Australian BOM under fire – questions about “adjusted” temperatures exploding around the world

A hard hitting article today from Graham Lloyd in The Australian. Finally the scientific debacle of climate records is being hung out like dirty laundry. For people who don’t read skeptic blogs it will be news that there are claims of scandal and corruption about temperature data adjustments around the world, against institutions that are (or were) respected household names.

Lloyd starts with a brilliant analogy from David Stockwell, who asks Would it be OK if we adjusted Don Bradmans batting average down?  It won’t affect the global batting average…. (The Don is the legend of international cricket — those stats are sacred.)

Lloyd goes on to tell the tale of how temperature adjustments that make historic records cooler are commonplace, and suddenly under the spotlight around the world. To his credit, Lloyd realizes this has been coming for a long time — he explains the Australian and UK Met offices were caught discussing ways to make it hard for skeptics. He talks about Christopher Booker’s article on adjustments in Paraguay getting 30,000 comments, and the issue “exploding” internationally with questions about the misleading public declarations about 2014 being the hottest year on record, as well as the issue of Arctic temperatures. There is now a review into the Australian BOM, and even the prospect of a US Senate inquiry.

CRICKET legend Donald Bradman is a useful metaphor for the escalating global row over claims the world’s leading climate agencies have been messing with the weather.

Imagine, for instance, if some bureau of sport were to revise the Don’s batting average in Test cricket down from 99.94 to 75 after adjusting for anomalies and deleting innings of 200 runs or more.

What if the bureau then claimed another batsman had exceeded the Don’s revamped record to become the greatest ever?

Critics could be told the adjustments “don’t matter” because they had not affected overall global batting averages. Just as many batsmen had been adjusted up as down. And complaints could easily be dismissed as the “cherrypicking” of a few, isolated batsmen.

David Stockwell, Australian Research Council grant recipient and adjunct researcher at Central Queensland University, raised the Bradman analogy in his submission to a newly formed independent panel that will oversee the operation of the Bureau of Meteorology’s national temperature dataset.

Stockwell was highlighting public concerns at the BoM’s use of homogenisation techniques to adjust historical temperature records to remove anomalies and produce a national dataset called ACORN-SAT (Australian Climate Observations Reference Network — Surface Air Temperature). The panel, or technical advisory forum, which will hold its first discussions with BoM staff on Monday, was formed in December after a series of questions were raised publicly about the treatment of historic temperature records that has resulted in temperature trends at some Australian sites being changed from long-term cooling to warming.

Climategate emails show how long the climate scientists have been unscientifically hiding their work:

Even better, noted East Anglia University’s Phil Jones, was to give troublemakers a big package of data with key information missing, making it impossible to decipher.

Much of the background work and hard questions come from Jennifer Marohasy and the independent audit team who assembled around this website back in 2010, and who write guests posts here. Together we’ve written 41 articles on the BOM here.

But critics of BoM are already lining up to have their questions answered.

Research academic Jennifer Marohasy has accused BoM of using “creative accounting practices” in both the homogenisation of data to remodel individual series as well as the choice of stations and time periods when the individual series are combined to calculate a national average for each year.

Marohasy says BoM’s methodologies have turned a cycle of warming and cooling over the past century into one of continuous warming.

 Ken Stewart has been tireless at independently checking BOM figures:

Self-declared “citizen scientist” Ken Stewart has been more pointed. “The apparent lack of quality assurance means ACORN-SAT is not fit for the purpose of serious climate analysis including the calculation of annual temperature trends, identifying hottest or coldest days on record, analysing the intensity, duration and frequency of heatwaves, matching rainfall with temperature, calculating monthly means or medians, and calculating diurnal temperature range,” he says.

“In conclusion, ACORN-SAT is not reliable and should be scrapped.

In a separate article this weekend, also by Graham Lloyd,  the headline points out that a lot of warming in Australia is created by adding warmer and dropping cooler stations from long term averaged records:

BoM’s new stations ‘explain warming’ in Australia

ALMOST half of the 20th-century warming for Australia’s nation­al average surface temperatures could be due to changes in the weather stations chosen for analysis, rather than changes in the climate, according to a submission to an independent review of the Bureau of Meteorology’s national records.

Merrick Thomson, a retired certified practising accountant, has asked the independent panel to investigate how and why stations were selected for inclusion to make up the national trend.

The panel of experts, headed by Ron Sandland from the CSIRO, will begin its review of BoM’s national temperature data next week, amid growing controv­ersy about the homogenisation of climate records worldwide.

In his submission to the review panel, Mr Thompson said when the BoM transitioned to the new ACORN-SAT system it had remove­d 57 stations from its calculations, replacing them with 36 on-average hotter stations.

“I calculate this has had the effect­ of increasing the recorded Australian average temperature by 0.42 degrees Celsius, independently of any actual real change in temperature,” Mr Thomson said.

“Of the 57 stations removed from the calculation of the nationa­l average temperature, only three of these have actually closed as weather stations,” he added.

Mr Thomson asked that the review panel investigate why the mix of stations changed with the transition to ACORN-SAT, and why this was not explained and declared, particularly given that it has resulted in a large increase in the 2013 annual temperature for Australia.

Read more in The Australian

The BOM were invited to write for The Australian, but declined.

This is a very long feature, with interviews of Judith Curry and Richard Tol. Don’t just run down and buy a copy of  The Australian —  subscribe to it. You certainly won’t get this information from Fairfax or The ABC. Graham Lloyd has done a great job, bravely following the hard questions — as has Jennifer Marohasy, in relentless pursuing this for so long, and so many of the other unpaid, and independent minds who expect the answer provided by the BOM to make more sense. My thanks to everyone who has put in long hours. I have a lot more material to share from them — it’s hard to do it all justice.

9.5 out of 10 based on 161 ratings

189 comments to Australian BOM under fire – questions about “adjusted” temperatures exploding around the world

  • #

    The source of Christopher Booker’s two articles in the Telegraph is Paul Homewood at notalotofpeopleknowthat.
    Homewood’s findings include the following
    – In Paraguay all 9 weather stations had been adjusted all in the same way – cooling the past.
    – In neighboring Bolivia all 14 weather stations had been similarly adjusted.
    – In the Arctic periphery from Western Greenland to the Central North Coast of Siberia, there have been adjustments that cool the past over about 16 weather stations.
    – In South Korea the there is no net allowance for UHI in the cities, and there are no rural weather stations.

    I have taken a more detailed look at Paraguay adjustments. There I found a sharp cooling in the raw data in the late 1960s had been smoothed out. Further, static temperatures since then had been adjusted to 0.5C of warming.

    Following Homewood’s lead I checked the Reykjavik adjustments. Since 1901, the raw data shows the massive warming until the 1940s, the cooling almost back to 1900s levels, and a return to 1940s levels in the last decade. The adjusted data emasculates the early twentieth century warming and subsequent cooling.

    This is not just related to Australia. We need to be very careful to understand the extent of the problem. In response to Booker’s first article a campaign has been launched to divert attention away from looking at the data, and towards the meme of a conspiracy thoerists cherry-picking a few random weather stations against real scientists who know the wider picture.

    851

    • #
      Roy Hogue

      In response to Booker’s first article a campaign has been launched to divert attention away from looking at the data, and towards the meme of a conspiracy thoerists cherry-picking a few random weather stations against real scientists who know the wider picture.

      So we shove the data back at them at every opportunity.

      421

      • #

        Roy,
        “Shoving it back” is not the right expression. The climate alarmists have full-time public relations consultants propagandists who deflect away and play dirty. We should understand better the techniques employed and, to retaliate, do the opposite.
        On temperature records, I looked at some of the methods used. These include (with suggested responses in italics):-
        1. Divert away from looking at the original sources, and only mention the commentary. In the terms of historians call this reliance on secondary sources, rather than primary sources. Follow the evidence, not the commentary.
        2. Link to the secondary sources, but only in derogatory terms. There is a rich language you can draw upon. So hardly anyone will link to them. Look up those articles and compare and contrast. There is often a reason for the diversion.
        3. Link to alternative sources in glowing terms, inferring they have the correct answers. Go beyond the biases, comparing and contrasting what is said in all sources.
        4. On temperature stations, massively understate the numbers. Such as infer just three in dispute. It is easy to count and contradict. My article showed 28. With Iceland, other Arctic, South Korea UHI, and Euan Mean’s additions for Australia and the Southern Hemisphere there are now nearly 100. The BOMs switching of temperature stations is a quite separate.
        5. On temperature stations, mention the need for homgenization, but never mention that the possibility of getting adjustments wrong or the need for quality controls. Understand statistical bias.
        6. When you look at temperature data, do fuzzy averages and indistinct graphs. Do not look at the consequences of smothering the richness and variety of the raw temperature data, whether between sites, or over time at one site. Check the data – or go to sources that have. Support efforts for independent corroboration of adjustments and objective quality standards.
        7. Imply climate scientists are professional experts applying well-known techniques. Realize that climate scientists are academics who rely for funding on producing original articles. This is why you get layer-upon-layer of adjustments, and new techniques all the time. It is like getting engine design engineers to service your car.
        8. In general, switch attention away from examination of the primary evidence, to bickering between government-funded scientists and a few attacking deniers. Remember that science is about understanding the real world, and the greatest enemy to that understanding is established beliefs. When we think we have perfect understanding is when we fail most.

        130

        • #

          I would have posted this up yesterday, but it fell foul of the auto-filters on the website. This was due to link I had to

          4. On temperature stations, massively understate the numbers. Such as infer just three in dispute.

          The link had in its title had some offensive language. To find the source please search on “Variable Variability Climatologists have to REDUCE warming“. The search implies that the experts have to correct the data – exactly what the author wants to avoid. 🙂

          40

        • #
          Roy Hogue

          Kevin,

          I don’t wish to play around with semantics and I believe you understand what I mean. 🙂

          It’s unfortunate that we do not have the possibility of a full time PR group to counter the nonsense (unless Jo spends some of her big oil money on it ;-)). But we can still speak out and we must at every possible opportunity.

          And yes! By all means explain the things to the public that a large number of people don’t understand.

          30

          • #

            Roy,
            Of course I was not getting at you, and I dislike playing semantics. I like to respond to robust comments, even those I mostly agree with. It is part of the debate.
            I am not in favor of a counter-PR campaign. I would like something far more powerful and helpful to science. That is to give people the tools to question for themselves. Nothing sophisticated. Just if somebody is attacked vehemently, like Christopher Booker, get people to check for themselves. If you encounter a polarized opinion, read the opposite. Then compare and contrast. But I am also a pluralist, so believe in multiple approaches. If you would like to contact me for a chat, ask Jo Nova for my contact details.

            30

            • #
              Roy Hogue

              I would like something far more powerful and helpful to science. That is to give people the tools to question for themselves.

              I agree. What I don’t see is how to do that without what will amount to some form of PR operation. It amounts to reeducating people on a grand scale and that takes time and persistence. Climate change didn’t become so embedded in our culture overnight. It took several decades to get where we are.

              I’d be happy to talk to you offline about possibilities, ideas and so forth. But frankly, I’ve no idea that wouldn’t take some financing, enough financing to buy space on TV and in newspapers. And I don’t see that being available, Jo’s big oil money notwithstanding. I certainly can’t pull it off and probably neither can you.

              I’ll get your email though and we can talk if you wish.

              10

        • #

          Useful and interesting blog post, Kevin.

          20

    • #
      gai

      I did not keep the comment, but Eliza on Stephen Goddard’s site said her father went to Paraguay many many years ago to set-up modern weather stations.

      If you bother to actually look at the measurement methods a century ago, there is zero reason for adjustments. Those people were scientists who put the current lysankoists to shame.

      571

    • #
      manalive

      This is not just related to Australia …

      That’s right, the BoM claim its adjustments follow ‘world’s best practice’.

      411

    • #
      Rud Istvan

      I have taken an independent look and come to the same conclusions. Homewood’s finding is even worse. The South American and Artic stations were used to infil a large portion of Central South America and the Atlantic part of the Artic where there is no GHCN data. That vastly amplifies the global effect of the adjustments. The second step is what hits the GMST.

      361

    • #
      Jennifer Marohasy

      Christopher Booker go so many comments at that article. The Weekend Australian doesn’t usually open its online articles to comments. But Alas, a comments section has just opened under Graham Lloyd’s article here… http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/upping-the-heat-on-climate-number-crunchers/story-e6frg6z6-1227242096753
      Make the most of it!

      310

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    And Jo doesn’t permit the word FR**D to appear in comments. I guess she knows what the legal and political realities in Australia are a lot better than I do. But I still can’t think of a better descriptive word for what’s been going on, lo these last 30 years or so.

    371

    • #
      Roy Hogue

      And if I could proof read, much less type, I might win a Pulitzer Prize. But as it is I type such nonsense as, “…realities in Australia are a lot…” and don’t even notice the extraneous word, “are”. Do you suppose there’s any hope at all for me?

      Nuts!

      102

      • #
        Robert

        I suspect you’re over thinking this. 🙂

        “she knows what the legal and political realities in Australia are a lot better…”

        or

        “she knows the legal and political realities in Australia a lot better…”

        So I think you were fine. Had you removed “are” so it read “she knows what the legal and political realities in Australia a lot better…” then I’d be a little concerned. But just a little 😛

        91

        • #
          Peter Carabot

          I suppose being a migrant and having learned English translating newspaper articles, gives me an advantage. “B#$% W&* cant speaka dha englis”…….

          111

          • #
            James Bradley

            Well you got the first words most migrants learn phonetically correct.

            61

          • #
            Byron

            Reminds Me of the classic scene out of the TV series Deadwood where Al Swearengen and Mr Wu are having a conversation … Warning:contains strong language and partial nudity

            10

            • #
              Roy Hogue

              Byron,

              Your partial nudity isn’t worth a look. I see women dressed almost that poorly out in public from time to time. Southern California is a zoo. S’truth, unfortunately. Times have changed and not for the better.

              Interesting movie though. The clip is a comedy in it’s own right, made so by the, ahh… …strong language. Needless to say, I’m no prude.

              I wish I had the time to watch the whole thing. Maybe someday…

              10

              • #
                Roy Hogue

                The ever more permissive dress code gets tiring. I keep wondering why they don’t either really take it off or quit pretending and stay decently dressed. As a gynecologist I knew once said, “If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.” In the end it distracts from a good story in most cases rather than adding anything.

                11

              • #
                Byron

                Well , the nudity doesn’t bother Me but but not everyone is Me (thankfully )so I like to give some warning for the easily offended and those who may be reading somewhere where some discretion might be required .

                20

        • #
          Roy Hogue

          I suspect you’re over thinking this.

          Robert,

          I suspect you caught me. 🙂

          I get too many distractions throughout the day and sometimes… …well, stuff happens. What can I say?

          00

          • #
            Robert

            No worries. Been there, done that, t-shirt doesn’t fit anymore. 🙂

            Actually I had just gotten up and had to read that sentence through a few times before I sorted it out. You said the sentence had a problem so even though the little voice was saying the sentence is fine I had to make sure. Was driving me batty because I couldn’t find a problem with it.

            Take it from one who, knowing fully well that Outlook has a spell checker, finds things in emails I send professionally that I shouldn’t have had to use the spell checker for and because I didn’t they weren’t found until after the mail was sent. As you say stuff happens.

            10

            • #
              Roy Hogue

              This is a bit late, Robert. But the spell checkers I’ve used all suffer from the one problem no one has yet been able to solve. They can’t determine your intent. So even with grammar checkers they’ll let through a legitimate word that results from as little as one mistyped letter that changes a legitimate word into another (3-letter words are particularly vulnerable). And that leaves the final proofreading up to the guy behind the keyboard (where it belongs of course).

              As you no doubt have noticed if you read my comments, that problem has bitten me more than once. People here take that sort of thing in stride but professionally it does tend to be embarrassing to say the very least.

              Back in the 80s I once did some work on implementing a misspelling tolerant word comparison algorithm. The design of the algorithm had to ignore certain things it might otherwise accept as a match because of the 3-letter word problem. It taught me that a little English can be a dangerous thing. I didn’t actually design the algorithm. That was the project manager’s idea. But I had to reduce the state diagram he gave me, which was a mess, to it’s minimum number of states, eliminating the duplicates and then figure out what didn’t work. It was a lot of fun fooling with it but in the end the whole project was closed down for lack of customer interest.

              00

      • #

        …not what a lot of hope are for you, I think me (you betcha).

        20

    • #
      davefromweewaa

      If we can’t say fraud surely we can say fast and loose.
      “Worlds best practise” is Orwellian doublespeak for dodgy.

      191

      • #
        PeterS

        Yes, when I hear “worlds best practice” in any line of business, I take it to mean best practice in covering up the truth and telling lies to do so. I see it every day at work in the management world.

        41

      • #
        Carbo500

        I’ve always liked ‘doubleplusgood duckspeaking’ as an Orwellian concept. What a shrewd observer of human nature the man was!

        40

  • #

    Re-writing The Climate History of Iceland
    Temperature Adjustments in Australia

    Jo, you are welcome to run the Australian article which is more interesting for the total absence of warming than for the wholesale over writing of the original temperature records that turns out to change nothing. I’ll be offering Iceland to all blogs early next week. I think Iceland deserves very wide coverage.

    301

    • #

      I can recommend Euan’s temperature adjustments in Australia by GHCN. It covers 30 stations in Central Australia – within a 1000km radius of Alice Springs. The overall conclusions is the net effect is to make no difference to the average trend in the last 100 years – which was no warming. However, there are some huge adjustments, including the elimination of 3˚C of cooling in the 1970s found in 6 stations around Alice Springs.
      The conclusion is similar to one I found with the Paraguay data. Large fluctuations are eliminated. Euan also looked at 11 stations in the Southern Hemisphere – in South America, South Africa and Sydney. Adjustments were all over the place, including some massive warming trends being reduced. However, to my eye, after adjustment there is greater similarity of adjusted than before. This adjusted data conforms much more to the global average surface temperature pattern.
      This confirms my hypothesis as to why the adjustments are made. We are constantly told that climate experts know the truth that

      The earth is warming and humans are the cause of it.

      This is essentially an a priori truth, so any large deviations from that pattern must be due to faulty instrument readings. Further there are fixed patterns to this warming, particularly in the Arctic where it is known warming is at much faster rates than elsewhere. This hypothesis might be a testable.

      311

    • #

      Hi Jo, just wanting to make sure you saw my post on Australia. Using the GISS web data base, I clicked on Alice Springs and got the 30 nearest climate stations in a 1000 km radius. The average temperature for these 30 stations is a TOTALY FLAT line for the last 100 years. Every Australian should have the chance to see this.

      http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/average_raw_1907.png

      In comments I posted the equivalent for anomalies – still flat. NB its actually the V2 unadjusted data that I’m plotting here.

      71

  • #
    pattoh

    Something was on the nose from the beginning & the miasma of artifice was cloaking the data as evidenced by the infamous reply to Warwick Hughes’ request:-

    “Why should I make the data available to you,
    when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.”

    Well let me see; perhaps patronage, ideology, subjectivity & corruption does not make good science.

    ( & if the Minister for Goldman Sachs has a successful coup, neither pure science or statesmanship will have anything to do with the direction he will take Australia in Paris!)

    501

  • #
    Stuart Elliot

    There’s a series of scandals to be uncovered that I believe would secure a newspaper’s place in the world for a generation.

    Most seem to prefer a slow and placid shuffle off to Camp Irrelevant.

    The amounts of money, the malfeasance and the bullying would be subjects of intense probing if the underlying matter were of more concern to the Left.

    The Green Blob bought themselves a lot of time and running room when they succeeded in framing the issue as Truth vs Big Oil. In my opinion, it’s Truth vs Big Government and the admirers & dependents thereof.

    371

  • #
    Peter Miller

    Perhaps the well co-ordinated witch hunt currently underway against sceptic scientists is a direct response to the fears that the greatest scandal of all time is about to unfold, namely: “M’lud, the numbers were got at.”

    381

  • #
    Thejoker

    The very simplest of thought experiments can prove that these accusations against the BoM are an obvious fabrication: If you create a trend from a historical dataset by adjusting older data down and more recent data up, what is going to happen when you add unadjusted new data to the end of the series? There will be a step change down. This is completely obvious and irrefutable.

    So Jo, either:

    1. Show us these step changes in the series.

    2. Demonstrate that the BoM are adjusting the recent data upwards to continue the trend. Or

    3. Apologise for making up an defamatory lie against the BoM.

    Quote accurately. We’re talking of historic adjustments and station additions/subtractions. You, however, appear to have fabricated something up… – Jo

    330

    • #
      Ross

      Quite a simple answer to your question thejoker. They keep making the adjustments so no step change occurs. It is not only BOM who are doing it –it is happening in the USA ,UK as well as other places.

      181

    • #
      Angry

      Thejoker,
      From your comments your moniker is richly deserved !

      101

    • #
      The Backslider

      The BOM regularly rounds up numbers to the nearest degree (or two).

      41

      • #
        mem

        And changes which stations it includes (cherry picks ones that are a bit warmer) so it will always be able to homogenise up.

        31

  • #

    But…but…but their intentions were noble. They were just trying to save us from the disaster they feared was coming. So they say. That their fear had little more bases in reality than “things that go bump in the night” or “monsters under the bed” not withstanding.

    Their heart was in the right place. Meaning in the left side of their chest near their left arm pit. Unfortunately, neither of their hands were. They were deeply embedded in our pockets through the agency of government grants of tax money. Money they used to build a story that stimulated still more government grants of tax money.

    Since we can’t know their real intentions, all we can go on are their words and subsequent actions. Their actions produced fake science on top of fake science for the apparently single minded purpose of getting government grants to do still more fake science. Since that is overwhelmingly the case, one has difficulty believing the apparent benevolence of their stated intentions. Otherwise, we are forced to believe they are either psychotically delusional, unbelievable stupid, or willfully misrepresenting the truth. No matter which of these are actually true, they are not worthy of the trust that has been given them simply because they call themselves “climate scientists”.

    The interesting thing, the net of all of these carefully chosen words can be summed up by calling them the forbidden “F” word (no not that one, the other one).

    I make one final observation. If you can’t name your enemy for what they are, you have already lost the battle. They have so corrupted the world into using politically correct language that nothing can be identified for what it is. If you can’t say what it is, you can’t identify it well enough to fight it.

    The world of the book 1984 was a paragon of clarity and explicitness compared to the one we now inhabit.

    441

  • #
    bemused

    Perhaps we are coming out of the Dark Ages into the Age of Enlightenment sooner than expected.

    141

    • #
      Dennis

      Let’s hope that Tony Abbott survives the relentless attacks, he said that he will not stand for socialism masquerading as environmentalism and as Christopher Monckton pointed out he is the target of local and international associates who want to get rid of him.

      322

      • #
        Ross

        Dennis

        I think your point is CRITICAL for Australia. Tony Abbott has to remain PM.
        He is currently over here in NZ. The lead item on TV One News ( the “top” TV channel for news at 6.00pm) last night was about him and how it maybe his last visit as PM. A Fairfax paper had a an “opinion” piece yesterday referring to him as “toxic” Tony Abbott –there is no doubt in my mind Fairfax HO is sending out the orders.

        273

        • #
          el gordo

          Fairfax and the ABC are pushing to replace Tony with Malcolm, with the ultimate intention of destroying the Lib/Nat Coalition.

          The Nationals cannot accept labor Lite Malcolm who would bring in an ETS and (like a drunken sailor on shore leave) throw billions away in Paris.

          I don’t expect it to happen.

          180

          • #
            The Backslider

            Fairfax and the ABC are pushing to replace Tony with Malcolm, with the ultimate intention of destroying the Lib/Nat Coalition.

            They are desperate. Malcolm is their man for Paris, no doubt.

            70

        • #
          toorightmate

          Despite the pitfalls and the cacophony of criticism from their ABC and Fairfax press, Tony Abbot has a spine. Malcolm’s spine is similar to that found in a jelly fish.
          If Abbot had not rolled Turnbull, Kevin Rudd would still e PM, we would still have the ALP/CFMEU/AWU running the country and we would be getting very close to Greece’s economical situation (or should that be “comical” situation).

          180

        • #
          pattoh

          Yep, the first thing TA should do if he survives is halve the ABC budget & re-instate to $500M licensing fee for the commercials just to put them on notice ( for starters)

          110

        • #
          Ross

          I’ve just heard a radio news item reporting Julie Bishop
          (who is over here with TA )was on weekend TV political program supporting TA and fending off the rumours of TA being rolled. So I think the leftie NZ MSM are all wound up it and trying to stir the pot for their leftie Aussie MSM friends.

          120

        • #
          bemused

          I emailed my local member expressing my concern (and that of others that I know) regarding the ongoing leadership war and that Tony Abbott must remain as PM if these voters are to continue to support the Coalition. The government cannot be poll and ABC/The Age driven when it comes to these important issues.

          110

        • #
          RB

          My local paper is a Fairfax paper. It had a cartoon with two MPs arguing over whether the party room or the people should choose the PM. In the foreground was Rupert Mudoch reading a paper with a smirk.

          The problem is that the Murdoch bogeyman is a myth that stops the useful idiots in the media from looking at themselves critically.

          60

  • #
    Yonniestone

    RIP Leonard Nimoy, LLAP.

    181

  • #
    TdeF

    The other major omission which creates the illusion of a warming 20th century is the start date of the BOM, 1910. Formed in 1907 after Federation in 1901, the new Federal BOM has consistently refused to include the massive Federation drought in its picture of the 20th century, despite the widespread use since at 1887 of the same measurement technology as in 1910. The country started again in 1910, as if new.

    So our Australian climate history was effectively wiped of a contiguous and highly significant period which is very similar to that at the start of the 21st century, indicating a pattern of heat and drought which is very significant for long term predictions and understanding. In presentations by the BOM and the expensive Climate Commission, how many Australians are even made aware of the very existence of the long and devastating Federation drought? Why was that?

    There is no explanation for this excision but it obviously created and supports the illusion that Australia has never been hotter or drier during the entire period of accurate recording, something which is utterly false even in the 20th century. It allows the lines to project upwards.

    Of course the records go back even further, back to the earliest days of settlement. With a full time staff of 1500 people whose entire job to record, monitor and predict the weather, this is not understandable. The full picture of the Australian climate has always demanded full integration of these early records. The only difference was politics then and politics now, not science or duty. Maybe someone lost them? You can forget images of extremists smashing their own history. We have done the same.

    272

    • #
      TdeF

      I have a confession. As an Australian and someone who loves to read history, I had no idea of the massive Federation drought. 1895-1902. Why was that? You drive through suburbs in Melbourne where every street is named after the Crimean War. Why did we fight? The Boer war has been also forgotten, except for Breaker Morant. In discussions of the Australian climate, how can anyone leave out the 7 long years of no rain and scorching temperatures and devastation. How did that affect ordinary Australians? How can you even understand Australian history of the time without that knowledge? So in the story of Australian climate, how can something so important which just passed out of living memory be so utterly forgotten?

      Wasn’t it the job of climate scientists, specifically our salaried Australian of the Year, Chief Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery to point out that the recent long drought and worse had happened before? Wasn’t it the job of the BOM to make this very point and implicitly fall back on the absurd excuse that their department records only started in 1910? Did the relevance escape everyone?

      This would be tantamount to forgetting about Gallipoli, as we have forgotten about Pozieres where 7,000 Australians died in only 6 weeks. Our professional record keepers have failed us. Worse, our well paid and specifically tasked Climate Commissioners kept utterly silent about the Federation Drought. This is like the Australian Cricket Board forgetting Don Bradman ever existed. Convenient for some.

      512

      • #
        TdeF

        and not implicitly.

        42

      • #
        TdeF

        History can mean understanding a jigsaw. I wondered about two famous Australian poems. Firstly the magnificent “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar describes a land of droughts and flooding rains. It was written in green and wet England in 1907 when she was 22 and homesick. Clearly it was inspired by her experience on her brothers’ farms near Gunnedah, in the north-west of New South Wales reflecting her memory of the terrible drought which ended when she was 17 in 1902.

        Core of my heart, my country!
        Her pitiless blue sky,
        When sick at heart, around us,
        We see the cattle die –
        But then the grey clouds gather,
        And we can bless again
        The drumming of an army,
        The steady, soaking rain.

        Then Father Patrick Hartigan’s “Said Hanrahan” was written in 1921. He would also have had strong memories of this killer drought. Father Hartigan who ministered in various towns around NSW and was only 22 when it ended. In parody of Climate Council head Tim Flannery, even though the rains come, it finishes in Hanrahan’s words

        “There’ll be bush-fires for sure, me man,
        There will, without a doubt;
        We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
        “Before the year is out.”

        190

        • #
          TdeF

          My point is that to not know about the Federation drought is to not understand why these poems were written and so poignant at the time.

          222

          • #
            ROM

            As I was born in mid 1938 during my boyhood and early years there were still Old Timers around who had been through the terrible times of the Federation Drought.
            Not realised by most of today’s generation that in those times of more than a century ago around 70% to 80% of the population was engaged in agriculture compared to about 5% of todays population is directly engaged in agricultural production ie; food producing for today’s 95% percent mostly city dwellers.

            Wiki has an article on the Federation Drought , a mixed period of years from 1896 to 1902 consisting of very dry periods interspersed with some wetter periods but overall devastatingly dry.

            Another Wiki entry is Drought in Australia which gives Australia’s drought history going back as far as 1803 , just five years after Captain Arthur Phillip with 11 ships each no larger than a Manly ferry and with 1480 men, women and children on board landed first at Botany Bay and then at Sydney Cove on 26th January 1788 where in a simple ceremony the Australian nation was established.

            During the severe, Australia wide, 1902 Federation Drought the total sheep population dropped to fewer than 54,000,000 from a total of 106,000,000 sheep in 1891 and cattle numbers fell by more than 40 per cent. It was 1925 before the sheep numbers reached the hundred-million mark again.

            The real devastation from the Federation Drought was created by the great rabbit plagues where plague rabbit simply ate anything green which included most native plant species to the point where very large ares of native plants and even trees were exterminated.
            In NSW north of Hillston and up near Roto on the Transcontinental rail line, a huge American airforce base during WW2, where we contract harvested in the late 1970’s, there were small still standing groves of dead trees in many areas.
            When we asked the local station owners what had happened to those trees we were told that the great rabbit plagues of the Federation Drought had killed those trees.
            A similar story is also told in the Victorian and SA Mallee country where the plague rabbits in their deadly pursuit of moisture use to burrow down to the roots of the trees and then strip the bark off the roots to get at the moisture in the tree roots thus killing the trees and Mallees.

            Every drought prior to the introduction of the Myxomatosis virus in 1950 and later the Calici virus was made far worse by the incredible number of rabbits that infested every southern area of Australia, destroying any and every bit of grass and the native plants and trees in their depredations.

            As a boy I saw the paddocks along the Wimmera River with it’s sheltered areas which the rabbits in enormous numbers in their endless warrens where in sandy soil, the old timers have told me, you could walk hundreds of metres or more falling into the warrens up to your knees as the soil collapsed into the burrows under one’s weight.

            As a boy I have seen hundreds of acres along the Wimmera river environs that were infested with rabbits in plague numbers, just heaving and moving with thousands of rabbits eating and destroying anything that looked green or plant like.

            Rabbits in Australia & australian rabbit plagues

            Had the Myxo and Calici Virus not stopped the rabbits in their tracks and the unsung, unnoticed by the city centrified media and least of all those green and academic latte sippers, war against the rabbit is ongoing, Australian droughts over the last 60 years would have been truly horrific with the losses possibly at least double what we have actually experienced.
            Plus a good proportion of Australian plant species might well have been driven to the very point of extinction by the depradations of the plague rabbits.

            As is usual there are often far more subtleties to many Australian climate phenomena than is ever realized or recognised in the simplistic and generally ignorant scenarios and solutions put up by those who in their big city academic ignorance and total lack of real hard earned and learned experience assume that they in their selfie acclaimed academic wisdom have all the solutions and answers, solutions and answers to which everybody elseof a lower status must submit too on bended knee

            331

        • #
          gnome

          Wasn’t that Msgr. John O’Brien?

          (Outside the current comment, but still on-topic – I would be willing to bet that those who produce the electronic version of “The Australian” don’t read it electronically. Apart from the way it has been bouncing around at the start of every article in the last few days, the graphics are impossible to follow when it keeps skipping between a picture and a graph.)

          OK- just looked it up- John O’Brien was the pen name of Fr Patrick Hartigan- I think I got the Msgr part from an anthology of Australian poetry some years ago.

          20

      • #

        The Federation drought must have been widespread. Last week in Broome, we had about 4 minimums of 30C or more, a record according to BoM. Of course they missed January 1897, a 31.7C minimum, Feb 1903, 31.4C. Inconvenient, I guess. The Indian Ocean is very warm off the North West where I am, but a number of strong cyclones have travelled across the rest of the Indian Ocean, cooling things somewhat. We are still awaiting our first of 4 predicted this season to cool us down. That 31.7C minimum could only have come about due to very warm seas off the North West. We are surrounded on 3 sides by seawater.

        92

        • #

          Yes Tom, the Federation Drought was wide spread but taking into account variations in rainfall it lasted a lot longer than most people think. My records (indicative of SEQld- from the Gold Coast upto Maryborough and maybe further north) show record rainfall (3.8m) in 1893 (massive floods in Brisbane & Sunshine coast) and (4.0m) in 1898 (floods in many parts of Qld). 1900 (1.0m rainfall) was the start of a period of very much below average rain. 1902 with only 0.5m rainfall (at my place) was the most difficult time in Queensland. Below average rainfall continued until 1919 when my records show 1.2m of rain. To contrast the 1902 rainfall, this month of February 2015 had 516mm with very little contribution from cyclone Marcia which went out to sea around Fraser island. Most of the rain came from a separate and earlier rain depression not forecast by BOM.
          BOM forecast below average rain for January and February (or rather used the dumb& useless forecast of 40-60% probability of average rain).

          60

    • #

      In the past pre-BoM era, it would have been more critical to get the meteorological science and recordings as accurate as possible, the consequences for getting it wrong were more severe on farmers and the economy, as shown by the many thousands of articles found on the Trove website that refer to weather data in news reports. Here is one for Broome floods, a town that rarely floods, no rivers are near, yet still 45,000 results.

      111

    • #
      DaveR

      TdeF you have nailed one of the key issues in your comment. The BOM steadfastly refuse to include temperature series much before 1905 for fear of exposing the data of the Federation Drought, or the exceedingly national hot weather of the 1880’s. And the reason – because it would invalidate the downwards adjustments of the early 1900’s temperatures – by as much as2 deg C – which creates the “modern warming trend”.

      The adoption of useable Stevenson Screen based temperature records back into the mid 1880’s and possibly to the late 1870’s in a few locations is all important, but is studiously avoided by BOM. If the BOM’s current activities are anything to go by, then this data will have been attempted to be destroyed or disappeared from BOM archives. Only persistent FOI requests are going to expose this element of the fr**d.

      121

  • #
    Ian Hill

    One typo but it’s an important one – you have “Thompson” for Thomson in the fourth paragraph of that article.

    Regarding Don Bradman – there was a book published in 2000 by Charles Davis called “The Best of The Best” which, quoting from the back cover, details a “statistically rigorous rating system for cricketers which allows a combined ranking of batsmen, bowlers, and all rounders, from all eras, on a single scale. For good measure, the analysis has been further extended to other major sports. Who was the greatest sportsman of all time?”

    It’s a good read if you can get hold of a copy.

    71

    • #
      RB

      You would take such rankings with a pinch of salt and not disregard the actual runs made. Maybe even compare the two to make your own judgement on how good the ranking system was.

      For the ignorant. Bradman had a batting average of 99.94. Of those who batted more than 20 times in international games, only 4 others have an average over 60 with the highest being 63.05

      30

      • #
        Ian Hill

        I should have made my point clearer. I wasn’t knocking Bradman, just the opposite.

        For someone trained in statistics it was fairly easy to follow and looked sound enough. The idea was to put players’ careers in perspective. From Table 15.1 Bradman had a rarity of 1 in 200,000 compared to the next best Pele in soccer at 1 in 14,000, where “rarity” was amongst top-level sportsmen, not the general population.

        20

        • #
          RB

          Sorry, I wasn’t criticising. Just adding to the comparison to the way thermometer records were treated.

          As for for the method, I noticed on Wikipedia that they were ranked on the number of standard deviations above the mean for the stat. Pele was second at 3.7 while Bradman was 4.4. I haven’t looked at the details but Puskas was close to one goal per game for club and country as well. Puskas was about 0.9 goals per game for internationals. The equivalent for next best in batting would be like an average of 80-90. Like wise, Woods has 14 majors compared to Nicholas. You wouldn’t call someone who averaged 10 in cricket a professional (batsman) but many good players in golf never won a major.

          I know its only a ranking to be strictly limited to pub conversations but can you imagine someone fitting a linear trend to it and deciding world policy on the outcome?

          10

      • #
        mem

        Ah but I can see a progressive cricket statistician arguing to adjust the Don’s scores down on the basis that he played fewer matches than today’s cricketers or similar reason. Especially if there was a financial incentive with moral and political overlay!

        30

    • #
      braddles

      You might be interested to know that the author you mention, while an infrequent commenter, is a frequent reader of this blog. I have been a long-time climate sceptic (of the lukewarm variety) since I started reading John Daly’s website in the 1990s. I recall giving a talk at my place of work in 1997 where I said that the greenhouse effect would probably lead to 1.0 to 1.5 C warming over a century, and that this was nothing really to worry about; in fact, it would likely be beneficial globally. Nothing that has happened seen since has changed my mind, although I would say now that 1 degree is more likely than 1.5.

      I will have to admit to adjusting Bradman’s average downwards (to about 85) in my cricket analysis. The aim was to compare individuals from different eras using a similar baseline. It is not something that is applicable to or appropriate for climate records. If faced with a ‘Bradmanesque’ temperature record, I don’t think the BoM would adjust it; they would delete it entirely as statistically impossible.

      131

      • #
        Ian Hill

        Struth, how about that! I wasn’t expecting the author to be reading my comments. 🙂

        I think David Stockwell’s cricketing analogy is a good one though because readers can easily understand it. His point is how long term temperature trends are being manipulated in a subtle way and people would be outraged if it happened to something as important as the Don’s batting average.

        50

      • #
        RB

        and I’m not being critical of the method in 12.1.1.1 above, as I haven’t read through it. Just using it as an example of how you need to realise that the global temperature anomalies are not a single reading off of a globalometer.

        20

  • #
    el gordo

    Wonderful news, the revolution is now. Marohasy and Stockwell deserve national acclaim and Lloyd (Australia’s only real journalist) should be counted amongst them. Terrific effort Jo.

    371

  • #
    Manfred

    There is no question that The Ministry of We Know Best For Your Own Good, the UNEP eco-socialist ideological machine is hell-bent upon providing the World with its wondrous ‘final solution’ by replacing ‘failed’ capitalism with its particularly toxic version of elite, eco-socialist centralism. Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change was crystal clear.

    In this goal, it has employed all manner of scheming from klimate fear mongering to ‘double-dividend’ nonsense, from social stigmatising to divest-invest, from euphemistic ‘summaries for policy makers’ to the non-disclosure of adjustment methodology or of the adjustments themselves.

    ‘Global warming’ was ditched swiftly when it inconveniently failed to oblige ‘klimate khange‘. It politically bastardised an accurate, prosaic and axiomatic term we all understood into one that sought to deliberately confuse the unwary. Climate change became klimate khange, the loaded gun of the politically correct.

    Over the years the ‘adjusted’ temperature data has garnered frequent comment, attention, analysis, question and derision. Perhaps this time, we are seeing the mahogany stake of MSM enlightenment hammering through its dark heart and the fourth estate begin to grow a pair…before its all too little and too late.

    111

    • #
      Another Ian

      Manfred

      Try this

      Relative to “Businesses Too Big To Fail” Bigger than the British Empire?

      And for the “One World Governmentists” There’s your experiment in about a “Half The World’s Government”

      10

  • #
    Robert O

    There are other parallels between cricket and climate data inasmuch shouldn’t we give the Don an upgrade to make a valid comparison with modern day scores due to improved technology such as better pitches, bigger bats, faster balls?

    81

    • #

      Of course it was much tougher for ‘the Don’, they often had to endure long ship journeys, catch trains and long bus trips, so a lot fewer games and practice sessions.

      100

  • #
    Phillip Bratby

    Wait. Nick Stokes will be along shortly to explain why all the adjustments are valid. Honest.

    162

  • #
    • #

      Whoopee, a thumb down within seconds, some sensitive warmist is haunting the page.

      192

      • #
        Peter Miller

        “Some sensitive warmest?”

        These comments are mostly made by mindless trolls, only capable of repeating the empty mantras of the alarmist cult.

        Generally speaking – as we have witnessed so often – the depth of the trolls’ climate knowledge and ability to communicate is of the “Yah, boo, sucks to you!” variety.

        50

  • #
    toorightmate

    I really hope something positive for the world comes from this.
    The work by Marohasy and others has been outstanding.
    The actions of the BOM and the other climate “establishments” around the world has been disgusting and a bad slur on science.
    It is akin to someone saying that the Magna Carta or the Declaration of Independence really meant to say something else, so we’ll just take the liberty of changing a few words.
    Unfortunately we have so many sick minded people well established in international politics (eg Oh Bummer).

    323

    • #
      King Geo

      So so true toorightmate .

      As Lord Monckton has said, the likes of Govt funded instrumentalities like BOM, the UK’s Met Office etc need to have their machinations tested in a court of law – we can’t use the “f word” in this blog (I know I used it once and it got gonged – and fair enough to protect the legal position of this fine website). As I say we can’t use the “f word” but that is effectively what has been happening it seems to assist the UN’s “Agenda 21 Orwellian Big Brother” plan to “Tax Earth’s CO2 or Air”, as Bob Carter puts it. It is “F……… Collusion” on a grand scale.

      20

  • #
    manalive

    Slightly OT.

    The Australian –  subscribe to it …

    The Australian, and the other News Corp publications, are pursuing the wrong model IMO.
    They would be better charging per article in much the same way iTunes charges i.e. you can buy a ‘song’ or you can buy the album.
    That way they would probably bring in more revenue, would be able to better assess their customers’ or readers’ interests and customise the advertising.

    100

    • #

      I buy the odd issue. Gave up on doing it every day. Too full of left wing drivel by failed pollys and incompetent journos. Sure as hell not going to subscribe for on line stuff and still get ads. Can get plenty of that for free on the web. Ever looked at Daily Kos or Huffpo. Wash your hands afterwards.

      70

    • #
      The Backslider

      I just find the headline, Google it and then read it all for free………..

      30

  • #
    Onyabike

    If I recall rightly the NZ Climate Science Coalition (http://nzclimatescience.net/) had a crack at NZ’s NOAA temperature data about 4 years ago. The case was heard in High Court over here (NZ). Unfortunately, from memory NOAA just pleaded ‘best practice’ and the judge decided not to consider the science in his/her decision.

    If only we had a decent batsman like Bradman to provide a good analogy. Maybe after this weekend…

    30

  • #
    Jennifer Marohasy

    Comments section has just opened under the article. I suggest we hammer it… http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/upping-the-heat-on-climate-number-crunchers/story-e6frg6z6-1227242096753 with FACTS and FIGURES.

    150

  • #
    DaveR

    What a perfect political wedge for Tony Abbott – call an urgent enquiry into the BOM data, placate the unhappy conservative base that elected him, and carpet the increasingly worrying Greg Hunt in the process who is running dead on this vital issue.

    151

    • #
      Robert O

      I remember writing to the PM a few days after his election suggesting he initiate an independent commission with international members to review the validity of global warming, letting them decide its scientific basis and getting it out of the political and media arena. Could have been done by now. This could have dealt with the many issues such as temperature alteration, the failure of models to accurately predict outcomes, and failure to observe basic scientific principle.

      Simply, it could have had three outcomes:

      1. Global warming is occurring and man is responsible,

      2. Global warming is occurring and man has very little to do with it,

      3. Global warming is not occurring.

      Accurate satellite data suggests that global warming is not occurring, outcome 3, but man seems to be adjusting land based temperatures so there is global warming, option 1.

      172

      • #

        Indeed.
        Your division of all by three is OK but also FRAUD!

        Simply, it could have had three outcomes:
        1. Global warming is occurring and man is responsible,
        2. Global warming is occurring and man has very little to do with it,
        3. Global warming is not occurring.

        There are at least 200 others that end up with “do not know”.

        Your entire set is but 1.5% of what is, or may be.

        Who profits by the adjusting of your three?

        03

        • #
          Robert O

          Will, I cannot see what is fraudulent. Either we have global warming, or not. And if we have global warming mankind has either nothing to do with it, or the various shades of grey between nothing and being totally responsible, e.g. 25% due to man, 75% due to nature etc. The difficulty would be in assigning the percentage blame to either man or nature. As it stands there hasn’t been any significant rise in global temperature (apart from alteration of land-based data) for 18 years or so and levels of CO2 have kept rising, hence no correlation.

          40

      • #
        Unmentionable

        So, a goodly chunk of humanity, let’s call it a ‘consensus’, are being deceived by people who are willing to deceive as a matter of course? In which case BOM would be akin to dodgy used car salesmen, who really like their job.

        So it comes down to motive. The used car salesman does it for commission and an ego-boost of suckering a ‘wood-duck’. But is money and ego why BOM try to treat everyone as ‘wood-ducks’ also? Sucker to be ruthlessly and mercilessly exploited, whilst pretending to give the public a ‘good deal’?

        Is it possible some of these used car salesmen don’t know they’re concerted deceivers? All car salesmen put on an act, they deceive themselves first. And then they try to sell you the car. If they were not acting as per a trained role they could not pull it off, or would not try to, they would get no sales.

        So I guess that’s the question people at BOM have to ask themselves; if they have an ounce of honesty and are they just playing a role to sell a lie to deceive everyone to materially benefit and get an ego boost from the act of skilled deception? Used car salesmen rarely have such an attack of conscience, and I kinda doubt BOM will either.

        So buyer beware, don’t buy a car from BOM, otherwise your car will just be an old BOM (sorry ’bout that).

        Instead, buy nothing, say no good word about them, warn people about the shonky operator, force them out of business, use competition in the form of better cars and more ethical salesmen for honest market process. This taxpayer-funded public monopoly model is a dismal failure that refuses to respond to market forces or to listen to customer complaints and fix itself. It apparently can’t.

        101

  • #
    pat

    compare Graham Lloyd to Crispin!

    27 Feb: Brisbane Times: Crispin Hull: Cyclone Marcia media coverage fails to examine climate change impact
    Attitudes towards climate change may be shifting, writes Crispin Hull, as the country recovers from Cyclone Marcia.
    The long queues of Esky-clutching ice-desperate people outside the very few servicestations with power in the wake of Category 5 Cyclone Marcia should have delivered a pertinent message…
    The very fossilfuel-reliant power grid was being hammered by the very climate change it is causing…
    Climate sceptics always point to freak weather and say we have always had freak weather. The trouble with that is that the trend is hugely towards getting records in the direction of climatechange predictions, not in random directions and certainly not in the direction away from climatechange predictions. We have not had nine of the 10 coldest years on record the past 20 years.
    No scientist will link a particular cyclone, fire or flood with climate change. Rather they will only point to a trend. Cyclone Marcia certainly fitted the trend predicted by climate scientists…
    Attitudes may slowly change. People are less likely to buy the “freak weather” argument when they get battered by “freak” weather regularly. It indicates the harsh weather events are no longer “freak” but a new normal – a frightening prospect…
    The solar panel technology is improving and getting cheaper all the time. So is windgeneration technology…
    It is not a question of, to use the Prime Minister’s phrase in a different context, “shit happens”. Maybe it is a case of we are causing it to happen…
    Australia has to join the global effort to combat global warming, otherwise the Esky queues will get longer and the weather batterings more frequent.
    http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/comment/cyclone-marcia-media-coverage-fails-to-examine-climate-change-impact-20150227-13odr2.html

    April 2014: Bolt Blog: An alarmist’s evidence: 22 boiled eggs
    I don’t want to teach journalism lecturer and Fairfax columnist Crispin Hull to suck eggs, but has he ever considered doing some research to back up his bog-standard warming alarmism?
    First, note how Hull catastrophises a cyclone which merely forced him to boil 22 more eggs than he needed…
    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/an_alarmists_evidence_22_boiled_eggs/

    20

  • #
    Gary Pearse

    Let’s hope we don’t end up with a “Best” temperature record when its all done. I though CSIRO had also been totally corrupted. I’m glad they have an accountant heading it up anyways. This scepticism is a bitch. I used to be a nice trusting guy but now I have to guard myself against being sceptical of good things happening.

    30

  • #
    Victor Ramirez

    [Mod: If you feel this idea is inappropriate, please delete this post]

    I am a subscriber to The Australian and would be happy to post a few suitable comments on behalf of those without access. I will check back here throughout the day. Just tag your posts here with “For Vic to Aussie”.

    71

    • #
      Eddie

      No need to. If you Google for the headline you get a new URL each time which works for a while. I guess The Australian doesn’t want to stop being discovered.
      Here’s a Tip.
      The only Australian I’m subscribing to is JoNova.

      40

  • #
    Peter

    Lloyd has done a great job, bravely following the hard questions

    Hear Hear! Ditto Jo Nova, Jennifer Marohasy, Anthony Watts, Roy Spencer, John Droz Jr, James Dellingpole, Donna Laframboise. Jeff id, Andrew Montford, Luboš Motl, Lucia and so many more who have been asking the questions for so long.

    If the increasing body temps and foaming at mouth episodes from the alarmist camp are any indication we are kicking a few goals against them.

    Now is the time to ramp up the challenges to those who are spreading the propaganda in our schools. I have one favourite and he gets it every week and sometimes every day in spades!

    161

  • #
    Gary in Erko

    So now there are questions even about whether there has been any rise in global average temperature at all. We really don’t know. The minute proportion of atmospheric CO2 added by us might not make any difference worth considering – like, if we empty the bathtub into the ocean the ocean level will rise, and does it matter in any way at all beyond theoretical whimsy.

    91

  • #

    Even if the temp data was not ”adjusted” would be completely wrong! Reconstructing the temp for the WHOLE GLOBE from few thousand thermometers / recording only the hottest minute in 24h and ignoring all the other 1439 minutes is created for confusion, from both camps! Here is the final truth: https://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/2014/07/12/cooling-earth/

    41

    • #

      You still believe that the tropopause and space are isotherms that can absorb all discarded heat energy with no increase in temperature. Where is any evidence of your fantasy

      05

  • #
    Ruairi

    Now,what can some ‘scientists’ do,
    When the warming they need won’t come true,
    Perhaps,smooth out the bumps,
    Of past temperature jumps,
    For the last hundred years or two?

    60

    • #
      Another Ian

      Ruari

      I think you should consider a site like Josh or Fenbeagle where these are collected.

      Keep at it!

      20

  • #
    handjive

    They have been deliberately exaggerating the evidence, over-stating the case, frightening people, frightening even children.
    Christopher Monckton, ABC Catalyst, Thursday, 16 October 2014

    Notable Catalyst Quotes:
    GLOBAL WARMING PAUSE
    Dr Kevin Trenberth: “… and that we’ve found is that after about 1999, a lot more heat is going deeper into the ocean.”

    Professor Matthew England:
    “If you rotate the globe around, that’s all you see for part of this hemisphere is just a big fat piece of ocean. The Pacific Ocean is a huge influence on climate.”

    If ever you travel to the tropics in the Pacific Ocean, there’s a prevailing wind from the east towards the west, and these easterly winds push a lot of the surface water across the West Pacific Ocean.
    If they remain for long enough, this water starts to get subducted into the ocean interior.”

    Dr Gerald Meehl
    “And sure enough the extra heat was going into the deeper ocean.
    So that was kind of the first tie we had, a tangible link to where the heat was going during these hiatus periods.”
    ~ ~ ~
    October 6, 2014
    RELEASE 14-272
    NASA Study Finds Earth’s Ocean Abyss Has Not Warmed
    ~ ~ ~
    Fast Forward … (not too fast) … The Return of The Great Pumpkin!
    February 26, 2015-

    Cool Pacific Ocean Slowed Global Warming (livescience.com)
    “The warming due to human activities, such as greenhouse gas emissions, swamps this natural signal, said Michael(sic) England, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia who was not involved in the study.”

    Wait!

    February 27th, 2015

    Looming Warming Spurt Could Reshape Climate Debate (climatecentral.com)
    Graph Credit: (Love that graph)
    England, M. H. et al. Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus. Nature Clim. Change 4, 222–227 (2014).

    “The hiatus is associated with the negative PDO phase — with strong subtropical trade winds that pile the warm water up in the tropical western Pacific, and bury some warm water in the subtropics,” Trenberth said.
    . . .
    Hot Pacific.
    Cool Pacific.
    What a mess.

    51

  • #
    el gordo

    “Every portrayal of historical data should be historically accurate, else it becomes revisionism, and strays out of the domain of science and into the domain of ideology and politics. While step-wise adjustments are intended to compensate for real changes in the baseline temperature that result from, often undocumented, changes in instrumentation or relocation of stations, the cumulative effect of back-propagating step adjustments is to corrupt the official record.”

    David Stockwell

    ———-

    When it comes to light that they have fudged the figures to get a biased outcome, the Klimatariat high priests will be seen as Cargo Cultists.

    It will come like a bolt out of the blue, a shock of enormous proportions and the masses will laugh at being duped. Fairfax and the Guardian can do what they like, but Aunty is in for a thrashing.

    81

  • #
    handjive

    Bureau of Meteorology officials, meanwhile, told Senate estimates on Monday that Australia was on a clear warming path, with temperatures rising between 0.71 and 0.76 degrees since 1960, depending on the methods used.
    http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/threat-of-air-pollution-to-worsen-along-with-global-warming-warns-climate-council-20141020-118u3k.html

    20

    • #
      PeterS

      A statistic like that is meaningless and useless. If it was the other way and it fell by that amount, I doubt anyone would care less, and it certainly would not be cause for panic fearing a massive new ice age. BOM should stick to the business of improving their methods of predicting tomorrows weather.

      30

      • #
        Andrew McRae

        In one of those quirky little factoids one occasionally sees trotted out to blur the distinction between “weather” and “climate”… it is nonetheless a fact that the 24-month running average of total world sea ice area has recently climbed back up to the same levels it had in 1981. Probably the general decline in total sea ice will continue rather sedately, just as it no doubt has done for centuries since the end of the LIA in 1850. But what if it represented the beginning of a change in the trend line? We’ll have to wait another 4 to 6 years to find out.

        Oh what am I saying, in Paris they’ll abandon science and pass energy tax laws while they still can.

        30

        • #
          PeterS

          True. What I’m trying to say though is a 0.7 degree rise (or fall) over such a period means nothing. If it were say 5 degrees then I would be panicking.

          20

  • #

    Gentlemen, gentlemen; when you say ”pause” that means: you are endorsing the phony ”global”warming… There isn’t any global warming = cannot ”pause”!!! It will be same temp for millions of years, that’s not a ”pause”
    Warmist invented the therm ”pause” because: if they increase the temp every year, people on the street will see that is a lie. They will increase the temp, when it suits them; as for example before the Paris conference…

    By using the therm ‘pause” you are backstabbing Tony Abbott… shame, shame..
    Whoever brainwashed you that the ”global’ temp goes up and down at the drop of a hat, wasn’t your friend…

    83

  • #
  • #
    pat

    LOL.

    26 Feb: Daily Mail: PA: Met Office staff in pay strike
    Staff at the Met Office are to stage their first ever pay strike in protest at an ongoing wage freeze.
    Members of the Prospect union will walk out for three hours from 2pm from offices including Exeter, Aberdeen and Edinburgh.
    Union official Gordon Hutchinson said: “This is an unprecedented strike and shows how strongly people feel about a government pay policy completely at odds with what the prime minister advocates for the private sector…
    TV weather forecasters in the union will not be taking part in the strike, while service with implications for safety will be maintained.
    A Met Office spokesman said: “We’re disappointed that some staff have chosen to take this action but we are confident our robust business continuity measures will reduce the impact of the action.
    “We are pleased that Prospect is working with the Met Office to ensure that the threat of industrial action is mitigated for any service where safety of life is at risk – severe weather warnings for example…
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-2969546/Met-Office-staff-pay-strike.html

    which reminds me…i bet ABC staff have read this one.

    26 Feb: Independent: Adam Sherwin: BBC licence fee alternative should be paid by everyone – even if you don’t watch TV
    ***There remain “major questions to be answered about what justifies the close to £4 billion of public money spent on the BBC,” the report found…
    ***Mr Whittingdale added: “The BBC should tailor its output to what it does best, and not stray into areas that can and should be left to commercial providers to do well. It is pointless and wasteful having an organisation receiving that kind of public funding competing with – and potentially crowding out-other providers.
    “The BBC Trust has failed to meet expectations and should be abolished. It remains far too close to the BBC and blurs accountability of the BBC rather than it being a sharp and effective overseer of the BBC’s performance as a public service institution.”
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/bbc-licence-fee-should-be-replaced-say-mps-10070000.html#

    20

  • #
    Angry

    Here is an interesting link to an article concerning the Republicans in the US who intend to investigate NASA and their “data tampering” :-

    Republicans To Investigate NASA Over Climate Data Tampering

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-22/republicans-investigate-nasa-over-climate-data-tampering

    41

  • #

    Will Janoschka @24.1

    Will, you believe that upper atmosphere is warmer than on the ground… debate with you is impossible.. I asked you to get informed first, ask anybody!

    @2: ”tropopause” doesn’t exist! It has being invented to confuse the ignorant, nothing more! From the ground to up where oxygen &nitrogen go, is the troposphere. From there up is the stratosphere – stratosphere temp is irrelevant for the planet Those gases orbit around the planet, don’t come to the ground to take heat up, or bring coldness down.

    On 10km altitude is minus -90C – why one needs colder than that… unless is like you; believing that upper atmosphere is warmer than on the ground. Please inform yourself first!!! The truth and details are on my post!

    71

    • #

      Anyone can look up the atmospheric temperature at 120 km. Why is 10 Km at a lower temperature? how did it get that way? Your post contains nothing of truth!

      02

  • #
    pat

    a good Prince:

    26 Feb: RTCC: Ed King: Prince Charles mocks climate sceptics in Royal Society speech
    Prince Charles has used a speech at the Royal Society in London to dismiss suggestions global warming is a hoax, warning of severe consequences if governments fail to take action.
    “The gravity and immediacy of the threat it poses to us and our children and grandchildren is… accepted by constituencies that can scarcely be accused of being part of some half-baked conspiracy dreamt up by extreme environmentalists intent on undermining capitalism,” he said.
    “These constituencies include the UN, the World Bank; The Pentagon and the UK Ministry of Defence, the CIA, NSA. … and, I’m happy to say, nurses and doctors.”
    Failure to agree a global climate change deal at the UN later this year could lead to a “death certificate” for the planet, the heir to the British throne said…
    A keen environmentalist who has frequently spoken about global warming – the Prince used his address to call on scientists and politicians to offer a message not just of alarm, but hope.“Actions which are good for the planet are also good for human health: taking a more active approach to transport by walking and cycling and adopting healthy diets reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but also reduce rates of obesity, heart disease, cancer and more – saving lives and money,” he said.“Reductions in air pollution also result – with separate and additional benefits to human health. A healthy planet and healthy people are two sides of the same coin.”The Prince is expected to discuss climate change with US president Barack Obama when he travels to the States on an official visit next month.
    http://www.rtcc.org/2015/02/26/prince-charles-mocks-climate-sceptics-in-royal-society-speech/

    ABC’s Natasha Mitchell on “Life Matters” this week admitted to warming to environmentally-sound Prince Charlie while chatting to Catherine Mayer, author of the latest Charles biography, “Heart of a King”.

    some Princes, like some billionaires, are more lovable – or politically correct – than others, it would seem.

    20

    • #
      gnome

      He the man!!

      I wanna live like that Prince Charley do!

      00

    • #
      JLC of Perth

      The older Prince Charles gets, the more of a twit he becomes. Fortunately he will be a constitutional monarch, his hands kept far away from the controls of political power.

      50

    • #
      Peter Miller

      The first two King Charles’ reigns were a disaster, so this would make three in a row.

      In the UK, I know of no one who doesn’t want the monarchy to skip a generation, going directly from Liz to her grandson William.

      By so many deeds and words, Charley boy has demonstrated he is not fit for purpose.

      40

    • #
      Another Ian

      Pat

      Many years ago (ca 1970?) when ABC radio ran My Word there was a session on “Charlie is My Darling”

      In it was a response that “In the case of Lady Diana Spenser My Darling is a Charlie”

      10

  • #
    pat

    Prince Charlie “mocks”, Inhofe rants & rambles in a stunt:

    27 Feb: Guardian: Nicky Woolf: Republican Senate environment chief uses snowball as prop in climate rant
    Senator James Inhofe, who has famously claimed global warming is a hoax, wields snowball on Senate floor to in stunt against climate change evidence
    The snowball stunt was part of a rambling speech to America’s most august deliberative body in which, among other points, Inhofe took aim at evidence by scientists that 2014 was the warmest year on record due to climate change.
    (According to detailed research Nasa and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, two of the top bodies of government scientists, it was.)…
    “I think it’s lovely that Senator Inhofe enjoys the winter weather so much,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist and director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “I’m a winter sports fan myself. But there’s a big difference between people playing with the snow, and global climate change.”
    Schmidt told the Guardian that, despite Senator Inhofe’s views, 2014 had indisputably been the warmest year on record, and January 2015 had been one of the warmest Januaries on record.
    “Europe was toasty warm. Alaska was toasty warm. Australia was toasty warm. All these things cancel out the fact that it happens to be cold in Washington DC this week,” he said.
    http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/26/senate-james-inhofe-snowball-climate-change

    the sooner these smug writers & CAGW activists like Schmidt are TOAST, the better.

    72

    • #
      Another Ian

      Pat

      Way back when ABC radio had My Word there was a session where the theme was “Charlie is my Darling”

      With the comment that in the case of Lady Diana Spencer “My Darling is a Charlie”

      Doesn’t seem to have changed IMO

      10

  • #

    […] “Australian BOM under fire – questions about “adjusted” temperatures exploding around the world”  [link] […]

    30

  • #

    For Americans substitute Babe Ruth for Donald Bradman. And don’t forget to mention Roger Maris who played in more games because the season was longer. So Maris’ 61 “doesn’t count”.

    20

  • #
    pat

    unbelievable hypocrisy…or CAGW politics at its most transparent?

    26 Feb: Reuters: Timothy Gardner: Green groups DIVIDED on Hillary Clinton’s oil interest ties
    Hillary Clinton’s connections to oil and gas interests has created a DILEMMA for some environmental groups, TROUBLING activists for whom she would be the natural candidate to support for president.
    The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate’s environmental record has come under renewed scrutiny after the Wall Street Journal reported that the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative have accepted large donations from major energy companies Exxon Mobil and Chevron.
    The groups also got money from foreign governments, including Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, and from an office of the Canadian government in charge of promoting the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline…opposed by environmentalists…
    “It’s hard to believe that they don’t think they are getting something for their contributions,” said Ben Schreiber, head of climate and energy at Friends of the Earth…
    The foundation’s connections to the oil industry POTENTIALLY complicate Clinton’s relationship with environmental groups, whose supporters form an important part of the Democratic base…
    Any SIGN OF AMBIVALENCE on climate change policies COULD hurt Clinton’s support among progressive voters, said Jamie Henn, a spokesman for 350 Action…
    “This isn’t an election where we can get some fancy rhetoric but no real commitments, said Henn, warning that 350 Action COULD target Clinton with rallies…if she fails to take a strong stand on climate.
    Uncharacteristically, many green groups normally quick to attack politicians linked to oil and gas companies SHIED AWAY from commenting on the Clinton Foundation’s relationship with these donors…
    The Environmental Defense Action Fund had NO COMMENT because it ***does not have anyone with knowledge of the subject***, a spokesman said. Another business friendly green group, the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund also DECLINED, saying it would discuss the issues “when we have declared candidates.” The World Wildlife Fund had NO COMMENT…
    Many activists remain LEERY of her apparent support for building Keystone…
    Exxon has given about $2 million to the Clinton Global Initiative starting in 2009, while Chevron donated $250,000 in 2013 to the Clinton Foundation, the Wall Street Journal article said…
    (BLAME RUSSIA)Clinton’s defenders in the environmental movement say U.S. strategic interests drove her support for the expansion of fracking into other countries…
    “Introducing fracking to produce natural gas in Eastern Europe was an element of national security, the less dependence those nations have on Russian gas, the better off they are,” said Daniel Weiss, the League of Conservation Voters’ senior vice president for campaigns.
    (HYPOCRITES)NextGen Climate, an advocacy group run by hedge fund manager-turned environmentalist Tom Steyer who has poured millions of dollars into Democratic party campaigns, said in a statement that Clinton had “made clear the primary importance of addressing this critical issue” of climate change.
    Yet a recent NextGen blog accused oil companies of using their financial power to influence climate and energy policies in California, declaring: “We can’t allow the fossil fuel industry to override what’s best for our families, for our communities and for our economy.”
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/26/us-usa-election-clinton-oil-idUSKBN0LU18O20150226

    20

  • #
    Eliza

    As usual with everything Australian, the Australian is pricing itself out of existence. No one cares. You can view most major international papers for free. Its the only major newspaper that demands payment. What a joke.

    41

    • #

      The Wall Street Journal (another Murdoch publication) requires payment too. FU Rupert. I ain’t gunna pay! If people stopped buying subs they might get the message.
      I bought today’s Weekend Australian. That’s $3.50 I’ll never get back. What a piece of garbage. Our unfortunately no longer with us Burmese cats (Heisenberg and Schrodinger)would be ashamed to pee on the shredded issue.

      31

  • #
    Ian H

    The cricketing analogy is very timely – yes?

    151 all out in the 33rd over … go black caps

    51

    • #
      Ross

      IanH

      The BOM are needed quickly to homogenise the figures !!!!

      92

    • #
      King Geo

      Very lucky for your team Ian H.

      The Black Caps fell over the line, literally at Eden Park in Auckland today – if only Mitch Starc had bowled accurate swinging yorkers to the Black Caps No. 11 batsmen and “Man of the Match” Trent Boult (for his 5 wkts) with his 5th and 6th deliveries in that penultimate over. That 6th delivery was a shocker. That loss has derailed the Baggygreen’s 2015 ODI campaign. They are now 4th in their Pool and assuming they account for Sri Lanka at the SCG on March 8, they should finish 2nd in their Pool after the Round Robin stage. The problem then is that they almost certainly will face the Black Caps yet again in a Semi Final to be held at Eden Park in Auckland on 24 March – not an ideal scenario for the Baggygreens.

      I am expecting a comment from fellow ex cricketer “Tony From Oz”, also a bowler like King Geo, who like myself is almost certainly agonizing over Mitch Starc’s loss of accuracy in those 5th and 6th deliveries. Had Mitch been on song with either of those 2 deliveries then not only would have the Baggygreens won, but Mitch would have been “Man of the Match”.

      If only ……….I think I will get over this loss next month – that’s just over 6 hours away.

      20

      • #
        Ross

        Yes King Geo –a great fight back by the Aussie’s helped by some average batting by the Kiwis. In away given both side’s average batting, a draw might have been a better result.

        20

  • #
    pat

    the following Orwellian piece is all over the British MSM:

    note all comments, especially:

    oracle15: Notice the Met Office’s use of a red herring once again. The winter has been an extremely cold one – so they immediately draw our attention to how sunny it has been.

    28 Feb: Daily Mail: Keiligh Baker: Spring has sprung! Britain basks in warm weather as Met Office say UK has had its sunniest winter since 1929
    This winter has been the sunniest in records dating back almost 90 years, the Met Office has announced
    While Britain has experienced fairly average temperatures and rainfall, 2015 is on track to be the sunniest
    With just one day left to go of the meteorological winter the UK has already seen more than 189 hours of sunshine
    But in Scotland the winter has also been one of the top 10 wettest in records dating back to 1910
    The Met Office predicts that with sunshine in the last three days of winter, the UK is likely to beat the record by seven hours…
    This year, winter temperatures are expected to be slightly above average, at 3.8C, compared to the long term average of 3.7C.
    But it was much less warm than last winter when temperatures averaged 5.2C, beginning what became the UK’s hottest year on record.
    Early figures for February from the Met Office suggest the month was drier than average and likely to be slightly cooler than average…
    But the fine weather is not expected to last as cloud is forecast to move in from the West later this afternoon and tomorrow will see a damp and drizzly morning, with patchy rain across the UK…
    ‘Next week will see cold and showery weather on Monday and Tuesday, but should become more settled from Wednesday,’ said Helen Roberts, of the Met Office. ‘Temperatures may be slightly cooler than average.’
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2972163/Spring-sprung-Britain-basks-warm-weather-Met-Office-say-UK-sunniest-winter-1929.html

    41

  • #
    ROM

    Cynical skepticsm is definitely on the increase.
    A lot of you might have read this comment on WUWT but it seems appropiate for this headline post of Jo’s so I will repeat it here.
    _____________

    What is the difference between a meteorologist and a climate scientist?

    When a meteorologist is wrong, he loses his job;
    When a climate scientist is wrong, he gets another grant.
    ______________

    h/t alexwade via WUWT

    112

  • #
    ROM

    After going through just a part of Obama’s quite nauseating web site last night I am now wondering if this following is where Obama intends to take America and it’s people.
    I hope I am wrong but after looking at Obama’s web site I smell big trouble coming on the political scene in the USA.

    From his website

    Truth team > in Stalin’s Soviet Russian parlance >правда команда / pravda komanda
    _________

    Pravda,; [ “Truth” ] the propaganda publication of the former Communist Party of the USSR.

    [ The “Pravda” name has been resurrected for a paper in today’s Russia which dutifully and correctly spouts Putin’s objectives allied with a very strong dose of anti-western propaganda ]

    ************
    ************
    Ideas are more powerful than guns.
    We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.

    ********************
    It is enough that the people know there was an election.
    The people who cast the votes decide nothing.
    The people who count the votes decide everything.

    **************
    Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.

    ****************
    Death solves all problems – no man, no problem.
    ____________

    Quoted by the Georgian “Joseph Djugashvili” otherwise known as “Joseph STALIN,” the “Man of Steel” and murderer of 30 millions plus of his own people.

    51

  • #
    PeterS

    This clear and deliberate corruption of the data to peddle a scam has gone for far too long. In any other line of business, the perpetrators would be behind bars by now. I won’t hold my breath though. Much of the leftist media is behind this scam so it will be almost impossible for the public to be made aware of what’s actually happening. Of course if Abbott were to be caught fiddling the financial figures of a local tuck shop, the media would be in such a frenzy one would think World War 3 had started.

    91

  • #
    Victor Ramirez

    I wonder if Wayne Swan ever worked as an intern at the BoM? There seems a certain synergy…

    30

  • #
    pat

    brilliant.

    28 Feb: Breitbart: Christopher Monckton: Dr Willie Soon: A Scientist in the Humble Quest for Truth
    Christopher Monckton of Brenchley answers the campaign of assaults on the reputation of Dr. Willie Soon, an unsalaried astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
    http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/02/28/dr-willie-soon-a-scientist-in-the-humble-quest-for-truth/

    52

    • #
      diogenese2

      The fallacy of the “ad hominem” is the proper response to the fallacy of the “argument from authority”. When applied to a body of published and referenced work it is a clear indication that the authority of that work is recognised and be refuted by counter argument. The importance of this battle cannot be understated – Dr Soon MUST be discredited because the acceptance of his work deeply undermines the narrative.
      Not what is wanted on the road to Paris. Bear in mind that as “Why Models Run Hot” 2015. was published in China – the Chinese would certainly have read it!

      50

  • #
    pat

    at the end of Monckton’s piece:

    “The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Professor Robert Carter in drafting this article”

    40

  • #
    mem

    We had our evening meal on the porch tonight, last day of our Oz summer in Melbourne’s north east. In the distance a rumble of thunder then lightning followed by a downpour and a cool change. A fitting end to a disappointing summer. My bet is that the figures for heat exhaustion admissions to hospitals this summer were down, pool shops dispensed fewer chemicals and ice cream sales slumped. But I will wait with bated breath for BOM to announce it was the hottest summer ever. PS Has anyone checked with other indicators of temperature or do we just take BOM as the arbiter on temperature?

    82

  • #
    Scott

    This is why we need to put more weight on temperate data collected by satellites. Besides, as I understand it, the whole CAGW theory rested on the idea that temps in the lower troposphere, not the surface, is where the man made warming – if there is any – will first appear. So satellites appear to be the prefect tool for deciding whether to accept the theory or not. And from what I’ve read, the instrumentation is extremely precise and tests and re-tests its calibration every few seconds to ensure accuracy.

    But satellite data sets are not setting new records, so they focus on surface temps that are setting new records after the data has been molested and tortured by adjustments.

    32

  • #
    observa

    From little acorns do whopping big tree rings grow.
    Unless of course they don’t in which case you have to go back to the raw thermometer data and do some grafting.

    20

  • #
    Farmer Gez

    We should remember that Al Capone was jailed for unpaid taxes and not the murderous crime he did commit. Detail gets them every time.

    20

  • #
    mem

    Another 8 positions currently being advertised by the new Victorian Labor government through Hays link recruiting to ostensibly address local climate change action. Political activists being employed from tax payer’s funds to prop up Andrews and his union mates. There will be committees and plans and grants to support them and on and on the gravy train goes.

    20

  • #
    Bob Fernley-Jones

    Impartiality of chairman Ron Sandland might be a potential concern simply because the regular ‘State of the Climate’ reports are declared to be of joint CSIRO and BoM authorship.

    Also, following claims of FOI revelations, there is alarming stuff kicked-off in a long piece in Australasian Science entitled: How a Tobacco Lobbyist Won over CSIRO:

    http://www.australasianscience.com.au/article/issue-may-2013/how-tobacco-lobbyist-won-over-csiro.html

    Briefly, reportedly from FOI info, Sandland appointed Donna Staunton to better communicate the CSIRO’s aura to the world. A storm of protests followed which Sandland defended including a claim that she had publically denounced her previous beliefs that tobacco was not harmful to health. However, it seems that researchers have yet to find any evidence of that.

    20

  • #

    JOANNE NOVA,

    This post is a good example, why the ”Skeptics” are born losers!
    Instead of proving that: the global temp cannot be reconstructed from few thousand thermometers / monitoring only the hottest minute in 24h, you are arguing about ”manipulated data”… Joanne, the ”globe” is a big place!!! Reconstructing the ”global” temp from few thousand thermometers, not evenly distributed, ignoring the oceans 2/3 of the planet; is same as ”constructing a jumbo jet from five rusty bolts and nuts”…
    Same as: trying to prove that Santa comes trough the backdoor instead via the chimney…

    Paul Homewood tried everything possible to expose the truth, instead the Warmist are marching from victory to victory; because he is a prisoner in his pagan beliefs… BECAUSE: he, same as you, believe that ”overall global temp” can be told from a picture people scatting on river Thames, or from a peat bog… (legacy from Ian Plimer)

    05

    • #
      mem

      stephanthedenier You make a very good point. My own view is that you can measure temperature over time in a particular location but as soon as you average or in someway combine it with another location you make a nonsense of reality and arrive at a confected figure. This reminds me of an anecdote about Communist China. Mao put pressure on industry to increase output. The bean counters responsible for shoe production had a great census measuring foot size and determined that the average foot size was x. So factories were told to increase production of shoe size x and rationalise other sizes to cut costs. Unfortunately you can guess the outcome. One major factory also ran out of left foot mouldings and to make up quotas increased the production of right foot shoes. Rice seedlings were planted closer together following a scientific trial that concluded erroneously (under pressure to achieve results) that this would result in increased production. Millions starved as a result. This may all seem irrelevant but if we are forced to use renewables and leave coal and oil in the ground because some bean counters say average temperatures have increased due to CO2 then who will take responsibility for the havoc this will cause.

      32

      • #

        man,
        If the ”Skeptics” can understand the principle of what you are saying – the Warmist Organised Crime (WOC) would have collapsed before next Christmas. Unfortunately, most of the ”Skeptics” think that: one can tell every size of feet on the planet, from one pair of shoe…= Skeptics can tell from a picture on river Thames, the temp ”on the whole planet for 300years”..WOW!

        THE TRUTH: past global warmings were NEVER GLOBAL; global warming was and is impossible = problem solved. One cannot prove that Rudolf is not for real, until he recognizes that Santa is not for real. Cheers, keep on the good job!

        13

  • #
    Bob Fernley-Jones

    But where are the ‘TERMS OF REFERENCE’ for the ‘Technical Advisory Forum’?

    In my searches it seems that there are none. Take for example this extract from ‘The Conversation’ on Jan 27, 2015 –

    “…Although the advisory forum’s detailed terms of reference have not been released, it seems clear that when the panel meets in March it will not be tasked with delivering the comprehensive audit demanded by some of the Bureau’s prominent critics, such as the Prime Minister’s business adviser Maurice Newman. That’s fair enough, considering that a comprehensive, independent and international peer review was carried out as recently as 2011 and concluded that the Bureau’s practices and data meet the world’s best standards…”

    The author was: Ailie Gallant ARC DECRA Fellow, School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at Monash University

    I’m also trying to establish the correct submission process to the forum, but again my searches have been unsuccessful. On 27/Feb/2015 I redelivered what amounts to a submission to the Honourable Bob Baldwin MP who announced the forum membership in January. (BTW, I had referred it to his predecessor senator Birmingham and others in November 2014, and received an only response just recently from the BoM acting CEO, which was unhelpfully irrelevant).

    It is important to track such submissions. For instance in the case of the ABC, when formally raising a complaint, they respond with advice of a tracking file number. It all seems a bit undefined and sloppy to me!

    21

    • #
      Bob Fernley-Jones

      To the person who gave the thumbs down against #59, I’d be interested to know if any factual inaccuracies are suggested, or that there are no vagaries in the forum process, together with the ID of said negative clicker.

      00

  • #
    Lawrie

    I tried to find Graham Lloyds column in the Aus but found it only by the link in this post. I had no idea who was on the committee and assumed, wrongly, that I would recognize at least one name; not so. I wrote to Bob Baldwin expressing my shock at seeing a CSIRO chap as the lead commissioner and pointed out a potential conflict of interest. I also inquired why one of the many skeptical scientists could not be included to assuage our concerns. I don’t really expect a reply but I suggest the many correspondents here should write to Mr. Baldwin to express your concerns. I don’t think Bob would be aware of the close and cosy association between the CSIRO and BoM nor the multitude of government white washes. Writers may want to point this out.

    51

  • #
    Andrew McRae

    Can you believe it?
    From the “No 5h!t, Sherlock!” department…

    “We know that it is important to distinguish between human-caused and natural climate variability so we can assess the impact of human-caused climate change,” says Michael Mann, a climatologist from Pennsylvania State University.
    […]
    “The North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans appear to be drivers of substantial natural, internal climate variability on timescales of decades,” says Mann.

    Read it and weep… for joy, at the Main Mediaeval Mannipulator admitting the PDO has been a significant part of recent climate change. He’s still not quite ready to admit that the change in direction of the PDO implies global temperatures will be going DOWN for a while, but we can’t be too harsh on the poor guy, what with the stress of his trial and everything. The poor dear.

    “The slowdown in warming is probably a combination of several different factors,” says Mann.

    Yes, which implies the onset of the warming was also due to…ahh what’s the use.

    12

    • #
      Just-A-Guy

      Andrew McRae,

      The original paper is behind a paywall at the Science website.

      The abstract reads:

      The recent slowdown in global warming has brought into question the reliability of climate model projections of future temperature change and has led to a vigorous debate over whether this slowdown is the result of naturally occurring, internal variability or forcing external to Earth’s climate system. To address these issues, we applied a semi-empirical approach that combines climate observations and model simulations to estimate Atlantic- and Pacific-based internal multidecadal variability (termed “AMO” and “PMO,” respectively). Using this method, the AMO and PMO are found to explain a large proportion of internal variability in Northern Hemisphere mean temperatures. Competition between a modest positive peak in the AMO and a substantially negative-trending PMO are seen to produce a slowdown or “false pause” in warming of the past decade.

      He tells us that the effect of the AMO and PMO on temperatures produce a slowdown in warming. This means that these naturally occuring internal variabilities are stronger than the claimed effect of CO2. Clearly CO2 is not the primary driver. Natural variability is.

      Then he calls this a false pause! How is it false if it’s actually occuring in the real world and he went to the trouble of finding a reason for it?

      Talk about beating a dead horse.

      Abe

      10

  • #

    This constant adjusting is disturbing. Rather than indicating a desire for greater accuracy, which one would think would require a system that was not in constant adjustment, they keep “new and improving” the data. That does not sound like science to me. It sounds like an admission that their data is bad or their techniques are not appropriate to the data.

    01

    • #
      Roy Hogue

      Or that their original data is just fine but they don’t want that data to show what it really shows?

      Disturbing for sure.

      01

      • #

        Roy—Also possible. I was being generous and hoping it’s bad science and not deliberate misrepresentation of data and techniques.

        01

  • #
    Earl

    If I recall correctly, in November last year, the BOM advised that Victoria was in for a catastrophic bushfire season, with little rain and above average temperatures.
    Now it appears that Melbourne did not had done day over 40o, when we usually have 4-5.
    I have yet to hear of any major fire in Victoria, probably because it has been hissing down rain all summer. Up here in the Ovens Valley, I have to cut the grass every week, when by now it should all be dead.
    But I feel confident, that by mid March the BOM will tell us it was the hottest SUMMAH EVAAAH, and that all the major bush fires are now under control and it will never snow again and that the drought in Victoria is the worst since records began in 2001.
    I would not mind some of what they are on to get me through the day.

    20

  • #
    Mervyn

    This is what Anthony Watts had to say back in June 2012:

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/06/noaas-national-climatic-data-center-caught-cooling-the-past-modern-processed-records-dont-match-paper-records/

    “Is this purposeful mendacity, or just another example of confirmation bias at work? Either way, I don’t think private citizen observers of NOAA’s Cooperative Observer Program who gave their time and efforts every day for years really appreciate that their hard work is tossed into a climate data soup then seasoned to create a new reality that is different from the actual observations they made. In the case of Arizona and changing the Climate Divisions, it would be the equivalent of changing state borders as saying less people lived in Arizona in 1934 because we changed the borders today. That wouldn’t fly, so why should this?”

    00

  • #
    thingadonta

    The then head of the climate change branch at the BOM said (sorry don’t have the exact reference anymore, but it’s buried somewhere).

    It goes something like:

    ‘We KNOW that all towns in Australia have warmed over the last century…so what we need to do is to adjust the anomalies to be more in line international standards blah blah blah.”

    So they ‘know’ that all towns have warmed, and even WHEN they did so, gosh!, I wish I were that smart.

    I suppose regional variation just clutters a centralised bureaucrat’s mind.

    00

  • #

    […] The Climate-club are still stuck at stage one. They know something is wrong but the cognitive dissonance is killing them: their heroes hide declines and data, are too scared to debate anyone, and the equipment just keeps failing and needs adjustment. […]

    00