Weekend Unthreaded

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195 comments to Weekend Unthreaded

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    warcroft

    Earth is locked into 90cm of sea level rises!
    Hundreds of millions of people displaced!

    Probably.

    At some stage.

    Cant tell you how long.

    But its locked in!!!

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        Annie

        Oh Goody! 🙂

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        AndyG55

        I’ve just been watching “All Creatures Big and Small” 🙂

        Very topical.. 🙂

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        Roy Hogue

        NASA Is Fully Prepared to Watch the Oceans Swallow Earth.

        If that’s what they want to do I hope they realize they’re up the creek without a paddle. Since NASA has no more ability to put men in space the watchers will have to watch the oceans swallow them along with the Earth.

        There might be some justice in there somewhere.

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          ROM

          Roy Hogue @ #1.1.3

          Quoted ; Since NASA has no more ability to put men in space the watchers will have to watch the oceans swallow them along with the Earth.

          National Aeronautics and Space Administration = NASA.

          From a world leading space science organisation that achieved a first ever in all of mankind’s history and a “first” that can never be repeated as it was the FIRST time, the one and only FIRST time , a time when man set foot on a world not his own, the NASA Moon landings of the late 1960’s.

          All gone in less than two generations and in its place just another small “s” science mouthpiece and an over zealous lap dog for the climate change cult.

          A sad and a devastating indictment of the American scientific and political leadership over the last four decades when the scientific and political generation of the 1960’s now passing on, had created and left so much of promise for the following generations to look forward to expand and build on in mankind’s ever onward march into the future.

          Instead we see only a shallow facsimile of the NASA of those halycon days of the 1960’s, a bureaucratized NASA of today now bogged down deep in the increasingly stinking sink hole of a dead science that of “global warming science”, which has no promise at all of a better future but offers instead only suffering and deprivation as mankind’s future lot and destiny.

          Sad indeed and rather Ironic is it not?
          And a massive indictment of stratospheric proportions of America’s scientific and political leadership over the last four decades.

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            Roy Hogue

            It’s a great tragedy, ROM. Achievement, the only worthwhile thing in life, has been replaced with imaginary goblins to be fought Don Quixote style by jousting at windmills (too literally to be funny). Don Quixote made for inspiring fiction and eventually an inspiring stage play. But in the end, no matter who or what you are, the only lasting and worthwhile satisfaction you get out of life is what you achieve that improves your life and the lives of others.

            I cannot imagine myself on my deathbed thinking that kind of imaginary life, devoid of actual useful accomplishment, no matter how much activity was done because of it, was worthwhile.

            I spent a long career making software that had a purpose and was useful. One program was used by the United States Air Force for more than 10 years, a very long life for any computer program. I feel good about that.

            I believe most every reader of this comment knows that same satisfaction from solid accomplishment.

            I weep for what my whole country, not just NASA, has become. 🙁

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      It is interesting to note that there is no time period involved. The article just says that the sea levels have risen by 6cm in the last 23 years. Then somebody proclaims without agreement in Paris we are locked into three feet of sea level rise. There no claims of prospective acceleration. The current rate is 0.26cm a year (6/23), which makes 350 years for sea levels to rise 91.44cm or 3 feet.
      If the author had looked up the satellite data, he would have found sea level rise is now 3.3mm a year, which reduces the time scale down to a mere 277 years.
      http://sealevel.colorado.edu/

      Such nonsense is of little concern if it does not affect policy. Last year I wrote about Harold R. Wanless, a senior geology professor in Miami, who also chairs the science committee for the Miami-Dade Climate Change Advisory Task Force. Wanless has long-held views on future sea level rise that are way more extreme than the available evidence, or even the IPCC climate models. As Miami is very low-lying there is likely to be massive expenditures to allay false panic. My article is here.

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        Mike

        I have always wanted to know what ‘cup size’ the climate models wear 🙂

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        Manfred

        SEA LEVEL CHANGES PAST RECORDS AND FUTURE EXPECTATIONS

        ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT, VOLUME 24 No. 3 & 4 2013
        Nils-Axel Mörner

        ABSTRACT

        The history and development of our understanding of sea level changes is reviewed. Sea level research is multi-facetted and calls for integrated studies of a large number of parameters. Well established records indicate a post-LIA (1850–1950) sea level rise of 11 cm. During the same period of time, the Earth’s rate of rotation experienced a slowing down (deceleration) equivalent to a sea level rise of about 10 cm. Sea level changes during the last 40-50 years are subjected to major controversies. The methodology applied and the views claimed by the IPCC are challenged. For the last 40-50 years strong observational facts indicate virtually stable sea level conditions. The Earth’s rate of rotation records a mean acceleration from 1972 to 2012, contradicting all claims of a rapid global sea level rise, and instead suggests stable, to slightly falling, sea levels. Best estimates for future sea level changes up to the year 2100 are in the range of +5 cm ±15 cm.

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          gai

          More to add to that study. The Dutch who are the most concerned about actual sea level rise have found a lunar cycle.

          Local Relative Sea Level
          To determine the relevance of the nodal cycle at the Dutch coast, a spectral analysis was carried out on the yearly means of six main tidal gauges for the period 1890–2008. The data were corrected for atmospheric pressure variation using an inverse barometer correction. The spectral density shows a clear peak at the 18.6 -year period (Figure 1). The multiple linear regression yields a sea-level rise (b1) of 0.19 +/- 0.015 cm y-1 (95%), an amplitude (A) of 1.2 +/- 0.92 cm, and a phase (w) of -1.16 (with 1970 as 0), resulting in a peak in February 2005 (Figure 2). No significant acceleration (inclusion of b2) was found.
          CONCLUSIONS
          Coastal management requires estimates of the rate of sealevel rise. The trends found locally for the Dutch coast are the same as have been found in the past 50 years (Deltacommissie, 1960; Dillingh et al., 1993). Even though including the nodal cycle made it more likely that the high-level scenarios would become apparent in the observations, no acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise was found. The higher, recent rise (van den Hurk et al., 2007) coincides with the up phase of the nodal cycle. For the period 2005 through 2011, the Dutch mean sea-level is expected to drop because the lunar cycle is in the down phase. This shows the importance of including the 18.6-year cycle in regional sea-level estimates. Not doing so on a regional or local scale for decadal length projections leads to inaccuracies.
          http://www.bioone.org/doi/pdf/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-11-00169.1

          Linear trend lines on sinusoidal curves are very time dependent.

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    • #
      Ian George

      Warcroft
      Read this NOAA report before it is taken down.
      http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/globalregional.htm

      Sourced from Notrickszone.

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        Ted O'Brien.

        Yes. I noticed last week that Sydney’s remarkably stable record cuts out at 2010. Why? Fort Denison was still there on Sunday as we took the ferry past.

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      OriginalSteve

      You can always tell how desperate they are when they keep coming up with new “crises”.

      As always – CAGW is a “middle class calamaity”…..

      Most tradies will tell you its a pile of horse hooey.

      Most wealthy are busy making money off it.

      The middle class however drive priuses and fret over nothing and then pay huge taxes to fund the nonsense…..

      The middle class is living proff a little bit of knowledge is dangerous and can lead to mental slavery ad infinitum…..

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      Annie

      I don’t know why I wasted time on that! It doesn’t persuade me to start reading
      The Age again. 🙁

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      Manfred

      Transparent and unadulterated fantasy cli-fi peddled as a means to a terminal Green end.

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      tom0mason

      bemused,

      I heartily recommend you read Dr. Tim Ball’s 2014 book “The Deliberate Corruption Of Climate Science” is a must read. Book review is here:

      http://www.principia-scientific.org/review-the-deliberate-corruption-of-climate-science-by-dr-tim-ballreview-the-deliberate-corruption-of-climate-science-by-dr-tim-ball.html

      He names the names, provides the data, explains the history, and drives nail after nail into the AGW coffin.

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        The climate debate has been corrupt from the outset, especially since it has nothing to do with climate change. I watched the video presented by David Dilley and I think it sums things up about what we need to be concerned with, far clearer than anything else I’ve seen (I just wish he was a more slick presenter).

        I’m a firm believer that we are experiencing the biggest scam in history and I can’t be convinced or converted otherwise, but it’s the average person who still believes the guff that’s coming from most of the MSM etc that needs to be convinced that this is a scam.

        If this current cold becomes the norm, perhaps not much convincing will be required.

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        Ceeee

        Thanks Tom, will do. Always thought there was a need for a concise record of this slow train crash. Hope this is it. Far too much writing on this issue misses it’s target and disappears altogether. I’ve seen it advertised but since you recommend it I will get it. I like the fact that Mann actually filed a libel suit against him, that says it must of really pricked something.
        No wonder these buggers are so fretful, all the pertinent facts are public record and from a legal standpoint they are constantly walking into the crosshairs. Pity how it seems that democracy seems to spend so much effort defeating itself, allowing their cheerleaders in politics and the ticket clipping, yogic contorted, rectally focussed MSM to float this boat. I have no doubt though that that the truth here like gravity will become apparent, and it will be grave (for them). Billions wasted, economies distorted and people dying for want of warmth and dignity or basic amenities for that matter.

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      el gordo

      The article fails to mention that Melbourne is only a small city on a very large island and that 40% of the jobs we enjoy now will be gone in a couple of decades.

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    • #
      tom0mason

      MODS

      Could my comment please be released?

      tom0mason #2.3
      Your comment is awaiting moderation.
      August 31, 2015 at 6:38 am · Reply

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      Rick Will

      That must be a different Melbourne to the one experiencing it coldest August in Decades:
      http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/coldest-first-week-of-august-in-decades-for-australias-southeast/343574
      No global warming here – just getting colder.

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        OriginalSteve

        YEs, dont look atthe little man of global cooling behind the curtain….look at fictitious rising sea levels…..

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  • #
    Just-A-Guy

    Science of Doom,

    Promoters of AGW ™ often tell us (the general public) that, according to measurements, there is less radiative energy leaving the TOA (top of atmosphere) than there is radiating from the surface of the Earth. That difference, we’re told, if proof that some of that energy is being bounced back to the surface of the earth and warming it up. They call this ‘additional’ energy ‘downwelling long-wave radiation’.

    In my first response to SoD, I noted a flaw in the way this difference is calculated. Today’s comment analyzes a different aspect of what SoD calls ‘The Earths Energy Budget’.

    SoD wrote:

    2. Energy has to Balance (at the Top of Atmosphere)

    If you measure all the energy going in at TOA vs all the energy going out at TOA, you will find that they net to zero over time. . .
    . . . The average over the globe and over a year at the top of atmosphere for incoming and outgoing radiation is about 240W/m^2. . .
    . . . Note – what is very important about this is that the radiation in and out at the top of atmosphere balance.

    In this comment, I’ll describe why we should not expect the radiative energy leaving TOA to be the same as the radiative energy coming in at TOA, according to the theory being promoted by AGW ™ adherents.

    Two Reasons Why We Should Not Expect A Balance In Radiative Energy At TOA – part 3

    The first reason for us to expect more energy to be radiating away from the TOA than what’s coming in from the sun is that the Earth has a molten core. The heat from the Earth’s core is constantly being released in various ways the most notable of which is volcanos.
    The second reason we should not expect the amount of energy radiating away from the TOA to be the same as the amount of energy coming in is due to bological activity. All forms of life on Earth, most notably mammals, use chemical reactions within their bodies to release energy that was locked up in the molecules of the food they ingest.
    There is yet a third reason why there should be more energy radiating away at TOA than what’s coming in and that is because of decomposition of dead bio-mass, most notably plants. Anyone who’s ever worked on a farm as I have will tell you that if you stick your hand into a compost heap, you can feel the heat being produced within it.

    SoD wrote:

    At the top of atmosphere there is no convection and no water vapor, so energy can only be moved by radiation.

    So let’s think about this for a moment. What SoD is telling us is that by the time we measure radiative energy at TOA there should be an equal amount coming in and going out. And SoD gives us the measurements to show that this is true and actually happenning. And, finally, SoD explains to us that measuring radiative energy at TOA is valid because, at that point, the only method of energy movement is via radiative energy transfer.

    If the measurements are correct, why does energy coming in equal energy going out at TOA? There should be more energy going out than what’s coming in because of the additional energy being released into the atmosphere via volcanoes, biological processes, and decomposition.

    Hmm. Where did that extra energy go?

    There is of course an answer to that last question, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. At this point, I’m only interested in why proponents of AGW ™, like SoD, constantly tell us that we should expect energy in to equal energy out, when in fact, we should expect energy out to be greater than energy in.

    Abe

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      AndyG55

      “biological processes, and decomposition.”

      Volcanoes , yes..

      but biological processes and decomposition..

      these both absorb energy and release energy.. and I would have thought that in the long run they would have balanced.

      We also need to consider the energy used in erosion and the movement of matter.

      eg… if sand is moved up the beach, then moved down the beach to the same place.. where does the energy come from and go to.?

      hmmm.. not saying you are wrong.. just need to think some more about this..

      Persuade me 😉

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        tom0mason

        AndyG55,

        these both absorb energy and release energy.. and I would have thought that in the long run they would have balanced.

        I will have to disagree here.
        Life on earth continually sequesters chemicals and solar energy.
        Think of the living peat bogs, long lived tree forests, and oceanic algal blooms. All these processes (and so many others) take in the sunlight (along with atmospheric gases, water, and minerals) to make millions(billions?) of tons of solid matter. It may well be hundreds or maybe thousands of years hence, if ever, that the energy captured in these processes is released. This matter is solar energy converted to the energy of chemical bonds.

        While the earth has life on it the overall balance must be negative.

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          Think carbonates and coal as sequestering solar energy.

          The “balance” is over hundreds of millions of years; if ever.

          Not all of the solar energy sequestered takes that long path. If you see estimates of the amount of energy sequestered, consider the uncertainties.

          In terms of energy “balance” of ToA TSI, the “internals” of variables such as surface and cloud albedo are important. Simplistic models are only useful for teaching the effect of one factor is (almost) every other factor is held constant. In the real world, everything is variable. And many factors are coupled; typically in a non-linear fashion so superposition can not be applied legitimately to combine the effects of “independent” factors.

          Even the “external” of TSI isn’t constant. It varies in total magnitude by about 7% throughout the year. It varies in spectral content; and thus the potential heating effect on the oceans; throughout solar cycles. Spectral content also influence e.g. plant biology that alter land surface albedo.

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        Just-A-Guy

        AndyG55,

        Thanks for the reply and for staying on topic.

        You asked me to persuade you. My guess is that in order to do that, I would have to prove with either equations or links to documents, that a)the amount of energy absorbed by plants during the process of photosynthesis is less than the sum of b)the energy expended during cell respiration in plants, and c)the energy left over which is stored in plants after cell respiration. IOW. b) plus c) must be greater than a).

        I was under the impression that this was a well known and accepted fact based on the decrease in entropy inherent all life forms. I don’t have the expertise to present a clear enough explanation of how this works. But I will say this. When push comes to shove, an honest expert in the field will tell you that this is one of the unsolved mysteries in science. i.e. how is it that life reverses the natural order of things by getting more out than what goes in. i.e. a decrease in entropy.

        So, because of my lack of expertise in bio-chemical processes, we can actually ignore them for the purpose of this discussion. IOW, even without the contribution from bio-chemical processes in living things and decomposition of dead bio-mass, the amount of energy released from the Earth’s core (BTW, volcanos aren’t the only way that energy is released from the earth’s crust.) is still a very significant amount of energy. We should be able quantify to how much energy that is, even if only to a close approximation. And if the measurements of incoming and outgoing radiation at the TOA are correct, as claimed by SoD, and a balance does exist, then that additional geo-thermal energy is missing in action. But then we’re already in agreement on that. 🙂

        Abe

        PS: I appologise for taking so long to respond.

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          There is no such thing as an “accepted fact based on the decrease in entropy inherent all life forms.” Well, you may accept it, but that’s not so. It’s a working hypothesis that the universe’s total entropy is contnuously increasing.

          one of the unsolved mysteries in science. i.e. how is it that life reverses the natural order of things by getting more out than what goes in. i.e. a decrease in entropy.

          It’s simple; by “doing” more work elsewhere. It’s called a “heat engine” in thermodynamics.

          Do not take the Earth to be a closed system.
          Looking at the chemistry on an energetic basis one needs to look at the input and output compounds. If the output compounds can be exothermally transformed (releasing heat) to the input compounds, then energy must have been stored by the formation process.

          There are many natural, endothermic processes; those which absorb (heat) energy. Heat is a requirement for life’s chemistry; absorbing, indeed needing external energy to put chemical components “in order” (i.e. reducing their specific entropy).

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          • #
            Just-A-Guy

            Bernd Felscch,

            You wrote:

            There is no such thing as an “accepted fact based on the decrease in entropy inherent all life forms.”

            False. You’re invited to review the article in wikipedia on Negentropy. Especially useful is their fifth reference note listed as; Mae-Wan Ho, What is (Schrödinger’s) Negentropy?, Bioelectrodynamics Laboratory, Open university Walton Hall, Milton Keynes8.

            You might also enjoy: Laws of Thermodynamics – © Eric R. Pianka, on the website of the University of Texas, Austin.

            You wrote:

            It’s a working hypothesis that the universe’s total entropy is contnuously increasing.

            And:

            Do not take the Earth to be a closed system.

            It’s unclear why you call this a working hypothesis, and emphasize hypothesis, when everyone else calls this The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (or derived therefrom).

            From the article on the 2nd law at physics.about.com:

            Reformulated as a statement regarding entropy, the second law reads:
            In any closed system, the entropy of the system will either remain constant or increase.

            Furthermore, I never said anything about the Universe’s total entropy decreasing or about taking the Earth as a closed system.

            What I actually wrote was:

            I was under the impression that this was a well known and accepted fact based on the decrease in entropy inherent [in] all life forms.

            Maybe you missed that? While it’s true that the total entropy of the universe is increasing, each ane every living creature whether polar bear, cherry tree, or amoeba is a closed system where entropy decreases.

            You wrote:

            Heat is a requirement for life’s chemistry; absorbing, indeed needing external energy to put chemical components “in order” (i.e. reducing their specific entropy).

            OK, dude. Make up your mind. Either you accept that life-forms exibit a decrease in entropy or you don’t.

            Abe
            * I found this article to be very well written using clear and unambigous language. Although it does get a bit technical at times, the bulk of the work is accessible to the lay person. Very intersting and highly recommended.

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              “Negentropy” is a concept. Not a fact. As is “entropy”.

              The Earth is not a closed system. Closed systems are mental constructs to attempt to isolate factors.

              You’ve quoted a version of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Which applies to closed systems. “closed systems” are models. “Closed system” in the second law rules out its application to e.g. heat pumps which move energy against the entropy gradient. The external work increases the entropy “outside”.

              Life cannot be without an increase in total entropy. TANSTAAFL.
              An internal “re-ordering”; the specific entropy; is reduced at the cost of more entropy elsewhere.

              It’s not the mystery which you declared it to be.

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                Just-A-Guy

                Bernd Felsch,

                Entropy is a concept sure. The concept describes observable phenomenon. Those phenomenon can be measured and quantified. In the realm of science, observations that can be quantified are called data. Data are the facts with which hypotheses become theories and theories become laws.

                The same is true for negentropy, temperature, atmospheric pressure, latent heat and so on. They’re all concepts which describe observable facts. 😮

                I just love it when people sit back and play word games when they’ve been shown to be mistaken.

                You wrote:

                The Earth is not a closed system. Closed systems are mental constructs to attempt to isolate factors.

                Once again you’ve put words in my mouth. I never said the Earth was a closed system so any argument you derive from that false premise is not only faulty but irrelevant to boot.

                You wrote:

                Life cannot be without an increase in total entropy. TANSTAAFL.
                An internal “re-ordering”; the specific entropy; is reduced at the cost of more entropy elsewhere.

                So what?

                That’s exactly what I said:

                While it’s true that the total entropy of the universe is increasing, each ane every living creature whether polar bear, cherry tree, or amoeba is a closed system where entropy decreases.

                Another favorite obfuscating technique. You say the same thing I said but say it in such a way as to make it look as a refuration. 😮

                Face it. You’ve shown that you agree that my statements are correct, but you wan’t to make it look as though I’m wrong.

                Nice try. Won’t fly.

                Abe

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                Just-A-Guy

                Bernd Felsch,

                You wrote:

                It’s not the mystery which you declared it to be.

                Here’s a simplified version for those of you who don’t want to accept the facts.

                When an object like the Moon for example, is bombarded with radiative energy from the sun, the Moon gets hotter on one side. The Moon’s entropy is decreased. The decreased entropy can be calculated and quatified by taking measurements of its temperature at different points. Those measurements will show that there is an uneven distribution of thermal energy, i.e. reduced entropy.
                The Moon will, immediately upon receiving solar radiation, begin to radiate some of that incoming energy as it strives for thermal equlibrium. Within the Moon, there will also be a transfer of energy by conduction in an attempt to strive for thermal equilibrium.

                This situation, and the processes that describe it, are true for all inanimate objects in the Universe. IOW. As soon as there is a decrease in entropy caused by some outside source of energy, there will be an immediate, measurable, and quantifiable redistribution of that energy tending towards equlibrium and by definition, higher entropy.

                But . . .

                Not so with living organisms. As soon as living organisms begin to receive energy from an outside source, they too exibit a decrease in entropy just like inanimate objects do. Except that . . .
                . . . rather than redistribute that energy by conduction and radiation, as do all inanimate objects, they use that energy to further organize internally and reduce entropy even more. 😮

                This is why we call them organisms. Because they organize themselves. 😮

                Why this should be is the mystery you are afraid to acknowledge.

                Cheers,
                Abe

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      KinkyKeith

      A lot of excitement on that previous exchange on the other thread.

      This from some time ago: a bit vague but ..

      KinkyKeith
      November 1, 2012 at 6:18 am

      The original Man Made Global Warming by CO2 Fantasy lasted so long because it it was presented as final

      pivotal concept in the long scientific struggle to capture the essence of Earth’s Temperature change.

      Focus was therefore applied to the micro functioning of CO2 as an infra red absorber and emitter and so long

      as this focus remained there all was well.

      The trust in the “scientists” skill and honorable behaviour was the essential obscuring cover that kept the

      whole idea on the rails and allowing UN and Governments alike to funnel money to combat AGW to the friends

      and backers.

      But as always, the terms and conditions are always important in any transaction and this is the case with scientific analysis.

      It turns out that our trust in the science had been misplaced and the terms and conditions had been obscured from view, and analysis.

      All of the other factors, besides CO2, which had been assumed by the public to have been isolated and quantified had in fact been left out.

      Water, for example, with all its energy transfer capacity had been totally ignored and it seems deliberately

      left off the analysis, raising serious doubts as to the scientific credibility of the proponents of of CO2 AGW.

      Once the doubts were raised there was anger that the good reputation of science had been used as a screen to

      cover politically inspired scams and the resulting full analysis of the claims showed that the CO2 thing was

      a scam and that not even a dumb but honest scientist could have been stupid enough to believe the “science”

      behind the Man Made aspect of the claims.

      It was always a deliberate scam for personal and group advantage.

      The above Energy Budget is much the same and it can only be described as PRIMITIVE.

      There are too many factors to be listed and quantified to say that there is any real chance of isolating a back radiation effect by a Difference analysis of estimated inputs and outputs.

      It is a massive problem to do a mass, heat and momentum balance on the Earth.

      A staggering problem that labels anyone claiming to have the complete answer as a SCIENTIFIC FOOL.

      A DIFFERENCE ANALYSIS CANNOT WORK IN THIS PROBLEM where the object is to quantify one small factor.

      As Jo points out, the target is so small compared with known factors and their variability let alone all the unknown ones.

      The only solution is to physically measure back radiation or what ever it is that takes the fancy of Climate Scientists.

      If you can’t measure it then maybe it doesn’t exist?

      KK 🙂

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        Just-A-Guy

        KinkyKeith,

        You wrote:

        This from some time ago: a bit vague but ..

        KinkyKeith
        November 1, 2012 at 6:18 am

        I disagree. The comment may appear vague to the casual reader who doesn’t have all of the background information. To the informed reader, the comment isn’t vague.

        At first, I wasn’t even sure what the relevance was to my comment. That is until I went back to see the context in which it was written. The article by Jo where you made that comment is: Blockbuster: Earths Energy Balance measured – models are wrong.

        There, at the bottom of Jo’s article, is a diagram which appears in a paper by Trenberth, Fasullo and Keihl’s energy budget from 2009. It just so happens that this Trenberth, et.al. paper is the same paper that SoD uses as a reference in the article I’m discussing.

        SoD wrote:

        The value of 396W/m2 is calculated in Trenberth and Kiehl’s 2008 update to their 1997 paper: Earth’s Annual Global Mean Energy Budget. In the 2008 paper they comment that the upwards radiation from the surface cannot be assumed by averaging the temperature arithmetically and then calculating the radiation. So they take data on the surface temperature around the globe and re-calculate.

        I haven’t read Jo’s article, 🙁 , but I did read both of the Trenberth papers when I read SoD article. I couldn’t find a single piece of empirical evidence in either paper that wasn’t tainted by computer models simulations in one way or another. Those same models, (and possibly others), that have failed so miserably in describing Earth’s climate system.

        Back when SoD came here to defend their article . . .

        SoD asked:

        What exactly do I propose that is “known to promote AGW”?

        I wasn’t going to answer this question until the end of this series of comments, but now I feel that this is a good place to preview my response:

        SoD. The article you wrote uses the above mentioned Trenberth papers as source material. Both papers are seriously flawed and have been shown to promote AGW ™. By using those papers as reference material, you are in effect promoting AGW ™.

        There are still a few comments to be made on SoD’s article so I’ll have more to say on this in the summary comment at the end of the series.

        Thank you for your contribution, KK.

        Abe

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      aussie pete

      “Hmm. Where did that extra energy go?”
      O.K JAG, When are you going to tell us, or is it so obvious it doesn’t need explaining. Please remember that simpletons read these blogs (i am living proof). As further proof may i ask where does the energy come from that pushes and pulls the world’s oceans back and forth. Remember i’m a simpleton and don’t understand gravity. Finally seems like a helluva lot of energy goes into pumping water (sap)up giant trees under massive pressure. Anybody out there care to help me?

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        Just-A-Guy

        aussie pete,

        You wrote:

        O.K JAG, When are you going to tell us, or is it so obvious it doesn’t need explaining.

        If all goes well, two more Weekend Unthreadeds. I still have one more flaw to point out in that SoD article and hope to do that next week. When I first began this series of comments my intent was to focus on one item at a time in order to make sure each point got the treatment it deserves. I also wanted to avoid going off on a tangent as often happens when too many ideas are presented at once.

        I will give you a few hints, though. The inappropriately named, inaccurately described, fantasy concept that is ‘The Greenhouse Effect ®’ is not only unnecesary but also misleading when describing the earths atmosphere. The actual science that describes how the atmosphere regulates the near surface temperature of the Earth is well known and has been in use at least since the seventies. (The basics were well established much earlier.) That science is easy to explain and the concepts, when put together, paint a much simpler picture of ‘what’s going on’.

        You wrote:

        Finally seems like a helluva lot of energy goes into pumping water (sap)up giant trees under massive pressure. Anybody out there care to help me?

        Water reaches the leaves of trees by taking advantage of differences in water pressure.

        Abe

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      bobl

      I think you have focused too much on the input terms.

      Organisms (Especially plants also absorb sunlight to perform endothermic reactions, such as photosynthesis and synthesis of Vitamin D from Cholesterol.

      Heat energy also gets translated into bulk kinetic energy, eg by evaporating water and then condensing to rain which falls out and hits the earth at a rate of knots, or wind, or waves whipped up by wind. There is a fallacy around that all kinetic energy ends up as heat – no, some of it ends up slowing the earths rotation and perturbing its orbit by a few microns.

      Rocks crack due to thermal stress, ice melts and other entropy occurs absorbing energy more or less permanently.

      On the input side, gravitational tidal effects and rotational momentum from the earth’s rotation slosh the oceans and atmosphere around creating kinetic flows, the jet streams, ocean currents etc, which cause friction and put extra heat into the system, how much is totally unknown. Ocean wave energy is 30 TIMES the energy received from the sun (about 30 kW per square meter). The potential energy of the earths orbital position above the sun is 800 BILLION times the annual insolation of the earth. The gravitational forces cause a bulge of 1.3 KILOMETERS in the earth’s molten core helping to keep it that way. How much of that gravitational or momentum sourced energy leaks into the heat of the atmosphere.

      So along with the radiative balance we have energy leaking out through various mechanisms and other energy leaking in through various mechanisms, the magnitudes of which are totally unknown. Therefore the radiative balance of the earth could be accurately expressed as Insolation + (Totally unknown) – (Totally unknown) = (Totally unknown) +/- (Totally unknown)

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        aussie pete

        Thank You Bobl. That helps somewhat and your formula in the last line satisfies my intuition but i would like to add a rider (with your permission) and that is, that the value of Totally Unknown may be infinitely variable.

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          bobl

          I thought it went without saying Pete; but it’s probably not infinitely variable but the variability may well be found to exceed the supposed CO2 “Back radiation”. More like incalculably variable.

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        Bobl
        Your formula works! It is the first working formula I have seen. Well done. If those instantaneous figures are ever worked out then the unknown rates of change could be calculated as well….endlessly. No doubt those who have been forced to deduce the existance of dark energy would agree. Minor questions like the quantity of dark energy absorbed by abiotic hydro carbon production and thus not turning directly into heat or altering our orbit is no doubt described accurately someplace in the settled science but where?

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          bobl

          Interesting you should mention that. Dark energy/Matter is just astronomers way of saying “Something we don’t know about” like Maxwell’s aetha. It’s a means to a mathematical end. In a way Dark X is the astronomical equivalent of the 65 excuses for the pause. Except at the moment they don’t have 65 excuses for red-shift they just have one. It might be right and dark matter/energy exist but at the moment its the latest excuse for the fact that there isn’t sufficient mass/energy in the universe to support their conclusions – solution, make up some mass and energy. It could also mean that something else is happening.

          It may well be that the cause of red shift is NOT expansion, the same thing might happen for example if the permitivity of free space were higher than now a few quadrillion years ago! We humans have a problem perceiving things that change slowly – that’s why we love supernovae.

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            David Maddison

            Is the concept of Dark Matter/Energy even science since it is not falsifiable?

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            Wayne Job

            Take a very high vacuum X-ray tube, science is puzzled that electrons oft times spontaneously appear in the tube with nothing in it? The BS dark matter and dark energy the missing part of the universe are indeed the Aether of old. 95% of the universe is despun photons put a spin on they become visible, put another spin on them they become electrons, another spin they become protons, keep spinning them up you end up with helium get enough of it in free space you end up with a sun, that makes more dense matter, ad infinitum time, super novas you get a universe.
            Viva the aether of old.

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        tom0mason

        bobl,

        While I totally agree with your points, I prefer the view that nature, in all her glory, has not made a perpetual motion system.
        That is to say for all of nature to continue engergy must be expended. On this planet I see that nature sequesters away solar energy by the action of chlorophyll, and other such processes. Converting solar energy to chemical bonds. These processes locks solar energy away for an unknown period of time (think coal, peat, chalk, and the build-up of sludge in the depths of the oceans over the eons).

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          Graeme No.3

          I take the simple view that measuring an instantaneous balance doesn’t reflect a dynamic process i.e. time is a factor.

          Given the waffle about ‘unprecedented’ & “hottest ever” etc. it is obvious that the warmist hysterics have no idea of recent processes (e.g. the 1930’s), historic time (e.g. the Medieval warm periods) or geological time. A distorted view of the first law of thermodynamics is not really a substitute.

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          bobl

          Tom-o,
          I don’t disagree. (you sound like an engineer). This is more or less what I’m saying, every system is going to have losses. A motor for example doesn’t convert electricity to motion perfectly there are always losses – HOWEVER take all the little losses, heat, light maybe, sound, the breeze from the fan, vibration and add them ALL up and theoretically you’ll reach unity. Law of conservation of energy, energy cannot be created or destroyed, just changed from one form to another. My view comes from this observation: viewing the earth as an engineer would, seeing the “Desired Output” = “Input” is near enough impossible, in any system there are ALWAYS losses, so what ARE they. If I pour a kiliowatt of radiant energy in, and taking account of the losses (and given we are talking about heat which is a byproduct of JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING ™ ) the other sources of heat coming in. What can we say about the idea that “Radiant energy out = Radiant Energy In” premise. Hence my formula, the assumption that the sun is the only source of heat, and that emission is the ONLY sink is naive in the extreme – there are ALWAYS losses.

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          bobl

          I posted a reply Ian, with my additional fluxes, there are probably thousands of little losses like those, mostly not considered.

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        Just-A-Guy

        bobl,

        You wrote:

        I think you have focused too much on the input terms.

        If you’re refering to the input terms that go into ‘Earth’s Energy Budget ®’, then yes, I have. This was my intent because . . .

        SoD wrote:

        2. Energy has to Balance (at the Top of Atmosphere)

        If you measure all the energy going in at TOA vs all the energy going out at TOA, you will find that they net to zero over time. . .
        . . . The average over the globe and over a year at the top of atmosphere for incoming and outgoing radiation is about 240W/m^2. . .
        . . . Note – what is very important about this is that the radiation in and out at the top of atmosphere balance.

        What I’m saying is that this claim, that energy must balance at TOA is false. There is at least one* additional input that must be accounted for at TOA and that is geo-thermal energy. That energy gets released into the atmosphere all the time. Because this energy is significant, it should be measureable at the TOA. But SoD claims that measuremenmts show energy in at TOA = energy out at TOA! 😮

        That’s my second problem with SoD’s claims in that article.
        Not only should we not expect energy to balance at TOA, but, since measurements show that it does, then something’s terribly wrong with the whole theory.

        You wrote:

        Insolation + (Totally unknown) – (Totally unknown) = (Totally unknown) +/- (Totally unknown)

        He! He! 🙂

        Yes. This equation pretty much expresses everything that’s wrong with trying to calculate that silly thing AGW ™ proponents call ‘Earth’s Energy Budget ®’. How did Siligy put it, “Your formula works! It is the first working formula I have seen.”

        BTW. You mentioned evaporation, condensation, and kinetic energy among some of the many forms of energy transfer in and around the Earth’s atmosphere. These will play a crucial role both in pointing out the fatal error in SoD’s claims about the GHE (next week) but also in describing the alternative theory (two weeks) which already exists to explain how the atmosphere actually functions.

        Stay tuned, and thank’s for responding.

        Abe

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          bobl

          Abe,
          Just pointing out that the result might be more OR LESS that equal depending on the magnitude of the losses and gains. The fact that the energy in nearly balances the energy out is unlikely but certainly possible especially if the energy transfers are two way and have equal resistance in each direction. They very likely do not however, more to the point there is no evidence to suggest that they should be that way and as you say the outgoing energy could end up being almost anything because we don’t know anything about the losses and gains. Having things they way they measure is just as likely as any other outcome.

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      gai

      ERRRrrr,
      Abe I think you have that backwards.

      Energy in + geothermal = Energy out PLUS ENERGY bound in chemical + biological processes + energy bound in the ocean.

      The earth is a very busy place and all sorts of processes need energy. Some of that energy gets bound up as chemical energy in say a tree or a turtle for hundreds of years for example.

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        bobl

        Gai,
        In fact any “Effect” has to change the energy state of the planet. Any Effect and Every Effect. For example lets say, increased evaporation, ice melt, extra growth, more super-storms all require energy, supposedly extracted from the same mere Christmas light of energy (0.6Watts) per square meter. Just one of the supposed effects often turns out to be energetically impossible – combinations much more so.

        For example, a few years ago there was a paper that claimed there would be 20% more rainfall (and biblical floods) for a doubling of CO2 (3.7Watts per square meter warming by IPCC) BUT 3.7 Watts per square meter is only capabale of evaporating about 5% more water for excess rainfall, and IF that did happen ALL of the 3.7Watts would be absorbed into water vapour and there could be no global warming (to cause the evaporation – ie the effect becomes non-causal). And what of the extra wind, lightning and other energy expenditures that accompany precipitation, they need some of the energy too. There is only so much a Christmas light can do.

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        Just-A-Guy

        gai,

        You wrote:

        The earth is a very busy place and all sorts of processes need energy. Some of that energy gets bound up as chemical energy in say a tree or a turtle for hundreds of years for example.

        Of course this is right. The thing is, the measurements mentioned by SoD are taken at TOA where the only measurable transfer of energy is radiative in nature. All of the other energy transfers, including the storage of energy within bio-mass, take place below the TOA. It’s SoD’s claim that because of this, the measurements at the TOA are justified. I agree with you, and disagree with SoD.

        There’s all sorts of nonsense involved in the calculation of the so-called energy budget of our planet. All I’m saying now is that this specific claim that we should expect a balance or equality between incoming and outgoing radiative energy at TOA is obviously wrong because of the additional energy being released into the system from within the earth. IOW. Once the claim that there’s a requirement of radiative balance at TOA is shown to be incorrect, any other inaccuracies, and there are many, in the calculation of the so-called energy budget are irrelevant. Those inaccuracies exist, and we should examine them to see where the errors occur, but if the theory is already wrong, then further evidence can only strengthen the argument. It isn’t essential to falsifying the theory.

        Abe

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          gai

          Abe, I certainly agree and I now see where you are going. It really is an I Gottcha!

          The first time I saw Trainbreath’s Energy Balance Cartoon I ended up ROTFLMAO. It is really worse than Mikey’s Hockey stick in terms of science but the scientifically illiterate just lap it up.

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    Bevan Dockery

    The Global CO2 – Temperature Setting

    The Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville releases a “Global Temperature Report” on a monthly basis. The report for November 2014 at [1] by Dr. John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center, summarised 36 years of global atmospheric satellite temperature measurement. Extracts from the report are, quote:
    “The fastest warming spot is in Baffin Bay, where temperatures have risen 0.82 C per decade since 1978.”, and, quote:
    “The fastest cooling area is in East Antarctica near Dome C, where temperatures have been dropping at the rate of 0.50 C per decade.”

    The 36 year graphical summary appeared on the Web site at [2]. It shows warming towards the North Pole, minimal change in the Equatorial zone and cooling around the South Polar region.

    The closest CO2 recording station to Baffin Bay in the Arctic was Alert in northern Canada, where the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration has been 1.69 ppm per annum with a standard error of 0.028, for the period December 1978 to December 2013. The average of the monthly concentration values for 2013 was 397.75 ppm.

    The closest long-term CO2 recording station to Dome C in the Antarctic was the US station at the South Pole where the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration has been 1.67 ppm per annum with a standard error of 0.007, for the period December 1978 to December 2013. The average of the monthly concentration values for 2013 was 392.69 ppm. The difference of 5.06 ppm between the two stations should mean that the temperature conditions at the South Pole would be similar to those at the North Pole about 3 years earlier under the thesis that increased CO2 concentration causes increased atmospheric temperature. The data for Alert and the South Pole were taken from the Web site of the World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases at [3].

    Comparison of the CO2 conditions at the two stations shows that they have no perceptible difference in slope, that is, the rate of change of CO2 concentration with time. However there is an obvious difference in character. The Alert data shows a clear seasonal cycle with an amplitude greater than 10 ppm for each year. This is the seasonal life cycle whereby as temperature increases during Spring, life forms proliferate absorbing CO2 and causing its concentration to fall. Then in Autumn, the temperature falls, the seasonal life forms die, release CO2 and cause its concentration to rise. That is, as temperature rises CO2 concentration falls and as temperature falls CO2 concentration rises, the exact opposite of the claim by the IPCC that increased CO2 concentration causes an increase in temperature.

    The large seasonal amplitude at Alert relative to that at the South Pole is due to the large land mass in the Northern Hemisphere with its extensive cover of forest demonstrating that biological sources are a major contributor to the Earth’s atmospheric CO2 concentration.

    The temperature conditions at the Polar Regions, taken from the Satellite Lower Tropospheric temperature data provided by the Earth System Science Center, the University of Alabama in Huntsville at [4] gave a rate of increase of 0.444 degrees C per decade for the North Polar region for the period December 1978 to December 2013. At the South Polar region the rate of change of temperature was -0.001 degrees C per decade during the same period.

    This is supported by satellite recording of the ground conditions which are provided by the National Snow & Ice Data Center at [5]. In the Arctic, the sea-ice extent reached a Summer minimum on September 16, 2012, of 3.41 million square kilometres, the lowest seasonal minimum since satellite recording began in 1979. Meanwhile the Antarctic sea-ice extent reached a maximum, since recording began, of 20.11 million square kilometres on September 22, 2014. Note that this is more than 2.5 times the area of the Australian continent so it not an incidental local weather effect. At its maximum it covered one twenty-fifth of the Earth’s surface.

    For comparison, the Observatory at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, has been the standard reference for the value of the Earth’s CO2 concentration . For the period December 1978 to December 2013, the rate of increase in CO2 concentration was 1.71 ppm per annum with a standard error of 0.012 ppm and an average for 2013 of 396.52 ppm using the data supplied by the Scripts Institute at [6]. The Satellite lower tropospheric temperature for the same period over the Tropics zone, Latitude 20 degree South to 20 degree North, increased at the rate of 0.068 degrees C per decade.

    In summary, the rate of change of CO2 concentration at the Mauna Loa Observatory was greater than that at either Alert station or the South Pole by less than 2% indicating that there is little difference in the rate of change across the whole of the globe. The Observatory is on the Northern boundary of the satellite Tropics region over which there was minimal change in temperature. At the Alert station, the rate of change of CO2 concentration was less than at Mauna Loa but the nearby Baffin Bay recorded the greatest rate of increase in temperature of anywhere on the globe. At the South Pole station the rate of change of CO2 concentration was slightly less than at the Alert station but the nearby Dome C recorded the greatest rate of decrease in temperature of anywhere on the globe.

    This shows that the measured changes in CO2 concentration have had no detectable effect on the global temperature as demonstrated by the opposite responses for the sea-ice extent at the two Poles. This is what has happened in reality. It is not opinion, theory or computer simulation and must negate the IPCC propositions on increased CO2 concentration causing, not catastrophic climate change, but any detectable temperature change whatsoever.

    References:
    [1] http://nsstc.uah.edu/climate/2014/november2014/NOV2014GTR.pdf
    [2] http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/03/global-temperature-report-november-2014/
    [3] http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/gmd/wdcgg/
    [4] http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc_lt_5.6.txt
    [5] http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
    [6] http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/data/in_situ_co2/monthly_mlo.csv

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      Just-A-Guy

      Bevan Dockery,

      I have to say that I’m trully impressed by the amount of work you must have put into preparing this comment. Even more impressive, is the clarity of the explanation. This is especially beneficial to the non-specialist who often struggles to understand ‘what it all means’.

      While the promoters of CAGW ™ have taken, and will continue to take, individual items (let’s call them factoids) from among the data you’ve collected here and spin each factoid into ‘proof’ of their claims that co2 is the cause of all of the planets ills, (real or imagined, but mostly imagined), when a rational adult looks at all the data as a whole, it’s clear the whole theory is just bunk.

      Cheers,
      Abe

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        Bevan Dockery

        Thank you Just-A-Guy for your encouraging comments and thanks to all of those that followed. I have been feeling on the verge of giving up on my data analyses after not even getting an acknowledgement from either the Minister for the Environment or the President of the Australian Academy of Science. I notified them that their Web sites were misleading the public by quoting the fictitious 33 degree C for the greenhouse effect – see my entry at #13 under:
        http://joannenova.com.au/2015/06/weekend-unthreaded-77/

        While the lack of response from the Department of Environment may be driven by politics, the disregard by the President of the Academy to the science fiction on their Web site is an utter disgrace. If there are any Fellows of the Academy reading this, I ask when are you going to get some back-bone and speak out about this nonsense ?

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      Manfred

      The politically institutionalised blur between the empirical measurement of temperature (an empirical end result that summarises all known and unknown feedbacks) and the IPCC theoretical model construct that suggests increasing CO2 should theoretically result in increasing temperature (leaving aside for the moment the idea that atmospheric CO2 conc. lags temperature and the IPCC models are an ‘epic’ expensive fail) and the ensuing and bizarrely paradoxical angst emanating from the Green eco-hypocrites when confronted with a 19 yr. trendless interval in warming that anyone sane who believed as they do would celebrate. They betray themselves at every turn.

      I am perfectly comfortable that the Earth’s climate is not an IPCC model, not a theoretical construct, but instead it is a complex chaotic auto-regulatory robust system replete with coarse, slow, positive and negative feedbacks, a position endorsed by declining atmospheric sensitivity values to CO2. Indeed, it makes little sense that it should have rapid, sensitive and uncomfortably unstable systems, particularly when one considers the biological systems that have existed stably over hundreds of millions of years, indeed quite happily (dinos) until for example, an uncomfortably rapid celestial species extinguishing event at the K-T band end of Cretaceous.

      So like so many, I refuse to preoccupied by a few ∆ppmv of ‘CO2’ and more importantly, their associated array of politically correct and unscientifically required Green implications.

      I know that ANY sane person capable of reading and writing who undertakes the simplest level of stone-lifting research will arrive at a similar position.

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      Annie

      Bevan Dockery: Thank you for that info and the trouble you have taken over supplying it.

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      Safetyguy66

      Impressive, most impressive.

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      Manfred

      Bevan, I grievously omitted to acknowledge your comment and I also thank you for the thoroughness and depth to which you have dissected the subject. Your analysis will provide a useful resource.

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      gai

      Very impressive Bevan, I actually thought at first it was written by Dr. John Christy!

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    Grizzly bears moving into the territory of and interbreeding with the polar bear as AGW makes the Arctic more like home for the grizzly we know about (well, some of us do, the ones with BOTH eyes open) but now:

    Norway and Sweden are combining forces to save the Arctic fox, which is under threat from climate change and the incursion into its territory of the common red fox, which is almost twice the size.

    http://www.thelocal.se/20150827/norway-and-sweden-team-up-for-arctic-fox

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      Gee Aye

      How do you distinguish between ongoing long-term changes in species range versus the direct effects of AGW?

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      Where is the evidence of increased inter-breeding between the Grizzly and polar bears? Does this correlate with the irregular pattern of warming that has been occurring since at least 1820? Was there increased inter-breeding in the previous warm periods?

      As for the common fox, is it moving North because of climate change or due to other factors? In Britain over the past 50 years foxes have become increasingly urbanized where temperatures are on average much warmer than the surrounding countryside. Has this happened in Scandinavia?

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        Bingo… plus a dozen other causes that might become apparent with more study.

        It is a well known problem when studying changes in ecosytems, habitats, species numbers/distribution etc, is attributing change. “No change” is a pointless null hypothesis since change will be detected unless the data is crappy so one has to estimate the change due to a particular factor by subtracting out other factors. So much data interpretation is working out what the residuals mean.

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        gai

        I do not know about Scandinavia but I have at least two red fox (one is lighter red) and gray fox running around and one has even trots up the front steps when I open the front door!

        I would be very happy to donate the lot to Sweden.

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      Fred Streeter

      The NOAA Arctic Report Card on the Arctic Fox notes that the Scandinavian Arctic Fox population was reduced from 15,000 individuals to its current (2012) < 200, and thus is at "considerable risk of extinction".

      The Yukon has experienced "intense" warming in recent decades, yet a 40 year study of the "relative abundance of Red and Arctic foxes" observed little change.

      To me, the studies identify availability of food and a sustainable population density as the primary drivers of "relative abundance".

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      Fred Streeter

      Whoops!
      Reduced from 15,000 by the fur industry.

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      Yonniestone

      Applying a form of Lysenko-Michurinism to a failed hypothesis is a bold move Maxine, Though you’ll probably be promoted to director for sustainable biology when the NWO kicks off.

      Who knows what the new science will create?, might even give Terrier dogs the ability of speech instead of the common yapping and anxious behavior.

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        Are you using Lysenko just to slur Maxine’s comments – a pretty lazy argument – or is there more substance to your argument. What did you mean?

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      tom0mason

      Maxine,

      Read something worthy about polar bears, either this, or this.

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      Bill

      Maxine:
      Hardly news, this has been documented for over a century. The Inuit have oral histories going back several thousand years that tell the same. Not proof of anything but your ability to twist reality in support of your religion.
      Might I suggest a trip to Churchill Manitoba aka Polar Bear Capital of the World? The have a score board on the main street used to keep track of tourist who become polar bear appetizers. BTW, the polar bear is the ONLY predator that is genetically programed to regard humans as a normal food source; evolution over thousands of years in action.
      Do you deny evolution as well?

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    David

    I’ve been looking for at least ten years but I have yet to find any empirical evidence that there is a statistically significant correlation between CO2 and atmospheric temperature. Can anyone help me?

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      AndyG55

      There is zero CO2 signature in the satellite record.

      The only MAN-made warming seems to be in GISS, BOM, CRU . !!

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      Manfred

      I think an SSRI like Prozac may help David. Your GP should be able to provide you with a prescription, particularly when you explain the underlying reason. Ask your GP to send their bill to the UN IPCC.

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      David,
      On Saturday I was playing around with some figures trying to relate much of recent warming could be explained by CO2 by decades. The difficult bit is that the lagged impact of CO2.
      Method was
      1. Took HADCRUT4 temperature anomalies, averaged by decade (0-9) and took the change from one decade to another.
      2. For CO2 used Mauna Loa figures from 1959, and Law Dome ice core estimates before that.
      3. Assumed 40% of the impact of CO2 was in the decade, 30% in the following decade, 20% in the next decade and 10% in the decade after.

      The results were a remarkable fit for the last 3 decades. CO2 “explains” 89% of the 1970-1980s warming, 98% of the 1980-1990s warming and 106% of the warming in the 1990s-2000s.
      Problem is that for all the previous 13 decades – from the 1850s to the 1970s – there is no relationship at all. That is why any arguments for the relationship are extremely fuzzy, and/or concentrate on late twentieth century warming phase.

      I have uploaded the graph – with CO2 impact in blue and unexplained residual temperature change in red.
      https://manicbeancounter.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/decadalhadcrut4vco2.jpg

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        el gordo

        Good effort Kevin, it appears that an increase in CO2 and temperature rise at the end of last century was just a coincidence after all.

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          It does not mean that CO2 has had zero impact, but the evidence suggests that CO2 with large positive feedbacks is just a coincidence. That is the evidence does not support the CAGW hypothesis (which justifies policy), but does not contradict a mild form of the AGW hypothesis.
          Climate alarmism fails to make this fundamental distinction, which is why it cannot be considered a science.

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            el gordo

            Okay, so how long do you expect the hiatus to continue?

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              Based on CO2 I have not got a clue. A number of different theories could be fitted to the data, including the random walk theory. There could be a number of different theories playing a role.
              Before using the data we must first understand the data set. Averaging temperature trends is of limited meaning when local and regional temperature trends vary not just in magnitude but also time for quite long periods. This is clear from the data. But climatologists just assume the problem away without checking. My testable hypothesis is that the further back in time a temperature series goes, the greater the smoothing of average trends. In particular the early twentieth century warming will appear smaller relative to the late twentieth century warming.

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        ivan

        The only question I have is, ‘how reliable is the HADCRUT4 data set?’ In other words what is the amount of ‘massaging’ that has been applied to that data set?

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        Andrew McRae

        Kevin, I see you have taken off your bean counting hat and put on your Joule counting hat.
        Welcome to the club of amateur climate modeling for fun and profit retained earnings.

        It’s a thrill isn’t it? That first time you tweak the model parameters to a magical combination and suddenly the output matches history. Eureka! But the elation is short lived.
        We always hear of how models are just a reflection of the assumptions of their creator, but the ease with which one can fool one’s self just doesn’t seem important until you’ve actually done it yourself.
        So you have tweaked the model to give 89% of the power to CO2. By now you must be wondering what other confounding and missing variables have to be added to the model to improve accuracy… and just how many different parameter combinations would give exactly the same end result.

        You may chase down various hypothetical climate mechanisms looking for observations and analysis that can help empirically constrain the model parameters and all you will find is conjecture and dogma. Of course no matter how many processes and parameters you add to the model the contrarians will tell you it is not accurate unless geothermal heat, backyard pools, and beaver dams are included. Then the prospect of feedbacks, the N-body problem, and mutually interacting phenomena appears and so the clutching at simple parameterisations continues. Only when progress and confidence have faded into paralysis and confusion will you truly reach a state of modern climate science zen. 🙂

        Wishing you best of luck in climate modeling, and may all your Root-Mean-Square-Errors be low.

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      bobl

      Um yes,
      I believe there is robust scientific evidence that increasing CO2 can be caused by increasing temperature – increasing both oxic biotic activity – most creatures like it warm. and through outgassing of oceans.

      In other words there is a plethora of evidence that higher temperature will probably cause higher CO2.

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      gai

      Yes! Tony Heller finally found the correlation. LINK It is an almost perfect correlation with R = 0.98667

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    Safetyguy66

    Im going to try to remember to put up the Weatherzone page for Beauty Point TAS on or about the last day of each month. August was cold by quite a margin on both max and min. But the other numbers are interesting too. Like the coldest on record being 2013 for example.

    http://www.weatherzone.com.au/tas/central-north/beauty-point

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      GrahamP

      Safetyguy66, I recommend you be very careful using weatherzone info. The dates they use for their records seem to be a bit dodgy.

      If you hover the pointer over the underlined word Record it displays the date range for the records and in this case it is 1998 to 2014.

      I don’t know whether this is significant or not in this case but it may be. A quick look at BoM indicates that records for Devon Airport are available from 1971 and may be more useful. Of course there may be records going back to early settlers days that may even tell a different story.

      No denying that it has been a cold winter down south though.

      cheers, Graham

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    peter

    I want someone to explain to me why the media,the Greens, the Labor Party and most people I know are so convinced everything said about global warming is true? Why is it so hard to get the truth out? I just want to know why there aren’t people out there that can convince people of what is really the truth? I see see so many comments on this site that are so convincing and am confused why the message is so hard to get across to the average person. My boss says he has been a Liberal voter all his life but wants an ETS and thinks the government should put more money into renewables. Why? I can’t even talk with him about it.

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      Gary in Erko

      There’s been an unfounded rumor going around in the west for the last couple of hundred years, that we entered an enlightened rational cultural environment. Don’t believe it. That’s the explanation you’re looking for. We’re no different than the superstitious, mystery believing, peasants of the pre-literate medieval world. “Modern” is just a word – it doesn’t really refer to anything of practical worth.

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      Mike

      OOps double post below.
      Gday peter,
      Probably ‘suggestibility’. The stuff of hypnosis. Short allegory quote below from In Search Of The Miraculous by P. D. Ouspensky published in 1949 about suggestibility. A fairly good illustration IMO.

      “There is an Eastern tale which speaks about a very rich magician who had a great many sheep. But at the same time this magician was very mean. He did not want to hire shepherds, nor did he want to erect a fence about the pasture where his sheep were grazing. The sheep consequently often wandered into the forest, fell into ravines, and so on, and above all they ran away, for they knew that the magician wanted their flesh and skins and this they did not like.

      “At last the magician found a remedy. He hypnotized his sheep and suggested to them first of all that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when they were skinned, that, on the contrary, it would be very good for them and even pleasant; secondly he suggested that the magician was a good master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them; and in the third place he suggested to them that if anything at all were going to happen to them it was not going to happen just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to think about it. Further the magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions, to others that they were eagles, to others that they were men, and to others that they were magicians.

      “And after this all his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end. They never ran away again but quietly awaited the time when the magician would require their flesh and skins.

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      Safetyguy66

      If you really want a head scratcher Peter, ask some of these people you know about GM food or Nukes. Their cognitive dissonance on the value of science will explode before you. Almost all alarmists recognize science as a deciding factor only on certain topics. They also carefully choose the science they expose themselves to. Most on this site listen to a LOT of warmist propaganda, the same is certainly not true of the opposition, they actively avoid anything that might challenge their beliefs.

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      el gordo

      ‘I just want to know why there aren’t people out there that can convince people of what is really the truth?’

      Its not easy to persuade a brainwashed population that the AGW science is flawed and global cooling is rapidly approaching.

      Essentially what we require is balance in the media so we can argue our case, which we would win hands downs. Glad you are on our side Peter, the wait is frustrating but victory will be ours.

      In the meantime you may get a torrent of abuse from people who see you as inhuman, with no interest in saving our grandchildren or the planet, good luck with the rebuttal.

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        bobl

        Ahh, but Gordo, this is where you switch to the effects of global warming “Action” on grannies in winter, poor people without electricity, burning other peoples food in their cars, and the misuse of money impacting on health of the poor.

        Using this argument wins the day because the emotional feel-good fix that AGW gives them is shown in its true light. The wolf in sheep’s clothing is revealed for all to see.

        It is an error to try to win this argument on the science when to the “Useful Idiots” AGW is a moral justification rather than a scientific one.

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          el gordo

          ‘It is an error to try to win this argument on the science …’

          I disagree, we can run two memes in tandem.

          http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/weather/11382808/Winter-death-toll-to-exceed-40000.html

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          el gordo

          ‘AGW is a moral justification rather than a scientific one.’

          Yeah, so we need to turn the world upside down, the authorities have a moral responsibility to bring the winter death rate down.

          http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31518899

          The beeb blames the flu and cold air outbreaks for the higher mortality.

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            bobl

            El Gordo,
            Exactly, this is what needs to be done – We have a moral responsibility to keep energy cheap and accessible lest we kill the poor and infirm. The government has the responsibility to DO NO HARM which they are violating by artificially inflating the price of energy beyond affordability. They are morally bankrupt in doing this. That’s the political message to get out.

            Also Gordo, burning food for fuel, and the use of Trillions of dollars to do nothing to cool the climate instead of spending it in developing cures to cancer, aids or malaria, or feeding the world are other such observations to be brought to bear politically.

            That we are deliberately restricting the third worlds access to the same cheap plentiful energy we have used to build our clean environment is another such observation.

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      GrahamP

      peter, I can’t answer your question but I too am mystified.

      From what I have read it would seem that a good proportion of the population think renewable energy is a good idea. On the face of it it seems a reasonably idea and those without the ability to understand the complexities of the issue accept the proposition.

      Maybe it is the same for “climate change”. People are bombarded by big scary numbers of how much CO2 is being released by our activities and accept the proposition.

      In my experience your boss is not unique, he possibly has more on his plate and not the time to delve into the intricacies of the real science and simply accepts the proposition.

      The Greens are anti everything so nothing will change their entrenched position, but the Labor party is being particularly mischievous in that it is simply playing politics and to hell with the national interest.

      As for the ABC, words fail me!!

      cheers Graham

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    Gary in Erko

    .
    Phenotypic plasticity is the ability of an organism to change its phenotype in response to changes in the environment.
    Would an unusual alteration of environment due to change in climate really cause mayhem and devastation among creatures? Small changes – yes …. chaos and destruction – no.

    Articles in Wikipedia and Heredity in Nature

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    Mike

    Gday peter,
    Probably ‘suggestibility’. The stuff of hypnosis. Short allegory quote below from In Search Of The Miraculous by P. D. Ouspensky published in 1949 about suggestibility. A fairly good illustration IMO.

    “There is an Eastern tale which speaks about a very rich magician who had a great many sheep. But at the same time this magician was very mean. He did not want to hire shepherds, nor did he want to erect a fence about the pasture where his sheep were grazing. The sheep consequently often wandered into the forest, fell into ravines, and so on, and above all they ran away, for they knew that the magician wanted their flesh and skins and this they did not like.

    “At last the magician found a remedy. He hypnotized his sheep and suggested to them first of all that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when they were skinned, that, on the contrary, it would be very good for them and even pleasant; secondly he suggested that the magician was a good master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them; and in the third place he suggested to them that if anything at all were going to happen to them it was not going to happen just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to think about it. Further the magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions, to others that they were eagles, to others that they were men, and to others that they were magicians.

    “And after this all his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end. They never ran away again but quietly awaited the time when the magician would require their flesh and skins.

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    Andrew McRae

    Dallying with Dilley, part 1 of 1.

    After watching the video by David Dilley (the ex NOAA forecaster) last week, something he said about cycles stuck in my craw.
    He reckoned there was a 9 year cycle in the Moon’s orbit that affected the temperature.
    I spent longer than I care to admit trying to find a recurring temperature blip (peak or trough) in world SST from either the 9.3 year lunar declination cycle or the 19 year metronic cycle, and didn’t find any sign of either one of them.
    Checked the video again and… he was only talking about USA temperature. D’oh! So not only did he never claim it affected world temperature but his own chart of the USA shows an 11 year gap between events he says are caused by a 9-year cycle. Plus a wavelet analysis of SST shows no sign of periodicity at 9 years, not even a weak one. What a wild goose chase.
    Besides, a “climate normal” is defined by WMO as a 30-year average so a brief warming event every 9 years won’t make a climatic difference if it is as regular over the medium term as the Moon.

    If anyone knows how to find proof of the lunar cycle affecting world temperature on a multi-decadal scale, please speak up.
    Hell, even a 9 year cycle in mid-latitude NH or SH would be interesting, but good luck separating it from ENSO.

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      Mike

      Thanks for trying to verify that. Some of the comments on that video indicated a lack of detail in some of the graphs.
      I posted something about suggestibility. The chief culprit for the result called ‘belief’ as a substitute for what is not personally verified.

      Offtopic slightly: Just after Fukushima nuclear holocaust, i purchased a gamma spectrometer and started finding out more about radioactivity, Steep learning curve, but lots of help from a great enthusiast community that helped with the low cost setup. By low cost, 200$ for a scintillation detector, a power supply for it 250$ and some software that is free from a professor at Sydney university.

      I did observe increased airborn background radiation in southern Victoria Au where i live, but after a few months it died down considerably. Later i built a Lead chamber to be able to be able to do food testing and verify for myself the presence of the signature Cesium 137 and Cesium 134 that characterized the fukushima explosions/meltdowns.

      Spent more time than i would care to admit, like yourself, on various blogs/sources researching, discussing and debating my amateur findings. That helped cure my fear as i was very agitated about ‘that’ event in particular. The lead shielding for the test chamber was about 700$ worth of Lead sheet flashing to make a cylinder and end cap with 75mm wall thickness.

      I haven’t tested fish for a while. Smelly procedure because the fish needs to be dessicated to concentrate the possible contamination of radionuclides.

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      john robertson

      Andrew Chiefio did quite a bit of digging into lunar cycles, a while back.
      try Musings from the Cheifio.
      Trouble is my flaky memory does not remember when, mid last year or ear lie I think.
      I seem to recall an 18 year cycle.

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      handjive

      Here is a couple of links:

      Over an 18.6 to 19 year period, the Full Moons nearest the solstices swing much like a pendulum.
      In 2005 and 2006, these Full Moons will be at their highest and lowest positions in the sky over this approximately 19 year period, reaching declination 28º +/- (north/south). Also the First and Last Quarter Moons around the time of the equinoxes can be seen at their highest and lowest declinations.

      In 2015 there will be a minor lunar standstill season, occurring about 9.3 to 10 years after the major lunar standstill season.

      http://www.skyscript.co.uk/lss.html

      The always excellent Chiefo: A Remarkable Lunar Paper and Numbers on Major Standstill

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      gai

      Andrew, I just posted info from the Dutch:
      The Effect of the 18.6-Year Lunar Nodal Cycle on Regional Sea-Level Rise Estimates

      E.M. Smith has explored the effects of the lunar cycles and has a lot of links to papers
      SEE: https://chiefio.wordpress.com/?s=lunar

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    Paul Vaughan

    I’ve put forward a deliberate unambiguous test of integrity to sort serious, sensible climate discussion enthusiasts from devilish distortion artists.

    The test takes 2 minutes:

    http://joannenova.com.au/2015/08/former-noaa-meteorologist-tells-of-years-of-censorship-to-hide-the-effect-of-natural-cycles/#comment-1740892

    I dare everyone to take the test.

    Bon Courage.

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      gai

      Paul,

      I think you left out the third category. Completely confused. I am having my husband, whose math and computer skills are a lot better than mine look at your challenge.

      Do I smell very rotten fish at NASA and NOAA? Oh Yes. Unfortunately the USA has been taken over up to and including the Supreme Court much to my disgust. If the courts are no longer honest; and the Peter Gleick/Heartland fiasco LINK and the NASA/James Hansen mess where Hansen got, $1.6 million in outside cash as speaking fees in direct violation of criminal code, 18 U.S.C. 209 LINK; then what are we little people to do? — Except volunteer to put Trump in office and pray he cleans up the mess.

      Not only are the courts useless (and I have had personnel experience in just how useless) The MSM is in bed with the ClimAstrologists. You could have 5 million people show up in DC protesting the EPAs shutting off our power and the MSM will show 25 people protesting Black Lives Matter instead.

      I have been tackling people on the issue one at a time and as I said volunteer for Trump (If the MSM hates him that is a good sign) otherwise I am out of ideas.

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    handjive

    Lewis Fry Richardson, 1921:

    “Perhaps some day in the dim future it will be possible to advance the computations faster than the weather advances and at a cost less than the saving to mankind due to the information gained. But that is a dream.”

    ABC, 1999: Lewis Fry Richardson’s dream has become reality.

    “The Bureau of Meteorology’s three-day forecasts are now as accurate as their one-day forecasts were in the mid-1980s.

    Meanwhile, CSIRO and Bureau scientists are looking even further ahead.
    They are developing sophisticated climate models to determine the likelihood of El Niño and La Niña events up to 12 months ahead.”
    . . .
    Fast Forward 15+ years …

    SMH, March 6, 2015: El Nino declared as climate scientists watch on with ‘amazement’

    “We only understand what we have seen,” said Cai Wenju, a principal CSIRO research scientist who has published widely on the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern.

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    • #
      Safetyguy66

      That would be all the “reduced southern rainfall” predictions finding their natural home in the junk science bin I guess.

      http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of-the-climate/

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        you make it sound like they write the articles that they think will sell papers or online advertising??? How unethical.

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      • #

        Actually… what did you mean? I didn’t find any mention of 2015 at all in the thing you linked. Are you using a single season average in one location to disprove a predicted long term trend?

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        Spetzer86

        They’re now calling for a general warming trend over the next six months. Should be back to hottest ever by December.

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      handjive

      2015 Hottest Year Evah! Update:
      (It is rare for climate experts to make such a bold prediction so soon in the year)

      ABC: Victoria’s Gippsland has experienced its coldest winter in 26 years, playing havoc with horticultural crops.

      Bureau of Meteorology climatologist Blair Trewin said Gippsland had not had as many north-westerly winds, which generally resulted in warmer temperatures.

      “Day time temperatures have been colder than normal, generally 0.6 to 0.8 below normal,” he said.

      “It’s a winter the likes we haven’t seen for awhile.”

      Mr Vizzari (farmer) said he was now looking north, to find warmer climates that would support asparagus and broccolini production.

      He said he wanted to extend the growing season for the vegetables he produced.”
      . . .
      TheAge: Weather is now Climate – Will Steffen

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        HJ… you’v hit the nail on the head. Those predicting the hottest year never factored in the fact that Gippsland’s winter will drag the whole globes temperatures down.

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          handjive

          Quite so, Gee Aye.

          Those predicting the hottest year evah never factored in the fact that Gippsland’s winter will drag the whole globes temperatures down because not one of them predicted the cold, wet weather.

          When the 97% settled science is based on GiGo, the errors only compound to the point where the complete opposite is predicted:

          ABC, 1 Jun 2015: Bureau of Meteorology bearers of bad El Niño tidings to farmers
          “This year the consensus of all the models the Bureau looks at is absolutely unequivocal; they indicate we will be in a sustained El Niño event over the next five to six months.”

          Wettest Canberra in 10 years you say? Another BoM fail.

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            quite so HJ. I see you’ve reached new levels of understanding. Maybe an article that addresses predictions about winter rain would help your argument. Or an article that is not a tertiary media report – and a pretty crappy one at that, would assist.

            btw for those who cant be bothered reading this… the article was published in June and contains no predictions of winter weather. The prediction it is making are the formation and establishment of an el nino, and that it will be bad news for farmers. The quote hj gives like others in the link is pretty poorly written and contextualised so I am hesitant to interpret the quote – in any case it has nothing to do with rainfall in Canberra.

            As for the quote it is either saying we will achieve sustained EN in the coming months or that we are already in it and it will last some 5 months.

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              handjive

              GA. “I see you’ve reached new levels of understanding”.

              Yes. I have “seen the light“.

              GA. “Maybe an article that addresses predictions about winter rain would help your argument.”

              If only I could find one from the BoM. Maybe you could help?

              > “predictions of an El Niño are not a palatable message to deliver to farmers,” Bureau Climate Liaison Officer, Gary Allen, said.

              Mr. Allen isn’t talking about record breaking harvests when he says calls El Niño “not a palatable message”.

              GA. “Or an article that is not a tertiary media report – and a pretty crappy one at that, would assist.”

              So, shooting the messenger instead of the science. The BoM hasn’t made the ABC retract article, so, they must be ok about it.

              GA. “the article was published in June and contains no predictions of winter weather.”

              Quoting article, the BoM June 1, (officially the first day of winter in Oz):
              “The Bureau has continued to predict an El Niño over the next six months and said the figures are firming as the year progresses.”

              Pretty sure that is a ‘prediction’, and covers winter & spring in Oz, but, in the hottest year evah, winters should be a thing of the past.

              GA. “The quote hj gives like others in the link is pretty poorly written and contextualised so I am hesitant to interpret the quote – in any case it has nothing to do with rainfall in Canberra.”

              Allow me to interpret that for you, using only a BoM/CSIRO previous description of El Niño, better written:

              ABC: El Nino in Australia means hot sunny weather and drought

              “During El Niño we have the droughts in western Pacific counties, like Indonesia and Australia,” says Dr Wenju Cai, a senior principal research scientist at CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship.”

              I think I’m in moderation now, too many links … good luck finding that link. Thanks in advance.

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                no link because they didn’t make a prediction. Your straw man collapseth. The BOM did not say anytihng about the coming winter in different parts of Australia wrt the predicted el nino. You did.

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          Mike

          Yep. I live in Gippsland and can say it is frickin freezing here. I have a bee hive and painted it black with a bitumen paint to help the beehive warm up quicker so the bees can be more active. Works well.

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            Mike

            Painting with bitumen imitates the ‘urban heat island effect’ kinda. Have to be careful the hive does not melt down. I regularly check with an infrared thermometer. Saves me getting too close to the hive and getting stung 🙂

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        David Maddison

        What data is the BoM using to make that statement? Real, original data or their current altered (homogenised) data set?

        Now that the original data has been altered I can’t trust the BoM with anything they say, not even today’s weather.

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    Gary in Erko

    An interesting article by Don Aitkin about scepticism in general, and his particular application of scepticism to climate knowledge – link

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      el gordo

      ‘It may take a generation before ‘climate change’ theory is finally buried, at least in the form that humans are responsible for global climate.’

      Methinks much sooner than that, abrupt climate change would bring about a paradigm shift, and the communications revolution will get the word out faster.

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    pat

    how to get the sceptic side across to the public? not easy when the MSM is pumping out propaganda 24/7:

    29 Aug: ABC The Science Show: The Science Show celebrates 40 years
    Today, we revisit that first program. It was the middle of the Cold War and before AIDS. The internet had not been imagined. But even in 1975, with a world population of 4 billion (in 2015 it is 7.35 billion) there were warnings about population growth, vanishing resources and environmental degradation, and the effects of burning fossil fuels were well known…
    GUESTS include:
    Peter Ritchie Calder (1906-1982)Scottish socialist author, journalist and academic
    COMMENTS:
    Richard le Sarcophage:
    itchie Calder’s comments here actually came a decade after LBJ of all people warned the US Congress of greenhouse related climate disaster. Needless to say, we have regressed centuries in the forty years since, the Right insisting that science, rationality, ‘Enlightenment values’ and basic instincts like self-preservation and care for one’s own children were eminently dispensable when raw greed and ideological fanaticism are preferred. I’m pretty confident that there will not be another Science Show forty years from now, to report on our further adventures in moral depravity, because we’ll be gone by then, perhaps long gone. What an ironically tragic broadcast this is…
    Rodney Wetherell:
    Listening to the first one, I could only notice how many issues raised then are still important, and unsolved, today – climate change, ‘the nuclear threat’ et al. Robin has stuck to his guns over 40 years, on climate change for one issue, pursuing its many highways and byways and personalities for what they could contribute to the wider debate. He may well be disheartened by the apparent triumph of the sceptics at a Government level as well as in the media, but there is no doubt in my mind that the scientific arguments will win in the end – possibly too late for some species and small islands…
    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/the-science-show-celebrates-40-years/6726302

    the above is now on repeat, but go back a few months and u find:

    20 March: ABC: The Science Show: Looking back as The Science Show approaches 40
    by Wendy Zukerman
    As host Robyn Williams returns from a fresh trip to Vancouver, Wendy Zukerman takes a look at how the issues covered in that first episode—global warming, environmental destruction and nuclear disarmament—are still with us today…
    ‘This is a very serious matter,’ said the late Lord Peter Ritchie-Calder on the first episode of The Science Show, which aired 40 years ago in August. Ritchie-Calder, an eminent science writer, was speaking with Robyn Williams at the 13th Pacific Science Congress in Vancouver in August 1975.
    ‘In the course of the last century, we’ve put 360,000 million tonnes of fossil carbon into the atmosphere,’ said Lord Ritchie-Calder, before calculating the vast quantities of coal, crude petroleum, liquid natural gas and natural gas that he expected would be belched into the atmosphere in the next few decades.
    ‘This is coming out of the bowels of the Earth and now we are taking it out and we are throwing it back into the atmosphere, and into the climatic machine, into the weather machine, where it is beginning to affect the climate itself,’ he foretold…
    Despite continued research into climate change and increasingly concerning headlines, little action has been taken to reduce carbon emissions. According to Professor Mann, that’s due to a organised campaign to discredit climate science driven by those with a stake in the fossil fuel industry. Only last month renowned climate sceptic Willie Wei-Hock Soon was outed for receiving over $1 million in financial support from fossil fuel companies over the past decade…
    For four decades we have been warned about threats to the environment and our very existence, yet few have taken heed. Few have raised hell. If scientific predictions continue to be correct and if we wait another 40 years to take action, it may be too late.
    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/raising-hell-for-40-years/6335336

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    pat

    go back 5 years, and u get:

    2010: ABC The Science Show: The Science Show celebrates 35 years
    Transcript: Peter Ritchie-Calder: In the course of the last century we’ve put 360,000 million tonnes of fossil carbon into the atmosphere…blah blah…
    We were very emphatic in 1963, that’s 12 years ago…these are the years that the locusts have eaten, we’ve really wasted our opportunity…in 1963 we were talking at the Rome conference, the UN conference, on new sources of energy, which is rather sardonic because we weren’t talking about atomic energy at all, we were talking about the oldest sources of energy which is the sun and the wind and the water and geothermal energy…
    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/the-science-show-celebrates-35-years/3023384

    2010: jaymez commented on jo’s websit:

    But I had to laugh when comment #14 at RC provided this link: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2010/2992897.htm#transcript It is to the ABC Science Show’s 35 year celebration program where climate alarmist and ABC Science editor Robyn Williams, in a moment of self congratulation posted an interview with Peter Ritchie-Calder from 1975. They were talking about how the world was recklessly pumping carbon into the atmosphere and how that was going to create dangerous climate change. What Williams didn’t reveal, and what the RC poster obviously didn’t realise, was that back in 1975 Robyn Williams and his guest were warning of global cooling and the prospects of an ice-age.
    http://joannenova.com.au/2010/08/the-word-skeptic-is-back/

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      Andrew McRae

      You must put that thoughtcrime straight down the memory hole, pat, and remember we have always been at war against warming.

      Also get ready for the Hate Hour starting very soon, as Naomi Klein is on ABC Q&A tonight.

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    pat

    do I believe a Pew poll on CAGW? no. WSJ has most GOP presidential candidates, except for Trump, moving into the Believer camp! readers commenting are mostly sceptics:

    30 Aug: WSJ: Amy Harder: Obama’s Arctic Trip Comes as Climate Change Builds as 2016 Issue
    Hillary Clinton and other Democrats take on more aggressive stances than president amid changing public opinion; Republican field remains divided
    His (Obama’s) visit to the North Pole region, the first ever for a sitting president, coincides with a growing public consensus that the earth is heating up and that humans have something to do with it.
    A July report from the Pew Research Center found that 72% of American adults say there is “solid evidence” of global warming. Of those respondents, 46% said the warming trend is “mostly due to human activity,” compared with 22% who blamed it on mostly on “natural patterns.”…
    The crowded Republican field remains divided on the issue, although public opinion is prompting some candidates to address it in more substantive ways…
    “I think Secretary Clinton has made a decision to prioritize climate change in her campaign,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. “You have polling consistently showing Americans want more action on climate change.” …
    Nearly two-thirds of Americans, especially young people, support putting stricter pollution limits on power plants to address climate change, according to a Pew Research Center poll released in early August…
    “This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING b—has got to stop,” Mr. Trump tweeted on Jan. 1, 2014, one of his more recent posts on the subject. “Our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our GW scientists are stuck in ice.”…
    http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-arctic-trip-comes-as-climate-change-builds-as-2016-issue-1440963782

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    edwina

    Here, I think, is an interesting admission by a scientist in what we would call a hard science admitting to basic flaws in experiments and peer review.

    Many psychology studies fail the replication test › News in Science (ABC Science)
    http://www.abc.net.au

    Scientific scrutiny Scientific studies about how people act or think can rarely be replicated by outside experts, according to a new study that raises questions about the seriousness of psychology research.

    A team of 270 scientists tried reproducing 100 psychology and social science studies that had been published in three top peer-reviewed US journals in 2008.

    Just 39 per cent came out with same results as the initial reports, according an international team of researchers known as The Open Science Collaboration.

    Their findings are reported in the journal Science .

    The topics of studies reviewed ranged from people’s social lives and interactions with others to research involving perception, attention and memory.

    No medical therapies were called into question as a result of the study, although a separate effort is underway to evaluate cancer biology studies.

    “It’s important to note that this somewhat disappointing outcome does not speak directly to the validity or the falsity of the theories,” says Gilbert Chin, a psychologist and senior editor at the journal Science.

    “What it does say is that we should be less confident about many of the original experimental results,” says Chin, who was not involved in the study.

    Study co-author Brian Nosek from the University of Virginia says the research shows the need for scientists to continually question themselves.

    “A scientific claim doesn’t become believable because of the status or authority of the person that generated it,” says Nosek.

    “Credibility of the claim depends in part on the repeatability of its supporting evidence.”

    Skewed picture

    Problems can arise when scientists cherry-pick their data to include only what is deemed “significant,” or when study sizes are so small that false negatives or false positives arise.

    Nosek says scientists are also under pressure to publish their research regularly and in top journals, and the process can lead to a skewed picture.

    “Not everything we do gets published. Novel, positive and tidy results are more likely to survive peer review and this can lead to publication biases that leave out negative results and studies that do not fit the story that we have,” he says.

    “If this occurs on a broad scale, then the published literature may become more beautiful than the reality.”

    Some experts said the problem may be even worse that the current study suggests.

    John Ioannidis, a biologist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, told Science magazine he suspects about 25 per cent of psychology papers would hold up under scrutiny, about the same “as what we see in many biomedical disciplines.”

    Key caution

    One study author who participated in the project as both a reviewer and reviewee was E J Masicampo, assistant professor at Wake Forest College in North Carolina.

    He was part of a team that was able to replicate a study that found people who are faced with a confrontational task, like having to play a violent video game, prefer to listen to angry music and think about negative experiences beforehand.

    But when outside researchers tried to replicate Masicampo’s study — which hypothesised that a sugary drink can help college students do better at making a complicated decision — they were not successful.

    Masicampo chalks up the differences to geographical factors, stressing that the experiment showed how complicated it can be to do a high-quality replication of a study.

    “As an original author whose work was being replicated, I felt like my research was being treated in the best way possible,” he says.

    There are ways to fix the process so that findings are more likely to hold up under scrutiny, says Dorothy Bishop, professor of developmental neuropsychology at the University of Oxford.

    “I see this study as illustrating that we have a problem, one that could be tackled,” says Bishop, who was not involved in research.

    She urged mandatory registration of research methods beforehand to prevent scientists from picking only the most favourable data for analysis, as well as requiring adequate sample sizes and wider reporting of studies that show null result, or in other words, those that do not support the hypothesis initially put forward.

    Scientists could also publish their methods and data in detail so that others could try to replicate their experiments more easily.

    These are “simply ways of ensuring that we are doing science as well as we can,” says Bishop.

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      gai

      “It’s important to note that this somewhat disappointing outcome does not speak directly to the validity or the falsity of the theories,”

      What complete B.S. and this guy is a supposed ‘scientist’? If you can not duplicate it it ain’t science PERIOD. It might be interesting and you might want to look at it again but duplication by independent outsiders is the criteria that differentiates science from story telling.

      The hiding of data and methods is the telltale of bad/dodgy science. A real scientist wants his findings verified and validated and that is why he writes them up with ALL the information and invites others to look at what he has done.

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    el gordo

    Adjusting to real world conditions, Sheldon Walker guest post at WUWT.

    ‘One of the strange things about the GISTEMP “Pause-busting” adjustments, is that the year with the highest rate of warming (since 1880) has changed. It used to be around 1998, with a warming rate of about +2.4 °C per century. After the adjustments, it moved to around 1937 (that’s right, 1937, back when the CO2 level was only about 300 ppm), with a warming rate of about +2.8 °C per century.’

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      David Maddison

      Keep an eye on that report and watch to see if it gets pasteurised and homogenised.

      I suggest a few people download and check back in a few months.

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      Annie

      Reading that BOM forecast was good for a laugh. We’ve had a long cold winter here in the North Central of Vic. There has been less rain than last year, when it was very wet, but still enough to get the grass going. This contrasts with East Gippsland where family report huge amounts of rain.

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    (Via the Tallbloke)
    Wind-powered train travel is on Dutch rail schedule

    But it’s all done via “accounting”; much like Western Australia’s desalination plant being driven by wind power.

    This development comes from a new contract signed by power company Eneco and VIVENS, an energy procurement cooperative. VIVENS is a joint venture comprising Netherlands Railways (NS), Veolia, Arriva, Connexxion and rail freight firms. Eneco will supply 1.4TWh of electricity for the rail system.

    So they won’t actually run on wind power which is only marginally useful for such things as it’s unreliable and unpredictable. i.e. mostly useless for scheduled train services.

    Netherlands’ Rail is lagging German rail which has been offering “green electricity” for quite a few years now.

    It’s all done as an accounting trick (“Papier ist geduldig” – as they say in Germany == “Paper is accommodating”). “Green electricity” doesn’t have to be available at the time of travel, it’s merely accounted for in the energy mix “bought” whenever the stuff is available; not when it’s actually needed. That’s very different to the impression one gets from the German Rail page:

    How can we guarantee that our customers
    are actually travelling with green energy?

    Based on information about the distances the customers are travelling, Deutsche Bahn can calculate the energy used and the amount of green electricity required. DB Energie buys in this amount and uses it to replace the same quantity from the usual power mix. The electricity from renewable sources is physically fed into the rail power network. In contrast to compensation measures, there are therefore no CO2 emissions at all.

    This is of course a deception as the spinning reserve produces CO2 even when sufficient “green electricity” is available at the time of travel.

    Deutsche Bahn doesn’t schedule wind and sun according to the number of people who pay the smuggness tax.

    For just EUR 1.00 more per person and direction, you can then travel with 100% green electricity on Germany’s long-distance network.

    On a chilling, still, overcast winter’s day, German Rail doesn’t ask those who’ve paid to travel using “green electricity” to please leave the train and to wait until the wind blows again.

    And speaking of which way the wind blows; don’t entertain the thought of trying to make others aware of the falsehoods in greenvertising while in Germany. People have been hounded out of the country by litigation and police actions. It looks like it’s impossible to detect corruption in Germany’s judiciary.

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      It’s a similar thing with the way that the desal plant was advertised in Victoria as running on Wind Power.

      I saw that and was actually dumbfounded.

      It doesn’t matter what size the wind plant was going to be because, on average they only supply their power at a Capacity Factor (CF) of barely 30%, and that CF can be equated to time as well, eg, only supplying its full rated power for 30% of the time, in other words, only 7.2 hours a day.

      A desal plant is required to be running for 24 hours of every day, and is a humungous consumer of electricity for the actual process, similar in nature to the Capture part of the process of CCS.

      So, they calculated that the plant would require (X) MW of power to operate, so they just said that they would build a wind plant of the equivalent (X) MW.

      Needless to say that the wind plant only provides its power at a CF of 30%, so 0.3 of (X) MW.

      The media bought that, lock stock and barrel, and reported it, and hey, why would any journalist even bother to check.

      Needless to say, the wind plant is still in planning, many years away yet, and that desal plant will be a huge draw on already strained power supplies in Victoria.

      They are crying to close down Hazelwood, and in the same breath constructing a desal plant which actually requires 24/7/365 power, and huge amounts of it.

      It’s a con of the highest order, and everyone just swallows it.

      Tony.

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      gai

      Has Germany forgotten about the 1930s and 1940s already?

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        Many seem to have forgotten even the 1980’s, while there was still an Iron Curtain rusting away under a control economy.

        Of course the majority of Germans in the West never understood how bad things were for their cousins in the East. If they had, they’d never have fallen for the lies leading to “re-unification”, etc. Their own arrogance was compounded by credulity.

        Now all of Germany is becoming a “GDR 2.0”

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    I received a comment in reply to one here recently that CCS was an invention of the coal industry, when the opposite was the real truth.

    Green dreamers thought it up.

    The whole thing made me think about this whole debate, which we are told is now closed!!!!!

    All of the supposed solutions have been dreamed up by those Green supporters.

    I find it ironic that it is the supposedly skeptical side of the debate which most effectively explains the shortcomings and outright failings of all these supposed solutions.

    We all explain the truth of the matter, and how virtually everything they dream up is not only a supposed solution to a fake problem, but a solution which cannot work in the manner required to even solve their fake problem in the first place.

    When we prove it, virtually conclusively, their only reply is to refer to us as (insert word for stocking thread count here)s.

    I’ve lost count of the number of times I have received blank looks of the astonishment of realisation when I just reply that if the problem was indeed so dire, then why isn’t the simple response to just stop those CO2 emitting sources from emitting them.

    Tony.

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      gai

      Tony I really love that last paragraph so I am going to steal it!

      If Obama and the EPA are so gung-ho on shutting down 83% of CO2 emmisions by 2050, why wait? We have a Republican house and senate. Pass a bill that as of November 15 ALL cars, ALL planes, ALL coal plants and ALL natural gas plants are to be shut down. Only rail will be allowed.

      I wonder how Obama would get out of the dilemma of refusing to sign it.

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    Neville

    GEEEZZZZ who would believe it, but a huge forest of trees once existed ( about 1,000 years ago) before they were covered by ice.
    But the stupid Mann told us there wasn’t a Med WP so these trees must have been planted by Martians and artificially heated? Will they ever wake up?????

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2451640/Mendenhall-Glacier-melting-reveals-ancient-forest.html

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    pat

    abc news radio has a poll top right colum:

    Justice Dyson Heydon has decided to stay on as head of the trade union Royal Commission; has he made the right call?
    http://www.abc.net.au/newsradio/

    71% saying yes at time of posting this. vote & send to friends if u feel inclined. i’m so sick of the unions going along with the CAGW scam, I had no difficulty choosing “yes”.

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    David Maddison

    The Aug 8, 2015 New Scientist has an article about how the Drax power station in the UK, which ships 7 million tons of US forests across the Atlantic every year to burn as biomass plans to now sequester its CO2 under the North Sea. The insanity never ends!

    I’m not sure how the recent announcement of the UK Gov to end subsidies to unsustainable power generation will affect things.

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      toorightmate

      Spike Milligan was unique.
      He could never have thought of this script.

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      Rollo

      There might be some good news here for you David

      Drax shares plunged more than 8pc on Thursday(7 Aug) after it lost a legal battle with the Government over eligibility for a lucrative biomass subsidy contract.
      The Court of Appeal ruled that ministers were justified in their April decision to deny the Yorkshire-based power plant a contract for converting one of its coal-fired units to burn biomass.
      Markets had been expecting Drax to win, after the High Court found in its favour last month.
      “Drax has staked its future on converting the majority of the station to biomass. The economics of the conversion is entirely dependent upon government subsidy,”
      “The events of this year raises two concerns. First, that the UK government has cooled on its enthusiasm for large scale biomass conversions. And second that as the government juggles its various energy priorities they can act arbitrarily and unpredictably.”

      link to full story: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/11018259/Drax-shares-drop-after-Government-wins-subsidy-appeal.html

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    Andrew McRae

    Tee-hee

    Qld shopkeeper held up with hockey stick
    http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/08/31/11/27/qld-shopkeeper-held-up-with-hockey-stick

    The shopkeeper’s PC analysis was insensitive to sick saplings and didn’t fall for The Trick. 🙂

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    toorightmate

    This is Brisbane calling.
    It’s 31 August – the last day of winter, and it is still cold – despite last month (July) being the hottest July EVVVVAAAAHHHHHH.

    Will you folks please stoke up the coal boilers to produce some more seeohtwo so we can warm up a bit.

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    pat

    was just wondering what happened to peter Ritchie-calder’s CAGW sceptic son, Nigel. seems he died last year, but his Wikipedia entry is fun:

    Wikipedia: Nigel Calder, British science writer, (2 December 1931 – 25 June 2014)
    Calder said that climate change science has been invaded by sophistry about man-made global warming. As early as 1980, he predicted that by 2000 “the much-advertised heating of the earth by the man-made carbon-dioxide ‘greenhouse’ [will fail] to occur; instead, there [will be] renewed concern about cooling and an impending ice age”.
    Calder participated in making the film The Great Global Warming Swindle. He also co-authored The Chilling Stars. Regarding global warming, Calder stated: “Governments are trying to achieve unanimity by stifling any scientist who disagrees. Einstein could not have got funding under the present system…
    Nigel Calder was the son of the late Lord Ritchie-Calder…
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Calder

    Calder’s Updates (Nigel Calder website)
    https://calderup.wordpress.com/category/3-climate-change/

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      gai

      Thank goodness his website has been kept up. Nigel Calder was a Grand Old Man and sorely missed. They do not make many like him.

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    pat

    who is employing all these people at news.com.au who seem to feel they are capable of reporting on climate science?

    31 Aug: news.com.au: Rohan Smith: Small Alaskan island Kivalina expected to be covered by water within 10 years
    Closer to Australia, small Pacific island states like Kiribati and Tuvalu are suffering similar fates…
    Kivalina elder Joseph Swan told a town meeting earlier this year that “the ice does not freeze like it used to”. He said it used to be 10-feet thick.
    “Global warming has caused us so much problems,” Mr Swan said…
    Despite that, no sitting president has ever visited during his term in office. That could change this week if President Barack Obama stops by on a trip to the Arctic.
    For his part, at least he is talking about it…
    Professor Ian McGregor from the Institute of Sustainable Futures says Kivalina is not alone. He says small islands are already being swept away and none of what’s happening to Kivalina, Kiribati or Tuvalu should come as a surprise.
    “Global warming is causing sea level rises, water expands as it gets hotter. Scientists have been telling us this for 25 years,” Prof McGregor told news.com.au.
    He said extreme weather events should force leaders, including our own Prime Minister Tony Abbott, to take the issue seriously.
    “On Tuvalu, the average height above sea level is 3-4 metres. It varies from island to island but an island in the Solomon Islands has already become uninhabitable. It’s damaging that the Abbott government still takes (climate change deniers) seriously. Australia has been a laggard, it’s never been a true leader on this issue.”…
    Professor Colin Butler from the University of Canberra says it’s not enough (Govt’s targets). He says Australia should take the issue seriously because it is not immune to rising seas. Maybe not in 10 years, but maybe in the next century.
    “We might be heading into a new dark age, not in the next five years but maybe in the next 100 years,” he told the ABC…
    http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/small-alaskan-island-kivalina-expected-to-be-covered-by-water-within-10-years/story-fnjwvztl-1227506491329

    30 Aug: KUCB: John Ryan: Alaskan Greens: Obama’s Words, Actions Conflict On Climate Change
    You might think Alaskan environmental groups would be cheering the president’s climate-themed visit. Instead, the groups most focused on climate change are organizing a protest rally. They argue President Obama can’t claim to be a climate leader after his administration gave the green light to Shell Oil to drill in the Arctic Ocean…
    COMMENT: By Pilar Eibeck
    He doesnt need to come to Alaska, is no such as climate change here, great timing of the snow to show in the mountains. Obama needs to go to HAWAIII OR kenya.
    http://kucb.org/news/article/alaskan-greens-attack-mismatch-of-obamas-words-actions-on-climate-change/

    from the Weather Channel:

    29 Aug: Nation’s First Winter Storm Warning Issued in Alaska
    The calendar may still say August, but the first winter storm warning was issued this past Wednesday in the U.S. and you guessed it – the warning was in far northern Alaska. In addition to the snow…
    Snow in northern Alaska is not rare in late August. Barrow saw its first measurable snow of the 2015-16 snow season on Aug. 18 when 0.2 inches of snow fell…

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      diogenese2

      Kivalina is sited on a sand spit, the most unstable & short lived of any coastal feature. The village was originally on the mainland across the lagoon but was resited in the 19th century for administrative convenience. In 2008 the township sued Exxon (and many others) for the cost of re-location on the grounds that “sea level rise” was endangering the community. They lost. Their claim was for $400m, the population 374 – a moving expense only matched by Premier League footballers.

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    pat

    30 Aug: Australian Financial Review: Ben Potter: Warwick McKibbin accuses Bernie Fraser of playing politics with climate
    Warwick McKibbin, an internationally recognised economic modeller, writes in an opinion piece published in today’s Australian Financial Review that “to argue that Australia is not making a large contribution to the overall effort for Paris is incorrect”…
    Professor McKibbin, who is also a senior non-resident scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, accuses Mr Fraser and others focusing only on emission targets of “playing politics” with climate…
    “Until the economic costs relative to the environmental benefits are at the core of the global response, there will not be an effective global agreement,” Professor McKibbin writes.
    His modelling found that the proportionate reduction in Australian economic output would be three to six times higher than for the US and Europe – even though its emissions pledge is less ambitious – because natural resources play such a big role…
    The mining industry prefers Professor McKibbin’s approach.
    “Australia’s emissions are higher than some other nations, not because we are bad people, but because we provide other nations with protein and fibre to feed their population, and minerals and energy to power their economies and build their essential infrastructure,” said Brendan Pearson, chief executive of the Minerals Council of Australia.
    The Abbott government wants to abolish the Climate Change Authority, which was created by Labor, but has been blocked by the Senate…
    http://www.afr.com/news/policy/climate/warwick-mckibbin-accuses-bernie-fraser-of-playing-politics-with-climate-20150830-gjawms

    30 Aug: Australian Financial Review: Warwick McKibbin: Emission target put us in front of climate fight
    http://www.afr.com/opinion/emission-targets-put-us-in-front-of-climate-fight-20150830-gjazuv

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    handjive

    ABC, 28 August 2015: Many psychology studies fail the replication test

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    handjive

    Remembering Stevie Ray Vaughan
    October 3, 1954 – August 27, 1990
    (Stevie Winwood’s facebookpage)

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    David Maddison

    On their ABC today…

    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/the-eu-and-climate-change-change-action/6736232

    The EU and climate change action

    The EU has committed itself to a 40% carbon reduction goal by 2030. In spite of the economic difficulties brought on by the GFC, Europe continues to set ambitious climate targets. Former EU Commissioner for Climate Action, Connie Hedergaard, speaks about the upcoming UN climate change conference in Paris, the challenge of getting Europe to speak with one voice on the issue, and what Australia might learn from Europe.

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    pat

    for those who haven’t followed the Dyson Heydon story (especially via MichaelSmithNews, & how it involves a Liberal who turned Green, and a Union intent on removing the PM Tony Abbott, here are some pieces u might be able to access:

    Dyson Heydon: Call that stirred up a judicial hornets’ nest
    The Australian-26 Aug 2015
    Chris Winslow, the association’s publications manager, had dealt … However, he quit the (Liberal) party in 2013 and joined the Greens in August last …

    Secret ACTU army moves on Tony Abbott
    An ACTU-backed grassroots army is … The unprecedented $30 million-plus campaign will see rank-and-file activists — backed by 25 full-time organisers — spreading the anti-Abbott message across about 30 marginal …The Australian · 20/08/2015…

    Michael Smith News
    including:
    Timeline on the ACTU spin-doctors’ strategy to smear the TURC – taken hook, line and sinker by the media
    On 12 August 2015
    Marcus Priest and Chris Winslow phone conversation. Winslow sends Priest a copy of the Sir Garfield Barwick address invitation with attachments. At 7.30PM Winslow creates a document that summarises the ACTU’s position and emails it to Stoljar. That email, once produced, would be useful evidence that the Commission had been warned by the Bar Association:…
    http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/

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    pat

    a final word for today on getting information to the public.

    the scientific message will always face difficulties.
    as someone who knew they didn’t undertand the climate science, but figured why not go ahead and shift to renewables anyway, I can understand other people who feel the same way today.
    for me, tho, Climategate changed everything and visiting websites such as Jo’s and WUWT, etc., has helped me to understand the economic insanity of trying to just phase out fossil fuels & move quickly to solar and wind, etc.

    what is needed is competent financial journalists/reporters, who can grasp the economics of the policies espoused by Labor/Greens & the Unions, and their true cost to energy consumers. reporters who will consistently convey the facts & figures to the public. to some extent, this is what Bjorn Lomborg does, which is why he is such a threat to those pushing unrealistic renewables’ scenarios.

    if the public learned of the real costs of Labor/Green CAGW policies, it would show up in the political polls; so far, this hasn’t been the case.

    how do we identify some financial reporters with integrity, who might be willing to look at the analyses of the likes of TonyfromOz, etc?

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    Paul Vaughan

    I’ve posted a kindergarten-level cookbook recipe to help people detect NOAA’s corruption of the natural record firsthand:

    https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/suggestions-13/comment-page-1/#comment-106428

    This isn’t something esoteric. On the contrary it’s clear cut, simple, immediately tangible, and within full local control. Anyone who can subtract one column of numbers from another in a spreadsheet can fingerprint NOAA’s corruption of the natural record firsthand.

    I’m going to suggest that all community members have a responsibility to pursue this dead simple exercise that shines a bright light exposing taxpayer-funded corruption of the natural record.

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    Andrew McRae

    A quick note about Smart Meters.

    Smart meters are supposed to be great, as they can be rigged to email you a weekly or even daily power bill to help the poorer folk understand how much power activities use. Now being introduced in NSW.
    http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/08/31/19/36/digital-meters-aim-to-curb-surge-in-power-bill-debts

    Smart meters also present a potential cybersecurity challenge if they are not designed and operated well.
    A few weeks ago I saw an interesting video about some hackers in Spain who decided to reverse engineer a smart meter. One of the astonishing things they found is that this device did no authentication on the commands it receives – anyone who knows the encryption key can send it a command (eg turn off the power). And the worst part… it’s the same encryption key embedded in every customer premises equipment. There’s a lot of technical stuff in this video which might only interest electrical engineers, programmers, or infosec types, but if you just jump to 45 minutes in you can listen to their last 12 minutes which has a summary.
    https://youtu.be/Z_y_vjYtAWM?t=45m18s

    There was also a brief Reuters article about their discovery. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/07/us-cybersecurity-spain-idUSKCN0HW15E20141007

    The meters featured in the AGL media release were the EDMI Atlas Mk7c and the Landis+Gyr E350, which do not look the same on the front panel as the model hacked for demonstration last year. Presumably AGL are more sophisticated than the Spanish retailers.

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      gai

      Smart Meters are about removing your control over your own home!

      The Smart Grid theoretically allows residential electricity to be turned off so the system can be balanced as wind and solar power surges and declines. It even allows individual appliances to be selectively turned off at the power company’s whim. Of course it also allows power companies to ‘Shape Customer Behavior’ by charging a lot more for using energy during peak times. (I do not know about you but I am not interested in being treated like pavlov’s dogs.)

      Smart Meters, an attractive opportunity for Investors

      Executive Summary
      We see an attractive long-term secular trend for investors to capitalize on over the coming 20–30 years as today’s underinvested and technologically challenged power grid is modernized to a technology-enabled smart grid. In particular, we see an attractive opportunity over the next three to five years to invest in companies that are enabling this transformation of the power grid. Similar to trends in the telecommunications industry, we expect this upgrade process to be evolutionary rather then revolutionary. As such, we think investors need to take a long term view when evaluating the sector.

      By focusing on this segment of the market, which we believe could be as large as $8 billion annually in the next 5–10 years, we are branching out our coverage into areas that allow utilities to use their existing legacy networks more efficiently,….

      Eventually our vision of a smart grid calls for power, whether sourced from traditional sources or renewable sources including demand response and energy efficiency, to be routed from one region to another intelligently and automatically, such that the balance between supply and demand is always maintained with sufficient margin reserve at all times. We believe that the demand response solution providers will have a big role to play in this evolution of the smart grid. ….

      In the following, we describe commonly used demand response programs in the United States in greater detail.

      Direct Load Control (DLC): DLC programs refer to those in which a utility or system operator remotely shuts down or cycles a customer’s electrical equipment on short notice
      to address system or local reliability contingencies in exchange for an incentive payment or bill credit. DLC has been in operation for at least 20 years. A variety of utilities developed and deployed large programs in the late 1960s and expanded them significantly in the 1980s and 1990s. According the 2006 Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) survey, Florida Power & Light has implemented the largest program with 740,570 customers.

      The most common form of DLC is a program that cycles the operation of appliances such as air conditioners or water heaters. Typically, a one-way remote switch or digital control receiver is connected to the condensing unit of an air conditioner or the immersion element in a water heater. By remotely switching off the load at the appliance, peak loads can be reduced. Typical demand reductions are in the 1kW area for air conditioners and 0.6kW for heaters. The switch is operated through radio signals (for older systems) or digital paging. Depending on the duty cycle selected, the switch turns off the condensing unit or element for the full duration of an event or for various fractions of an hour (e.g., 15 minutes off during an hour). DLC programs also typically limit the number of times or hours that the customer’s appliance can be turned off per year or per season. ….

      In addition, remote control of individual appliances is being supplanted by remote control of smart, or programmable, communicating thermostats in recently implemented programs. During the summer, the utility or program operator can remotely adjust the temperature upward to reduce demand. After an event, the temperature setting is reset to the customer- specified level….

      Richard North at EUreferendum has more info:

      http://eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=83847

      http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2013/04/energy-they-really-are-serious.html

      (WWWDOT)eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=83184

      The internet has been ‘sanitized’ and I can not get any of the ‘shape customer behavior’ to load. I do however have this.

      Integrated Smart Grid Provides Wide Range of Benefits in Ohio and the Carolinas

      Smart meters and distribution management system upgrades also allowed Duke to pilot time-based rates programs, including time-of-use, critical peak pricing, and peak-time rebate programs. Though customer participation was low, the new technology positions Duke to implement similar programs as social, regulatory, and market landscapes change in the future.

      Duke’s 966,000 smart meters each have remote and off-cycle meter reading capabilities, remote connect/disconnect (residential only), tamper detection, and outage diagnostics features that allow the utility to “ping” meters and determine where power is out.

      While Duke encountered opt-out requests during the meter deployment, personal contact with individual customers, local leadership, regulatory staff, and legislative leaders, helped defuse the opt-out issue for the majority of the deployment timeframe.
      [In other words Duke’s PROPAGANDA was successful]
      (WWWDOT)smartgrid.gov/document/integrated_smart_grid_provides_wide_range_benefits_ohio_and_carolinas

      Chairman’s Letter to Stakeholders

      ….At Duke Energy, we have two aspirations that guide our planning and serve as a bridge to the future: (1) Modernize and decarbonize our generation fleet, and (2) Help make the communities we serve the most energy efficient in the world.
      (WWWDOT)duke-energy.com/investors/publications/annual/ar-2007/downloads/pdf/07Letter.pdf

      Notice that Duke Energy is not giving the CUSTOMERS any say about becoming ” the most energy efficient in the world” they are going to MAKE them “the most energy efficient in the world. …”

      If you have a strong stomach:
      Sustainability Report:
      Includes underground CO2 sequestering:
      sustainabilityreport(DOT)duke-energy.com/2008/environmental/diversification.asp

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    • #

      New appliances such as refrigerators and airconditioners (e.g.)also participate in “demand-side management” by monitoring the grid signals. It’s in the fine print of the manuals that aren’t printed in full but need to be downloaded to enjoy their full splendour.

      Manufacturers are safe because nobody reads the manuals. I’m a nobody.

      Demand Response
      • This unit is Demand Response – enabled. This means it
      can be interfaced with your electricity supplier to utilise
      Demand Response if available. A separate arrangement
      needs to be made for this. Contact your energy supplier
      to determine if there is an Air Conditioning Demand
      Response program available in your area.
      • When your energy supplier activates one of the 3
      possible Demand Response modes, the display of the
      indoor unit will show d1, d2 or d3 as described below:…

      This airconditioner can be turned off (or have its working caapcity reduced) remotely without a “Smart Meter”. There is no way for the consumer to turn off the “feature” in the appliance. A DREDful supplier can do as they please.

      I remember back when electrical power providers gave away free electrical appliances so that they could sell more electrical power and make more money. Nowadays, they spend all of their time apologizing for producing (invisible) derdy carbon.

      Will domestic Lang-Felsche voltage, phase and frequency correctors be prohibited in Australia because it produces only pure 50Hz sine wave at 230 Vrms? 😉

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    Another Ian

    History brought up to date


    A Disturbance in the Narrative

    Janice Fiamengo on feminism versus history:

    After 1832, about one in five men had the right to vote. Almost half of adult males, though, were still not eligible to vote when they accepted the call to fight and die for their country in the First World War. It wasn’t until 1918 that the right to vote was extended, not only to women – which of course we hear a great deal about – but to all men. So how can this be – that this part of the story is almost completely unknown? How come when we celebrate the extension of the franchise to women, we don’t talk about its extension to poor and working class men? ”

    From

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2015/08/a-disturbance-i-1.html

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    el gordo

    ‘All interpretations of data sets are cherry picked one way or the other. The key to good science is having the insight to do the best cherry picking. The future course of events is the only arbiter of who picked correctly.’

    Dr Norm Page

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    el gordo

    Regional cooling signal spotted in Australia’s south east.

    http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=3953

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    el gordo

    July was supposedly the hottest since records began and NOAA is under scrutiny for dodgy practice.

    http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=3961

    The Bolter is back on song, energizing his supporters for the battle ahead.

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    el gordo

    ‘The UK’s average temperature this summer was among the lowest in 20 years as parts of the country endured up to three times the average rainfall during August, the Met Office has revealed.’

    20

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      gai

      The measured (raw) US temperature data from USHCN USA Historic Climate Network) shows that the US is on a long-term cooling trend and has been falling since the 1997/98 Super El Nino peak. LINK

      Last winter was darn cold and we had the Great Lake freeze-up again. Tony reports Summer 2015 Was One Of The Least Hot On Record In The US Canada was shivering and South America has livestock dying by the thousands due to the cold and snow. Henry P from South Africa reports cooling, Japan had major blizzards and roof collapses in areas that are semi tropical. So where the blazes is this very very hot weather?

      Oh and Tony also reports Rapidly Cooling The Pacific

      All of the warm water at the surface of the Pacific, and the major hurricanes that have been occurring there – are radiating huge amounts of heat out into space. The Pacific is likely losing record amounts of heat this summer. Note the cold spots starting to appear around Hawaii where typhoons have passed.

      One commenter noted: “…the N. Pacific is loosing energy fast, the PDO+ is quickly going down, as happened in similar previous spikes, the anomaly decreased by more than 1C since the beginning of this year..”

      10