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Bottom line: The BOM has added a page listing “Adjustments”. It’s two years late, inadequate and incomplete. Skeptics shouldn’t have had to ask for it in the first place, and we still don’t have the algorithms and codes, or rational answers to most questions. No one can replicate the mystery black box homogenisation methods of the BOM — and without replication, it isn’t science. There is still no explanation of why an excellent station like Rutherglen should change from cooling to warming, except for vague “statistics”, or why any station should be adjusted without documentary evidence, based on thermometers that might be 300 km away.
Lo and behold, the pressure from The Australian and independent analysts means the BOM has made a weak belated attempt to do what it has implied it always has done. When Michael Brown provided cover for the BOM he said the notion that scientists were hiding data was “pseudoscience”. The BOM, meanwhile, added a page called “Adjustments”, two years after launching “ACORN”, quietly admitting that the skeptics were right. They did not correct Brown’s baseless namecalling. Other apologists for their inexplicable anomalies, major adjustments or errors — like David Karoly — demand the […]
Once upon a time, Australian climate scientists discussed and published climate trends of the late 1800s. And lo, the long lost hot weather decades were apparent in many places in inland South Eastern Australia. While skeptics are accused of cherry picking data from Bourke, Rutherglen and Deniliquin, there are plenty of other examples. In the last post, the 1953 Argus story described hotter drier summers in Omeo, Bendigo, Hay, Bourke, Alice Springs, Echuca, Albury, and Cooma. Here is a Deacon et al peer reviewed graph of the long term trends at Hay, Narrabri, Bourke and Alice Springs.
Thanks to Chris Gillham for finding the Deacon paper of 1952. [On another point, I’ll have a response up to the new BOM “adjustments” page later. In short, their data still has many inexplicable errors like where maxima are lower than minima, and they are still not providing all the details we need to replicate their data and homogenization methods. – Jo]
But just have a look at this graph. Degrees Fahrenheit of course. State of the art, 1952.
….
These cooling trends cover “only” a couple of million square kilometers of Australia:
The location of Alice Springs, Bourke, Narrabri, and […]
The average maximum temperatures [of SE Australia] during the last 35 years were between two and four degrees (F) lower than the average for the previous 35 years. — CSIRO 1953
Once upon a time — before the Great Politicization of Climate Science — CSIRO was able to analyze trends from 1880 to 1910. In 1953 CSIRO scientists were making a case that large parts of Australia had been hotter in the 1880s and around the turn of last century. They are referring specifically to summer maximums, and presumably the increase in rainfall over the same period played a large role in preventing hot days from becoming hotter. Minimum and mean trends may have been quite different, but these older maximum records are surely relevant when news headlines are drafted today about hot summers and heatwaves.
So what happened to the widespread lost hot decades?
I have a lot more to say on the warm and the work of these scientists. For the moment, the full archived news story is entertaining in its own right. Thanks to Chris Gillham for this link and to Jennifer Marohasy. Graphs tomorrow : – )
— Jo
The Argus (Melbourne, Vic) Wednesday 18 […]
You won’t believe… Research shows surprise global warming ‘hiatus’ could have been forecast
[The Guardian] Australian and US climate experts say with new ocean-based modelling tools, the early 2000s warming slowdown was foreseeable. Australian and US researchers have shown that the slowdown in the rate of global warming in the early 2000s, known as a so-called “global warming hiatus”, could have been predicted if today’s tools for decade-by-decade climate forecasting had been available in the 1990s.
And I’ve got a model that would have predicted the 1987 stock market crash, the GFC, and the winner of the Melbourne Cup. What I would not have predicted is that lame excuses this transparent, would be made by people calling themselves scientists, Gerald Meehl, and repeated by people calling themselves journalists. (That’s you, Melissa Davey). Though I’m not surprised that research this weak had to be published by Nature. (Where else?)
Although global temperatures remain close to record highs, they have shown little warming trend over the past 15 years, a slowdown that earlier climate models had been largely unable to predict.
This has been used by climate change sceptics as evidence that climate change prediction models are flawed.
Imagine that, the stupid […]
Back when CO2 levels were ideal, and there were 1 billion less cars than today, monsoons always happened in the same place, the rain was the same year after year, and there were no local extinctions of animals.
If we could only return to renewable slave power:
[ScienceDaily] The researchers identified five episodes over the past 6,000 years when dramatic changes occurred in Egypt’s mammalian community, three of which coincided with extreme environmental changes as the climate shifted to more arid conditions. These drying periods also coincided with upheaval in human societies, such as the collapse of the Old Kingdom around 4,000 years ago and the fall of the New Kingdom about 3,000 years ago.
“There were three large pulses of aridification as Egypt went from a wetter to a drier climate, starting with the end of the African Humid Period 5,500 years ago when the monsoons shifted to the south,” Yeakel said. “At the same time, human population densities were increasing, and competition for space along the Nile Valley would have had a large impact on animal populations.”
No climate models were harmed in the production of this paper.
8.8 out of 10 based on 66 ratings […]
The ABC Drum Pater Burdon asks: Is democracy hurting our climate change response?
Indeed! Burdon is impressed with Naomi Orsekes’ speculation that China will “weather” the climate change storm because it is an undemocratic (and glorious communist) state. This same country builds the equivalent of a new coal powered plant every 10 days, and suffers from smogifying pollution so crippling that up to 250,000 people may be dying of it. Let’s try that “centralized” government where peaceful activists and people who complain about corruption get jailed or risk torture. And who could forget the “success” of big-government in China last century — no other style of government has successfully killed as many people, ever.
Burdon
Is it democracy that is blocking progress on climate change or the current limited version of it that pervades Western society? Peter D Burdon writes.
The third possibility is that democracy is working just fine, and the masses of “dumb” voters have it right. What if believers can’t convince the voters that their alarming-tax-plan can stop the storms because the case for a carbon-crisis is pathetically weak? Could it be that people don’t need a degree in the history of feminist art to see that […]
Order today 🙂
Buy a T-Shirt to help get Patrick Moore to Australia.
Wear it to BBQ’s to spark some fun.
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LAST CHANCE TO ORDER – $30.00 (includes postage) Details here: http://ow.ly/AVgun They need 30 more orders to reach the amount for cheaper printing
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UPDATE: Responding to comments. Messages on t-shirts do not have to be logical, grammatically correct, nor literally accurate. The more people who wear this the better.
8 out of 10 based on 58 ratings […]
Ninemsn (major network news in Australia) held a small poll on it’s home page on Friday, asking Do you believe global warming is man-made?
The ratio stayed roughly the same from start to finish. (Here, early on, it was 44% skeptical).
Matty in Perth kept track of the tally, and while the poll seems to have disappeared off the home page (can anyone find an archive?) at last count it was 39,899 yes and 33,960 no which was 46% skeptic of a total of 73,859 votes.
Of course, these are unrepresentative, self selecting polls. It underestimates the number of skeptics. The latest CSIRO survey shows 53% of the Australian population don’t agree that “humans are causing climate change”. Nonetheless, we trust Nine news notices the large response of its own audience. There will be some major ratings wins out there for whichever commercial news service notices that almost everything they broadcast on climate change is a bore and a turn-off for half their audience.
And as far as the ABC goes, as I’ve said before, when it gives 50% of its climate budget and time to skeptical arguments we will know it is fulfilling its charter.
Image thanks […]
For otherwise homeless thoughts…
8.3 out of 10 based on 23 ratings
He’s the new President of the British Science Association (I bet they are loving this media coverage) and has decided to move on from the old technique of debating scientific points on their merits. It’s too slow (especially if you don’t have… evidence). Instead he’s going with retro-science — Do you believe, sinner? It’s so retro, it’s retro-the-renaissance.
The Daily Mail UK
Politicians who do not believe in climate change should be ‘crushed and buried’, according to the new president of the British Science Association.
How much belief is enough, I wonder, to avoid the crushing? If a politician believed in the greenhouse theory but not the catastrophe, is that half crushed, or do we skip the squishing and go straight for the burying?
Sir Paul Nurse, who starts his presidency next week, pledged to ‘take on’ the ‘serial offenders’ who he accused of cherry picking scientific facts to suit their arguments.
In an extraordinary outburst, Sir Paul accused those who refuse to accept scientific orthodoxy on global warming of ‘distorting’ the facts.
Sir Paul singled out GWPF — as “pretending to talk about science” — and he whipped […]
Amazing what they can discover with data from just the last 130 years. Hey but it must be right. It’s bootstrapped!
Finally, the study you’ve been waiting for. Now we can be absolutely certain — it’s practically proven beyond all doubt — your SUV changes the climate.
We just need to assume the climate models understand the climate and that there are no longer natural cycles at work AND that there are no effects from the sun from the solar wind, solar magnetic fields, or spectral changes. Easy. (Don’t look at the evidence, the pause or all the model failures.)
The new headline:
99.999% certainty humans are driving global warming: new study
It’s at The Conversation – -the government funded site where government funded scientists discuss their bestest ideas.
WARNING – Modern global temperatures (red) were homogenized with imaginary Vostok data for entertainment purposes only. See footnote*
Obviously being 95% certain is not enough. Desperate believers are upping the ante. I guess all those people who were not convinced by 95% certainty will now switch over, blown away by the last 4.999% certainty that was missing before. It’s the third decimal place that does it.
PS: There’s […]
The list goes on, and there is more to come.
In Deniliquin NSW, the homogenisation has lifted both the maxima and minima trends — again converting cooling to warming.
Graham Lloyd continues to increase the pressure on the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. In answers to Lloyd the BOM could only defend their work with the extraordinary statement that while some trends at individual stations look anomalous, overall the results “showed a similar warming trend to that of other international climate organisations. ”
So they inadvertently admit that they expect Australian trends to look like trends in other parts of the world. Despite the fact that Australia is drier, flatter and surrounded on every edge by oceans, the Bureau would consider it a fail if our trends were different to others? We’re in the opposite hemisphere to many international climate organizations, which may or may not matter, but we’ll never find out if we are trying to fit our data to theirs. And El Nino’s and La Nina’s mean very different things to countries on opposite sides of the Pacific. We’re blurring the resolution from thousands of data-points. The raw data is blended not just on regional scales but thanks […]
People who have no cheap electricity burn wood or coal inside their homes to make dinner and stay warm. The smoke produces real pollution (as opposed to the fake kind which feeds plants). In India, some homes have pollution levels “three times higher than a typical London street”. Not surprisingly, living in smoke does not work out well for lungs and hearts. “Estimates suggest that household air pollution killed 3·5 to 4 million people in 2010. “
We can argue about the numbers and whether they are exaggerated, but there’s no doubt that millions of people would lead better lives if they had access to cheap electricity, which in practical terms means coal-fired power. In Niger, Africa, 17 million people use less electricity than Dubbo, NSW, a town of 40,000.
Where are the Greens? Children in poverty are suffering from lung damage now. The Greens priority is to spend billions to stop them dying in 2100 from seas rising at 1mm a year. How many people does expensive electricity kill? — Jo
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Household air pollution puts more than one in three people worldwide at risk of ill health, early death 8.9 out of 10 based on 61 ratings […]
Was January 3rd 1909 in Bourke one of Australia’s hottest days ever?
The historic records say “125F” — or 51.7C. The BOM say it was an observer error.
Bourke and neighboring stations in NSW and QLD Australia
Blair Trewin wrote a paper looking at the extreme highs in 1997. The Bourke record was made on a Sunday and in that particular year there are no records on other Sundays. On the other hand, I wonder what station observer would not notice a day that was 125F and head in to work to see exactly how high it was. The number 125F was handwritten in and underlined. You’d think observers would know it was a special figure, and pay attention.
The town of Bourke got a Stephenson Screen only a few months beforehand in August 1908, so it had good modern equipment. But Trewin thinks the record is an observer error, and points out that it was a lot warmer in Bourke than in other surrounding towns like Thargomindah, Walgett, and Coonable, and by about 6.9C degrees, which is an unusual gap. During the rest of the month Bourke was “not exceptionally hot compared to other stations”. […]
We’ve seen the remarkable change of the Rutherglen record as it got homogenized. This long running rural record that looks ideal apparently had “unrecorded” station moves found by thermometers miles away. Already we have found Bill Johnston who did some work at Rutherglen who confirmed that the station did not move. The mystery grows?
Since early 2012 Ken Stewart has been asking the BOM which neighbouring stations were used. Finally, after pressure from The Australian, the BOM has provided the 17 names, and Ken has graphed them.
Follow the chart below. Rutherglen temperatures start off in blue. The yellow line is the average of the 17 “neighbours” which are used to homogenize that blue line and transform it into the red one which somehow ends up being colder than its neighbours in 1952 and warmer than its neighbours in all the last 30 years.
See if you can figure it out?
Rutherglen starts off blue. Then the yellow line is used to homogenize that blue line into the red one.
Presumably the BOM technique would be a lot more complicated that what Ken has done, but clearly replicating that ACORN final trend is not going to be easy.
The […]
Blades being chopped for transport. | Global Cement Magazine
It’s the new alternative fuel — decommissioned turbines. There are 21,000 wind turbines in Germany alone at the moment. With 15,000 tons a year of old blades expected to be dumped by 2019, it’s a real problem to get rid of them. The EU says they can’t be dumped in landfill. Here’s the perfect solution. Chop them, shred them, then deliver the fibreglass reinforced plastic to the local cement plant. The resins hold 15MJ per kilo. “One tonne of resin saves 600 kg of coal at the cement plant!”
It’s a win-win all round. Residents get rid of the bird chopping towers, the cement plant gets energy, and the windmills may, possibly for the first time, save some CO2 for the Greens. What’s not to like?
Indeed this is recycling you can like. The raw materials in old blades can even be used in the cement too.
Wind Turbines make good alternative fuels for cement production.
Global Cement Magazine Sept 2014 page 10
9.4 out of 10 based on 90 ratings […]
What is striking about Andy Pitman and Lisa Alexander’s response to the articles in The Australian, on The Conversation, is how intellectually weak it is, and how little content they have after we remove the logical fallacies. It’s argument from authority, circular reasoning, and strawmen. Hail the Gods (and don’t look over there)! They don’t question Jennifer Marohasy’s remarkable figures, they don’t even mention them at all, nor use the names “Rutherglen”, “Amberley” or “Bourke” –how revealing.
And these are the points at issue. Long cooling trends at supposedly excellent sites had been homogenized and transformed into warming trends. Rutherglen is the kind of station other stations dream to be: it has stayed in the same place according to the official documents, isn’t affected by the heat from urban growth either and is similar to its neighbors. Other stations might be adjusted to be more like it. Instead the BOM has a method that detected “unrecorded” site moves at Rutherglen by studying unnamed stations somewhere in the region. Awkwardly, someone who used to work there says the thermometer didn’t move. Hmm. Would a thinking person ask for more details and an explanation? Not if you are director of an ARC […]
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