Antarctic scientists may find climate Holy Grail, ice with magic 7 digit age

ABC news tells us intrepid researchers are in a race for the sacred key. The news is a sexed up advert for climate funding done in the theme of Raiders of the Lost Ice:

“It’s the “holy grail of climate science”, a piece of ice so old that it might be able to reveal the climate of the past and help predict the future of Earth’s atmosphere.

And Australia’s Antarctic scientists are now part of an international race to find the ancient time capsule.

So, what is it?

Somewhere deep below the surface of Antarctica, ice has laid untouched for a million years or more — it’s believed to be the world’s oldest ice

I don’t know why scientists think the million year mark is so holy, they’ve pretty much ignored the message in the first 800,000 years. They hunted and drilled but the telex from prehistory kept saying temperature controls CO2, not the other way around.

Either CO2 followed the temp, or CO2 stayed high, but temp did its own thing. (See the spot from circa 130,000BC, for about 15,000 years? CO2 was at “record highs” unseen for 120,000 years, but that didn’t stop temperatures falling by a eight degree blitzkreig. So much for that “warming” ability.

Vostok Ice Cores. Graph, ancient temperatures.

Deny this. Fifteen thousand years of high CO2 that has no detectable effect.

ABC still pushing the Al Gore cheat-speak on the ice cores

After 1999 many papers were published showing that CO2 levels lagged behind temperature by hundreds of years. By 2003 Caillon et al calculated it as 800 years. Now 13 years later, the ABC is still in denial of the 800 year lag. Note the pravda-lingo, are you still beating your wife and can scientists make more accurate predictions:

“The idea is that by studying the past climate, scientists will able to make more accurate predictions about how it will change in the future.

For example, ice core research has proven that up until industrialisation, the Earth’s temperature and carbon dioxide levels rose and fell in lockstep.”

So “lockstep” and “800 years” are the same number in ABC maths. Let’s take that nuance and run with it: The ABC is in “lockstep” with Australians in 2016, or was that 1216 AD, and who cares anyway?

The ABC wants your money now to save the world, not in 800 years time. Pay now, pay twice, and if we’re lucky we might stop CO2 from rising and prevent the medieval warm period.

I say, let’s pay them in lockstep. The cheques in the mail, and it’s coming in 2800.

The ABC sells the idea that even though CO2 hasn’t done anything conclusive for 800,000 years, it might have before that:

Besides one million is a really big number:

Why is it the Holy Grail of climate research?

While the 800,000 year ice core has revealed a lot about climate history, something strange happened about a million years ago; the cycle of ice ages slowed down.

Rather than happening every 40,000 years, they started happening every 100,000 years.

Scientists believe carbon dioxide played a role but the only way to prove that theory is by finding the oldest possible record of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Vostok Ice cores were the Holy Grail of climate scientists back in 2000.

I predict when they get to the million-year-mark, the holy grail will be at 1.5 million.

REFERENCES

  • Petit et all 1999 — analysed 420,000 years of Vostok, and found that as the world cools into an ice age, the delay before carbon falls is several thousand years.
  • Fischer et al 1999 — described a lag of 600 plus or minus 400 years as the world warms up from an ice age.
  • Monnin et al 2001 – looked at Dome Concordia (also in  Antarctica) – and found a delay on the recent rise out of the last major ice age to be 800 ± 600
  • Mudelsee (2001) – Over the full 420,000 year Vostok history Co2 variations lag temperature by 1,300 years ± 1000.
  • Caillon et al 2003 analysed the Vostok data and found a lag (where CO2 rises after temperature) of 800 ± 200 years.
  • The Voctok Ice Core reference graphs (Joanne Nova 2008)
9.5 out of 10 based on 75 ratings

241 comments to Antarctic scientists may find climate Holy Grail, ice with magic 7 digit age

  • #
    RobK

    For imaginative adventure in Antarctica, The Sun is hard to beat with: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2380220/shock-claims-massive-civilisation-lies-frozen-beneath-a-mile-of-ice-in-the-south-pole/
    The ABC being about as relevant as The Sun newspaper.

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    • #
      RobK

      Talk about holy grails…..that’s a holy grail.

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      • #
        Lionell Griffith

        Shouldn’t that be “holy grill” from all the CO2 caused global warming?

        After all, isn’t it a religious conviction that all the ills of the earth are attributable to our profligate use of technology to make our lives better. We must repent our sins, abandon all use of technology, and return to the state of nature (97% of mankind dead) to save mother earth.

        Personally, I would believe the green blob catastrophists much more if they volunteered to go first and actually did. Then the rest of us would have a chance to make our lives good.

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        • #
          Yonniestone

          As much as the Vostok ice stack is fascinating all this talk of a ‘Holy Grail’ gives me images of ABC climate experts prancing about knocking two coconut halves together.

          “This new learning amazes me Sir Bedevere! Explain again how sheep’s bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.”

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          • #
            Roy Hogue

            Instead of two coconut halves how about knocking some heads together? That might actually stand a chance of getting some progress.

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            • #
              Yonniestone

              Same hollow sound 🙂

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              • #
                OriginalSteve

                Shooting for the 1,000,000 year info want change anything…its a bit like watching kids push food around their plate they dont want to eat, in the hope that by pushing it around it will some how miraculously disappear……moving stuff give apeparance of progress but its a shell game…a bit like using the Rutherglen “homogenisation” trick to create an artificial warming trend by extreme shonkiness…

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          • #
            Rereke Whakaaro

            The holy grail should be written as “The Holly Grill”. It is a yuppie resturant somewhere near Exeter, in the UK. Seriouosly.

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      • #
        toorightmate

        The holy grail for these spongers is $45 million.

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        • #
          David Maddison

          That’s OK, the Government can just tax more, borrow more or print more. There is an unlimited supply of money, you know.

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    • #
      TdeF

      Homosapiens have only been around for 100,000 years. Hardly enough time to predate continental drift 2000x earlier, 140 million years before Tyrannasaurus Rex when mammals were small scurrying scavengers. So clearly they built a ‘lost’ city under 4km of ice in Antarctica. That’s just silly.

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      • #
        sophocles

        TdeF says:

        Homosapiens have only been around for 100,000 years.

        Mmm, Homo Sapiens has been around for a bit longer than that, some 200,000 or maybe a bit more, years ago.
        The modern sub-species, homo sapiens sapiens, according to the mitochondrial DNA analysis [SYKES, Brian: “The Seven Daughters of Eve,” 2001 W.W. Norton & Co.] originated within the last 150,000 years. It was about 100,000 years ago that members of the species started satisfying attacks of itchy feet, and distributing themselves.

        So, in a strict sense of being `around,’ yes. 🙂

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        • #
          TdeF

          The hairs are split. No one much left Africa until only 70,000 years ago and the next mass migration was 50,000 years ago. Combining archeological and genetic data you can plot the groups to India, Australia, China, Japan and later to Europe after the glaciers retreated. The three migrations across the Aleutians to populate the Americas too as defined. The Pacific islands were only inhabited in the last thousand years after the invention of boats. Mankind is very new.

          My point is that this is all really recent, a minute ago on a geological scale. There is no way we built a hidden city under the Antarctic ice 200 million year agos. Maybe the Scientologists’ Thetans, before they were killed by atom bombs?

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          • #
            theRealUniverse

            There is no way we built a hidden city under the Antarctic ice 200 million year agos.

            No it was built by aliens from Proxima Centauri!

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            • #
              TdeF

              Yes and they looked just like us except with extra wrinkles and big eyebrows, two eyes, two arms, five fingers too. As on Star Trek. All speak English.

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          • #

            Prehuman types were wandering far and wide 500,000 years ago (http://australianmuseum.net.au/the-spread-of-people-to-australia). Neaderthals were spread across Europe and Asia and a lot of their genes are still with us. http://australianmuseum.net.au/homo-neanderthalensis

            Looks like evolution has been a messy multi continent event over hundreds of thousands of years.

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            • #
              TdeF

              Yes, fascinating. Neanderthals had migrated widely and co existed until say 30,000 years ago, as did the woolly mammoths of Siberia. Perhaps ‘modern’ man simply had better weapons, distance weapons?

              Only very recently has gene analysis finally answered the question. We now know that we have often substantial Neanderthal genes (more in some people I know), so the separate species idea from the last 200 years is plain wrong. By definition a separate species cannot interbreed. There was however a massive visible change in skull shape and capacity, enough to be classified for two centuries as a separate species. Other cave paintings indicate that they were creative and we know they had tools, so it might have been someone’s desire to integrate religion with fact, to assign a point at which homo sapiens sprang from nowhere with no known ancestor. Even Charles Darwin was deeply religious and disturbed by what he concluded. The temptation to make modern man quite different and smarter and very recent must have been strong and without gene analysis, who would ever know?

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            • #
              David Maddison

              Also, apart from Neanderthals there were Denisovans that interbred with other humans at least once.

              http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-29/impact-of-interbreeding-with-ancient-denisovans-and-neanderthals/7275182

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        • #
          toorightmate

          Some homosapiens have been square.

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        • #
          KinkyKeith

          The origins of mankind go back 2 million years.
          Admittedly our progenitor then was a small mamal the size of a mouse but in one form or another we have been evolving for a long, long time.

          One of the most amazing things I have ever done was to look at, walk around and climb inside the Great Pyramid at Giza. Built 4,500 years ago and 7,500 years after Gobleki Tepi.

          People have been doing amazing stuff for a long time; and now look at us.

          Evolution??

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          • #
            Mike

            The sacred question hat makes the theory of evolution fall into fragments is that if it was survival of the fittest, how is it that life increases in complexity. If it was survival of the fittest, we would be down to a handful of ruling elite organisms.

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          • #
            el gordo

            ‘The origins of mankind go back 2 million years.
            ‘Admittedly our progenitor then was a small mamal the size of a mouse …’

            I beg to differ, it was Homo Erectus and as the name implies he was bipedal.

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            • #
              KinkyKeith

              El,

              I stand by what I wrote in that we developed from a very small mammal.

              Did I get the time wrong, maybe. Just going from memory and perhaps that gap between it and us was 64 million years.

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    • #
      Geoffrey Williams

      If they find anything beneath the antartic ice it will a box of frozen kippers! Just more red herrings from ‘our’ ABC.
      And the whole story stinks too!
      GeoffW

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    • #
      sophocles

      RobK: you should know better than to fall for Click Bait like that.

      It’s Arrant Nonsense from the SUN. The article claims:

      The theory, called crustal displacement, alleges that movements in the Earth’s crust meant that large parts of Antarctica were ice-free 12,000 years ago and people could have lived there.

      The Theory of Crustal Displacement is pseudoscience. A huge displacement would be required. Such displacements of the earth’s crust may take place in 12-22 million years but 12,000? Not a chance. It took the continents more than 120 million years to reach their present positions after the supercontinent of Pangea began to break up 175MYA.

      Antarctica built its ice cap about 33MYA when it settled into its current position and froze over during the Solar System’s journey through the Carina Spiral Arm. It did some (slight) thawing from about 22MYA when the Solar System exited the Carina Spiral Arm, but rebuilt its glaciers around 12 MYA when the Orion Spur was encountered. It hasn’t thawed since the Quaternary Ice Age (still current) began c. 2.5 MYA when the Solar System entered Gould’s Belt in the Orion arm.

      Suffice it to say that 12,000 years ago was smack in the middle of the Younger Dryas. The Younger Dryas is a geological period from c. 12,900 to c. 11,700 calendar years ago (BP). It was just a lot cold then, a short sharp return to the freezing temperatures of the Wisconsin/Wurm glaciation, colloquially referred to as “the last ice age.”

      If Greenland can lay down ice at the rate of 2m per year (see the growth rate here) during this warm interglacial and especially the warm 20th Century, then the rate of ice cap growth during a freeze should be far more rapid over a thousand years.

      It’s a totally unrealistic fantasy. CLICK BAIT and something to fill a page when there’s no Real News.

      MYA = Mega Years Ago (Mega = million)

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      Funnily enough, I think of Raiders of the Lost Ark when i read stuff like this….

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    • #
      John

      I think Page 3 has more interest. My apologies if I offend anyone. 😉

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  • #
    TdeF

    No matter what the event in earth’s history, CO2 is the villain. CO2 controls everything, despite being only a tiny .04% of the total gas in the air and that is ignoring water vapour and clouds. That is because CO2 is from cars and aircraft and a sign of profligate modern human consumption in largely white male dominated Western democracies which are not sufficiently multi cultural and where people still eat meat and drive to work. Self evident science really. Climate is all someone’s fault and they should be taxed and punished. Windmills must be built to please Gaia and gifts of carbon taxes must be made. Only then can we be saved.

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    • #
      David Maddison

      I think you covered everything there TdeF. Well said.

      This is all about the deliberate destruction of Western Civilisation.

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    • #
      Eric Simpson

      IMO this is the best short video (4 minutes) illustrating the specious / deceptive bs of Al Gore and the warmists on CO2. Yes, CO2 does not lead but *follows* changes in temperatures. The video makes that point clear as day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_WyvfcJyg&info=GGWarmingSwindle_CO2Lag

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      • #
        TdeF

        Yes. This is what is obvious to a physicist that if 98% of all CO2 is in the huge, deep and heavy oceans, a hotter planet means more CO2. As the seas average 3.4Km in depth and it is 1 atmosphere in pressure for every 10 meters, you know the seas weigh 340x as much as the thin atmosphere above. Heat them and the CO2 comes out. Warmists try to ignore the oceans, even ignore the fact that all fish breathe fresh air, output CO2. To a fish, the sea is full of air. It cannot be ignored and it has to be changed regularly or the fish would drown. So CO2 is set by the ocean temperature. The surface temperature of the planet is set by the ocean temperature, as if we did not know that already.

        Besides, there is uner 2% fossil fuel CO2 in the air anyway, so whether it warms or not is irrelevant. We do not and cannot control CO2 levels. Ocean temperature does.

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        • #
          Eric Simpson

          Yes. The video I link to shows no evidence that CO2 has ANY impact on climate temperature. That’s the actual evidence. But even if we grant the warmists the notion that doubling of CO2 will cause a 1 degree increase in temperature, it is very difficult to grant them their wild speculation that positive feedback from water vapor will *triple* that warming. In fact, it’s argued that water vapor and the associated clouds that that causes will lead to a dampening of warming, turning say a 1 degree warming into a half degree. So, that’s hardly any warming at all.

          There’s an additional logic for why it’s probably true that any warming from CO2 creates negative, not positive, feedback. If in fact a 3x positive feedback would be generated from water vapor than you’d expect, as it warmed, temperatures to keep rising, causing more CO2 to outgas from the oceans, causing more warming, more positive feedback, more CO2 etc in a runaway greenhouse effect with the oceans boiling and everything dead. BUT … clearly that has never happened (despite CO2 being has high as 7000ppm in the past). The very fact that there has never been a runaway greenhouse effect strongly suggests that the feedback for any warming is NEGATIVE! Otherwise disaster would ensue!

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          • #
            TdeF

            Yes. If heating produced CO2 and CO2 produced heating, so one is not true. I also want to point out that the world does not have one temperature, one for the whole planet. The one temperature is a construction of unknown meaning for a chaotic complex system. Summer and winter, light and dark, storms and stability, desert, snow, ice, mountains all play their part. Most of Antarctica is 4km in the air, solid water. So in the colder climes, CO2 is absorbed into the cold surface water and in the hot tropics, it comes out. CO2 is mobile, laterally and vertically like all air. What this means is that there are endless factors at work which stop the pure feedback systems. Wild hypotheses to amplify the effect of CO2 have been defeated by the lack of a Hot Spot over the equator. So there is no amplification.

            What this means is that lacking positive feedback from itself, it is agreed that CO2 on its own cannot heat the planet. So why does this increasingly absurd and utterly disproven hypothesis continue? Why is Victoria closing a perfectly good power station because it is ‘the dirtiest in the country’. If CO2 does not heat the planet, why is it ‘dirty’? Who is making this stuff up?

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            • #
              TdeF

              Sorry, I know the answer. Al Gore, Tim Flannery and a whole pile of amathematical admitted communist Greens like Adam Bandt who hate democracy, the US and our way of life.

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          • #
            TedM

            Or else there is another mechanism whereby heat is radiated to space more rapidly than in the models.

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  • #
    TdeF

    It would be wonderful for the ABC to have a documentary on how all animals, birds, insects and plants are made almost entirely from CO2 plus water.

    They could show how a giant tree comes entirely from the air and not the ground, as do the tomatoes and the flowers. Otherwise there would be a big hole around every 50 tonne tree.

    Then they could show how fish breathe our air too and how much air is in the water with most CO2 being in the oceans. Half of our O2 also comes from the ocean, the real lungs of the world. Perhaps even the cycle of CO2 and that only a tiny 3% of the CO2 output each year is from human activity and 98% of the CO2 is in the oceans and finally how heating the oceans even slightly raises CO2 and the world is suddenly greener and more habitable and if we are lucky, maybe a degree warmer so that people could live where only kilometer thick glaciers lived just 10,000 years ago. If the world cooled even one degree, the Northern ice cap could cover the earth again.

    David Attenborough could be amazed at the story of our remarkable carbon dioxide lifeforms and the cycle of CO2 from Green leaves to oil and coal and back to the air and life again. He might even mention how little control we puny humans have over the planet, how we are discovering the life cycle of coral and polar bears and caribou and how the sun really controls everything. Coal is nothing more than stored sunshine. Now I’m dreaming.

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    • #
      bobl

      If the world cooled even one degree, the Northern ice cap could cover the earth again.

      TDef a little over reach there – the cryogenian (snowball earth – did I get that right) was supposed to be around 70 degrees below today around -55 Ave and -10 at midday in summer at the equator. One degree isn’t enough to cover the earth but it might be enough to cover Alaska/Siberia/Northern China year round.

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      • #
        TdeF

        Not so sure. The average temperature of the North polar ice cap is a precise 0C, an interesting number. Ice comes in winter and can nearly vanish in summer. That dramatic change is very noticeable, which is why warmists seize on it when in fact it is just a coincidence, not a harbinger. Antarctica is -25C in summer.

        However make that average -1C and you might have a very different situation. As is self evident, the world may not be very sensitive to a 1C increase in temperature but it could be extremely sensitive to a drop in temperature as once the ice does not melt, the extent can grow dramatically, reflecting the light and producing more cooling and reach a ‘tipping point’. There are real arguments to be scared of a cooling planet, as everyone thought in the 1970s. The arguments were simply flipped to make a warming planet dangerous, when that is not the case.

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      • #
        David Maddison

        The idea of a Snowball Earth is contested.

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth

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        • #
          bobl

          Yes I know that however it helps to use their own sources against them. From the supposed Snowball Earth (AVE T -55) to the Eimian Optimum (AVE T +23) is the supposed range of Temperature that defines the limits of “Natural Variation” ie what the warmies call the “Stable” climate, since we are currently around +15 I point out that we have far to go DOWN and a warm earth of even +23 is a pretty cushy place to be relative to -55. Of course that also means that +15 odd where we are at the moment is nothing unusual.

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      • #
        TedM

        Another big volcanic eruption and we may be able to put that to the test bobl.

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    • #
      Radical Rodent

      …how little control we puny humans have over the planet…

      We are still debating as to whether the climate change is really being caused by humans, yet ONE volcano erupting can, within days (if not hours), have an undeniably noticeable effect upon the climate, and an effect that can last for weeks or months (or even years, as Krakatoa did). Perhaps we ought to note that, no matter how large the change caused by the eruption, the Earth pretty quickly returns to normal. The message? That, no matter how large the “forcing”, Earth maintains its own balance.

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  • #
    Oliver K. Manuel

    IMHO, Einstein provided the holy grail in 1905:

    E = mc^2

    Frightened world leaders and guilt-ridden scientists united nations and national academies of sciences on 24 OCT 1945 to hide NEUTRON REPULSION, the holy grail.

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    • #
      TdeF

      How do neutrons repel anything? Guilt ridden scientists? Where do you find those?

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      • #
        Yonniestone

        A little known fact is Green Neurons repel any positive signals originating from the frontal lobe……

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        • #
          Leonard Lane

          Yonnie, now that is good one! Actually great if you could wrap leftist neurons around green ones. Thanks for brightening my day a little.

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      • #
        sophocles

        How do neutrons repel anything?

        Through a (presently hypothetical) nuclear strong force. It’s doesn’t follow an inverse square law as does the electromagnetic force. The link contents are very interesting.

        Enjoy.

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        • #
          TdeF

          Thanks. This general observational rationalization does explain why you do not get neutron only nuclei and these incidentally without electrons.

          However these are logical postulations from the observed combinations in nature implying a slight repulsion between neutrons and attraction between neutron proton pairs. The stronger bonding energy per baryon in the mid range of atoms did suggest both fission and fusion possibilities to early scientists and led to the creation of the respective bombs. This seems self evident, without explaining anything much but it is hard to see where there is a holy grail?

          The holy grail is controllable man made fusion. You would have to wonder if the $1Trillion a year spent on windmills and solar panels was spent on fusion research where we would be. Fusion would make us independent of the sun.

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          • #
            TdeF

            I means without explaining anything about the strong forces other than their existence and strength, incredibly strong compared to electrical forces especially at such close distances.

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        • #
          Peter C

          Thanks Sophocles!

          There is much left to be done concerning this matter, but the evidence is clear that while the strong force between protons and neutrons is an attraction it is a repulsion between neutrons. This should not be too much of a surprise; it is just another case of like particles repelling each other.

          Just As Oliver K Manuel has been saying all along.

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        • #
          Oliver K. Manuel

          I am grateful this Holiday Season because ClimateGate emails that surfaced in Nov 2009, have finally revealed the reality that was hidden from the public after nations and national academies of sciences were united on 24 OCT 1945 to yield worldwide “97% consensus scientific support” for Weizsacker’s sleight-of-hand to hide NEUTRON REPULSION:

          https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/THANKSGIVING.pdf

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  • #
    Rereke Whakaaro

    I always thought that neutrons were supposed to be … well … neutral? Perhaps they have a stealth charge – sort of like internet connection fees.

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      Internet connection fees may be stealth but here in the states there’s a move afoot supported by several states and cities to tax streaming services like Netflix, Vudu and others. And there’s nothing stealth or neutral about that. They want only one thing, more of our money.

      So far this country has managed to avoid taxing the Internet in any way. I hope that trend continues. I would hate to have to cancel Netflix in protest. But if I did I would have to hope every Netflix, every subscriber to any taxed service would do likewise because within a month or two at the most the tax would be rescinded. Then once the tax is gone we’d all rejoin, at least of there was anything left to rejoin.

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    • #
      sophocles

      Rereke noted:

      I always thought that neutrons were supposed to be … well … neutral?

      Electrostatically, yes, as in no electric charge. If they were truly neutral, they wouldn’t be able to bind with protons to form atomic nuclei. See the material linked to in my comment at 4.1.2.
      Enjoy.

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        Yes, Sophocles, I was vaguely aware of that.

        I chose to ignore it, however, because I believe that we should never let science get in the way of making people smile. They learn when they smile, and they will come back to the science later, to really understand what is going on.

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    • #
      Oliver K. Manuel

      Figure 3 shows the difference between the

      _ a.) Strong, short-range force of repulsion between neutrons
      _ b.) Weaker, long-range force of Coulomb repulsion between protons

      by the heights of

      _ a.) Blue dots on the front panel, and
      _ b.) Red dots on the back panel

      http://ierj.in/journal/index.php/ierj/article/download/409/386

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  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Raiders of the Lost Ice:

    How interesting — truthful also because it sounds just like what it is, a work of fiction. And I’ve got some bad news for them. Global warming melted all that ice. So they’re likely to be disappointed, not that I think it will stop them from making some new and even more dire prediction after miraculously finding exactly the gazillion year old ice they’re looking for.

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  • #
    Egor TheOne

    If the Facts don’t Fit the Faith then the Facts get Fudged till they do!…..Thy CAGW Mantra.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    When I was in primary school (grade school as they say in the US) they taught about the CO2 cycle and also the Ice Ages and Milankovitch Cycles. It seems that not even many scientists and certainly no politicians or most of the sheeple are aware of these things now. With the deliberate dumbing down of the education system are these things no longer taught?

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      Now add in the reality that everyone owns a smart phone so they now know everything.

      Caveat – people are now as only as smart as their internet conections.

      As I’ve said a few times, a classical education is still best. All the internet-enabled toys people now use are just a method to enhance and/or interract with existing ideas…..but you still need the base knowledge *first* before you can be remotely useful to anyone.

      The illusion of knowledge with smart phones is dangerous to people – it like giving every child a prize despite how stupid they are….its the ultimate method of making dumb people “smart” and diluting real intelligence to bread-and-circuses ( “I’m watchin’ the footy” ) level….

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  • #
    Roy Hogue

    And so they find this ice!? What’s to say it will tell us anything interesting? I’m once more amazed and at the same time baffled by the ability of science to stack up one fact on top of another to the point where if that one foundation fact becomes falsified, the whole stack of facts, the work of hundreds of people and the billions now spent of climate change research will all come tumbling down.

    I first got that “iffy” feeling when I studied geology and the dating of things was stated with such certainty and I couldn’t see it being that precise no matter how I tried. And it continues to this day. Maybe we do know the age of something so closely as the nearest millennium or better. But maybe we don’t. When you build an airplane, an automobile or a tall building it’s based on hard facts, proven by experiment and experience to be correct. But building — or is it buttressing — a theory on the deepest ice on the Antarctic land mass? Who can say for sure? Yet it will be used to point a big finger of blame right at the human race. Shame on us for causing that evil carbon dioxide.

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    • #
      James Murphy

      It depends how you want to define ‘certainty.

      Isotope dating confidence, errors, and statistical methods are usually quite clearly stated, at least when papers are written by reasonable people.

      Have a look at this as an example: (sorry, the actual report download is large, at about 35mb, but illustrates my point well, I think).
      https://sarigbasis.pir.sa.gov.au/WebtopEw/ws/samref/sarig1/wcir/Record?r=0&m=1&w=catno=2037851

      This is a lot smaller, but still has a taste of the same type of data treatment and presentation.
      https://sarigbasis.pir.sa.gov.au/WebtopEw/ws/samref/sarig1/image/DDD/MESAJ060007-017.pdf

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      • #
        James Murphy

        As it might look like I am blatantly pushing the work of an individual, or small number of people, I should add that I was at university contemporaneously with a couple of the authors of these examples, but that was a disturbingly long time ago, and our social and professional paths have not crossed in any significant way since then.

        20

      • #
        Roy Hogue

        James,

        Maybe the logical basis for carbon dating has escaped me even after numerous tries to get the point. But when all radioactive carbon started out at the same time and it all has the same half life, I can’t quite figure out why there would be a difference in the amount of it left in something created X years ago from something created Y years ago.

        I’m always willing to learn, so where am I going wrong?

        10

        • #
          Roy Hogue

          PS:

          I’ve been willing to go along with carbon dating on the basis that so many others believe it does work. But understanding it myself is a stumbling block and has been since college.

          10

    • #
      Binny

      I like you stack of facts analogy. Of cause the facts don’t have fit neatly on top of each other to build a stable column (theory) As long as the errors/uncertainties are kept to with in a reasonable margin relative to the central core of the column it can be very robust. However when all the errors/uncertainties are in one direction the column becomes unstable and falls over. This is the case with climate science, viewed in small segments the facts stack up within an acceptable margin. Only when you step back and look at the column as a whole, can you see just how unstable it is. In fact, if the massive Government/media support was taken away from under the carbon side. It would immediately collapse into a pile of rubble.

      40

      • #
        Raven

        Only when you step back and look at the column as a whole, can you see just how unstable it is.

        Most of the scary stories surround the RCP8.5 scenario.
        Yet in AR5 the IPCC state there is no “expert” agreement on climate sensitivity estimates . . and the AR5 position is a walk back from AR4.

        I would have thought this is a fundamental metric in order to determine the implications of RCP’s but it appears we know less than in 2007. So much for progres.

        Climate Science™ is more unstable than the climate, but don’t let that get in the way of a good “scary” story.

        10

      • #
        Roy Hogue

        Yeah! I get your point. If it was a physical stack of objects, say my wife’s coasters on our coffee table, they wouldn’t necessarily need to all be centered each one on the one below it because as long at the center of mass stayed correct it would stand. But if they were all stacked off center in the same direction it would soon fall.

        And so many things about climate change put that stack off balance that I’m perplexed as to why they don’t notice it.

        10

  • #
    ianl8888

    Now there is certainly a change occurring in the epicentre of funding in CAGW-land, ie. the US.

    https://judithcurry.com/2016/12/12/shifting-sands-of-the-climate-debate/#more-22586

    Perhaps one of the more interesting changes for me is the admission that “climate denial” was always a proxy for control of energy policy and direction. This was my first thought over 30 years ago; subsequent developments have only supplied empirical evidence for that.

    Note also that one James Hansen now comments that given the ponderousness of climate response to various “forcings”, deploying energy sources other than hydrocarbons is not urgent. Hmm … perhaps he just likes being arrested 🙂

    50

    • #
      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      Many thanks Ian,
      And for the link to Judith’s latest. Within that I found another to the Illinois decision to keep a couple of their nukes going, in a last minute decision. And I’ve sent that to a couple of our politicians, in hope.
      Cheers,
      Dave B

      20

    • #
      OriginalSteve

      Could we interperet this shift as a way of the CAGW weasels quietly sliding out of harms way before Trump takes over? Or put another way – people are changing their tune so they dont get hit by the bus of real science ( but leaving the many useful idiots they recruited to do their dirty work in harms way ) once its been let off the leash by Trump….

      30

  • #
    David Maddison

    Will those results of this “Holy Grail” of ice cores be homogenised if they find it? I bet they WILL find it and the results WILL be homogenised!

    Besides, what an excellent excuse to get a taxpayer funded adventure vacation in Antarctica.

    51

    • #
      toorightmate

      The homogenisers are currently very busy homogenising Sydney night temperatures – so they can say that Sydney has had the hottest December night EEEVVVVAAAAAHHHHHH!.

      51

      • #
        bobl

        It drives me balmy when the nightly news talks of an unprecedented heatwave and it’s forecast to be 36! My metric for hot was always 100F ( 38C ) or there abouts and 40 is “Not unusual for summer”

        50

  • #
    el gordo

    The Vostok ice cores illustrate that the plateau in temperatures over the Holocene Interglacial is a freak event.

    40

    • #
      tom0mason

      And el gordo, there is that rather nasty occurrence of liquid water at great depths of the Antarctic ice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok

      Makes me wonder if all the very deep ice cores might be contaminated to some degree by liquid water forming then refreezing later. Do that a few times and exactly what are those ‘bubbles’ in the ice cores, where the ice shrunk as it melted, then much later refroze?

      Remember also that the Antarctic was once lush with plant life and there is known to be coal there. And where there is coal there is methane and when methane breaks down it forms CO2 and water.

      60

      • #
        Raven

        This paper seems to suggest they already found 1-Ma ice last year without using a two mile long drill bit.

        Atmospheric composition 1 million years ago from blue
        ice in the Allan Hills, Antarctica


        Conclusions:

        Ice cores containing archives of 1-My air have been recovered
        from shallow depths in Antarctic BIAs, providing the first, to our
        knowledge, direct measurements of atmospheric composition
        during glacial cycles of the mid-Pleistocene. Although these records
        are stratigraphically complex and likely incomplete, our
        results are consistent with the prevailing views (4, 22) that the
        amplitude of glacial cycles was diminished during this time, climates
        were warmer, interglacial CO2 concentrations were greater
        than between 450 and 800 ka, and glacial CO2 concentrations, at
        most, were ∼30 ppm higher than between 0 and 800 ka. Our record
        also provides reconstructions of atmospheric CH4 >800 ka
        and shows that CH4 concentrations are both surprisingly low and
        exhibit less variability than the other climate indicators compared
        with glacial cycles over the last 800 ky.

        30

    • #
      el gordo

      It would be mush at the bottom, but they might find something interesting along the way and the scientists will cross reference with Vostok to make sure its kosher.

      My vague comment earlier was directed towards the Younger Dryas asteroid bombardment putting a damper on Holocene temperatures and creating a plateau, unlike previous interglacials which were rather pointy.

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  • #
    Another Ian

    Jo An un-holy grail

    “Via @ClimateAudit — if warming doesnt stimulate northern forest growth, dendro reconstructions of past temperature by Mann, Briffa etc are worthless. No surprise ”

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2016/12/the-sound-of-se-553.html

    and links

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  • #
    David Maddison

    How long do you think this search will take? It seems open ended. And is there any data they will accept that will lead them to admit that CO2 does not cause warming?

    50

    • #
      TdeF

      Whether CO2 causes warming is generally irrelevant or even whether man can cause CO2 changes at all as it has gone up and down dramatically without humans and motor cars. The simple truth is that you get funding if you talk about CO2 and climate. If you wanted to study the sex life of the three toed sloth, you would talk CO2 and warming.

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      • #
        Rod Stuart

        Proved beyond doubt by Timothy Flannelpants.
        Study of the sex life of the tree kangaroo was not advancing his livelihood one iota.
        But with the supplementary mention of CO2 and warming…………fame and fortune.

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  • #
    Ruairi

    A deep drilling Antarctic bore,
    Got an 800,000 year core,
    But, that carbonized ice,
    Won’t for warming suffice,
    So they’ll drill for a million or more.

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  • #
    Robert Rosicka

    So if they find evidence that low Co2 levels coincide with ice ages what will the warmists do ?
    No chance they will then say Co2 is good we were wrong sorry .
    I see victoriastan are playing up the good they are doing by increasing renewable energy targets for our future , as I have seen saves the planet from warming by (rounded to nearest whole number) 0.0 .
    Trump needs to get cracking when he takes over and call this scam for what it is , and maybe shame other countries who have been taken over by greentards to rise up and vote them out of relevance for evaaahhhh.

    70

    • #
      ghl

      R R
      All it would take is an independent audit of temperature records.
      ” See that Rutherglen ’34 record. Who adjusted it? Why?”

      50

      • #
        el gordo

        That will all come out in the Royal Commission, but before then we need a definite sign that global cooling has begun, otherwise we won’t have a leg to stand on.

        Let’s not forget the power of the Precautionary Principle to maintain bipartisan support, that is until President Trump burst onto the world stage in search of the truth.

        Democracy is refreshed.

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  • #
    pat

    it’s all to mask the terrifying reality the public faces due to misguided & unnecessary CAGW policies:

    naturally, those responsible for the problem – Greens, unions – are the first given space to criticise & complain. all in all, a bizarre bit of writing where u start with the average rise before spelling out the massive increases for Tasmania, ACT, etc:

    14 Dec: SMH: Report spells out impact of coal closure on household bills amid brawl over energy
    by Adam Morton & James Massola
    The political fight over electricity prices will be given fresh ammunition by a new report warning the abrupt closure of the giant Hazelwood coal plant is expected to push up yearly electricity bills by an average $78 across Australia over the next two years.
    It comes as energy ministers meet on Wednesday, and as an unprecedented coalition of business and industry bodies, ***green groups, ***unions and charities urge Canberra and the states to fix Australia’s faltering energy systems, warning failure will lead to a national crisis…
    The increase linked to Hazelwood shutting is expected to be $99 in Victoria – broadly in line with the state government’s public expectations – and $74 in NSW. Other projections are $204 in Tasmania, $150 in South Australia, $46 in the ACT and $28 in Queensland…
    In Victoria, a spike next year is expected to be followed by a slight fall in 2018-19 as new wind farms – mainly driven by the state’s renewable energy target – start operating and reduce a reliance on electricity imported from interstate. The increase averages out to 3.5 per cent a year.
    South Australia is expected to follow a similar jump-then-smaller-reduction pattern as it also builds new wind energy…
    ***The biggest rise will be in the ACT, where households can expect a jump of more than 9 per cent, overwhelmingly due to the territory’s 100 per cent renewable energy target…
    Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declared prices would be lower under his government, but modelling suggested an intensity scheme could keep national electricity bills up to $15 billion lower than other measures, including doing nothing, by reducing the cost of cleaner energy.
    An extraordinary collection of 18 groups – including the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Industry Group, aluminium and steel industry bodies, energy groups, the ACTU, and welfare and environmental organisations – issued a joint statement on Tuesday urging action to “avert a systemic crisis”…
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/report-spells-out-impact-of-coal-closure-on-household-bills-amid-political-brawl-over-energy-20161213-gt9zem.html

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      People think that when you pee in the pool, it disappears…it doesnt…the same pee is there…youre now just deluding yourself its gone….and swimming in it…..best hope you dont get splashed in the face, huh?

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        Urine is sterile, when released, it is very salty, and tastes awful, but it won’t kill you. The livestock on the skin of the people you are sharing the pool with … not so much.

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  • #
    Dennis

    Let the games begin, Summer 2016

    8:04AM

    Sydney has sweltered through one of its hottest December nights in recent memory as capital cities break record.

    The Australian

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  • #
    Dennis

    Don’t tell me that there are natural Earth Cycles of warmer and cooler periods.

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  • #
    pat

    13 Dec: AFR: Households will pay $78 more for electricity in 2018-19 after Hazelwood power station closure
    by Ben Potter & Mark Ludlow
    Victorian Energy Minister Lily d’Ambrosio and Queensland minister Mark Bailey slammed the federal government for its lack of leadership ahead of the COAG Energy Council meeting in Melbourne.
    “Everybody is sick of the lack of leadership and silly political games being played by the Commonwealth, let’s get on with it and do what we were elected to do,” Ms d’Ambrosio said. Mr Bailey said the situation was “a hell of a mess” and there was nationwide disappointment…
    Business and civil society groups, including the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Industry Group, the ACTU and the ***St Vincent de Paul Society, urged governments to act urgently to reform the energy system, saying the “status quo of policy uncertainty, lack of coordination and unreformed markets is increasing costs, undermining investment and worsening reliability risks”…
    Keep all options open
    They said the policy chaos hurts all Australians, from low-income households and workers to regions and trade- exposed industries, and urged the Turnbull government to assess all policy options in next year’s review of climate policies. Last week the government ruled out an emissions intensity scheme for the power industry 48 hours after Mr Frydenberg said it was on the table…
    “Taking policy options off the table at this point risks a less efficient transformation, continued investment uncertainty, higher electricity prices and lower international competitiveness.”…
    The Turnbull government’s backflip came despite Chief Scientist Alan Finkel saying energy policy confusion was undermining energy investment and the AEMC and Australian Energy Market Operator saying an emissions intensity scheme would be three-fifths cheaper than an extended renewable energy target as a way to lower carbon emissions…
    AEMC chairman John Pierce said policies to reduce carbon emissions and improve system security, as well as the high price of natural gas, would also push prices up.
    “Wholesale electricity costs are a key driver in customer bills. These costs are increasingly connected with the mechanisms used to achieve emissions policy objectives – that is, how the energy sector will contribute to the emissions reduction target set by the government as part of the Paris commitment,” said Mr Pierce.
    “Having more renewable non-synchronous generation affects the technical characteristics of the electricity system. We can expect that additional services will be needed to manage system security, potentially impacting retail prices over the longer term.”…
    http://www.afr.com/news/politics/households-to-cough-up-for-hazelwood-closure-20161212-gt9rw6

    Bailey – below – was on 4BC radio this morning but said more than what’s documented.
    rough paraphrase: he said Queensland had a reliable energy system in place, sufficient to allow a smooth transition towards the Qld Govt’s renewables target:

    14 Dec: 4BC: Electricity price drop for southeast Queensland
    Residential electricity prices in southeast Queensland are expected to decrease slightly over the next two years, despite a rise in wholesale energy costs.
    The $28 increase following the looming retirement of Hazelwood power station in Victoria is expected to be offset by ***decreases in the cost of the Queensland solar bonus scheme.
    Energy Minister Mark Bailey says there a number of different factors driving the prices down.
    “We’ve acted to back in the consumers in Queensland by directing our power companies to accept lower revenues and that means lower prices because we’ve kept them in public ownership that’s certainly been a key.”
    http://www.4bc.com.au/news/electricity-price-drop-for-southeast-queensland-20161213-gtakgb.html

    following is really all about Qld – Caldwell writes for Fairfax Brisbane Times:

    14 Dec: SMH: Felicity Caldwell: Electricity bills to rise due to power station retirement
    AEMC chairman John Pierce said the report found that residential electricity prices in south-east Queensland were expected to decrease by 1.5 per cent on average over the next two years.
    ***Decreases in the cost of the state’s solar bonus scheme are expected to offset higher wholesale costs following the closure of Hazelwood, while demand remains flat…
    “Across the national electricity market, the generation mix is changing – with the large-scale renewable energy target leading to substantial investment in wind generation,” Mr Pierce said.
    “This is contributing to the closure of coal-fired plants and increasing wholesale prices.”…
    http://www.smh.com.au/queensland/electricity-bills-to-rise-due-to-power-station-retirement-20161213-gtag1z.html

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      They can take more reliable powerstations off the grid, and set up more “Mad Max”-style anarchy and instability.

      Actually i think Mad Max is an apt analogy…set in the future when pretty much everything in terms of society and structure had collapsed and madness reigned….

      I guess if it does, there will be nowhere for the communists to hide …..

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  • #
    pat

    further to previous comment with claims about decreases in Qld’s solar bonus scheme! surely it was just extended for 12 years, tho the news didn’t set the MSM on fire:

    1 Dec: Energy Matters: QLD Government Rules Out Early Solar Bonus Scheme Closure
    Early adopters of solar power systems who applied for the Queensland Solar Bonus Scheme before 10 July 2012 and maintain their eligibility receive a feed-in tariff rate of 44 cents per kilowatt hour for exported electricity.
    Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk rejected the Queensland Productivity Commission’s recommendation to end the scheme early due to what it said was the impact on electricity prices.
    “My Government has already taken firm action to stabilise electricity prices,” Ms Palaszczuk said, stating that under the first 2 years of her government the average annual electricity price increase for households will be just 1.2 per cent…
    It’s been reported the Government has also rejected recommendations that Scheme participants should lose their feed-in tariff if they install battery systems; an issue that may have been preventing some Queensland solar households from acquiring home energy storage.
    Queensland’s Solar Bonus Scheme is legislated to end on 1 July 2028.
    The Premier also announced various other reforms related to electricity yesterday, including providing more than 150,000 additional Queensland families a rebate on their power bills.
    While Queensland’s Solar Bonus Scheme is safe, over the border in NSW the end of the program of the same name is set in stone.
    Participants who joined the New South Wales Solar Bonus Scheme prior to May 2011 will start receiving an unsubsidised tariff rate of 4.7-8c per kWh on average from January 1 – and only for surplus electricity exports from their solar power systems…
    http://www.energymatters.com.au/renewable-news/queensland-solar-bonus-em5797/

    30 Nov: Courier Mail: Feed-in tariff for solar households to stay as pricing blueprint ignored by State Government
    EXCLUSIVE Steven Wardill
    THE State Government will ignore its own blueprint for putting downward pressure on electricity prices and retain the 44¢ feed-in tariff for thousands of solar households for the next 12 years.
    The Courier-Mail can reveal the Queensland Productivity Commission’s final report on electricity pricing recommended the exorbitant tariff be scrapped before the 2028 deadline.
    The recommendation would have saved non-solar households about $90 a year, or $3 billion over the life of the scheme, by stopping the costs of the high-priced power being passed on to other consumers…
    However, the Palaszczuk Government will today announce it has rejected the recommendation in its response to the QPC final report, which was completed six months ago.

    “Anybody who signed up for the Solar Bonus Scheme will continue to receive the feed-in-tariff and the current terms of their contract with their retailer will be honoured,” Energy Minister Mark Bailey said.

    Mr Bailey insisted the scheme had helped many of the 424,005 households with solar, which combined could now produce 1589 megawatts of power.
    “This also means that, combined, rooftop solar is the second largest power station in Queensland,” Mr Bailey said….
    However, it will reject another recommendation to strip households of the 44¢ tariff if they connect battery storage technology…

    10

  • #
    Trevor

    got it about 115,000 YBP Homo Sapiens diverged in the African savannah and CO2 goes up – must have been those cooking fire

    40

    • #
      el gordo

      You may have missed an earlier conversation we had here, the world’s first BBQ chef was Homo Erectus about one million years ago.

      40

    • #
      el gordo

      An amazing coincidence a few million years ago changed the world and we are proof of it.

      ‘Scientists believe the formation of the Isthmus of Panama is one of the most important geologic events to happen on Earth in the last 60 million years.’

      NASA Earth Observatory

      20

      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        Scientists believe the formation of the Isthmus of Panama is one of the most important geologic events to happen on Earth

        Why?

        And if it was so important, why did they let the Engineers dig bl**dy great canal through it?

        21

        • #
          Graeme No.3

          They were told it would remove the danger of global warming. Pity about the Ice Ages side effects. See pat No.37.

          10

      • #
        Glen Michel

        Separation of Antarctic from Australia. Let that 40 degreeS flow.

        10

  • #
    David Maddison

    Isn’t it the case that Antartica has been very thoroughly surveyed and that they have already taken ice cores at all the best sites?

    It seems to me to spend $45m looking for a core sample that likely does’t exist and will have limited scientific merit if found is just more money wasted on the false hypothesis of CAGW.

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  • #
    Rod Stuart

    Hard to believe how loony the Loony Left can get.

    10

  • #
    Mark M

    Video, @1.00 minute, Dr Tessa Vance, Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre:
    “What it shows your is the CO2, which is the blue curve, and the temperature cycles, which is the red curve, both from which we get from ice cores, and how that cycle goes for hundreds of thousands of years.
    . . .
    What it does show you is that CO2 follows temperature, not the cause temperature rise. Undeniably.

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  • #
    theRealUniverse

    The above graph is not really correlated even visual by observation between -130,000 to about – 105,000 BP. CO2 is about constant while temp fluctuate. Anyway CO2 dissolves in colder water more that in warmer water. Most of the CO2 is in the oceans, hence the lag AFTER post ice-age warming. ABC, denying that the sky is blue will get you nowhere!

    20

  • #
    pat

    Channel 9 has a completely different story!
    downplays the price rises, uses percentages rather than figures.
    subscription was required, so had to go to cached version:

    Power bills projected to soar by $40 in 2017
    ninemsn – By 9Finance ‎29 minutes ago‎
    The closure of Australia’s dirtiest coal-fuelled power plant and the government’s renewable energy targets could lead to electricity bills increasing by up to $40 next year, according to the Australian Energy Market Commission.
    The body has tipped an increase of 2.7 percent, expected to hit in mid-2017, in a new report that cites the decommissioning of Victoria’s Hazelwood plant among the factors in the price increase…
    The ACT is expected to be hardest hit, with bills projected to increase by as much as 9.3 percent, while ***Tasmania and Victoria will see little to no increase thanks to offsets.
    In Tassie’s case the break comes from helping build the Basslink sea cable which links the Apple Isle to Victoria, while Queenslanders will reap the ***benefits of the state’s solar bonus scheme, and actually see a 1.5 percent price reduction over the next two years…

    20

    • #
      TdeF

      “Australia’s dirtiest coal-fuelled power plant”. CO2 is not dirty! That’s just an awful denunciation of a technological triumph of the time like the Snowy Mountain scheme, the work of a generation of Victorians to build a long lasting quality clean power supply.

      Amazing how people just make up such a silly statement and repeat it.

      CO2 is not ‘dirty’ but invisible and harmless. Almost all of it is dissolved in the ocean. Brown coal produces only 6% more CO2 than black coal. Coal is also natural and CO2 is necessary. The other repeated statement is that Hazelwood is OLD, when it is younger than the Snowy Mountain scheme which is not closing. So unlike windmills with a 20 year life span which is why they are called ‘renewables’ as they are not serviceable. As with solar panels, replaceables would be better.

      In contrast, traditional coal power stations are really clean now and can last for hundreds of years. They also do not need wind or sun to work a significant difference in winter or summer. Much of Northern Australia would not be habitable without electric air conditioning, but the Greens want to turn them off. Why? Why is self harm so much a part of leftist politics?

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      • #
        Dennis

        The extreme Greens pretend not to know about Environmental Pollution Agencies and regulations/laws regarding illegal pollution.

        And that during the 1970s developed nations created those regulations and laws to deal with emissions and other problems for the environment including coal fired power stations which used to be located in suburbs of cities. They were gradually shut down and better technology power stations constructed far away from the city suburbs. And despite the MSM images used on television news of power station water vapour even the now 40 year old power stations in Australian are producing low emission levels.

        40

  • #
    PeterPetrum

    I noticed the “lockstep” claim in the original release, but then I realised that if CO2 increases 800 years after every temperature increase, then it is in “lockstep”. However, if you don’t know about the 800 years it would have a very different meaning to the uninitiated, particularly if that meaning is pushed by the uninhibited.

    40

    • #
      john karajas

      Yes, no mention of the 800 year lag between temperatures going up and increases in CO2 levels. And wasn’t Comrade Jane Norman so fetching in her Antarctic gear!

      30

  • #
    Bulldust

    It’s costing WA households $63 each per year for Federal and State-imposed schemes for green energy according to advisory body AEMC (Australian Energy Market Commission):

    https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/senior-liberals-feud-over-branches-ng-b88327997z

    I love how Greenies keep telling us it is competitive … if it was our costs wouldn’t go up.

    41

    • #
      Bulldust

      To clarify – wouldn’t go up because of the inclusion of Green energy schemes over traditional fossil-fuel generators.

      21

    • #
      David Maddison

      I’ve heard eco-marxists claim “renewables” would be so

      10

      • #
        David Maddison

        Sorry, accidentally hit comment.

        (Continuing) cheap fossil and nuclear power would be put out of business even without subsidies to renewables.

        20

  • #
    pat

    13 Dec: NewAmerican: Alex Newman: Climate Scare Over: Top Experts Expose Scam at Freedom Confab
    PHOENIX — Call off the doomsday bunkers and carbon taxes! The “climate” scare is officially over. The time for hysteria over alleged man-made global warming and CO2 has passed. The theory is toast — it is totally and completely debunked. At least it will be, once a soon-to-be-released “Weapon of Mass Instruction” exposing the climate fraudsters and their fraud is dropped on the world…
    The keynote speaker for the event was Lord Christopher Monckton, the internationally known climate realist and former science adviser to U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He began by going up on stage and putting a red “Make America Great Again” hat on his head. The crowd cheered. He also highlighted Brexit, the historic decision by British voters to throw off the chains of the European Union super-state by exiting the EU completely…READ ALL
    http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/24820-climate-scare-over-top-experts-expose-scam-at-freedom-confab

    50

  • #

    CO2 bailing out of warm liquid. That’s why your Fanta loses its fizz in a warm spot. Or your chinotto, if you’re a hipster. Or your champagne, if you’re a climate conference attendee with some serious air miles and jet trails to prove it.

    50

  • #
    RoHa

    “a piece of ice so old that it might be able to reveal the climate of the past and help predict the future of Earth’s atmosphere.”

    But will it make my vodka martini taste better?

    30

    • #
      David Maddison

      It mightn’t taste better but getting a piece of that million year old ice would make it cost a lot more…

      11

  • #
    pat

    what a difference an election makes!

    14 Dec: HuffPo: Kate Sheppard: It’s Hard To Overstate How Anti-Environment Donald Trump’s Cabinet Picks Are
    “President-elect Trump is creating a government of, by, and for the oil and gas industry,” one advocate said.
    If environmentalists found themselves in some kind of paralyzing hypnagogia on Nov. 9, the day they realized that there was no waking up from this was Dec. 13…
    Tillerson has personally argued that climate change is no biggie because “we will adapt to this.” If he’s confirmed as secretary of state, he will be in the position of deciding whether the U.S. stays involved in the Paris climate agreement and whether to approve massive international oil pipelines like Keystone XL.
    Pruitt is the attorney general of Oklahoma and has described himself as “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.” He is currently suing the EPA ― the agency he could lead ― to stop the Obama administration’s regulatory effort to curb emissions from power plants…
    Perry, the former Republican governor of Texas, is expected to be nominated to lead a department whose name he once famously forgot while pledging to eliminate it. He has said that climate change is just a “theory that remains unproven” and that climate scientists have “manipulated data to keep the money rolling in.” …
    There’s also (Jeff) Sessions…The Alabama senator regularly recites the talking points of climate change deniers, dismisses the overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that global warming is caused by human activity, and once suggested that addressing climate change is a conspiracy against the world’s poor…
    The Washington Post and Politico reported Tuesday evening that Trump will pick Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) to lead the Department of Interior, another important slot for environmental issues. Interior’s purview includes public lands, such as national parks, wildlife refuges and the outer continental shelf, as well as endangered species and tribal affairs. The freshman member has said that selling off public lands is a “non-starter,” but he also thinks that climate change is “not proven science.”
    Environmental groups are, understandably, ***not psyched about these picks…
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/trump-administration-anti-environment_us_58507c5ae4b0ee009eb44512

    ***not psyched perhaps, but definitely psyched out.

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      He has said that climate change is just a “theory that remains unproven” and that climate scientists have “manipulated data to keep the money rolling in.” …

      Sounds pretty accurate to me.

      Anybody in “the sky is falling” camp, can grub around and find miscellanious correlations, and claim a bounty.

      But correlation is not evidence of causation.

      New Zealand has been experiencing a string of earthquakes and submarine volcanic activity. A decent “belch” from a volcanic rift, will release more CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, than the New Zealand population could produce, in all their respective lifetimes, even if they tried.

      The activists, who do not like that idea, will tell you that volcanos emit dust and dirt that creates a blanket in the air that cools the earth, and does not warm it. Twinotter did precisely that, on a recent thread.

      That is rubbish, and cherry-picking (a charge he likes to lay). There are a few active volcanos on land that may do that, occasionally. But there are literally hundreds of submarine volcanos, and tens of thousands of undersea vents that release volcanic pressure continuously by emitting CO2, etc. You can’t sail between our fair islands, without passing over quite a few.

      You can’t blame mankind for variations in CO2, unless you can definitively measure the proportion of any increase in CO2 that comes from natural sources.

      And since we don’t seem to be able to do that, we should just live with what we have got. People don’t die from CO2. They die from lack of oxygen.

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        An important difference between CO2 from natural sources and CO2 from fossil fuels is the age of the carbon it contains. Younger natural sources of CO2 are relatively rich in carbon-14. But since carbon-14 has a half-life of about 5,700 years, it can’t be found in fossil fuels that are millions of years old.

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          Rereke Whakaaro

          Thank you, Gee Aye, for mentioning the isotopes of Carbon. I had not thought that would be pertinent, in the context of quoting the former Governor of Texas.

          He seems to be intent on stirring the pot, so we will all have to keep a balanced view. This has the potential to get a bit silly, wouldn’t you agree?

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            Graeme No.3

            Rereke:

            What Gee Aye may have been hinting at was that (ex)Governor Perry being a lot younger than 5,700 years would have a higher amount of carbon-14, the heavier isotope. Gravitas can be useful in a Statesman.

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              Rereke Whakaaro

              Oh come on. That is far too subtle for your average working Maori boy.

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                Graeme No.3

                So, are you not average? Not working? Not Maori? Or not a boy?

                If the last, are you the reference John gives in 1.6 ? You would then be classified as a source of man-made warming.

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            tedious reply.

            You can’t blame mankind for variations in CO2, unless you can definitively measure the proportion of any increase in CO2 that comes from natural sources.

            An important difference between CO2 from natural sources and CO2 from fossil fuels is the age of the carbon it contains. Younger natural sources of CO2 are relatively rich in carbon-14. But since carbon-14 has a half-life of about 5,700 years, it can’t be found in fossil fuels that are millions of years old

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        Richard

        “You can’t blame mankind for variations in CO2, unless you can definitively measure the proportion of any increase in CO2 that comes from natural sources”.

        In fact we can do. The measured amount of human CO2 in the atmosphere today is only about 6%, with the remaining 94% being natural. This is determined by measuring the C12/C13 ratio (referred to as δ13C). The current δ13C is around -8.3. Human CO2 has a δ13C value of around -29 and the assumed pre-industrial δ13C value was about -7. Therefore we get 6% (i.e. 6% of -29 and 94% of -7). However the human component could be less than 6% because δ13C could decrease due to biological sources. The 6% of human CO2 in the atmosphere today is an expected consequence of short residence time for CO2 of about 5 years. Of course though, the IPCC is far too clever to give that impression to the general public. They assume that human CO2 molecules are simply swapping places with CO2 molecules in the ocean and then count the increase as anthropogenic (see the IPCC’s carbon-cycle diagram here: https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch7s7-3.html). Notice how in the diagram the oceans are absorbing around 22Gts/year of anthropogenic carbon and are re-emitting 20Gts/year of anthropogenic carbon. Stop to mull on that for just a moment. Obviously these cannot be the same molecules because once the original anthropogenic molecules have been absorbed by the oceans they become thoroughly intermixed with natural pre-existing CO2. These are just tagged as anthropogenic CO2 since that is how much the IPCC assumes the oceans can cope with. Since there is no logical reason to believe these are the same molecules there is no reason to treat them any differently from the natural oceanic emissions of 70.6Gts. Therefore there is no reason to believe the oceans are not simply absorbing our CO2 and that this 20Gts of ‘anthropogenic CO2’ is not just natural. (In fact, this is what Henry’s law predicts, as TedF often points out). This ‘ocean swapping’ mechanism (due to the unproven Revelle Factor) make the IPCC completely and utterly unaccountable to empirical measurements showing that almost all anthropogenic CO2 has already been absorbed.

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    pat

    here we go again – absolute madness:

    12 Dec: UK Telegraph: Emily Gosden: Pay factories to save energy during crunch times, industry group says
    The Government should pay factory owners to help keep the lights on in homes by switching off their machinery to ease electricity demand, according to the lobby group for big manufacturers.
    The EEF believes that Government cash incentives for cutting energy consumption at peak times or when wind and solar farms aren’t working would ease strain on the grid more cheaply than building new power stations.
    Such “demand side response” schemes have been used by the National Grid over recent winters as a “last resort” measure to help keep the lights on in an emergency as the closure of old power plants tightens UK supplies.
    Critics have likened the schemes to the power rationing of the 1970s.
    In a report published on Monday, the EEF dismissed such attacks, saying: “Demand side response (DSR) is far from a last resort and should increasingly be one of the first options we look to in achieving electricity security.”…
    The lobby group says only 9pc of manufacturers are currently involved in demand side schemes and the Government must encourage more businesses to sign up…
    Richard Warren, EEF energy adviser, argued there was also a “clear business case” for the UK.
    He highlighted the National Infrastructure Commission’s finding that more flexible energy usage ***could save Britain £8bn a year…
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/12/12/pay-factories-save-energy-crunch-times-industry-group-says/

    if ABC (and Fairfax) keep promoting the likes of Environmental Justice Australia (formerly Environmental Defenders Office (Victoria) until May 2014, Australia will end up in the same situation as the UK:

    14 Dec: ABC: Whitehaven Coal tries to block release of air pollution reports from NSW mines
    By national science reporter Jake Sturmer
    Whitehaven Coal is trying to stop the release of annual pollution reports from its north-west NSW coal mines, despite the state’s Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) deciding the information is in the public interest.
    Several months ago, researchers at Environmental Justice Australia (EJA) raised concerns about the air quality monitoring at five coal mines run by Whitehaven Coal and Idemitsu.
    The air monitoring sites are not independent and are run by the mines themselves.
    The mines provide weekly public data to the NSW EPA, but researchers have questioned the quality of that information, reporting “wildly inaccurate” results…
    Whitehaven Coal can now challenge the EPA’s decision with either an internal or external review, which would take up to 40 days.
    To address community air quality concerns, the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage and the EPA are currently investigating having a public, government-run regional air quality monitoring network…
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-14/whitehaven-tries-to-block-access-to-air-quality-reports/8117240

    ABC quotes Nicola Rivers, EJA: Prior to joining our team, she (Nicola Rivers) worked as a senior lawyer with the Environment Department of Western Australia. She has also worked for the Federal Attorney General’s department and as a policy officer for the Federal Environment Department. Nicola is a Fellow of the Centre for Sustainability Leadership…EJA website

    who funds EJA?
    following refers to a period after they were part of EDO, but it’s hard to imagine anyone other than left-leaning orgs would be giving them funds:

    Environmental Defenders Office: Environmental Defenders Offices welcome $10.8 million funding pledge
    Media Statement 15 June 2016
    Environmental Defenders Offices of Australia (EDOs of Australia) welcome the ALP’s commitment to restore funding to EDOs by providing $10.8 million over four years, as announced on Wednesday 15 June 2016.
    Jo Bragg, convenor of EDOs of Australia, said: “EDOs across Australia welcome the ALP’s commitment to reinstate federal funding to our non-profit community legal centres, which was abruptly withdrawn in late 2013…
    “EDOs also welcome the commitment by the Greens yesterday in their Access to Justice Package to restore $14.5 million funding for EDOs. This commitment also recognises the vital services provided by EDOs to the Australian community…
    BACKGROUND
    Shadow Environment Minister Mark Butler (with Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus QC) late on 14 June 2016 announced funds of $10.8 million over 4 years for Environmental Defenders Offices. Senator Nick McKim of the Greens earlier on 14 June announced $14.5 million for EDOs over 4 years as part of their Access of Justice Package…

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Pat,

      I think it is about time that I thanked you, again, for what you do.

      In reporting on the EJA, you are actually exposing some of the graft and corruption that is rife in the politics of the left. It was bad enough, when it was just the European Trade Union movement that was involved. It now seems that the majority of Academics have also figured out how “the system” works.

      Truth, is always the first casualty of war. We need people like you.

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  • #
    Harry Twinotter

    “They hunted and drilled but the telex from prehistory kept saying temperature controls CO2, not the other way around.”

    Totally untrue. CO2 predominately controls the temperature, refer to the lectures given by Dr Richard Alley.

    [Oh, I see, we are we back on the “Richard Alley is God”, meme … again. OK! Please explain the chemical reactions involved in converting a molicule of CO2 into heat, and … what?] -Fly

    (He ignores numerous papers from 1999 onwards,that Jo mentioned in the post) CTS

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    • #

      OK, so Harry, you watched the lectures (you did didn’t you?) so you can explain Alley’s main point yourself.
      Go for it…

      Or have you got no idea at all, and for you it’s enough that a Prof once said something, sometime, which might have meant there was evidence.

      Baa, Baa, Baa, surprise me.

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      Peter C

      Oh please explain Rixhard Alley’s main point. or even give a reference.

      Who is Richard Alley?

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        A Professor or lecturer, whom Harry Twinotter goes weak at the knees over.

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          Peter C

          Since I am slightly interested now

          Richard Alley

          He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in the same year, his nomination reads:

          “ Richard Alley has made outstanding contributions to the study of ice, its interactions with the landscape and its link to climate. He has made important advances in topics as diverse as grain-scale physics controlling ice deformation, the role and nature of ice streams, and processes at the bed of the ice sheet. His work synthesised the evidence that abrupt climate changes occurred in the past, and drove hypotheses about their cause and the role of ice on ocean circulation

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Alley

          ” His work synthesised the evidence that abrupt climate changes occurred in the past” Does that mean he made it all up?

          “His work … drove hypotheses” ie He speculated about things and hypothesized about the causes! Is that Science nowadays? Has he in gactbadvanced our knowledge in any way?

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            TdeF

            Any idea of his undergraduate degree? Tim Flannery’s was in English at Latrobe, then Earth Sciences at Monash and PhD in paleoentology. At no stage did he do any hard science, mathematics, chemistry, physics, engineering. He still holds himself out as a technologically competent scientist offering opinions on hot rock and nuclear power.

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          • #
            Rod Stuart

            This sounds suspiciously like a relative of Waleed Aly, who also speculates about things, hypothesizes the causes, and processes it into fake news.

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        • #
          toorightmate

          We are pleased to announce the forthcoming marriage between our brilliant son, Harry Twinotter to the equally fascinating Richard Alley.

          Please bring your own marbles.

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        Yonniestone

        He’s Mildew Wolf reincarnated.

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      • #
        Harry Twinotter

        Peter C.

        Professor Richard Alley is a famous climate researcher. Jo Nova shows his research data on this blog from time to time. This video is a bit long, but references are given to the studies he uses in his presentation.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RffPSrRpq_g

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      Richard

      Harry wrote:

      Totally untrue. CO2 predominately controls the temperature, refer to the lectures given by Dr Richard Alley.

      There was an interesting paper published in Nature in 2015 that claimed to have measured the downwelling radiation from a 22ppmv increase in atmospheric CO2 at the surface between 2000-2010 (Feldman 2015). They measured a radiative forcing increase of 0.2 W/m2 at the surface over that period. That’s not that much. In the paper they also acknowledged that the radiative forcing from CO2 is only “approximately ten per cent of the trend in downwelling longwave radiation”. If CO2 is only producing 10% of the forcing trend, then how can it possibly “predominately control the temperature”? Even with the IPCC’s positive feedbacks factored in, they can only boost the forcing from CO2 by a factor of ~3, but they apparently take many decades to kick-in. So, clearly, there are other forcings in the climate-system that are completely overwhelming the small forcing from CO2.

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      • #
        Harry Twinotter

        Richard.

        0.2 W/m2 per decade. This is significant when compared to the estimates of forcing of 1.82 W/m2 since 1750.

        This also from the study abstract:

        “These results confirm theoretical predictions of the atmospheric greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic emissions, and provide empirical evidence of how rising CO2 levels, mediated by temporal variations due to photosynthesis and respiration, are affecting the surface energy balance.”

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        • #
          Richard

          The forcing from CO2 at 0.2 W/m2 per decade is still only about 10% of the downward radiation impinging on the surface of around 2 W/m2 (Wang et al 2009) as Feldman says. The seasonal CO2 respiration/absorption by photosynthesis is “carbon-neutral” and produces no annual net-effect on the annual downward radiation from the annual CO2 increase. The seasonal CO2 respiration/absorption by photosynthesis is carbon-neutral because the CO2 plants respire in the winter is re-absorbed in the summer. This is what produces the characteristic saw-tooth shape in the Keeling Curve, and this is what Feldman is referring to. So I don’t know why you’re quoting that as if it has any significance.

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          • #
            Harry Twinotter

            Richard.

            It is a pity the study is paywalled, I would like to see more discussion about the 10% figure.

            But they state the conclusion in black and white. I do not know why you think that comment is insignificant.

            “These results confirm theoretical predictions of the atmospheric greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic emissions, and provide empirical evidence of how rising CO2 levels…”

            I can think of reasons for the rest of the downwelling trend. The average air temperature is increasing, that will cause a downwelling increase. Water vapor increase will also cause a downwelling increase.

            01

            • #
              Harry Twinotter

              I thought so. From the study:

              “The climate perturbation from this surface forcing will be larger than the observed effect, since it has been found that the water-vapour feedback enhances greenhouse gas forcing at the surface by a factor of three and will increase, largely owing to thermodynamic constraints”.

              http://asl.umbc.edu/pub/chepplew/journals/nature14240_v519_Feldman_CO2.pdf

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            • #
              Richard

              I do not know why you think that comment is insignificant.

              But I said why the plant-photosynthesis comment was irrelevant to the question of total radiative forcing from CO2 at the end of each year. You then responded by quoting a different comment in the paper that says “These results confirm theoretical predictions of the atmospheric greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic emissions”. That’s true, and for the most part they do. The IPCC’s logarithmic equation (ΔF = 5.35ln(C/C₀) which estimates the amount of radiative forcing from a given increase in atmospheric CO2 predicts a similar amount of radiative forcing over that period. But that is still only about 10-15% of the trend in total radiative forcing at the surface. So, your argument that CO2 is the ‘predominate’ controller of temperature is unconvincing to me, because 90% of the forcing is not coming from CO2. You say that it could be water vapour feedback. Even if we assume that the feedbacks are strongly positive as the IPCC claims, they should only amplify the forcing from CO2 by a factor of 3 at equilibrium, not by a factor of 10 (and equilibrium climate sensitivity apparently takes many decades to materialise). So, feedbacks alone cannot explain away the extra forcing. Something else must be contributing, and there is evidence (if you’re willing to look past the IPCC) that nature is a significant contributor.

              It is a pity the study is paywalled, I would like to see more discussion about the 10% figure.

              The 10% figure comes from the measured 0.2 W/m2 from CO2 per decade and the 2 W/m2 downward radiation from Wang et al (2009). Feldman references this in the abstract.

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          Harry Twinotter

          The results from the two observation sites show a clear correlation between increasing CO2 concentration and forcing.

          But only two observation sites – they really do need more.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfsCmEP94pU

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          • #
            AndyG55

            “The results from the two observation sites show a clear correlation between increasing CO2 concentration and forcing.”

            ROFLMAO.. you mean this graph..?

            https://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/alaska-co2.png?w=1842&h=1017

            It shows two nicely matching curves, does it not?
            But what are the quantities being graphed?
            One is CO2 but the other is NOT temperature.
            It is a theoretically derived construct called forcing.

            Pretty funny, hey !! Did you get sucked in yet again, Twooter?

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      • #
        AndyG55

        “2000-2010 (Feldman 2015)”

        Temps starts at very base of La Nina.. ends at very top of El Nino

        Now what were they measuring again?

        And why did it take 5 years to produce a paper. ??? very odd for such an “important” paper.

        I wonder…. did the data really end in 2012, and the last 2 years get discarded?

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        • #
          Harry Twinotter

          AndyG55.

          “Temps starts at very base of La Nina.. ends at very top of El Nino”

          Irrelevant. They isolated the increase in downwelling radiation from CO2 only. It says so in the study.

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          • #
            AndyG55

            “It says so in the study”

            ROFLMAO !!

            You gullible little child. !!

            01

            • #
              Harry Twinotter

              Andy-pandy.

              [No need to keep this up Harry. And that goes for you too Andy. Stick to the issues, not the insults and personalities.] AZ

              How about actually responding to my comment for a change instead of your childish outbursts and thread-bombing. You do know how you appear to other readers?

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            AndyG55

            What frequency band would that be, Twotter? 😉

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            AndyG55

            This is the “classic” statement..

            “The spectrum it sees looks very much like the one we’d calculated it should see, with a few exceptions caused by heating of the instrument itself. But the precise details vary based on the factors noted above, like the weather and seasons. Using a decade-long time series, the authors are able to get all these other factors to effectively cancel out; what emerges shows “the unmistakable spectral fingerprint of CO2.””

            ie, they modelled, they fiddled, they fudged and eventually got a signal they liked.

            11

            • #
              AndyG55

              I wonder what their “result” would have been had they only gone to 2008.

              I bet they didn’t even check. I thought it was standard practice to break results into shorter time periods to see if they give the same result with the same calculation method. You know… science. !!!

              But probably not in “climate science™”

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            AndyG55

            Even if this study did actually measure what it says it did… (gullible)

            0.2w/decade = 2w/century

            At the measured increase of 2 watts per century, we can expect a temperature increase of 0.36 K by 2115.

            PANIC !!!!!!!!!!

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  • #
    pat

    burp…

    13 Dec: Bloomberg: Eric Roston: Scientists Want to Give the Atmosphere an Antacid to Relieve Climate Change
    It won’t solve the underlying problem, but “geoengineering” may have just gotten a bit safer.
    A group of Harvard researchers led by David Keith, a professor of applied physics and public policy, just proposed a different solution in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. An aerosol of calcium carbonate would have a similar cooling effect as sulfur dioxide on the upper atmosphere and help protect the ozone layer as a bonus.
    The approach is akin to giving the atmosphere a handful of antacid tablets….READ ON
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-12/scientists-want-to-give-the-atmosphere-an-antacid-to-relieve-climate-change

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    • #
      Graeme No.3

      bloomberg is hardly a reliable source of scientific news but an article, which should have been titled “Looney Professor has crazy Idea”, should be rapidly discarded; and will be if said Professor was told to provide insurance against his idea causing any change in curent climate conditions.

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      toorightmate

      The climate antacid is also available as a suppository.

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    pat

    sounds like union members are getting restless. after all, their union bosses promised there’d be plenty of jobs if they went along with the CAGW scam:

    12 Dec: LeftFootForward: Scotland’s trade unions call for nationalisation of green energy schemes
    Create jobs while protecting environment, say campaigners
    Trade unions and green campaigners in Scotland are calling for more nationalisation of climate change and green energy projects to create jobs while protecting the environment.
    A joint statement by Friends of the Earth Scotland and the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) said the Scottish government must take bolder steps in moving to a low-carbon economy, and support workers currently in sectors that rely on fossil fuels.
    It comes ahead of a new energy strategy and climate change plan from the SNP government.
    Today’s statement, which is backed by WWF Scotland and the Unite, Unison, PCS, UCATT, UCU and CWU unions, said current plans were ‘not ambitious enough’ and progress has been slow outside of onshore windfarms…

    ***“Where necessary to secure change at sufficient pace and scale, options for public and community ownership or partial stakes in flagship projects and enterprises should be pursued.”…
    A spokesman for the Scottish government, responding to the statement, said it has already met its 2020 target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 42 per cent, six years early.
    He said a Climate Change Bill with a new post-Paris Agreement target will be up for consultation in 2017, and half a billion pounds is earmarked for tackling ***fuel poverty over the next four years…
    https://leftfootforward.org/2016/12/scotlands-trade-unions-call-for-nationalisation-of-green-energy-schemes/

    12 Dec: ScottishEnergyNews: Scottish TUC and Friends of Earth join forces to demand new green jobs in the Scottish Energy Strategy
    Stephen Boyd, STUC Assistant General Secretary, commented: “The transition to a low-carbon economy – done the right way – has the potential to increase employment and create a more dynamic and resilient economy.
    “However experience to date confirms that a more active and interventionist approach will be necessary to maximise economic and employment benefits”…
    “However, fine words and targets are not sufficient on their own and experience to date shows that the growth of renewable energy generation does not necessarily result in the creation of new manufacturing and engineering capacity and employment in Scotland…
    http://www.scottishenergynews.com/scottish-tuc-and-friends-of-earth-join-forces-to-demand-new-green-jobs-in-the-scottish-energy-strategy/

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    Peter C

    Fake News

    Can any one help me understand the term Fake News which is all over the media at present? How is it different from the News that we used to get? Is it different from the News that we used to get?

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Fake news is more accurate than the news that you used to get, except that the purveyors of the news you used to get, say that it is fake, in order to disguise the fact that the new news is less fake than the old news, which was officially fake.

      I hope that clarifies things for you.

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Sorry Peter,

      I guess you are entitled to a sensible answer. There was a time, when the serious news media took pride in keeping the population informed of what the Politicians at home or abroad were doing.

      Back in the day, journalists and editors took much pride in being as accurate and honest as possible. The way that the news was actually presented, in different newspapers, was dependent upon the “educational attainment level” of the target audience, but the basic facts tended to be the same, and as accurate as possible. Even today, people tend to believe what they read in their newspaper, or media outlet of choice.

      Then came two world wars, and Governments on all sides, started to use propaganda (a German word, I believe) to state the news in ways that influenced public opinion, to raise morale at home, and demonize the enemy, abroad. After the wars, the Media continued to use propaganda to influence public opinion as a quasi branch of the Government of the day.

      The more liberal wing of politics also used propaganda to influence public opinion, and thus reduce what the Government could plausibly achieve within an electoral term.

      This liberal democratic side of politics eventually came to have tremendous influence within the media itself, to the point that most media outlets are well left, of the original “balanced view.” The information they will or will not publish is still propaganda that supports whatever message the liberal democratic side of politics wishes to convey to the general public.

      Real news, as a statement of fact about what will, or has happened, is almost non-existent, because it only exists outside of that bubble.

      Then comes The Donald, who starts telling it like it is (or at least how he sees it) through the new media. He is the POTUS, and he is the first POTUS who is not dependent upon the traditional media to get his views in front of the people. He uses twitter and face-book to do that, and does not need “the dead tree” media. As far as the traditional press is concerned, they are only one day away from armageddon.

      So they fight back, by claiming that what the POTUS, or his staffers put up on Face-book is not real news, it is “fake” news. It is “fake” in the eyes of the media, because there is no standard of writing or spelling, and it is “fake” in the eyes of the liberal democratic side of politics, and it is “fake” because it has not been passed through the editorial chain, and it has not had the approval of the news media’s owners, and most importantly, it is “fake”, because they cannot slant his words to imply something that he did not say. The liberal democratic side of politics is up in arms

      Donald is a one-man earthquake, and the media ants are running around in confusion.

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        Peter C

        Thamks Rereke, for both of your answers

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        Mari C

        Mark Twain (and probably others I can’t recall or haven’t read) had a lot to say on the reliability of the “news” – or lack thereof – and this was long before either world war. Imprecision and outright lying in the news has been a mainstay of the press – he who controls the news controls the minds of the masses. The worry about “fake” news comes about now because we were taught that journalism is fair, precise and verified. That the news as been fact-checked and verified according to standards.
        Now we find the standards are “I called Uncle Bob, he’s in agreement” or “Google has 23,000 more hits on -this- than it has on -that- so -this- must be true”

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      Mike

      Fake news, as i understand it, is the news that will probably get micro-accredited, somewhat akin to a tracking process analogous to being microchipped,……hmmmmmm…it’s a tough one…. for not being of sound anthropomorphic/anthropogenic quality so as to prevent it wandering around near high accredited and authorised sound news where it could possibly endanger itself or others and so on. [sarc]

      “House Passes Bill To “Microchip Citizens With ‘Mental Disabilities'” – Who’s Next?”
      http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-13/house-passes-bill-microchip-citizens-mental-disabilities-whos-next

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        Mike

        Just so that there is no mistake, here is an accredited news source not containing any traces of fake news I use it all the time…..

        “Accredited Times”
        “A World Leader In Accredited Journalism”

        http://www.accredited-times.com/

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        • #
          Mike

          Then there is the ever present danger that Real Data could be wiped from the anthropogenic records, likely being replaced with Fake Data, so that we will never see them again unless fresh ice cores are performed….Goodgrief…..It is getting harder to keep up with all the news in general….. 🙁

          The Washington Post reports “Scientists are frantically copying U.S. climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump”
          “Alarmed that decades of crucial climate measurements could vanish under a hostile Trump administration, scientists have begun a feverish attempt to copy reams of government data onto independent servers in hopes of safeguarding it from any political interference.
          https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/13/scientists-are-frantically-copying-u-s-climate-data-fearing-it-might-vanish-under-trump/

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            TdeF

            More likely hiding their fiddling, alarmed that decades of homogenization could be undone.

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            Rereke Whakaaro

            Well this implies to me, that the traditional media has never heard of the Methods and Practice of Disaster Recovery.

            Or if they have, they are purging their point-in-time images in order to hide the evidence get more storage space to better support the performance of their server farm.

            This extra space will be required, of course, to capture every facebook word and online tweet from the POTUS. So it is of critical importance to get this done, before he is officially sworn in.

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      Ruairi

      The public are learning to choose,
      Between M.S.M. fixed P.C. views,
      And those small budget channels,
      With their well-informed panels,
      As to which they consider Fake News.

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        Mike

        It is increasingly difficult to choose
        Exactly which ice cores to use
        All those millions of years
        Only increase the fear
        Going deeper will find the Real News.

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    David Maddison

    Question: Is it possible to distinguish by isotope analysis the origin of CO2 in the air due to either fossil fuel burning or volcanic emmissions?

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    Salome

    So the rate of glaciation slowed down. Isn’t that a sort of good thing?

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    macha

    Bored, boring, boresomemore…can’t wait for CO2 to fall off the radar. I live in hope….

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    • #
      • #
        AndyG55

        What someone really needs to do is take out an 18c against the ABC..

        They are TRULY OFFENSIVE.

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        Lewis P Buckingham

        The best way of getting rid of bad law is to have the random crucifixions generated by it show the law is stupid.

        The recent Qld case is almost a morality play, with the complainant losing heavily in court, her solicitor just avoiding having to pay all the costs.

        “Ms Prior’s lawyers raised several arguments to try to avoid a costs order, citing the public interest in section 18C, but Mr Wood’s barrister, Anthony Collins, said the racial vilification allegations she levelled were “of the highest level of seriousness”, lacked merit and involved an unreasonable pursuit. He told the court: “In a clinical and objective way, they could never have succeeded. There was an absence of scrutiny by Ms ­Moriarty.”

        Ms Moriarty’s barrister, Damien O’Brien QC, said it was a serious and wrong claim that Ms Moriarty had “thought up, crafted and brought the case” for an ­ulterior purpose, and she should be given the benefit of doubt.”

        The plaintiff is facing action in the bankruptcy court.
        http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/qut-case-cindy-prior-must-pay-students-200000plus/news-story/438d7814ebde35825a5c51e4c77e6902

        The moral of the story is two fold
        The end is not sufficient justification for the means.

        To stay free we need to hang onto the rule of law, enshrined in case law, based on natural justice.
        This action was a denial of natural justice for those complained against.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      If you make bad law, bad people will use it. … Just a random thought, whilst my tea cools.

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    RobbertBobbertGDQ

    Joanne and readers,
    Scientific America. March 1 2013 by William Ferguson… Ice Core Data Help Solve a Global Warming Mystery (Parrenin of Laboratory of Glaciology and Geophysical Environment in France)
    What Mystery we may ask?
    This article is just warmist bias from start to finish and conjures up more magic tricks and illusions than a Houdini performance.
    Until one commentator (mostly warmist acolytes) notes that Parennin actually still verifies Caillon (2003).The temp going first with CO2 following but with the lag reduced to 200 years. That was all.
    As for Antarctica, Fabian Dattner, from a well known Melbourne family, in cahoots with a Climate academic has organised a womens leadership and science event. This is taking place on a vessel taking them from Sth America to the Antarctic.
    It is called Homeward Bound and for all its spruiking Leadership and Science it seems to be a Luvvie front for Climate Scamming given that it has, as auxillary supporters, Figueras of UN Climate Nonsense and its Documentary auxillary supporter is listed as Fanny Armstrong from 10;10. She runs that mob which produced the vile fascist Splattergate films of kids disagreeing with Climate issues and their heads going splat.
    Joanne this voyage has not hit the media headlines as I expected but I am sceptical of its intent and wonder if you or any of the readers have come across it.
    Its funding informs that most of the near 80 odd participants paid but half of the 30 to 35 thousand USA Cost. Antarctica Cruise Vessel Ushuaia.
    But I cannot get a handle on the other funding for this Fabian Dattner Snow White Schoolies on Ice Antarctic Escapades Holiday Tour for Well Off Sciency Ladies.
    Any information. Any news.
    Regards and cheers to all.

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    Analitik

    According to some of the ice core specialists, more recent research shows that diffusion of the CO2 bubbles up through the ice pack until the ice builds up to be firm enough to lock the bubbles to a fixed depth and that this movement is enough to remove the 800 year lag between temperature rise and atmospheric CO2 concentration increase in the Vostock cores.

    https://epic.awi.de/32547/1/parrenin2013s_accepted_all.pdf

    I don’t know enough about the subject to be able to evaluate the modelling used but there do seem to be a fair number of assumptions made in update to provide the correlation between temperature and CO2 concentrations. Perhaps some others here can make better sense of it.

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      AndyG55

      Irrelevant.. The very nature of the graphs shows that the peak of CO2 was totally unable to maintain peak temperatures.

      If you draw a horizontal line through any part of the CO2 graph…. then 50% of the time at that level, temperature was warming and 50% of the time it was cooling.

      This PROVES CATEGORICALLY that CO2 has basically ZERO effect on temperature.

      If CO2 caused warming at any level, it would cause warming ALL the time at that level, not exactly half the time.

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      toorightmate

      If the assumptions fall a bit short, you simply modify the actual data to ensure it then fits the assumptions.
      a la homogenisation.
      Now where have I seen that practised before?

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      Mike

      It makes sense that snow undertakes a mind bogglingly slow compaction taking hundreds of years or perhaps even more than eight hundred years, and that during the process there is diffusion of trapped air between the not yet solid snow both up, down and across before the final solidification stage of the process.

      ‘people not wearing enough hats’.

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      TdeF

      So if the data does not fit the explanation, the data must be wrong.

      Any explanation will do as it must be the right explanation simply because it produces the results required.

      The same with CO2 producing warming, which it does not, there must be amplification from water vapour. Therefore amplification from water vapour is true. Too bad about the missing hot spot, but that part was simply wrong. No idea why.

      Finally even if CO2 increase and temperature increase were absolutely coincidental without any lag, CO2 increase must cause the temperature increase. The other explanation is clearly wrong because it does not blame industrialization in Western Democracies and require taxation and windmills.

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        Rereke Whakaaro

        That is known as, “Pre Hoc evaluation”.

        It is an incredible technique. It always comes up with an answer that is bankable.

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      David Maddison

      I can’t see how an entire bubble would diffuse upward in soiid ice, but no doubt the data will be altered to fit the desired result. I can see a bubble disappearing but not migrating.

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    observa

    I’ve just discovered the Holy Grail of climatology. 99.99% of Aunty employees believe in public broadcasting, so that settles it and eat your heart out John Cook and Co.

    20

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    Oliver K. Manuel

    If Donald Trump appoints former Texas Governor Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy, the Holy Grail for life on a planet one AU (astronomical unit) from a pulsar may actually be revealed.

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    Jim

    I am just amazed that we humans are arguing about CO2 levels and temperatures from 100,000 years ago and longer. Is anyone seriously expecting to live for 100,000 years, or even 1,000 years. We have to be concerned about Climate Change in the SHORT TERM, which means 50-100 years, during which period agriculture (= foundation of our food supplies) could collapse if a number of potentially disastrous events occur, e.g.
    (1) bees and other insects essential to plant pollination die off due to loss of local habitat, or toxic chemical emissions,.
    (2) change in rainfall patterns that could render current agricultural regions into arid zones or perhaps swamps (due to flooding from storms, or sea level rise)
    (3) a rogue nation like Pakistan provokes/initiates nuclear war that makes large areas of the Earth uninhabitable
    (4) and so on

    Get a grip on reality, folks !

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      Jim,

      Would you care to put a percentage assessment alongside each of those 3 scenarios you describe, of it occurring in the next, say fifty years?

      Would you also like to make an estimate of the cost in avoiding each scenario, and a second estimate of cost for responding and mitigating each scenario, should it eventuate?

      I don’t expect you to outline # 4

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    Svend Ferdinandsen

    I doubt they can say anything relevant for climate, because the resolution in time must be 100 of years. So they will not be able to see if there also at that time could be a few years with unprecedented warming and alarming warnings for the future.
    The exisisting of this old ice tells instead that we dont have to fear the Antarctic icecap to dissapear and much less to collapse anytime in the future.

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    Rereke Whakaaro

    As I understand it, the deeper you drill, the more the ice has been compressed, and the narrower the historic bands become. At some point, you get samples that are indistinguishable from those above and below. Is that correct?

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    This is classic Ant Div stuff. Funding science for national prestige reasons and nothing else. The “lock step” statement came from the project leader, Tas van Ommen. I predict the temperatures between 1 million years bp and 800,000 years bp will turn out to look very much like the temperatures between 800,000 years bp and 600,000 years bp, i.e. a strong 40,000 year cycle at the obliquity period. If I am wrong it will be a science success story – something new will have been discovered.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      Funding science for national prestige

      When I was a little Rereke, we used to use a tape measures to compare our amount of prestige.

      The big boys have more expensive ways of doing the same thing.

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      Lewis P Buckingham

      Yes and the ABC simply reported it.
      What struck me was that the comment was not.
      ‘We are looking for new information that will allow us to understand more fully the natural climate,
      of our planet’
      By saying that temperate was in ‘lock step ‘with CO2 the honest hearer would conclude that as the science was already known about climate, there was not much point in drilling more holes to confirm the settled science of CO2.

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    el gordo

    Graham Lloyd has gone over to the dark side at game’s end, bad move.

    ‘A human climate change “fingerprint” could be found in low rainfall in Tasmania and extreme heat across southern Australia in October last year, a global study has found.

    ‘Three Australian studies were included in a report released today by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.’

    The Oz

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      AndyG55

      What extreme heat ???

      https://s19.postimg.org/iuq4zl10z/Australia_1996_now.png

      There is absolutely ZERO CO2 signature in the real Australian temperatures.

      Yes, there is a “climate change™” agenda signature in BOM’s temperatures. 😉

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        Harry Twinotter

        AndyG55.

        Why does your chart start in 1998 instead of 1997. Annual figures instead of monthly figures?

        “There is absolutely ZERO CO2 signature in the real Australian temperatures.”

        Please explain that claim. Also show the chart for surface temperatures to see how it compares to the free-air temperatures.

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      AndyG55

      Conorville: BOM rainfall records close to Tasmania’s “hydro zone” that runs from 1924 to the present with only a few months missing – Here it is:

      http://s32.postimg.org/53iw89qf9/temp.png

      The low reservoir levels in 2006-2008 and 2015 correspond with unusually dry years, but there’s been no significant change in rainfall since 1924 (the red trend line is almost dead flat)

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        el gordo

        Lloyd picked the story up from the New York Times.

        “WASHINGTON — A new scientific report finds man-made climate change played some role in two dozen extreme weather events last year but not in a few other weird weather instances around the world.

        ‘An annual report released Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found climate change was a factor…’

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    Mike M.

    Check out essay @ Watts https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/16/climate-change-debate-latest-results/

    MORE from the “temperature can drive CO2” department … even in the short term apparently, use the derivative of CO2 against temperature.

    E.G. http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1958/mean:12/derivative/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1958

    Notice that although the rate of increase of CO2 is almost never zero, it increases dramatically for El Nino events, (ocean out gassing?). Obviously ~other~ factors are also influencing CO2 rate but temperature is a major one.

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    Edward sikk

    Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year Jo to you and all your supporters.

    [Thanks and to you too Edward. – Mod]

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