BOM homogenization errors are so big they can be seen from space

It’s just not cricket. And in so many ways.

Shame to let a perfectly good dataset go to waste… Australian data comes from some of the longest stations running in the Southern Hemisphere; it could be useful. Instead we get more evidence here that the BOM’s magical and secret homogenization adjustments can take poor data and spread false signals into better data. Homogenisation errors are already visible in a site-by-site analysis, but this shows the problems may be so big they affect averages across the whole of Australia, and we can detect them with satellites.

Tom Quirk continues comparing the satellite record of Australia with the BOM surface version. Previously, he (and for the record, Ken Stewart in 2015) showed that some discrepancies are due to the effect of heavy rain or drought. But now he looks further and finds that not-so-coincidentally, the largest gaps and most “inexplicable” differences occur in the mid nineteen-nineties, the same years the BoM shifted from using old large Stevenson screens to electronic thermometers. Around the same time, the large screens were often also swapped for much smaller ones too — like double jeopardy for data. Oddly, spookily, the BOM makes many adjustments to data during those same years that are vaguely referred to as “statistical” adjustments (rather than specifically called site moves or screen changes), and it is exactly these kinds of adjustments that are implicated here. (All together now with the cliche du jour: hullo lies, damned lies and “statistics”?)

The big clue comes from correlations – on a yearly average the two datasets look very similar, but it’s artificial — on a monthly scale a few key correlations fall apart.

You might think that changing instruments should be no big deal — the BoM just has to run both types of instrument side by side for a couple of years and analyze and adjust accordingly. But as we’ve heard before, they claim they do that, but they won’t publish it, and when skeptics like Bill Johnston ask, they admit they’ve deleted the data. Instead of using this simple, obvious approach, the BoM “corrects” the record by getting data from another statistically selected thermometer which may be hundreds of kilometers away and which may also have been changed/shifted/degraded/watered/cleared or had a ten-lane highway installed next door.Edit

Tom Quirk implies homogenization is a process that can be improved but I think it should be thrown away — we need to start from scratch. We need a proper historical, documentary analysis of each and every site first (and a full independent audit of the BoM). There is no point blending bad data with good. False signals are smeared across real data. Homogenization is vandalism.

If the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s work was a million-dollar scandal involving celebrities breaching international rules and hiding secrets down their pants, they’d be on every news talk show and problems would’ve been fixed ten years ago. Instead it’s a billion dollar scandal, international guidelines are blitzed, and meh.

Jo

h/t to both Tom and Barry C for the cricket scandal comparison.

————————————————————————————–

Guest Post by Tom Quirk

Comparison UAH and BOM temperatures and homogenization Part II

(Part I: Mystery solved: Rain means satellite and surface temps are different.)

Near-ground temperatures in Australia have been subject to a process called homogenization. This process adjusts temperatures at a given location to take into account nearby temperature measurements as preparation for area estimates of temperature. Fortunately the satellite measurements of the lower troposphere (UAH) provide an opportunity to audit the Australia-wide near surface measurements of the BOM. Figure 1 shows a comparison with a correlation coefficient of 83 +/- 5 % which is very respectable.

Graph, UAH, temperatures, Australia, BOM.

Figure 1: UAH and BOM Australian annual temperatures where the BOM anomalies have been normalized to the same mean value as that of the UAH measurements

However when the comparison is made on a monthly basis the correlation coefficient falls to 68 +/- 2 %. That detail is shown in Figure 2.

Graph, UAH, temperatures, Australia, BOM.

Figure 2: UAH – BOM Australian monthly temperature anomaly correlation for a 13 month sliding average correlation coefficient.


The range of values for the correlation coefficient is from a maximum of 91% to a minimum of -8%. Curiously, the loss of correlation occurs in the period 1995 to 1998 at the same time as the automatic weather stations were introduced.

This loss of correlation will be examined firstlyon a year by year basis and then on a month by month basis from 1979 to 2017.

12 monthly measurement correlations

The first test is to look at the 12 monthly measurement correlations year by year to see if any particular years stand out. Figure 3 shows extremes from a high correlation coefficient of 88% in 1999 to a low of 12% in 1996. The average 12 month correlation coefficient is 64% to be compared with the correlation coefficient of 83% for the 39 year annual time series.

Graph, UAH, temperatures, Australia, BOM.

Figure 3: 12 month correlation coefficients on a year by year basis. The correlation coefficient for the 39 year time series is 68%


The temperature anomalies for the two years with the lowest correlation coefficient, 1996 and 1997 are shown in Figure 4. There are very large temperature anomaly differences of between 1 and 2°C.

Graph, UAH, temperatures, Australia, BOM.

Figure 4: Temperature anomalies for the two years with the lowest correlation coefficient, 1996 and 1997

1979 to 2017 measurement correlations month by month
The second test is to look at the 39 year measurement correlations month by month to see if there are particular months where the two datasets diverge. This can be seen in Figure 5 Left and shows most months have a decent correlation coefficient above 70%, peaking at 88% in September. But things come apart in February and December when correlations fall to 40%. In the ten year periods of 2007 to 2017 and 1979 to 1989, the December correlation falls to -40% (Figure 5 Right).

 

Graph, UAH, temperatures, Australia, BOM.

Figure 5: Left 39 year measurement correlations month by month and Right correlations split for 1979 – 1988 and 2008 – 2017

 

Scatter plots of low-correlation months also show some significant differences (Figure 6). Note that there are quite different trend lines for December as shown in Figure 6 Right that reflect the positive and negative correlation coefficients in December shown in Figure 5 Right.

Graph, UAH, temperatures, Australia, BOM.

Figure 6: Scatter plots and trend lines for low correlation months.  Left February and March and Right December 1979 – 1988 and 2008 – 2017.


Source of low correlations from ACORN-SAT data

The Australia-wide temperature is constructed using ACORN-SAT temperatures. ACORN-SAT is the official dataset used to report on climate variability and change by the Australian government, CSIRO, and also university researchers.  Adjustments are made as step-changes, which are promulgated backwards in time. Temperature measurements are homogenised, that is to say, adjusted by reference to nearby temperature measurements.

The reasons for the temperature adjustments for the period 1979 to 2017 are listed below with the number of changes made for each class of adjustment. Note that there is no supporting observational evidence for the changes when they are described as “statistical” adjustments.

Adjustment

 

Statistical

 91

Move

 80

Merge

 52

Move/screen

  2

Screen

  2

Site env

  3

AWS

  2

Total

232

In addition there are seasonal adjustments in 65 of the 232 all-year adjustments:

Seasonal changes

Summer

Autumn

Winter

Spring

Dec Jan Feb

Mar Apr May

Jul Jun Aug

Sept Oct Nov

Total

20

11

14

20

Statistical

3

1

1

3

 

The years in which adjustments are made is shown in Figure 7. The period 1993 to 1998 shows a peaking in adjustments and this is the period when the UAH – BOM 12 monthly correlations are at a low…

Graph, UAH, temperatures, Australia, BOM.

Figure 7: Years in which adjustments are made and the type of adjustment.


The period 1993 to 1998 is when the automatic weather stations (AWS) replaced mercury and alcohol thermometers. Consequently sites were moved and time series merged.

This would explain the loss of correlation between lower troposphere and near surface temperatures.

The month in which adjustments are made is shown in Figure 8. The changes are made on the first of the month so the temperature adjustment appears in the previous month. So a 1st January change in 1995 is added to all preceding days, months and years starting at 31st December 1994.

Graph, UAH, temperatures, Australia, BOM.

Figure 8: Months in which adjustments are made and the type of adjustment.


The monthly distribution of adjustments explains the loss of correlation in December (Figure 5). Looking at the years when adjustments were made (Figure 7), there are no statistical adjustments for the period 2008 to 2017, and the correlation coefficient for December is similar to the earlier months (Figure 5 Right). But there are 58 statistical adjustments from 1989 to 2006, all of which will reduce the December correlation found for 1979 to 1988, and in that period there are a further 33 statistical adjustments and the correlation coefficient falls to -40% (Figure 5 Right). However the low correlation coefficient for February increases from February to July due to the interaction of rainfall with evaporative cooling lowering the surface temperatures over a period of months, and thus lowering the correlation coefficient for the UAH – BOM comparison.

The years in which seasonal changes are made is shown in Figure 9. There is a peaking of adjustments in the period 1993 to 1998 when the automatic weather stations (AWS) replaced mercury and alcohol thermometers.

Graph, UAH, temperatures, Australia, BOM.

Figure 9: Years in which seasonal adjustments are made and the seasons


This would add to the loss of correlation between lower troposphere and near surface temperatures.

Conclusion

There is a clear connection between the loss of correlation between UAH and BOM temperatures and increasing adjustments seen in the ACORN-SAT temperatures. The sources of the differences are likely to be due toinstrument changes and particularly statistically derived temperature step changes.

The analysis shows that the homogenization process applied to the construction of the Australia wide temperature is probably adding to the flaws in the datasets rather than correcting for them.

It would be useful to see whether improvements are possible by excluding statistically derived shifts and with a careful approach to step changes. Further a comparison with the USA 48 states near ground and troposphere temperatures might give rise to some further improvements.

BACKGROUND:

The BOM trend is higher than UAH but the difference is not significant (as seen in the last post on this topic last week)

BOM annual temperatures are averaged from 1979 to 2017 and normalized to UAH average, a -0.33 °C adjustment. The temperature increases are:

UAH   0.176 +/- 0.036 °C per 10 years

BOM   0.154 +/- 0.048 °C per 10 years

There is no significant difference in trends at 0.022 +/- 0.030 °C per 10 years.

It should not come as any surprise,
That Met. Offices homogenize,
To let data read high,
So that temps. will comply,
With what governments authorize.

–Ruairi

9.6 out of 10 based on 57 ratings

106 comments to BOM homogenization errors are so big they can be seen from space

  • #
    OriginalSteve

    The rallying cry for sceptics…

    ” Remember the Rutherglen homogenization….”

    130

    • #
      Roy Hogue

      And here I am thinking homogenized was something done to the milk I buy at the supermarket. How do you homogenize data anyway? What’s really happening is that they doctor up the real data that doesn’t say what they want it to say so that when they finish messing with it, it says what they do want it to say.

      I believe this is called prevarication or by it’s common name, lying.

      And yes, data can talk. It tells a story. Temperature records tell a story too and homogenized temperature data speaks loud and clear, only it’s not saying what they tell us it’s saying — it’s screaming at us,

      I’m a liar. Don’t believe me.

      130

      • #
        The Deplorable Vlad the Impaler

        I think the best way it was ever put was in the Star Trek episode, “I, Mudd”. The crew had been captured by some androids, who were ostensibly under the control of Harcourt Fenton Mudd.

        Once everyone figured out that even Mudd was not in ‘control’, they had to find a way to disrupt the androids’ CPU’s, and as they worked the plan, it came down to Mr. Spock telling the leader, “Everything I tell you is a lie.” The logical paradox ended up causing an infinite loop in the android, and the whole lot became dysfunctional.

        Unfortunately for us, the true believers do not believe that everything they’ve been told is a lie.

        80

        • #
          Roy Hogue

          I keep waiting for their CPU to self destruct but it doesn’t. What now? I think they’ve told themselves enough lies and certainly they believe everything we tell them is a lie.

          Maybe we can manage to infect them with Tribbles. That ought to put a stop to them with no trouble.

          But nuts! At the end Scotty sent all the Tribbles to the Klingons. 🙁

          40

        • #
          OriginalSteve

          When you believe your won delusion, you have a Pol Pot / Jim Jones scenario unfolding.

          When logic is replaced by a delusion, you have an unstable state of affairs.

          This is of course the reason the USA has the 2nd Amendment….but we dont.

          In fact, Oprah Winfrey recently held Australia up as a shining example for other Lefties to follow ( specifically Socialist-driven gun control ) …it made my blood run cold….it means were well on the way to being left wing road kill….but one thing I do know is the Elite will trial stuff on a small basis first, then roll it out globally.

          One of the downsides to being a global “minnow” is that were easily disposable….

          40

          • #
            Roy Hogue

            What if all the global minnows stood up at once and said, “No.”

            There is often more strength in large numbers of minnows than there is in being one big shark.

            Someday all the minnows will feel threatened at once and then, just maybe, they will flex their combined muscle and wham, the shark is retired; DOA.

            Californian’s are beginning to wake up to the sad state of their state and flex their muscle by leaving. If that continues the whole state will soon enough be one big homeless camp full of squatters trying to find a place to sleep between all the broken bottles and begging someone to come in and help them before they starve to death.

            At the same time along the coast, in Sacramento, San Francisco and a handful of others we have a bastion of those who, though they may once have had to work or face the possibility of hunger, have long ago left that life and no longer remember it or concern themselves with it. They seem to prefer patting themselves on the back at every kind of award ceremony you can imagine. John Wayne, Jimmy Stuart and many others could manage real humility. But not this crowd.

            I would like to see Barbara Streisand** or [your choice here] do an honest days work, just once in order to eat dinner that night. And if she can’t manage to do that, put a cork in her foolish mouth and stay silent. The wakeup call will someday reach her expensive, well hidden and guarded mansion overlooking the Pacific. And then how will she hide from it?

            The handwriting is finally on the wall for everyone to see. Let them see it or fall.

            Why not the same scenario for the rest of the world? Every dumbass idea, every dictator, every power broker needs a whole lot of willing supporters or they fail. I can only wait to see whether the fall comes before it’s too late or after and pray that it’s before.

            Our 3 year old grandson was here on Easter Sunday. I look at him now in fear for the world he may have left to him when all these Hollyweird/Malibu/Silicon Valley/Sacramento fools finish their madness. Let’s not even talk about the rest of the country.

            And yes, I am angry. I want justice for all the post WWII crimes of the careless, the hippies and their descendants, Democrat, Republican or any other stripe.

            10

            • #
              Roy Hogue

              ** Streisand was just the first name that came to mind. I would have a telephone directory full of names if I tried to list them all.

              They all got on my fighting side one by one, foolish act by foolish act over all the years since I graduated from high school in 1957. It builds up after a while.

              Ironically, my graduating class had a list of names suggested by members of the class to vote on and were foolish enough to name us, The Utopians. It’s been downhill in the world ever since.

              10

            • #
              Kinky Keith

              Hi Roy,

              It would be great if everyone just stood up and said No at the next election.

              Trouble is that we have a choice between dumb and dumber here in Australia and we have a lot in common with California.
              Australia seems lost politically and our politicians have as much social awareness as your example of Barbara Streisand.

              KK

              00

          • #
            Kinky Keith

            Steve,

            We have been brought to the present state of affairs by many years of manipulation and no guns were used.

            The media has replaced guns, people have been brainwashed and we are near total enslavement.

            Where are our leaders?

            00

      • #
        Rereke Whakkaro

        How do you homogenize data anyway?

        You don’t. Or you shouldn’t. The data you have observed and recorded is what it is. If you have doubts about the accuracy of the data you observed, you should throw it out and make a new observation, with more sensitive equipment. This is taught in the first semester of the first year of all physics and engineering courses that I am aware of.

        Homogenizing white paint with black paint will give you a shade of grey. That works just fine for the Arts Faculty, but it doesn’t work with Science and Engineering.

        This tells me that Climate Change, as a notion, has nothing to do with science, but has a lot to do with creative story telling.

        180

    • #
      Leonard Lane

      What a shame. With discarded data (or hidden) and all these other problems it looks as if the entire data sets and truth will never be available. Imagine, a century of data gone over an entire continent. It is saddening to think of this.

      130

  • #
    Mark M

    Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736) was the German physicist who invented the alcohol thermometer in 1709, and the mercury thermometer in 1714.

    Since then the thermometer has developed and evolved.

    Now, we are to ‘believe’ the the people involved couldn’t discern the difference of putting a thermometer in the shade, thus …

    “Temperature data prior to 1910 should be used with extreme caution as many stations, prior to that date, were exposed in non-standard shelters, some of which give readings which are several degrees warmer or cooler than those measured according to post-1910 standards.”
    http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/cdo/about/about-airtemp-data.shtml

    If it wasn’t for double standards, the BoM wouldn’t have any standards at all …

    “It looks like we had an instrument fault with with our automatic weather station at the Alice Springs Airport.

    We do have other thermometers on site.

    We have some mercury and glass thermometers that did not show that spike to 46C.

    They showed the maximum temperature yesterday to be only 41.5C.”

    Jan 2015, BoM withdraws advice Alice Springs recorded its hottest day ever, blames faulty thermometer

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-21/bom-withdraws-alice-springs-hottest-day-record-advice/6030090

    240

    • #
      el gordo

      This from Watkin Tench, Port Jackson 1788.

      “The thermometer, whence my observations were constantly made, was hung in the open air, in a southern aspect, never reached by the rays of the sun, at the distance of several feet above the ground.”

      210

  • #
    Dennis

    Broken or Manipulated

    72

  • #

    If, on a still, clear night, you walk along a track with forest on one side and paddock on the other you will pass through different temperature zones. It’s a sudden and palpable effect, like when swimming in open sea.

    If the paddock regrows, if the forest is thinned, if the track has its dips filled, if you change your measurement device, if you don’t change your measurement device as it ages, if the council makes a clearance for power lines and thus changes wind patterns, if someone starts parking a car or stops parking a car in the same place etc etc…minimum temps change in that spot where you have your measurement device. If you do nothing but move your measuring device a few metres, same deal. A few metres is all it takes for some siteings.

    And let’s say you have a year where the cloud doesn’t want to go away, and everything is more humid. Lower maxima and higher minima result. But how do you compare those readings to min/max measured (and even averaged!) during long periods of clear skies? Your apples may be the same size as your oranges, but nobody walks into a shop and buys same-size “fruits”. Everybody buys apples if they want apples, oranges if they want oranges. Your clear sky temps are unrelated to your cloudy sky temps. Your windy day temps are unrelated to your still day temps.

    Does this mean that temp statistics, like all other statistics, are born corrupted and are thus useless unless interpreted with caution, skepticism and prudence? Yes. Yes, it does meant that.

    Add that temps can only trend two ways so that some warming or cooling over time is to be expected, just as in a sluggish two-horse race one does not expect both nags to stay aligned. Is it not fair to suggest that proof of warming, whether local or global, UAH or BoM, is trivial even when not tenuous? What else do we expect temps to do except trend up or down? Stay the same for our comfort? Tap dance for our entertainment?

    250

    • #
      Graeme No.3

      mosomoso:

      One of the problems with Climatology is that the only historical records were not what is needed, so they have made a fetish of min. & max. daily temperatures, which as you point out are useless for trend analysis, but used by Climatologists determined to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
      The second problem is the adoption of “the consensus” and so any data that doesn’t conform MUST be “homogenized” to agree.
      As for Sir Charles Todd I think he would be a shock to the prevailing system at the BoM. Well known as a stickler for accuracy and doing things right.
      Thermograph, thermometer, calibration, certificates, Adelaide,
      1858 http://guides.naa.gov.au/records-about-south-australia/chapter15/15.2.aspx

      170

      • #
        Graeme No.3

        In 1887, Todd set up what must be one of the longest-running scientific experiments ever, when he installed thermometers in a Stevenson Screen and on a Glaisher Stand at Adelaide Observatory (as seen in the illustration here). Observations were taken in both exposures until 1948.
        The results of this 61-year experiment show that summer daytime temperatures measured using the Glaisher Stand are, on average, 1C warmer than in the Stevenson Screen. And this was at a well-maintained station

        170

  • #
    pat

    what does BoM know?

    2 Apr: BrisbaneTimes: Iris has formed into a tropical cyclone again off the Queensland coast
    By Jorge Branco
    (Jorge Branco is a crime reporter at the Brisbane Times)
    Its predicted path was uncertain but it was not expected to cross the coast…

    Initial advice from the Bureau of Meteorology rated the system only a medium chance of intensifying into a cyclone on Monday, with the likelihood increasing on Tuesday to higher than 50 per cent.

    “She has shown some pretty significant signs of development in the last 24 hours,” senior forecaster Diana Eadie told ABC Radio Brisbane.
    “We have increased the tropical cyclone likelihood from low to moderate for today, and to high on Tuesday.”…

    In the meantime, communities from Innisfail to Proserpine have been warned to brace for wind gusts of more than 100km/h and 24-hour rainfall of as much as 200-300 millimetres…
    https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/iris-has-formed-into-a-tropical-cyclone-again-off-the-queensland-coast-20180402-p4z7cz.html

    ***bringing? how about “might bring”…then we can argue if more rain means “misery” for all who might be affected:

    2 Apr: 9News: Reformed Cyclone Iris ***bringing more misery to sodden towns
    by Luke Cooper
    Cyclone Iris has reformed off the Queensland northern coast and already sodden communities are bracing for further downpours and damaging winds…

    “We are continuing to monitor this on a daily basis and I know that there’s a lot of concerns from families down on the Gold Coast, we do expect the (Commonwealth) Games to continue as normal… but Queensland is a big state and I’m absolutely committed to the safety of all Queenslanders no matter where they live.
    “Whilst we might be experiencing Queensland’s biggest event down in the southeast on the Gold Coast, we are not going to forget those families that live up and down our coast.”

    The BoM has also issued a severe weather warning for people living in northern and central Queensland…
    https://www.9news.com.au/national/2018/04/02/07/56/ex-tropical-cyclone-iris-moving-towards-queensland-coast-wild-weather-expected

    71

    • #
      glen Michel

      People should harden up a bit.I keep hearing in the media how tough and enduring Queenslanders are but we see endless whingeing about the inconvenience of it all – the rain never stops.This is what the tropics ARE about; just how long you live in such climes. I swear we are getting dumber and softer.

      101

    • #
      Another Ian

      Pat

      Recycled but

      “what does BoM know?”

      “You think the BOM knows f nothing. Actually the BOM knows f all”

      71

  • #
    WXcycles

    Thim to play spot the cyclone again.

    QLD time at writing is 1:55 PM

    BOM claims this is a category-1 tropical cyclone.

    http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR731.loop.shtml#skip

    Note the:

    1. Lack of any central dense overcast’s storm build up.

    2. Lack of a closed cirfulation

    3. Lack of any eye wall structure

    4. Lack of any donut of rapidly spinning wind

    5. Unimpressive feeder band development

    6. Poor symmetry

    7. Poor organisation

    8. The nearest BOM sensor is ~20 km almost due south of the rotation centre, and reads just 67 km/h.

    Most of all, notice the lack of any tropical cyclone.

    67 km/h … I can actually ride a pushbike about.that fast.

    Danger Will Robinson!

    ABC’s Hysteria-Button has been pressed!

    222

    • #
      beowulf

      Along with the new Cat 6, the BOM obviously has a new Cat 0.25 cyclone, formerly known as a “rainy day”.

      212

      • #
        OriginalSteve

        Cat 6 is only good to 1 Gb …..after that you should use fibre…. 🙂

        111

      • #
        WXcycles

        BOM are so dishonest that they’ve simply abolushed the low-end graduated classification of tropical weather systems.

        Back in the olden-days when BOM actually had some credibility as professional observers, reporters and tropical forecasters there were:

        Tropical Lows (cloudy low Pressure area wings <60 km/h)

        Tropical Storms (rotating storm winds 125 km/h <150km/hr )

        WINDS … not the GUSTS, which can be up to 40% higher.

        But in the 'informed' enlightened-hysteria-era, BOM now just does away with the first two classifications (much to messy and factual) and just calls anything with a bit of a sort of swirl a Cat-1 Tropcal cyclone!

        Simples!

        Thus BOM manufactured FAKE Cat-1 (and Cat-2) 'cyclones'.

        Then via ABC they, "feed the chooks", with the 'two
        -minutes of hysteria' every hour, on the hour.

        _______________________________

        " The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf"

        The fable

        The tale concerns a shepherd boy who repeatedly tricks nearby villagers into thinking wolves are attacking his flock. When a wolf actually does appear and the boy again calls for help, the villagers believe that it is another false alarm and the sheep are eaten by the wolf. In later English-language poetic versions of the fable, the wolf also eats the boy. This happens in Fables for Five Year Olds (1830) by John Hookham Frere,[4] in William Ellery Leonard's Aesop & Hyssop (1912),[5] and in his interpretation of Aesop's Fables (1965) by Louis Untermeyer.[6]

        The moral stated at the end of the Greek version is, "this shows how liars are rewarded: even if they tell the truth, no one believes them". It echoes a statement attributed to Aristotle by Diogenes Laërtius in his The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, in which the sage was asked what those who tell lies gain by it and he answered "that when they speak truth they are not believed".[7] William Caxton similarly closes his version with the remark that "men bileve not lyghtly hym whiche is knowen for a lyer".[8]

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

        142

        • #
          WXcycles

          Drafting error, that should have posted as:

          Tropical Lows (cloudy low pressure area winds <60 km/h)

          Tropical Storms (rotating storm with winds 125km/h 150 km/h 90 km/h, and Cat-2 slipped down 25km/h to just 125 km/h.

          BOM embodies the very definition of the dishonest practice of continually “moving the goal posts”.

          92

          • #
            WXcycles

            It did it again, geez.

            Jo, or mod, the site filter is chopping up the text I submitted and cutting out part of it, so that what is posted is missing several lines. Suspect it is greater than and less than signs doing it, will try again with a space after them.

            ________

            Drafting error, that should have posted as:

            Tropical Lows (cloudy low pressure area winds < 60 km/h)

            Tropical Storms (rotating storm with winds 125km/h 150 km/h 90 km/h, and Cat 2 slipped down 25km/h to just > 125 km/h.

            BOM embodies the very definition of the dishonest practice of continually “moving the goal posts”.

            41

            • #
              WXcycles

              Nope, still didn’t work.

              20

              • #
                WXcycles

                The inability to edit posts is bad enough, but the inability to post what you wrote, and instead have something you didn’t write posted instead, is a real innovation.

                30

              • #
                Another Ian

                Jo FYI

                SDA has just moved over to WordPress (don’t know which version but it doesn’t seem to have the background skim of other WP sites) with some editing within a time limit

                20

      • #
        • #
          WXcycles

          ROFLMAO!

          Hilarious, but the BOM Cat 1 should have been a very small kitten taking its first playful swipe at a ball of wool.

          What a farce this is, there’s simply NO CYCLONE here, have a look (10:10 AM at time of writing):

          http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR732.loop.shtml

          http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR731.loop.shtml#skip

          And BOM has actually UPGRADED this non-existent cyclone to Cat 2. Can you believe that rubbish? Blind Freddie could plainly see it has weakened during the past 19 hours, since I first posted on this latest BOM farce.

          Look at the current track map, Cat 2 (!) :

          http://www.bom.gov.au/fwo/IDQ65001.png?1522705434255

          Can you believe that? Well get a load of the current warning text baloney:
          _______
          TOP PRIORITY FOR IMMEDIATE BROADCAST
          TROPICAL CYCLONE ADVICE NUMBER 3

          Issued at 7:42 am EST on Tuesday 3 April 2018
          Headline:

          Tropical cyclone warning is current for parts of the Lower Burdekin, Central Coast & Whitsunday Islands and adjacent inland areas.

          Areas Affected:

          Warning Zone

          Ayr to Sarina, including Mackay and the Whitsunday Islands, and adjacent inland areas.

          Watch Zone Sarina to St Lawrence.

          Cancelled Zone None.

          Details of Tropical Cyclone Iris at 7:00 am AEST:

          Intensity: Category 2, sustained winds near the centre of 100 kilometres per hour with wind gusts to 140 kilometres per hour.

          Location: within 55 kilometres of 17.5 degrees South 148.8 degrees East, estimated to be 290 kilometres northeast of Townsville and 405 kilometres north of Mackay.

          Movement: slow moving.

          Tropical cyclone Iris has continued to intensify while moving southward overnight and is currently a category 2 cyclone.

          Tropical cyclone Iris is expected to continue moving slowly to the south through most of today while continuing to intensify, …
          _____________

          Now look at the Townsville Radar loop again, does any of that BOM text gell, or otherwise make any sense based on observations?

          Only if you’re not trying to forecast the weather—then it makes perfect sense.

          The rotten corrupt incompetant deceitful tax-payer funded Weather Agency, who kept on crying wolf, even when everyone could plainly see they’re lying.

          Ministry of Truth approved ‘reality’ … is now our reality, facts be damned.

          “… How many cyclones am I holding up? …” – 1984, George Orwell.

          I saw it on the televiewer, so it must be terwew. And if it isn’t BOM can just rewrite history.

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          • #
            OriginalSteve

            The BOM seem to be “emotive-izing” everything…..

            I also noticed the Victoriastan Politburo seemed to starting to create / develop an emotive response to storms etc.

            Witness the nonsense recently of getting Melbourne basically emptied when a strong storm came along….promoting the victim culture which the Left loves so much…but worse, its training people to react emotively, rather than logically, to weather. Pavlov would be proud. Instead of people volunteering to fill sand bags and battle the storm, people are being trained to cower under beds….

            Go back to the 1950s and people would say we are a soft bunch of easily led fools….

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          • #
            glen Michel

            Looks like “Iris” is discarding herself on the S.e quadrant.Not yer classic cyclone by my reckoning;cant see an eye as such.Heading SW at the moment-or is that south?

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            • #
              WXcycles

              Slow ESE far as I can tell.

              It’s more of a deep NNW to SSE oriented trough, than a rotation around a centralised low. Definitely not a cyclone, and definitely not Cat 2 like, either. Just a disorderly tropical storm, that’s too low symmetry to get its act together.

              That could change near Whitsundays, but the models have been in very poor agreement, but beginning to converge on dissolution on Thursday evening with a residual low tracking toward Charters Towers area on Saturday.

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    • #
      Peter C

      WXcycles,

      You have gone Off Topic here.

      I was going to respond in kind, but I thought I should do some fact checking first;

      1. BOM Definition of Cyclone:

      A tropical cyclone is defined as a non-frontal low pressure system of synoptic scale developing over warm waters having organised convection and a maximum mean wind speed of 34 knots or greater extending more than half-way around near the centre and persisting for at least six hours.

      http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/faq/index.shtml#definitions

      2. Observation from the BOM recording station at Flinders Reef (near the cyclone centre) shows sustained wind speeds of more than 34kts for more than six hours.
      http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDQ60801/IDQ60801.94290.shtml

      So BOM has, on this occasion, risen to their own definition of Tropical Cyclone (with confirmed observations).

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      • #
        WXcycles

        Peter, BOM definitions come under the category of moving the goal posts, tommorow yes = no, and bananas will be universally pink.

        But nothing changes the FACT that there is NO Cat 1, nor Cat 2 Tropical Cyclone within this radar image (at 10:30 AM on 3rd Apri 2018).

        http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR732.loop.shtml

        No Cyclone.

        Telling me about quibling BOM definitions (excuses), sorta gets trumped by the total lack of a tropical cyclone, of ANY defined category.

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    • #
      Graham Richards

      The ABC in it’s determination to have a cyclone comes ashore on the Queensland east coast appear to have created a new, more aggressive categorie of cyclones. This morning their weatherman, in his enthusiasm for having the second of the forecast 9 / 11 cyclones come ashore,
      was doing his best to talk up the low pressure system lurking off the coast, into a cyclone.
      He quite clearly stated that it would come ashore as an “extreme” category 3. As it still can’t be classified as a cyclone I guess he took upon himself to get categorically as high as possible without looking more stupid & devious.
      Will all categories henceforth be further divided into mild, strong & extreme. We can then have 15 categories instead of 5 with which to “terrify” the regional communities.
      You can’t make it up……..but the ABC can.

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  • #
    Ted O'Brien.

    Not today’s topic, but here are some data.

    I have always believed that usage of electric vehicles will depend on the cost of the batteries.

    Here are the prices for a Polaris Ranger 2 seater utility vehicle in three models.

    Petrol powered 570cc EFI motor………………US$ 9,999

    EV electric, I think lead/acid battery……..US$ 11,299

    EV Lithium Ion………………………………………US$ 22,999

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    • #
      Dennis

      Cost of batteries one important factor, time required to fully recharge and battery life and replacement cost too.

      And, how would governments replace fuel taxes if EV became the fleet standard? Add an energy charge of course.

      Apparently the now game changer argument is for super chargers, requiring an average of two family homes energy to recharge the EV. So electricity grids could not cope with an EV fleet as they are now.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        And batteries hate the cold…now imagine in places like Canada…..or Europe…..they are dreaming….

        Imagine pulling a road train in NT or QLD…hopping from wind farm to wind farm to refuel….

        Its beyond stupid…..it can only be a religious push….as I’ve said before, this is a religious war. On one side, we have the normal population [snip], on the other the human hating Occultists who are pushing the anti-human green nightmare.

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    • #
      robert rosicka

      Just as well farming is a 9 – 5 job eh .

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    pat

    1 Apr: Newsroom New Zealand: Are we soaking up more CO2 than we think?
    by Baz Macdonald
    (Baz Macdonald is completing a masters in journalism at Massey University in Wellington)
    Satellites watching over New Zealand might show our forests are soaking up more CO2 than estimated – and leave us better off under international climate change commitments…
    A new technique developed by NIWA carbon cycle scientist, Dr Sara Mikaloff-Fletcher, uses satellite sensors to look at where greenhouse gases are being emitted.
    Her work is in back-trajectory analysis. This is a new process in which she identifies ‘clouds’ of greenhouse gases using earth observation satellites and tracks them back to their source, as well as following their dispersal course after identification. Her colleague at NIWA, atmospheric scientist Dave Pollard, describes the process as “a weather forecast in reverse” – instead of using data to predict where the cloud is going, it predicts where it has come from.

    Through this study Mikaloff-Fletcher discovered a larger than anticipated carbon sink in Fiordland National Park. These findings could have massive consequences for our carbon calculations, as it was thought at NIWA that NZ’s mature indigenous forests were carbon neutral – with the trees drawing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as they grow, and then when they die, decomposing and giving it back.
    “But, this latest research suggests that we don’t understand that properly,” Pollard said. “Perhaps there is a process which could allow us to take more carbon dioxide in, than is let out.” …

    This is the third in a series by Newsroom contributor Baz MacDonald looking at how satellites and their big deluges of data are helping New Zealand industries and the economy. The first two are here and here.
    https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2018/04/01/100366/how-satellites-help-us-understand-climate-change

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  • #
    Robber

    The Paris Agreement’s aim is to keep the global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius. However what is the agreed pre-industrial temperature that somehow is the “utopian” global temperature? By various accounts we are somewhere around 1 degree above that undefined starting point. But given that action is demanded because 1.5-2.0 degree rise is considered catastrophic, shouldn’t we already be seeing the disastrous impacts as we are two thirds of the way to a 1.5 degree increase? Yet all the evidence suggests that the world is supporting far more people and the present climate is allowing far greater crop yields than in pre-industrial times. Is there some magical “tipping point” with just another 0.5 degree rise?

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  • #
    tom0mason

    Homogenization what is it for?

    OK lets try homogenization on, say, a photo image of all of Australia.

    Measure —
    1. You have 1000s of calibrated cameras set up all over Australia.
    2. You sample the cameras at second intervals.

    Adjust —
    3. To get a ‘true’ picture of Australia you adjust the resulting images to have the ‘required’ color hue and brightness.

    Homogenize —
    4. You pick at an arbitrary but nearly consistent time to sample each site’s image, adjust the images to an ‘average’ view by blurring the images (by a variable amount — site specific), and assemble to get an overall composite montage of what Australia looks like. During this processes infilling lost images with averages from neighboring images, or inserting radically adjusted images for images from sites that have moved (or changed significantly).

    Adjust the history —
    5. You keep changing the adjustment (to brightness, color and amount of averaging blur) on historical images to match a ‘consensus perception’ of what the historical image should be.

    Announce the findings —

    Now you can go the media and say that you ‘know’ the brightest, darkest, reddest, brownest, or greenest places in Australia and how it’s changed with history. Now you boast that you can, apparently, statistically resolve the finest details of any part of the montage image of Australia. And now you say you can show how it’s changed historically over time.

    Questions —

    But really? Can you possibly rely on such a composite image to actually tell you anything about Australia, can you really glean more information about this vast continent than what the raw information at any one location can tell you?

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    robert rosicka

    If it has to be adjusted , altered , homogenised, modelled, tampered with or fiddled in any way it’s not data anymore that’s fit for measuring anything or comparing anything other than garbage .

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    pat

    “study looked at 122 developing and least-developed countries, mostly in Asia, Africa and South America” and found “Wetter conditions are expected to have the biggest impact in South and East Asia” plus “areas worst affected by droughts are expected to be southern Africa and South America”!
    ***note the geniuses that came up with this rubbish:

    1 Apr: Phys.org: Uni of Exeter: Climate change could raise food insecurity risk
    Weather extremes caused by climate change could raise the risk of food shortages in many countries, new research suggests
    The study, led by the University of Exeter, examined how climate change could affect the vulnerability of different countries to food insecurity – when people lack access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.
    Scientists looked at the difference between global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C (compared to pre-industrial levels) and found that – despite increased vulnerability to food insecurity in both scenarios – the effects would be worse for most countries at 2°C.

    The study looked at 122 developing and least-developed countries, mostly in Asia, Africa and South America.
    “Climate change is expected to lead to more extremes of both heavy rainfall and drought, with different effects in different parts of the world,” said Professor Richard Betts, Chair in Climate Impacts at the University of Exeter.
    “Such weather extremes can increase vulnerability to food insecurity.
    “Some change is already unavoidable, but if global warming is limited to 1.5°C, this vulnerability is projected to remain smaller than at 2°C in approximately 76% of developing countries.”
    Warming is expected to lead to wetter conditions on average – with floods putting food production at risk – but agriculture could also be harmed by more frequent and prolonged droughts in some areas…

    Wetter conditions are expected to have the biggest impact in South and East Asia, with the most extreme projections suggesting the flow of the River Ganges could more than double at 2°C global warming.
    The areas worst affected by droughts are expected to be southern Africa and South America – where flows in the Amazon are projected to decline by up to 25%.

    ***The team included researchers from the Met Office, the European Commission, the Technical University of Crete, Cranfield University and the Rossby Centre in Sweden.
    The paper, published in a special issue of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, is entitled: “Changes in climate extremes, fresh water availability and vulnerability to food insecurity projected at 1.5°C and 2°C global warming with a higher-resolution global climate model.” (LINK)
    https://phys.org/news/2018-04-climate-food-insecurity.html

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  • #
    pat

    this is hilarious:

    2 Apr: Plymouth Herald: Met Office weather warning downgraded for Plymouth
    The bad weather will now be over by noon, rather than 4pm
    Forecasters initially placed the city under a yellow weather warning until 4pm on Easter Monday, but now suggest the band of torrential rain will have passed by noon.
    The agency is still warning of a chance of travel delays or cancellations to train and bus services, and a risk of flooding to some homes and businesses.

    However, contrary to last night’s downpours, there is now only a 10 per cent chance of rain in Plymouth for the rest of the day – increasing to 70 per cent at 9pm.
    Easter Monday will start cloudy with outbreaks of rain. Skies will brighten at times during the day, although further showers are also likely. It will be breezy, although it will become rather warm in any sunshine.
    It’s likely to feel like eight degrees Celsius for most of the day with south westerly winds…

    There will still be a few showers around on Tuesday, especially in the morning. However, plenty of sunshine is also expected, and it will feel rather warm at times…

    Met Office advice for wet weather driving
    •Even moderate rain can reduce your ability to see and be seen. A good rule of thumb is ‘if it’s time for your wipers, it’s time to slow down’.
    •If heavy downpours are expected, avoid starting your journey until it clears.
    •If you can, choose main roads, where you are less likely to be exposed to fallen branches and debris and flooding.
    •Use dipped headlights if visibility is seriously reduced.
    •Gusts of wind can unsettle vehicles – grip your steering wheel firmly with both hands. This is particularly important when planning to overtake.
    •Keep an eye out for gaps between trees, buildings or bridges over a river or railway – these are some of the places you are more likely to be exposed to side winds. Ensure that you maintain enough room either side of your vehicle so you can account for it being blown sideways.
    •Roads will be more slippery than usual in wet weather – be sure to give yourself more time to react when approaching a hazard. Increase your following gap to at least four seconds from the moving traffic in front.
    •Keep your eyes peeled on the road at all times as spray from other vehicles can suddenly reduce your visibility. Remember it affects others too, so anticipate their actions and be prepared.
    https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/met-office-weather-warning-downgraded-1408671

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    • #
      Rereke Whakkaro

      However, contrary to last night’s downpours, there is now only a 10 per cent chance of rain in Plymouth for the rest of the day – increasing to 70 per cent at 9pm.
      Easter Monday will start cloudy with outbreaks of rain. Skies will brighten at times …

      The Plymouth Herald reports that there is going to be weather tomorrow, with a likelihood of fluctuating weather for the rest of the week, and possibly the week after.

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  • #
    pat

    even funnier. posted this on an earlier thread, but it’s such a classic, am posting it again for those who missed it. who writes this stuff?

    29 Mar: UK Met Office Press Release: March statistics may challenge your perception
    After two significant and impactful periods of snow, you might expect March 2018 to be the coldest on record.

    However, early indications are that this will not be the case. Mean temperatures for the month so far (to 28th) have been well below average in all areas, typically by nearly 2 °C. However, this is around 1½ °C less cold than the notable March of 2013, which was the coldest March since 1962. Perhaps surprisingly, March 2018 will not rank within the coldest ten Marches since 1910. However, it could end up being the third coldest March in the last 30 years.

    The month began with unseasonably cold air of Siberian origin covering the UK, and this became known in the media as “the Beast from the East”. This led to the first episode of notable weather on the 1st and 2nd with significant falls of powdery snow, compounded by freezing rain. These two days were both bitterly cold, with a strong easterly wind, and temperatures across many parts of the UK failed to rise above freezing. The daily maximum temperature on 1st March 2018 at Tredegar (Blaenau Gwent) was only -4.7 °C; the lowest March daily maximum temperature on record for the UK, and the ‘feels like’ temperature was widely around -10 °C.

    Conditions on the Scottish mountain summits were unusually severe with an air temperature on Cairngorm summit of -10 to -14 °C combined with wind speed of over 46mph resulting in a ‘feels like’ temperature approaching -30 °C – around the lowest for at least 25 years. After that, temperatures gradually returned nearer to normal for a time and many of us had a good deal of sunshine. However, temperatures fell again in the middle of the month, leading to the second significant bout of snow on the 18th/19th. Some areas finally began to feel more spring-like around 22nd-26th, though the last few days of the month look like being colder than average with a return of easterly winds.

    Although the average and minimum temperatures were not exceptional, maximum temperatures in the first couple of days of the month were very unusual, with negative figures being recorded widely. In practice, what this meant was that air temperatures in large parts of the country stayed below zero for more than 48 hours. Problems with burst water pipes may have been caused by the unusual longevity of the freezing temperatures. The map below shows how much below normal maximum temperatures were than normal in different parts of the country…

    Complete March weather statistics will be published early in April…
    https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/2018/march-statistics

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    • #
      pat

      should have mentioned the Met Office press release includes maps, data.

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      • #
        el gordo

        Look at this Pat, the NAO went negative in early March.

        http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/nao_index.html

        The NAO is linked to the sun.

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        • #
          pat

          el gordo –

          even I seem to get that picture. thanks.

          a solar panel salesman, originally from Brooklyn, turned up the other day and we had a good chat about the CAGW scam. he seemed to know pretty much everything discussed on jo’s website. he said his relatives are begging him to send them some global warming.

          1 Apr: CBC: 11 Sask. communities snap decades-old cold weather records
          Previous cold weather records for Moose Jaw and Prince Albert were set in the 1890s
          Several Saskatchewan communities set new record lows over the Easter long weekend, with Moose Jaw and Prince Albert breaking weather records set in the 1890s.
          On Friday, Meadow Lake, Melfort, Nipawin, Prince Albert, Watrous East and Wynyard set new cold weather temperatures.

          Prince Albert set its lowest record cold, at -33.1 C, breaking a record set of -32.8 C in 1890.
          On Saturday, Assiniboia, Kindersley, Moose Jaw, Rosetown and Weyburn broke former records as well, with temperatures hovering around the -20 C range.
          Moose Jaw also broke a more than century-old record, set in 1899. The temperature at that time was recorded at -22.2 C, while the new record is set at -23.1 C.

          No quick end in sight
          Amanda Prysizney, a decision support meteorologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada, had said on Friday that temperatures across most of Saskatchewan are between about 10 and 15 degrees below normal for this time of year…
          http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/cold-weather-easter-weekend-saskatchewan-1.4601589

          1 Apr: CTV: McKenna has ‘no time’ for climate change deniers
          OTTAWA – Federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna says she has “no time” for political adversaries who don’t believe climate change is real.
          During an interview with CTV Question Period host Evan Solomon, McKenna smacked down critics of the Liberals’ climate change plan and price on carbon.
          “I have no time for folks who are like, you know, ‘We shouldn’t take action,'” she said. “I don’t have time for politicians that play cynical games about climate action.”…

          “I have time for Canadians who disagree with me, and I have conversations with them all the time…. But I don’t have time for politicians that pretend that climate change isn’t real.”
          Saskatchewan is strongly opposed to the federal carbon tax, and both Alberta United Conservative Leader Jason Kenney and Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford have said they’d rail against it if they become premier of their respective provinces.

          McKenna said she isn’t worried about potential legal challenges to the federal government’s imposition of a per tonne price on pollution should some provinces not put in place their own system by Jan. 1, 2019.
          “They’ll lose in court,” she said, asserting that it is within the federal jurisdiction to implement a carbon pricing system.
          https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/mckenna-has-no-time-for-climate-change-deniers-1.3865161

          31 Mar: CBC: Carbon pricing would address gaps in Sask. climate change strategy, says Uni of Regina economist
          The province’s carbon change strategy, which was unveiled last December and did not include a carbon tax, looks at only half the province’s sources of emissions and there are still gaps that could be addressed with more regulations, said the U of R’s Brett Dolter.
          “But probably the easiest thing would be if we just put a carbon price in place and filled in those gaps with a carbon price,” he told CBC Radio’s The Morning Edition…

          The Saskatchewan government has stood firm in its refusal to implement carbon pricing…
          The province has committed to taking the federal government to court over its carbon tax, saying such a tax would cost the province $4 billion over five years…

          But Dolter said that is “misleading,” as revenue from a carbon tax would stay in the province and could be redistributed. That redistribution could go to low-income or rural households, or Indigenous communities, Dolter said…
          Dolter acknowledged that carbon pricing can hurt a province on the international market but said more and more, jurisdictions from Europe to China are moving to carbon markets and pricing…

          Steady price increases to carbon can act as a deterrent to consumption and can help reduce emissions relative to what they would otherwise be, he said.
          “You need that price to keep rising over time to keep that signal in place, so that they start to switch the curve to decreasing.”
          http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/carbon-pricing-economy-saskatchewan-climate-change-report-1.4600908

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    pat

    reminder:

    5 Mar: Telegraph: Met Office chief executive sacked amid questions over ‘governance and management’
    By Robert Mendick, Chief Reporter
    The Met Office has been plunged into crisis after its chief executive was sacked over problems with “governance and management controls” at the £170 million a year public body.
    Rob Varley was ordered to resign from his £160,000 post by the most senior civil servant at the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), which oversees the national weather service.
    Mr Varley, who had worked at the Met Office for 34 years beginning as a trainee forecaster in 1983, agreed to step aside.

    It comes at a pivotal time for the Met Office, which lost the contract to provide forecasting services for the BBC to its rival MeteoGroup. It will stop providing forecasts later this month. The Met Office has provided data for the BBC’s weather forecasts since the corporation’s first radio weather bulletin in November 1922.

    An internal report by Sir John Beddington, the Met Office’s chairman and the Government’s former chief scientific adviser, raised concerns over the “governance arrangements and management controls” within the chief executive’s department, said a BEIS spokesman.

    The findings of the internal investigation were then passed to Alex Chisholm, the permanent secretary at BEIS, who requested that Mr Varley resign. “He agreed to step down after being told to step down,” said the BEIS spokesman.

    The Government refused to say exactly what the problem was but insisted it concerned management around the chief executive’s office and said the problem was “not on a huge scale”.

    The Met Office declined to say why its chief executive had been forced to resign. A spokesman said it had come as a surprise and nobody had been informed of the reason.

    The Met Office said that its work was “wholly unaffected” by Mr Varley stepping down and that the current deputy chief executive and chief finance officer Nick Jobling has taken over with immediate effect on a short term basis.

    “This will ensure continued leadership of our world-class National Meteorological Service,” said the organisation, adding; “Met Office operations and services are wholly unaffected by this decision.”

    Mr Varley was appointed chief executive in 2014 and had spoken of his great ‘privilege’ in heading up the body.

    He said at the time of his appointment: “I feel hugely privileged to be asked to take up this role having started work at the Met Office as a forecaster over 30 years ago.”
    He went on: “I am passionate about the difference accurate forecasts and warnings can make to people lives and livelihoods. As Met Office Chief Executive, I want to ensure we unlock the full potential of our science for the benefit of the nation and our partners in the UK and overseas.”
    Mr Varley’s father had also worked at the Met Office and the pair briefly overlapped.

    It is not clear the precise nature of the complaint against Mr Varley. The Met Office’s annual report raised a “significant governance and control issue” over “a particular product development and a bid which resulted in incorrect pricing and specifications for some key services”.

    The report went on: “The specific issues have been addressed but these processes are being analysed to identify the root causes and to develop appropriate remedial actions.”
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/05/met-office-chief-executive-sacked-amid-questions-governance/

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    Greg in NZ

    http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/353896/why-scientist-shaun-hendy-has-grounded-himself

    Listened to this interview on the radio while driving to work this morning: NZ theoretical physicist, Shaun Hendy, “has given up plane travel for a year as part of action he is taking to combat climate change.” Ooh, I thought, this’ll be a hoot.

    “He told RNZ’s Easter Monday programme some people would not trust what was being said about climate change if those involved were not taking steps themselves.” Really? “He said he hoped this might sway some people who were still unsure about the credibility of climate science.” Really? “He said by not taking flights he would miss out on an invitation to speak to the UK government, but he managed to find a colleague in the US to go in his stead.” REALLY?! Surely his non-virtue signalling Irish ancestors survived the 3 month wind-powered sailing trip to NZ back in the 1800s when the climate was ‘perfect’. “Professor Hendy is speaking in Dunedin tomorrow and is travelling down the country from Auckland by train.” Stinky old diesel train, then the stinky old diesel inter-island ferry, then another stinky old diesel train…

    http://www.kiwirail.co.nz/news/450/78/KiwiRail-announces-fleet-decision-on-North-Island-line.html

    21 December 2016 11:11AM “KiwiRail will improve its reliability and efficiency for customers by employing an all-diesel fleet on the North Island Main Trunk line, KiwiRail Chief Executive Peter Reidy says.”

    When he threw in the obligatory “climate denier” nonsense, I turned the radio off: my diesel 4WD van had successfully got me to my destination – the wharf where I was about to board a diesel-powered ferry which would take me to work. And this idiot is teaching young adults at university?

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    • #
      pat

      Greg in NZ –

      that was Hendy’s second go at virtue-signalling:

      25 Feb: NZ Herald: Top scientist’s climate-friendly, flight-free 2018
      by Jamie Morton
      One of New Zealand’s best-known scientists has vowed to be “kinder to our climate” by swapping planes for trains this year.
      University of Auckland physicist and science commentator Professor Shaun Hendy wants to set an example to others with his one-man campaign, dubbed #nofly2018…

      Hendy was inspired by a talk by Professor Quentin Atkinson, a fellow Auckland University researcher and an expert in how cultures change and evolve, who explained why we believe things even when there is no evidence, or the evidence is against us.

      “He made the point we often put faith in people who make sacrifices that demonstrate the strength of their conviction,” said Hendy, who directs the university-based centre of research excellence, Te Punaha Matatini.
      “People who walk the talk can be more convincing than those who just talk.”…

      “We tell people the world is warming as we continue to emit carbon dioxide, yet the typical scientist has a much bigger carbon footprint than the average person, because of the travel we do.”
      “Traveling to Antarctica for field work or presenting your work at a conference in Hawaii is one of the perks of the job.”
      Because of this, there was a growing movement in science to reduce the amount of traveling scientists do.

      Some figures in science, like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Peter Kalmus, had now stopped flying altogether.
      “I thought I would try something less drastic – not flying for a year – hoping that it might be something that other scientists would try.”
      For Hendy, who works closely with the Government on a range of projects, and who found himself flying to Wellington at least once a month last year, his self-imposed air-ban wouldn’t be easy.

      But he had some ways to work around it.

      “This year I’ll take the train or bus down and stay for longer – replacing a couple of dozen flights with a few train trips and a lot of video-conferencing,” he said.

      “I think it is doable if I plan well, but it will mean missing some events and spending more time away from home.”
      Hendy has also been working for nearly 10 years with scientists at the University of Sydney on how to use nanotechnology to produce clean water.
      While they meet regularly via video conference, the collaboration typically involves at least one or two face-to-face sessions a year.
      “This year we may find it more difficult to crack some of the challenges we are still work.”
      His first big overland trip, fittingly, was to last week’s Pacific Climate Change Conference in Wellington, and proved the first time in 30 years that he’d taken a train through the North Island.
      “It was a beautiful journey, and I was able to work most of the way on my laptop.
      “But I was surprised to find it only goes three times a week, which meant I had to go down on a Saturday for a Monday meeting.
      “It also means I will have to go back by bus, which won’t be as easy to work on.”

      Hendy said Atkinson was joining his effort, and others colleagues had also shown some interest in doing the same.
      “The climate is changing, not in a good way – it’s bad, and it will be much, much worse unless we get our act together.”
      “I hope people see what we are doing and get the message that scientists are worried about the climate.”
      “I also want to show that it’s possible to make changes in the way we live and work to be kinder on our climate.
      “It’s actually up to those of us who, like scientists, live relatively privileged lives to make these changes first.
      “We have the biggest impact and are best equipped to make the changes.”
      http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12001577

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        Another Ian

        “HuffPost Notices Academic Climate Hypocrisy”

        “Huffington Post has noticed that many university academics are utter climate hypocrites, that many of them rate their personal importance by how many professional air miles they can accumulate every year.”

        https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/01/huffpost-notices-academic-climate-hypocrisy/

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        Greg in NZ

        Pat, cheers for that. Not sure if the mad professor realises how comically self-defeating his bovine verbiage is: “We tell people the world is warming as we continue to emit carbon dioxide, yet the typical scientist has a much bigger carbon footprint than the average person, because of the travel we do. Traveling [sic] to Antarctica for field work or presenting your work at a conference in Hawaii is one of the perks of the job.” [The NZ Herald’s so-called science reporter, Jamie Morton, hasn’t yet found how to turn on his spellcheck, or maybe he simply prefers American English. https://mobile.twitter.com/Jamienzherald ]

        Shaun ‘of the dead’ Hendy continues: “It’s actually up to those of us who, like scientists, live relatively privileged lives to make these changes first. We have the biggest impact and are best equipped to make the changes.” Please, go right ahead, Professor Privileged. And the best gobbledegook is: “The climate is changing, not in a good way – it’s bad, and it will be much, much worse unless…”

        Funny that – Easter in NZ (a 4-day long weekend holiday) is usually cold, rainy, blowing a storm, yet this year we had, are still having, a lovely settled, calm, sunny, pleasant, warm, mild, most-enjoyable spell of weather. Who knew that Gaia was a !)enier!

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      OriginalSteve

      Well he is a theoretical physicist and lets face it, CAGW is theoretical at best….

      Oh the irony….

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    Tim Hammond

    The issue stems from a simple problem – no long term, high quality sites show the expected warming. Thus the need for an average which does show the expected warming.

    And once you start down the track of knowing what the data should be, you always end up “finding” that data.

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    Greebo

    As far as I’m concerned, homogenization even ruins milk.

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      Kinky Keith

      It’s amazing that so many brands of “pure, organic, whole, no_ permeate milk, all seem to taste of powdered milk additive.

      Perhaps modern milk comes from “preserved” cows.

      Homogenize that.

      KK

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    PeterS

    If the aim of homogenization is to make the temperature readings more uniform then why don’t they just use one well calibrated and appropriately located thermometer based in each nation, and monitor the trends to get a better idea of whether the earth is indeed warming or cooling, and by approximately how much? Think of the massive savings in cost.

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      toorightmate

      PeterS,
      The only purpose of homogenization is to make past temperatures cooler than actual and present day temperatures warmer than actual.
      These adjustments are supposed to fit a “curve” which is supposed to show that the earth’s temperature increases with increasing atmospheric CO2 levels.
      I repeat, this is the only purpose of homogenization.
      After a lifetime of working in science and experimentation, this is the only example I know of where actual data are manipulated to fit a theory (now proven to be WRONG).
      I am flabbergasted that homogenization of weather data has been taken on by the Western World – and we have the audacity to criticize China and Russia!!!!
      Or are we so altruistic that we think we are above cheating?

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      Richard Ilfeld

      Like the single site used for many years to measure CO2 ppm,no doubt?
      More and more it seems that we questioners fell into a trap — since the gloom and doomists
      pretended to use science (while really preaching to emotions) the skeptical replied scientifically, thus
      arguing beyond the attention span of most. Simple questions might have been better, see:
      http://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-alarmists-may-inherit-the-wind (not a link)& other reports of the trial in SF.

      Why did ice ages start?, why did they end?, all before man’s influence. How did we survive such large changes only now
      to be fearful of tiny ones?

      I think the ocean liner of public opinion is slowly turning in our direction.

      Well-meaning people doing green things can keep doing them, with cost-benefit slowly asserting itself in the marketplace as it usually does. Too many kids have been brainwashed into believers; but like all movements it can morph into something else if its original premise fails. Even the Millerites survived. Out ability to rationalize is a truly wondrous thing.

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    pat

    lots at this site about the Met Office/BBC/MeteoGroup:

    28 Mar: XMetman: Twitter wars – the BBC weather team versus the Met Office
    There is a war going on out there on all forms of social media to gain the hearts and minds of the people of the UK. You might not have noticed it but there is, and on Twitter it’s already pretty aggressive. It’s all to do with Weather, and it’s between the two biggest weather players in the UK at the moment – the BBC weather team based in the heart of London and now backed by MeteoGroup, and the news and social media team of the Met Office, based down here in deepest, darkest Devon…

    The use of satellite imagery
    You don’t see many tweets that include satellite imagery of the UK in them from either of the teams, which is very shortsighted, as I feel that it’s grossly underused resource, but when the Met Office do consider using it, it’s apparent that have access to better imagery than MeteoGroup (fig 5), but there’s still no sign of either organisations making use of high-resolution rapid scan imagery either in Twitter or in their TV and video forecast output. 2-1 to the Met Office…

    23 Mar: What do UK passports and the BBC weather forecast have in common?
    Q: What do UK passports and the BBC weather forecast have in common?
    A: The production of both has been outsourced to company’s outside the UK.

    The Met Office is regarded as one of the leading weather services in the world, it develops and runs one of the finest NWP models on a £100 million supercomputer that’s housed in its own bespoke building, and then for some inexplicable reason the BBC, the state broadcasting system, decides to cut its ties with an organisation that it’s worked with for the last 70 years or more, and replace them with an organisation that’s owned by an American worldwide growth equity firm. The other odd thing about all this is: how did the Met Office manage to keep its contracts with all the commercial ITV companies, and at the same time lose the one it had with the state broadcaster? The awarding of the contract to MeteoGroup rather than the Met Office does remind me of that old idiom: don’t keep a dog and bark yourself.

    20 Mar: MeteoGroup v Met Office
    READ ON
    https://www.xmetman.com/wp/category/meteogroup/

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    toorightmate April02,18:22:34

    The only purpose of homogenization is to make past temperatures cooler than actual and present day temperatures warmer than actual.

    Correct! Academic Climate Clowns got caught with face in trough; and nothing else! Much evil to account for!
    All the best!-will-

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    pat

    re an article in The Australian behind paywall. wonder who wrote the Xinhua piece?

    2 Apr: Xinhua: Australia’s smallest district threatens to derail major energy policy
    The Australian Capital Territory (ACT) has ruled out supporting a major federal energy reform unless the policy ramps up support for renewable energy.
    Shane Rattenbury, the ACT’s energy minister and leader of the ACT Greens, said that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s National Energy Guarantee (NEG) was counter to the national interest and contained a “weak” emission target.
    Under the Australian law, all six states and two territories must ratify the NEG before it can be implemented.

    That means that despite the ACT accounting for just 1.5 percent of the national electricity market, and it being Australia’s smallest district in square kilometers, its government could kill Turnbull’s signature energy policy.
    Rattenbury said that the federal government needed to be more ambitious and seek to deliver a steeper emissions cut than the 26 percent it promised as part of the Paris agreement.
    “We need to find an agreement to move the national energy market forward,” Rattenbury told News Corp Australia on Monday…

    The ACT is on track to achieve its 100 percent renewable energy target by 2020…

    Despite Rattenbury’s assessment, Josh Frydenberg, the Federal Minister for the Environment and Energy, said he was optimistic that the Coalition of Australian Governments (COAG) could come to an agreement on the policy…
    “The ACT is a very small fraction of the national electricity market … and I cannot see a situation where you got unanimous agreement from the other states in the national electricity market, and the ACT blocking a historic national reform,” Frydenberg said.
    http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-04/02/c_137082577.htm

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    John Ridgway 02Apr18:12:04

    I want people to understand that, by comparing climate science to safety engineering, I am employing neither a metaphor nor a simile. Rather, I am making a statement I intend to be taken literally. Climatologists self-identify as scientists and are encouraged to do so mainly because they do lots of sciencey things, but, ultimately, it is only the engineering paradigm that can legitimise their positihears to the scientific meathodon. So perhaps we shouldn’t be worrying that climatologists are failing to respect the scientific method; maybe we should be more concerned that…

    the engineer’s heuristic approach is being passed off as science . Such SCAM is truly pissing off each and every engineer that because of personal integrity adheres to the scientific method (measurement of every damned thing)! No speculation of what may be; is allowed. When it fails it fails! Such does not wait for social\political ‘SCIENCE’ approval! Congresscriters insist on using cheap Chinese steel for the bridge; that must fail!
    All the best!-will-

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    Ruairi

    It should not come as any surprise,
    That Met. Offices homogenize,
    To let data read high,
    So that temps. will comply,
    With what governments authorize.

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    THIS article is typical of this site , everybody knows as sceptics it’s never been about science . My youngest daughter celebrates her eighteenth birthday in one months time , her friends will be able to enjoy themselves ,listen to good music eat good food and stop over , sleeping in tents or if weather is not good sleep on dance floor . It’s about time we all stuck our heads above the parapet and defended our Judao Christian values against the onslaught from a new feudal system . Stop pussyfooting around and defend WESTERN culture or lose it .

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      glen Michel

      As my coffee cup reminds me.”Wake up and smell the Roses” De omnibus dubitandum! But try and tell the people that!

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      PeterS

      Enjoy the Western way of life while you can because it’s not going to last much longer. It will crash and burn due to a number of internal self-inflicted problems. Then the vulchers will come in and devour the West. The only way it can be avoided is for the public to wake up and stop voting for political parties that are far too slow to detect and act on the problems, if at all. Of course it can’t happen simply because much of the public are themselves against the West, in particular the left. That makes a large proportion of the public not only asleep but fools. They will eventually get what they deserve as the vulchers enter the scene but unfortunately the rest of us will have to suffer too. History repeats.

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        OriginalSteve

        My niece who is 16 and rather bright, thought Communism was “cool” until I pointed out North Korea was communist and she quickly turned her nose up at it.

        The kids ate her secondary college who are anglos and 4th generation australians, call each other “whitey” as a way of circumventing PC which has them all absolutely terrifed of saying the “wrong” thing. In fact, similar to Hitler who who put spies in the concentration camps, the current generation are absolutely terrified in case a stray utterance should wind up recorded and uploaded to social media so they can be publically vilified. So much for free speech.

        This is the world these kids live in and we’ve let it happen…shame on us.

        I’ve also warned off my other niece who attends RMIT to stay away from the Lefties, as they throw great parties on campus, but will rot your soul.

        Simply put, we have near voting age adults who don’t know how bad the Left is, they don’t know history, and they are will accomplices, as they have been wooed by slick Leftists nonsense.

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      If the queen got involved with politics taking sides with either labour or the conservative party in an election , there would be hell to play , and yet we have just had an election in America where the Pope took sides with Obama and Clinton against Trump . The Pope wanted no wall and open borders , why , Mexico is a Caffolic country , why not flood America with Catholics and displace protestants , that are not compatible with a new feudal system

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    Another Ian

    O/T but not far

    “Delingpole: The New York Times Is 100 Percent Wrong About Scott Pruitt”

    http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/04/02/delingpole-the-new-york-times-is-100-percent-wrong-about-scott-pruitt/

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    AndyG55

    1. Homogenisation was only ever a METHODOLOGY FOR FUDGING THE DATA.

    2. Trend UAH vs BOM since small AWS screens

    https://s19.postimg.org/7dxc7ls4z/BOM_vs_UAH.png

    3. I was looking at Bourke data a few weeks ago, the amount of “missing” data since 1998 AWS change was incredible !!

    https://s19.postimg.org/w9qhxuwer/bourke_missing.png (0=data 1=missing)

    Great way to run a system. Just get rid of all the data and MAKE IT ALL UP !!!

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      Kinky Keith

      And they call this. “Science”.

      No, it’s Not!

      So many now seem to believe in Science, but nobody actually does it.

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      Robert Swan

      Not only is the data fudged, but the whole enterprise is absurd.

      The supposed agreement to “limit warming to 2 degrees” (or whatever) presumes that we have some sort of instrument which reads global temperature. If there is such a beast, it will surely be located in space. Your car has a speedo which agrees pretty well with the speed that matters (e.g. police laser/radar). If you tried to work out your speed by averaging the speeds of crankshaft, conrods, pistons, fans, gears, etc., and concocting your own dodgy statistical methods to combine them in complete ignorance of what those components did, how well do you think you’d do?

      To not even understand clouds or sun and yet say that we can hold the temperature where we want by adjusting our emissions of CO2, well, choose your satirist — Monty Python, Voltaire, Swift, …

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    • #
      PeterS

      You need to understand that much of what passes as science today is not real science but more akin to witchcraft. So organisations like BOM and NASA are the last place to try and learn the truth.

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    There is a down-to-earth practicality (and, indeed humility) in engineering that climatologist would do well to recognise and embrace, rather than sticking to their pious, overconfident and, ultimately, unconvincing, quasi-scientific boasting.

    Why do you refuse to acknowledge this obvious vicious political SCAM to reduce all Earth critters to edible slaves/food. My lovable kitten ‘Shadow’ would not even sniff at some steenking Peloci!

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    BoM seem to be indulging in a bit of hype on alleged tropical cyclone Iris, now that it is south of Willis I, and there are no measuring stations until maybe Hamilton I. Expectation of increasing to Cat 2 or 3 is possible but unlikely. Currently Bowen is showing 30km/hr sustained. Hamilton a bit more brisk at 67 sus 83 gust an hour ago but now dropped to 63/74. Bear in mind that Hamilton is not at the airport but 58.66 m above it.

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    pat

    ABC RN Breakfast today:

    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/

    two segments:

    AUDIO: 3 Apr: ABC Breakfast: Backbencher committee push for more coal in NEG
    The Turnbull Government is facing more internal pressure over energy policy with a prominent group of MPs agitating for the construction of more coal fired power stations.
    It’s claimed more than 20 backbenchers have joined the newly created Monash Forum which wants coal to play a more prominent role in the National Energy Guarantee — the NEG is still being negotiated with the states and territories.
    Guest: Craig Kelly, Chairman, Backbench Committee on Energy and Environment.

    AUDIO: 3 Apr: ABC Breakfast: Politics with Paul Bongiorno
    (before speaking to Bongiorno, Fran reads 3 listener responses. first, pumped hydro+batteries+”renewables” means no need for coal. second includes mention of baseload requirement; third says Monash Forum’s announcement is sick-inducing.
    Bongiorno says Monash Forum is pure politics, nothing more, which ignores CAGW; no mention of public outrage over ever-increasing costs of electricity.
    says, however, that Labor’s ever-changing pronouncements on private health cover should be emulated by the Coalition Govt because people who have private cover are outraged.)

    Malcolm Farr obviously listened to theirABC’s Breakfast – it’s just political, you know!

    3 Apr: news.com.au: Coalition MPs have formed a group against Turnbull’s signature energy policy
    A GROUP of Coalition backbenchers have apparently formed an alliance against the PM, but questions have been raised about their motives.
    by Malcolm Farr
    THE government’s energetic coal fan club wants taxpayers to return to owning power stations at a cost of more than $2.5 billion each with 30 years of financial risk…

    Tony Abbott, Eric Abetz, Kevin Andrews and Barnaby Joyce are among the Coalition members who have reportedly thrown their support behind the new faction, The Australian reports.
    It’s estimated that more than 30 MPs will join the group, which has been named the Monash Forum…

    The group will serve to encourage the Government in the construction of coal-fired power stations.
    But some colleagues are not impressed.
    “It’s just the usual suspects. It’s a triple-A hit – Abbott, Andrews and Abetz,” one (ANONYMOUS) Liberal told news.com.au today.
    The forum – named after the great Australian general Sir John Monash who encouraged Victorian coal production – announced itself today just a week out from a Newspoll which could be the 30th in a row Mr Turnbull will lose to Labor’s Bill Shorten…

    Mr Kelly told ABC radio today the job of building a coal-fired generator was too difficult for private companies which would have to fund the construction – variously costed at from $2.5 to $3 billion each – and then accept 20 to 30 years of potential uncertainty from changes in technology and regulations and governments.

    Mr Kelly also called for approval of gas from fracking in NSW and Victoria, but declined to say whether he wanted it in his NSW federal seat of Hughes.
    And he acknowledged that coal continue to play a major role under the Turnbull NEG – generating just over 50 per cent of electricity to 2030.

    And he accepted a finding by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission last September that the biggest cause of rising power prices was the cost of “gold plated” poles and wires, and that the cost of renewables contributed much less.

    More than 60 per cent of price jumps which anger households and businesses came from rises in network prices and retail margins rather than subsidies for environmental schemes such as solar energy, reported ACCC chairman Rod Simms…
    http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/coalition-mps-have-formed-a-group-against-turnbulls-signature-energy-policy/news-story/0b59caf8f09b35c1f8c9629fcce21873

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      robert rosicka

      Be good to see the thirty MPs defect to Bernardi because that would then give our political elite a massive shake up .

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    pat

    ABC America has no mention in text or on weather maps of temperatures:

    2 Apr: ABC America: Spring storm hits Northeast, bringing NYC the most April snow in over 30 years
    By Max Golembo, Emily Shapiro and MELISSA GRIFFIN; ABC News’ Hayley Bartels and Jeff Cook contributed to this report
    It may be spring, but it feels like winter for the Northeast after a fast snowstorm moved through Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and New England this morning…

    Another storm is forming
    Now a new storm is taking shape which will bring more spring snow and heavy rain from the Northern Plains through the East Coast the next few days.
    By tonight, heavy snow will be falling from Montana to Wisconsin. Some spots will see whiteout conditions and hazardous travel for the evening commute.
    On Tuesday afternoon, the heavy snow will hit the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes.
    Six to 12 inches of snow is possible for parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan
    http://abcnews.go.com/US/snow-unseasonable-cold-midwest-northeast/story?id=54170815

    Samenow first brings up warmer pre-snowstorm temperature!

    2 Apr: WaPo: New York City pasted by heaviest April snow since 1982
    By Jason Samenow
    (This post, first published at 10:04 a.m., was updated to reflect the latest snowfall totals at 11 a.m.)
    The calendar read April 2, but heavy, wet snow poured down in New York City early Monday. The big, fat flakes piled up quickly and, despite the temperature hitting 60 degrees the day before, stuck to everything.

    By 10 a.m., 5.5 inches had accumulated in Central Park, the most during April since 1982, when 9.6 inches fell on the 6th of the month. The amount was the seventh most on record in April, less than two inches away from making the top five.
    New York City has now received 40.9 inches of snow during the 2017-2018 cold season, almost 15 inches more than normal.

    The snow arrived between 3 and 4 a.m. in the Big Apple and temperatures, in the low 40s, tumbled into the low to mid-30s. Central Park reported heavy snow and visibility of a quarter-mile or less for three straight hours between 6 and 8 a.m. and a temperature of 33 degrees…

    The snow was the result of an area of low pressure that scooted along an Arctic front positioned south of the region. It also brought heavy snowfall to western Maryland and parts of Pennsylvania…
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2018/04/02/new-york-city-pasted-by-heaviest-april-snow-since-1982/?utm_term=.7d385761e442

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    pat

    2 Apr: WaPo: Seasons in reverse: For second year in a row, March was colder than February
    March just refused to bring spring this year. Remarkably, it ended up colder than February for a second straight year. The month was also the snowiest of the past two winters. The reversion to more wintry conditions slowed the progression of cherry blossoms and left Washingtonians wondering…
    The average temperature of 43.6 was 3.2 cooler than normal, the coolest March since 2014, the third-coolest since 2000, and 1.7 degrees colder than February…
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2018/04/02/seasons-in-reverse-for-second-year-in-row-march-was-colder-than-february/

    2 Apr: Facebook: WaPo Capital Weather Gang: What a weird month March was. Colder than February. This has now happened two years in a row (but rarely happens). It was also our snowiest month in the last two winters. So, yes, we don’t blame you if you’re ready to move on to spring!!!
    https://www.facebook.com/capitalweather/posts/1920838571282053

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    Ken Stewart

    Very good analysis Tom. I’ve been wondering about the 1990s problem for a long time but didn’t look at it at a monthly level. I’ll have another look now.

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    pat

    2 Apr: CBS Philadelphia: Weather Blog: A March We Would Love To Forget
    By Matt Peterson, Meteorologist and weather producer
    March of 2018 won’t go down in the record books for any kind of special month, but it is definitely one that we will soon be looking to forget thanks to heavy snow and the cold temperatures that we just could not shake across the Delaware and Lehigh Valleys…

    March of 2018 ended with a total of 15.2 inches of snow when it all was said and done. That ties us for the second snowiest March on record for the city of Philadelphia. The last time we had 15.2 inches of snow in March was 1914! The only year that this year trailed was 1941 when Philly received 17.7 inches of snow.
    On average, March gets 3.8 inches of snow in Philly. When you compare this year to last year as well, we received over 8 inches more this year than the 7 inches we got in 2017…

    March will not go down as one of the coldest on record like the snow will but it still was quite uncomfortable, especially in the second half of the month as we try to prepare for the spring time. For 2018, we averaged a high temperature of 47.6 degrees, and the average temperature for the month was 40.1 degrees. Again, this will not come in as a top 10 coldest month or anything like that, but it still was over 3 degrees before normal on average and the only reason it wasn’t colder was because the two days of 70s at the end of the month really pulled the average up to save the day.

    When we check the breakdown for the highs through the month we get a really good idea of just how cold it was. We ended March with only five days where the temperature was in the 50s, zero days where the high temperature was in the 60s and two days where the high was in the 70s. In a typical March we should have 16 days where the high temperature reaches 50 degrees or more. This year we only got seven total days. The last time we had a March where not a single day was in the 60s was 2001 when the closest we got to 60 was 58 degrees.

    Also, for 2018, we had 29 days where the high temperature in the afternoon never reached the 60 mark. This was the first March since 2013 where we had that many days without reaching 60. This year also put us tied for second in the number of days where the high temperature in the afternoon was at 50 or below. There were 26 days this March where we stayed at 50 or lower in the afternoon, tying 1970 for the second time that has happened on record.

    As you can see, in general, this was just a very cold and snowy month with a few stats here or there that push the record books, but we looked at just a very cold and wet month. While the consensus is that we are hoping for spring to be right around the corner, it looks, unfortunately, like April is going to continue our trend of cold temperatures and active weather…
    http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2018/04/02/weather-blog-march-noreasters-snow/

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    Geoff Sherrington

    TQ,
    Thank you for a neat analysis. I have not seen your methodology used much in the past. Maybe some are reluctant to use UAH results for comparison because it is popular to badmouth UAH just now.
    Certainly, there is a need for BOM to open up with more comparisons with the electronic T sensors and their housings.
    BTW, a couple of weeks ago I asked BOM what overall error they claim for individual daily temperature measurements? An interim answer dealt with other than daily and more with aggregated, so I still await a response on what is one of the most fundamental parts of measurement – the error. Geoff

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    Ken Stewart

    Hi Tom

    I’ve had a look at monthly Tmax vs UAH and find the huge drop in correlation centred in April 1996 as you show, but a completely different pattern when correlations are calculated between the UAH-BOM difference and rainfall. A bit hard to explain here so I will post at https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/ as soon as I can. Might be Wednesday.

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    Davidsb

    If I recall correctly, the reason that a side-by-side comparison of old vs new thermometers cannot be performed is that the new thermometers were specifically designed and constructed to BoM’s own specification. BoM investigated all commercially available thermometers, but were unable to identify one which could do the job.

    Were the results of the review of the thermometer market ever released?

    And was the contract for the specially designed/manufactured bespoke thermometers put out to commercial tender?

    And was the successful bidder for the contract ever named?

    I presume that these facts are in the public domain. since it is public money being spent…

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    ATheoK

    “Homogenization is vandalism”

    If “vandalism” is directly identical to the Vandals burning and sacking cities, then Yes, it is vandalism!

    However, vandalism in modern simply refers to property damage.

    “action involving deliberate destruction of or damage to public or private property.
    synonyms: harm · injury · destruction · vandalization · vandalism · impairment · defilement · desecration · defacement · disfigurement · scarring · mutilation · vitiation · detriment · ruin”

    Homogenization,as the BOM and NOAA practice it; it is sabotage!

    “deliberately destroy, damage, or obstruct (something), especially for political or military advantage.
    synonyms: wreck · deliberately damage · vandalize · destroy · obstruct · disrupt”

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