What really happened in 1878?
The raw data at Nobby’s near Newcastle (graphed below) shows monster heat in 1878, 1879, and 1883 — far hotter than modern times. Its unlikely that it was recorded with modern equipment, so it’s hard to compare. Was it really hotter? We don’t know when the Stevenson screen was installed. I went hunting through our wonderful historic Trove archive of old newspaper records. It doesn’t help us make any accurate comparisons, or even tell us about annual averages, but there is a remarkable story of exceptional heat and dryness in January 1877 that few Australians know. Let’s revisit the times of forgotten people who lived when CO2 was perfect and the climate was ideal.
How hot were the 1800s in Australia? My favorite quote is about the miners near Braidwood (in the mountains between Canberra and the coast). It reached 108F but look at the cultural norms:
“Years ago in the valley the miners always ‘knocked off’ if the thermometer registered 112 degrees (44.4C) in the shade, but times and wages are changed now, and the poor men are willing, to work on days like last Friday 18.1.78″ (see the Freeman’s Journal link below for the full quote).
Piecing together the quotes I found below, it looks like an El Nino probably formed in 1877, which caused a widespread drought right across Australia. Rivers all over NSW were running dry, and so presumably was the soil, which may explain the heat. When soils are dry they gain heat faster because there is less evaporative cooling, and less humidity in the air. Wetter soils limit the heat gains. January 1878 was described as “intensely hot” in many places, with temperatures recorded “in the shade” at Walgett of 120F, Coonamble, 113F, Sydney 114F and at Hay 117F. Later in January it reach 119 at Gunndah, and 129F at Coonamble.
The rivers of NSW were empty: At Lachlan ” the water-supply has given out and residents are reduced to great straits”. The Namoi River also dried up. And the ” upper part of the Moruya River, is completely dried up in some places — in other parts it consists of a chain of ponds.”
….
WALGETT, Thursday. . The weather to-day is intensely hot, and water is very scarce. The river is drying up fast, and stock are dying. There is no appearance of rain. Tho temperature in the shade to-day was 120.
COONAMBLE, Thursday. The thermometer’s average for six weeks has been 102 in the shade. To-day it registers 113. There are no signs of rain. The grass which sprang since last thunderstorms has been quite burned up. There were no stock passings to report.
GRAFTON, Friday. The weather is intensely hot.
The Riverine Grazier (Hay, NSW : 1873 – 1954)
Saturday 12 January 1878
“The heat is now the current topic at Hay. Business, where not entirely suspended, receives very little attention. Scarcely a soul is to be seen in the streets; and even in the stores, those who are not enjoying the cool of the cellar, may be found lolling on the counters, talking about the weather, and occasionally scrutinizing the thermometer. On Thursday the glass indicated 117 degrees of heat in the fair shade, on a wall on which the sun never shines at noon ; in the sun the glass indicated 154 degrees. We know of one case in which a gentle man fainted in the shade, and we fear that next week will bring its records of sunstroke. On the Lachlan, the Darling, amid the Billabong, the water-supply has given out and residents are reduced to great straits. At Hay, fortunately, there is no fear of failure in this direction, but a few more days of this weather will certainly lead to a serious exodus to cooler latitudes.
“The weather has of late been somewhat,warm, in fact on Tuesday last I may say it was hot, considering the thermometer stood 114 in the shade. A southerly-burster set in about 10 o’clock at night, but the houses of our citizens were so intensely heated that even this wind did not cool them, and consequently but little sleep could be obtained during that night. Wednesday and Thursday were moderately cool, but today, we have had another scorcher. A gentleman informs me that had never experienced the ‘heat so much as he did in Sydney, on Tuesday, but even that extreme was surpassed in Maitland to-day, where the heat was far greater. We have at Newcastle, “nearly at all times, a breeze from the sea, which our northern friends are deprived of.
Cootamundra Herald (NSW : 1877 – 1954) Tuesday 22 January 1878
Gunnedah. — Friday. “The weather is excessively hot, and the thermometer registered 119 in the shade to-day. The Namoi River has dried up, and there is no water suitable for drinking purposes. A meeting has been held for the purpose, of’ sinking wells on the river bank, to obtain water for the inhabitants. Coonamble, — Friday. — The thermometer to-day was 129- in the shade. The birds are dying in hundreds. There is no sign of rain.
Freeman’s Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1850 – 1932) Saturday 26 January 1878
ARALUEN-CUM-BRAIDWOOD.
Weather. — “The weather since my last has been exceedingly hot, Fahrenheit registering as high as 108 degrees in the shade. Sydney people will think on reading this that Aralueu is situated on the great plains of New South Wales, like Fort Bourke, Wilcannia, &c., but such, fortunately, is not the case. On the whole, we possess a climate very much resembling that of Sydney. Hot winds, how ever, seem to be a speciality of Araluen, for we had the pleasure of four visits during the last fortnight. It was on these days that the temperature went to extremes. Strange to relate, one of the hot winds before alluded to came from the coast district, and stranger still, it rivalled in intensity of heat its ‘brethren’ from the north- west On these days there could be seen (so I am informed) our pseudo-squatters and semi-selectors washing their hands invisible water, and fervently praying, that this never to-be-forgotten drought of 1875-6-7 might be brought to a conclusion before the termination of next month. From Braidwood to Moruya cattle are in a pitiable condition on the whole, and grass is not to be seen. The Dead Rivers, that is to say, the upper part of the Moruya River, is completely dried up in some places — in other parts it consists of a chain of ponds. The main stream is flowing, but the volume is only a fraction of what it ought to be. In former years the same thing has occurred, but, as a general rule, it was followed by heavy and continuous rains in February.? On this ground alone it is predicted by many old residents on the river that rain may be expected for a certainty next month. We earnestly hope that these modem seers may have their prognostication realized. The last four or five days we have been cool and delightful. Years ago in the valley the miners always ‘knocked off’ if the thermometer registered 112 degrees in the shade, but times and wages are changed now, and the poor men are willing, to work on days like last Friday 18.1.78; in order to put in a full week.
The Singleton Argus and Upper Hunter General Advocate (NSW : 1874 – 1880)
Saturday 16 March 1878
“The’ weather has again changed for the worse, and instead of bright skies and gentle breezes, varied by the occas -ional showers of a few days back, we are now undergoing a sort of baking process, no doubt In order to fit us for thoronghly appreciating the cool weather when it does come-— at present it appear, unlikely, to say the least of it. However, we will hope for the best and — roast meanwhile.
- 1877 All States affected by severe drought, with disastrous losses in Queensland. In Western Australia many native trees died, swamps dried up and crops failed.
- 1880 to 1886 Drought in Victoria (northern areas and Gippsland); New South Wales (mainly northern wheat belt, Northern Tablelands and south coast); Queensland (1881–86, in south-east with breaks – otherwise mainly in coastal areas, the central highlands and central interior in 1883–86); and South Australia (1884–86, mainly in agricultural areas).
1877 was a big El Nino
“The thought of famine in Australia seems quaint, from a 20th century perspective. Famine is what occurs in other countries during droughts, not here. And severe famines have certainly occurred in various parts of the world, during El Niño events. Perhaps the most notorious was the El Niño of 1877. This event resulted in the deaths of over nine million people in China and eight million in India. But this disaster led to the first scientific attempts to understand and predict drought and famine. Henry Blanford, then the head of the India Meteorological Department noticed that atmospheric pressures were higher than usual over India during the drought. He advised meteorologists in other parts of the British Empire of this fact and asked them about atmospheric pressures in their colonies.
Blanford’s message reached the South Australian Government Astronomer and Meteorologist Charles Todd (better known for building the overland telegraph between Darwin and Adelaide) who noticed that Australian atmospheric pressures were also high, and that the country had been in a drought at the same time as India. The next time a wide spread drought struck Australia (in 1888) Todd realised that India and Australia often experienced drought at the same time. This is part of the suite of long-range connections between climate fluctuations in different parts of the world that we now call the Southern Oscillation. Todd (an Australian scientist) was the first to observe these “teleconnections”.
An Australian was also one of the very first to suggest that we could use these connections to forecast climate. By 1910 the broad picture of teleconnections associated with the Southern Oscillation had been established. Edward Quayle, a scientist with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, published a paper suggesting that tropical pressure fluctuations could be used to predict rainfall over eastern Australia. He expanded this work in several publications over the next couple of decades, but his work remained unused until the late 1970s when I checked the accuracy of Quayle’s forecast method. It would have produced forecasts with considerable skill, if they had been used over the 60 or so intervening years. Now, variants on his ideas form the basis for routine operational seasonal climate prediction for Australia. Quayle’s prediction method is just part of the El Niño – Southern Oscillation.
The conditions at that time sound appalling. I’m amazed that those miners could work at all.
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“if the average temperature is higher by 1-3 degrees ”
But it isn’t !!!
And shows no sign what so ever of going back to those high temperatures of the late 1800’s.
So FFS.. stop panicking like a little flea-brained gerbil !!!
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Chester hijacked the thread with a comment at #1.1 which had nothing to do with the thread. All his comments are now moderated automatically. Griss’s comment and those below are orphaned and now live at the bottom of the thread. Apologies to those who responded (above here at the moment at #35 – #40, but Chester is abusing the “reply” feature.
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I don’t think anyone took Chester seriously except perhaps his like minded companions wandering in the wilderness of fuzzy thinking with him.
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Chester.
(Spike & Chester via youtube)
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Here is the comment I responded to
To which my comment contains the response
Exactly. You are abusing the reply option. Your comment had nothing to do with hers, or the post. No one was discussing 1 – 3 C changes, or clinical effects, or average temperatures. – Jo
But, let’s face it, you were just looking for an excuse to censor someone that is critical of your money making venture here.
Go for it Chester. I’ve published 113 inane comments of yours. It doesn’t matter how many times we knock them down, or how blatantly you break site rules, you’ll always cry censorship, it’s #1 in the anonymous troll handbook isn’t it? It’s all you have. – Jo
Meanwhile your backers her spew forth the foulest of abuse contrary to your site policy.
Weak as water but infinitely more hypocritical.
00
Someone should remind Chester that the question is not, does the climate change? Neither is it, by how much does the temperature change? The question is, does human activity cause climate change?
So far NO ONE has shown even remotely convincing evidence that human activity is doing anything to the climate — ABSOLUTELY NO ONE, INCLUDING CHESTER.
In fact, Chester has been the most ineffective arguer for man made climate change that I can remember since beginning to read JoNova in 2008 or 2009.
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Some pity he has chosen to abuse the rules… I would like to reply though.
Chester 1, 3 or even 6 degrees of warming due to CO2 and increased humidity wont make earth uninhabitable at all. You assume they mean to top of the maximum when climate science only talks about the average. On average Jakarta is hotter than Melbourne, because of radiative gasses (water) and additional solar input, but even so the summer maximum for Jakarta (38) is far less than the summer maximum for Melbourne or Alice springs (40 -45) where humidity is much lower.
To be as devastating as you want it to be (creepy that you want it!) it needs to be shown not only that it IS warming by so much but exactly where, and when too.
It could warm over Antarctica by 10 degrees and frankly I couldn’t give a rats, because noone lives there, if it warmed the minimums of the coldest days in winter by 6 degrees I’d clap my hands, no more -3 mornings, no frost to kill my weggies.
Your what ifs fool noone, there is little evidence of manmade warming and even less evidence it would be harmful if it did happen.
Thanks Jo
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Australia does have lots of NATURAL CLIMATE VARIABILITY doesn’t it.
Nothing to do with CO2 or human caused warming.
TOTALLY NATURAL !!!
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Griss: I don’t CO2 is such a clever little molecule as to bring all this about either!
40
Earth Cycles
00
And certainly humankind and most of nature THRIVED when it was considerable warmer in eons past.
Life developed when the Earth was much warmer. !
The RWP and MWP, which are still below temperature-wise, were times of human and natural prosperity. And even the RWP and MWP were
We are actually at a quite low temperature in the current Holocene. Right near the bottom !!
Yet the world easily survived the Holocene.
so…… STOP PANICKING!
Enjoy the warmth while we are lucky enough to have it !
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typo correction.
The RWP and MWP, which the Earth is still below temperature-wise,were times of human and natural prosperity.
And even the MWP and RWP were below the Holocene Optimum.
(sorry, got distracted by phone call)
50
Chester the pulse was experienced around the planet.
‘How bad will it be if those average temperatures become permanent?’
Highly unlikely as CO2 is not the main driver, even Berkeley recognise the plateau in temperatures.
http://static.berkeleyearth.org/memos/Global-Warming-2014-Berkeley-Earth-Newsletter.pdf
‘Numerically, our best estimate for the global temperature of 2014 puts it slightly above (by 0.01C) that of the next warmest year (2010) but by much less than the margin of uncertainty (0.05C). Therefore it is impossible to conclude from our analysis which of 2014, 2010, or 2005 was actually the warmest year.’
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Chester
“Setting aside the accuracy of the measurements,…” yes we can as they were in all probability accurate for their day, and not like today’s temperature records fudged to fit the agenda.
Of course if you have proof that the instruments, or people taking these measurements were for some reason inaccurate or wrong in anyway please cough-up with the peer-reviewed paper that shows specifics of which records where and when. Until you can prove it with verified evidence then your little comment is worthless and can be totally ignored.
90
In the gold mines of Virginia City Nevada the temperature rose very rapidly as the mineshaft went deeper and it became so hot that ice was brought in from distant mountains and put in chambers within the mines. The miners would take 15 or 20 minute breaks in the ice chambers so they could go back to work for another 15 to 20 minutes. This link explains the situation. Search the text for the word ice.
I can’t imagine working so hard in such conditions for even 5 minutes. But that history is well documented.
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Actually the mine produced more silver than gold but the mines were there after gold first and then silver was discovered.
10
It was the warmest winter on record in Minnesota.
http://climate.umn.edu/doc/journal/wint77_78.html
Minnesota’s “Year Without a Winter”
1877-1878
The Winter of 1997-1998 will go down in history of one of the warmest ever. However, the Winter of 1877-1878 was definitely the mildest of the post-settlement era.
State Climatologist, Jim Zandlo prepared the following summary of the 1877-1878 Winter in the aftermath of another mild Winter, 1986-1987. Responding to questions resulting from that modern-day temperate Winter, Jim’s investigation shows us that nothing is new under the sun!
Farmers near Minneapolis were plowing fields until late December 1878. But in spite of the general warmth, three days with subzero temperatures in early January 1878 froze the Mississippi River in Saint Paul so that it was closed for navigation until the 28th of February. After January 7 only three days through the remainder of the ‘cool’ season would experience single digit temperatures or lower.
The “Monthly Weather Review” from February 1878 reported prairie fires in Minnesota, Dakota, and Kansas. In that same month active insects in Iowa, grasses sprouting in Dakota, and the ice cover in Duluth harbor broken up by heavy winds were all reported.
The continuing warmth of March 1878 allowed the first boat arrival in Duluth on the 17th. From research done by naturalist Jim Gilbert, Lake Minnetonka ice is known to have gone out at the earliest date on record, March 11, some 35 days earlier than its median ice-out date of April 15.
The winter of 1877-78 while warmest of record at Minneapolis-St. Paul, was not a dry winter. The months of December 1877 through February 1878 saw 3.09 inches of precipitation. For comparison, the full record average for December through February is 2.71 inches.
No simple rule depicts what will follow dry or warm winters; the range of precipitation which can follow in the warm season is large and but has average values which are very nearly the same as all other winters. The perception that ‘a drought follows a dry winter’ probably reflects the fact that less snow melt would be available to recharge soil moisture in the springs following dry winters.
More at the link.
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I suppose it must have been all those wood-fired(renewable) locomotive spewing smoke ans CO2 in the atmosphere….
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TedL
Todays warmist believers would have wet themselves if they could show those worldwide hot temperatures in Australia and your neck of the woods in the Northern Hemisphere over similar modern day years. Gore would go crazy spreading alarm and our would be apologists for Meteorologists in the Australian B.O.M. would be pouring out alarmist stories to be taken up by all the alarmist echo chambers like the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (if it had existed then)not to mention the alarmist Media like the Guardian and the Age in Melbourne.
Mind you when the newly formed B.O.M came about and published their 1913 report covering Australia and its weather, they were happy to acknowledge such past records and reports and so it was recorded in the BOM history until the computer jockeys got into the act and thought they knew better than their peers (and the historical records and reports).
Most of us also use computers and understand how easy it is to make mistakes, to assume, to jump to conclusions but these modern guys just use them to create cover ups for a meme, that they knew was falling apart, right from when the CRU emails were released (if not before)but with so much invested in politics and the politicians supporting Climatology lightweights and economists playing with wealth creation, they ignored the satellites, and the research before that, the upper atmosphere balloons, and fiddled with the only thing they could do, the historical records, denying the contemporaneous reports of the day, lowering the past high recorded temperature records and trying with mathematical homogenisation to create the impression of ever rising temperature, if possible in lock step with that taxable rising CO2 meme that enticed them to the tax paying money trough. It’s now desperation time in the hope they can conceal all, cover their tricks, but like Gore and his shenanigans the climate isn’t doing what they fervently wanted.
So what is left? Its lies all downhill for actual science and try to fluff up any natural disaster as ominous climate change, weather wierding, end of the world as we know it stuff, and what for? So some activists can parade and peddle those beliefs at Paris and the UN will be empowered to create a new world order.
I wonder if they have ever considered where real science and scientist will sit in the pecking order if that dream/nightmare came true, will they be just the super serfs living an existence under the table, to be used and abused as their masters wish. I guess if you wreck history, then you don’t really learn and read any warning signs in past political history either.
The present averaging and smearing of desert temperatures to try and raise alarm. Not to mention the underlying deceptions are really idiotic with only gaining tenths of a degree records on cherry picked dates. Stupid really when UHI adds up to a 5 or 6c rise from urban to the city fringe and the best that their deception can do is claim tenths of a degree above a nonsensical past date? Not only that,but on a world century scale add just .08C at best over that period and of course don’t mention the over 18 years now with no significant rise in temperature.
Crazy farts if they can’t realise the stupidity and insult to common sense, that they are trying to sell the thinking people of the world.
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Nah,it never happened,it couldn’t,there was no such day as Saturday 12 January 1878,so it couldn’t have been that hot,besides hot days only came about in the 1950’s before then they didn’t have any weather.
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Never mind the heat… humans are well on the way to breaking the seven seals, err nine seals:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/human-activity-has-pushed-earth-beyond-four-of-nine-planetary-boundaries-scientists-warn-20150115-12rjh9.html
The earth is doomed! It is in Science, so it must be true!
Fetch me the paper bag.
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Bulldust :
a good name for commenting on that article.
“This young field of research draws from such disciplines as ecology, geology, chemistry, atmospheric science, marine biology and economics”. Precious little geology or chemistry, and I notice they left logic and ethics off the list. And statistics.
“It’s known generally as Earth Systems Science”. Only by those who want to give the impression that it is scientific.
“The researchers acknowledge the uncertainties inherent in what they’re doing”. No doubt you can recall many examples of that?
Another bit of the barrage of propaganda leading up to Paris “the last chance saloon”.
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I am reminded of one commentator here that noted that the insecure fields of study are the ones that add “science” to their titles, such as social science, computer science… A bit like my first degre ein “Minerals Engineering” which had precious little true rngineering in the curriculum. Minerals Processing would have been a better description.
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Bulldust – there are four major fields of engineering Chemical,Civil,Electrical and Mechanical. Civil, associated with buildings is probably the oldest going back to about 10,000 BC with a temple in Turkey made from cut limestone columns with a wooden roof. The first smelting of metal (lead) occurred about 7000BC but lime making, is earlier than 10,000BC. Polish poured concrete (using lime & hydraulic lime)floors have been found in building ruins dated to around 7000BC. Smelting and metallurgical processing (including lime and cement) would come under the Chemical engineering umbrella as does leather processing, making of rope, paper, soap even making of wine and processing olives. Imhotep who discovered geopolymers used in building of the pyramids and making vases, glazes and glass making is one of the great chemical as well as civil engineers. You could call the ship builders of the Greeks and Phoneacians mechanical engineers. A Greek mechanical engineer designed what could be called the first computer containing gears used for navigating and predicting the movements of planets and eclipses. Electrical engineering is the youngest of the engineering disciplines and dates to a little after 1850.
Engineers base their knowledge on measurements, experience, experiments. They develop equations and models to refine their knowledge and extend their experience. I understand a famous physicists said that scientists make guesses and hypotheses first and then they try and prove them. They should discard hypotheses that are falsified and they should also discard those that can not be falsified or proved true. Engineers do not make guesses. In many countries engineers can be jailed if they are wrong and cause harm.
Now there are all sorts who call themselves Professional engineers such as aeronautical engineers who should be in a greater mechanical engineering faculty and environmental engineers who should be firstly Chemical engineers but are mostly connected with civil engineering and have no understanding of chemistry, combustion, processing, materials handling etc and are as useless as “climate scientists” Then there are also the many non-professionals that are using the engineering name “sanitation” engineers (or garbage collects) comes to mind. In Europe (eg France, Holland, Germany, Italy)professional engineers use the title Ingineur
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“environmental engineers” what do they exactly do? Maybe they engineer the climate?? That explain the BS….
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“This young field of research draws from such disciplines as …” they left out cult religions.
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In proper science we require at least 95% certainty, otherwise it is essentially thrown out.
20
Bulldust: I read through about half of the comments in your link. Tell me that these aren’t real people saying the things they are saying. Have we humans descended to such a level of moronic thought. Are there that many gullible individuals in this world. I actually fear for humanity’s future and not because of the global warming / climate change impending catastrophe!
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It’s the SMH … need I say more?
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From Will Steffen no less.
I guess we all better pay up our funeral insurance.
Where’s the panic button?
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When the article opened with Will Steffen I knew it was going to be wrong. Scientists say; what scientists? who are they so they can be quizzed? How much deforestation has been driven by the need to grow biofuels? More damage is being done by those trying to “save” the planet than those simply living on it.
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The thermometer to-day was 129- in the shade. The birds are dying in hundreds.
if only those birds had realised that those thermometers were reading several degrees high and would be adjusted downwards today by climate scientists, there would be no need to die.
530
“The thermometer to-day was 129- in the shade. The birds are dying in hundreds.”
An old lady I worked for out west of Longreach often told me “birds don’t start dying until it gets to 120f.” She had witnessed the phenomenon a few times in her lifetime.
The only time I ever actually saw a bird die in flight was while pumping bore water for thirsty cattle in 122f heat in Sturts Stony Desert in 1958.
Was there an el Nino, I wonder, in Feb 1791 when hundreds of birds died at Rose Hill, near Parramatta. A shame they didn’t have a thermometer on hand to check those temps that day.
But it is something that has happened not infrequently in Australia in past years.
370
Perhaps the best example of a big cull of birds at politically incorrect temperatures and in a politically incorrect year is this one from 1932.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/bird%20deaths%201932.pdf
I made a small blue with the Adelaide thermometers in that one so ignore that bit. A tip from Warwick Hughes and a lot more research and that is now well understood.
30
“Years ago in the valley the miners always ‘knocked off’ if the thermometer registered 112 degrees (44.4C) in the shade”
Not too impressed. When I was doing my Leaving exams in the exhibition halls in the Wayville Showgrounds (1962), the temperature inside hit 112F. We didn’t knock off. Just kept on writing “compare and contrast”, “give reasons”, “translate into Latin”, “include formulae”, while the ink evaporated from our fountain pens or melted out of our Biros.
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And it was three hours solid on one exam in the morning, and then another three hours solid on another in the afternoon. And then you did it again the next day or the day after for your other subjects.
But you try telling that to the young people of today …
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RoHa:
Don’t exaggerate – we sometimes got an afternoon off. I was there.
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You remember the pigeons going “kroo kroo” and stamping on the roof in hobnail boots? Very distracting when you were trying to remember the difference between a syncline and an anticline, or comparing valency bonds with ionic bonds.
20
what no Air Con….if I was you I’d sue the Education Department for cruelty, abuse and all the rest. Then again it could be a valuable tool in your defense for murder…….
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That was nothin, the masters woke us up at 2 Aam for an ice water bath, fed us rat poison and gruel for breakfast and sent us down for a whippin’ before the exams started – 13 hours, in morn and 18 in afternoon held in 150 degree bread oven with the smell of pizza in our nostrils, with naught to drink except nettle juice and quinine… and do you think those young’uns would believe?
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Great school memories Bobl – I’ve not laughed so much for quite a while!
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Beats me why they all just didn’t head down to the local Mall to cool off ….. umm, wait a minute.
The Council could have just called up (….. um, wait a minute) for a water truck ….. umm, wait a minute.
They could have headed off to their local Coles or Woolies (…..umm, wait a minute) for some bottled water ….. umm, wait a minute.
Tony.
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Saturday 7 July 1877
“At last we have the pleasure of announcing that the Ice Works of the Great Northern Ice Company, West Maitland, are ready to turn out ice.”
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/18829904?
Saturday 18 October 1879 Now with a twelve horse power engine!
“Enlargment of the Maitland Ice Works.
On Thursday, the Northern Ice Company turned out the first complete batch of ice, nearly two tons, in twenty slabs, from the larger machinery imported some months
since.”
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/18937403?
70
As a kid in the late 50’s on the northern beaches of Sydney I remember regular hot summers. One in particular the shade temperature was 108F, the only relief was sucking on ice. Too hot for the beach as the sand was so hot it caused blisters. We just toughed it out the best way we could by staying in the shade. A real treat was standing under the Hills hoist where we had attached the hose as a sprinkler.
Another hot summer I experienced in the same area as above was Christmas around mid 80’s. The shade temperature for Christmas lunch was 45C.
In other words, there’s a goldmine of anecdotal heatwave reports which will refute the BoM boolium.
201
So now we are going to get a parade of tedious old gits telling long, rambling, stories about how hot it was when they were young.
My fault. I started it. Sorry.
Jo, how about a prize for the story which combines the highest temperature with the maximum mind-numbing meandering?
150
It was so hot back then that the chooks laid hard boiled eggs and when you milked the cows all you got was evaporated milk.
It was so hot that the birds had to use potholders to pull the worms out of the ground.
Crikey it was hot,the water in our waterbag turned into dust.
I was digging post holes and when I put the crowbar down for 10 minutes for smoko the damn thing melted.
250
It was so hot, the ink dried up in my biro while I was filling out the application for a Government grant.
It was so hot I had to stand in front of the heat exchanger of the outside unit of my split system aircon unit just to cool down.
It was so hot the car stalled at the traffic lights when the fuel evaporated between the tank and the engine. (you know, like in the old Vauxhall Cresta and Mark One Zephyr)
Tony.
250
Tony:
Now that’s something that hasn’t happened to me for a long time. Fuel vaporising was pretty common 40-50 years ago. One of the not so good things about the good old days.
40
In those early days, when Holdens were the only car designed and manufactured solely here in Oz, the main Country for our imported cars was the UK, and umm, that had a lot to do with the steering wheel being on the correct side of the car. Ford Oz made some of those English Fords under license at Broadmeadows, before the Falcon was adapted from the U.S. design in late 1960.
Hence, we got a lot of English cars here, and some models were in fact prone to fuel vapourisation in our hot climate, the cars not specifically designed for those conditions.
My good lady wife’s first car was a 1960 Fourth generation Ford Anglia, (the 105E with the one litre engine) bought new, and she has told me that in mid Summer, she dreaded stopping at traffic lights, not that there were that many in those days, because the engine would invariably cough and then stop dead.
During my training days with the RAAF at Wagga Wagga, one of the fellows on our Electrical Course had a ’61 Vauxhall Cresta and that was awful to be in during Summer, and he always had at least 2 passengers with him to push the car through the lights when it stopped dead, in the days when Wagga Wagga only had two or three sets of traffic lights, so they were easy enough to avoid.
Tony.
40
Tony,
I relate to that. I was in Wagga Wagga in the 80’s at a time when local council and other outdoor workers would knock off when temps hit 45c. My 1600 beetle would vapour lock on the way out To Forest Hill in summer and I tried everything to rectify the problem which I put down to coil or fuel pump because after 10 or fifteen minutes off it would go again – it was a fantastic car and I practically gave it away only twigging to vapourisation after I sold it. I also flew lighties from Western NSW Airlines and remember my habit of requesting intersection departures off runway zero five. Familiarity breeds contempt and I once made the mistake of doing that on a hot Wagga day with full fuel and a full load, I just managed to get it’s sorry tail off the tarmac at the piano keys, full powwer, 15 degree flaps and riding the stall warning all the way out.
20
Yes Tony, I remember it well.
We had a 1930 dodge that suffered badly from vaporisation, when you turned it off. We had our waterbag of course, hanging is a bracket above the front bumper bar, & carried about half an old towel. This would be soaked in water, & was hung/wrapped around the carby & fuel pipe from the fuel pump. This sort of worked, if you kept the water up to it.
A smart mechanic in Young NSW worked out a cure. Most fuel pipes had high points in them, where the vapour would gather, & stop the flow. This bloke arranged the fuel pipe wound in a spiral, with the highest point at the carby union.
The vapour would then easily pass into the float bowl. Why car manufacturers couldn’t figure this out I can’t imagine.
Thanks for the memory.
40
You mean you had to light your smoke? It wasn’t that hot then 😛
It was so hot my smokes lit themselves, burned a hole right through my shirt, good thing I wasn’t wearing it at the time.
140
How hot was it?
50
Clearly not hot enough long ago enough for them to have learned how to tell a long, maundering, story. Those are all too short and bereft of time markers, (when I was a lad, etc.)place markers, and irrelevant social detail.
Go and get lessons from Abe Simpson, guys, and then try again.
70
It’s hotter than Hell
and I’m starting to smell
and the temperature’s still going up
It’s one ten in the shade
and I’m very afraid
that the beer’s all run out in my cup
http://www.wanowandthen.com/Ballads/text.html#Hotter%20than%20Hell
by Marc Glasby
100
Good. A few longer stories have been added. But remember, you should included things like: “That was the time my great uncle Albert got out of jail. Not much point, though. He was back inside a month later.” Followed by a lengthy disquisition on the the penal system of the time and social attitudes to whatever crimes Albert committed. Then back to the main thread of the story for sentence or two before you go off on another sidetrack.
10
Lived in Tucson about 25 years ago and remember a day when there was a sticky sound as I was driving (bitumen sticking to the tyres). At one stoplight I cracked the door open and was a tad surprised to find I could push my finger into the blacktop to the second knuckle with relative ease.
Phoenix tends to get hotter though… I remember it being over 120F in Phoenix one summer. Turns out Wikipedia remembers it too:
It was only 117F in Tucson that day.
120
Bulldust: interesting post about Phoenix and Tucson.
This set my memory going – because of the CO2 nonsense, I like to read proper meteorology books, and here’s what I found ages ago in one of them.
Due to cloudless skies and low humidities, low latitude deserts in the interiors of continents have the greatest daily temperature ranges on Earth.
It’s 34C for Phoenix, and 19C for Flagstaff which is about 100 miles away. Flagstaff is however at higher altitude by several thousand feet.
50
It was so hot in 1878 that,
– Chickens were laying omelettes.
– Squirrels had to pick up nuts with potholders.
– People washed and dried their clothes at the same time.
– Trees would fight over a dog.
– Corn popped off the ears in the garden.
– Sunflowers looked for shade.
– Rainclouds were treated for dehydration.
I blame handjive, apologies.
130
Central Australia in 1893.
“Too hot to eat,
Too hot to drink,
Too hot to talk,
Too hot to think,
Too hot to live,
To hot to die,
Too hot to lovo,
Too hot to try…………” It goes on.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/64962541?zoomLevel=6
50
Ouch.
Didn’t mean to press any buttons sonny. Walking frame was busted so I was stuck indoors. Got to reminiscing about my happy childhood days.
40
Sonny? You could be a year or two younger than me. But we are both still tedious old gits.
40
Me too, and regular late afternoon thunderstorms with heavy rain for a short time followed by high humidity and a sleepless night until the house cooled down in the early morning hours. One early 1950s Christmas near the NSW-Qld border inland from Murwillumbah around midday the Ginger Beer ceramic containers blew out and sprayed the decorations until they fell down. The afternoon was spent by me sitting in a tree with other little children watching the big boys and men playing cricket on a paddock alongside the hotel.
30
Someone please inform the ‘data adjusters’ (paid propagandists) at the BOM that long term studies of the Australian climate indicate that when Australia is drier, it is comparatively warmer due to lack of rainfall.
Another key point is that when the world is cooler, Australia tends to get drier.
This produces the paradoxical effect that when the world is cooler, Australia may be, comparatively speaking, drier and warmer than normal, when compared to trends in the rest of the world.
This effectively means, that relative to the rest of the world, local trends may not follow (like sheep) world temperature trends (‘in line with internationally accepted homogenisation methods’ etc).
In other words, rainfall affects Australian temperature trends rather significantly, and these rainfall trends do not have to follow ‘internationally accepted homogenisation procedures’.
241
“and these rainfall trends do not have to follow ‘internationally accepted homogenisation procedures’.”
And Why not??? What are we? special? I think that such a rebellious display should be punished! Imagine Milne in black stiletto and a wip…….
40
No… I’d rather not
40
Put me off me lunch!!
30
Pity those miners couldn’t get on twitter and form a solidarity movement against the evil big mining companies.
…er maybe not.
Times were so different then. I wonder how long it took to get the news of these terrible droughts to the rest of the British Empire and the world so that a global response could be organized?
These days we have near instant global news, mobile phones and all the other communication systems to alert the world of our local catastrophies, back then it was the wire services (telegraphy and wireless) and help yourself and your kin.
80
They really needed Will Steffen and Tim Flannery then which would have the bonus that those two wouldn’t be with us now.
While anecdotal evidence cannot give temperatures to one hundredth of a degree like the BoM (after adjustment and homogenization of course) they do provide historical relativity. Mild summers were not reported only unusual or significant weather events. Studies such as this item and particularly photos can add to our knowledge. Those photos of picnics in the bed of the Murray give the lie to claims that we are killing the river.
30
The heatwave of 1896 was another where many perished, see http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/64889112 for newspaper account.
Most reports have sustained temperatures at over 110°F with little respite during the nightime hours.
70
And again this was linked to a large India famine starting in 1896 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_famine_of_1896–1897 .
I wonder if Henry Blanford and Charles Todd saw that one coming?
50
Looking at the graph the system seems to have overreacted to the heat spike, caused by an active sun and strong El Nino, which produced a very negative NAO.
‘Proxy evidence suggests a historical episode of extreme cold in the shelf waters off southeast Canada and the northeastern United States between April and August of 1882. This event is hypothesized to be the consequence of enhanced equatorward transport of cold water in the Labrador Current (LC), coincident with strongly negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) indices in preceding winters (notably 1878/79 and 1880/81), and driven by associated anomalies in large-scale wind forcing…’
Robert Marsh
60
The AMO was positive during the episode.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/This_graph_shows_Global_Average_Temperature_between_1880-2009_compared_with_the_Atlantic_Multi-decadal_Oscillation_%28AMO%29_Index._The_roughly_parallel_curves_of_the_two_parameters_show_that_they_are_related.gif
40
someone tell the Pope…
15 Jan: VOA: Pope: Man Responsible for Global Warming
Pope Francis said Thursday he is convinced that man was primarily responsible for global warming and he hopes his upcoming encyclical on the environment will encourage negotiators at a climate change meeting later this year to make “courageous” decisions to protect God’s creation.
Speaking to reporters on the plane taking him from Sri Lanka to Manila, he was asked specifically if man was mostly to blame for climate change.
“I don’t know if it is all [man’s fault], but the majority is, for the most part, it is man who continuously slaps down nature,” he said…
“I think man has gone too far,” he said. “Thank God that today there are voices that are speaking out about this.”…
Francis, who pledged on the day of his installation as pope to make the environment a priority, said he expected his encyclical on ecology to be released by June or July, in time provide food for thought ahead of the U.N. climate meeting Paris in November…
The pope faulted the Peru conference for not doing enough about climate change.
“The meetings in Peru were nothing much, I was disappointed. I think there was a lack of courage. They stopped at a certain point. Let’s hope the delegates in Paris will be more courageous and move forward with this,” he said…
http://www.voanews.com/content/pope-man-responsible-for-climate-change/2599444.html
16 Jan: SMH: Lindsay Murdoch: ‘Man has gone too far’: Pope Francis says we are primarily responsible for climate change
With AP, Reuters and agencies
“We have in a sense taken over nature. I think we have exploited nature too much.”…
“We have, in a sense, lorded it over nature, over Sister Earth, over Mother Earth,” said the leader of 1.2 billion Catholics, who has in the past spoken about the need to protect the environment…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/global-warming/man-has-gone-too-far-pope-francis-says-we-are-primarily-responsible-for-climate-change-20150115-12rcwm.html
50
Maybe the Pope could inform me where in the bible “Sister and Mother Earth” are referred to?Doesn’t it say to “be fruitful,increase in Number and fill the earth” Genesis Chapter 8,verse 2 NIV version. Shouldn’t he be basing his policies on what’s written in the Bible,not making them up out of his head?
60
The Pope is probaly using some of the sentiments of Francis of Assissi. They are definitely not biblical. But then again he is a Jesuit.
40
Beautifully built, dome topped wells bear testament to the high incidence of El Niño years from 1878-1910. We still have one on the farm. Sheds were built beside the wells to catch rainfall and a series of shallow bricked gutters ran water from whatever slope they could find to the well. Builders left their stamp on the wet render and usually a date. Ours is stamped, J Kavanaugh 1908.
120
In a park in Erskineville, an inner west suburb of Sydney, there’s one of those dome topped water catchment holders hidden under the ground. The houses surrounding it and even the short lane to them, built around the 1870s, were demolished a few decades ago. The water holder is still there though, completely hidden from view.
120
Interesting article on the 1877-8 El-Nino, which focuses on South America, but shows that its effects were felt worldwide :
http://www.met.igp.gob.pe/publicaciones/2009/aceituno_et_al_2009.pdf
Money quote :
140
Those unfortunate miners of old,
Couldn’t work with the heat:we are told,
But our ‘science’today,
Is clear when they say,
It wasn’t hot then:it was cold.
170
Suddenly Thermometers are reliable again.
60
1878 and surrounding years constitute one of the world’s worst weather periods.
Lethal famine and drought extended from the Cape, through Asia, New Guinea and Australia, and to South America, esp Northern Brazil. Even in bloody Dunedin a bucket of water cost big money.
Just as well there was no climate change back then.
190
” 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 …”
Nev Nicholls
~ ~ ~
> 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.”
> 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.”
Perhaps the most notorious was the El Niño of 1877.
This event resulted in the deaths of over nine million people in China and eight million in India.
> Henry Blanford, then the head of the India Meteorological Department noticed that atmospheric pressures were higher than usual over India during the drought.
Blanford’s message reached the South Australian Government Astronomer and Meteorologist Charles Todd (better known for building the overland telegraph between Darwin and Adelaide).
> The next time a wide spread drought struck Australia (in 1888) Todd realised … Todd (an Australian scientist) was the first to observe these “teleconnections”.
> By 1910 the broad picture of teleconnections associated with the Southern Oscillation had been established. Edward Quayle, a scientist with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, published a paper …
Quantum screened El Niño – The Boy Child on ABCTV on 16 October 1997.
. . .
Seems pre-1910 data from incompetent collectors is acceptable when advancing one’s career @BoM.
90
Letter from Governor Macquarie back to London:
Reply from London.
Tony.
140
That’s funny Tony…who’s El Nino? Blame my fellow Pommie countrymen!
20
Did many freeze to death in the ‘big cold’ in Newcastle in 1895 when the mean maximum was less than 18 degrees C?
30
O/T What I find interesting in the Western Queensland drought/reprieve is that the Roos seemed to know what was happening – whilst the BoM was predicting further drought and a long hot dry summer the Roos, which can control their birthing, were all producing Joeys. Now there are huge herds of Roos ready to take up the feed that is eventuating from the recent rains whilst the farmers are destocked. Someone commented on radio that the road to Mt Isa has roadkill everywhere.
Story here
160
I’d say that in those days, temperature was measured using some antiquated scale not relevant to what is today’s modern, scientific, methodology used by the BoM; it’s clearly historical exaggeration and must be taken with a grain of salt.
61
But of course these high temperatures are too embarrassing for the Bureau of Meteorology to include in the Australian temperature series – they start the “reliable” temperatures at about 1910, after the Federation Drought (and after 1878).
Their argument is that the measurements “are not reliable” because they generally predate the introduction of the accepted Stevenson Screen enclosure. But “generally” is the operative word, as there is clear evidence of the use of Stevenson Screens back into the 1870s. Those stations could provide valuable, continuous data for BOM. But its all too hard, and they prefer to end all the temperature records at 1905-1910.
In the meantime, the BOM feels free to adjust down all the early temperatures for reasons they will not reveal, which leads to (you guessed it):” “unprecedented hot weather” and “hottest year on record (sic)” type of rubbish.
170
However they must have supplied raw or ‘adjusted’ data to NASA, which claims to have reliable global data starting 1880, and Met-Hadley which claims to have reliable global data back to 1850.
At least Met-Hadley includes light grey error bars.
Incidentally 1878 just pops up above the 0C anomaly line on the Met-Hadley record.
50
Great point. The pre-1905 records are good enough for NASA in the USA and MET-Hadley in the UK, but not good enough for their own country??? Please.
50
It doesn’t matter, we’re all doomed shortly anyway: http://www.theage.com.au/environment/human-activity-has-pushed-earth-beyond-four-of-nine-planetary-boundaries-scientists-warn-20150115-12rjh9.html. Might as well stock up on beer and red, enjoy the sunset.
61
Meteorological SMH Jan 19 1878
Deniliquin 116°F(46.7°C), 119, 121(49.4°C), 108, 105
Euston 117°F(47.2°C), 118, 116 , 118, 110
for 10th to 15th.
Mildura’s two days of 50°C in 1906 were reduced by 2.5°C (and one day) on the basis of comparison with Deniliquin. Notice that Euston (70km away east of Mildura) differs from Deniliquin (300km east) by as much -2.5°C and +5°C.
In the north of the state, Carinda had 121°F and Brewinna had 120°F on the Sunday, in 1906.
50
The Sydney Morning Herald Tuesday 15 January 1878 page 4
“Some idea of the heat at Walgett may be gathered from the fact that the thermometer was 162° in the sun and 127° in the shade. And at Bourke 121° was recorded as the shade heat on the same day with no sign of rain.”
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/13405789?
30
162 ?
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/forgotten-extreme-heat-el-nino-of-1878-when-miners-yearned-for-the-years-when-theyd-knock-off-at-44-4c/#comment-1667639
‘I believe that the Australian record is 53.1°C (127.6°F) recorded at Cloncurry (QLD”
?
00
162 is the temperature the thermometer get to in the sun but the record is an “in the shade” temperature. So the Cloncurry one may have read too low if it really was a beer crate and the beer crate had no louvers to let the hot wind past the thermometer. All Australians at the time were clever, educated and resourceful enough to keep it “in the shade” but may not have built a substitute box that allowed enough air flow. So the Cloncurry temp may have been well shaded but a low reading due to the outside air being blocked.
10
To me Marble Bar has always been the nail in the coffin of AGW. I just don’t understand how you can have the longest heatwave on record in a 250ppm CO2 atmosphere and to not even have come close to beating it with a near doubling of CO2. This alone has to refute the theory beyond all doubt.
http://www.bom.gov.au/lam/climate/levelthree/c20thc/temp1.htm
I mean if you want to talk about observational evidence, not whacky modelling, this is the smoking gun, its the holy grail and a dozen other superlatives I cant think of. Its the end of the argument for me, always has been.
Oh and save the link/info because its only a matter of time before the BOM delete it Id say.
150
BOM like so many other governments agencies, and the UN are players in a scam.
A scam built on nothing but McGuffins. CAGW elite are the undisputed masters of disinformation scamming, yet what makes a CAGW so special? What is the ‘scheme’ in CAGW scam? What is it that puts that creepy feeling on the back of your neck? Would you believe that it’s nothing? CAGW elite has built the most spiteful scam around with what Hitchcock (and some scamsters) call ‘The McGuffin’ which is, in effect, nothing.
That’s right is is nothing!
Over the years, the McGuffin has come to have a description formalized as: ‘A device or plot element that catches the population’s attention, or drives the plot dialog. It is generally something that every character appears to be concerned with.’[ref Wiki on Hitchcock] The McGuffin is essentially something that the entire scam is built around and yet has no real relevance. A distraction from reality.
Everyone talks of ice melting, the atmosphere overheating, or forest fires, or the number of storms or… I think you get the idea. McGuffins everyone! Even the Whitehouse is in on the act, pontificating on this or that aspect of the CAGW scam. The linchpin McGuffin is CO2 illusion, cripple that and all of the charatans’ ediface of McGuffins come tumbling down.
But CO2 is the most biggest ‘greenhouse’ gas they screech – oh no it’s not, water is the most abundant and powerful gas that interacts thermally in the atmosphere not puny rarity CO2.
So the real story is not the saving of the planet but losing your personal freedom, of the UN unending desire for more global governance, the IMF and World Bank’s desire for political power, of big money made by the biggest scammer of all the Big Banking, and their patoons of investment and finacing entities.
Look to who is winning power, money, and influence in this scam, and there lies the corruption that steals your money and your freedom.
100
With a couple of doses of homogenization, the Marble Bar heat record might change to the longest cold spell.
Paraburdoo nearly beat the Marble Bar record.
During construction (1971), the reached 98 days over the century. Then they had one day at 98 degs. Then they had another 60 days straight over the century.
Not a record, but bloody hot – and still is.
60
I’ve been following Notrickszone website with an interesting story about the effect on German temperatures of converting from glass thermometers to electric probes. I seem to remember an article by Anthony Watts about a similar effect going from whitewash to acrylic paint on Stephenson screens. And then there is the heat Island effect.
I sometimes wonder if it really is hotter now. Anecdotally I find that people who have worked for years outside – roofers, farmers, road workers, drillers, geologists, … aren’t all that convinced, while people who shunt from air conditioned house to air conditioned car to air conditioned work to air conditioned supermarket to air conditioned cinema seem to think it is.
I’m guessing we will never know the truth.
120
But it’s worse than just not knowing the truth.
The computer models that they are using to predict the future are validated by their ability to reproduce the past.
If the temperature records are corrupt, for whatever reasons – then the simulations are just being trained to predict past errors in the future!
The entire exercise of becomes utterly absurd, and we’re on a mission to change the world because of it!
It might be Orwellian, were it deliberate. But doing it by mistake, beholden to computing machines of our own creation – is perhaps even stranger.
If it weren’t for the internet and people like Jo and Anthony and Pierre (and many more), this stuff would already be long down the Memory Hole.
Thank You All
110
KenW
“If the temperature records are corrupt, for whatever reasons – then the simulations are just being trained to predict past errors in the future!”
The main problem is trying to train these computer models with data that attempts to measure a chaotic (climate) system where parameters at any point in the atmosphere will vary for no readily apparent reason.
Sure the models have the math of chaos theory buried within their algorithms (as part of the math of fluid mechanics) But then the models become a trial to get parameterized chaotic system (measured climate parameters) to match the constrained chaos of the computer models’ output.
Thus the running of these computerize climate models to
predictproject probable climate scenario are an act of gross futility.Maybe the Brownian motion digitizer needs to be reset.
50
It’s not just random. If we teach them to reproduce rises and falls (or lack thereof) which are imaginary in the first place then they will project imaginary trends for the future. Classic GIGO.
It’s not only futile – its insane.
50
I’m not saying that the climate is random. I’m paraphrasing the UN-IPCC statement that the weather and climate act chaotically.
That is to say that weather/climate events happen for a reason but due to our lack of knowledge of the extremely complex feeback system and it’s relationship to the rest of nature, we do not know why. These events happen due to the chaotic nature of the system and that if we knew all the initiating parameters of the system and all interacting governing factors and all feedbacks through time that can affect all climate parameters, then a perfect (and choatic) algorithm of weather/climate prediction system could be derived.
As it is we know nothing of the initial start of the planet’s weather/climate and not much about how all the various parameters interact with the rest of our biosphere. We do know however that quasi cyclic periods of relative hot, cold, and stasis have happened before and are likely to happen again.
Hence the extreme heat of 1878 and subsequent El Nino events appear near cyclic but are not truely so. We still do not have a method of knowing when an El Nino will occur as we do not know its true nature or the factors governing it.
40
True, even if we had all the correct data for the last centuries, it is doubtful that we could say much about the next century, because as you say, chaotic stuff happens!
My point though, referring to this and the ntz posts, is that if the temperature record is corrupted because of spurious instrument errors – or worse – because a politically inconvenient heat wave has been “disappeared”, then using this record to make predictions, and then driving off a cliff because of it – is utter madness.
60
Good point, the inaccuracy/corruption only adds more confounding factors to an already chaotic system.
As you say it is utter maddness!
40
I don’t think that the term “chaotic” is a good description of the situation simply because of the unstated periodicity of the situation being examined.
If we are looking at a time span of say 5 minutes, then chaos theory may be involved but for most weather we are looking at periods of 24 hours plus when convection is the big factor.
The interpretation I have with Climate Models ™ is that many factors of significance are left out and you just can’t do that with a model. Time scales, for example are never specified.
It is almost certain that processes of orbital mechanics of the solar system control the approx 100,000 year cycle of freezing and heating undergone by Earth over the last couple of million years.
The interglacial periods such as the one we are currently enjoying are a relatively short part of the cycle and rarely seem to last much past 10,000 years.
Given the fairly stable conditions on Earth for the past 7 or 8,000 years any real scientist would be asking”what can we do to prepare for the next sharp drop in Global Temperatures due any time soon?
Recent northern winters have been devastating and may be precursors of the big permanent drop.
It does happen quickly according to past records. Even wicki can’t deny these facts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age#mediaviewer/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg
KK
30
Climate Computer models sux!
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/02/yet-another-paper-shows-the-hot-spot-is-missing/#comment-1234546
20
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory and the link to the double rod pendulum movement.
Keep in mind that the explaination of the double pendulum is only showing a 2D explaination, a pendulum that is allowed to move in 3D has a much more complex chaotic movement.
20
Whether intentionally or not you made an excellent distinction with your phrasing there. What we keep hearing is “save the planet” when what we see going on is would be more appropriately described as “changing the planet” with changes that are questionably beneficial.
It would appear that the reason this entire mess has gotten the traction that it has is that to reject the “humans are causing it therefore we can control or change it” is easier that accepting the fact that it is beyond our control so there is bugger all we can do about it but adapt.
Adaptation takes effort, it is usually an uncomfortable and chaotic process. But one can easily jump on the climate change bandwagon, do absolutely nothing different in their life and expect the government to fix it from the relative comfort of their home in the warm fuzzy glow of knowing they are “saving the planet.”
How many of these people have ever gone out and picked up trash along a roadway or gone out of their way to find a trash bin when one wasn’t conveniently there for them? How many of these people even have the simple manners to stop and the entrance to a building and hold the door for the person they know is 3 steps behind them?
Ran across this awhile ago: Past Generations Were Green Before ‘Being Green’ Became A Light-Feathered, Baby Boomer Fad
With which I will close this post as they closed theirs, because this is a classic:
“Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smartass young person…
We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to piss us off.”
70
BTW, the link is intended to get you to the little story that begins with “Checking out at the store” the site just happens to be the first one I found it on.
40
Hmmm, nice essay, but I’m only 55! And not even cranky. It’s over at those warmist places where the people are angry and bitter. That’s why I come here. We skeptics have lots more fun!
80
Shows you what happens when you’re tired and commenting at the end of y9our day.
This: It would appear that the reason this entire mess has gotten the traction that it has is that to reject the “humans are causing it therefore we can control or change it” is easier that accepting the fact that it is beyond our control so there is bugger all we can do about it but adapt.
Should read as: It would appear that the reason this entire mess has gotten the traction that it has is that to accept the “humans are causing it therefore we can control or change it” is easier that accepting the fact that it is beyond our control so there is bugger all we can do about it but adapt.
I’ve been trying to teach the dogs to proof read for me but they just aren’t interested.
51
How many of the thoughtless people who throw their litter out along our farm frontage are believers in the MM global warming/climate change nonsense? I fill up at least two large shopping bags to bursting every so often and the situation is worse after holiday seasons. Why can’t they stop and just consider that they are the ones that brought the stuff into our area and they are the ones who should darned well take it away again?
I have lost count of the times I’ve held open a door for someone behind me; sometimes I get a nice response but often I might just as well be invisible. One feels like letting the door swing shut in their faces but I can’t bring myself to behave like that. Sometimes I do mutter “Thank you!” but that goes unnoticed too!
I’m definitely a grumpy old woman!
Thank you!”
20
But has the CLIMATE changed anywhere on Earth?
No. Here in the UK it’s as it’s always been – and I can remember most of the 1950s. Nothing’s changed.
All we get are rubbishy predictions based on fraction of a degree claimed thermometer readings.
As if our ancestors couldn’t make proper thermometers and read them!
40
Its pretty much the same with sea level rise. People keep telling me the sea level is rising but when I go down to the same beach I went to as a kid – I cant see any difference. And the old photos of the shore line taken in the last century look pretty much the same. Must be rising somewhere else apparently.
120
Careful, AC – don’t let too much reality cloud your judgement and preparations for doomsday!
40
From the New Zealand steamer Rimutaka in 1883, – ‘It is quite a common thing for vessels voyaging to or from New Zealand via Cape Horn to fall in with large numbers of icebergs. The barque Kirkdale from Liverpool, reported that on her recent trip icebergs were passed in rapid succession for 1,400 miles, the vessel being on one occasion hemmed in for four days. Icebergs have been seen in New Zealand waters as far north as the Chatham Islands, which lie in the same latitude as Christchurch.’
In the 1890s the number of reports seemed to increase, but I’m not exactly sure why there was a proliferation of massive calving. Perhaps it had something to do with the Length of Day (LOD).
40
If the data doesn’t fit your failed hypothesis, just change the data says the BOM
https://twitter.com/GalileoMovement/status/551699518861750274
“Concurry has been stripped of it’s claim to the nation’s highest temperature days before it was to celebrate it’s 115th anniversary.
The 53.1c on January 1889 had brought notoriety to the outback town.
The weather bureau’s acting Queensland regional director, Jeff Crane said the high was struck off the books because of the way it was recorded.
60
Probably used a non-official pencil.
90
Well………I know where the area near Braidwood is…….it called Araluen and I own a property there and my property has been mined for gold just like the rest of the area, it has always been known as a very hot little valley and I can attest to this as sometimes we are up to 8 to 10 degrees warmer than Braidwood which is only 15 k or so as the crow flys. Take this with a grain of salt but when the last devastating bushfires were burning in Victoria I went to my property to check on my cattle and the car temp guage was reading 52 in the shade………funny that this year so far has been the year of no summer, swings and roundabouts people
80
These historic articles comparing past and present climate just go to show how little progress we are making as climate skeptics. Our Federal Parliament is still considering Renewal Energy Targets and other useless approaches to climate change. Is this because of fear of insulting people under our legal clause 18C whereby I presume that we are not allowed to say that the statements put out by the BoM, CSIRO, the Greens and associated environmental groups are “lies”?
At the time of the First Assessment Report by the IPCC, there was already 32 years of data on atmospheric CO2 concentration available from the Mauna Loa Observatory and 11 years of satellite lower tropospheric temperature data, which is now updated monthly by Dr.s Roy Spencer and John Christy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Comparison of monthly increments in CO2 concentration and Tropics Land satellite lower tropospheric temperature – the combination that currently shows the maximum relationship between the two variable – gives a correlation of 0.06 with a probability of 48% that the correlation is zero.
Clearly that data analysis shows that there was definitely no basis for the statement in the IPCC FAR Overview that:
1. Science
1.0.1 We are certain of the following:
• There is a natural greenhouse effect which already keeps the Earth warmer than it would otherwise be.
• Emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, chloro-fluorocarbons (CFCs) and nitrous oxide. These increases will enhance the greenhouse effect, resulting on average in an additional warming of the Earth’s surface. The main greenhouse gas, water vapour, will increase in response to global warming and further enhance it.
End of quote.
Thus even the FAR was a lie and all future statements based on that report are consequently lies. Is it fear of prosecution for insulting persons or organisations under 18C that stops us from stating the truth that CO2 induced global warming is a lie? Why is it that none of our Federal politicians can make such an admission?
To conclude, the first 11 years of joint CO2/satellite temperature data reveals that the correlation between the average annual tropics land satellite lower tropospheric temperature and the annual increment in atmospheric CO2 concentration has a correlation of 0.6 with a negligible probability that the correlation is zero. Additional proof that the IPCC was either incompetent or chose to lie when the data already showed that temperature drove CO2 concentration.
80
Newcastle may make it up to 21 degrees C(53.6F) on Monday.
http://www.bom.gov.au/nsw/forecasts/newcastle.shtml
40
‘The climate record of the past 163 years is well explained as the integral second-order response to a triggering event that occurred in the mid-to-late 1870s, plus an oscillatory mode regulated by solar irradiance.’
J S Patterson
30
Hmm, I seem to be missing something here, this article tells me that when the humidity (H2O = greenhouse gas) is low, things get hotter (which fits with everything I have experienced), but greenhouse gas theory tells me otherwise, that temps should rise with increased humidity! I’m not entirely convinced that the truth is being told and I think it’s the AGW crowd and the press pulling everyones legs collectively!
40
Yes, interesting isn’t it, but what they say CAN be true, high humidity leads to hot nights, and cool days. This is self evident if you look at tropical zones compared with polar regions. Since the bedwetters define average as (min + max)/2 if the night time temperature rises by more than the daytime (which happens in humid environments) then the average increases even as the maximum falls. Heres an example.
Melbourne, annual range is about -2 to 42 degrees average 20 degrees
South Kalimantan where I used to work has an annual range from 21 to 35 an average of 28 degrees so Kalimantan by Climate Science is 8 degrees hotter than Melbourne despite the fact that its maximum temperature is a full 7 degrees less than Melbourne’s maximum. This is the insanity of the Climate Science method increasing humidity might raise average temperatures but it WILL also lead to LOWER annual temperature ranges and most likely lower maximums and less extreme weather (temperature wise). It’s only ill effect might be to extend the area in which cyclones are sustainable.
30
I believe that the Australian record is 53.1°C (127.6°F) recorded at Cloncurry (QLD) on 16 January 1889. Couldn’t find this one in the intro.
Same El Nino effect, I guess.
40
Tim
The official government recording of the early climate was one of the main tasks given to explorers.
From the party of John McDouall Stuart.
“At Herrgolt Springs there have been found the fossils of some very large animal in sinking a well. The teeth or tusks are about eight inches long, and in almost a perfect state of preservation, and the jawbone is of an enormous size. It certainly has been an enormous animal. The thermometer stood yesterday, in the shade 128 deg ; in the sun 173. This morning at 5 o’clock, it was down to 43 deg — cold enough to starve a fellow to death. This is the most changeable place I was ever in ; it is never two hours alike. I am, &c., J. N. Ewart.”
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/65567656
Lt. Col. Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell Kt. D.C.L. (1792-1855)
Surveyor-General of New South Wales
1845 near the Bogan river “27TH DECEMBER.–The bullock-drivers having allowed twenty-two of the bullocks to stray, it was impossible to proceed.
At early morning the sky was overcast, the weather calm, a slight wind from the west carried off these clouds, and at about eleven a very hot wind set in. The thermometer in my tent stood at 117°, and when exposed to the wind rose rapidly to 129°, when I feared the thermometer would break as it only reached to 132°.
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/e00034.html
Sir Charles Sturt. 1845 a day away from “latitude 29 degrees 43 minutes S., and in longitude 141 degrees 14 minutes E.” On the old mapping grid of the time.
“,At a quarter past 3, p.m. on the 21st of January, the thermometer had risen to 131 degrees in the shade, and to 154 degrees in the direct rays of the sun.
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/sturt/charles/s93n/chapter5.html
So there we have official government recordings of 53.3 degrees C, 53.9 and 55.
80
Interesting read
KK
30
While I could add several anecdotes to the discourse of the elevated degrees of heat I have personally experienced, and heard of, it’s not the point I take from Jo’s thread; it’s the “call to arms” by alarmists with their “extreme heat” and “highest” or “third highest on record” and similar alarm calls from the chorus of BOM, ABC, et al, trying to maintain the broken thesis of CAGW. All one has to do is read the real life experiences of those who faithfully reported the conditions people lived with in the past, as just the way it was, and what’s more to the point, how they got on with whatever they had to do, and didn’t bleat about it, nor use it to make false claims about “the sky is falling”, or, “give me a generous grant, or two, or three, and I’ll model as many answers as you like to point out what or who ’caused’ it”, by the parasite class.
As for all the whimps of today, softened by an air conditioned and nanny state environment they live, travel and work in, it appears they have their air heads brainwashed to believe the false paradigm of AGW, and reach for the thermostat knob to try to turn it “back to normal” when it reaches a tad over 36 degrees C. Fire bureacracies also join the fray to warn of “extreme conditions” at 38 when it’s just reached a nice warm day to go for a swim, when it’s nothing, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, usual, expected, weather conditions of summer. Wait until it’s winter again and the same lot will bitch how cold it is.
And in pure nanny state on steroids mode, the paid fireies warn of “extreme” conditions at 38, and just a degree more, humidity one or two less, a few km of wind speed more and it would be “catastrophic”. But still 10 degrees short of what our great grandparents lived and worked with. The cynic asks: it wouldn’t be that they then go on penalty rates, would it, if they had to “work” inside the air conditioning building that might fail, (good heavens, we open the windows?) while “ordinary volnteers” get smoke and dust in their eyes doing the real work?
And here we are about to recognise (some say celebrate, what, the carnage, of war?) 100 years since World war one (to end all wars?), lest we forget, but also just because we don’t have any living person left who lived through the normal for the time, really hot weather, as described above, to do a television interview (with the inevitable ABC patronising question, “how bad it must have been for you”?), we should not forget the CAGW is a differnt kind of war, one of ideas, seeking truth, integrity, and resolution by the norms, values and principles of what we intrinsically know is right. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Like Jo, stick to your metaphorical guns. There, that’s got the extreme heat off my chest! Or was it back?
70
1877-78 was the biggest Super-El Nino in history.
Nino 3.4 peaked at about 3.4C in November 1877 and, by February 1878 (the three month lag), global temperatures had spiked upwards by about +0.7C above the background temperature of the time. The AMO index also reached its record high in February 1878 which further enhanced temperatures in areas impacted by the AMO (eastern North America and Europe).
Even with all the adjustments, Hadcrut4 in February 1878 was 0.403C. November 2014 was only 0.487C.
Now take out the unjustified temperature adjustments and the 1878 temperatures would rank up there with 1997-98 as the warmest period on record.
20
Hi Bill
Interesting Nino 3.4 figures. Completely different from SOI. 1877-1878 are not in the top El Ninos by a long way. Only one month (February 1878) was in the top 5%, equal 42nd at -21.1. Using 12 month means, biggest super el nino was 1983, followed by years up to 1905, then 1897.
Cheers
Ken
00
I think the chemical measurements from Beck 2007 show a sudden increase in CO2 in 1880 and it reaching about 440ppmv. That sudden CO2 increase I think was probably temperature-driven.
40
El Nino brings worldwide rise in temperature causing death and decay of plants thus releasing a large amont of CO2. Too simple! There must be some way to obscure this with complexity.
20
It’s interesting that, in the whole England and Wales Precipitation (EWP) record, the wettest thirty-six month period is from September 1876 to August 1879. Wettest decade was the decade around 1878 (1874-1883). This was a period of cold winters in the British Isles and Europe, especially 1878-9 (December 1879 was the coldest month of the 19th century in France and Central Europe): also stormy, with the Tay Bridge disaster occurring in 1879.
Bit of a contrast with what was happening around the mid-section of the globe, with millions dying through drought, heat and famine. I’d be tempted to use the terms “extreme” and “climate change”…but all that didn’t start till 1980, as we now know. Hell, Cliff Richard is much older than any climate change, right?
60
In early 2014, we had a lot of rain in the UK, and the year before. Out came the doommongers. But…there was a disastrous flood at Louth, Lincolnshire in 1920, and serious flooding in the city of Norwich. There’s a tablet set into a wall which records the high water mark for severe floods of the past. The highest prior to the flood described was in 1614, but the 1912 flood went 15 inches higher. Much damage was done to roads and bridges around.
The late Robin Stirling, a meteorologist, commented that ‘it must not be thought strange that so many new records were broken in the early years of the 20th century: records cannot be broken until there are records in existence to break’.
There have been other UK floods in the past: in 1833, 1897, 1917, 1924, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1937 for example and continuing right up to recent times. In 1931 Boston in Lincolnshire had a quarter of a year’s worth of rainfall dumped on the city in two hours. This happened again in 1937. In August 1952, Exmoor suffered a flooding disaster following a wet month. The peat and shales of Exmoor were unable to absorb the vast quantities of water, which surged down the valleys of the East and West Lyn rivers, carrying enormous boulders and washing away houses, hotels , and sweeping 130 cars out to sea. A seven-ton boulder was found in the basement of one hotel. In Milbrook, Guildford in September 1968, some shops in the High Street were flooded to a depth of almost eight feet, so 1968 will long be remembered for ‘the floods’.
Stirling has stated that caution is needed in assessing changes in the frequency of flooding as indicators of climate change. He mentions that Exmoor’s rainfall varies between 49 and 79 inches in a year. An inch of water is the equivalent of 100 tons per acre, or 4840 square yards. I find it’s easier to think of this as the area bounded by a square of seven buses on each side, a bus being about 30 feet long!
So, severe floods are nothing new – time for the warmists to have a ‘reality check’.
60
In one day in 1963 my area of NSW had half of London’s average rainfall in ONE day.
If it were to happen now, who doubts that the event would be attributed to you-know-what (with the usual double-speak)?
But because it happened fifty years ago, it’s just…well, stuff.
40
It’s worth considering temps during the years in question on the other side of the country. Perth Botanic Gardens temps 1876-1899 are available and although they’re also non-Stevenson, Perth recordings might give some idea of the magnitude of what’s claimed to have been a giant El Nino that affected all of Australia.
The Climate of Western Australia by government meteorologist Ernest W Cooke has the data (http://www.waclimate.net/climateofwestern00cookrich.pdf – 26.7mb).
The mean annual max at Perth Metro 9225 in Mt Lawley since opening in 1994 is 24.7C, with the hottest 25.7C in 2011 and 2012. The mean January max is 31.1C with the hottest 33.5C in 2012.
Perth Botanic Gardens opened 1876 when the annual mean max was 24.7C and the Jan mean max was 30.3C. In 1877 the annual mean max was 25.2C and the Jan mean max was 29.8C. In 1878 the annual mean max was 25.4C and the Jan mean max was 34.7C, with the hottest day registering 47.1C in the Botanic Gardens.
Perth had some reprieve in 1879 when the annual mean max was 24.1C and the Jan mean max was 32.3C. Newcastle also had a reprieve in 1879 when the annual max dropped sharply.
Then 1880 hit Perth Botanic Gardens (and Newcastle), with an annual mean max of 25.1C and a January mean max of 36.6C. During 23 days of Jan 1880 in Perth with a couple of four day cool spots, the mostly consecutive daily max were 41.3C, 41.4C, 41.7C, 40C, 37.3C, 38C, 37.4C, 38C, 42.2C, 40.3C, 39.8C, 39.4C, 35.6C, 37.1C, 35.3C, 38.3C, 37.2C, 43.3C, 43.3C, 41.7C, 33.7C, 33.1C, 37.8C. The summer of 1879/80 in Perth averaged a max of 32.7C, which compares to Perth Metro’s hottest ever summer of 32.3C in 2012/13.
Thermometer shades don’t explain records such as above at WA’s most meticulously maintained weather station from 1878 to 1880, and anybody enjoying this year’s glorious Perth summer days around 30C would need some convincing that CO2 has given us more extreme temps than 1880.
Perth Botanic Gardens annual mean max from 1876 to 1899 was 24.2C (0.5C cooler than Perth Metro since 1994) and its average Jan max 1876-1899 was 31.1C (the same as Perth Metro since 1994). Compared to Stevensons, Glaishers can add an average 1C to summer mean max and 2-3C on very hot days, with an average annual mean (min+max/2) warming bias of 0.2C. To match Perth Metro’s hottest Jan of 33.5C, the thermometer at the Botanic Gardens in Jan 1880 would have had to register an average 3.1C warmer than the Stevenson equivalent throughout the month.
Newcastle’s max seemed to cool or “correct” by 1890 and the same thing happened in Perth. All locations across WA dating back that far in Cooke show 1880 and Jan/Feb 1880 in particular were way above average with a general cooling by the 1890s. There is strong evidence from coast to coast that the late 1870s and early 1880s were hotter than today beyond what can be explained by thermometer screens.
The mean temp at Perth Botanic Gardens 1876-1899 was 18.3C, compared to 18.3C at Perth Regional Office 1897-1992 with Stevenson and 18.7C at Perth Metro 2000-2013 with Stevenson. A Glaisher or other screen bias might cut an average 0.2C from the Botanic Gardens annual mean but UHI is likely to have more than countered that influence over the past 115 years.
80
‘2014 was hottest year on record’
2014 was hottest year on record across the globe, US government scientists say
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30852588
04
That would be from Gavin at NOAA, the world’s foremost temperature data torturer. !
Reality isn’t really his thing. He will do anything to make the data follow the agenda.
The un-mutilated RSS and UAH give 2014 as 6th and 3rd respectively.
This is the sort of thing Gavin and his merry band of misfitters does.
Even after their data torturing, the difference between this “pseudo-record” and previous is 0.01 degrees, way smaller than the margin of error..
… and they have the hide to say it shows the
pauseplateau in warming is over.These guys are a joke !!
40
Another example of how GISS manufacture the farce
40
This WFT graph shows just how hard Gavin and Phil have been working the data over the last year to maintain the lie. !!
The divergence between the real temps of RSS/UAH and the fabrications that are GISS and HadCrut is astounding.
Its like they were on a mission or something. !!
40
One thing for certain, the warming isn’t coming from the USA. (link taken from SG)
I bet the extra warming comes from somewhere with no thermometers !!
41
With billions of windfarms constructed, solar panels installed and economies carbon constrained to stop doomsday global warming, a key performance indicator(KPI) is the heat of the planet.
2014 hottest year ever is proof that all remedies so far have failed and new methods are needed.
20
Sarc?
00
What is not stated in that BBC (and other MSM reports) is that 2014 was only 0.04°C above 2005 & 2010……..with a ±0.09°C range of uncertainty as reported by NOAA in their report.
20
Numerous places in the Southwest U.S. frequently reach summertime temperatures of 120° F and above (49° C). These aren’t unusual conditions and don’t need any special weather event. Try Yuma Arizona in August or July. Try Blythe California in the summer. And you can never mind Death Valley (record 134° F measured). These places are a long way from there.
Not more than a mile from where I am right now, during the first week of March, 1962, the temperature was 100° F or more for the entire week. I know because I was there. March usually starts off quite cool if not cold. But not that March.
So much for the alarmists.
30
Roy, on the other side of the ocean, 1962 was easily the coldest March in the 20th century, and the coldest March since 1892 (CET). Just before, Germany experienced the 1962 North Sea Flood – not as big a mess as the 1953 North Sea Flood, but still a real mess. As for Asia, it’s always hard to tell if it’s weather or commies, but 1962 was the final act of the Great Famine in China, and climate was so not helping.
Of course, the big US weather news for 1962 was the Columbus Day Storm, a Pacific NW windstorm which is one of the few weather disasters might be called “unprecedented” with any accuracy. Florida’s Great Frost later that year is thought to have been the kickstarter for Brazil’s citrus mega-industry.
But all of this was going on before climate change and increasing climate extremes, so I don’t know what to call it. Maybe just call it Fred…but it was messy, very messy.
20
O/T
Story here
70
Seriously? CSIRO in charge of an investigation into BOM’s temperature manipulations.
That’s like inviting a second fox into the hen house !!
Let’s wait and see who is actually on this panel.
50
Actually, searching for Ron Sandland, I can’t find any overt support either way for the climate change agenda.
Maybe, just maybe, this won’t be rigged by alarmists !!
10
Bob is a MP and not a warmist!
20
How very convenient.
“The globally averaged temperature over land and ocean surfaces for 2014 was the highest among all years since record keeping began in 1880.”
SMH
50
We have not visited the extremes of weather anywhere on the planet during the last 2 centuries. The records show todays weather is mild.
50
When see posts such as Jo’s above on past heat and temperatures it often triggers off some other line of thought so here’s another one.
Right through out all those early Australian history stories lies one constant and unchangeable theme.
And that is WATER and it’s availability or shortage.
Very, very few in our world today and almost unknown in our cities is what it is like to be without water for even a few hours or only slightly less traumatic to have very limited access to only small amounts of water over days and weeks that are just sufficient to sustain life.
I remember as a small boy, probably about ten years old [ it’s getting close to 70 years ago for me ] standing at the end of the long table where the family were sitting around after a sunday family get together and getting my old Grandfather who settled a property north west of Dimboola in Victoria’s Wimmera in around 1902 and then had to clear it of Mallee scrub, to talk about his boyhood and early days.
Even to this small boy he had a fascinating story to tell of those early days back in the late 1800’s.
One of those little pieces of the old man’s yarns of early times I haven’t forgotten is how he as a boy had the job of harnessing a couple of horses to a large tree fork on which a large barrel had been fixed and then heading off and dragging that great fork and it’s precious barrel down the couple of miles to the river to get the drinking and washing water for the family for the next three or four days.
It was a couple of times a week job.
There was quite a chuckle around the table as he just sort of mentioned that rather strangely the local girls also turned up to wash the family clothes in the river about the same time as all the local lads turned up to collect water for their families.
My grandmother sort of just smiled and looked at him out of the corner of her eyes.
It seems that not much has changed on that subject over the last few thousand years.
Now what has that to do with water as we know it and each of us so casually wash thousands of litres a day down those hidden and never thought about modern piping systems that lay in such huge mileages under every few metres of our cities and dwellings where ever they might be?.
The invention of “PIPES” is another one of mankind’s very, very early creations, a hollow reed probably being one of mankind’s first pipes, that are one of the few pieces of absolutely basic technology that are all that stands between us and our immense numbers and civilisation and a primitive, harsh brutal existence constantly belaboured with health and sickness problems from the polluted surrounds and water created by the human masses and their animals.
The Romans and their city of Rome which at it’s zenith is estimated to be both the largest city on earth until modern times had an estimated maximum population of about one million.
To supply water and to carry away sewerage the Romans had the then luxury of both pipes of earthenware to supply water brought from hundreds of kilometres away in some cases through the great aqueducts, remnants of which still in places in southern Europe plus lead piping in the wealthiest households which ensured a good turn over of older aged Romans through slow lead poisoning.
Water for the multi storied teeming Urb’s of Imperial Rome was only available on the ground floors and then only in some districts.
But the true impact of PIPES on our civilization had to wait until the mass production technologies of the Industrial Revolution began.
Then and only then did it become possible that millions would be able to live in vast megapolis’s and do so with an almost complete absence of contaminated health destroying water and any health destroying contaminated waste water and with access to almost unlimited for personal use, good clean drinking and washing water. all accessible and available and useable at any minute of any day, anytime.
Pipes and piping which lays under our feet in the cities and towns and villages in immense mileages and are used from water to gas to electronic communication systems to energy provision in fuel and refrigeration to preserve food brought thousands of kilometres away to feed the city masses, all of these plus many, many more systems that sustain our cites and our civilisation rely totally on pipes and systems of pipes of every type, configuration and complexity.
Without “pipes”, we in our modern civilisation would be without water in amounts and qualities that would enable our human existence and sustain our cities and civilisation
Without water there is no civilisation and no life.
Pipes are one of mankind’s great technological advances and are one of the few technologies that stand between a civilisation of billions and a primitive existence for mankind whose numbers at most would be measured in millions.
50
ROM
A good change in perspective always helps see “the Science” in the proper light.
🙂
KK
20
Interesting view of things, ROM.
Water does seem to be the big deal, whether you are a bristle cone pine or a human.
It’s strange that we are so easy with the idea of Rome, Egypt, China and other civilisations undergoing major climate and hence political change…yet we act surprised by every little recent blip or bump in the ongoing Holocene.
It’s true that climate change is worse than we thought. It was also worse than the various Nile kingdoms thought. And it was worse than the Ming thought. 2200BC was definitely worse than anybody thought. Think we’ve got probs now…Try surviving one of those Bond Events!
20
ROM, the name of the trade of Plumber comes from the Latin word Plumbus which means Lead. So the plumbers originally worked with lead to conduct water.
10
multiple links and quotes…
16 Jan: Climate Depot: Scientists balk at ‘hottest year’ claims: Ignores Satellites showing 18 Year ‘Pause’ – ‘We are arguing over the significance of hundredths of a degree’ – The ‘Pause’ continues
http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/01/16/scientists-balk-at-hottest-year-claims-we-are-arguing-over-the-significance-of-hundredths-of-a-degree-the-pause-continues/
just for fun:
16 Jan: CNS News: Terence P. Jeffrey: Price of Electricity Hit Record High in U.S. in 2014
Even as gasoline prices plummeted and the overall energy price index calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics declined, electricity prices bucked the trend in the United States in 2014.
Data released today by the BLS indicates that the electricity price indexes hit all-time highs for the month of December and for the year. 2014 was the most-expensive year ever for electricity in the United States…
The average price for a kilowatt hour of electricity in the United States was 13.5 cents in December. That is the highest average price for KWH of electricity in the month of December since the BLS started recording the December monthly price for a KWH in 1978…
In the first nine months of 2014, solar power equaled about 0.46 percent of total electricity generation. Wind power equaled about 4.3 percent of total electricity production.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/price-electricity-hit-record-high-us-2014
00
16 Jan: The Hindu: Nearly 100 bidders purchase papers for coal blocks
Nearly 100 prospective bidders have picked up the tender documents for the coal blocks that have been put on auction, Coal Secretary Anil Swarup said, adding that the government proposes to complete the entire process of (of the 204 blocks) by March 2016. He described the response as “encouraging.”…
Participating at an interactive session with the members of the Merchant Chamber of Commerce, he said that the government had “no intention to denationalise coal” by auctioning coal blocks to the private sector. “We see an increasing role for Coal India (CIL) whose production target is being doubled to one billion tonnes.”
He said that in order to evacuate this increased CIL output, the government was exploring the options of entering into joint venture with the Railways for 50 projects where CIL could strike a joint venture with the Railways. These JVs would improve evacuation facilities.
“I have written to the Railway Board and we are meeting on (January) 20.. they will tell me about the viability of these projects.” …
http://www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/nearly-100-bidders-purchase-papers-for-coal-blocks/article6794410.ece
10
a laugh for the weekend:
14 Jan: The Onion: New Climate Change Study Just 400 Pages Of Scientists Telling Americans To Read Previous Climate Change Studies
WASHINGTON—Co-authored by several dozen of the nation’s top climatologists, a new climate change study released Wednesday by the U.S. Global Change Research Program reportedly consists of 400 pages in which scientists just tell Americans to read previous climate change studies.
“Not sure if you saw this one from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 2012 about how rising sea levels are putting billions of people in coastal cities at risk, or L.G. Thompson’s 2009 paper on the loss of Kilimanjaro’s glaciers, but really, you should check them out,” read the study in part, which is titled “The Global Climate At Risk: A Broad Survey Of Climate Change Reports That We’ve Been Publishing For Decades And That You Should Actually, Seriously Read.” “Look, there are hundreds of studies on Greenland’s rapidly melting ice sheet alone.
If you could just skim the abstract of one of those—just one, that’s it—that would be great. They’re all online, and our JSTOR password is USGCRP90, so you can go and check one out right now.” The report is said to conclude with a single exasperated 28-page run-on sentence urging people to “just come on and look at these damn things, for the love of God—what more do you want from us—Jesus, this is ridiculous.”
http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-climate-change-study-just-400-pages-of-scienti,37761/
20
HELP PLEASE!
Our government is under attack from Labor and Greens who claim that 2014 was the hottest year on record ………..
https://au.news.yahoo.com/technology/a/26024558/abbott-frozen-while-world-warms-labor/
Relentless relativity with propaganda spread by BOM, CSIRO, ABC, SBS, MSM who all ignore the facts.
00
typo: relentless negativity
00