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The Australian media are going all out on climate change and bushfires.
The ABC 7:30 Report last night clearly laid out the options for preventing mega bush-fires.
Funded by you whether you like it or not.
Watch the whole bizarre post-modern witchcraft here: ABC Channel 1
Yes, the world has warmed by 0.7C since 1900. We are living in a new climate. Before, when things were, on average imperceptibly cooler, megafires did not happen. Right?
Thanks to Peter Ritson for the short video version.
“The Science is in”. Annabel Crabb tells us “The link is established between climate change and bushfires”. (What “link” would that be Annabel? — That when there is a bushfire there are more media stories about climate change?)
As Simon at ClimateMadness jokes, obviously there is no groupthink at the ABC because they put forward all the views from every side of Greenness:
9 out of 10 based on 109 ratings […]
How about some perspective on those alarming headlines:
Thanks to Steve Hunter illustrations
We are tying ourselves in knots over 150 year old records (or even less) when:
These are just short Australian records, not long global ones. Even in the 1800’s Australia recorded heatwaves of 50+ degrees. The world was similarly warm 1,000 years ago, definitely warmer 7,000 years ago, and a lot warmer 120,000 years ago. The world has been warmer for most of the last 500 million years. Satellites are more reliable, have better coverage, and don’t have dubious inexplicable adjustments. They show it was not a record angry summer, nor the hottest year we’ve had. 8.8 out of 10 based on 87 ratings […]
Whatever happened to polar amplification?
The oceans are apparently warming, and yet the sea-ice abounds in the Southern Hemisphere. A new record was set at 19.57 million square kilometers of ice [NSIDC-nrt], around one million more than the usual amount. (Yesterday ice covered 19.11m km2).
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Source: http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr2/
National Snow and Ice Data Center Web site. Records date back to October 1978. NSIDC also has a similar graph of daily sea-ice-extent.
The size of the sea-ice surrounding Antarctica is spectacular. We can just see the outline of the landmass here to appreciate just how much of the Southern Hemisphere is covered with sea-ice right now.
8.6 out of 10 based on 93 ratings […]
For all those other ideas…
8.9 out of 10 based on 12 ratings
Millions of people are alive today because the net emissions of carbon dioxide have increased. These extra emissions have provided essential fertilization for crops around the world. Craig Idso has released a new report calculating that the extra value that the rise in CO2 has produced from 1961 – 2011 is equivalent to $3.5 trillion dollars cumulatively. Currently the extra CO2 is worth $160 billion dollars annually. Big-biccies. Projecting forwards, increasing CO2 levels could be worth an extra $9.8 trillion on crop production between now and 2050. Virtually every economic analysis to date does not include the agricultural gains. There are also benefits in health, as warmer winters reduce mortality by more than hotter summers increase deaths. The real economic question then, is “Can we afford to slow CO2 emissions at all?”
While there are negative externalities projected by some climate modelers, their models are unvalidated, proven wrong, and based on unsupported assumptions about clouds and humidity. Compare that to the agricultural gains, which are not just demonstrated in laboratory greenhouses, but confirmed in the field, and with global satellite estimates of increased biomass.
Obviously, the only sensible thing to do at this point is continue our emissions of […]
A small win for determined citizens?
Dailymail.co.uk: “After blighting the Yorkshire Dales for more than two decades, four giant turbines have been removed from the stunning landscape – the first ever windfarm in Britain to be scrapped.
9.5 out of 10 based on 86 ratings […]
Those who depend on silencing opponents have already lost the intellectual war. But they cling to the hope that they can keep the news of their loss from spreading.
“Should newspapers ban letters from climate science deniers?
The Guardian
Graham Readfearn
The LA Times decides not to print letters from readers claiming there’s no evidence for human-caused climate change”
Note the example Readfearn chooses of a letter most dangerous and unworthy:
“Here’s an excerpt from a Letter to the Editor, printed earlier this week in The Australian newspaper.
“While [temperatures] have been higher than before the past 15 years, they have not increased in line with fossil fuel emissions, just as they failed to do over the 1948-77 period. This makes incorrect the theory that fossil fuel emissions cause temperature increases.” Des Moore, South Yarra, Victoria.
Wrongheaded and simplistic views like this …”
Except it’s not wrongheaded and Readfearn is the one who is simplistic, not Des Moore. (As it happens, the unworthy know-nothing denier was probably the same Des Moore who used to be the deputy secretary of the Australian Federal Treasury). Would Australia really […]
Three things everyone needs to know about carbon capture.
Coal supplies 29% of the worlds total energy (and oil supplies 31%). In the last five years governments world-wide promised to spend $22 billion on carbon capture and storage (CCS). $5b in the US. CCS increases the cost of electricity by 70%. (Yes, you read that correctly, seventy percent). That’s about $60/ton of carbon reduction.
TonyfromOz has been sending me gobsmacking details and statistics on this bizarre practice for months, and I must post them in their full glory as soon as possible. Historians of the future will gape at this strange religious ritual and ask how much we gave up in order to stuff a plant fertilizer down a deep hole in an effort to change the weather. – Jo
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Carbon capture and storage—the Edsel of energy policies
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By Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times
The war on climate change has produced many dubious “innovations.” Intermittent wind and solar energy sources, carbon markets that buy and sell “hot air,” and biofuels that burn food as we drive are just a few examples. But carbon capture and storage is the Edsel of energy policies.
[…]
This means nothing of course. Just weather. (No, actually I do mean that, though I expect those who look for excuses to complain will say I’m not allowed to discuss weather conditions. It’s a “dog-whistle”, or something.) For balance I’ll point out it’s been record hot on the East Coast of Australia. (Sydney’s “third hottest October day since records began 154 years ago.”)
But seriously, it’s interesting (and sad) that snow in Dakota killed 100,000 head of cattle, that early heavy snow has fallen in Europe (nearly a meter in Switzerland), it’s been called the worst start to “winter for 200 years”. The snowfall in Germany was the largest at the start of winter since records started in 1800.
Probably most interesting of all is that long range forecasters are issuing catastrophic warnings (they are quite extreme) but the UK Met says that’s “irresponsible”, and that trying to predict the weather that far in advance is “crystal ball” gazing. (Oh really?) They didn’t seem so concerned about predicting hot horrors on longer timeframes…
It’s been an early cold winter already in Europe NoTricksZone “Most Severe Winter Start In 200 Years!” + Euro Municipalities Now Ignoring Foolish Predictions Of Warm Winters […]
Glaciers that tore trees in half and then froze the stumps are receding again in Alaska to reveal those old remnants of a warmer era. I like these little “concrete” anecdotes, though their true meaning depends on exactly how old these remains are, and whether that timing correlates with warming in other places.
Ancient trees emerge from frozen forest ‘tomb’ Retreat of the Mendenhall Glacier reveals the remains of trees which grew more than 2,000 years ago By MARY CATHARINE MARTIN JUNEAU EMPIRE
The Mendenhall Glacier’s recession is unveiling the remains of ancient forests that have remained frozen beneath the ice for up to 2,350 years.
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The most recent stumps she’s dated emerging from the Mendenhall are between 1,400 and 1,200 years old. The oldest she’s tested are around 2,350 years old. She’s also dated some at around 1,870 to 2,000 years old.
8.9 out of 10 based on 97 ratings […]
[See our concise and updating story of the bet here.]
Commenters often ask us if I am prepared to make a bet and put “your money where your mouth is.” The answer is: been there — done that. We (as in David Evans and I) already have and a long time ago. As far as I know, it’s one of the largest private bets going on the climate*. David bet against Brian Schmidt, $6,000 to $9,000, in early 2007 on outcomes over 10, 15 and 20 years.
The bet was made a year before I started blogging. It was literally the first action we took as skeptics (instigated and hammered out almost entirely by David, with my support). So we have $6,000 exposure — betting that global temperatures would not rise faster than 0.15C per decade, as judged by GISTemp. How are we doing on this bet? Judging by the trend at the moment, pretty well. Brian is still optimistic that he will win on the later outcomes. (This is part of the reason we are particularly interested in trends from 2005, which is when the bet temperatures begin to count.) Kudos to Brian both for being one […]
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7.2 out of 10 based on 31 ratings
Nicola Scafetta has a new paper (in long line of papers) on a semi-empirical model which has a better fit than Global Circulation Models (CGM) favored by the IPCC. We ought be careful not to read too much into it, but nor to ignore the message in it about the grand failure of the GCM’s. Scafetta used Fourier analysis to find six cycles, then uses those six cycles to produce a climate model he runs for as long as 2000 years which seems to match the best multiproxies. In terms of discovering the absolute truth about the climate, this is not an end-point way to use Fourier analysis, as it is just “curve fitting” With six flexible cycle frequencies (plus amplitude and phase) there are 18* 6 tuneable parameters, more than enough to model any wiggly line on a graph, and there are scores of astronomical cycles to pick from. *.[Nicola Scafetta replies to this below, pointing out he uses the “6 major detected astronomical oscillations”, and their phases are fixed. I am happy to be corrected. His model is more useful than I thought. Apologies for the misunderstanding. – Jo]
But Scafetta’s work suggests it’s madness not to pay […]
” I’m over and over
tryin’ to excuse your point of view
I’m over and over
Your slant and bias too
I’m over and over
being treated like a fool
And I’m over and over
continually funding you..”
“When it’s over you’ll discover
What a free market can do
8.6 out of 10 based on 84 ratings […]
“…the role of the Sun is one of the largest unknowns in the climate system”
Meteorologists are already aware that changes in the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) can affect the polar regions of Earth. Now, for the first time Lam et al report the magnetic field appears to influence atmospheric pressure in the mid latitudes. Lam compared the average surface pressure at times when the magnetic field is either very strong or very weak and found a statistically significant wave structure similar to an atmospheric Rossby wave. They claim to show that this works through a mechanism that is a conventional meteorological process, and that the effect is large enough to influence weather patterns in the mid-latitudes. The size of the effect is similar to “initial analysis uncertainties” in “ensemble numerical weather prediction” (which I take to mean “climate models”).
They are suggesting that small changes in this solar influence on the upper atmosphere could produce important changes through “non-linear evolution of atmospheric dynamics”.
Jo suggests that IPCC-favoured climate models don’t include any solar magnetic effect at all, which is just one of many reasons why they don’t work.
The large scale wandering convolutions of the jet […]
I’m very glad to see this point being made in the mainstream media. Earth is a water planet (yet the models don’t do clouds, rain, snow or humidity well). This is pitched for The Washington Times audience, not a science blog, but it’s a point well made, and it’s good to see the point about positive feedback from water vapor, which I (and David Evans) have been making for so long, is getting out to the mainstream press. Readers will also find the North Atlantic hurricane statistics on predictions versus outcome rather stark. – Jo
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Climate change is dominated by the water cycle, not carbon dioxide
By Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times
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Climate scientists are obsessed with carbon dioxide. The newly released Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that “radiative forcing” from human-emitted CO2 is the leading driver of climate change. Carbon dioxide is blamed for everything from causing more droughts, floods, and hurricanes, to endangering polar bears and acidifying the oceans. But Earth’s climate is dominated by water, not carbon dioxide.
Earth’s water cycle encompasses the salt water of the oceans, the fresh water of rivers and […]
This song is growing on me. It didn’t grab me in the first verse, but I was definitely smiling by the middle. A rollicking… satire.
I could see this going down very well at the right party. :- )
Thanks to James Black, a Tropicarnival music award winner, see his site. This song is part of an album “Songs From Inside The System”, and I hear it started as a short poem here. Support the musician who doesn’t follow the same meme as so many others, there are plenty more songs yet to be written about our collective craziness.
My favourite lines:
“Paying your carbon taxes,
paying trillions to the goldman saches,
surrender your neurology,
to the church of climatology,
that science garbology,
is new world theology.
8.7 out of 10 based on 65 ratings
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7.8 out of 10 based on 22 ratings
Popular Science — a 141 year old science and technology publication — have announced they’re shutting down their comments entirely. Apparently they can’t cope with open debate of contentious scientific areas like climate change.
As usual, there are pat lines about “fostering debate” even as they close it down.
“It wasn’t a decision we made lightly. As the news arm of a 141-year-old science and technology magazine, we are as committed to fostering lively, intellectual debate as we are to spreading the word of science far and wide. The problem is when trolls and spambots overwhelm the former, diminishing our ability to do the latter.”
Actions speak louder than words.
Of the two posts used to justify the silencing, the first was about climate, and had all of 16 comments — two of which were spam (see Ninna and Lili) — the rest mostly skeptical, and one used crass language. The other post was about abortion (90 comments) — yes, killing the unborn is going to generate debate. Is that it?
The real problem here is their mission statement (as contained in the quote above) is profoundly unscientific. A scientist’s job is not to “spread the word of ‘science’ “, […]
It’s clear science journalists need some help. The IPCC are saying “The ocean ate my global warming” and most environment reporters just cut-n-paste this excuse — they fall for the breathtaking joules-to-the-22nd-figures — not realizing they convert to a mere 0.07C over nearly 50 years (as if we could measure the average temperature of the global oceans to a hundredth of a degree!). Worse, the warming we do find is so small, it supports the skeptical calculations, not the IPCC’s ones. I ran a tutorial for journalists at the end of the post, and asked Bob Tisdale (author of Climate Models Fail ) if he had some other questions. He did, oh boy, and here they are. Thanks to Bob. – Jo
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Questions the Media Should Be Asking the IPCC – The Hiatus in Warming Posted on October 3, 2013 by Bob Tisdale
Joanne Nova asked me to suggest questions the media should be asking the IPCC about their 5th Assessment Report (AR5). I’ve provided a few examples along with background information.
This post will discuss the slowdown in global warming since 1998 (or the halt since 2001) known as the hiatus. While the hiatus in warming […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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