Momentum is growing. In Federal Parliament this week George Christensen (Nationals party, Qld) gave an excellent summary of questions Jennifer Marohasy and I have been raising about the Bureau of Meteorology, and announced he would be calling for an inquiry.
It’s long past time. Why does the BOM have so little curiosity about the burning Australian heat before 1910? Why do older thermometers seem to need correction 90 years later for reading “too warm”? Why do so many hot or dry empirical measurements remain invisible in our national conversation about the climate? And with so many questions, why do the Bureau insist they are 95% certain they know what they are talking about?
The Transcript from Quadrant — Wanted: Straight Answers from the BoM.
“I rise to paint a picture of climate change — a picture where Camden, just to the south-west of Sydney, is sweltering in 50-degree heat. Over in the west it is 51 degrees in the shade at Geraldton. Perth is 44, Geelong is 43, Wilcannia 48, Carnarvon 49½ and Southern Cross is 50 degrees. The death rate is 12 in 100,000 from heat-associated deaths—435 dead over the summer!
This is not a Greens scare campaign but the Federation Drought, 118 years ago. It has never been as hot since.
See our post about the extreme heat of 1896 for the original links to the news archives that underlie what Christensen is talking about. Much of this work is fueled by the number crunching and research of Ken Stewart, Chris Gilham, Lance Pidgeon and others on the independent BOM audit team. See also the heat map of Australian 50+ temperatures, and all my posts on Australian Temperatures. It’s great to see this material being spoken in Parliament yet again.
The Media — the gatekeepers
As I watched his speech, I wondered if anyone in Parliament was listening. Speeches like this can disappear. Cory Bernardi, I and others called for an independent audit in 2011, and Dennis Jensen called for an audit of the BOM and the CSIRO in March 2014. But perhaps the time is right. The story was picked up by The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and the Daily Mail Australia. Don’t miss my message, this time the media is paying attention. (Finally). But the Media IS the problem. Politicians have little power if the media ignore them. We need to fix the media first. The rest will follow. Improve the journalists, and we’ll get better policies, better politicians, and better bureaus too.
The mysteries of the Bureau of Meteorology:
By Nelson Groom for Daily Mail Australia
Heat is on the Weather Bureau after MP accuses it of wiping 118-year-old temperature records to justify claims of climate change
- George Christensen claimed the Bureau had wiped earlier records
- He cited records from 1896 that saw temperatures of 50C in NSW
- Mr Christensen claimed this examples had been wiped off the records
- He also accused them of tampering with data so the past appeared cooler
- The Dawson MP will be seeking an inquiry into their conduct this week
The BOM and Environment Dept have offered to bring forward a review. I pointed out how useless it was to get another toothless review, when what we needed was a truly independent one. And anything less than an audit that shows everyone how the BOM got its numbers from the raw data just leaves the BOM able to haughtily reply to any criticism: “we are the experts, so trust us!”. Andrew Bolt picked up my request.
‘Obviously if you drop down temperatures from the past, all the later temperatures will appear warmer even if they are not,’ he said.
‘We cannot use fudged figures skewed to support a global warming hypothesis. We have a scientific process being tainted at the source.’
Mr Christensen said he would use evidence of the Bureau’s misconduct to launch an inquiry this week.
Senator Simon Birmingham, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment, told Daily Mail Australia ‘the country’s climate record and the methods used for analysis by the Bureau were independently reviewed by international experts in 2012 to ensure quality assurance, transparency and communication”
This call by Mr. Christensen is a very brave move. He is instituting action against the keystone of bedwetting propaganda and the Left/Green Hyena pack will be on to him. Every aspect of his public and private life will be scoured for Ad Hom attack. It will also be a test of the Government’s committment to rid the Australian body-politic of the millennialist followers of Ehrlich and Gore who have done everything they can to destroy Australian prosperity.
I only wish we had a UK Government with it’s eyes even half-open to the Green Blob.
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Well UKIP are doing that – they polled as high as 25% a few weeks back – the Tories & Labour must be worried with the 2015 UK Election less than a year away. UKIP’s policies are similar in some respects to those of the current Abbott Coalition Govt.
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I’m a fully paid-up ‘Kipper myself, but realistic enough to know that the chances of being part of government even after 2015 are slim to non-existent. The Westminster social-democratic elite will go to any lengths to deny UKIP a share in government, even if they manage a significant minority parliamentary party.
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Don’t fret, Kevin. The object isn’t to win; it is to ‘bend’ the leftist Conservatives back to the mainstream. It is beginning to work. Your sneaky PM is starting to make the right noises, but, of course at this early stage it is still just talk intended to try to deceive the people into believing they get the message.
We in Australia don’t have a UKIP equivalent, although there is a huge groundswell against the destruction of our society by the Left. The pressure is building. Something has to ‘give’ soon.
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The trouble is, UKIP are tied to a number of right-wing policies that have nothing to do with the climate change debate. (Or with leaving the EU for that matter!)
This is always the problem, these days. People automatically link any desire for an open debate on climate with a hatred of foreigners, homosexuals, women, and ethnic minorities, not to mention far-out libertarian economic ideas. Left-wingers only think that they are believers in CAGW. What they really believe, and very strongly, is that they know who the bad guys are.
Partly this is the result of a very successful propaganda war. But it’s also because a lot of people with these views are also climate sceptics. It’s very much a case of “Don’t be my friend – Please!”
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Yep – much like Pauline Hansen here, right?
Just find one out of context quote that most people would find abhorrent, and pound that into the ground – in PH’s case, this was “.. we are in danger of being swamped by asians…” turns into “… we are being swamped by asians…”, turns into “she is clearly racist”, turns into no-one will do a preference deal with her. This means that despite her party polling higher numbers than the greens, they ended up with *less* seats than the greens, means the whole party is marginalised. Then the “majors” and their “approved” minor parties can rule the roost and claim a “mandate” for whatever it is they want to do.
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To be fair I think that there has been a correlation between the denial of AGW and far right political views. Look at the Tea Party in the US as the embodiment of this, Cory Bernardi here. It seems anything progressive gets the same knee jerk response and of course climate science is seen as “progressive”. Still the neo-conservatives have been incredibly successful at derailing the debate and have had the upper hand over the past few years. It seems to me that the pendulum may be swinging back a little but I think the politics, but not the science (there has been no “skeptic” science to speak of), has been won on the whole by the “skeptics”.
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“(there has been no “skeptic” science to speak of), ”
Yes there has, you just don’t understand any of it and have a mental block against understanding any of it.
The real science of there not being any real or significant change with the climate FAR outweighs the pseudo-science of the alarmist CAGNW cult.
The Liberal party have enough real scientists to realise this fact.
(Labor/Green.. roflmao.. ex-union hacks.!!)
Take your blinkers off, and your fingers out of your ears, child-mind. !
Until you are prepared to let knowledge in, only the same garbage you always sprout will continue to come out.
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Now, now Griss. Manners please.
What FIN really means is not that there isn’t good science – which by definition is sceptical – just that we mustn’t speak of it.
It is a technique which has served them well but you can only sweep so many inconvenient results under the carpet before people trip over the mound.
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and “progressive” ???? seriously.. that’s hilarious.
Not one thing Labor or the Greens has ever done could be called “progressive”. They have always been ANTI-progress.
Its just a label they give themselves to con weak-minded people like you.
REGRESSIVE is the term you are looking for wrt Lab/Green !
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If you really want some scientific data and results that challenge the CAGW orthodoxy all you have to do is go to the geological record of global warnings and coolings cross-plotted against atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. The correlation is very poor.
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You are so ignorant of the “Tea Party” that you are a self parody.
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Then kindly present us with some science, FIN. From you, that is, not a tedious list of links, please. Some suggestions might be the Hockey Stick, polar bears, the pause, extreme weather events, Trenberth’s missing heat, the missing atmospheric hot spot, rising seas, polar ice, data homogenization and other such bending. But please, you pick.
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To be fair, since liberal studies of the members of the “Tea party” have been shown to have a higher than average IQ, perhaps they just know how to look at data and ask questions? Intelligent questions?
So perhaps if you learn how to do that, you may become a skeptic as well. Or not if all you can do is parrot talking points.
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It is amazing how wanting to be left alone by big government who use any sort of pseudo scientific BS to increasingly interfere with every aspect of our lives is now far right wing.
It is also amazing how wanting to have a clear understanding of who comes to our country to live so that we do not get large concentrated populations of people who, not only do not share our values as expressed in our liberal democratic system of government, but want to do us harm is now suddenly far right wing.
Perhaps all of these people still inhabit the center and it is you that have moved to the far left.
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“Every aspect of his public and private life will be scoured for Ad Hom attack”
LOL already been raked over several times, Kevin.
George has been outspoken on a number of issues, and is less than polite in his criticism of the greens. Last month he commented: “… the greatest terrorism threat in North Queensland, I’m sad to say, comes from the extreme green movement”.
I and many others up here agree with him.
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Thanks for that. my exposure to daily Australian goings-on is limited.
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I have mentioned this before, but in case you are not aware of it I’ll tell it again.
Historically the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation was a quite marvellous institution which aided Australian industrial and scientific research by providing government funded input where required to aid R&D work.
In 1986 the Hawke government changed the management of the CSIRO, installing a new board of management with Neville Wran, national president of the Labor Party as chairman. He was the first non scientist to hold that position.
This government put their “social scientist” mates in charge of the real scientists at the CSIRO. This then determined what programs were undertaken, who was employed to do it, and, most importantly, what results were published.
Prior to that the CSIRO was a strictly non partisan organisation.
This set me watching for where the bogus science would turn up. The first that I saw was the full front page headline: “Cows Australia’s biggest source of greenhouse gases!” A CSIRO scientist had discovered this in Tasmania.
This was a monstrous lie. I don’t believe any scientist said it. The now Marxist CSIRO publicity machine had seized a bit of his work and built this story around it. Why?
60% of Australia’s land area is used for grazing cattle and sheep. Agriculture was the last sector of the Australian economy still dominated by small business capitalism, the last sector where the business owners still made the business decisions. This was a vicious attack on the public perception of the agricultural sector. At that time very little research had been done on quantifying GG emissions, and that lie stood for a very long time before somebody noticed power generation and transport were our two biggest emitters. In the meantime, the lie about cows (and by inference those dirty capitalist farmers) was taught in our schools and universities.
The original ETS proposed by the Rudd government studiously refused to allow credits for the sequestration side of agriculture’s carbon cycle. They intended to tax agriculture’s “emissions” on the same basis as fossil emissions. This would have quickly bankrupted Australia’s grazing industries, rendering the land used for grazing valueless. This would have enabled the government to direct that land into new ownership without compensating the current owners.
I didn’t see what was done at the BOM, but suspect they did something similar there.
What everybody should worry about is that only one parliamentarian, Barnaby Joyce, stood between that ETS proposal and its passage through the parliament. Only he among the Liberal/National party ranks understood the implications. Thankfully, to date, he has prevailed.
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This is also true for the majority of senior positions in the public service. In the good old days people were appointed on merit and not their political persuasion, but it hasn’t been the case for a long time now, perhaps since Menzies. Heads of Departments were not political appointees and more importantly were prepared to provide impartial advice, forcibly at times, to government. Take the Gillard government’s decision to ban the cattle trade to Indonesia instead of introduce improvements to avoid instances of cruelty. A totally knee-jerk political decision that sent many producers to the wall and some to suicide. The actions by Treasury and finance officials disputing government figures prior to the last election was a rare example, but yes men generally do not oppose their masters.
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This is so extreme and ridiculous as to be laughable. Whatever Greens may or may not be, you would have to redefine the word “terrorism” to fit them in to that category.
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Certainly the Greens are the most disruptive influence to “getting on with business”.
That is their meme, to disrupt progress and industry by threats, blockades, lawfare, etc. Often using mercenaries from interstate.
Can you name any other human threat to progress and development in North Queensland that comes anywhere near these sort of guerrilla tactics ?
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“that comes anywhere near these sort of guerrilla tactics ?”
Except perhaps union activity !
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It seems you would have us believe that talk of 50 million climate refugees is not terrorism.
News for you. It is terrorism.
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Actually if you include economic destruction in the definition of terrorism, this is a correct statement. India has realised this with including economics as part of it’s security consideration by defining it as Nation Economic Security. It is now going after the economically destructive green extremist groups like Greenpeace and the WWF. I am hopeful that this sensible measure will expand to Australia.
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The longer this festers, the bigger the inquiry. Well done!
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As had been demonstrated repeatedly, it is the attempt to cover-up malfeasance that blows up in the face of those behind the cover-up.
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Exactly.
Despite being told many times not to admit I’d made a mistake because it makes the company look “bad” or “incompetent”, I continue to admit to errors that I or my colleges make. The proof that this is the best course of action is that the vast majority of customers not only come back, but specifically ask for me when they call – they are confident that if I say “not our fault”, I am not bulls**tting.
It’s also much easier to remember who got told what – everyone got the truth, every time!
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@kneel: My experience also. People contact me because they get advice they think is wrong, or they are being lied to. My estimate is 80% of them are right to be suspicious.
Public servants in particular used to be warned about this, but that was back when they were taught the meaning of the term public servant.
No one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes. Mitigate the damage by fixing them when they happen. Once or twice might be maladministration, which might be actionable. Repeatedly doing the same wrong thing will eventually constitute official misconduct, which is a crime and is certainly actionable.
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And well done to
Greg HuntGeorge Christensen.80
Point well made, Sean ! 🙂
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Not really, Griss. My “well done” was directed at Jen & Ken for their tenacity which will be required if any inquiry is to be held.
I’ve met George a few times, a nice guy but very junior in the government. I know there is a stir happening in the back benches over this issue but don’t know the status.
Might ring around today and get back.
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I was just noting how Sean had crossed out Greg Hunt.. the person who should be leading on this issue…. but isn’t.
I thought that was a point that was well made. 🙂
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I don’t because there is a political game and if Hunt led on this issue it would play into the warmists’ hands. They would have a field day which would lead to an ETS.
To win this involves not appeasing the warmists or sceptics, the middle ground is where this will finally be won.
Trojan comes to mind.
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Hey, haven’t I just helped Greg Hunt be the ‘Trojan [Horse]’? So why the adverse reaction? And should you be advertising the ‘Trojan’ stuff or should you be maintaining your previous position, that he he has looked at the matter and there is no evidence?
Being so on the inside, you especially need to be careful. Loose lips sink ships!!
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Go forth, and multiply! Since this nonsense is common to all or many of the meteorological organisations I feel it could be too entrenched,especially so the WMO and it’s incipient fear-mongering back in the early days.Then again: if malfeasance is uncovered ya just never know…..
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It should be a great feeling to get the exposure of the inaccuracies presented by our BOM, a good start and well done to all involved.
Interesting it is a Nationals MP that has made this move as locally I spoke briefly to Nationals candidate for Buninyong Sonia Smith who coming from a rural background raised concerns of keeping accurate weather records also, this was at a public meeting held at Lal Lal by residents concerned by a proposed Wind Farm development and noted was the attendance of Nationals, Liberal and independent Senator Madigan (former DLP) along with the absence of Labor, Greens.
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Today the heat on the NSW midcoast has been sickening, high heat with westerlies always is. And 37 is very high for the first of November, our hottest of this month post 1964 being for the 28th (42.6 in 1980). But I note that, even within the allowed post 1964 record we have been hotter than 37 not just in November but in October and almost as hot in September. (Both record max readings were in the very hot spring of 1965.)
Of course, the real problem now is drought after good August rain. The child in me would like to think that the great conditions (here) of 2007-11 will be extended. People probably felt that way as the Long Drought started to take hold around 1958 after the boom wets of the 1950s. The seventies spoiled us with rain…but look what came straight after.
Because the drought is messing with my plans I can be forgiven a bit of childishness. But by what right do climate experts pretend that Australia has not always been a realm of drought/bare adequacy with occasional runs of good rain? And drier for the half century before WW1. It is the simple truth, born out by simple rainfall figures well over a century old which (fingers crossed) can’t be fudged. How do they manage to ignore how much rain did not fall in Sydney in 1888…or just about everywhere in 1902?
Lastly, if our local temp records around here pre-1965 are in fact accurate, the real horror years for heat were between 1910 and 1919, and that whopper double La Nina 1916-18 didn’t seem to help much locally, either by cooling or raining. The combo of heat and drought in 1915 scares me silly, as do the conditions for winter 1895 or spring 1897. The adult in me says that it can all happen again and there is no reason why it should not be as bad or worse. We still don’t know if the colossal monsoon failures of the 1790s which devasted India and hammered the First and Second Fleeters aren’t our worse conditions in the European period.
It’s called Australia. You get that.
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Once upon a time (1997) …
When it was acceptable to quote historical documents older than 1910 at the BoM …
THE HUNGRY YEARS
Governor Arthur Phillip wrote the following to the Colonial Secretary, the Right Honourable W. W. Grenville on 4 March 1791:
“From June until the present time so little rain has fallen that most of the runs of water in the different parts of the harbour have been dried up for several months, and the run which supplies this settlement is greatly reduced, but still sufficient for all culinary purposes…
I do not think it probable that so dry a season often occurs. Our crops of corn have suffered greatly from the dry weather.”
Phillip was wrong.
Dry years do occur often, and usually accompany El Niño events, as was the case in 1791.
The British settlers had not experienced such a variable climate, and they weren’t prepared.
Their crops failed, and food had to be imported in these “hungry years” from Cape Town.
I searched the letters the various governors of the colony of New South Wales sent to the colonial secretary in London, looking for references to drought and found that since the British arrived in Sydney most severe and widespread droughts have occurred during El Niño events (we know the years when El Niño events occurred, from documentary evidence of heavy rains in Peru).
Another example was from Governor Macquarie who in an El Niño related drought in 1814 had to import food to avoid what he called:
“…the heavy calamity of very great scarcity, both of animal feed and of grain, if not in an actual famine.”
by Dr Neville Nicholls
Quantum screened El Niño – The Boy Child on ABCTV on 16 October 1997.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/elnino/story.htm
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When the Governor referred to corn, he was using the English meaning which is wheat, oats and barley, not maize.
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“El Niño events, as was the case in 1791″…??? A very long shot.
I question the validity of citing El Nino and La Nina in relation to history. The first I recall hearing or seeing these terms was after the 1980 drought. I am quite sure that it would be impossible to produce records to document such an event in 1791.
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Ted, it is just guessing, but the guess this time is based on knowledge of concurrent events in India, namely the monsoon failures and Doji Bara famine 1789-1795 (peaking 1791-2). Doji Bara means “skull famine”. Maybe 11 million dead, too many to bury so the bones were exposed all over the place. If you compare with the description of conditions in Sydney that summer, you can see why some suspect an El Nino. But you have a point. It’s just a guess, and there have been plenty of bad times without El Nino (1939 was a La Nina flanked by neutral years!).
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“I am quite sure that it would be impossible to produce records to document such an event in 1791.”
Not at all. “El Nino” events have always very conspicuous in Peru (that’s why it is called by a spanish name) and are recorded in historical sources back at least to the mid-seventeenth century.
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PS.
WUWT has an excellent post by Bob Tisdale:
The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 19 – Is an El Niño Already Taking Place?
Couldn’t say it any better than:
gary gulrud October 31, 2014 at 8:58 am
Really very well done Mr. Tisdale; the organization, font changes, brevity of points, clear transitions, etc., made for this dilettante, a pleasurable read.
Normally I would not suffer well an articulation of minutiae but your skill with presentation has really come a long way toward reaching the marginal audience.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/31/the-201415-el-nino-part-19-is-an-el-nino-already-taking-place/
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The NSW area you are referring to is similar in many ways to the Highveldt of South Africa.
There is a 10-11 year climate cycle there, it is almost biblical. 10-11 relatively wet years followed by 10-11 relatively dry ones. The problem is the ‘relatively dry’ years can contain a few years of extreme drought. In South Affica, in the summer of 1982/83, the drought was so bad that water had to be pumped back up the Vaal River from the Orange River.
If the same weather cycle happens in NSW, then sadly a relatively dry decade – and therefore relatively hot – has just started for the summer of 2014/15.
Well, that will keep the alarmist community happy, but no one else.
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I cannot be thinking straight this morning.
My apologies, a relatively wet – and therefore relatively cool – decade should/could be about to start in NSW and that will obviously upset alarmists and not please them.
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As a contrast here in Ballarat (central Vic) we had a high of 11°C with rain and hail with tomorrow much the same, what was that old poem about Australia again? 🙂
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We had a nice bit of warmth yesterday in North Central Vic but it’s cold and windy again this evening. We’ve lit the stove again. There was some good rain earlier also. Australia is nothing if not highly variable.
I panic-wrapped my tomato plants tonight….plant them on Melbourne Cup weekend? Ha Ha Ha! Poor tomatoes.
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My apologies for a typo when I said Australia was drier for the half century before WWI. I meant WWII. Hard to determine how dry the 19th century was, but there were some horrific droughts, that of the late 1830s not the longest but maybe the worst (ended by flood, doncha know). Takes a bit to dry up the ‘bidgee, but it happened. When you consider that the conditions for the world’s greatest known inferno (Vic 1851) were separated from the Gundagai flood (that ‘bidgee again!) by just a year and a bit…who knows what to say about that century?
If old thermometers may have been inaccurate and running hot I think it would be a good idea to determine in detail and case by case, as a matter of urgency. Otherwise we might obscure some enormous facts. Dubbo, for example, set all its monthly records (mean max) between 1888 and 1902, with just the one exception (August was hottest in 1982). Three consecutive months, May, June and July, set their records in the hottest recorded year – good old 1902!
What is not in doubt is that most of Dubbo’s driest years were a long time back in the record, something which also applies to my region.
You would think those claiming to be passionately concerned about climate change would be interested in…well, changes of climate. But no.
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This issue should be scrutinised thoroughly and a public debate ensue,but I won’t hold my breath! Science and its adherents to the orthodoxy should be confronted by the dissenters.O how it would be to see BoM manipulators squirm under firm questioning.Good on the member for Dawson for keeping the issue on the front burner;also our hostess and all the others.w
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He spoke well, and I’m sure left a dent on those who know just what’s happening. Others will rant and rave as they have always done. Lets pray somebody with a spine heads the inquiry.
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After the review of NZ temps recently (although accepted, may not be recognised by those in power), I hope that the same review will be done here.
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A paper has just recently been published about how the New Zealand temperature record has been altered. See the Climate Conversations blog for full details. In a comment there I pointed out how inordinately important the few Southern Hemisphere temperature records are to the overall global temperature calculations. I wonder if there exist any comparable records to New Zealand and Australia in South Africa, Argentina, or Chile. Such records would vastly increase our knowledge of the Southern Hemisphere climate history.
Jo, as usual, is absolutely correct. If the so called main stream media would really get involved the house of global warming cards would come tumbling down, down, down. I for one, cannot see what is stopping the media. The body politic of the world is ready to hear the real story. Exposure of the corruption of climate science and the resulting political corruption, and the rampant crony capitalism would sell one hell of a lot of newspapers and pump up a lot of television ratings. Sooner or later the dam will break. More then one enterprising reporter and editor must realize that if they exposed this fraud they would become as famous as Woodward and Bernstein. When the dam breaks the scattered few, Jo Nova, Anthony Watts, Judith Curry the M&M boys, Pointman, Bishop Hill and countless others will receive the credit they are more then due. So will the true giants of science, Roy Spencer, S. Fred Singer, Richard Linsien, (sp?), Dr.s
Hopper and Dysan at Harvard and again countless others. Dr. Judith Curry could be on both lists. Lies cannot be sustained forever; the truth will out.
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Well, finally I’ve gotten out of purgatory for using the forbidden word fruit fly.
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The paper on New Zealand’s temperature record is reported at Bishop Hill. The abstract says
It would seem a difference in methodology can make a three-fold difference in the result.
A Reanalysis of Long-Term Surface Air Temperature Trends in New Zealand : C. R. de Freitas, M. O. Dedekind, B. E. Brill
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The media don’t tend to ask any hard questions because it is easier to sell a story by pandering to superficial morality than to question such morality. And many journalists see their vocation as supporting moral issues, so they tend to unthinkingly report moral issues such as climate change. It never occurs to them that morality can be used as a cloak for self-interest and distortion.
The ‘experts’ at the BOM don’t question their own methodology because they are paid to support such a methodology in the first place. If they were overly sceptical about it, they wouldn’t be asked to review it in the first place. They tow the line to keep their jobs and advance their careers.
There are gatekeepers within all governments, including in research, who see their role as filtering out divergent points of view, which they perceive as being contrary to the proper role of government, or government research, when in fact these divergent points of view are often there to keep balance and perspective. Over time, people retire, new movements take over, and the BOM climate team has become a politicised organisation.
Nobody on the ‘expert’ team probably even bothered to look at historical records or historical reports. They are statisticians, who tow the party line and deliver an outcome that they are expected to deliver, ‘consistent with other international organisations’ ….’following standard practice’…. and all that crap. (Note the pressure to conform in the language itself, and the absurd lack of sceptical awareness?).
This is how they get their jobs and get promoted.
What did Al Gore say, ‘its difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on them not understanding it’. They never seem to realised this also applies to themselves.
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This is all too true. Hunting through Trove, the National Library and the Archives quicky brings to light how much data has been completely ignored.
Books are covered in dust with pages stuck together, trove pages are not corrected to the text and archives are marked “yet to be examined”.
Lance Pidgeon.
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I question whether climate change is a moral issue.
It’s debatable whether, even if AGW or even CAGW is real, it is moral for us to do anything about it. We may not be able to do anything. We may make things worse. Certainly we have no moral imperative to cover the landscape in bird mincers, stop cows from farting, buy overpriced hybrid cars, or do any of the other things so beloved of climate activists, none of which have been shown to be effective or, in some cases, are even meant to be effective. Much of it is like lighting a candle for the Ebola victims – purely symbolic, unless you believe God (or the Goddess Gaia) is listening.
We have allowed people like the activists to change the debate. They now control the meaning of words like “moral” and “ethical” to the point where we hardly remember what they used to mean. Likewise “left-wing”, which no longer has anything to do with ownership of the means of production. They’re trying to do the same to “evidence”, but that’s a toughy. Too many people need it in it’s original meaning to do things like, for instance, make aeroplanes fly.
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FWIW …
Sinclair Davidson had a post @catallaxyfiles; Damn statisticians (and accountants)
Quote: “I suppose an inquiry into the Bureau of Meteorology is not a bad thing, but I’m wondering what George Christensen hopes to find?
He seems to be suggesting that any process involving statistics (or accounting) is hopelessly compromised.
Now that is simply not true.
He also seems to think that an inquiry will show the Bureau is up to no good.
So the community would learn a lot of the limitations of aggregate data and the uses of those data, but not much about the intentions of the Bureau of Meteorology.
The overall lesson would be that we don’t know as much as we think we do – certainly not enough to be spending billions of dollars on direct action, or taxing carbon emissions and that the Bureau should stick to forecasting the weather.”
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2014/10/30/damn-statisticians-and-accountants/
. . .
> Not necessarily my angle, but, another angle to consider, FWIW.
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YES!!
Well said Jo!!!
Because THAT is the big problem. You’ve hit the nail squarely on the head.
Only the blogosphere with the likes of you, Ken, Jennifer, ChiefIO, SteveGoddard, and a few others are reporting and investigating further this crime against the public. “The Media — the gatekeepers” are catatonically asleep, whilst acting as brain-dead regurgitators (and I don’t mean the band from Brisbane) of any and all of the climate propaganda that falls their way.
It is to be expected, when most (if not all) of the current bunch of wanna-be-celebrity reporters, pundits, and TV and radio commentators just recopy the dross from the climate shills’ press office. And the bloodless editors let it pass. They never have a thought, or any questions about the content of these so-called academic papers or their
projectionspredictions, or any knowledge or reference to ‘inconvenient’ historical climate records.IMO investigative reporting by the MSM died about 30 years ago, and all that is left is the rotting corpse of real reporting, and the stinking zombies that run it.
It would be nice to think that the press, the MSM, will pick up the gauntlet, but I know they will not, as they are a bunch of lily-livered lefties, all products of the same leftie media studies courses. They’re all cut from the same cookie-cutter, they all just echo the same CAGW din. Just empty-headed vassals…
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Human greed will cause some of these brain dead journalists to report the truth.
30
It has taken a long time!
10
It’s far too complex a subject for the public to comprehend in their nightly MSM news grab.
Therefore no votes in this, so no enquiry. Move along folks.
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Tom
You said of the media
Might I suggest a further edit?
Statements made stem from beliefs, not from rigorous modelling. Like astrological “predictions” they are stated in such a vague way that they cannot be later found to be wrong. What is more, if there is any evaluation of these prophesies after to event, it is to explain why reality did not conform to the models, not why the predictions failed to conform to reality. The models hold a higher form of truth, so they cannot be wrong. They should therefore be labelled prophesies.
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” “The Media — the gatekeepers” are catatonically asleep, whilst acting as brain-dead regurgitators (and I don’t mean the band from Brisbane) of any and all of the climate propaganda that falls their way.”
The only way to get your own opinion out there, is to follow the process – do like Harold Scruby did.
1) create an “interest group”
2) send press releases to the media regularly
3) state strong opinions and give them a “sound bite”
After several months of doing this, they will start to quote you – initially just one liners. Then, when your name and the name of your interest group is more familiar, you will be presented as an “expert” or “community leader on the issue” – it doesn’t matter if you *are* an expert or not, and neither does your group need to be large or particularly representative, you just need to *sound* like you are, and to state strong, quotable opinions as “sound bites”.
If you doubt this can work, dig into Scruby’s “Pedestrian Council” to see who’s a “member” etc, and then consider how much sway he has and how much media coverage he gets on his “main issue”. He got this by pandering to the laziness of reporters, not because he has a large support base, or because he made good predictions. He simply “kept at them” and made their life easier – they can say “look Boss, I got an alternative view here” and hand over the press release on important sounding letterhead.
Worked for the greens and for Scruby – it can work for “deniers” too. As much as I like this blog and appreciate her efforts, Jo may have more luck making actual change happen by following this path – sorry Jo, but your name is “out there” already, if you want to make a bigger difference, you need to capitalise on this NOW. Keep your name and opinions in their (reporters) faces, keep it short, keep it simple, give them a quote, give them a “group name” and DON’T STOP doing it.
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I agree that a dysfunctional (in terms of biased an inacurrate reporting) Media is a major problem and I think this arises from two trends. The first is the reduction in the number of news outlets and amalgamation of the survivors into large corporate structures. Although ownership and control is more than somewhat Byzantine, for most people there is no real MSM alternative to Fairfax or Murdock in Australia. I think this problem is well recognised and not controversial, e.g. http://theconversation.com/australias-lamentable-media-diversity-needs-a-regulatory-fix-12942
The ABC (and SBS) should be alternatives, but as we know, the ABC is at best a Fairfax wannabe and at worst a crèche for journalist graduates that can’t get a job elsewhere. The internet provides some diversity, but mostly for niche controversies such as climate change. I haven’t found any single site with reliable general news reporting in Australia and even sampling from a half dozen or more international sites leaves me unsure of what is going on in the world.
The second trend is the decline in quality of reporting and editing. Although this is not independent of the duopoly problem, I think the primary cause is academic journalism. I don’t have any data to support this, but my hypothesis is that as reporters and editors have increasingly become the products of tertiary degrees in journalism (and other social sciences), the quality of their reporting has decline in terms of fairness and balance, errors in fact, and general competence in grammar and syntax. I admit that this hypothesis has been generated by getting most of my news from the ABC on-line (shockingly poor in each of the above categories) and by occasional reading of Tim Blair, who loves to point out the poor literacy and ignorance of Fairfax ‘reporters’.
I think that any fight against the duopoly is unlikely to succeed in the short-term. It may make more sense to wait for one or both to implode or wither and then break them up. However, I do not understand why the Abbott Government is not moving to restore balance at the ABC. Australians deserve a fair and balanced reporting of the news from the public broadcaster and it is a disgrace that we don’t have it.
00
This is great news. I’ll send George Christensen copies of relevant papers to supplement the emails and letters already sent to many of Australia’s politicians. All natural climate cycles correlate exceptionally well with the inverted plot of the scalar sum of the angular momentum of the Sun and all the planets. The sensitivity to carbon dioxide doubling is less than ±0.1 degree of warming or cooling, most probably cooling.
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Hi Physicist,
I’m interested in your sensitivity figure.
Do you have any links?
Good luck with the mail out.
50
We have to be clear
The data recorded from Stevenson boxes is correct, even if it is 100+ years old.
There is no reason to discard correct data.
If there is a problem with the data (box moved, urban heat effect,…) chances are that the recorded results will be higher than expected, not lower. There is no reason to expect that the real temperature is higher than that measured. Is there?
So firstly raw data should show more warming than expected, simply because man’s habit of putting concrete and building nearby increases the urban heat effect.
Then if simply moving a box can produce a significant error, significant enough to discard the data, then any measurement is inaccurate to that extent. Otherwise, who can pick the perfect position for measurement?
It would be great to have a picture of Australia’s ‘average’ temperature history, without any homogenization, elimination, substitution, interpolation or weighting.
The fact is, the correction for urban heating always seems to produce more heating when you would expect the lowering of measured temperatures. How is that possible? There is something very wrong with the whole process of ‘homogenization’.
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Interesting thought on the recording location.
At first one spot is as good as another. They use the excuse of creating a continuous record out of two sites, even though those two are very close to one another (ie: moved) to add an adjustment to the older record.
But you are right of course. Pick any location in a field and you’ll get different temperatures.
So what happens if we take everything that we’ve got, accept that they are all fixed location and fixed duration records (being individual records instead of continuous records). Process that over a global average and see what that gives us.
30
BOM has been naughty by tampering with “Australia’s real thermometer temperature record” from sites all over Australia to make the past climate in Australia appear cooler for the obvious purpose of promoting the “AGW Belief System”. This is aBOMinable and unscientific, and needs a full-scale inquiry as proposed by the Liberal MP for Tangney (Dr Dennis Jensen) and the National MP for Dawson (George Christensen). Please note that no ALP or Greens MP’s have questioned BOM about this matter for obvious reason – their policies are clearly “Warmist” and promote the “CAGW scare mongering” to the Australian electorate.
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You do realise, that any inquiry will probably be done by a Select Committee, and that the Greens will move Heaven and Earth, to sit on that Committee so they can influence the questioning and taking of evidence?
100
So true.
20
These Australian senate committees are toothless tigers, a poor reflection of the powerful US committees. However they can force attendance and can extract answers which the public cannot but can also descend into high farce as with the recent Green committee into Operation Sovereign Borders.
A real concern is that the Environment minister and his secretary appear to be simultaneously warmists and defenders of the BOM. Their job is to secure the swinging Green voters, not infuriate the Labor/Green public service establishment. From the ABC to the BOM to CSIRO, this government is careful not to put these powerful bodies more offside than they are. This is a shame as they could not be more Green/Labor than they are but exposing any fraud, their political influence would be diminished and a political advantage. An Australian ClimateGate would actually help expose the worldwide political agenda in fudging the climate facts.
50
Cutting the record short does not just make it appear cooler.
As can be seen from the link below the weather back in 1896 was far more extreme. So extreme that even though hundreds died in the heat wave, the most notable weather events were tropical cyclone Sigma and the severe frosts.
The idea that CO2 warming is even bad or causes more extreme weather is more wrong that the previous idea that it would cause runaway thermogeddon.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/76749389?zoomlevel=6
As for the BoM documenting anything in a misleading way, they say Boulia airport weather station (site No 038003) opened decades before the Wright bros took to the air. Is this proof of alien contact?
80
An interesting article you have linked there Siliggy. Thank you.
According to BoM’s ‘official records’ for Sydney they state that the hottest day ‘ever’ was 45.8C on the 18/01/2014. In the article above, there is this observation:
“On the 21st [Jan, 1896], 119degs. was the shade temperature in Sydney, and deaths were recorded from heat apoplexy.”
119F = 48.3C
60
That’s rubbish. It was 46 on New Years Day 2006 in Sydney. It was so hot my family and I went to the cinema to see the Lion Witch and The Wardrobe. When we got home we saw the weather on tv and that was the temperature they were touting in the western suburbs.
10
For those following the saga, I show that the minimum temperatures in the ACORN-SAT Rutherglen and Deniliquin have, in fact, been altered from a trend consistent with their neighbouring stations, to being significantly warmer and completely inconsistent with their neighbours. http://landshape.org/enm/bom-copies-me-inadequately/ I am putting each of the stations in ACORN-SAT through a quality control test and the BoM are trying to defend them.
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I find the same, and those two are consistent with each other, and with the raw data at nearby Mildura, Kerang and Nhill. The conclusion is obvious, the raw data is already High Quality, indicating the actual climate history of that region.
30
Yes, What I expect to find are bad ACORN series in that region because the radius of comparison has been too large, coercing pockets of stable temps towards uniform warming. But there may be other problems that turn up as I check more of them.
40
I think ACORN-SAT is dead in the water, but the only thing that will sink it is a better alternative, so I no longer bother looking at what it says. The better alternative can be constructed directly from raw data, but considerable checking is required to eliminate a small number of clear errors. I’m doing this checking simply by plotting multiple records on the same graph.
00
You might want to take a look at Tibooburra Post Office. It has a long record to 1886 and is still going. Just looking at the data myself and noticed that GISS has mean monthly temperatures for 1942-1950 but the minimum temperatures are missing from the BOM data base.
They also seem to ignore data with two days in a row that are the same. November in 1944 had four days at 111°F (110.5°F= 43.6°C) according to Trove (16-19). BOM has the maximum at 41.1, 43.9, _, 43.3. Putting your mouse over the italics shows “2 days” so two extreme heat days in 1944 get left off of the mean that are 8°C higher than the mean for the month (plus others) but we will never hear the end of it if that record is broken.
10
Well, well.
No wonder the Greens want sceptics to vote informal.
90
Yes, voting informal means your votes goes to preferences. Which is usually the Greens.
50
Video. Youtube:
12.51
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ge9Nwu8MxE
Published on Jul 23, 2014
Dr Jennifer Marohasy exposes the data ‘adjustments’ that are endemic at the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and at Berkeley University.
In concert with Dr Jensen, she has asked the BOM to justify their data ‘adjustments’ and have released a paper on the subject, it can be found here;
http://jennifermarohasy.com/wp-conten…
and here;
http://jennifermarohasy.com/
Filmed at the 9th ICCC conferance in Las Vegas 10th July, 2014.
The 9th International Conference on Climate Change
80
The hand wringers from all quarters, ranging from the soft and squishy, limp wristed politicians (2 Billion Direct Action anyone?) through to the hard nosed rent seekers and their ravings that are not only bereft of credibility and occasionally verge of the edge of lunacy, all the science and heaven forbid, real world observations fail to hit any nerve. Perhaps brain dead is a theme, as is the notion that there is an abundance of many well intentioned people who are educated, appointed and elected to high positions of authority, but equally, it’s apparently also well beyond their level of intelligence.
As the threshold of two decades approaches, there has been no statistically observable warming, and a rising concern from the more learned and wise amongst us is warning that we may instead be heading into a definite cooling trend. I listened with some disbelief (but not at the blatant hypocrisy) when, on their ABC, in the Country Hour, someone from the warmist CSIRO (some might say alarmist with mates in the BOM) warning of heavy frosts and very cold weather (not climate!) conditions trending through to 2030-2035, as a warning for farmers. However, the “cause” of the cooling was the same culprit as warming: anthropogenic derived greenhouse gases. Perhaps a classic two bob each way bet. Follow the money.
What always strikes me is the disconnect with the whole theory of AGW: “carbon emissions” (CO2 being the primary culprit), “cause” temperature to rise to a point where the elusive “environment” will “overheat”, resulting in “irreversible damage”. However, punitive never ending taxes and other payments by inumerable means will allegedly offset the cause by reducing “carbon emissions”, and all will be well again! Or some other fairy tale of similar flavour. Surely this IS the central point the argument should be hammered on? There is no justification for avoiding the reality and adding to the gross waste.
The theory and hypothesis of AGW is proven to be invalid, so why the persistence (other than might be suggestive of illegitimate personal gain) with the flawed theory? Just how long does the absolute waste (e.g. “Direct Action”) have to continue before the collective senses arise and put a stop to it? Do we need to experience record snow seasons, failed crops with frost and cold temperatures and commensurate lowering of agricultural productivity and economic delivery, escalating heating costs, etc, before the collective “penny drops”? Ignorance does not always lead to bliss, and at another level it’s gross negligence.
Does CSIRO research into genetic selection of crops for frost tolerance fall into the criteria for “Direct Action” funding? Is that also two bob each way? And the outcome will be the same, a waste of money except for those on the receiving end. That might well include the bankster and finance industry: the primary controllers of government. A lucky country, perhaps; an intelligent country, questionable? A heavy duty investigation (not another enquiry) into the science and the politics might result in severe discomfort to many with much to lose, but surely that is one of the consequences of the truth being pursued, and isn’t that what science is really all about? If the hard facts don’t fit the theory, the theory is invalid, not the reality. The MSM are a primary part of the problem and individuals should (also) be held accountable. All the rest is diversionary and irrelevant.
60
Good luck with fixing the media. It doesn’t seem to have changed that much…
In a toast before the New York Press Club in 1880, John Swinton, the former Chief of Staff at the New York Sun, made this confession:
“There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.
If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes. “
60
Although the hiatus in global warming continues the media doesn’t take much notice, the government agencies even less and the politicians, with a few exceptions, none at all having passed the direct action bill to ostensibly to fight non existing global warming.
Seriously, what hope is there of an independent enquiry which would expose the dogma, changing of records, deletion of past data etc. The AGW industry still has a lot momentum and many followers who believe in it as well as those who profit from it.
40
The science is far too complex for the average voter via their MSN news scan. That means no vote potential = no enquiry.
20
A David Brewer makes an excellent comment on Warwick Hughes blog with reference to temp adjustments by NIWA. A very good observation and logical argument. Find it here
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=3366#comments
20
You will have noticed that the BOM with a rural site showing no rise in temperature, or even a slight fall, and a nearby(?) city with recorded rising temperatures, always HOMOGENISES the rural site upwards. WHY?
40
Im happy to sit on that commission.
60
The environment in politics has been a football since it started forty years ago. Of course its role is officially to protect the environment but its real role is to secure environment votes and protect the BOM in this portfolio
So its name has changed amazingly and it has been a parking spot for many aspiring leaders or troublesome ones, but the name?
1971 Howson Department of the Environment, Aborigines and the Arts
Whitlam
Cass Environment and Conservation
Cairns Environment
Greenwood Environment, Housing and Community Development
Webster Science and Environment
Ellicott Home Affairs and Environment
Cohen Arts, Heritage and the Environment
Brown Arts, Sports, The Environment, Tourism and Territories
Hill Environment and Heritage.
Turnbull Environment and Water Resources
Garrett Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts
Burke Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities
Hunt Environment
and with the large Green vote especially in SA, it is finally just Environment again, as in the days of Jim Cairns. However the defence of examination by international peers is a script straight out of Yes Minister.
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The key point about audits is the people who conduct them (witness the “inquiries” conducted into Climategate).
It’s almost “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes”. (Who guards the guards themselves)
40
About bloody time! And then the ABC, perhaps. And (Oh sooth my quivering heart) we require journalists to be able to logically defend the opinions they espouse as Gospel! When that is organised, we arrange to have teachers who can read, write and think both logically and ethically, by which stage it is only logical that politicians and other public servants learn to defer to the interests of their public, not to their political masters. It would be called civilisation – sustainable civilisation.
Wake up Speedy, you’re dreaming!
Cheers,
Speedy
30
Keep that dream, Speedy, keep that dream! Don’t let it go for anything. Every accomplishment begins with the dream. Why not that one?
40
One thing i have always wondered about. Cities , day and night, run much hotter than average.
Acu weather-
“Temperature differences in urban areas can be anywhere from 10 to 20 degrees higher than a rural area in the evening”
We are told that wildlife etc will not be able to adapt and yet Trees, flowers , birds and bees have adapted beautifully to this much hotter environment, indeed bees thrive-
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jun/23/can-cities-save-bees
“But surprisingly, the industry has discovered that bees kept in urban areas are healthier and produce better honey In rural areas, bees are victims of the disappearance of wild flowers, caused by excessive monoculture and the misuse of pesticides. As a consequence, it is more and more common to see wild swarms finding refuge in cities, and beekeepers are regularly deciding to move their hives to city gardens and parks”
So with an expected, possible, average two degree rise in 50- 100 years I see no reason why there should be a problem.
50
I suspect that your BOM is using the same techniques to change current and past tempreatures as BEST. You will find 4 years of these arguments at http://wattsupwiththat.com/category/berkeley-earth-surface-temperature/page/2/. Good luck, it looks like you took control of your government as I hope the U.S. will in four days time.
Why BEST Will Not Settle the Climate Debate
By S. Fred Singer (first published in American Thinker) Global warming has re-entered public consciousness in recent days, partly because of the buzz surrounding the release of warming results from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project. The reaction of the “warmistas” has been jubilant, yet hilariously wrong. Will they ever learn?
An uncorrected assumption in BEST’s station quality paper
I noted with a chuckle today, this statement over at the California Academy of Sciences “Climate Change Blog”: I think that we all need to be careful of not falling into the unqualified and inexpert morass characterized by vessels like Anthony Watts. – Peter D. Roopnarine Seeing that compliment, and since we are having so?.
40
Nice but so far it’s all just noise. I’d be impressed when a leading AGW scam artist is taken to court, charged with fraud and committed to prison. Until that happens, the rest is just so much huff and puff, and the scam will continue.
20
It is very hard to prove fraud, especially when the alleged perpetrator can call many colleagues as witnesses, who will all state under oath that the methods were accepted professional practice.
The change has to come from the politicians, who can realign budgets, and maximum staffing levels in the Public Service, so that it becomes less lucrative for people to work in this area.
The current situation is that, companies who stand to profit from climate research are inclined to make funding donations to political parties and lobby groups who have the ability to “persuade” the Government to fund the research from general taxation. Everybody pays, and a few benefit. Very nice, if you are on the receiving end. But it relies on the politicians “being persuaded”.
However, if the Chief Executive of the BOM were to get a budget cut in the area of climate research, and still wanted to continue, then they would have to find the money someplace else.
If outside sources were to offer research grant funding, to cover the short-fall the following year, the Government could lower the budget funding accordingly. Eventually, a state is reached where those who seek to profit from “climate change” must end up paying for all the research. And we end up with a pseudo-commercial relationship, where the general public does not have to pay. At least, not directly.
The big losers in such an arrangement are the political parties and lobby groups who are, presumably, clipping the ticket in the original arrangement.
All hypothetical of course, based on my observation of the behaviours of those involved.
61
Five stars, thumbs up, hip hip and hooray! to Jo and the others fighting for a BOM investigation/audit. What wonderful work. Please keep it up.
With hope, someday the USA will do likewise.
60
Meanwhile the AGE resists the two major points in their latest blatant nonsense.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/warmist_piece_missing_the_only_two_figures_that_count/
20
Any “internal” review of the BoM will be slooow and likely to result in a whitewash, as happened in the UK with the “Climategate” inquiry. The Team will close ranks and little will be achieved.
The best strategy may be to divide and conquer. Provide support to the meteorology part of the BoM, they do an excellent job of providing all the “raw” data via their website. The problem lies with the Climatology group, who probably are viewed as key marketeers, ensuring that the Gravy Train is not derailed.
The best way to deal with the Climatology group may be to produce alternative (better) versions of the climate history of Australia, ideally published in peer reviewed journals.
Homogenisation of temperature data is not necessary in Australia thanks to the hundreds of stations, especially in the South East. The raw data (after removal of clear errors and step changes) can simply be “averaged” (with care), any perturbations due to station moves will average out to be insignificant.
I find that station histories have a great deal of regional consistency back to 1900, but before that date they diverge, such that no clear climatology can be deduced. Preliminary conclusions:
* Climate history can be deduced with near-certainty from 1900 onwards
* Secular trends are minimal, nowhere near as large as the propaganda figures produced by the BoM
* Sufficient High Quality datasets can be derived quite easily by splicing together selected station histories, with in-filling of gaps from nearby stations (with offsets), such that the results are good approximations to the actual climate signal for the region in question
40
My 1990 encyclopedia says the earth’s average temperature is 15 degrees C.
The 2010 version says it’s 15 degrees C.
Can someone please explain this +/- 7% cooling?
50
My 1990 encyclopedia thinks the Earth’s average temperature was 15 degrees C.
The 2010 version thinks it’s 14 degrees C.
Can someone please explain how this +/- 7% cooling came about?
20
Round-off error. The real value is probably in region of 14.499 degrees C, give or take one-thousandth of a degree.
30
At a guess; the encyclopedia understood that putting 3 decimal places behind a temperature figure wasn’t terribly meaningful to the casual reader. And encyclopedia isn’t a scientific book, it’s a general book covering the most interesting subjects in sufficient detail to be useful.
00
Greg,
I wasn’t actually being terribly serious, it you know what I mean.
It struck me as funny, that a tiny round-off error could actually lead to a 7% inconsistency between two editions, of the same encyclopedia, especially since the trend is the “wrong way” as far as the alarmists are concerned.
Forgive me. I live in a world of esoteric reasoning, have few friends, and I don’t get out much.
00
Jo,
How short a time ago was it that no one would even make such a speech? So someone is paying attention — finally. It may take several to sit up and take notice but eventually too many MPs will decide they’ve had enough and the house of cards will come down.
The score sheet looks about like this:
Jo Nova: 1
BOM: 0
Parliament: 1/2 +
Looks like a good score considering how much work you and others have done to get here and the terrible starting odds against you.
30
it is now sunday 2nd november and the George Christensen story still hasn’t been picked up by ABC! shut them down.
guardian can do as it likes, but it put out this nonsense, with quotes from Karoly & the like-minded, yet can’t report Christensen:
29 Oct: Guardian: Oliver Milman: Greenhouse gases made hottest year on record ‘2,000 times more likely’
Research into unusually high temperatures across Australia in 2013 found that the peaks would have been almost impossible without the influence of man-made climate change
Australia has warmed by nearly 1C over the past century. The BoM and CSIRO have estimated that Australia could warm by as much as 5C by 2070, if current high emissions levels aren’t dramatically slashed
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/30/greenhouse-gases-made-hottest-year-on-record-2000-times-more-likely
20
I share your angst, but until we throw the Trots out of the ABC our message won’t be heard with clarity. Fairfax and the Guardian can pump out Klimatariat propaganda until the cows come home, but aunty’s sins of omission are a disgrace.
20
prepare for yet another MSM orgy of GAGW scarey stories:
1 Nov: UK Telegraph: Emily Gosden: UN climate change report to warn of ‘severe, pervasive’ effects of global warming
Flooding, dangerous heatwaves, ill health and violent conflicts among likely risks if the world keeps burning fossil fuels at current rates, IPCC expected to say
The world is on course to experience “severe and pervasive” negative impacts from climate change unless it takes rapid action to slash its greenhouse gas emissions, a major UN report is expected to warn on Sunday.
Flooding, dangerous heatwaves, ill health and violent conflicts are among the likely risks if temperatures exceed 2C above pre-industrial levels, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will say.
Yet on current trends, continued burning of fossil fuels could see temperature increases of between 3.7C and 4.8C by the end of the century, the report warns, according to a draft seen by the Telegraph…
The final document, which has been agreed line-by-line by international government officials at a summit in Copenhagen over the past week, is intended to provide the clearest and most concise summary yet of the widely-agreed scientific evidence on climate change…
Richard Black, director of the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, said the key question for those finalising the IPCC report was “what to say about the elephant in the room… that if the computer model projections are right, keeping global warming below 2C basically means ending fossil fuel use well before today’s children start drawing their pensions”…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/11202987/UN-climate-change-report-to-warn-of-severe-pervasive-effects-of-global-warming.html
20
Becoming abundantly clear: the climate change regime for both Australia and New Zealand, 1800s to 1900s to 2000s was simply – warm => cool => warm.
20
Lean says it’s even worse than the IPCC report suggests!
31 Oct: UK Telegraph: Geoffrey Lean: Danger: irreversible climate-change forces at work
The new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that irreversible consequences could be averted, at surprisingly little cost, if action is taken without delay
Campaigners against global warming and their bitterest opponents are united by one word this weekend: irreversible.
It appears 48 times in the draft of the most important report so far on climate change, being finalised today in Copenhagen, signifying that unless the world takes speedy action to curb emissions of greenhouse gases their dire effect will last for thousands of years, at least…
Yet – even before publication, it is badly out of date – because it results from a cumbersome six-year process, which cannot take recent scientific findings into account. One of the most worrying studies to date, suggesting that the Western Antarctic ice sheet may have begun irreversible collapse – eventually raising sea levels worldwide by some 10 feet – was only published last May, far too late to be considered…
The panel urgently needs to get up to speed, issuing regular, perhaps annual, updates on the science…
Facekinis and fashion masks for China’s ‘airpocalypse’
Stand by for the latest in haute couture – the pollution mask. Designer Yin Peng has just paraded them as part of his spring/summer 2015 collection during China Fashion Week in Beijing.
It’s dressing for the “airpocalypse”, as the Chinese call the ever-more-frequent days when tiny particulates exceed maximum World Health Organisation standards by some twentyfold…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/11201482/Danger-irreversible-climate-change-forces-at-work.html
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31 Oct: Guardian: Adam Vaughan: IPCC report: six graphs that show how we’re changing the world’s climateA draft of the synthesis report, seen by the Guardian, shows it will repeat the message that there’s no doubt over our role in global warming: “Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history,” it says.
It doesn’t mince words on the repercussions: “The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.”…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/31/ipcc-report-six-graphs-that-show-how-were-changing-the-worlds-climate
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***and then they RESTED!!!! lol.
2 Nov: SBS: AAP: UN panel adopts landmark climate report
The United Nations’ expert panel on climate science says there’s “conclusive evidence” that humans are altering the Earth’s climate system.
A report, which combines the findings of three earlier reports, was adopted after all-night talks that went on until 5am on Saturday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The scientists and government representatives on the panel, who jointly approved the document line by line, then ***rested for a few hours before resuming the session in Copenhagen to finish the document…
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says scientists are now 95 per cent certain that the buildup of such gases from the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation is the main cause of warming seen since the middle of the 20th century…
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/11/02/un-panel-adopts-landmark-climate-report
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behind the rhetoric of the report:
31 Oct: Reuters: Alister Doyle: U.N. talks of tough global climate targets, vague on national action
“Somewhere after the middle of this century human-caused emissions will have to come down to a net zero,” Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Programme, told Reuters…
Governments feel more comfortable setting long-term goals for the planet than targets for themselves. “No one wants to admit how much they will have to do,” to meet the 2C target, said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists…
GOING TO ZERO…
One chapter of the earlier reports indicates rich nations would have to halve their emissions by 2030 from current levels to get on track for 2C. Asian nations as a group would need to cap their soaring emissions around current levels by 2030.
Few governments are considering such tough goals…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/31/us-climatechange-talks-idUSKBN0IK1F020141031
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How easy it is to just say this, and then for a journalist to write it.
You would surely think that the person who said it, and then the person who wrote it might actually think about that for even a fleeting minute.
Emissions back to ZERO.
No real electrical power, literally, and if you think about it, that even cancels out wind power for all the steel and concrete in those towers.
Yeah, some might say, that’s all okay, we can live with closing down those power plants, said by people who have no idea whatsoever.
Cities, not just the large ones, but all of them, ghost zones. No trains. No hospitals, because even their backup power is emissions intensive. No refrigeration, because of the electricity involved and also the refrigerant gases involved. And on and on and on.
Yeah, some might say, with a little trepidation now, that’s all okay, we can live with that, said by people who have no idea whatsoever.
But ZERO emissions.
No mining at all, not just coal and iron ore, but for anything dug out of the ground.
No Industry, steel, etc.
Think of all the jobs associated with just Mining and Industry.
Yeah, some might say, that’s all okay, we can live with that, said by people who have no idea whatsoever.
But Zero emissions.
No food production or secondary processes involved with that.
And the killer.
Zero emissions.
No cars trucks, buses, transport, any vehicles of any type.
“Hey, wait a minute mate, you’re not taking away my car.”
Zero emissions.
It will NEVER happen.
NEVER.
Tony.
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Head of the U.N. Environment Program.
Pretty much says it all.
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I really want to see how they are even going to stop China continuing to increase it much-needed bio-sphere CO2 emissions.
These guys want to doom the Earth to an unnatural demise.
They want to suffocate the world’s plant life !!
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Tony:
they may get a taste of their medicine anyway.
http://irishenergyblog.blogspot.ie/2014/10/news-from-germany-and-uk.html
The German Association for plant construction this month have issued a warning about the damage that increased cycling of power plants, due to balancing of renewables on the grid, is having on generation equipment :
This rapid increase in renewables in recent years in Germany has put operational demands on existing gas and coal power plants, which are simply not technically designed for it. The plants must be more frequently switched on and off in order to be able to compensate for the fluctuations, which are associated with electrical inputs from sun, wind and water. The degree of load change is partly more than 200 times higher than that permissible for the power station…
But can they rely on “renewables”?
http://irishenergyblog.blogspot.ie/2014/09/no-wind-day-september-9th-2014.html
No Wind Day – September 9th, 2014
As I sit here typing away, wind generation is providing 50MW of power from about 2000MW of wind turbines. In the UK, it is providing 0.18GW or 180MW of power. Given that the UK has roughly 11GW of installed wind capacity, thats a tiny amount, 0.47 of a percent. In total, between the UK and Ireland, wind energy is generating 230MW from 130,000 MW of equipment. It was even worse earlier today when …
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back to reality:
1 Nov: Bloomberg: Heesu Lee: Shale Boom Redraws Oil Routes as Alaskans Ship to Korea
The Asian nation, which relies on the Middle East for about 86 percent of its oil imports, is benefiting as new output from Texas to North Dakota displaces the crudes that fed U.S. refineries for decades. South Korea received this month a shipment of Alaskan oil for the first time in at least eight years and may buy more, the importing company said. The country was one of the first to receive a cargo of the ultralight U.S. oil known as condensate after export rules were eased.
The U.S. shale revolution has driven oil output to the highest in more than three decades, reducing America’s need for overseas purchases and sinking global prices into a bear market…
The hunt for more oil suppliers goes on. Crude may flow from Canada to South Korea after the two signed a free-trade agreement in September that removed a 3 percent import duty on oil. JBC Energy GmbH said last month the Asian nation’s refiners were beginning to show interest in Canadian grades…
“It is because of huge demand for crude in Korea,” International Energy Agency Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven said Oct. 27 in Singapore…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-30/shale-boom-redraws-oil-routes-as-alaskans-ship-to-korea.html
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LOL:
31 Oct: Bloomberg: Eric Roston: Enough With the Fat Climate Change Reports Already
The United Nations in 1988 entrusted the future of civilization to a loosely confederated, all-volunteer band of Earth scientists and economists. This coterie has a long, bureaucratic name with no memorable abbreviation. It was charged with taking the temperature, so to speak, of the whole planet and advising governments on how big a problem they had their hands. Turns out, a big problem.
Early next week the group drops the last of four massive tomes that together make up its fifth report in a quarter century. In essence, next week’s edition is a synthesis of the thousands of pages of synthesis that started coming out last fall.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s scientific reviews land every six years or so, like the anvil that falls on Wile E. Coyote’s head from time to time…
The question is, do we really need these massive reports, with little new transformative information, that very few people read?…
Here are three ways modern technology could help the IPCC get you to pay attention.
Turn on, Log in, Drop by…
Front of Mind and Urgent. Every Six Years…
Hire Web Developers…
There’s now a cottage industry of websites that explain the main aspects of climate change, from governments (NASA or NOAA), nonprofits (Climate Central) and individuals (Skeptical Science). Researchers at Yale, Columbia, George Mason and elsewhere have learned a lot about effective and ineffective ways to inform people that the world is heating up. It’s easier than ever to find scientific speech translated into human speech.
And that’s great, because as it turns out, the way scientists conduct their research has very little to do with the way people form opinions about it.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-30/enough-with-the-fat-climate-change-reports-already.html
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“Improve the journalists”.
Ha ha ha oh you do dream on.
The rise of the new media (and especially blogs, like this) are something that journos really dislike. You pick this up because there are snide and sniping attacks, usually, subtle, that appear especially in the print media. I seem to spot them about once a month.
I think what’s happened is that the journos feel terribly under threat by electronic communications, and blogging software that allows ANYONE to express an opinion. Once upon a time, journos were the gatekeepers of what we could read. They were the opinion-makers, or at least the minders of the opinion makers (a term which I despise, by the way).
The rise of blogging has decreased the relevance of the journo. There is a position for the reporter (a much lesser beast) in t hat somebody still has to be out gathering actual news.
The reaction has been several:
– the rise of 24 hours news (CNN, Sky, ABC News, etc) has resulting in searching out the boring and trivial and inflating it in order to keep a talking head… well, talking
– printed newspapers are far less serious, there are endless pages of trivial crap about who’s shagging who, and what shoes they had on. The place for analysis and deep investigative reporting seems to be diminished.
– journos are not as trusted as they used to be. When they are no longer fearless seekers of the truth because they are instead fearless seekers of hairstyles, then they are taken a little less seriously.
– there is a vast amount of opinion published, not news. Is this a reaction to blogs which are almost entirely opinion?
– and periodically they lash out at the bloggers.
A consequence of course from all this is that they standard of journos has fallen: you don’t need tenacity, understanding, time and patience to ferret out a story on AFL wives.
And those few who are any good are hardly going to credit some mere blogger – unqualified in journalism – for a lead to something. Far better to just go looking at the state of the surf, or paraphrase a press release.
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“because they are instead fearless seekers of hairstyles,’
.. not to mention the fearless pursuit of the next soy latte !!
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Unfortunately, the review of the BOM temperature data will most likely be another green wash unless the critics are appointed to the committee of review ie Maurice Newman and Jennifer Marohasy.
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Bruce
That day Sydney reached 45.8C was interesting. The temp rose from 44.9C at 2:49pm to 45.8C at 2:53pm and dropped down to 44.8C at 2:59pm. So, up 0.9C in 4 mins and then down 1.1C in 6 mins. I’m sure the old liquid-in-glass thermometers would not have been able to pick up a such a sudden shift in temp that quickly.
SR
Yes, it was hot – but the highest official temp for Sydney that day was Sydney Airport at 45.2C. Sydney Obs was 44.2C. B Parramatta North recorded 44.8C.
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I saw a summary of the AWS for Observatory Hill the next day.. It said 45.3C maximum on 10 minute data.
EXACTLY the same maximum as 74 years earlier .
The 10 minute data is what is now MEANT to be used for max and min……
…. but someone at BOM over-rode that data, added 0.5C and reported 45.8C.
As far as I’m concerned , that 45.8C … IS A LIE !!!
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the Griss
I agree with you. It’s hard to believe the sudden change in temp in just 4 mins (and then a sudden drop), could have been achieved during those high temps – a sudden gust of hot wind, perhaps?
The liquid-in-glass thermometers on 14th Jan, 1939 would not have been as sensitive as the new AWS therms – so it could have been higher back then.
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Nationals’ MP Christensen gets some points for consistency, as the last time I heard anything from him on any topic at all was in October 2011 when this screenshot was captured. It’s nice he wants an inquiry by experts, which is probably a more productive activity than the cacophony of public responses received during the Clean Energy Future debate.
Unfortunately Mr Christensen is surrounded by a Fiberal Party that has back-flipped on climate science, back-flipped on cancelling the Climate Change Authority, back-flipped on the ETS twice, back-flipped on renewables and continues to support the RET (against Jo’s advice), has gagged its own members (eg Dennis Jensen) from asking awkward questions about climate to the full house in Question Time, and looks set to deliver Rudd’s plan by pointlessly continuing the ETS in 2015 as per Labor’s original schedule.
Christensen is surrounded by the Party whose leader said his new Cabinet was one of the most experienced in Australian history, then proceeded to snub Barnaby Joyce out of the Finance portfolio and snub Dennis Jensen out of a Science ministry. The Fiberals haven’t given jobs to anyone who knew what they were talking about, why would they hold a fair inquiry now?
Amongst the many scientific deadweights that surround MP Christensen in particular is government minister for communications and former Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull, who had this to say on the topic in 2011:
It’s great Mr Christensen wants to rock the climate boat, but the climate boat is well stabilized by all the other dead weight on board. We’re going to need more than just the verbal expression of an intention to politely request at some unknown future date an inquiry into the BoM temperature adjustments with as-yet-unspecified terms of reference.
An inquiry into BoM homogenization? I’ll believe it when I see it. Such an inquiry will make no difference to Australia’s climate hairshirt if it happens after the next climate treaty negotiations in Paris in May 2015, affects only a small percentage of world weather stations, and Australia is already signed on to Kyoto II up until 2020.
The fact that Mr Christensen’s narrowly focused speech above is being celebrated as some sort of major turning point shows just how bad the situation remains for climate skeptics currently, even with the formerly messianic figure of Abbott as PM.
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This is a brilliant and eloquent speech clarifying the BOM’s attempts to “cook the books” on Australia’s warming history.
well done to Nationals MP George Christenson for raising the subject in Parliament.
We just have to hope that someone takes notice – like the government of the day!
Is Tony Abbot brave enough?
Geoff Williams Sydney
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Of course the Green Left Weekly had lots to say about the hottest day.
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