmosphere on the oceans is cooling. And the atmosphere has only one effective means of cooling, that being radiative gases.

            Andrew, before you shriek “slaaayer!” (incorrectly) again, perhaps you would like to give your answer –
            http://i42.tinypic.com/315nbdl.jpg
            Starting at 15C, is the water going to
            1. Freeze or
            2. Rise toward 80C?

            PS. Andrew, has it not occurred to you that some of the “slayers” were “false flag” sceptics and that those yelling “slaaaayer!” at anyone questioning the hypothesis of a net radiative GHE are themselves “Fenton Puppets”?

            10

            • #
              Andrew McRae

              Konrad,
              It doesn’t matter if you do not believe you are a Slayer. The name Slayer was invented by the chief Sky Dragon slayers to refer to anyone who does not believe in the radiative greenhouse effect. That was before the creation of PSI and independent of it. You do not believe there is a greenhouse effect, therefore you qualify under that group definition. In their view it is heroic to be a Slayer, so there should be no problem.

              The lower atmosphere, at least in the boundary layer, is in equilibrium with the ocean. Therefore…
              “Do radiative gases warm the lower atmosphere and cool the upper atmosphere? Yes”
              …is consistent with a GHE, and…
              “the net effect of the atmosphere on the oceans is cooling.”
              …also does not contradict a GHE. The lower atmosphere’s total cooling effect on the ocean would be reduced if it returned more 15μm band to the ocean. As CO2 increases in the stratosphere (where humidity is low) the average altitude of 15μm emission to space would increase which is also at a lower Planck thermal emission rate. Also the energy density of the lower atmosphere is increased by intercepting 15μm radiation earlier in flight. By either of those effects the equilibrium temperature must increase.

              OLR measurements? They increased over 30 years of satellite observation and have only flatlined and decreased slightly in the recent CERES data in lockstep with satellite temperature records.

              Exactly as the lukewarmer view would predict. The influence of CO2 at the surface is small compared to all the other sources of direct energy and DWLWIR. The reduction in 15μm radiation is no match for the Stefan-Boltzmann law applied to all LWIR as a broad band, so if temperature increased for any reason then total OLR would increase too. All going to plan. (Presumably the S-B law does not exist in SlayerWorld™.)

              I have show by empirical experiment that DWLWIR cannot heat nor slow the cooling rate of water that is free to evaporatively cool.

              No you haven’t because that is impossible. The evaporation rate will increase and so the outgoing heat flux (both convective and radiative) will increase precisely because the temperature has already been increased by the incoming IR. Check that what you have actually measured is what you wanted to measure.

              Radiative GHE believers, “doomers” and “lukewarmers” alike, agree that the oceans would freeze without incident LWIR.

              Strawman argument. The argument put forward by Lacis and adopted by the doomers is that removing all CO2 would reduce the DWIR flux and reduce the equilibrium temperature and evaporation rates, creating spiralling negative feedback on humidity and all other factors being equal leading to such a loss of water vapour and GHE that it would lead to glaciation.
              Certainly water is highly transparent to sunlight but the absorption coefficient is not actually zero. The ocean doesn’t suddenly freeze if DWLWIR is switched off. It just means it takes 100s of metres of salt water to thermalise the SW insolation. So it seems the temperature at the ocean surface is being (re)heated by DWLWIR to a significant degree, but most of it is from water vapour.

              Unlike doomers and Slayers, the lukewarmer does not forget the overlap in absorption spectrum between CO2 and H2O (particularly around 15μm) and notes that in the absence of CO2 the H2O would gladly take up the slack on returning LWIR.

              Comparing Veizer’s paleo temperature and Berner’s CO2 reconstruction shows CO2 has been higher than 280ppm for the majority of Earth’s history, with very little anti-correlation to ice ages. The CO2 was allegedly as low as 180ppm during the last ice age, but the conditions of CO2 lower than 180ppm have never been tested by nature and so are entirely theoretical, and whether Shakun and colleagues can be believed is separate issue.

              The doomers have a strawman here too. In particular the lukewarmer remembers that the GHE of CO2 is logarithmic with respect to concentration, so even if removing all CO2 did remove a huge chunk of DWIR, adding the first 300ppm made vastly more difference to temperature than adding the next 200ppm could do, so it still does not logically follow that 500ppm would be dangerous.

              Empirical estimates of climate sensitivity put it between half and a quarter of IPCC values, and even in the prestigious peer-reviewed literature the sensitivity figure keeps falling. But there is no evidence to show increasing CO2 past 280ppm would cool the surface, while the conventional radiative transfer equations for the Standard Atmosphere mixture (which as you have seen exactly match real measurements) predict a DWLWIR increase and therefore a temperature increase of some degree still under debate.

              A water sample receiving no DWLWIR will be heated at depth by SW and only cool from the surface by LWIR.
              http://i42.tinypic.com/315nbdl.jpg
              Starting at 15C, is the water going to 1. Freeze or 2. Rise toward 80C?

              The answer is option 2, the temperature will rise until it reaches about 34° Celsius, all in accordance with a lukewarmer view. The water will be initially radiating at 379W/m^2 but you are putting on average 500W/m^2 into it. You will not be disproving AGW but proving the S-B law. Again, check that what you are actually measuring is what you believe you are measuring.

              Did you make that schematic? If so, top marks for that, it’s very nifty. Was it done in Solidworks/TurboCAD/SketchUp?? I like designing mechanical stuff but I don’t have the material fabrication skills and tools. Very envious of those who do.

              10

              • #
                Konrad

                Andrew,
                First up, CONGRATULATIONS! You are the first, the very first, to actually give an honest and direct answer to the questions about the last experiment. Watching the likes of Willis and Dr. Brown at WUWT thrash and twist like rabid weasels to avoid giving an answer has been an education.

                Now sadly this –
                “Presumably the S-B law does not exist in SlayerWorld™.”

                Please do not be doing that. As the permanent internet record shows, I have debated long and hard to get the likes of Doug Cotton (slayer) to admit that LWIR, even from a cooler object, can slow the cooling of another object. (when Doug Cotton finally capitulated at WUWT, guess who deleted his comment? That’s right Anthony Watts.)

                If you had followed my first link in my post above, you would have seen my refined experiment demonstrating the radiative two shell model based on SB physics.

                Calling me a “slayer” is no different to calling a sceptic a “holocaust denier”

                I state –
                “I have show by empirical experiment that DWLWIR cannot heat nor slow the cooling rate of water that is free to evaporatively cool.

                You claim –
                “No you haven’t because that is impossible. The evaporation rate will increase and so the outgoing heat flux (both convective and radiative) will increase precisely because the temperature has already been increased by the incoming IR.”

                Andrew it’s not impossible, you can try it for yourself. My first version of the experiment simply reflected outgoing LWIR from a warm water sample back to the surface –
                http://i47.tinypic.com/694203.jpg (results of this were covered at Talkshop, all discussion suppressed at WUWT to protect Willis)
                This experiment suffered from the flaw that reflected LWIR diminished with water temperature(4th power)
                The experiment was refined and re-run –
                http://i42.tinypic.com/2h6rsoz.jpg
                In this version, designed for others to build, LWIR is held constant over the water sample, so you can check the effects both heating and slowing of cooling.

                What I tell those attempting this experiment is to do a second run with a thin film of LDPE (microwave safe clingwrap, Willis’ Kryptonite) floated on the surface of each water sample. This allows LWIR exchange and conductive cooling but prevents evaporative cooling. Suddenly the sample under the strong LWIR source cools slower.

                Your claim is partially correct. Evaporation increases as does energy flux from the surface, but only as removal of latent heat, not increased outgoing LWIR radiation. The cooling rate of a water sample exposed to LWIR is not altered. Yet global warming maths demands it should be.

                Andrew, this is not “slayer physics” or some such. It is just the LWIR version of the old “how do you heat a plastic tub of water with a hair dryer trick?” Answer – point the hair dryer at the side of the tub not the water surface.

                Lukewarmer and Doomer claims of the oceans freezing are not dependant on atmospheric processes or CO2 levels as you assert, but rather that without DWLWIR, the oceans on average, receive too little SW to keep them from freezing, and that like a desert under a non-radiative atmosphere they should have a Tav of -18C.

                You raise confounding issues of atmospheric processes. That is precisely what the last experiment design presented (not yet run) is designed to eliminate. It eliminates all atmospheric processes over the oceans except pressure. This allows the net effect of the atmosphere on the oceans to be determined.

                This experiment leaves believers in a net radiative GHE nowhere to hide.

                If the net effect of the atmosphere over the oceans is cooling, then both AGW and the hypothesis of a net radiative GHE is disproved. After all there is only one effective cooling mechanism for the atmosphere, radiative gases.

                20

  • #
    PhilJourdan

    So all you have to do to win a prize is have predictions not based in reality, act on those predictions, defy the judgement and decisions of those more knowledgeable, get stuck because of your arrogance and ignorance, and spend millions of dollars saving people that were in no danger before you took them into harms way with no clue or idea what you are doing.

    Does that about sum it up?

    230

  • #
    JamesP

    “Professor Turney is an internationally recognised earth scientist..”

    Well, he is now, but not for the reasons they mean.. 🙂

    240

  • #
    Tim

    There’s nothing new about awards. Corporates discovered long ago that they boost the ego and energy of those who push the corporate agenda enthusiastically.

    Science has been a slow learner – but is catching up fast.

    30

  • #
    Eliza

    This is very bad news for Australian Universities. Very likely a huge drop in foreign students coming to Australia if this is the type of person who gets awarded there.

    100

  • #
    Mervyn

    The Australian Academy of Science must have a bizarre sense of humour! Actually, its a bloody disgrace.

    90

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    red breast

    Well of course you’d expect a bum award from AAS

    40

  • #
    Matt

    If Chris continues to make decisions the way he did last year, he could be up for a “Darwin Award” at some point.

    90

  • #
    Steve R W

    Off Topic.

    I made a predication and failed in another thread suggesting the low in the Pilbara via cloud cover would reduce the temps in Perth. I was wrong. Wind direction i think trumped that.

    But what is fascinating, is the same low pressure system hanging the Pilbara around Newman.

    It just doesn’t want to go away. And it looks like a defunct cyclone. I’m sure it’s coming close to a week with it’s existence.

    It’s only weather, but it is interesting.

    30

  • #
  • #
    David Smith

    Where are the warmists?
    I thought they’d be posting comments here lauding Turkey Boy for his great work getting stuck in the ice and therefore showing how global warming causes more ice/less ice/warm/cold/take your pick.

    Oh, I forgot, Turkey is a huge embarrassment, and the warmists have extremely thin skins when their theories about disappearing ice are shown to be complete twaddle.

    C’mon warmists, bring it on!

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    • #
      James (Aus.)

      Where’s the jaundiced head-tilted one, the one who refers to anyone with evidence not supporting his sludge as a “fool”?

      Might be getting that bile duct unblocked.

      00

  • #

    You might be being a bit harsh here. He really was “contributing to the understanding of natural phenomena”.
    1. Antartic ice is b*tch.
    2. No country out there will let an idiot freeze to death.
    3. Penquins are really photogenic.
    4. Russion ship personnel are not really people persons–evacution of “guests” may be necessary.
    5. Water will not necessarily float an Argo.
    6. The thickness of sea ice makes it necessary to understand the ice breaking capacities of one’s ship
    7. Blogging about sleeping in and partying only adds to the chances of a science award
    8. Science awards have no meaning whatsoever
    9. Reporters are easily entertained. They probably were drawn in by the cute pictures of penguins.

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  • #
    J Martin

    They’ve made this award just in time for the press to get to Hobart for the arrival of the Aurora Australis in just a few hours time as the ship has rounded the southern most part of Tas. a while ago.

    It will be interesting to see what the papers will make of their homecoming.

    51

  • #
    Mortis

    Seems to me the other side is doubling down on Turney to help hide the growing cracks in AGW, to which his foolish actions drew the spotlight. Perhaps they will give him a copy of the AGW haiku book http://daily.sightline.org/2013/12/16/the-entire-ipcc-report-in-19-illustrated-haiku/ (…I tried to read the comments after the article…smh…)

    31

  • #
    janama

    If he had any Honor he would refuse the award.

    31

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    RoyFOMR

    Why does this story remind me of cold war, Mayday pageants in Red square applauded by deckchair Warriors draped with medals?

    71

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    Owen Morgan

    I hope he gives his “up to $3000” to those poor Russians whom he gleefully abandoned.

    30

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    Kaboom

    Does that award come from the Australian Clown Academy? Because otherwise it’s a sick joke.

    60

  • #
    Franny by Coal light

    ““Professor Turney is an internationally recognised earth scientist and research leader …”

    Chris may be internationally recognised now for his polar exploits though previously one suspects he might have been internationally recognised only for his remarkable similarity to darling of the celebrity magazines Peter Andrea.

    50

    • #
      Yonniestone

      Do you mean Peter Andre?, thanks for the reminder of a terrible time in music and imagery we all had to live through. 🙂

      20

  • #
    Franny by Coal light

    ““Professor Turney is an internationally recognised earth scientist and research leader …”

    Chris may be internationally recognised now for his polar exploits though previously one suspects he might have been internationally recognised only for his remarkable similarity to darling of the celebrity magazines Peter Andrea.

    10

  • #
    Peter H

    The Australian Academy of Science degrades themselves and the recipients of all their awards. Turney is a fraud, the expedition proves it beyond doubt. Just Stupid.

    40

    • #
      James (Aus.)

      Claiming the Australian Antarctic Division and the NZ Department of Conservation have officially backed his “expedition” was an untruth. Both organisations have complained about him, and the DoC has told the “expedition” website to remove its logo.

      Just how misleading can he get? This goes to the heart of integrity. Turney needs a boot up the backside or as in in NZ, a sink the slipper event.

      10

  • #
    J Martin

    From the 3 webcams onboard the Aurora Australis we can see that is has now reached it’s dock in Hobart with just 2 possibly 3 people waiting for it.

    http://www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams/aurora

    10

    • #
      J Martin

      Perhaps they are going to be unceremoniously dumped on the quayside with nowhere to go and no onward transport arranged. Though no doubt the shore-side part of the Mawson ignominy will have arranged some coaches to pick them up and take them to hotels / airport. With any luck the port camera view might show us something.

      00

  • #
    GerardB

    When studying for my engineering degree, a friendly lecturer used to scribble “bullshit never baffles brains” over my assignments just help push us along and to try a bit harder.

    If he were around today and asked to assess Turney’s recent Antarctic effort, he would have to concede that “bullshit only baffles brains if you are a climate scientist” and give a mark of 4/5ths of 5/8ths of bugger all.

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  • #

    Obama got a Nobel Prize for doing nothing. Al Gore got a Nobel Peace Prize & Oscar for falsification and misrepresentation. Flannery was Australian of the year for predicting things that didn’t happen. Therefore it no surprise to see Professor Turkey getting this award fr not knowing that there is ice in Antarctica.
    It is insane to see Professor Turkey and the Ship of Fools get a Frederick White Prize for Climate Modelling. Western civilization is so far out of control that China and India will soon overtake it, as common sense here stalls.

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    Bruce of Newcastle

    The Uni of NSW is rapidly overtaking Steffen’s and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg’s groups as National Champion Excitable Climate Press Releasers. They have yet another in the Silly today saying that climate change will make our water supply undrinkable. I thought Tim Flannery wore that one out already.

    If you happen to live near Uni NSW, as I did for many years, my recommendation is do not attend that august organ. Instead get a job in the Kingsford McDonalds feeding burgers to uni students. You will go further.

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    • #
      Bob Malloy

      Bruce mentions Ove Hoegh-Guldberg and Excitable Climate Press Releasers.

      Straying a little from Bruce’s message but Trevor Chappell returned to his normal time slot on ABC overnights this morning. First guest for the year, Dr Reese Halter, subjects for discussion the shark cull in WA, followed by outbreak of extreme weather / climate disruption heat waves etc.

      This “guy”, I only use that word to be polite, the ultimate Excitable Releaser, could not stay on topic, definitely ADHD, he jumped from the Japanese whale and dolphin culls and any and every other sin of man including over population,( I actually loath the culls as much as he does) but they have nothing to do with this mornings talking point. The one that amazed me most was his claim that 3/4 of the great barrier reef is dead,(news to me) there’s the link to Ove Hoegh-Guldberg our very own disciple of doom for the reef.

      Anyhow he strayed from topic so much they never got to climate disruption, heat waves, which is a shame because I double checked and was hoping to ask how he could maintain heat waves are getting more frequent and lasting longer than during the past when in 1896 Bourke had a heat wave where day or night the temperature never dropped below 100̊ f for six weeks and between Oct 1923 and April 1924 the temperature in Marble Bar stayed at or above 100̊ f for 160 days. Just have to wait for another day, I might even chase up a few more examples like thermometers exploding in the fork of a tree during the exploits of one of our early explorers.

      If you are feeling brave have a listen at the Trevor Chappell link above, discussion starts late in the 2.00 to 3.00 hour and continues for about forty minutes in the following hour, he will either have you crying with depression or laughing out loud with his over the top antics.

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        Belfast

        Must have been hot there in ’91 and ’92 as well, Henry Lawson wrote

        No sign that green grass ever grew in scrubs that blazed beneath the sun;
        The plains were dust in Ninety-two, that baked to bricks in Ninety-one.
        On glaring iron-roofs of Bourke, the scorching, blinding sandstorms blew,
        And there was nothing beautiful in Ninety-one and Ninety-two.

        He says that the only message from the dead that ever came through was
        “Send my overcoat to hell – it came to Bourke in ’92”

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      Andrew McRae

      So… If you eat McDonalds’ products often you’ll die of colon cancer like Bell did? I’m lovin’ it.

      Reminds me of the inventor of the Atkins diet, who died of a heart attack and congestive heart disease.

      Moral of the story… Don’t take your work home with you? 😀

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      • #
        PhilJourdan

        Or the original health nut Euell Gibbons – the pusher of grape nuts. Died of a heart attack at 62.

        Eating “healthy” is just a slower way to die.

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    pat

    the reporting continues to be ridiculous:

    22 Jan: Sky News: Aurora Australis has arrived in Hobart
    The Australian icebreaker, the Aurora Australis, is alongside at Hobart’s Constitution Dock after its epic Antarctic rescue mission.
    The 52 passengers on board were rescued from a Russian Research vessel, after it became locked in thick ice in Antarctica for more than a week.
    The group of scientists, tourists and journalists was rescued by a helicopter on board a Chinese icebreaker, in a rescue mission coordinated by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.
    http://www.skynews.com.au/topstories/article.aspx?id=943895

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    pat

    22 Jan: West Australian: Passengers rescued from Russian ship stuck in Antarctic ice arrive in Hobart on Aurora Australis
    The Russian ship became stuck in thick sea ice at Commonwealth Bay on Christmas Eve…
    The passengers will spend the next few hours clearing quarantine.
    The expedition leader of the Russian ship, Professor Chris Turney, and the Aurora’s captain will address the media later this morning.
    Scientists on board the Russian ship had planned research projects as they retraced the voyage of Sir Douglas Mawson to the frozen continent a century ago…
    The Russian ship’s rescue has delayed Australia’s research program and the Antarctic Division says it will attempt to recoup costs.
    Professor Turney has been forced to defend himself from criticism that he was too inexperienced to take the ship into Antarctica’s Commonwealth Bay.
    http://au.news.yahoo.com/technology/a/20929234/52-tourists-and-researchers-rescued-from-antarctic-ice-return-to-hobart-this-morning-on-the-aurora-australis/

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    handjive

    Here is another decorated Australian climate hero:

    This year (2006), Dr David Jones received the National Australia Day Council Achievement Medallion from the Bureau of Meteorology for leadership of the bureau’s Climate Analysis section.
    “As a teenager in Adelaide, David Jones took weather observations in the backyard during what would later be understood as an El Niño event. He particularly remembers 1983 as “pretty interesting”, with the Ash Wednesday bushfires and then drought-breaking thunderstorms and floods in March of that year.”

    This information can be found at wikipedia, ‘go-to’ site to repudiate ‘ Skeptic Mis-information’ (attributable to Andrew Bolt):

    “The basis for this misquote is an article in the Sydney Morning Herald dated 3 January 2008 [3] which contained no statements about permanent drought.
    The quote represented a conflation of journalist headline and two separate sentences, one related to temperature rather than rainfall”

    If I was ‘mis-represented’ or wrongly quoted regarding my profession as such, a lawyer, an apology & retraction from the newspaper would be my first stop.
    Not wikipedia.

    Then, I would site my record:

    February 17, 2009: Drought and fire here to stay with El Nino’s return

    “VICTORIA is likely to come under the influence of another El Nino within the next three years, exacerbating the drought and the likelihood of bushfires, a senior Bureau of Meteorology climate scientist says.
    David Jones, the head of the bureau’s National Climate Centre, said there was some risk of a worsening El Nino event this year, but it was more likely to arrive in 2010 or 2011.”

    Encyclopedia Britannica:
    Australia floods of 2010–11, natural disaster that principally affected the three eastern states of Australia and was one of the worst in the country’s history.

    Maybe that explains why wikipedia is the best David A Jones can do to ‘repudiate sceptic mis-information’.
    . . . .
    Also note how David Jones claims ‘drought breaking rains’ of the 1982 drought ‘inspired him’ to follow his career, but after that complete failure documented above, no where does the BoM acknowledge the officially drought breaking rains in their 2012 summary, surely an event worthy of ‘significant’.

    Guess that was ‘inconvenient’ or maybe he didn’t want to remember.
    An environmental hero worthy of a Nobel Peace prize.

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    pat

    it took this long to report this, SMH?

    22 Jan: SMH: Nicky Phillips/Colin Cosier: Antarctic field trip a factor in ship becoming trapped in sea ice on Christmas Eve
    A four-hour delay on a passenger field trip in Antarctica may have contributed to the Akademik Shokalskiy becoming trapped in sea ice on Christmas Eve.
    In the hours before the ship was caught, its captain, Igor Kiselev, feared it would be surrounded by moving sea ice and requested passengers visiting nearby rocky islands return to the vessel, say passengers who didn’t go on the trip…
    “The captain and his staff up on the [ship’s] bridge did not look happy,” said one passenger, who asked to remain anonymous.
    By the time the ship departed the ice edge after 6pm, shifting sea ice had already blocked the escape route. The Akademik Shokalskiy was stuck by 3am…
    In addition to the field-trip delay, the director of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, Tony Press, said the satellite images his organisation provided to the AAE before it entered the sea ice-prone area ”showed where the sea ice was located and the weather forecast predicted increasing winds, which would tell you that the sea ice could move”.
    From midday on December 23 passengers were transported from the ship on snow vehicles over five nautical miles of ice to the Hodgeman Islands.
    “Everyone on board was keen to make the journey across the fast ice to the Hodgeman Islands,” said one passenger.
    A weather forecast predicted 25-35 knot winds reaching 40 knots late in the day.
    “Despite the wind and extreme cold, the scenery on the journey was spectacular – it seemed unreal, as though we were on a movie set,” said the same passenger.
    About 2.30pm the weather deteriorated. At the same time Captain Kiselev saw slabs of sea ice moving into the open water channel from which the ship had entered the area. He called for everyone to return.
    A passenger standing near Professor Turney overheard the voyage leader, Greg Mortimer, telling him over the radio to bring passengers back to the ship so it can leave.
    But minutes later, Turney drove six more passengers into the field.
    The overloaded vehicle had no space to collect returning passengers.
    Turney, Dr Fogwill and Mr Mortimer all declined to answer questions about the events of December 23.
    http://www.smh.com.au/national/antarctic-field-trip-a-factor-in-ship-becoming-trapped-in-sea-ice-on-christmas-eve-20140121-316xp.html

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      AndyG55

      “A passenger standing near Professor Turney overheard the voyage leader, Greg Mortimer, telling him over the radio to bring passengers back to the ship so it can leave.
      But minutes later, Turney drove six more passengers into the field.”

      If this is true, Turney is in deep doo-doo ! I hope !

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        Safetyguy66

        I doubt it. Consequences only apply to those without wealth or power. You or I get naked in a Vegas hotel on camera, we are going to spend the night in the cells (if we are lucky). Harry does it, hes “such a wag”.
        http://www.tmz.com/2012/08/21/prince-harry-naked-photos-nude-vegas-hotel-party/

        You or I use our corporate credit card to buy all manner of stuff for ourselves, we are out of a job. A politician does it, and its “oops I made a mistake”
        http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-stuck-in-travel-expenses-cycle-of-shame-20131109-2x8lr.html

        So it is with people like Turney. His benefactors will protect him while he remains on the “right” side of the debate.

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        ROM

        I’ve been wondering how Greg Mortimer who apparently is quite well regarded will react to any Ship of Fools inquiry?

        Steve McIntyre in his Climate Audit Ship of Fools post makes the following comment on Mortimer

        On this point, I note that co-leader Greg Mortimer, a distinguished mountaineer, was a highly experienced operator of adventure tourism in the Antarctic.

        If, as reported Turney disobeyed an instruction from the Captain and / or Mortimer and by that knowingly placed lives at risk and which then led to the stupid Ship of Fools debacle, it would seem that it would be in Mortimer’s long term reputational interest to clear his name by telling it as it is to any inquiry or legal case and throw Turney under the bus in doing so.

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          Rereke Whakaaro

          Hmm, time to buy popcorn futures, perhaps? This could prove interesting.

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            ROM

            Been thinking about those pop corn futures for a while RW.
            Anybody who still thinks it is all sweetness and light amongst those 72 clowns after all of that has happened and knowing who did what and when and to whom plus having the extreme embarrassment of their so called trapped” ice breaker ” beating them back to port by a week or so after they had been “rescued” from that same “ice breaker”, either doesn’t know human nature or is willfully blind, deaf and dumb.

            Plus no doubt have been exposed for a couple of weeks to some rather pointed at best and possibly a great deal stronger language than that for a sustained period from the Australian Antarctic research personnel whose entire programs were disrupted and for some possibly scrubbed due entirely to the Ship of Fools episode.

            I suspect that there may quite a lot more to run on this entire stupidity par excellence Ship of Fools debacle nicely highlighted by the self immolating involvement of the Aus Academy of Science.

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            Greg Cavanagh

            Can I order direct? I’ll have 3 large bags please.

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              ROM

              Due to the cessation of the previously unforeseen circumstances we regret that delivery of pop corn from our Antarctic depots has now been terminated.
              We are seeking alternate supplies from the Russians, Chinese and the Aus Antarctic program whom we anticipate will possibly be able to deliver some pop corn promoting features within the next few weeks.

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            Maybe Jo could substitute popcorn for chocolate?

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        James (Aus.)

        Andy, this, even above the other Warmist sludge surrounding Turney, is the most telling of all his behaviours.

        Tourney, the garrulous smart-a*** critic of the 20th century exploration and science giants, commits this most careless and disgraceful act, no doubt to give the passengers and himself a good time for their money.

        It truly identified what the cruise was all about: as tourists to play-act being “scientists”.

        The Australian Antarctic Division and the New Zealand Department of Conservation seem to have worked Turney out, with rejections of his claims (and the use of the DoC’s logo) that the “expedition” was officially recognised by them.

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    Sunray

    Sorry, will try harder.

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    Safetyguy66

    I think the entire international award system as it relates to climate *cough* science…. was undermined years ago with Tim Flannery winning whiney Australian of the year and Al Gore getting something with the word “Nobel” in it. The Chris Turney thing is just so last decade…..

    Climate Science belittles the notion of scientific process and procedure. The so called work done on trying to find patterns in a system the size and scope of our climate using a fraction of the required data so small as to be insignificant, is a nonsense and I actually think we (as skeptics) are beginning to bolster it’s credibility by even continuing to discuss it.

    If your 4 year old child came up to you and vehemently started espousing opinions on genetic modification techniques, you would find a way to caringly change the subject and get back to talking with them about Spongebob Squarepants. So it should be with these children posing as exponents of sound science. They are purveyors of nonsense and guesswork which is all but unworthy of comment by most of the learned contributors to this blog and in the skeptic community generally.

    I am all but over the whole topic because its starting to feel too much like religious debate to me and I learned a long time ago (although Dawkins seems to be still struggling with this one) you cant reason with lunatics. Its pointless using reason, rationale and scientific language and process to unravel the mysteries of “esoteric wisdom”, you would have more success in an attempt at fixing the engine of your car with an Allan’s jelly snake.

    We are all rational, reasoning beings at heart. When a cleric walks out to his (or her) car in the morning and it wont start, they do not fall to their knees in prayer in the hope the engine will spring to life. They call the RAA or they lift the bonnet like we all do. When an Alquieda fighter has a jam in their AK47, they do not throw the weapon to the ground and fall to their knees next to it and beg Allah to unjam it, they do it themselves. At the end of the day we all default to reason when the chips are down, no matter how deeply bizarre or unscientific our espoused nonsense may be.

    With climate science, the deluded have not had to default to reason. They have been enabled by tax payer funds, emboldened by circling the wagons together on dodgy data and methods and congratulated for getting things spectacularly wrong like CT’s award and Flannery’s dud predictions resulting in a $300K+ per year bludge. So they have not yet been forced to default to rational behavior and from the way things seem to work in this world, they are unlikely to ever be. So they will go on using cryptic models to claim certainty on climate predictions when they clearly cannot tell from one day to the next whats coming. They will continue to enjoy the support of the last vestiges of the left/green mutation posing as a political alliance and just as the money is running dry in about 2 elections time, the Australian people will demonstrate their eternally short memories yet again by re-electing another bunch of aspirational communists and starting the whole joke over again.

    All I want to know now is, how do you get on this gravy train? Whos half baked theory do I have to agree with to get a taste of this? I pay the better part of $50k per year in tax and people like this limp appendaged, drooling monkey nut get to pee it up against the wall on fairy stories.

    Truth is as per usual…. far stranger than fiction.

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    ROM

    Thanks Pat for the more detail on Turney and his stupidity and ignorance and obvious arrogance .

    On the AAS’s award to Turney, I wonder how much of this was the academic desire to shove it up all those skeptics and critics of Turney’s Antarctic debacle.
    It is becoming increasingly obvious that a very large slice of academia has just about lost all touch with the rest of the populace and is completely set in going it’s own arrogant way regardless of popular opinion or it’s responsibility to those who pay it’s lavish salaries and perks, in the belief it has become completely untouchable.
    It’s a trait that has appeared like clockwork in those individuals and organisations who down through history have for various reasons become outside of and immune to the range of the usual checks and balances that normally keep most power and influence seeking individuals and groups under societal control and operating within the mores and responsible to the society they are part of .

    Certainly in our current societal structure there appears to be almost no common community or societal checks and balances of any discernible type or influence being applied to the universities and an increasingly arrogant and isolated from the ordinary common folk, academia of today.

    For most of academic history academics and universities have always had at the forefront of their reason for being a deep sense of responsibility to the community and society they both serve and depend on for their funding and the central aim of improving the lives and the knowledge base of that same community

    Today that sense of responsibility to the community seems to now completely abrogated and lost and it is all “take” on the part of academia and the universities as they become ever more isolated from the mainstream of society.
    The universities and academia seem utterly impervious to the fact that if in their increasing arrogance, they destroy through hubris and contempt that long established link and respect between the common man in the street and academia then the universities and it’s academics will find that it is the man in the street who has the whip hand as to what will happen next to bring the universities and academics to heel in a manner they could never have contemplate in the past..
    It is the man in the street who provides the taxes that pay those well funded, lavish by many standards, university funding and academic salaries and perks.
    It is the man in the street who votes and who is listened to by those they elect, the politicians.
    And it is those humble voters who will be listened to by the politicians if and possibly when push comes to shove when the populace decides enough is enough of academic arrogance and and contempt for those lower in status and education than themselves.
    For the politicians it is a complex question on how to maintain a balance between academia and science and the requirements of constituents to ensure resources are channeled in a way that is of maximum benefit to society. But if society has had a gutsful of academia’s contempt and arrogance towards it and is being seen to be operating entirely in it’s own interest and in pursuit of it’s own selfish objectives and it’s own pursuit of power and influence, and thats certainly the view as seen from the street today, then academia and it’s seats of power in the university system will get done over in a big way simply by cutting it’s easy access to tax payer funds.

    The university system and academia in a lot of the western world has both lost it’s way and gone it’s own way and to hell with the people in the street and in industry who pay the money which enables the universities and academia to continue to function.

    I think the cutting of the lavish tax payer funded handouts to the universities and academia is now the only way to bring the universities and academia to heel and to again be made to respect the wishes and hopes and particularly the mores of the rest of the community and society.

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    pat

    given the AAE fiasco & its connections to Uni of NSW, u would think they’d be a bit quiet…but no, here’s another one. no link to the report & haven’t searched for it as yet:

    22 Jan: SMH: Peter Hannam: Drinking water: Extreme weather events threaten quality, says report
    Researchers surveyed operations of 41 utilities in the two countries, including Sydney Water and Melbourne Water, and found that climate change may affect the quality of drinking water as much as its availability…
    ”You have more droughts, more rainfall, more heatwaves, more bushfires – the more of them together actually makes the intensity of the impact on water quality greater,” said Stuart Khan, an associate professor of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of NSW, and lead author of the report…
    Desalination plants required huge spending – more than $2 billion for Sydney and about $5.7 billion for Melbourne’s massive plant – but are likely to be necessary to give cities flexibility when water quality is threatened by extreme weather…
    http://www.smh.com.au/environment/water-issues/drinking-water-extreme-weather-events-threaten-quality-says-report-20140121-316xh.html

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    pat

    22 Jan: UNSW Newsroom: Water utilities urged to adapt to risk from extreme weather events
    Khan is the lead Australian author on a report commissioned by the US-based Water Research Foundation, which was established to help water utilities better deliver clean drinking water and meet regulatory standards…
    To collect data, the researchers undertook detailed retrospective case studies of extreme weather events experienced during the past decade. These included surveying staff from 41 water utilities in Australia and the US, including major urban utilities in New York City, Houston, Sydney and Melbourne…
    Read the report “Water Quality Impacts Of Extreme Weather-Related Events”, here…
    Media Contacts: Dr Stuart Khan, [email protected],
    Steve Offner, UNSW Media Office
    http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-technology/water-utilities-urged-adapt-risk-extreme-weather-events

    been there, done that before, UNSW:

    Sept 2012: UNSW Newsroom: Drinking water: lessons from a decade of extreme weather
    Environmental engineers at UNSW conducted a review of extreme weather events in Australia over the past 14 years to assess their impact on raw and treated water, and various supply infrastructures…
    The results suggest, for instance, that a bushfire or drought followed by a heavy rainfall event would lead to far worse water quality impacts than either of those events would normally cause alone – even if they were considered very extreme…
    The project was funded by the Water Research Foundation with contributions from the Water Services Association of Australia and more than 50 water utilities from Australia and the USA.
    Media Contact: Denise Knight, UNSW Media Office
    http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-technology/drinking-water-lessons-decade-extreme-weather

    the Report!

    Water Research Foundation: Water Quality Impacts Of Extreme Weather-Related Events-4324
    http://www.waterrf.org/Pages/Projects.aspx?PID=4324

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      AndyG55

      Thing is, Pat, Canberra did have a major problem with rain after those big bushfires a while ago.
      One of their major reservoirs (Bendorra iirc) was taken out of action with washed in black slime, that took then ages to get rid off. Massive aerators etc had to be used.
      Canberra had to rely on smaller dams and had to apply quite stringent water use restrictions.
      They have since rebuilt the dam at Cotter, and greatly increased its capacity.

      I’ve only had a brief glimpse, but it seems there is not a lot in the report that is actually a long way from the truth.

      This is NOTHING to do with climate change though.. just normal natural Australian conditions.

      We live in a land of extremes.. nothing has changed !!

      Storage augmentation will be necessary for most of Australia’s capital cities in the near future as populations grow. Its an engineering and finance issue more than anything, and so long as its planned properly there is no need for the PANIC that is all too often being sold to the public.

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    pat

    because this is only available for six more days, will post it now.

    the former anti-fracking, anti-nuclear Liberal Democrat Ed Davey explains to BBC’s CAGW-believing Sarah why he’s now in love with fracking & nuclear, given the threat of CAGW. electricity prices will go up, carbon price will go up blah blah blah:

    25 mins: 20 Jan: BBC Hardtalk: British Energy and Climate Change Secretary – Ed Davey
    The British government is ‘going all out for shale’. Those are the words of the Prime Minister about his plan to allow companies to try to extract shale gas from deep underground. It’s a contrast to most European countries – many have banned it until they are convinced it can be done safely without damaging the water supply. Sarah Montague speaks to Britain’s Energy and Climate Change secretary – the Liberal Democrat Ed Davey. If we want clean, green and affordable energy, what role should fracking have?…
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01prcsj

    i’m no fracking or nuclear fan as most of u know, but it is so deliciously ironic that the Greens’ CAGW zealotry has led to this.

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      Safetyguy66

      For about the last 3 years of the Gillard regime I was warning everyone I know who votes green that their dogmatic adhesion to their most fringe ideals would work against them in the long run.

      Australia’s brief obsession with wind power (which is now as I predicted well and truly over)was only ever going to result in one outcome. The clawback of affordable energy options by the next Govt. You cant sit on such massive reserves of coal, gas and uranium as we do and delude ourselves we should survive by worshiping the 4 elements while dancing naked round a campfire. Its a great notion, but steel wont be manufactured as a result.

      Australia’s future is bound to coal and gas and hopefully uranium in the near future. It will boost our economy, create jobs, create industry, provide a broader more secure tax base and ironically provide enough funds for people like Chris Turney to continue to waste them chasing Leprechauns at the end of the rainbow.

      The pendulum of the zeitgeist swings and swings back. The left/green mutation caused it to swing far beyond a reasonable margin in their favor. The swing back was always going to be equal and perhaps even a bit beyond. If the greens would have voted in favor of Rudd’s original ETS we wouldn’t even be having this debate in the same way. The whole carbon pricing regime in Oz would be such old news most people would have let it go by now.

      http://greensmps.org.au/content/news-stories/greens-and-emissions-trading-%E2%80%93-your-questions-answered

      But guided by ideological delusion they shot for the stars and face-planted into the mud. Nothing new….nothing learned

      http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/milne-says-no-regrets-over-carbon-decision-20130904-2t53i.html

      Greens and environuts in general walk around with an idea in their heads of a world that may one day exist. A world with emissions and pollution free energy inhabited by beautiful, wealthy, white people in flowing robes and eating fruit through a haze of pot smoke and bad music. This is the vision they get in their heads when someone says “solar” or “wind”. The fact that their imagination is about 500 years ahead of the tech is completely lost on them and for those that get it, they dont care. As long as they as individuals and their immediate family and friends can continue to enjoy a top shelf western lifestyle at the expense of ordinary tax payers, the rest is detail.

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    pat

    NYT desperately trying to portray CAGW as NOT an ECONOMIC ISSUE…..FAILS MISERABLY IN THEIR OWN WORDS. EPA’s McCarthy saying it’s not usually her crowd!!! lol.

    21 Jan: NYT: Annie Lowrey: U.S. Delegation to Press Issues Like Climate Change and Syria
    (Coral Davenport contributed reporting)
    But noneconomic issues are expected to feature prominently at the World Economic Forum this year, with financial markets calmer than they have been since the global recession hit and the recovery chugging along. One of those issues is climate change, which Gina McCarthy, administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, plans to discuss at the forum.
    The forum will devote a full day to addressing the economic costs of climate change, and the costs to businesses and governments of solving the problem. Ms. McCarthy’s address at the forum will focus specifically on President Obama’s domestic climate change agenda. “I want to make sure climate change is understood as fundamental economic decision going forward,” she said.
    “This is not usually my crowd,” Ms. McCarthy added. “This is going to be fun.”…
    Others making the trip are Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, and Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund. Both have sounded sunnier notes on the global economy of late.
    “Optimism is in the air, the deep freeze is behind and the horizon is brighter,” Ms. Lagarde said in Washington last week. “My great hope is that 2014 will prove momentous in another way, the year in which the seven weak years, economically speaking, slide into seven strong years.”
    http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/davos-to-turn-its-attention-to-noneconomic-issues/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

    Sharan Burrow was on Aljazeera’s Davos report last nite insisting govts create employment for the young (while she spruiks for carbon dioxide to be financialised as she usually does, no doubt). the Aljaz reporter went on about CAGW being on the agenda & how the delegates will not be able to ignore extreme weather, as it’s a mild winter in Davos with very little snow:

    Davos Snow Report & Ski Conditions for 21 Jan.
    Davos Snow Condition
    Great snow conditions throughout area
    http://www.snow-forecast.com/resorts/Davos/snow-report

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    pat

    AndyG55 –
    it’s the “extreme” CAGW-framing i object to.

    one that needs to be watched carefully as attempts continue to soak up pension/super funds in the name of CAGW:

    20 Jan: Australian: David Uren: Call to scrap bank guarantees
    Professor Davis’s opinion carries weight, not only because he is one of the five members on the Treasurer’s financial system inquiry, but also because Labor’s financial claims scheme drew on a design he had prepared for former Coalition treasurer Peter Costello…
    The former Labor government offered a free guarantee of all bank deposits of up to $1 million in the heart of the global financial crisis in 2008, when there were fears of a bank run developing in Australia….
    When a permanent financial claims scheme was implemented in 2011, the ceiling was lowered to $250,000, which then treasurer Wayne Swan said would still cover 99 per cent of borrowers. Banks and depositors do not pay a fee for the guarantee.
    Professor Davis said the guarantees had contributed to falling sales of life insurance products, finance company debentures, cash management products and property trusts, while the amount of retail savings held in government guaranteed bank deposits had soared…
    Professor Davis said virtually all the cash holdings of self-managed superannuation funds were held in guaranteed bank deposits.
    One policy option would be to abolish the scheme altogether…
    He said there was a case for limiting the guarantee to “at call” transaction accounts and removing it from term deposits. Professional investors, including self-managed super funds, should not have bank deposits guaranteed.
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/financial-services/call-to-scrap-deposit-guarantees/story-fn91wd6x-1226805417932

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    Has there ever been a science prize awarded to someone not studying a natural phenomena?

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      handjive

      Does this qualify:
      The Nobel Peace Prize 2007 was awarded jointly to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      If it is pure science, it must be natural. If it ain’t natural, it’s Applied Science or Engineering.

      How does that sound?

      I have no idea if it is true, it just seems like a natural differentiator between the subject groups.

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    Dave

    Professor Turneys 1st public appearance.

    He states that:

    “Professor Turney said the ship was attempting to leave Cape Denison in Commonwealth Bay, heading toward Hodgman Island, when it became trapped.

    “This was an area where we have had satellite imagery, good weather observations, and we made our way into that area to test the idea of some of the impacts of that massive extended sea ice going into an area where there wasn’t massive extended sea ice,” Professor Turney said.”

    Well, isn’t this different to the report in the SMH.

    “A passenger standing near Professor Turney overheard the voyage leader, Greg Mortimer, telling him over the radio to bring passengers back to the ship so it can leave.
    But minutes later, Professor Turney drove six more passengers into the field.
    The overloaded vehicle had no space to collect returning passengers.”

    This is the start of the cover up, “I did nothing wrong” attitude that further degrades the science he is using as an excuse.

    I Think the Captain Kiselev of the Akademik Shokalskiy, and Greg Mortimer the voyage leader, will ultimately spill the beans on this fruitloop Professor.

    Currently, Professor Turney, Dr Fogwill and Mr Mortimer are all declining to answer questions about the events of December 23, and the exact timelines involved.

    All are gutless little men protecting their Gravy Train Income, but KAMA will pay them back in other ways.

    The Ship of Fools…..Grrrrrr..Grr

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      Bruce of Newcastle

      There will be some serious costs someone will have to pay. The insurance company will refuse, because of the circumstances you mention. The ARC dare not touch it since they are also in the political firing line for their climate grants – if they cough up several million in a special grant out of their limited budget the howls from the rest of science will be ear splitting. And the Federal Government would wreak stern vengeance.

      The Russians won’t wear the cost, not after the Arctic 30 incident, they will send a bill to UNSW. If UNSW doesn’t pay the lawyers will get a very yummy payoff as it goes through the courts.

      And if UNSW coughs up they will be in the political firing line for that.

      I wonder whether Prof Turney has a nice house he wants to triple mortgage?

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        Speedy

        Bruce

        If that happened, it might make other people think twice before they were so brave with our taxes.

        Cheers,

        Speedy

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    jaymam

    NZ’S Department of Conservation has asked for their logo to be removed from the AEE website:
    http://htmlimg3.scribdassets.com/1xvt6lbm2o3ecuo8/images/1-f763a0c054.jpg

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    Popeye

    Jo,

    Breaking news (if you haven’t seen already) – deserves to be covered everywhere and maybe new post subject.

    http://www.principia-scientific.org/breaking-new-climate-data-rigging-scandal-rocks-us-government.html

    Cheers,

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      Bruce of Newcastle

      We’re a little cautious of PriSci since they champion their hypothesis that CO2 has zero warming effect a bit too dogmatically. There isn’t much scientific support around for that idea. John O’Sullivan, though, has a pretty good track record of breaking stories.

      But with this post he is publicising analysis by Steve Goddard from last week. So you are actually better off linking to Real Science directly (see John’s included link) since there are many people read that blog who will not go near PriSci. I have an open mind. I maintain that empirical ECS is about 0.7 C/doubling, which is harmless. I have plenty of data to back that up. My view is its fairly pointless to jump up and down saying ECS is zero, as the skydragon group do, because that is also harmless. Just say empirical ECS less than 1 C/doubling is not dangerous and lets all go on with life without CAGW’ers making us miserable and poor.

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        Bruce–while you’re right that some here would skip the article just because of who wrote it, does that not make said individuals just like the warmists? Yes,that post is a publicising of a Steve Goddard article. I would note that I read Principia regularly. You have a point with saying won’t go near it, which sadly shows how unscientific anyone can be if they don’t like an idea. On the other hand, do people who are that closed minded deserve to know? And people who will only read things if they “like” the source–wait, again, warmist behaviour. If skeptics want to keep their credibility, behaving like warmists is not the way to do it. I still have no idea how the PriSci argument that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas works and there have been other posts I don’t understand, but I do keep reading for the ones that make sense and I do understand. I always thought the mantra here was: It’s the evidence. It’s the data. Not it’s a guy I like and agree with.

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          Bruce of Newcastle

          Hi Sheri – I thought Popeye might be concerned there was no response to his news. As I said I do have an open mind about their position. But in practical policy any ECS below about 1 C/doubling requires no political action at all, so it becomes unhelpful to have unnecessary and heated arguments over something which doesn’t matter a great deal.

          At the moment the political actions that governments have been taking really do cost lives of people and cause immense environmental harm. I would like that to stop. Then I would be delighted to argue about the exact value of ECS and what the theoretical basis is.

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            Yes, the greens have little regard for human beings. And very little concern for bats or eagles if it means getting in the way of putting up the white alters to the God Gore. I have written many letters and some posts on the wind slaughter of birds and bats. The greens were also surprised to find out farmers would till up conservation acreage and virgin prairie in response to the call for ethanol:
            http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/prairies-vanish-as-u-s-pushes-ethanol-policy/article_d09a943f-2952-5c49-886f-f7cd25713062.html?mode=image&photo=

            It seems they may have believed that pillaging the planet was only done by evil oil companies and not caring environmentalists. So wrong.

            Practically speaking, you are correct that whether or not the exact value of ECS is zero or below one probably makes no difference. To the scientific minded, though, they may believe accuracy is important. Hard to say. Things get very messed up when you turn science into politics, don’t they? Hard to know what direction to work from. (Sometinmes I think people don’t understand how complex their ideas are and that most people will not understand the significance of the idea.)

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        I should add that Jo has always allowed postings here by some banned on other blogs due to their views. She’s been gracious with letting open discussion on her blog.

        Tallbloke has a write-up today on the “Pattern Recognition in Physics” shutdown: http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/01/22/peer-review-debacle-friends-and-foes-in-the-fog-of-battle/

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    John Of Cloverdale WA

    Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit is worth following for his investigative reporting (with continuing updates) of Turney’s journey.

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    pat

    new timeline from the Fairfax journos:

    22 Jan: SMH: Nicky Phillips/Colin Cosier: Stuck In The Ice
    The inside story of how a polar expedition went terribly wrong, leaving dozens of tourists and scientists trapped in the ice.
    The leaders were also receiving daily weather forecasts from three sources, the Bureau of Meteorology’s forecasters at Casey station, a private forecasting company in Europe and the ship’s onboard weather station. From this information Mortimer estimated the team had 15 to 18 hours before the weather deteriorated, and 24 hours before a more serious change was expected…
    In the days following their rescue, Turney said the insurance claims were “yet to be discussed”.
    “Who is paying? At the moment, we’re not sure,” he said….
    This account has been reconstructed from interviews with members of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013/14, most of whom wished to remain anonymous, who witnessed events or overheard conversations, and the report the voyage leader, Greg Mortimer, submitted to IAATO.
    Mortimer declined to comment on his report.
    The Shokalskiy’s captain, Igor Kielev, did not respond to Fairfax Media’s emails.
    Chris Turney and Chris Fogwill, the expedition leaders, also declined to comment on specific questions regarding events on December 23.
    Nicky Phillips and Colin Cosier travelled on board the Aurora Australis as part of the Australian Antarctic Division’s media fellowship program.
    http://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2014/stuck-in-the-ice/

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    […] Amazingly, Chris Turney gets an award for “contributing to the understanding natural phenomena”. I suppose it’s a case of Fools Rushing In!! JoNova: […]

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    […] » Guess who won an award for understanding Natural Phenomena? Well, lessee, can we arrive at the right answer by elimination? If so, then the first candidate to […]

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    Slabadang

    Just horrific !
    Well its still pure logic connected with that the liar Gore gets the Nobel prize. Now we cant wait until biased BBC gives super biased ABC the reward on “best impartial public service” with help of the super duper biased Swedish SVT on the panel? I just hate these liars and parasites of public funds!

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    Dave N

    “And there are people who think we should listen to and laud these associations?”

    There’s people who think we should do the same for catastrophic failures like Ehrlich. It has nothing to do with accuracy of predictions and everything to do with how scary they are.

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