2013 heatwave “virtually impossible” without logical errors and broken climate models

The Climate Council calculate the “odds” that one warm year could be as hot as it was. But those “odds” depend on a logical fallacy, major, inexplicable adjustments and models we know are broken. There are invisible assumptions underlying that claim which are documentably untrue. The “odds”  might as well be lotto results.

The fallacy is argument from ignorance, a failure of logic and reasoning like saying “X is true, because we can’t think of anything else“.

To estimate meaningful odds, scientists would have to understand the major driving factors of our climate, well enough to be able to assign probabilities to outcomes. But their models are hopelessly broken, they can’t predict a decadal average on a global or continental scale. They can’t hindcast the past “bumps” without using major adjustments to make the raw observations fit the models. They don’t know why the medieval warm period was warm, they don’t know why the Little Ice Age was cool. They don’t know why the world started warming 200 years before we poured out industrial levels of CO2. They don’t know if the mystery factors driving our climate for the last 4.5 billion years are still operating. If we can’t predict the past climate without CO2, we can’t tell whether CO2 is controlling our current climate or something else is.

We know the models are missing at least one, and probably many, factors. The only odds we know for sure is that Climate Council Pronouncements are 100% likely to promote alarm.

The ABC, not having much idea what the scientific method is, dutifully parrots it all. (What are the odds of that?  “100%”.)

Questions a real science journalist could ask the Climate Council:

  1. Your figures rely on having successful climate models, and Hans Von Storch showed 18 months ago that 98% of models are wrong (and it would be higher now). Doesn’t this mean you can’t possibly calculate meaningful odds? (How can models that miss factors predict “odds” that depend on those factors?)
  2. The models are obviously missing at least one major climate driver since they have overestimated the warming of the last 15 years, even though CO2 emissions have been rising faster than expected. They can’t hindcast any of the turning points of the holocene era. How do you know that (or those) mystery factors  are not driving the current warming?
  3. This press release rests on the logical fallacy of  “argument from ignorance”. Shouldn’t a scientific council use impeccable logic? What is science without it?
  4. Shouldn’t a scientific group use empirical data rather than simulations, which are not “evidence” in the scientific sense? Evidence used to mean “what I recorded with this instrument”, not “what I saw on my computer screen”.
  5. The BOM temperature record has not been independently replicated or audited and contains adjustments of up to 2C which are biased towards increasing the warming trend. Normally adjustments would be neutral on trends (and the BOM implies they are). This artificial bias would falsely increase the odds you have calculated, wouldn’t it?

“2013 record heatwave ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change, Climate Council of Australia report says

ABC news

“A new report by the Climate Council of Australia says it would have been “virtually impossible” for 2013 to be the hottest year in the country’s record without man-made emissions in the atmosphere.

The independently-funded group used new modelling to look at the odds of extreme heat events occurring, with and without man-made emissions.

A computer simulation of the atmosphere showed that climate change tripled the odds that the heatwaves of 2012/2013 would occur as frequently as they did and doubled the odds that they would be as intense as they were.

More than 123 temperature records were broken over that summer.

Professor Will Steffen said the record temperatures of 2013 were caused by man-made emissions.

“What were the odds of that happening without the human carbon pollution, and what were the odds with human carbon pollution? The answer is quite striking,” he said.

“The answer is that year, 2013, being the hottest year in Australia ever, was virtually impossible without human emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

“That’s conclusive evidence in my view that human driven emission of greenhouse gases were the primary cause of 2013 being the hottest year on record.

9.4 out of 10 based on 97 ratings

162 comments to 2013 heatwave “virtually impossible” without logical errors and broken climate models

  • #
    Truthseeker

    2013 heatwave “virtually impossible” without logical errors, manipulated data and broken climate models

    There, fixed it for you …

    581

    • #
      aussieguy

      Speaking of manipulating data to suit a political agenda…

      The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever
      => http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/11395516/The-fiddling-with-temperature-data-is-the-biggest-science-scandal-ever.html

      …The more they dig, the more manipulations they encounter!



      Wait a minute, Climate Council?

      *Checks their website*

      Ah ha!
      => https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/councillors

      There he is! Tim Flannery!

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        I like it when they say, “Meet the Experts”.

        If somebody has to be labeled as “an expert,” you can bet dollars to donuts, that they ain’t one.

        Real experts just share the depth, breadth, and quality, of their experience, in the advice they give. They just demonstrate their expertise, without having to broadcast their title, awards, or qualifications.

        As a mining engineer once told to me, “Having a bit of paper, doesn’t keep anybody safe from falling rock.”

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      • #
        Ted O'Brien.

        Climate Council? Exactly! Who is this Climate Council?

        It is a self appointed extreme left wing partisan group set up after the Abbott government on election abolished the extreme left wing partisan Rudd/Gillard appointed Climate Commission.

        The Climate Council didn’t publish this garbage on their own. The publishers share the guilt.

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    • #
      Glen 42

      ABC Headline “2013 record heatwave ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change, Climate Council of Australia report says”
      The ABC fact checker has been caught asleep at the wheel.
      The photo accompanying the Stephanie Anderson article is a misleading (BoM) prediction created on the 7/1/2013 for the 14/1/2013
      The (BoM) Prediction 7/1/13 did not come within a bulls Roar of the reality photo 14/1/2013 from [Jo Novas Website]
      If it was Stephanie Anderson’s call to authorise the (BoM) photo, she deserves her credibility trashed; if it was her ABC Editorial staff then they have done her a gross disservice.

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    • #
      Spotted Reptile

      Here’s a thing. I’m NOT an expert, but I’m sure I heard Algore and others say that global warming was going to lead to more storms, hurricanes, tornadoes etc.
      Well, we’re almost through the Australian summer, and there hasn’t been ONE cyclone I can remember making landfall in Oz, or even coming close to the coast. This seems abnormal. Usually we get about 10 cyclones a year, and of them six or so go feet dry across the Top.
      So where are the cyclones? Surely if the ocean heats up, then the cyclones appear to draw the heat out of the water and towards the poles, yes? So conversely if no cyclones, the ocean is not that hot either.

      Somebody tell me I’m wrong (what scientists should say more often. . .)

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      • #
        albert

        After the Katrina scare in the US by Algore, Insurance companies made extra ‘billions’ in profit. The were warned the levees would not stand a Cat5 Hurricane and they decided to save the money. Most deaths were due to the fact that most people were Black and in that part of the US 10 Blacks = 1 white.
        Many years later, Sandy hit NY and the northern towns during a new moon so the forecast tidal surge was 4 metres. We won’t see that again in our lifetimes
        The ‘super typhoon’ that hit Tacloban City was just a normal Cat5 Typhoon. I was watching it on Radar, it headed into a funnel shaped area with a water channel at the end and Tacloban City was in its path with inhabitants living just above the water line. Had the Typhoon travelled 5 degrees further north or south, the damage would have been far less. I see no CC alarm here, it was normal weather that hit the wrong spot

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    • #
      me@home

      Re talk to the trees from a couple of days ago. I wrote to a spotted gum asking how it was enjoying all the additional plant food, CO2. Today I received three copies of the same reply: “G’day, Every meal these days is like Christmas! Thanks for your email.” At least someone has a sense of humour.

      30

    • #
      albert

      Members of the Climate Council also said during the drought it would never rain again, our dams would never be full and if it did rain it would never reach the ground (known as virga to REAL Meteorologists, not pretenders as the Climate Council)

      60

    • #
      Truthseeker

      I’d hate to live in a world that rewards ignorance.

      Oh wait …

      50

  • #
    el gordo

    Strong post, cannot fault it.

    I thought 2014 was the warmest evah, so hard to keep up.

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    • #
      albert

      Recent periods (1 decade) was hotter than 50 years ago, sure we know that, but Climate Council don’t tell us why the heating has levelled off 17 years ago and how can co2 related to heating be ‘science’. As I said more than 1 decade ago, we will not know the full effect of forever increasing co2 in the atmosphere till mid-century. The alarmists want us to believe their simplisistic view of Climate asserting co2 is the main driver

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    • #
      Another Ian

      But this is so BOM can rejig 2014 and have both of them?

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    • #
      The Backslider

      I thought 2014 was the warmest evah, so hard to keep up.

      You are not supposed to notice things like that………..

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    • #
      Peter Carabot

      Common, dont be so silly, it’s not hard at all to keep up: from now on E V E R Y T H I N G is “The Hottest Eva(h)” With or without “H” she is still the hottest!!

      80

  • #
    Frederick Colbourne

    You don’t need a full-fledged El Nino to boost the temperature in Australia and there wasn’t one in 2013 or 2014 but there was enough change in the ocean and atmosphere for many scientists to forecast an El Nino that did not occur.

    To some extent this was a case of the dog that didn’t bark.

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  • #
    Stuart Elliot

    “A new report by the Climate Council of Australia says it would have been “virtually impossible” for 2013 to be the hottest year in the country’s record without man-made changes in the temperature data.”

    Fixed it.

    To be fair, so did Truthseeker, far faster to the keyboard than I.

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  • #
    Leigh

    Take away their “worlds best practice” adjustments and how much of their global warming is left?
    Just on that “worlds best practice at diddling the books”, who was the clever dick who “wrote the book” on how to “practice”?

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  • #
    TedM

    When you choose to deliberately ignore the Medieval, Roman, and Minoan warm periods. Also choose to ignore the Holocene climate optimum and throw in some creative accounting, anything is possible.

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    • #
      the Griss

      Also ignore and data before 1910, then start your trend in the coolest period recorded in Australia (1960-70’s)

      Adjust data to suit.

      Easy peasy. 🙂

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    • #
      Leigh

      TedM I’m still having trouble understanding the BOM’s reasoning that the historical data, pre 1910 is”unreliable”.
      But that very same data is used by the United Nations IPCC.
      Did the BOM bother to tell them it’s “unreliable”?

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  • #
    John F. Hultquist

    A new report by the Climate Council of Australia says it would have been “virtually impossible” for anyone to spike their punch so the wording of their recent report has to be an after effect of the poor air quality in the back room where the report was prepared.

    In other words, it was what they were smoking.

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  • #
    david S

    The thing that is crazy about there models and these conclusions is that if the arguably hottest year could only be due to man made global warming the fact that there has been no warming for 18 years ( which everyone accepts) can only be explained by the fact that the models are wrong. That is the only conclusion that can be made.For scientists who academically would be considered to be smart they are really dumb! ( or dishonest).

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    • #
      King Geo

      They are clearly dishonest David but have to be to earn their meal ticket. First law of survival – “don’t bite the hand that feeds you”.

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      • #

        Yes, but if they have to fake it, they don’t EARN anything. It would be theft by deception. Considering the amounts stolen, it should be a felony worthy of a lot of very hard time manually turning big rocks into little ones. However, they will likely get a Golden Glob award for producing the most believed simulation of an alternate universe.

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    • #
      PeterK

      David: “…hottest year could only be due to man made global warming…”

      Shouldn’t we now be interpreting it as ‘man made no global warming for 18 years’?

      50

  • #
    King Geo

    While on the subject of heatwaves.

    SA Premier Jay Weatherill now wants to look at Nuclear Power as an option in SA because he says that fossil fuels cause AGW and Renewables are no bloody good because they are so bleedin expensive and inefficient. Well Jay you seem to know a lot about Climate Change – maybe you should change your name by deed poll to Hay I.A.M. WeatherKnowItAll.

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  • #
    Kevin Lohse

    Definition of Terms: How is it possible to speak of,”broken” CGM’s when they were never functional and operational in the first place?

    301

    • #
      Yonniestone

      Excellent point Kevin, it seems the real skeptical scientists have always said CGM’s were next to useless while the CAGW alarmists will use CGM’s when it fits their hypothesis.

      Maybe there’s a sliding scale for CGM’s starting at poor to abysmal? 🙂

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      • #

        GCMs were never fit for the stated or indeed any purpose …
        First looked at these things about 16 years ago. Absolutely amazed to find that they manifested EVERY error that I, as a recent (and therefore dangerous) post-graduate, had been warned not to commit when doing mathematical modelling back in the early 70s.

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        • #
          Greg Cavanagh

          They are useful for testing current understanding of life, the world, and everything else.

          They demonstrate that we don’t have all the answers.

          50

          • #
            Rereke Whakaaro

            As soon as you ask them to optimise one or more of the parameters values, without any constraints, they start to produce some very weird results.

            If you want to minimise the provisioning cost of hotel rooms in Sydney, for example, you need to build only one hotel with about 2,000 floors with 50 rooms per floor.

            The quoted figures may be wrong, but you get the idea.

            They are an excellent tool for identifying all the things, that you don’t know, or haven’t even thought of.

            But only a bunch of idiots would try to use them to run a country.

            10

  • #
    bemused

    The independently-funded group used new modelling…

    Is that because the old modelling, and the modelling before that, and the modelling before etc was wrong? This model is now correct, until the next model comes along?

    Also, what does ‘independently-funded’ actually mean?

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    • #
      tom0mason

      “Also, what does ‘independently-funded’ actually mean?”

      It means they’re still spending other people’s money.

      250

      • #
        bemused

        It would be very interesting to know who the ‘other people’ are that are funding the Climate Council. Calling themselves a ‘council’ is a large dose of hubris from the outset, but then that’s hardy news when it comes to warming worriers.

        140

    • #
      Another Ian

      Many years ago Mad Magazine had a series on the theme of “If the “”NEW”” whatever has this then what did the “”OLD”” whatever have in it”?

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    • #
      The Backslider

      The independently-funded group used new modelling

      Who within this august group has any qualifications whatsoever to do any kind of modelling? (Must be a qualified statistician)

      Where are the data and the model used so that we can verify?

      80

  • #
    Robbo_WA

    SBS also reported that “The Climate Council says recent studies show those heat events would have occurred only once every 12,300 years without greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.” [link at the bottom of the ABC article]

    That means that the Climate Council is effectively saying you need to look at 12,300 years of temperatures before the recent CO2-enhanced period to find another year as hot as 2013 (because if there were more years as hot as 2013 over the last non-CO2-enhanced 12,300 years, their probability to occur by chance would of course be higher than 1/12,300). 12,300 years ago is the end of the last ice age. So, the Climate Council is saying that 2013 was the hottest year in Australia since the end of the last ice age. Wow. They cannot determine the average temperature 100 years ago because apparently thermometer measurements were too inaccurate, but they know from their “new models” what the temperature was over the last 12,300 years.

    And I particularly like those 300 years: not 12,000 years, but 12,300! False precision is the typical technique of snake-oil salesmen, selling products that are proved to regrow your hair by 74% and enhance your sexual power by 132%.

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    • #
      ROM

      It is only once – we hope, that some organisation such as the Climate Council, skilled in turning of black into white” that claims the extraordinary prophetic powers of the Pythia of the Delphi Oracle in climate matters, comes along every 12,000 years.

      However we know the reality is that it is more like 12,000 organbnisations a year who try to turn “black into white” to their exclusive financial and political benefit and to the growing impoverishment of the proletariat.
      Thats us!

      The Climate Council and it’s principals are the archetypal organisation that has a passible resemblance to one of those George Orwell created Animal Farm “lies and deceit” propagandizing organizations and it’s principals.

      From George Orwell’s Animal Farm a couple of quotes that are very applicable to the manner in which the Climate Council propagandizes global warming.
      And you might even recognise a couple of the Climate Council’s principal spokesmen in the Animal Farm quotes below.
      _______________

      Lies and Deceit;

      All the other male pigs on the farm were porkers. The best known among them was a small fat pig named Squealer, with very round cheeks, twinkling eyes, nimble movements, and a shrill voice. He was a brilliant talker, and when he was arguing some difficult point he had a way of skipping from side to side and whisking his tail which was somehow very persuasive. The others said of Squealer that he could turn black into white. (2.2)

      Squealer is a one-pig propaganda machine: he takes the unpleasant realities (no food, pigs sleeping in beds) and turns them into delicious lies (lots of food; piggies resting their brains to better help you). Also, we kind of wish we could win arguments by swishing our tails.

      ***************
      Lies and Deceit

      “Comrades!” he cried. “You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organization of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for YOUR sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples.” (3.14)

      Dear Shmoopers, it’s so hard to have to eat all of this delicious chocolate cake. We really wish you could have it. But we need it, because otherwise we simply don’t have the energy to Shmoop Animal Farm. It’s for your benefit, really. Trust us.

      100

  • #
    toorightmate

    Perhaps I am just too old (fashioned).
    I think that the homogenisation process carried out in several countries is absolutely disgusting in the absence of any credible rationale.

    361

    • #
      Leigh

      This might come as a bit of a shock to you mate.
      It certainly shocked this old fashioned bloke.
      It’s substantially more than a “few” who are altering the planets temperature to fit global warming.
      They’re ALL members of this club and this clubs “hierarchys” management are ones who are the “worlds best practitioners of diddling the books”.

      https://www.wmo.int/pages/members/membership/index_en.php

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      • #
        The Backslider

        So, which “experts” are we looking for in The Climate Council? What type should they be?

        40

        • #
          Leigh

          Flannery and Steffan are not climatologist, as they continually point out to skeptics and critics of their “reports”.
          And neither are their critics they emphasis.
          Their misinformation I would say is gleaned from the BOM and other taxpayer funded bodys of “experts” that are only to willing to “share” with them.
          And not with the likes of jo and co.
          That is clearly evidenced by no protestations or corrections to this “privarely funded independant climate group” by any of these taxpayer funded alarmist “sheltered institutions”.
          Hence they don’t need “experts” in their independantly funded alarmist climate commission.
          We the taxpayer supply them.

          60

  • #
    tom0mason

    But the models rely on ‘adjusted’ data input, and the data ‘adjustments’ appear to follow the modeled expectations. And I wondered…
    I posted this on Paul Homewood’s site –
    I wonder if the solar 11 year signature is also being removed adjusted from these records so as to ‘prove’ all the science of solar variation affecting climate has a very much reduced impact on temperatures.
    There is reference to the 11 year cycle being seen in the records (Tazmania was quoted but probably others exist) in the leaked ‘climategate’ emails.

    Part of the email…
    From: John Daly
    To: n.nicholls’@’BoM.Gov.Au
    Subject: Re: Climatic warming in Tasmania
    Date: Fri, 09 Aug 1996 20:04:00 +1100

    ….
    “So Far so good.
    “Mathematica” first plots out the data itself (see Atachment 1)
    The first part of the instruction set lets “mathematica” do a Fourier Transform on the data, ie. searching out the periodicities, if there are any. The result is shown on Attachment 2.
    The transform result shows a sharp spike at the 11 year point (I wonder what is significant about 11 years?). The second part of the instructions now acts upon this observed spike (the Cos 11 bit), to extract it’s waveform from the rest of the noise. The result is shown as a waveform in attachment 3, the waves having an 11-year period, with the long-term Sydney warming easily evident.
    Attachment 4 shows the original Sydney data overlaid against the 11-year periodicity.
    It would appear that the solar cycle does indeed affect temperature.
    (I tried the same run on the CRU global temperature set. Even though CRU must be highly smoothed by the time all the averages are worked out, the 11-year pulse is still there, albeit about half the size of Sydneys).
    Stay cool…”
    [Attached *.gifs…]

    Maybe that is why Australian records get so much tampering world class adjustment — Australian records show the solar cycle in the climatic variation too well, and adjusting 2013/14 temperature records helps to break this obvious link.

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  • #
    albert

    WIKI – ”The Black Thursday bushfires were a devastating series of fires that swept the state of Victoria, Australia on 6 February 1851. They are considered the largest Australian bushfires in a populous region in recorded history, with approximately 5 million hectares, or a quarter of Victoria, being burnt. Twelve lives were lost, along with one million sheep, thousands of cattle and many native animals.”

    The latest Black Saturday fire was ¼ the size with 173 lives lost. It was started by power cables, arsonists and arsonists who used multiple ignition points. Lack of fire breaks, narrow roads, and massive fuel on the forest floor gave the victims no hope of survival.
    Climate Council is warning of worse bush fires when the fact is they were worse in the past and ‘green’ policies were responsible for humans and animals being burned alive

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    • #
      bemused

      Climate Council is warning of worse bush fires…

      Of course it’s easy to warn about worse bush fires when Anthropogenic Bushfire Initiation is a result of ignoring the very basics of bushfire mitigation.

      320

      • #
        TedM

        Such as prescribed burning!!!!

        180

        • #
          albert

          Those who know the history of Australia know that if you don’t burn the bush, it will burn you

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        • #
          Peter Carabot

          I wonder why they don’t do prescribed burning in Vic anymore! Nothing to do with some strange green belief I suppose……….

          60

      • #
        albert

        The modern bush has many service roads therefore many opportunities for multiple ignition points as we have witnessed.
        Victoria has just the coastal fringe left so hot dry winds from over SA have a large area to accelerate over and if the bush is alight then fire in the canopy seems certain. Natural fires were more frequent in the past and only those people who study the past have a better chance of not beibg conned by the Climate Council with their ‘secret models’

        20

    • #
      Robert O

      There is failure in logic by the greens & Co. On the one hand they are talking about climate change and more, wilder, bushfires, and on the other they are using their political power to stop preventative measures, mainly control burning under mild conditions, but also the proper maintenance of firebreaks, keeping property clean and free of fire hazards.

      Fire behaviour is a function of the amount of flammable fuel and the weather at the time: can’t do much about the weather but you can limit fire intensity by fuel reduction.

      100

    • #
      RB

      47°C in the shade on that day. (117°F)

      Melbourne Regional Office was opened in 1908 (1906 in the papers) but has data going back to only 1855.

      10

  • #

    Climate models. Giggle.

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  • #
    Gary in Erko

    The very knowledgeable Climate Council should publish the percentage likelihood that each year from now on will be hotter than the previous year. We shouldn’t have to wait until we and our children are all dead in the year 2100 to find out the quality of their predictions. How about a measurable incremental tally. For instance, suppose they predicted 80% likelihood, but only three years of the next decade were hotter than the previous year.

    90

    • #
      Peter Carabot

      Unfortunately all the eminent people… on the CC, are extremely busy working out how to make the next model fit the solution…So I had to use my own model to answer your query: The probability that every subsequent year will be the “Hottest Eva(h)” is in the order of 98.3%, there is only one probability in 1,356,872 that a refrigerated container with it’s door open will park anywhere near the measurement station! Even if that happened, I have my own mathematical equation to homogenize the BOM temperatures…..

      50

  • #
    Dennis

    Please spread the word of Monckton, it is too important to pass by and leave behind;

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG0WcjGHkEw&sns=em

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  • #
    el gordo

    ‘In a statement, a spokesman for Environment Minister Greg Hunt said the report drew on research conducted and published by the Australian Government.

    ‘The statement said the Government believed clearly and categorically in the science, and was committed to achieving its carbon emission reduction targets.’

    Greg lacks a backbone and brain, unlike Dennis Jensen who is fully equipped with both.

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  • #
    manalive

    Any so-called science body that uses a nonsense thought-corrupting cliché like ”human carbon pollution” should be ashamed of itself.
    The purpose of items like this are more to reassure the faithful that there is no need to worry that the planet is not heading for a climate catastrophe; I doubt they have much impact on the general public.

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  • #
    DonS

    Really? Didn’t they just tell us that 2014 was the hottest year on record ever?

    I do get confused because since 1998 the ABC has been telling me that every year since has been the hottest on record, EVER!

    150

  • #
    maurie

    Jo, I’m simply damn insulted by these lying mongrels who we are supposed to respect & rely on for our current & future wellbeing!
    I’m also disgusted both by the dangerous idiot Obama speaking of his vote buying dangerous income redistribution, & more so by those gutless other leaders who appear dumb enough not to be able to imagine a world full of self entitled but unmotivated & therefore dissatisfied citizens.

    [Maurie, we understand your frustration. I posted this as an expression of the depth of your anger. But better to rise above and be less insulting and more specific in future comments. OK? – Jo]

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  • #
    Yonniestone

    The heatwave error

    A desperate council bets

    Computer says no

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  • #
    KinkyKeith

    It says a lot that climatologists energy is spent retroactively adjusting the “data” and so little time actually deconstructing the

    “system” so that it can be assessed in a more scientific manner.

    I guess they intuitively realise that in the case of “climate science” that more knowledge is not necessarily “better”.

    KK

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  • #
    pat

    just want to say there are now 14,930 comments for Christopher Booker’s “The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever” … and the CAGW believers are attempting to fight back!!! obviously, it’s impossible to read them all, but it’s fun to check some out.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/11395516/The-fiddling-with-temperature-data-is-the-biggest-science-scandal-ever.html

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  • #
    the Griss

    And the adjustments just keep on coming !!!

    Nearly always towards a MANUFACTURED warming trend.

    I suspect that when all the adjustments are found..

    The adjustments will account for MORE THAN 100% of the warming !!

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  • #
    TdeF

    My questions to Australia’s Climate Council

    1. The ‘Climate Council’ is not a government body, so who exactly pays the wages and costs?
    2. Why? What do they want?
    3 Does the climate council make a profit or is it a non profit organization funded by philanthropists?
    4. To whom does the Climate Council report and how do they judge success?
    5. The ex Climate commissioners were not any of them meteorologists, so how is the climate council qualified to talk as experts about physical science and meteorology?
    6. If the ‘Climate Council’ decided that man made Global Warming was not true, would it disband?
    7. How many experts in computer modelling of climate are on the Climate Council and who are they?
    8. How does Global Warming produce Climate Change if there is no discernible global warming?
    9. Can just anyone be a scientist without formal training at tertiary level in at least physics, mathematics, chemistry or is science a matter of opinion and agreement and exposure and consensus among like minded individuals?
    9. Why all these announcements about every very hot day, every storm, every flood but the cold days, the normal rain, the dreadful cold in the Northern Hemisphere, the record ice cover in Antarctica are never mentioned? Surely they are equally important?
    10. Why is there never any good news about the climate from the Climate Council?
    11. Why does the Climate Council label CO2 pollution and an industrial emission when all humans and plants are made up to 99% from CO2 plus water? Most CO2 comes from plants, alive and dead, so it is not unnatural or manufactured in any sense so why emissions?
    12. Why is increased CO2 a bad thing when it does not cause any discernible warming and increases crop yields?
    13. Why is warming a bad thing? All mankind’s leaps have come during warm times when crops grew easily, creating a leisure and artistic and intellectual class.
    13. If ‘natural forces’ or ‘warming oceans’ currently prevent our environment totally from warming, how do you know that if you could not predict it?
    14. why are you insisting warming happens anyway, despite the evidence of satellites and thermometers?
    15. Could the switch to semiconductors in the 1980s have produced a discontinity in measurement world wide and there has been no real heating?
    16. How can you sincerely predict Global Warming while admitting that the warming is overwhelmed by things you do not understand and did not and cannot predict and do not understand?
    17. If the oceans stole the warming, why? Should we be grateful or angry?

    Sincerely,

    Puzzled

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    pat

    CAGW fanatic Taylor, formerly of News Ltd and Fairfax, is another piece of work:

    9 Feb: Guardian: Lenore Taylor: Tony Abbott’s plaintive plea for time fails to restore his authority
    The substantial vote for a leadership spill – even with no official candidate on offer – bodes ill for the prime minister’s future
    As well as the crazy decision to award Prince Philip a knighthood, this crisis was triggered by the disastrous result the Coalition suffered in Queensland. Now federal instability threatens to bleed into the New South Wales election campaign….
    But most think that if a prime minister loses 39 votes in what is effectively a leadership challenge with no alternative contender, he is living on borrowed time.
    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/feb/09/tony-abbott-plaintive-plea-time-fails-convince

    Malcolm, Malcolm, and more Malcolm. duh!

    9 Feb: Guardian: Tom Bentley: Abbott’s legacy is a hairball in the throat of the body politic. Can Turnbull dislodge it?
    Tony Abbott saw off this morning’s spill, but he’s a spent force.
    PHOTO CAPTION OF TURNBULL, NATURALLY: ‘The greater barrier to a successful Turnbull government, though, is the tangled knot of interests and claims surrounding the Coalition.’
    While I was working for Julia Gillard in 2012, I was told the Labor party should make Malcolm Turnbull its leader. One unasked-for adviser said the Liberal party would never do it, but since Malcolm was so naturally the leader Australia is waiting for, it would be worth Labor’s while to help him along.
    Recent opinion polls suggest that my acquaintance was not alone..
    Tony Abbott is a spent force…
    Personal arrogance, inflexibility and hypocrisy all played a part in Abbott’s demise. His inability to adapt to the demands of office stem from the fact that he is, fundamentally, a creature of the past…
    Turnbull’s ascension would be a good thing for Australia…
    Turnbull’s popularity is partly explained by the success he has achieved as an outsider, a buccaneer who conquered the worlds of law, finance and technology before entering politics…
    Knowing how to stick it to the British establishment, as Turnbull did in the Spycatcher case, appeals very broadly to Australians, a fact which demonstrates the epic scale of Abbott’s misjudgement over knighthoods.
    Turnbull’s entrepreneurial flair gives him an aura comparable to Richard Branson’s…
    Hilariously, on the weekend that Abbott was preparing to flunk his “make or break” press club address, Turnbull was test-driving a Tesla in California.
    A self-made man, comfortable in his own skin and the modern world, fits neatly with what many want to believe about Turnbull’s political leadership: that he could successfully combine social with economic liberalism, moderating the scarier fringes of the Coalition while modernising Australia’s market-friendly economic policy framework.
    Turnbull’s urbane charms are considerable…
    Turnbull lost the Liberal leadership in 2009 not just because of his virtuous advocacy of carbon pricing, but because he tried to dismount Kevin Rudd with a single blow…
    Turnbull has cheerfully signalled how different he is from Abbott over the last year, for example by taking on Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones, all in the name of being a “team player”…
    The government is made up of so many different ideological strands that it is little wonder the Coalition sought to govern through slogans..
    Together, they stack up to a giant hairball stuck in the throat of the body politic…
    The race is to articulate a convincing agenda for smart, inclusive growth: a version of economic prosperity that works within the ***ecological constraints discovered by science, and includes every person in its reach…
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/09/abbotts-legacy-is-a-hairball-in-the-throat-of-the-body-politic-can-turnbull-dislodge-it
    from Wikipedia: Tom Bentley is an author and policy analyst based in Australia. Bentley was born and educated in the United Kingdom, where he gained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford.
    Bentley was formerly executive director for policy and cabinet for the Premier of Victoria, Australia, and was then deputy chief of staff to Prime Minister Julia Gillard and part-time director of the Australia and New Zealand School of Government Between 1998 and 2006 he was director of DEMOS – described by The Economist as ‘Britain’s most influential think tank.

    butt out, Bentley. Lord Monckton has forewarned Australians. LOL.

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    Andrew McRae

    An old dispute between Doug Keenan and the Met Office UK may be relevant here. I may not have understood the statistics correctly but I’ll give it a shot; readers are encouraged to follow the link and decide for themselves.

    When claims of temperatures and temperature trends are said to be statistically significantly above some naturally expected range, this implies from the Bayesian school of probability that the appropriate prior probability distribution function is known for the quantity in question – in this case regional and global averaged temperatures in time series. Doug showed the MetOffice that the probability model they were using was 1000x worse at representing climate variability than a different probability model that he chose, so on what basis should the MetOffice’s claims of statistical significance be believed.

    Seems to me that claims the year 2013’s temperature was “virtually impossible” without AGW are also implicitly based on some probabilistic model of climate variance. What model was that, and on what basis does anyone think it is the most accurate one to use?

    Doug made a comment at Bishop Hill on 31 May 2013 which summarises his contention.

    The MetOffice has a rebuttal in which their point 3 reads (paraphrased):

    Using statistical tests in the absence of [our knowledge of the way that the climate system works] is inappropriate, particularly when it is not possible to know, definitively, which is the most appropriate statistical model to use.

    Some have interpreted this to mean that nobody knows which statistical model is best to test a nature-only model run against actual temperatures for determining the probability that a man-made distortion is present. The basis of a “virtually impossible” probability claim for 2013 seems even more uncertain when viewed in the context of the MetOffice response.

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    Faye

    When Flannery and Steffen were “showing” their shiny new report to scare the living daylights out of us so we will give them more money to save us from frying alive, they had a tinge of desperation and frustration about them, especially Flannery with his signature pleading face.

    Flannery was pointing at his favourite graph, working feverishly to prove to we morons that they had discovered we were all in mortal danger.

    When will this awful nightmare end! And these [people] made accountable?

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      el gordo

      The nightmare should end in a few years with the beginning of global cooling, Steffen and Flummery will undoubtedly be pilloried at that point.

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        Kevin Lohse

        Probably not. The whole point about the Millennialist approach is that the expected Armageddon can be moved forward in time at the convenience of the true believer, content in the knowledge that in 9,2 Billion years, give or take a billion, the planet will be burnt to a crisp anyway. THERE! SEE!! WE WERE RIGHT!!!!!. The best you can hope for is that over time, the Climate religion will become, like the Egyptian religion, an antiquarian curiosity with a last few traces carefully preserved for tourists to gawp at. A carefully preserved GCM here, an expeditionary ship eternally stuck in the Antarctic ice pack there, as monuments to Man’s folly..

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        Rereke Whakaaro

        I wouldn’t bet on it. Somebody will spot a “Cleb”, and all attention will focus elsewhere.

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    pat

    o/t but this is an ongoing story.
    who won the vote this morning? “up his proverbial”, “pissed off”? this is the DT’s “chief political reporter! unbelievable.

    10 Feb: Daily Telegraph: Hockey’s 13 weeks to save the PM
    by Simon Benson, Chief Political Reporter
    But Hockey has so far proved incapable of such a task.
    His fate, the fate of Abbott and that of Malcolm Turnbull now rest with the May Budget.
    If it fails, Turnbull will pounce. And he will be justified in doing so. No one will be able to say the PM wasn’t given a chance to redeem himself and lift the fortunes of the government…
    So it was not just Abbott who was put on formal notice by 40 per cent of his party room in yesterday’s aborted attempt at a leadership spill.
    It was Hockey who had a rocket fired up his proverbial as well…
    But the best view is often from afar. And the picture that emerges is that there were 39 members of the Coalition backbench who are mightily pissed off with Abbott and the leadership team. They were angry and they have had their say…
    But equally now that the malcontents have vented their spleen, their employers — the taxpayers — expect them to also get back to work.
    http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/hockeys-13-weeks-to-save-the-pm/story-fni0cx12-1227213907306

    if the following doesn’t prove, yet again, News Ltd is alongside the rest of the MSM in attempting to destroy Abbott and install Turnbull, i don’t know what will:

    10 Feb: Daily Telegraph: Turncoats: Six ministers among the traitors as Abbott safe beyond the Budget
    EXCLUSIVE Simon Benson and Daniel Meers
    VIDEO UNDER HEADLINE: SMIRKING MALCOLM WITH BISHOP BEHIND HIM Caption: Government gets hammered by Labor during Question Time.
    A minister close to the PM said he was shocked when the count confirmed only 61 votes.
    “Nine people lied to him,” he said…
    LINK: THE QUESTION ABBOTT COULDN’T ANSWER ON 7.30
    While most of his executive stuck with him, The Daily Telegraph was given the names of at least six ministers who are believed to have broken with duties of loyalty to the leader in the secret ballot.
    One was caught at the weekend making calls on behalf of communications minister Malcolm Turnbull…
    LINK: SIMON BENSON: HOCKEY’S 13 WEEKS TO SAVE THE PM
    LINK: PASS: SPECULATION OVER WHICH MP VOTED INFORMALLY
    LINK: PROTESTERS TRAPPED IN LIFT AT PM’S MANLY OFFICE
    They said it was a final warning after ignoring pleas from colleagues to change his style since December.
    “He was obviously shocked,” one of Mr Abbott’s ministerial colleagues said.
    “He didn’t expect the number to be that high. It is pretty tough medicine to read.”…
    The vote showed that the Prime Minister had lost the support of almost two-thirds of his backbench.
    The spill failure is expected to buy Mr Abbott survival until June to allow for the NSW election next month and the federal Budget in May…
    LINK: DANIEL MEERS: ABBOTT WON THE BATTLE, BUT THE WAR’S NOT OVER
    LINK: STUDENT PROTESTERS TRAPPED IN ELEVATOR AT PM’S MANLY OFFICE
    LINK: QUEENSLAND: PALASZCZUK TO CALL ON GOVERNOR TODAY
    The Daily Telegraph understands senior figures working for wannabe prime minister Malcolm Turnbull have agreed to put further challenges on ice until after the Budget.
    Supporters of Mr Abbott even warned that his fate now rested with Treasurer Joe Hockey, claiming they would struggle to protect him from another challenge to his leadership if they delivered another failed Budget. He would be expected to almost certainly lose a second challenge…
    There was speculation last night that some within the government’s frontbench executive had moved to Mr Turnbull, but Mr Abbott has vowed no recriminations to any of his senior ministers who have been disloyal…
    http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/turncoats-six-ministers-among-the-traitors-as-abbott-safe-beyond-the-budget/story-fnpn118l-1227213921518

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      Leigh

      Pat I didn’t think for one minute I was the only one who noticed that the Murdoch press has joined with the forces of evil at “our ABC” and fairfax to bring down Abbott.
      The bias displayed in about a eight different headlines on the opening page at news com. beggered belief.
      And again today with huge headlines highlighting an inane question by Sales.
      Turnbul and his instep thinking on global warming with Rudd and the labor/greens party is the reason Abbott is Prime minister.
      It just proves beyond doubt to me that all media outlets have an overwhelming bent to the left.
      They will eventually bring him down.
      And for what gain?
      It will achieve nothing but the hastening of the return of the labor/green party and we skeptics are right back where we started.

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    Matty

    Joe Public is much to smart to be taken in by Academic’s statistical sophistry. Particularly after repeated demonstrations that they don’t understand statistics.

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    pat

    9 Feb: News Ltd: Sam Clench: The one question Tony Abbott just couldn’t answer on 7.30
    But when Ms Sales asked one particularly uncomfortable question, Mr Abbott had no answers either.
    Ms Sales suggested Australians have seen three different Tony Abbotts: the Opposition Leader, the Prime Minister, and now the “changed, reformed” Prime Minister. She wanted to know who Mr Abbott really is.
    Here’s the full, intriguing exchange.
    Sales: “Who are you?”…

    (CLENCH THEN PASTES ABC’S TRANSCRIPT, WHICH WE CAN READ AT ABC, THANK U, WITH SALES ASKING THE QUESTION 3 TIMES DIRECTLY & ONCE INDIRECTLY. HE’S THE PM, LEIGH.)

    PIC OF SALES: Caption: Leigh Sales really wanted an answer.

    “But it’s interesting that you’re not able to answer the question to me. Who are you, what do you stand for? Which Tony are you?”…

    If you know who Tony Abbott really is, tell the author: @SamClench…

    (MORE ABC TRANSCRIPT)
    ***Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull had been touted as the most likely replacement for Mr Abbott in the event of a successful spill, with polls consistently giving him a significant edge as preferred Liberal leader…
    PIC of PM: Caption: Just forget about the previous 520 days, OK?”
    http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/the-one-question-tony-abbott-just-couldnt-answer-on-730/story-e6frfmyi-1227213839449

    LEIGH SALES: WHO ARE YOU?
    AND WHO IS SAM CLENCH:

    News Ltd bio for Sam Clench:
    Sam is the Afternoon Editor at news.com.au. While he is best known for his spectacularly bad haircut, Sam does write the occasional story, and is particularly obsessed with sport, US politics and anything related to Game of Thrones. He once earned a postgraduate degree in journalism from UTS, though we’re not entirely sure how. (FROM LINKEDIN, HE LEFT UTS IN 2013).

    ABC 7.30 Report: Top story headline: Tony Abbott survives ‘near death experience’ but is he on borrowed time?

    then Leigh Sales’s Who Are You interview, headlined “Tony Abbott ‘determined to be more consultative’ after spill threat”

    LEIGH SALES: …Prime Minister, welcome to the program.
    TONY ABBOTT, PRIME MINISTER: Thank you, Leigh. It’s lovely to be here.
    LEIGH SALES: Are you a dead man walking?..

    FINAL SEGMENT: Tony Abbott ‘won a reprieve’ according to some supporters
    Reporter: Leigh Sales
    Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s supporters say he’s won a reprieve by avoiding a leadership spill but ***some party insiders say that doesn’t mean he has a licence to continue forever.
    LEIGH SALES: Firstly, the million-dollar question: can the Prime Minister turn this around from here? Chris, firstly to you.
    CHRIS UHLMANN, ABC POLITICAL EDITOR: Well, there are a lot of people who supported him today who don’t believe that he can. In their words, he’s won a reprieve, ***but that doesn’t mean he has a licence to continue forever…
    http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/
    ***LEIGH SALES: IS UHLMANN “SOME PARTY INSIDERS” OR WHAT?

    I DIDN’T WATCH THIS. I DON’T WATCH ABC AT ALL. CAN CRITIQUE IT NO PROBLEM ONLINE. BUT SHUT THESE PEOPLE DOWN.

    THE IDEA THAT BBC OR STATE TV IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY WOULD DISRESPECT THE HEAD OF STATE IN SUCH AN ARROGANT & AMATEURISH MANNER AS THESE OVERPAID, TAXPAYER-FUNDED LOT DO, IS UNIMAGINABLE. PERIOD.

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    • #

      pat says this:

      THE IDEA THAT BBC OR STATE TV IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY WOULD DISRESPECT THE HEAD OF STATE IN SUCH AN ARROGANT & AMATEURISH MANNER AS THESE OVERPAID, TAXPAYER-FUNDED LOT DO, IS UNIMAGINABLE. PERIOD.

      Look, I know this is off topic but I also watched that interview Leigh Sales did with the Prime Minister of Australia tonight.

      Is there a salient factoid to come out of that interview?

      The Australian taxpayer pays the wages of both people featured in that interview.

      Leigh Sales is paid almost as much as the Prime Minister, and that’s based on figures which are now 2 years old.

      She probably now gets paid even more than the Prime Minister.

      THAT makes me very bl00dy angry.

      Tony.

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        pattoh

        Hey Tony

        Here is a plan:-

        Abbott could re-instate the licence reduction Kevin used to bribe the commercial media & “in light of the ever increasing costs of maintaining the high end ABC jouros, flip it into their kitty”

        That could set off an interesting cat fight between the artistic egos & self righteous, petulant, foot stomping children.

        After all they are not really delivering dispassionate objective news so they may as well provide some entertainmet.

        Either that or the delightful Memory Vault plan where they get the ABC signed over to them & have to sink or swim on their own.

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      • #

        I was wrong here, so I should rectify that.

        Leigh Sales only gets around 75% of what the Prime Minister is paid.

        I was going on old figures and I found more recent ones.

        Sorry!

        Tony.

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          AndrewWA

          Relax Tony

          In all cases Sales is grossly overpaid.

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          Leigh

          “I was wrong here,”
          And there in lies the differnce between sane people and the left.
          Good one Tony.
          And yes she’s not the only one grossly overpaid at
          “their ABC”.

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    The Backslider

    This is what the BOM regards as a weather station with “good exposure”: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/cdo/images/about/site.jpg

    http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/cdo/about/sites.shtml

    Notice that the base of the Stevenson screen box is made of STEEL?

    Notice just how close the Stevenson Screen is to a STEEL fence?

    Yeh mate, that’s how we always get the hottest year evah!!!

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    Roy Hogue

    Even in the middle of a supposedly unprecedented drought in California I’m not willing to believe that climate change (nee global warming) has anything to do with it. Except for the Sierra Nevada and northern coastal mountains, California is mostly desert, dry all the time and dependent on importing water from the Colorado River, the Sierra Nevada Range and the far north end of the state to survive.

    It doesn’t take much of a change in ocean currents — you know, those things that most influence precipitation on the west coast of North America — to throw it all out of whack. This past weekend the north end of the state, Oregon and Washington took a hell of a deluge from the first good storm in years, as much as 10 inches per hour was forecast. But it bypassed Southern California as it usually does with no more than a pretense of rain.

    It’s too bad even that storm will not “cure” the drought problem but I’m grateful for anything that helps.

    Nuts to climate change and it’s lying proponents.

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      Roy Hogue

      And nuts in spades to the cowardly Republicans who won’t stand up and put out the truth about climate change.

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      Roy Hogue

      And climate science isn’t the only problem in science. This popped up as I closed the tab with JoNova in it. It discusses the, “Shocking new report on danger of second hand smoke.” Is it really shocking?

      It’s off topic — or maybe not. So what’s my problem with it? There’s a ton of assumption about secondhand smoke in there and very little actual correlation with the smoker you’re exposed to. It’s still impossible to look at any one case of anything and determine that exposure to smoke caused it, just as it’s impossible to look at CO2 levels in the atmosphere and determine that CO2 is doing anything.

      If there’s really evidence that smoking by a parent is causing their child a problem then try to get the smoking stopped. But this kind of alarm is unjustified.

      I like being free of smoke, any kind of smoke, just as I like nice cool days. But hot days come and so does smoke. When can we begin to be honest with ourselves about risk evaluation and mitigation? I guess the answer is never. 🙁

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    Leonard Lane

    It seems that climate science is not the only endeavor which has trouble with it sums so it makes up new data. How about cosmology or astronomy, or astrophysics, or whatever it is called.
    This is, of course, from Wiki, but given the quality of explanation makes everything seem OK.
    “Dark matter’s existence is inferred from gravitational effects on visible matter and gravitational lensing of background radiation, and was originally hypothesized to account for discrepancies between calculations of the mass of galaxies, clusters of galaxies and the entire universe made through dynamical and general relativistic means, and calculations based on the mass of the visible “luminous” matter these objects contain: stars and the gas and dust of the interstellar and intergalactic medium.[2]

    The most widely accepted explanation for these phenomena is that dark matter exists and that it is most probably[9] composed of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) that interact only through gravity and the weak force. Alternative explanations have been proposed, and there is not yet sufficient experimental evidence to determine whether any of them are correct. Many experiments to detect proposed dark matter particles through non-gravitational means are under way.[11]

    One other theory suggests the existence of a “Hidden Valley”, a parallel world made of dark matter having very little in common with matter we know,[12] and that could only interact with our visible universe through gravity”

    40

    • #
      Roy Hogue

      Cosmology and theoretical physics have always been way out on a limb. It’s almost like a religeon climate science, isn’t it?

      80

    • #
      Matty

      Is CO2 the Dark Matter of the Climate Industry ?
      No, because it’s observable. But then there’s all that ‘missing’ Heat.

      60

    • #
      Grumpy

      Cosmology and astrophysics may well be drawing some quite amazing conclusions from very limited data, but we do not try to destroy our own economy and way of life because of what scientist postulate is happening in that very uncertain part of existence.

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        …but we do not try to destroy our own economy and way of life because of what scientist postulate is happening in that very uncertain part of existence.

        And that honesty is very much to your credit. I wish climate science could be as honest about what it does and does not know.

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  • #
    Another Ian

    More on adjusting temperature records at

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/y2kyoto-revisio.html#comments

    with link to Paul Homewood

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  • #
    Ruairi

    The U.N. must take us for asses,
    Hoping models will fob off the masses,
    To convince us it’s true,
    Climate changes are due,
    To our emissions of greenhouse gasses.

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    Peter Carabot

    Now we are talking odds? Maybe they should rename that think-tank “Weather-bet”.

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    handjive

    2013 was “The Angry Summer”.

    Very Angry.

    ”Not too many people would want to put their life savings on a 500-1 horse.” – Will Steffen.
    ~ ~ ~
    Whats the odds “the odds” would be greater 2 years later? Very good is that bet.

    The “it’s worse than we first thought” of the betting industry.

    A computer simulation of the atmosphere showed that climate change tripled the odds that the heatwaves of 2012/2013 would occur as frequently as they did and doubled the odds that they would be as intense as they were.”

    500 to 1500-1 odds in 2 years?

    Worst apocalypse. Ever.
    . . .
    What is odd is that this failed lotto prediction machine, presented as “97% certified consensus climate science”, is endorsed by the Abbott government!?!

    It’s not winning you any votes, Tony.

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    Physics Group

    Heatwaves have nothing to do with carbon dioxide, because the whole concept that planetary surface temperatures are determined primarily by direct solar radiation is totally incorrect. The planet Uranus, for example, has no surface at the base of its nominal troposphere where the temperatures is about 47°C.

    [snip the long boring rest from what appears to be yet another Doug Cotton sock puppet. Yawn. ] ED

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    • #
      Physics Group

      [Moderator: Sometimes it is necessary to take a reasonable number of words to explain the thermodynamics of all planetary tropospheres, surfaces, crusts, mantles etc. I make no apology for being precise, and precision in physics should also answer anticipated questions in advance. Our group will submit no more than three such comments (approved by the members) each week to various climate blogs, youtube threads and Facebook groups – about 80 to 100 in total.]

      Our group now comprises myself and four other men and a woman, all of us suitably qualified in physics or, in one case, in engineering with a suitable understanding of thermodynamics. All are from the state of NSW, Australia at this stage, though others are welcome from any English or German speaking country. (We have a German page on our website, by the way.)
      All understand and agree with the physics in our group’s website which has had over 3,000 visitors in its first month.

      I will also be meeting with the “Five Dock Climate Realists” and talking to their members later this month, possibly recruiting more to our small group. (Five Dock is a suburb of Sydney.) Some members of that group (one already in our Planetary Physics group) may have some influence through their membership of a political party. It is our hope that Australia may lead the world in rejecting the invalid physics promulgated by the IPCC without any supporting empirical evidence what-so-ever. In that regard, this letter should provide evidence of the lack of evidence supporting the radiative forcing conjecture.

      Radiation from the colder atmosphere does not penetrate ocean surfaces more than a few nanometers. Its flux cannot be added to incident solar flux and the total then used in Stefan Boltzmann calculations, after deducting sensible heat transfers out of the surface, because the surface is not a black or grey body by definition.

      The direct solar radiation is the only radiation that could raise the Earth’s surface temperature, as does indeed happen during the space of a few hours each clear day, mostly in non-polar regions, but the mean temperature which it could support 24/7 is nowhere near the observed temperature. In fact, using 168W/m^2 of incident solar radiation absorbed by the surface, but then deducting over 100W/m^2 of flux of sensible (non-radiative) heat transfers out of the surface, we are left with about 50W/m^2 and not that 390W/m^2 which included about 340W/m^2 of radiation from the colder atmosphere which cannot raise the surface temperature even in a billion years. The black body temperature for 51W/m^2 is -100°C.

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      • #

        “Radiation from the colder atmosphere does not penetrate ocean surfaces more than a few nanometers.”

        So Doug, smelly Cotton sock puppet, now has an idiot group who fantasize of some radiation from the colder atmosphere toward a higher temperature ocean.
        This group of idiot believers, believe “the black body temperature for 51W/m^2 is -100°C”. In actuality the temperature for anything thermally radiating any flux “must be” greater than the temperature of the environment of that “thing”.
        “Our group now comprises myself and four other men and a woman, all of us suitably qualified in physics or, in one case, in engineering with a suitable understanding of thermodynamics.” I suppose, but you seem to have no one that has any understanding whatsoever of the generation or transmission of thermal electromagnetic flux. Truly pitiful!!!

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    Reed Coray

    With the advent of the modern era of rocketry, it wasn’t long before the phrase “This (ABC) ain’t rocket science” appeared in the common man’s lexicon. The phrase, usually used in a semi-humorous/semi-derogatory vein, implies two things. First, rocket science is complex. Second “this (i.e., ABC)” is much simpler than rocket science and should be understandable (or doable) by all but the mentally challenged. Because of all the shenanigans involving temperature records, I predict that in the near future the phrase “This (DEF) ain’t climate science” will become a humorless/wholly-derogatory part of the lexicon. Like the rocket-science phrase, the climate-science phrase will carry two implications. First, climate science as practiced today isn’t science, but rather is a quasi-religious/fear-mongering/invective-spewing belief system being promulgated by people who for the most part are (a) convinced they’re saving the Earth from the pox that is mankind and/or (b) using the belief system to (i) seek personal aggrandizement, or (ii) achieve a political agenda, or (iii) amass financial gain. Second, unlike climate science, “this (i.e., DEF)” must obey the laws of nature and be amenable to analysis using the scientific method.

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    handjive

    UWA gets thumbs down for teaching

    Students have rated the University of WA, the State’s oldest and most prestigious institution, just one star out of five for teaching quality for the second year in a row.

    One for Ms Jo:
    Alma Mater – Alice Cooper

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    pat

    given the frantic pace of this verbal attack on the PM by Carabine (which includes every News Ltd line i posted last nite, without attribution btw), this probably would be a 45-minute segment on another day, another topic:

    6.09am – 6.27am: 10 Feb: ABC Breakfast: Morning political brief
    The Liberal Party room will meet again today, after what Prime Minister Tony Abbott described as his ‘near death experience’ at yesterday’s gathering.
    Reporter: Alison Carabine, political editor
    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/morning-political-brief/6081712

    ABC’s Breakfast just hours before spill vote yesterday: Jonathan Green: Newspoll gives backbenchers more ammunition against the PM. grim.
    Guest, ABC Insiders’ regular, Andrew Catsaras, goes over the poll figs, but NOT THE ONLY FIGURES THAT MATTER, THOSE RELATING TO COALITION VOTERS/TURNBULL.
    it is Green who cuts in to bring up “leadership change” & he says: at moments like this i like to turn to the “expert view”, plays Clive Palmer audio clip.

    9 Feb: ABC Breakfast: PM’s personal satisfaction rating dives
    The latest Newspoll shows that support for the Federal Government has plunged to its lowest level in six years.
    Guest: Andrew Catsaras, Independent polling analyst
    Producer: Alison Carabine, political editor
    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/pms-personal-satisfaction-rating-plunges/6078814

    thorough searches online and on abc’s own website/archives bring up NOT A SINGLE MENTION THAT COALITION VOTERS rank “Mr Abbott as preferred leader over Malcolm Turnbull by a margin of 54/40”, yet that was the matter at hand.

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    old farte

    Jo,

    You touched upon this, and I’d like to support this: The adjustments to past temp records occurred in response to warming alarmism, and the failure of the record to support the alarmist message. The past data did not support alarm, and the models’
    CO2-was-primary hypothesis was challenged by past data, so the “solution” was to alter past data, to show that the past was cooler than station temperatures recorded.

    The value of these stations was their recording of WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

    During med school, we lived on a mesa less than 2 km from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in University of California, San Diego student housing (now junior faculty housing, how about an Occupy protest).. We were ca. 100 meters above sea level. The climate where we lived was quite different from SIO’s. at 5-30 m above sea level. Our winter minimum colds were typically 1-2 C lower than SIO’s–we got light frosts that they escaped– while our July August maximum highs were 2-3 C higher. Had we lived 2 km eastward the minimum winter lows relative to where we lived were 1-2 C lower, the maximum highs 1-4 C higher. We could eat cherrie tomatoes end-of-June/early July. On the beach, tomatoes didn’t ripen until August. Both of these places were on the same University of California, San Diego campus. One college campus had drastically different climates, west border vs east border.

    A fascinating phenomenon was living along a creek bottom in San juan Capistrano, 2 km from the ocean. We had huge avocado trees. In 5 years living there, we had 1 humongous avocado crop, and 5 no-fruit years. Most years, we got fruit-killing frosts (min temps -3 to-6 C, several nights required to kill the babies). One km away, 70-80 m upslope, they got avos every year (-1 to -2 C minimums). Summertime max temps were within 1-2 C of each other.

    This teaches me that temp-record “smoothing” is a bad idea. I worked in a place where the highest temp I ever worked outdoors , doing heavy-lifting grunt labor was 41.5, in late August, 1971. Coastal zone central CA. It’s not on the homogenized record. In the homogenized record, didn’t happen. I almost passed out. Did it happen? To those of us working that day, it did. To the temp homogenizers it did not happen.

    If the climate modelers were competent, I’d accept what they say. I know this, from actually living in different places:

    I lived in San Diego for several yars 1974-82. Revisiting in August 2005, foggy on the coast, short sun break, water temp 20 C. sunny 5 km inland at the Wild Animal Park. Just what I remembered from 25 years earlier. San Francisco July 2011, foggy and windy. Best to wear a jacket, just lie in the 1970s. 2014, nice, I have to admit it,but Mendocino, Eureka, foggy. Pretty normal.

    I wentto Hawaii last year, after living there in the early 1980s. More people but climate-wise, about the same.

    Trip to the American River, wow!, young people swimming all over the place. Just like I remembered. Talk about cognitive dissonance. THIS CAN’T HAPPEN. YOU’RE IN AN HISTORIC DROUGHT.

    Just breathe a minute. Visit where you grew up. Has global warming completely changed your childhood landscape?

    The AGW alarmists, wolves telling the sheep, “The global temperature could rise by 5 C by 2100. Think of your grandchildren.” From what I can tell, the 60-70 degree landscape is unpopulated. This means, in the northern hemisphere, there are vast migration opportunities. But, it seems like people aren’t interested in moving. As we speak, New Yorkers, Bosonians, Chicagoans and Minneapolits are moving south,more than Floridians and Arizonans are moving north. They aren’t feeling the heat. If we go to renewable energy, and get more brownouts during the AC months, perhaps we can convince them to move back north.

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    old farte

    I spent the fall in Kiwiland in 1981 for 8 weeks.. The sun went across the sky backwards. If you’re from the NH, that’s discombobulating.

    Wow! Gorgeous place. Weird Monterey Pines that were 3 times as high and thick as intheir native land, where I grew up. Fun people to be with.

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    pat

    er…who lost yesterday?

    9 Feb: News Ltd Finance: Anthony Sharwood: Analysis of Malcolm Turnbull’s body language suggests he’s confident and strutting like a peacock
    But if anyone thinks Malcolm Turnbull is done with, it might pay to take a closer look at his body language…
    After the spill that wasn’t a spill, members of the Liberal party spilled out of the party room down the corridors of Parliament House. Most of them adopted what you might call a fairly natural, relaxed walking motion.
    But Malcolm Turnbull’s body language was decidedly different. The self-made millionaire sauntered along towards the end of the pack, hands clasped firmly behind his back. To the untrained eye, it appeared a little cocky…
    But we thought we’d ask a trained eye for a second opinion, so we turned to Dr Lisa A Williams, social psychologist at UNSW Australia.
    We showed the above image of Mr Turnbull to Dr Williams, and she said that when a person holds their hands behind their back, it can indicate confidence or power, and can even be seen as a chest-puffing gesture.
    “Holding your arms behind your back and doing a bit of chest-puffing could be an attempt to convey dominance,” Dr Williams told news.com.au.
    So basically, Malcolm Turnbull still thinks Malcolm Turnbull is the duck’s nuts, according to one interpretation of his body language today. But what can we infer from this?…
    ***Mr Turnbull has been a portrait of humility and restraint in his statements (or lack of them) this week regarding his personal ambitions and loyalty to Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
    His body language perhaps tells a different story.
    http://www.news.com.au/finance/executive-lounge/analysis-of-malcolm-turnbulls-body-language-suggests-hes-confident-and-strutting-like-a-peacock/story-fng3e17m-1227213263289

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    Rollo

    “The truth may be out there” , but it is Flannery and Stefan who are beamed into the loungerooms of ordinary Orstralians. The ABC denigrate our prime minister in every way possible, but give free reign to the likes of Dumb and Dumber. Nobody pointed out to Flannery that our dams and rivers have filled up multiple times since his “early period” predictions or that the sea has kept its distance from Melbourne and Sydney. I guess it’s the money pouring into their bank accounts that enables them to tell lies with such concerned expressions.

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    The Backslider

    Ok, so I downloaded a copy of the report. What it repeatedly says is the “climate change caused” this and “climate change caused” that.

    It actually only mentions “anthropogenic” once within quoting another study.

    We can safely assume that as a whole it is referring to natural climate change, can’t we?

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    pat

    9 Feb: NoTricksZone: P. Gosselin: Scientists Haul In Huge Money From BIG OIL And Heavy Industry! Long List Of Warmist Organizations, Scientists Haul In Huge Money From BIG OIL And Heavy Industry!
    Reader Jimbo left a comment which I’ve upgraded to a post.
    Below he presents a list of 25 examples where climate alarmism organizations and scientists were more than happy to take in big money from Big Oil and industry. Even Michael Mann (Example no. 19) benefitted from the Koch Brothers!…
    COMMENT by ES 9:
    This lady has done an excellent job of finding out who funds who though the tax system.
    200 Climate Campaign Groups All Funded by a Single Source: The Rockefeller Brothers…
    http://notrickszone.com/2015/02/09/long-list-of-warmist-organizations-scientists-haul-in-huge-money-from-big-oil-and-heavy-industry/#sthash.8f3Rnk72.dpbs

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    pat

    8 Feb: TONY HETHERINGTON: I transferred my pension savings of £158,000 into carbon credits, which have gone up in smoke. Have I lost my pension?
    ByTony Hetherington for the Daily Mail
    N.M. writes: In 2012 I was persuaded to transfer my pension savings of £158,000 into carbon credits…The investment company, Diffraction Limited, went into liquidation last year, but I was told my investment was safe as my credits were held by Citadel Trustees Limited. Now I have been informed this company has also gone into liquidation.
    HETHERINGTON: Citadel Trustees…has not gone into liquidation. It has simply changed its name to Highpoint Trustees. But this is where the good news ends. Diffraction did not just go into liquidation. It was ordered to do so last June by the High Court for making seriously false claims to investors who stumped up £1.3 million.
    The company sold carbon credits for £4.81 apiece, having bought them for just £1.11 from Eco-Synergies Limited, another company in the same corrupt gang. There is no proper market for ordinary investors to turn credits back into cash. In effect, you have been robbed at the point of a pen rather than the barrel of a gun.
    Diffraction’s sole director was Lincoln Prevost, a 39-year-old musician from South London who now runs a company called Zentith Studio. I asked him what he thought of your letter and why he should not be prosecuted for fraud…
    The judge who shut down Diffraction, Registrar Christine Derrett, made the same point. She said that ‘customers were referred to Citadel’s FCA registration, which offers the customer no protection ***as trading in carbon credits is not a regulated activity.’…
    In fact, Citadel and one of its directors, Anna Rickard, even ran Eco-Synergies Nominees, part of the corrupt network of 13 companies shut down by a different judge last May. The Insolvency Service, which investigated, found the group had scammed people out of more than £19 million. Again though, Citadel, Rickard, and Eco-Synergies Nominees provided a veneer of respectability and stood back from the dishonest marketing.
    I was in touch with Rickard two years ago, when her company Citadel played a similar trustee role for a different rip-off business, World Carbon Limited. She told me then: ‘It would only be unethical for Citadel to knowingly and intentionally involve itself in a scam.’
    World Carbon has since been wound up in court…
    The bottom line is that your pension savings have gone. Those behind the rip-off ring that included Diffraction have pocketed £19 million. Two judges have condemned the companies involved. But nobody has been arrested. Do we have genuine investor protection in Britain, or don’t we?
    If any politician wants to take this issue seriously, let them contact me. Until then, the answer has to be no, we do not.
    http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/experts/article-2943874/TONY-HETHERINGTON-158-000-carbon-credits-went-smoke.html

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      Rick Will

      Gullible people are easily separated from their savings.

      The lack of curiosity among the majority of journalists make them complicit in promoting the climate change fairy tale.

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        tom0mason

        The other factor is that as people reach their dotage, their once keen critical faculties begin to falter. What was in younger days easy to see as a dubious deal now seems a wise investment. That, sadly, is when a sharp dealer with an easy spiel can dupe them out of their life saving with ease.
        IMO Protection is necessary for these people.

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    eliza

    I think that you will realize that you have been royally had by using any temperature data spewed out by GISS, Hadcrut,BOM ect.THis means basically that all the analysis by Monckton, Yourselves ect is absolute crap because it is likely after reviewing all the data being shown by Homewood, Goddard, Mahorasy ect that is all been adjusted in a f[ulent] manner to show warming. My BEST guess (pun intended) is that surface temperatures since 1740 to this date are essentially flat. The satellite data from 1979 shows a little warming but if you extrapolleated it back to 1740 it would probably look the same as the raw surface data.I rest my case but we shall see.
    [ ]ED

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      Graeme No.3

      No. The Little Ice Age ended in Europe sometime around 1690-1710, depending on the definition of ending.
      The furthest reach of the Mont Blanc Glacier into the outskirts of Chamonix was 1685; we know because the locals had a priest exorcise the glacier. Confirmation was the report of the Taxation agents at that time that there was no point in trying to collect taxes there. In 1715 the local Bishop held a Fair in Chamonix to revive trade etc. (not entirely altruistic as he owned the village so an improved economy would help his income). In the 1740’s the glacier had retreated about 2 musket shots in distance (not sure what that is in metric).

      By 1830 the Dalton Minimum had brought the ice back almost to the original maximum. From 1850 onwards rapid warming caused massive retreat of the glaciers, which lasted until around 1885-90. From approx. 1920 the glaciers retreated for 20 years. There was another pause (and probably some increase) until the late 1970’s. There has been slight melting since. So there is little doubt that there was warming from 1845 onwards. The amount of warming since 1950 doesn’t seem to be that great.

      At the other end of Switzerland the Grindlwald glacier has melted back to the point it reached in 1240, but not back to the point known in 1210. So the temperatures current 1980-2005 are not as warm as the Medieval Warm Period.

      The readings now hidden by the BoM seem to show that SE Australia was warmer 1890-1940 than current day. Equally, rural stations in the USA show the 1920’s and 30’s were warmer than current days, and a deal warmer that 50 years previously.
      It now looks like we will move back to a cooling cycle for 20-30 years or possibly longer.

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    pat

    9 Feb: WCVB: Snow sets historic records in Boston
    Boston breaks record for snow in 30 days
    The seemingly never-ending snowfall gave Boston more than 73 inches for the winter, passing the 72.9 inches that fell during the winter of 1903-1904…
    Boston also set a record with the most snow in 30 days with 60.8 inches.
    The previous record was 58.8 inches that fell before, during and after the Blizzard of 1978. However, this time, that record was set in 17 days, not 30…
    FIRST COMMENT: NOT after NOAA jiggles the data. This will be recorded as almost BALMY!…ETC
    http://www.wcvb.com/weather/snow-sets-historic-records-in-boston/31168556

    following is a comic tale of infighting involving so-called CAGW believers…so funny:

    6 Feb: VermontWatchdog.org: Bruce Parker: Vermont’s environmental policy destroying environment, says environmentalist
    PHOTO CAPTION: MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL
    As environmentalists and lawmakers met at the statehouse this week to discuss a bill that would require large-scale utility companies to sell more high-cost renewable energy to Vermonters, Whitworth was among those who testified before the House Committee on Natural Resources and Energy.
    In a gathering of environmentalists, onlookers might expect sunny talk about Vermont’s plans to achieve 90-percent renewable energy consumption by 2050.
    Whitworth’s outlook on Big Renewables was as sunny as a snow-covered solar panel in the dead of a Vermont winter…
    While some oppose renewable energy development due to its high cost to ratepayers, Whitworth’s bone of contention is that Big Wind is decimating Vermont’s forests and ridgelines, as shown in this before-and-after shot of Lowell Mountain…
    According to Whitworth, the renewable industry’s destruction of ecosystems is the true threat to the environment…
    Whitworth said large-scale wind and solar projects produce the precise mountaintop destruction and environmental impact Ellis says she opposes.
    In addition, he said environmentalists were silent when Big Wind looked to install massive wind farms atop Seneca Mountain in the Northeast Kingdom, the second largest block of unfragmented wildlife habitat in Vermont.
    “Some developer wanted to put a line of turbines down the center of it. Where were the environmental groups when that was being proposed? Not one of them came out in opposition to that project because they believe renewables are intrinsically good,” he said…
    http://watchdog.org/198173/environmentalists-destroying-environment/

    COMMENT by Rickvt:
    I’m for protecting our environment, but, a few environmentalist’s who must be wealthy have had our hydro electric dams torn down for fish, they’ve forced Vermont Yankee to shut down even though there has never been any serious threat to Vermonters. Now they don’t want wind turbines on your mountains, they don’t want solar farms. And our legislators have caved into the demands of a few environmentalists without any cheap energy to replace all of the cleanest energy we all ready had. Also Massachusetts had been forced to close down it’s sole coal powered power plant leaving New England with a very serious energy shortage with no cheap replacement the loss. They’ve also fought the natural gas pipeline..A small pipe carrying Natural gas in my mind carries very little threat to our environment and only demands a small swath of land to build it…let these Environmental Nazi’s come up with the needed power for those of us who are on a limited budget and can’t afford the ever increasing cost of power..Maybe they can install solar panels for each home affected by their actions!!! I care for my elderly disabled Mom and we’re forced to sit in a cold home now in order to keep down the cost of heating…

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      pat quotes this

      They’ve also fought the natural gas pipeline..

      And yet these same people tell us that if we do (ever) approve of any new coal fired power plant, then it must have CCS (Carbon Capture and Sequestration (or Storage)) technology as part of it.

      Not that it will ever be realised on the scale required, it would however require thousands and probably tens of thousands of miles of pipeline to transfer the captured CO2 from the power plant to the ‘hole in the ground’ where it is to be sequestered forever, and when that hole fills, then more pipelines to the next ‘hole in the ground’.

      Sometimes, the outright hypocrisy (or more correctly, clueless stupidity) of environmentalists astounds me.

      A similar situation applies with the failure to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

      Tony.

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    Lord Jim

    “2013 record heatwave ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change, Climate Council of Australia report says..

    Meh, I don’t know what you are all complaining about the word ‘virtual’ in ‘virtually impossible’ clearly refers tot he fact that the models operate in virtual – as opposed to actual – reality; therefore the phrase ‘virtually impossible’ refers to the fact that warming without co2 is impossible in the virtually created world of climate science.
    QED.

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    http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/climate-guru-brace-for-massive-cover-up/

    [ Dorje, we like to have some kind of introduction with a link. Warning to readers there are lots of ads with the linked site. It appears to be clean otherwise.] ED

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    Grumpy

    I think that to refer to the climate models as ‘broken’ is too kind. They never had a chance of working in the first place. I work with geological data to model a static environment, which has its own challenges. Trying to model something like the dynamics of the earth’s atmosphere with only a handful of data, it does not matter how big your computer, or how sophisticated your routine, it is ‘virtually impossible’ that you will come up with something meaningful. But then again, this allows some room for creativity……………..

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    Rick Will

    Greenland ice accumulation continues at or near record level:
    http://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/

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    Ian Bryce

    I thought Will Steffens shot him self in the foot.
    How come heatwaves are not hotter in Darwin and Canberra, and in Hobart they are actually cooler. Hasn’t it twigged with these guys that the problem with the large cities is the Urban Heat Island effect. Doesn’t the lack of increase in heatwave temperatures in Darwin, Canberra, and Hobart indicate that there is no global warming in those cities.

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    RoHa

    “a real science journalist”

    Ha! I challenge you to find a real journalist of any type in Australia. The MSM just uncritically repeat the line they’ve been fed by the Global Warmers, the Government, or the Americans.

    If you want to get a real idea of what is going on you have to get your news and commentary from blogs run by guys wearing foil hats. (They are usually far too loopy to conned, threatened, or bought off.) Then apply a bit of scepticism to stories about the lizard people.

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    Tea party Lank

    In recent developments, the Mayor of Boston, an active climate alarmist, has come up with a cunning stunt.

    He has taken it into his own hands to make sure alarmist scares of dramatic sea level rise occur as predicted. During a ‘disappointing’ winter of ‘negative’ temperature records and huge snow drifts, he has decided that Boston will move the thick snow currently blanketing the city……… and dump it into the sea.
    https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/02/09/mayor-walsh-city-may-begin-dumping-snow-boston-harbor/KIW2nhQlS0yPfMuViLVI4K/story.html

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      John F. Hultquist

      Many years ago in the USA bridges had a removable section for snow-laden trucks to back up to and dump snow in rivers. It was decided that oil and salt did not do the water quality any good, so 40 or 50 (?) years years ago the practice was abandoned. Still, when it is picked up from the streets, it has to go someplace – and those places are finite. The snow, sometimes, doesn’t seem to be.
      http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2164/2235392487_d77100a4e5.jpg

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    pat

    never heard of this online website until today. noted this piece describing Leigh Sales’ attack on the PM as asking “hard questions”, which includes ABC video of the “who are you” exchange, and which attributes ABC at the bottom of the article, “- with ABC”

    9 Feb: TheNewDaily: Kaitlin Thals – with ABC (credited at bottom of article): ‘Which Tony are you?’ Hard questions for PM
    http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2015/02/09/abbott-vows-to-fight-on/#./?&_suid=1423518564388036158685978390575

    from the above link, i then noticed this piece:

    9 Feb: The New Daily: Sean Kelly: Turnbull should pounce while Abbott is wounded
    (Sean Kelly was an adviser to Kevin Rudd from 2009 then to Julia Gillard from 2010)
    Right now there is momentum going his way. It must be devilishly tempting to ride it to power…

    amusingly, Sean Kelly links to this piece, which ACTUALLY QUOTES THE FIGS showing Turnbull has even less momentum than Bishop with Coalition voters:

    9 Feb: The New Daily: Ebony Bowden: Federal government poll-axed
    The Newspoll showed overwhelming support for Mr Turnbull to lead the Liberal party and become prime minister…
    The majority of Mr Turnbull’s support comes from Labor voters, with Mr Abbott preferred among Liberal voters to lead the party, 54 to 40 per cent…
    Ms Bishop leads Mr Turnbull, 46 to 39 per cent, among Liberal voters as preferred leader…

    ABC tells us who The New Daily is and isn’t:

    Nov 2013: ABC AM: Peter Ryan: The New Daily emerges as an online media player, with backing from industry superannuation funds
    But as traditional hard copy newspapers struggle to survive in the digital world, there is not a media magnate in sight.
    Instead, The New Daily will be bankrolled by three Australian industry superannuation funds: Australian Super, Cbus and Industry Super Holdings.
    And unlike the online mastheads from Fairfax and News Corporation, such as The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian, The New Daily will not have a pay wall…
    Bruce Guthrie, a former editor of The Age and the Herald Sun, is The New Daily’s managing editor…
    The New Daily will be headquartered in Melbourne and will have a staff of 11 journalists, plus a network of contributors. The site will also use content from the Australian Associated Press and the ABC…
    While the three super fund backers are providing $2 million each, the strategy is to have The New Daily self funded through advertising revenue.
    “I think their expectations are realistic,” Mr Guthrie said…
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-13/new-daily-launches/5087940

    more to come…

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    pat

    The New Daily Part II:

    the Super Funds funding it – Australian Super, Cbus and Industry Super Holdings:

    26 Dec 2014: SMH: Clancy Yeates: Australian Super calls on banks to assess climate change risk
    One of the country’s biggest investors, Australian Super, has asked the chairmen of the nation’s biggest banks how they are responding to carbon exposure risk, as lenders face growing pressure over their response to climate change.
    Australian Super’s investment manager for governance, Andrew Gray, said banks needed to give investors comfort that they were “assessing and managing” the risks appropriately…
    Earlier in the year, former United States secretary to the Treasury and Goldman Sachs chief Hank Paulson likened the growing financial risks created by climate change to the US housing credit bubble that was allowed to inflate until 2008…
    The Asset Owners Disclosure Project, which Dr (John) Hewson chairs, is considering “naming and shaming” how the world’s 1000 biggest banks are responding to carbon risk, something it already does for pension funds…
    http://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/australian-super-calls-on-banks-to-assess-climate-change-risk-20141224-12d16q.html

    cBus: Climate change Q&A
    Q. What does the Fund do to address climate change risk?
    A. The Fund has taken a number of steps to address climate change risk. For example, we encourage our external fund managers and the listed companies in which we invest to incorporate and consider climate change risk and opportunities in their investment processes.
    We also actively participate in various climate change surveys and studies in order to share information about climate change investment best practice. For instance, we participate in the Global Investor Survey on Climate Change for Asset Owners and Asset Managers.
    Cbus is a participant in the 2014 Mercer’s Climate Change and Strategic Asset Allocation study, which is now in its second phase…
    Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC)
    The IGCC represents institutional investors with total funds under management of approximately $1 trillion, and others in the investment community interested in the impact of climate change on investments…
    Cbus is also a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment, a global network representing more than 1,267 investment institutions worldwide with total assets of more than US$45 trillion…
    http://www.cbussuper.com.au/investments/esg–and–responsible-investing/climate-change-q-and-a

    from LinkedIn (url available online):

    Pacific Hydro
    Pacific Hydro is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Industry Funds Management (IFM) Australian Infrastructure Fund…and is wholly owned, through Industry Super Holdings Pty Ltd, by a large number of Australian superannuation funds…
    Through its ownership structure, Pacific Hydro provides sustainable infrastructure investment opportunities for around 5 million Australian members of Industry Superannuation Funds.

    message to ABC’s Peter Ryan –
    true, there’s not “a media magnate in sight”…but being funded by CAGW-invested Super Funds raises a lot of serious questions, as far as i’m concerned.

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    Flatulant Lank

    I know this is a bit off-topic but I came across it the other day and thought readers would be interested.

    I giant fracking industry is planned in California. Massive wind farms will produce compressed air during windy days and send it to underground storage where it can be released through turbines to generate power when the windmills are not turning.
    http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/8-billion-green-energy-initiative-proposed-for-los-angeles-276440541.html

    How do the lock-the-gate [crowd] and anti-fracking [snips] rationalize this?

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    Bevan

    I doubt that the Climate Council is any better informed than the IPCC. Their pronouncements follow the alarmist agenda produced by the IPCC which is clearly based on ignorance because they do not research the Earth’s climate. Under “Principles Governing IPCC Work” on the IPCC Web site, the document states in its second paragraph:
    “ROLE
    2. The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, …”
    That is, they do not consider the non-human factors, which must be by far the most dominant part of the Earth’s climate.

    In no statements from either the IPCC or the Climate Council have I seen any mention of the 368 locations on the web site for the World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases which each contain files of past atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Taken together with 36 years of satellite temperature measurements these give us a clear insight into what has actually been happening in the Earth’s atmosphere.

    My analysis of data from selected sites has, to date, revealed that both the monthly and annual changes in each of the CO2 concentration and the satellite lower tropospheric temperature generate insignificant correlation coefficients with a high probability that the coefficients are zero.

    Hence there is clearly no causal relationship between changes in CO2 concentration and satellite lower tropospheric temperature. CO2 does not cause global warming.

    However the analysis has revealed that there is a high correlation between the annual average temperature and the annual rate of change in CO2. At Mauna Loa this correlation coefficient was 0.69 with negligible probability that the correlation is zero. Clearly the temperature level drives the rate of change in the CO2 concentration.

    This explains why CO2 concentration lags temperature on a geological time scale, the rate of increase in CO2 does not fall to zero until the temperature has reached a critical low point, that is, the CO2 concentration continues to rise while the temperature is falling but at an ever decreasing rate.

    It also explains why the CO2 concentration has been continually increasing for the past 58 years of recording at the Mauna Loa Observatory while the temperature has reached a plateau along with the rate of increase in CO2 concentration. In the first years of recording at Mauna Loa, the CO2 concentration was increasing at a rate of 0.68 ppm per annum. This has increased along with temperature to reach a plateau of almost 2.1 ppm per annum over the past 15 years.

    To conclude, the natural rise in temperature since the Little Ice Age has most likely caused the generation of the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration since then.

    To my way of thinking this should be an important consideration in the Climate Change discussion yet I do not seem to be able to get anyone to notice, not politicians, newspaper editors nor climate web site administrators, only the rare reader has commented. What do I have to do to be noticed, proclaim that I am a Climate Council scientist?

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    pat

    Sept 2014: RenewEconomy: Giles Parkinson: $29bn Australian super fund (HESTA) to restrict thermal coal investments
    The fund announced the move on Friday, following a meeting of its board. The restrictions will apply across its $29 billion portfolio…
    ***Investment bank HSBC this week coined a new expression – 2°C finance – to describe those investments which are consistent with reaching the climate goals that every government has signed up to, but are yet to act on…
    HESTA CEO Anne-Marie Corboy: “This ‘unburnable carbon’ is likely to become an increasing risk in the medium to long term, especially for companies heavily invested in thermal coal, or those seeking to develop new long-term assets,” Corboy said in a statement…
    http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/29bn-australian-super-fund-to-restrict-thermal-coal-investments-76172

    ***Giles, would this be the HSBC, to which u refer, as being concerned about CAGW & saving the planet?

    (MSM is covering this)

    8 Feb: International Consortium of Investigative Journalists: Banking Giant HSBC Sheltered Murky Cash Linked to Dictators and Arms Dealers
    By Gerard Ryle, Will Fitzgibbon, Mar Cabra, Rigoberto Carvajal, Marina Walker Guevara, Martha M. Hamilton and Tom Stites
    Team of journalists from 45 countries unearths secret bank accounts maintained for criminals, traffickers, tax dodgers, politicians and celebrities
    Secret documents reveal that global banking giant HSBC profited from doing business with arms dealers who channeled mortar bombs to child soldiers in Africa, bag men for Third World dictators, traffickers in blood diamonds and other international outlaws.
    The leaked files, based on the inner workings of HSBC’s Swiss private banking arm, relate to accounts holding more than $100 billion…
    The documents, obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists via the French newspaper Le Monde, show the bank’s dealings with clients engaged in a spectrum of illegal behavior, especially in hiding hundreds of millions of dollars from tax authorities…
    These disclosures shine a light on the intersection of international crime and legitimate business, and they dramatically expand what’s known about potentially illegal or unethical behavior in recent years at HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks…
    HSBC, which is headquartered in London and has offices in 74 nations and territories on six continents, at first insisted that ICIJ destroy the data…
    The reporting by ICIJ and a team of media organizations from 45 countries go deeper into the dark corners of HSBC than a 2012 U.S. Senate investigation, which found that the bank had lax controls that allowed Latin American drug cartels to launder hundreds of millions of ill-gotten dollars through its U.S. operations, rendering the dirty money usable…
    http://www.icij.org/project/swiss-leaks/banking-giant-hsbc-sheltered-murky-cash-linked-dictators-and-arms-dealers

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    pat

    whoa! RED ALERT:

    9 Feb: CarbonBrief: Roz Pidcock: Pachauri: IPCC should take official role in assessing country pledges to curb climate change
    The outgoing chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr Rajendra Pachauri, has a new vision for the organisation’s future.
    Traditionally focused on collating the science underpinning climate change, Pachauri’s proposals would seem to take the IPCC in a distinctly more political direction.
    Suggesting the panel “moves forward with the times and responds to changing expectations”, Pachauri wants the IPCC to take an official role in assessing countries’ pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and in totting up whether they add up to enough to meet global climate change targets…
    What would an annual report summing up countries’ INDCs look like in practice? The details are yet to be firmed up but would involve a new dedicated task force, says Pachauri…
    Pachauri is clear the IPCC’s core task of producing scientific assessment reports must not be compromised by taking on any new responsibilities:
    “[It is] useful for the Panel to keep in mind what makes the essence of IPCC assessments, namely scientific rigor and comprehensiveness. It is essential that any format decided for the future products of the IPCC does not allow for any compromise on their robustness, comprehensiveness, rigour and transparency”….
    http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/02/pachauri-ipcc-should-take-official-role-in-assessing-country-pledges-to-curb-climate-change/

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    pat

    9 Feb: BusinessGreen: Jessica Shankleman: Quarter of electorate say their vote hinges on parties’ stance on climate change, finds poll
    ComRes poll reveals 28 per cent of people would switch allegiances if their party of choice dropped their climate policies…
    The poll, commissioned by a group of more than 100 NGOs, including Greenpeace, Oxfam and Cafod, revealed 77 per cent of 18 to 24 year-olds who plan to vote Conservative are “very or fairly” concerned about climate change, compared to just 46 per cent of Conservative voters 65 and older.
    Overall, 13 per cent of Conservative-leaning voters said they were “very concerned” about climate change and 40 per cent said they were “fairly concerned”…
    In contrast, only one young Labour-leaning voter aged 18 to 24 said they were not at all worried about climate change..
    http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2394185/poll-quarter-of-electorate-say-their-vote-hinges-on-parties-stance-on-climate-change

    i swear the following is the BusinessGreen poll, as i’ve checked some of the figs quoted above! unbelievable:

    ComRes Polling: Social – Climate Change Coalition Climate Change Survey
    Around a fifth of UK adults say they would be less likely to go on a date (18%), start a relationship (19%) or get married to someone (21%) who does not believe that climate change needs to be tackled.
    23% of women say they would be less likely to go on a date with someone who does not believe that climate change should be tackled, with 25% of women saying they would be less likely to start a relationship and 26% saying they would be less likely to marry somebody who doesn’t believe climate change should be tackled.
    28% of UK adults say they would not vote for the party they intended to vote for at the 2015 General Election if they did not have a strong policy on tackling climate change.
    Download 40-page PDF…The Climate Coalition ‘Show the Love’ Campaign
    ComRes interviewed 2,100 UK adults online between the 30th and 2nd February 2015.
    http://comres.co.uk/poll/1388/climate-change-coalition-climate-change-survey.htm

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    el gordo

    Even with a sharp uptick last year, the temperature trend remains subdued.

    https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/clip_image0026.jpg

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    Bobl

    The problem with all these so-called probability calculations/models is that they errantly assume that each year is independent of each other, that is the climate somehow gets magically reset to the energy level of the average on Jan 1. But climate doesn’t work like that, the energy level of any given year starts off at the energy level of the end of the previous year, a random walk. So given that we are at the end of a rising trend since the little ice age, the probability of a hottest evah year is pretty much 0.5, depending on whether the current year heats from the previous year or falls from it.

    The throw of a dice odds based on it being hotter than the average is not the right probability model to use in such cases. The current pause in warming shows that undoubtedly the probability of warmest evah in 2013 was almost exactly 0.5, since almost every year since 2000 was the same as 2013 (plus or minus)

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      Bevan

      Bobl, you are writing about the difference between stationary and non-stationary time series. The IPCC, in their ignorance (or was it deliberate?), did not recognise that causation cannot be implied when both series are non-stationary as are the global temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration data, in that they both have been increasing with time.

      To study causation one must look at changes in each of the variables on the assumption that these changes are independently, Normally distributed about zero mean so that standard statistical tests apply. That is, for the IPCC proposition to hold, a change in CO2 concentration should correspond to a similar change, be it positive or negative, in global temperature and the data shows that this is not the case.

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        Bobl

        Yes, that is the case. The average of temperataure is no more stable than is temperature, that is a characteristic of chaotic systems. You can’t average a chaotic system as its integral is no more stationary than the variable of note. Another problem is the assumption that climate sensitivity is a constant, which it’s not. Climate sensitivity is probably also chaotic.

        However with climate maybe you could look at the probability of a given year being warmer than the previous, that might give you a sense of it. That number might be 1.2 : 1 or there abouts. That is, there might have been 1.2x the number of years that were warmer than the last compared with years that were cooler or the same. 1.2 :1 is probably not very newsworthy

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    mem

    If you were a gambler which would you bet your house on a) b) or c)?
    The Climate Council predicting that next year will be:
    a)the hottest year ever due to global warming
    b)normal and on par with past experiences plus or minus 10% difference
    c)colder than expected due to global warming?

    Bets in now to the divine (or is that the divining) Prof Will Steffen of the Australian Climate Council who is so confident of his predictions that he is willing to bet that Australia won’t be a good place for our grand kids to live by 2090. Prof Steffen being an astute fellow obviously realises that his gamble is null and void because he won’t be alive for us to collect from him. So, it is all brazen puffery and certainly unbecoming of anyone with Prof in front of his name.

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